IELTS Academic reading gives you sixty minutes for three passages and forty questions, with no extra time to copy answers across. Multiple choice is where careless time management shows up first, because every option is partly true and the differences are small. This page sets out a workable timing plan and drills option analysis with forty original questions.
Roughly twenty minutes per passage, including writing answers on the answer sheet. Write the two clock times you must reach at the top of the page.
Title, first line of each paragraph, any subheadings. You are building a map, not learning the content.
Cover the options, decide what the question is asking, and predict the answer. Then read the four choices.
Multiple-choice questions come in passage order. Locate the relevant lines, underline them, and answer from them alone.
Eliminate options one by one and note why each fails: too strong, not mentioned, true but irrelevant, half right.
Options containing always, never, all or proves are usually stronger than anything the passage claims.
If a question asks why the writer mentions something, look at what the surrounding sentences are arguing, not at the thing itself.
The reading paper has no transfer time, so copy each set of answers onto the answer sheet as you finish it.
The final passage is usually the densest. If passage one has run over, take the lost minutes out of rereading, not out of passage three.
Not thisChoosing an option because it is true according to the passage.
ThisChoosing the option that answers the question that was asked.
Two or three options are often true statements; only one answers the stem.
Not thisSpending five minutes on a single question.
ThisGuessing, marking the number and returning if time allows.
Every question is worth the same mark, and five minutes is a quarter of a passage's budget.
Not thisAnswering from memory after reading the passage once.
ThisGoing back to the lines each question is built on.
Distractors are designed to match a general impression of the passage.
Not thisChoosing the option with the most words in common with the passage.
ThisChoosing the option whose meaning matches.
Shared vocabulary is the standard bait; the correct option is usually a paraphrase.
Not thisPlanning to copy all forty answers onto the answer sheet at the end.
ThisTransferring after each passage.
There is no extra transfer time in the reading paper, and candidates run out of minutes every session.
Not thisReading the whole passage carefully before looking at any question.
ThisSkimming, then reading closely only where the questions send you.
Careful reading of nine hundred words leaves no time to answer thirteen questions.
Not thisTreating a 'writer's purpose' question as a detail question.
ThisAsking what the paragraph is trying to do at that point.
The answer is about the function of the sentence in the argument, not its content.
Not thisChanging answers at the end on instinct.
ThisChanging an answer only when you can point at the line that proves it.
Late instinctive changes are more often wrong than right, and they cost time you do not have.
40 original questions. The first 10 are open to everyone. Answers are checked in your browser and never sent to us, so you can share this page with a class as it is.
1Complete the sentence.
3Complete the sentence.
6Complete the sentence.
7You have used twenty-eight minutes on passage one. What do you do?
One good answer
Move to passage two immediately and take the lost minutes out of checking rather than out of passage three, since the last passage is usually the densest and cannot be done in ten minutes.
9Complete the sentence.
11Complete the sentence.
13Complete the sentence.
15Explain the difference between skimming and scanning, and when you use each.
One good answer
Skimming is reading quickly for the shape and general sense of a passage, which you do once at the start; scanning is searching for one specific word or fact, which you do each time a question sends you back into the text.
17Complete the sentence.
19Complete the sentence.
21Complete the sentence.
23Complete the sentence.
24Why is changing answers at the end usually a bad idea?
One good answer
Because a late change is normally based on a feeling rather than on evidence; unless you can point at the line in the passage that proves the new answer, the first choice made while you had the text in front of you is more reliable.
26Complete the sentence.
28Complete the sentence.
31Complete the sentence.
33Complete the sentence.
34Describe the four-step routine you use on each multiple-choice question.
One good answer
Read the stem and predict the answer, find and underline the lines the question is built on, eliminate each option with a stated reason, then choose the one whose meaning matches the passage rather than its wording.
36Complete the sentence.
39Complete the sentence.
40Write the timing plan you will use on the reading paper, with the clock times you will check.
One good answer
Twenty minutes a passage: at minute twenty I must be transferring passage one's answers, at minute forty I must be starting passage three, and I finish with two minutes to fill any blanks with guesses.
Note
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Broadly. The first is usually the most accessible and the third the densest, so a plan that spends twenty-five minutes on passage one is a plan to run out of time.
Read the question types, not every question. Knowing that a passage carries matching headings plus five multiple-choice items tells you how to skim it; memorising thirteen questions does not.
Transfer the answers, then fill any blanks rather than rereading. Only recheck a question where you can name the line that decides it.
Some ask you to choose two or three answers from a longer list. The instruction says how many, and writing a different number of letters makes the whole item wrong.
Work on locating rather than on reading speed. Most candidates read fast enough; they lose minutes hunting for information because they never built a map of the passage.
No. Check against the lines you underlined while answering. If you did not underline anything, that is the habit to build in practice, because it makes checking possible at all.