Yes, No, Not Given: How It Differs From True, False, Not Given

Yes/No/Not Given asks whether each statement agrees with the views or claims of the writer. True/False/Not Given asks whether it agrees with the information in the text. That is the only difference in the official definitions, and it changes what counts as evidence: a fact the passage reports is not a view the writer holds, and a view the writer reports from someone else is not the writer's view either.

IELTS calls this type "Identifying writer's views/claims", and it is listed on the Academic Reading format page only. The General Training page lists eight question types and this is not among them, which fits the papers: an Academic passage must contain detailed logical argument, and this is the question type built to test whether you can follow one.

What the three answers mean here

Yes means the statement agrees with the writer's view or claim. No means it contradicts the writer's view or claim. Not Given means the statement neither agrees with nor contradicts the writer's view or claim. The same warning applies as for True/False/Not Given: do not use anything you already know about the topic.

The word doing the work is "writer's". Every statement is a claim about what the author of the passage thinks, and the passage is the only evidence of that.

Three ways a statement ends up Not Given

The first is the familiar one. The writer never touches the point, so the passage cannot agree or disagree.

The second is specific to this type. The passage states a fact and the statement turns it into an opinion. A writer who reports that the scheme cost twice its budget has not said the scheme was a mistake. If the statement says the writer regards it as a mistake, and the passage only gives the figure, the answer is Not Given. The fact is there. The view is not.

The third is attribution. Argumentative passages quote people, summarise positions and set up objections before answering them. A view the writer attributes to someone else is not the writer's view unless the writer adopts it. "Critics argue that the scheme was rushed" tells you what critics think. It does not, on its own, tell you what the writer thinks, and a statement that the writer believes the scheme was rushed is Not Given unless the passage goes on to agree.

A worked example

Here is a short passage written for this page, followed by three statements.

Statement 1 is No. The writer's claim is that most journeys were transferred from buses, which contradicts the idea that the line attracted new users in large numbers.

Statement 2 is Yes. "The figure is real" is the writer's own claim, made in the writer's own voice, and the statement agrees with it. Note that the supporters' point and the writer's agreement with it are two different things, and it is the second one that decides the answer.

Statement 3 is Not Given. The writer is critical of the project and a reader might guess where that leads, but the passage says nothing about extending the line. A guess about what the writer would probably think is not evidence of what the writer says.

Reading for the writer's voice

The practical skill is telling the writer's own sentences from the ones that report other people. Argumentative writing signals the switch with attributions ("supporters point out", "it is often said", "according to") and with the turn that follows them ("but", "however", "in fact", "the figure is real, but"). The claim after the turn is usually the writer's. The claim before it usually belongs to someone else.

Hedges matter as much here as qualifiers do in True/False/Not Given. A writer who says a policy "may have contributed" to a problem has not claimed it caused the problem. A statement that the writer blames the policy for the problem overstates the view, and an overstatement of a view is not agreement with it.

Where the statements are, and what the type is worth

The Academic format page says answers follow the order of the passage for multiple choice, matching sentence endings, sentence completion and short-answer questions, and says nothing about order for this type. Use the passage order to narrow your search, since the statements often track it, and never use a missing answer as proof of Not Given.

Every question is one mark, and IELTS gives the number of questions for every type as "variable". The band 7 anchor on Academic Reading is 30 out of 40, so ten wrong answers is the whole margin; IELTS Reading raw score to band score covers how the conversion works, and the Reading band score converter turns a practice score into a band.

If the True/False/Not Given rules are not yet solid, start with True, False, Not Given: the search method is the same and the difference is what you compare the statement against. IELTS Reading question types lists all eleven types and which paper uses each.

The definitions of the three answers, the question wording, the warning about prior knowledge and the type's absence from the General Training list come from the IELTS Academic and General Training Reading format pages on ielts.org, last checked in September 2026. The example passage was written for this page and is not from any test.