Quizzes, exams, and flashcards about General Training Reading: Reading 1 — everyday notices, Reading 2 — a staff handbook, Reading 3 — the allotment.
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The three sections of the General Training paper, in the order and the registers they actually come in — notices and timetables, then workplace documents, then one long piece of general interest.
Three sections of increasing difficulty, 2,150 to 2,375 words in total, 40 questions, 60 minutes, and no extra time at the end to copy answers across.
The questions come from the same family of types as the Academic paper: multiple choice, True/False/Not Given, Yes/No/Not Given, matching information, matching headings, sentence and summary completion, diagram labelling, short answers.
It is sometimes described that way, and it is misleading. The texts are easier; the marking is not. The band boundaries on this paper sit higher than on the Academic one — the same band needs more correct answers here — precisely because the reading is less demanding. A comfortable feeling while working through Section 1 is not evidence of anything.
The other trap is Section 1 itself. Short practical texts are written to be scanned, not read: dates, prices, exceptions, opening hours, and the words that quietly limit them — except, unless, only, must be booked, does not apply. Most marks lost in Section 1 are lost to a qualifying phrase that was read past.
Six of the official question types ask you to write a word from the text into a gap, and one asks you to label a diagram. A multiple-choice quiz cannot set those — practise them on official material, where spelling and plurals count.
What is here is the reasoning half, with the whole text in front of you on every question, exactly as the paper keeps it beside you for the hour.
True/False/Not Given is set the other way round. In the real paper you get one statement and three verdicts to choose between. Two questions in one quiz may not offer the same set of options, so these materials give you four statements with the verdict in the question: which one is never stated, which one is contradicted, which one is true. The judgement is identical; the layout is ours, and the real paper will look different.
Not Given is not False. False means the text addresses the point and says the opposite. Not Given means it never addresses it at all — and the Not Given statement is almost always the plausible one, the thing any reasonable person would assume about a library, a bus company or an employer. What you know about how the world usually works is not evidence. Only the words on the page are.
Every explanation here says where the other three statements appear, because that is the only way to show that the fourth one does not.
Every text here is written by Zestly. Nothing is reproduced from an IELTS paper or any official practice material, and the organisations, timetables and terms in them are invented.
