General IELTS Reading Test

The General IELTS Reading Test is designed to test a wide range of reading skills such as:

• reading for gist,
• reading for main ideas,
• reading for detail,
• skimming,
• understanding logical argument,
• and recognising writers’ opinions, attitudes, and purpose.

IELTS Reading Test General Training

The General IELTS Reading Test has a total number of 40 questions divided into three sections and each question is worth 1 mark. The test must be done in 60 minutes.

Section 1:

may contain two or three short texts or several shorter texts. These texts are relevant to basic linguistic survival in English with tasks mainly about retrieving and providing general factual information, for example, notices, advertisements, and timetables.

Section 2:

It focuses on the workplace context. For example, job descriptions, contracts, and staff development and training materials.

Section 3:

There is one long text of general reading, that involves reading more extended prose with a more complex structure.

Here, the emphasis is on descriptive and instructive rather than argumentative texts, in a general context relevant to the wide range of test takers involved, for example, newspapers, magazines, and fictional and non-fictional book extracts.

IELTS Reading Questions Types

The question types vary as follows:

• multiple-choice,
• identifying information,
• identifying writer’s views/claims,
• matching information,
• matching headings,
• matching features,
• matching sentence endings,
• sentence completion,
• summary completion,
• note completion,
• table completion,
• flow-chart completion,
• diagram label completion,
• short-answer questions.

For more details about each type of question check IELTS Reading Questions Types article.

IELTS Reading Tips

• Develop reading your abilities for each type of question.
• You should be able to skim and scan passages.
• Improve your speed reading skills.
• Don’t try to understand the entire passage.
• Expand your English vocabulary.
• Focus on the keywords of each question. Keywords will help you locate the information in the passage and to spot the right answer.
• Develop your understanding of English Grammar.
• Practice as much as you can to know your weaknesses

IELTS Reading Test General Band Score

For each version of the General Training Reading test, a band score conversion table is created, which transforms scores out of 40 into the IELTS 9-band scale. Scores are given in whole and half bands.