StudyIELTSReading
Paper 2 · Academic and General Training differ

Find the line.Then decide.

Forty questions, sixty minutes, no transfer time. If you "read carefully" you finish twenty-two questions and score a 5.5. You read the question, hunt the line in the text, and decide on evidence. Every question type has a rule.

Academic
3 long texts · 2,150–2,750 words
journals, books, magazines
General Training
3 sections · 2,150–2,375 words
notices, work papers, one long text
Band 7 · Academic
about 30 of 40
Band 7 · General
about 34 of 40
easier texts, stricter scale
On computer
highlight · notes · any order
The eleven question types · one rule each

Every type
has a decision.

01True / False / Not Given
Three boxes, not two. TRUE: the text says the same thing in different words. FALSE: the text contradicts it. NOT GIVEN: you would have to invent something to decide. Underline the limiter in the statement: some, all, always, never, only, first. Limiters are where bands go to die.
02Yes / No / Not Given
Same three boxes, but about the writer's view, not the facts. "The writer believes…" Look for opinion language: argues, claims, suggests, it is clear that. A fact the writer reports is not the writer's view.
03Matching headings
A heading describes the paragraph's job, not its details. Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph; ask "what is this paragraph for?" Distractor headings match one detail inside a paragraph. There are more headings than paragraphs.
04Matching information
Where in the text is a specific detail (an example, a reason, a comparison). The answer can be in any paragraph and paragraphs can be used twice. Scan for the paraphrase, not the word.
05Matching features
Who said or did what: a list of names or dates against statements. Names are not paraphrased, so find every name first and mark where each appears; then match the statement to what is said around it.
06Matching sentence endings
The beginnings follow the order of the text. Grammar eliminates endings before meaning does: an ending that cannot follow the beginning grammatically is out.
07Sentence completion
Words from the passage, within the word limit, no change of form. Predict the grammar of the gap, locate the sentence, copy exactly.
08Summary, note, table, flow-chart completion
Two versions: words from the passage, or words from a box. Read the whole summary first to know the topic and the order; it usually covers one section of the text, not all of it.
09Diagram label completion
The passage describes a process or an object; the diagram is its map. Find the descriptive paragraph, follow the sequence words, label in order.
10Multiple choice
Locate the sentence for the question stem first, then test each option against it. Wrong options use words from the text with a twist: too strong, too general, the opposite.
11Short-answer questions
Question words tell you the answer type: who, when, how many, what. Word limit applies. Copy from the text; do not rephrase.
Sixty minutes · order of attack

Twenty. Twenty.
Twenty.

01
Questions first
Read the question set for the passage before the passage. Know what you are hunting.
02
Skim the shape
Title, first sentence of each paragraph. Two minutes. Now you know where things live.
03
Hunt meaning
Do not hunt synonyms with your eyes; hunt the idea. Names, numbers and dates are the anchors that are never paraphrased.
04
Decide with evidence
Point at the line that proves the answer. If you cannot point, it is Not Given or you are in the wrong place.
05
Move on
Two minutes on one question is a mark lost elsewhere. Guess, flag, return if time remains. Passage 3 is dense on purpose; leave it the most time or the least, but decide before you start.
Unknown words: read around them. The sentence before and after tells you whether the word is positive, negative, a thing or an action. That is all a question ever needs. Stopping to decode a word is how the sixty minutes disappear.
Practice set · True / False / Not Given

Night buses.

Passage

Cities that keep hospitals and ports open overnight depend on a thin layer of workers who travel when the rest of the city sleeps. A transport audit across three mid-sized cities found that where the last frequent bus ended at midnight, vacancies for night nursing aides rose within six months. The cause was not pay; night premiums already existed. The cause was reliability: workers without cars could not risk a forty-minute wait in winter.

Some councils answered with "night spines": one high-frequency corridor every fifteen minutes after half past midnight, feeding two hospitals and the freight gate. Daytime passengers complained that empty buses waste money. The audit's second finding answered them: each unfilled night post cost more in overtime than the corridor's yearly subsidy.

The audit did not claim that night buses raise wages. It claimed they keep trained people in jobs the city had already advertised.

1
Night vacancies rose mainly because the pay was too low.
2
Night premiums were introduced after the audit.
3
Night spines run every fifteen minutes after half past midnight.
4
Most daytime passengers supported the night spines.
5
Overtime for unfilled posts cost more than the corridor's subsidy.
6
The audit found that night buses increased wages.
AnswersWith the line that proves each one
  • 1 FALSE — "The cause was not pay." Contradicted.
  • 2 FALSE — "night premiums already existed." The text says before, not after.
  • 3 TRUE — "every fifteen minutes after half past midnight." Same fact, different words.
  • 4 NOT GIVEN — some passengers complained; the text never says how many supported. "Most" is the limiter; to decide it you would have to invent.
  • 5 TRUE — "cost more in overtime than the corridor's yearly subsidy."
  • 6 FALSE — "did not claim that night buses raise wages." Directly contradicted.

Question 4 is the one that separates 6.0 from 7.0. If you wrote FALSE, you decided on a feeling, not a line.

Timed reading · mini mock →Reading module · 13 videos
Academic · marks to band
General Training · marks to band
Next · Paper 3WritingThe report or the letter, then the essay that counts double.