IELTS General Training Reading Test

The IELTS Reading Test is for one hour.  It has three sections and a total of 40 questions.

The texts are taken from notices, advertisements, leaflets, newspapers, instruction manuals, books or magazines. You will find that the difficulty level of the text increases with each section.

Tips on doing Reading test

• DO NOT try to read the entire text and answer the questions.
• First, do skimming. That is, read the title, the first sentence of every paragraph.  Read any highlighted words.   The purpose of skimming is to get an overall idea of the text.
• Next, read the question at least 3 times. Focus on the key words and understand the question.
• Use the key words from the question to search for the answer in the text.
• You have only one and a half minutes for each question. If you find a question difficult, leave it and move to the next one.  You can try it later if you have time.

How band score is calculated (approximate)