IELTS Reading: Format and Question Types

IELTS Academic Reading has three passages (around 2,150-2,750 words total), typically taken from academic books, journals, or magazines, increasing in difficulty. General Training Reading instead uses several shorter texts drawn from everyday sources like notices, advertisements, and workplace documents in the first two sections, with one longer, more complex text in the third section. Both versions have 40 questions and a 60-minute time limit -- there is no extra transfer time in Reading, unlike Listening.

Question types include: True/False/Not Given or Yes/No/Not Given (does a statement agree with, contradict, or go beyond what the passage says), matching headings (match a heading to each paragraph), matching information (which paragraph contains a specific detail), sentence completion, and multiple choice. "Not Given" is the type learners most often get wrong -- it means the passage simply doesn't address the claim at all, which is different from the passage contradicting it (False/No).

A reasonable time budget is roughly 20 minutes per passage, leaving no time for lingering on one hard question -- if you're stuck, make your best guess, flag it, and move on, since every question is worth the same one mark.

Below is an original short passage. Practice applying True/False/Not Given to it.

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Passage (original, academic style -- urban green spaces):

Urban parks have long been valued for their recreational role, but recent research has drawn attention to their measurable effect on local air quality. Trees and other vegetation can filter certain airborne pollutants, and studies conducted in several mid-sized cities found modest reductions in particulate matter concentrations near well-established parks compared to surrounding streets. However, researchers caution that this effect varies considerably depending on park size, tree density, and prevailing wind patterns, and that no study to date has shown urban parks alone can substitute for reducing pollution at its source, such as vehicle emissions. Some city planners have nonetheless begun incorporating "green corridors" -- continuous strips of vegetation connecting parks -- into new development plans, partly on the basis of this air-quality research and partly for its established benefits to biodiversity and resident wellbeing.