What type of questions will I need to answer?
In IELTS Reading, there are a total of 40 questions. The questions test various reading skills, including your ability to identify the writer’s purpose, locate specific information, identify opinions and attitudes, extract information from a text to complete a summary, diagram, table or notes.
There are three separate passages with 12-13 questions in each passage, and there are 1-3 different types of tasks in those sections. For some tasks, you need to write words or numbers from reading passage –
- sentence completion
- summary, note, table, flow-chart completion
- short-answer questions
- diagram completion
In other tasks, you need to choose options from a list and write a letter on your answer sheet –
- summary completion with box
- matching information, headings, features, sentence endings
- multiple choice
- matching sentence endings
You may also need to decide if sentences are True/False/Not Given or Yes/No/Not Given, based on the information you read in the text.
Dealing with different types of questions
There are 14 different types of questions in IELTS Reading. When dealing with these questions, the answers to some of them appear serially in the passage, which means, if you find an answer to the first question in paragraph 2, line number 3, then, for the second question, you do not need to search for answers from the first paragraph. You will then look around paragraph 2, where you found the answer to the last question, and then go below.
But some other question types may, may not, or never have answers in serial order in the passage/text.
For your reference, below is the table about which question types’ answers appear serially in the text’s order.
Questions that are always in order | Questions that may or may not be in order | Questions that are never in order |
---|---|---|
Short Answer Question | Notes Completion | Matching Headings |
Sentence Completion | Table Completion | Matching Information |
Multiple Choice Questions | Diagram Completion | Matching Sentence Ending |
True, False and Not Given | Summary Completion | Matching Features |
Yes, No, and Not Given | Flow-chart Completion |

About the Author
Merina is an experienced English Tutor, Exam Trainer and Head of the IELTS Teaching Department at BeatMockTest. Merina is also a Freelance Examiner and Materials Reviewer for IELTS Resources.