IELTS Reading completion questions and the word limit explained

Completion questions look like the easiest part of the Reading paper, because the answer is sitting in the passage and you only have to copy it. Then you lose a mark for writing three words where two were allowed, or for a letter dropped from a long word, and the score does not match how well you read. Most marks lost here are lost on the instruction, not on comprehension.

This guide covers the completion family in the Academic test: sentence completion, summary, note, table and flow-chart completion, and diagram label completion. The question types are listed in full in the guide to the Academic Reading format and question types.

What IELTS.org says about the word limit

IELTS.org’s Academic Reading format page gives the instruction as, for example, “NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER”. On the same page it says: “You will lose the mark for writing more than the word limit.” IELTS.org repeats the rule for sentence completion, summary, note, table and flow-chart completion, diagram label completion and short-answer questions.

Two more rules make counting simple. Hyphenated words such as “check-in” count as single words, so a two-word limit allows “well-known landmark”. And contracted words such as “they’re” will not be tested, so you will not have to write an apostrophe.

Read the limit as a ceiling, not a target: “no more than two words” allows one word. The phrase “and/or a number” means a number can stand alone or sit beside a word, so “2019” is an answer and so is “2019 survey”.

Two kinds of completion task

IELTS.org describes sentence completion as filling a gap in each sentence by choosing words from the text. Summary, note, table and flow-chart completion has two variations, and the page states them plainly: in the first you select words from the text to fit the gaps, in the second you choose from a list of words.

This changes how you work. In the first variation the answer is always a stretch of the passage, so you hunt and then copy. In the second the box does half the work, and the trap is the options themselves, because two or three will look plausible in any one gap. You choose by meaning and grammar together. The summary is usually a paraphrase of the passage, so the option you want may not match the passage word for word.

Diagram label completion asks you to complete the labels on a diagram, using the text that describes it. IELTS.org says the answers to these and to summary tasks may not come in the same order as in the text, but will usually come from one part of the text rather than the whole of it. That is useful: once you find the part of the passage that describes the process or the diagram, you can stay there.

Sentence completion

For sentence completion IELTS.org says the questions are in the same order as the information in the text. So you can move through the passage once rather than searching it afresh for each question.

Find the paragraph from a distinctive word in the question: a name, a date, an unusual noun. The question is usually a paraphrase of the passage, so the gap sits near the passage’s version of the idea, not next to the question’s own words.

Summary, note, table and flow-chart completion

Here you are filling a summary of one part of the text. It may be continuous prose, a set of notes, a table or a flow chart. Read the heading first. It tells you which part of the passage the summary covers, and it saves you from reading all three passages to fill one set of gaps.

In a flow chart, the arrows give you order. The passage describes a process, and the gaps are steps. Look for sequence words in the passage such as “first”, “then” and “finally”. In a table, the row and column headings work like keywords for locating the answer.

Grammar is a clue for the gap

Before you search the passage, look at the words on either side of the gap.

• After “a” or “an”, a single noun, possibly with an adjective, fits. After “the”, the same, or a noun that is already specific.
• After “is” or “was”, an adjective, a noun or a past participle may fit.
• Before “of”, a noun usually fits.
• A gap followed by a unit, such as “kilometres” or “per cent”, wants a number and not the unit.

Use the grammar to reject wrong candidates quickly. If the gap needs a noun and the phrase you found is an adverb, you have the right area of the passage and the wrong words.

Copy spelling exactly

The mark goes to the answer as it is written. A misspelt word is a wrong answer. Long words are where this happens, such as “accommodation”. When you find your answer, look back at the passage and compare it letter by letter before you type it. Copy also means do not add to it: “the central database” is three words against a two-word limit.

IELTS.org says nothing about changing the form of a word, so do not turn a plural into a singular because it reads better. If the grammar of the gap does not fit the words you found, you have probably found the wrong words.

The traps

• The limit you forgot. The instruction can change from one task to the next in the same paper, so check each set.
• The extra article. If the sentence already has “a” before the gap, do not add another.
• The repeated unit. If “%” or “years” is already printed after the gap, write only the number.
• Two candidates in one sentence. The passage mentions two similar things close together, and only one fits the question’s exact wording, including any qualifier such as “initially”.
• The box with a spare word. In a list-based summary, more options are given than gaps. A word that fits the grammar can still be wrong because it changes the meaning.

A worked example

This example is invented for illustration and is not from a past paper.

Passage: “Every morning the crew measured the temperature of the harbour water. The readings were then sent to a small team, who stored them in a central database and, from there, published them on a public website.”

Question: “Daily water temperatures were kept in a ..... before being published online. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.”

Start with the grammar. The sentence has “a” before the gap, so a singular noun, perhaps with an adjective, is needed. Find the place by its keywords: “temperature”, and “kept” paraphrased as “stored”. The passage says the readings were stored “in a central database”, and “central database” fits the limit and the grammar.

Now test the wrong answers. “A central database” is three words and repeats an article the sentence already has. “Central database on a public website” runs past the limit and confuses storing with publishing. “Small team” is where the readings were sent, not where they were kept, so it fails on meaning. Only “central database” survives all three checks: it comes from the passage, it fits the grammar, and it stays inside the limit.

A method for every completion question

Read the instruction and note the limit. Decide from the grammar what kind of word is missing. Locate the part of the passage by a distinctive keyword, then read around it for the paraphrase of the question. Count your words, compare them with the passage letter by letter, and read the whole sentence again with your answer in place.

Use your mistakes to sort the cause

When you review a practice paper, sort each lost completion mark into one of four causes: you went over the limit, you misspelt the word, you found the wrong place in the passage, or you understood the place but chose the wrong words. The first two are habits and disappear quickly once you look for them. The last two are reading skills. In IELTS Mentor AI, every wrong Reading answer links to the sentence in the passage that decides it, which makes the third and fourth causes easy to tell apart from the first two.

Where this fits

IELTS publishes no figures on how many questions of each type appear in a test, so do not assume a paper will be heavy on completion because the last one was. The same habits of keyword search and careful reading carry over to matching headings and to True, False, Not Given, and the next guide covers multiple choice and short-answer questions, which share the same word-limit rule for short answers. For the structure of the whole paper, see the answer on how many questions Reading has.