Lindsay McMahon
"The English Adventurer"
Michelle Kaplan
"The New York Radio Girl"

Today you’ll learn 4 IELTS Reading tips for summary completion, a daunting but common question type.

4 ielts reading tips summary completion

There are certain question types which are infamously scary for many IELTS candidates, including Matching Headings to Paragraphs, T/F/NG, Y/N/NG, and Summary Completion.

Today we talk about 4 tips to help you feel more confident about tackling the summary completion questions, which are often seen on the IELTS Reading Exam.



Tip #1- Where to find the answers

Very rarely, a summary will be of an entire passage. However, this is almost never the case!

Instead, the summary is usually of a portion of the passage, 2-3 paragraphs.

So that is your first task, is to look at the summary and figure out which section of the passage it is drawing from.

Tip #2- Answers are mostly in order

Focus on the key words before and after the answer. The answer is always next to the key words.


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The answers usually come in order in the passage. However, you must be flexible and realize that sometimes an answer is not in order.

Don’t let this cause panic, though. The answer will usually be found in the 2-3 lines previous to the answer you just found.

In sum, if you can’t find the answers in order, know that they are very near each other.

Tip #3- Predict word form

When you look at the missing word in the summary, predict the word form you need, like an adjective or a noun.

Then, when you find the key words in the passage, simply look for the correct word form nearest to the key word.

Tip #4- Look at it like sentence completion

When you see a summary, don’t panic. Try to remember that, basically, it is the same as sentence completion. Sentence completion is easy!

A summary is just a bunch of sentence pushed together!

Practice these strategies before your next IELTS Exam, and find the answers more easily.

What do you think of today’s advice?

Leave us a message in the comments section below!

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