Reading 2 — three employers compared
Matching features is one of the question types listed for General Training Reading, and Section 2 is a natural home for it: a text that describes several employers, several schemes or several jobs, and a set of statements you have to attach to the right one. This material is built around such a text — a page from a local jobs guide describing what three employers in one town offer their staff: a food factory, a distribution centre and a hotel group. Pay, night rates, shift patterns, meals, work clothing, transport, training, promotion, a bonus for recommending a friend, a staff discount and holiday are all covered, with thirteen questions and eleven vocabulary flashcards.
The difficulty of matching features is not finding a word; it is making sure a feature belongs to one employer and not to another that mentions something similar. Two employers supply work clothing, but only one washes it. Two provide meals, and one paragraph says so by pointing back to the other ("as at Brackley"). One employer has night shifts but no night rate; another pays more at night. One promotes from within without any course; another requires a course for promotion. Most of the questions turn on a near-miss of that kind.
Because two questions in one quiz cannot offer exactly the same list of answers, the matching items here do not all look alike. Some name a feature and ask which employer offers it, with a different fourth option each time ("all three", "none of the three", or a pair of employers). Others name an employer and ask which of four benefits is really its own. One asks for two employers at once. The judgement is the one the paper asks for: attach each fact to the right source.
The rest of the bank completes the picture. Two questions use the inverted True/False/Not Given layout of this category — one statement moves a fact from one employer to another, which makes it Not Given rather than False. Two ask for a short calculation of the kind workplace texts invite: pay for a night shift with its extra hourly rate, and holiday after four years of service.
On test day matching features usually asks you to write a letter next to each statement, and completion tasks on the same text ask you to copy words from it; practise those formats separately on published sample material.
The town, the three employers and every figure are invented, and the article is not a guide to real pay or conditions. The flashcards carry the vocabulary of work patterns and benefits — operative, rotation, to launder, to shadow, service, to be taken on, to turn down, guaranteed hours — which is also useful for the General Training Task 1 letter.
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- Attach each feature in a comparative text to the one employer it really belongs to
- Resist a near-miss: the same benefit described differently by two employers
- Follow a reference back to an earlier paragraph ("as at Brackley")
- Work out pay and holiday from a rate and the condition attached to it
- Build the vocabulary of shifts and benefits: rotation, operative, to shadow, service, to be taken on, guaranteed hours
Practice material written by Zestly, based on the ielts.org description of General Training Reading Section 2 and of the matching features question type.
Sample question
Reading Section 2 — from a local jobs guide WORKING IN HARWICK: WHAT THREE EMPLOYERS OFFER The three largest employers recruiting in Harwick this autumn all say that they look after their staff. We asked each of them what that means in practice. A BRACKLEY FOODS (ready-meal factory, Mill Lane) Production operatives start at £12.60 an hour. Shifts are eight hours long, and staff work either days or nights on a fixed pattern: there is no rotation, so a day worker will never be moved on to nights. A free hot meal is provided on every shift, and protective clothing is supplied and laundered by the company. New starters spend their first week shadowing an experienced operative before working on the production line alone. After a year, staff can apply for a funded course in food safety, which is required for promotion to team leader. There is no staff bus, but the factory is a ten-minute walk from Harwick station. B CORRAN LOGISTICS (distribution centre, Eastway Park) Warehouse staff are paid £12.20 an hour, with an extra £1.50 an hour for any hours worked between 10pm and 6am. Shifts rotate every four weeks between earlies, lates and nights. Because Eastway Park lies outside the town and is not on a bus route, Corran runs a free staff bus from the town centre, timed to meet every shift change. Staff who have completed three months' service can train to drive forklift trucks, and the licence, once gained, belongs to the employee rather than to the company. Corran also pays £200 to any employee who recommends a friend who is then taken on and stays for six months. C DELMORE HOTELS (the Harwick Grand and the Riverside Lodge) Room attendants and kitchen porters earn £12.00 an hour, and tips left for staff are shared equally at the end of each week. Hours vary with bookings: staff are guaranteed 24 hours a week but may be offered more at busy times, and they can turn extra hours down without any penalty. Meals are provided on shift, as at Brackley. Uniforms are supplied, but staff are asked to wash them at home. After six months, employees and one family member may stay at any Delmore hotel at half the usual room rate. Training is given on the job; there is no formal course, although supervisors are always chosen from existing staff. All three employers give full-time staff 28 days' paid holiday a year, including public holidays. Corran adds one extra day for every two years of service, up to a maximum of five extra days. — Which employer pays a higher rate for work done during the night?
- Brackley Foods
- Corran Logistics
- Delmore Hotels
- All three employers
See the answer
Corran Logistics
Corran pays "an extra £1.50 an hour for any hours worked between 10pm and 6am". Brackley has night workers too, but the article gives only one rate, £12.60, for everyone; Delmore's hours are described only as varying with bookings. So it is not true of all three.