The Reading test in brief
You have 60 minutes for 40 questions across three passages. There is no extra transfer time: on the computer-delivered test you type answers as you go, and on paper you write them onto the answer sheet within the hour. Academic Reading uses three long texts of the sort found in journals, magazines and textbooks. General Training starts with shorter everyday texts such as notices and adverts, moves on to workplace material such as job descriptions or staff policies, and ends with one longer general-interest text.
The band conversion differs between the two. Band 7 in Academic Reading needs roughly 30 correct answers out of 40, while General Training needs more correct answers for the same band. So if you are on the GT track, aim for accuracy on every question.
Question types you will meet
- TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN, and its cousin YES / NO / NOT GIVEN for the writer's views
- Matching Headings to paragraphs
- Matching Information: which paragraph contains a given detail
- Matching features, such as statements to researchers or dates
- Summary, note, table or flow-chart completion, sometimes with a word box
- Sentence completion and short-answer questions with a word limit
- Multiple choice with one or more answers
- Diagram label completion
Each type rewards a different reading behaviour. Completion questions usually follow the order of the text; Matching Information does not. Knowing that before you start saves minutes.
A timing plan for 60 minutes
A plan that suits many students:
- Passage 1: about 17 minutes. It is usually the most approachable, so bank these marks.
- Passage 2: about 20 minutes.
- Passage 3: about 23 minutes. It is normally the hardest, so it gets the most time.
If a question is eating your time, flag it, guess, and move on. On our computer-style screens you can flag questions for review and see in the question navigator which ones are still blank. Never leave an answer empty: there is no penalty for a wrong answer.
The two big traps: NOT GIVEN and headings
NOT GIVEN is where many careful readers lose marks. The rule is easy to state and hard to apply: FALSE means the passage says the opposite; NOT GIVEN means the passage does not say either way. The trap is your own knowledge. If a statement says Jaipur's old city was painted pink in the nineteenth century, you may know that to be true, but if the passage does not say it, the answer is NOT GIVEN. Answer only from the text.
Matching Headings catches students who match a keyword instead of the main idea. A paragraph about water shortages might mention "tourism" once, and the heading containing "tourism" will be a distractor. Read the first two sentences and the last sentence of each paragraph, put the main idea into your own words, then look at the list. Our drag-and-drop headings work like the computer test, so you can rearrange them as you change your mind.
Reading habits for Jaipur students
Many students here studied in Hindi medium or a mix of Hindi and English, and read English mainly for exams and textbooks. That is a solid base for Academic Reading, but the pace of IELTS can be a shock. Effective IELTS Reading practice in Jaipur means building a daily habit outside the test, which helps more than any trick:
- Read one long article a day from an English-language newspaper or a serious magazine, ideally on science, history, environment or society, the kinds of theme IELTS often uses.
- On the metro or in an auto, read on your phone and try to state the main idea of each paragraph in one line.
- Keep a notebook of paraphrases: when you see "rose sharply" in a question and "increased dramatically" in the passage, write the pair down.
- Rajasthan's own history, desert ecology and traditional water conservation make good practice topics. Read about them in English and summarise what you read.
How to practise on IELTS Learning
There are 52 Academic and General Training Reading sets, each with explanations that show where in the passage the answer sits and why the distractors are wrong. A sensible sequence:
- Weeks 1–2: single sets by question type, untimed, reading every explanation.
- Weeks 3–4: full sets with a strict timer.
- Later: full mocks and, if you are aiming at band 7 or above, the harder Charged sets, which use denser texts and closer distractors.
Every wrong answer goes into your Mistake Notebook automatically. Look back at it weekly and patterns appear: perhaps you struggle with NOT GIVEN only when the statement contains a number, or you miss headings on paragraphs about causes and effects.
Start with the free sample Reading sets on the practice tests page. When you want the full library for IELTS Reading practice in Jaipur or wherever your week takes you, register for Full Access.