IELTS flow-chart completion: how to answer it in Listening and Reading

A flow chart is the completion layout that looks most like a diagram and is read most like a story. Boxes are joined by arrows, each box is one step in a process, and some boxes have a numbered gap where a word is missing. The task is to fill the gaps from a recording or from a passage. Candidates lose marks on it for two reasons: they treat the gaps as unrelated, and they forget that the two skills do not behave the same way.

This guide covers flow-chart completion in both Listening and Reading. For the wider family, see the Listening completion guide and the Reading completion guide.

What a flow chart looks like

Picture a column or row of boxes. Each box holds a short phrase describing one stage, and an arrow points to the next box. The gaps are numbered like any other question and written ____ in the box, so a box might read “Seeds are ____ in trays” with an arrow down to “Seedlings are moved outdoors”. The chart’s title names the process, and it is your first clue to the recording or the passage.

The boxes without gaps are the fixed points: if you know the step before a gap and the step after it, you know where the answer sits in time.

How IELTS.org classifies it

IELTS.org’s Academic Listening format page lists “form, note, table, flow-chart, summary completion” as one question type, and lists sentence completion separately. IELTS.org’s Academic Reading format page lists “summary, note, table, flow-chart completion” as one type with two variants: in one you select words from the text to fit the gaps, in the other you choose from a list of options.

So a flow chart is one layout of a completion task, and the rules of completion apply to it.

IELTS publishes no count of questions per type, and no rule about which Listening part or which Reading section carries a flow chart.

The word limit and the lost mark

Each completion task carries a word limit in its instruction, for example “NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER”. In Reading, IELTS.org says: “You will lose the mark for writing more than the word limit.” It also says hyphenated words count as single words.

For Listening, IDP’s guide to common mistakes gives the same lesson from the other side: if the instruction says ONE word and you write “the bus”, the answer will be marked as incorrect, even though “bus” would have scored. The ONE WORD ONLY instruction on a flow chart is therefore a hard edge. A second word, even a small one such as “the”, costs the mark.

The one difference that matters: order

In Listening, IELTS.org says answers come in the order of the recording. The first gap in the chart is the first one you will hear, and the last gap is the last. If you hear the answer to gap 4 before gap 3, you have missed gap 3: leave it and move on.

In Reading, IELTS.org warns that answers to summary, note, table and flow-chart completion may not come in the same order as in the text. In practice the passage describes the whole process in one place, and you find that stretch first, then use the arrows and the sequence words to match each gap to its step. Do not assume that gap 38 sits after gap 37 in the passage.

Signpost words of sequence

A process is told with sequence words, and they are the best markers in both skills. Listen or look for first, next, then, once, after that, afterwards, before, until, as soon as, finally and last. IDP’s guide to Listening mistakes recommends listening for signpost words, and in a flow chart they do double duty: they tell you that a new step has begun, and they tell you which box it belongs to.

Remember that the recording and the passage paraphrase the chart. The chart may say “stored”, where the speaker says “kept in a cool room”. The chart may say “sorted by size” and the passage say “graded”. IDP notes that the recording paraphrases the question, so match the meaning of the step, not its words.

Predict the word class of each gap

Before you listen or search, look at the box around each gap and decide what kind of word is missing.

• “Seeds are ____ in trays”: a verb, probably in the past participle.
• “A ____ layer is added”: an adjective or a noun used as a modifier.
• “Samples are sent to the ____“: a noun, probably a place or a department.
• “Left for ____ hours”: a number.

Prediction narrows the search. In Listening you do it in the seconds before the recording; in Reading, once for all the gaps.

Spelling, plurals and ONE WORD ONLY

IDP says correct spelling is essential in Listening. In Reading, copy the word exactly as the passage spells it. The sources used for this guide say nothing about how singular and plural forms are judged, so the safe habit is to take the form that fits the grammar of the box. If the box says “Two ____ are added”, the gap needs a plural.

With ONE WORD ONLY, check that you have not carried a modifier with the noun. If the speaker says “the final filter”, the gap in “Water passes through a ____” needs only “filter”.

A worked example in Listening

This extract is invented for practice. It is not from a real recording.

Chart: Making paper from recycled card. Box 1: “Card is ____ into small pieces.” Box 2: “Pieces are soaked in warm water.” Box 3: “The pulp is passed through a ____.” Instruction: ONE WORD ONLY.

“First the card is shredded, or torn up by hand if there is only a little of it. Once it’s in small pieces, it goes into warm water for several hours. After that, the soft pulp is pushed through a fine screen to take out any lumps.”

Gap 1 needs a verb in the past participle form, and “First” signals the opening step. The speaker offers “shredded” and “torn up”. Only “shredded” is one word, and “torn up” would be two. Gap 2 follows “After that”, the step after the soaking, and the noun is “screen”. “Fine screen” would be two words, so the answer is “screen”. Notice that the speaker gave more than one candidate for the first gap. The word limit helped you decide.

A worked example in Reading

This extract is invented for practice. It is not from a real passage.

Chart: How a seed bank stores samples. Box 1: “Seeds are cleaned and ____.” Box 2: “Seeds are sealed in foil packets.” Box 3: “Packets are held at a low ____.” Instruction: ONE WORD ONLY, words from the text.

Once harvested, seeds are cleaned and then dried until they contain very little moisture. Drying is followed by sealing in foil, which keeps out air. The sealed packets are then kept in a vault at a low temperature, usually below freezing.

Box 1 needs a past participle after “and”: “dried”. Box 3 needs a noun after “low”: “temperature”. Both come from the same stretch, and the arrows match the order of the passage here.

The common traps

Treating gaps as separate questions. The chart is one sequence. If your answer for gap 2 describes something that happens after gap 3, one of them is wrong.

Hearing a different step. The recording may mention a step that is not in the chart, or may mention the chart’s step twice, once as a plan and once as what actually happened. Take the version that matches the box.

A wrong word class. Read the box in your head with your answer in the gap; if it does not read correctly, the word is wrong.

Practise it in context

The browser Reading practice test ends Passage 3 with a flow chart of five ONE WORD ONLY gaps, questions 36 to 40, and every wrong answer shows the deciding sentence. The Listening practice test has four parts and 40 questions, but no flow chart in it, so use the Listening completion questions there for the habits that carry over: predicting the word, the limit and the spelling.

Where this fits

Flow-chart completion sits inside the completion family in both skills. The Listening test format and question types places it among the six Listening types, and the Reading completion guide covers its siblings, sentence, summary, note and table completion. When you review a practice paper, sort the misses by cause: a skipped step, a paraphrase you did not recognise, a word over the limit or a spelling slip. IELTS Mentor AI lets you replay the line an answer came from in Listening and shows the deciding sentence in Reading, and the same habit works with any set of practice papers.