The test in one paragraph
IELTS Reading gives you 60 minutes for 40 questions across three passages, and there is no extra time to transfer answers. Academic passages come from books, journals and magazines, and they get harder as you go. General Training starts with short everyday texts, moves to workplace documents, and ends with one longer general passage. In Academic Reading, band 7 typically needs about 30 correct answers out of 40; General Training needs more correct answers for the same band.
The question types you will meet
- TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN (or YES / NO / NOT GIVEN for opinions).
- Matching Headings, where you choose a heading for each paragraph.
- Matching Information, where you find which paragraph contains a detail.
- Summary, sentence and note completion, sometimes with a word box.
- Multiple choice, with one or more answers.
- Diagram, table and flow-chart labelling.
Our 52 practice sets cover all of these for both Academic and General Training, with an explanation for every answer showing where in the passage it comes from.
A timing plan that works
For Academic, a simple split is around 17 minutes for Passage 1, 20 for Passage 2 and 23 for Passage 3. For General Training, move faster through Sections 1 and 2 so the long final text has the time it needs.
Within each passage:
- Read the questions first, underlining names, dates and key nouns.
- Skim the passage for about two minutes to see what each paragraph is about.
- Answer in order, because most question sets follow the order of the text (Matching Headings and Matching Information are the main exceptions).
- Never leave a blank. There is no penalty for a wrong answer.
On our computer-style screens you can flag questions for review and use the highlighter, just as in the computer-delivered test.
The two traps that cost the most
NOT GIVEN
Students often choose FALSE when the answer is NOT GIVEN. The rule is simple: FALSE means the passage says the opposite. NOT GIVEN means the passage does not say enough to decide. If you need your own knowledge to answer, it is almost always NOT GIVEN.
This trap catches students who know a topic well. A passage on crop yields or groundwater may feel familiar to anyone from a farming family in Malwa, but the test only rewards what the text actually states, not what you know from your own fields.
Matching Headings
Headings test the main idea of a paragraph, not a single word. A heading that repeats a word from the paragraph is often a distractor. Read the first two sentences and the last sentence of the paragraph, decide its main point in your own words, then look for a heading with the same meaning.
IELTS Reading practice for Bathinda students: building speed
Plenty of students in and around Bathinda studied in Punjabi-medium or Hindi-medium schools before switching to English at college. That is no barrier to a high Reading band, but it often means your reading speed in English lags behind your understanding. Speed comes only from volume.
- Read something in English every day for twenty minutes: a national English newspaper, a science magazine, or articles on agriculture, health and technology.
- Students at AIIMS Bathinda and the nursing colleges already read clinical English; widen that habit to general science and social topics, which appear often in Academic passages.
- Central University of Punjab and engineering students are used to dense texts but sometimes read too slowly and too carefully. Practise skimming a passage in two minutes before answering.
- On the bus from a nearby town, use the phone to review your Mistake Notebook or flashcards rather than full passages, which need concentration.
How to practise between mocks
- Do one timed passage a day, not a full test, on your weakest question type.
- Read every explanation, including for the answers you got right by luck.
- Let the Mistake Notebook guide you. It saves your wrong answers automatically, so patterns become clear within a couple of weeks.
- Check the Study Notes chapter on Reading strategy when one type keeps failing.
Charged sets for band 7 and above
Once you are scoring around 30 out of 40 regularly, standard passages stop stretching you. Our Charged Reading sets use denser texts and closer distractors, so you practise at a level above most test passages. They are part of Full Access, at ₹999 for 2 months.
Start your IELTS Reading practice with the free sample sets: register free or see the practice tests.