IELTS Reading Question Types: What Each One Tests and Which Paper Uses It

IELTS Reading uses eleven question types on the Academic paper and eight on General Training, and every one of them is worth the same single mark. That matters for how you prepare, because the types are not equally hard and they do not test the same skill. A candidate who loses four marks to one type on every practice test has found the cheapest place to gain a band, and the first step is knowing which type that is.

The full list, and which paper uses each

Three types appear only on the Academic paper: Yes/No/Not Given, matching sentence endings, and sentence completion as a type of its own. Everything else is on both. IELTS publishes the list on its Reading format pages, with a short description of what each type tests. Here it is in the order the Academic page gives it.

On General Training, sentence completion is not listed separately. It appears as one form of the completion type, alongside summaries, notes, tables and flow charts, and works the same way.

IELTS gives the number of questions for every type as "variable". No type has a fixed share of the 40 marks, and a paper can lean on one type heavily or skip it altogether.

Three families, three different skills

Read the right-hand column of that table again and the eleven types collapse into three jobs.

The first family asks you to find a specific detail and check it: True/False/Not Given, Yes/No/Not Given, matching information, sentence completion, short answers, and the completion types. IELTS describes almost all of these with the phrase "specific information". They reward scanning for a name, a number or a paraphrased idea, then reading that one sentence closely.

The second family asks about the main idea rather than a detail: matching headings and matching sentence endings. IELTS is explicit that matching headings tests whether you can tell a paragraph's main idea from a supporting one, and that matching information, which looks similar, tests the opposite. Candidates who treat the two the same way lose marks on both.

The third family sits in between. Multiple choice can test either a detail or a main point, and matching features asks you to connect facts to the people or things they belong to, which needs both scanning and close reading.

Where the answers are, and where IELTS does not say

For four types, IELTS states that the questions follow the order of the text: multiple choice, matching sentence endings, sentence completion and short-answer questions. When one of those is in front of you, the answer to question 3 sits after the answer to question 2, and you never need to go backwards.

For the completion types and diagram labels, IELTS says the opposite. The answers may not come in the same order as the text, though they will usually come from one part of it rather than the whole passage.

For True/False/Not Given and Yes/No/Not Given, the format pages say nothing about order either way. The statements often track the passage, and assuming they do is a useful place to start your search. It is not a published rule, so do not treat "I could not find it where it should be" as proof that the answer is Not Given. True, False, Not Given goes through what does prove it.

The word limit is a rule, not a guideline

Every type where you write words rather than choose them carries a limit in its instructions, of the form NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER. IELTS states three things about it. Going over the limit loses the mark, even when the right words are in your answer. Contracted forms such as "they're" are not tested, so you never need to decide whether one counts as one word or two. And hyphenated words such as "check-in" count as one word.

The other half of that rule is that answers must be words from the text. You are not asked to paraphrase, and a synonym that is not in the passage is wrong even when it means the same thing. On the General Training page IELTS adds that you lose marks for incorrect spelling and grammar. IDP, one of the three organisations that own IELTS, states that words with spelling errors are marked incorrect in Reading and Listening, so on either paper a correctly identified answer spelled wrongly earns nothing.

What a lost mark costs

On Academic Reading the published anchor for band 7 is 30 marks out of 40, so you can afford ten wrong answers. On General Training the same band needs 35, so you can afford five. A question type that costs you three marks on every practice test is a third of your whole margin on Academic and more than half of it on General Training. The conversion is worked through in IELTS Reading raw score to band score, and the Reading band score converter turns any practice score into a band.

Since a wrong answer costs nothing beyond the mark you did not get, answer every question. A blank has no chance of a mark and a guess has some.

Which types to work on first

Score three or four practice tests and count lost marks by type, not by passage. Most candidates find the losses cluster in two places: the two Not Given types, where the trap is a statement that sounds wrong but is simply absent, and matching headings, where a supporting idea gets mistaken for the main one.

This guide is the hub for the question types. Every type in the table above links to its own page. If you are still choosing a paper, IELTS Academic vs General Training covers how the two Reading tests differ beyond the question list.

The list of types, what each tests, the order and word-limit rules and the paper each appears on come from the IELTS Academic and General Training Reading format pages on ielts.org, last checked in September 2026. The statement that a misspelled answer is marked incorrect comes from IDP, one of the three organisations that own IELTS, also last checked in September 2026.