How to Write True, False, Not Given in IELTS Reading?

IELTS True, False, Not Given questions test the ability of a candidate to locate and identify specific facts or information presented in the statements.This question type is one of the most difficult question types on the IELTS reading test because you need to spend time finding the correlating information in the reading passage. They are different from Yes, No, Not Given questions as they delve more into the writer’s opinion while True, False, Not Given focuses on the facts mentioned in the text.

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There is not much reading between the lines in the True, False, Not Given kind of question. A candidate has to check whether the given statement is true, if the fact matches with the text, false, if the fact does not match and not given if nothing is mentioned about the fact in the text. Such kind of questions can be tricky for candidates as it is, sometimes, not overtly mentioned and thus, takes a lot of time. Certain approaches that can help a candidate to easily solve such questions are given below:

Analyse the statement: Read the statements and try to understand what it is trying to convey.

For example:

Passage: The majority of people who graduated from the university found it difficult to get a job

Question: After finishing their tertiary education, all people had difficulties finding employment.

Reading the statement in the question will tell us that after completing the university education, all people found it difficult to get a job.

Underline the keywords: Keywords are the most important words that are given in the text and act as “key” to the questions.

In the mentioned example the keywords would be “tertiary education” and “employment” as these are the words that must be present in the passage. These words can be underlined.

After finishing their tertiary education, all people had difficulties finding employment.

Skimming and scanning after carefully analyzing: This means looking into the passage for the keywords through a cursory glance and locate them after understanding the complete meaning of the text in the passage and the question. If the exact words are not found in the passage, look for synonyms(words with the same meaning). Through the keywords, the meaning is to be matched, not just the words.

In the given example, our underlined keyword “tertiary education” which means university education is present in the passage as it talks about people who graduated from university. The keyword “employment” is also present but it is given in its synonymous form “job”. Most of the information is matching in the question and the passage.

Re-read the statement: The statement given in the question must be read again and again to confirm its presence in the passage.

In the example, the statement talks about how every person had difficulty finding a job.

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Read the section of the passage: Read that section of the passage that has keywords or related meaning and draw out a conclusion concerning what is asked in the question to be verified through the text.

In the example, the passage says that many people who completed university education found it difficult to get a job.

Notice the words that qualify the statement: Words like all, some, majorly, often etc are present to confuse the readers. Hence, readers must pay more attention to these kinds of words as they tend to change the meaning of the statement.

In our example, the passage talks of the “majority” of the people while the statement given in the question talks about “all” people. Note these words are not the same as some people who form the minority do find a job easily. Hence, the words “majority” and “all” must be examined carefully. The final answer thus will be False, not true.

Do not get confused: Many readers get confused between False and Not Given options. False should be selected when the information present in the text is just opposite of what is given in the statement of the question while Not Given should be opted when even after reading many times, nothing about the statement given in the question is found.

True, False, Not Given questions in the IELTS reading test might be time-consuming but with practice, one can get a knack for doing them with ease. It is really important to practice more questions and keep the mentioned strategies in mind while solving them.

Few tips can come in handy while solving IELTS True, False, Not Given questions.

• Do not spend much time on just one question. If it becomes really difficult to decide if the question is true, false or not given, it is better to move ahead with the next question as the time is limited for the test.
• Keep aside assumptions while attempting True, False, Not Given questions and strictly adhere to what is mentioned in the passage. Our judgement might be impacted due to our assumptions and hence the previous knowledge regarding the topic must be kept aside and questions should be viewed objectively.
• Match the meaning rather than keywords as keywords are present in the text but in a synonymous way. Understand the passage carefully as that will help locate the meaning of the keywords in the statements of the questions.
• Think of possible paraphrases while looking at statements as IELTS make use of a wide range of words with the same meaning to check the vocabulary skills of the candidates.
• Answers always come in order in IELTS True, False, Not Given questions. This means that if the first answer is found in the second line of the passage, the second answer will be found after that and never before. It is thus advised to answer the questions sequentially as asked since that would save time as well.
• Keep an eye on the next question as well since the answers come in order, it is easier to look for answers. If you are unable to find the answer to question 2 in the passage and the answer to question 3 is found in the succeeding 2-3 lines, then it is confirmed that the answer to question 2 is Not Given. Do not spend time reading the whole passage.
• False is for contradictory information or the fact that is opposite in meaning with what is mentioned in the question while Not Given is when no information is given in the passage about the statement in the question.