How the questions are solved

Reading — every question type and decision routine

Raw score /40 · Academic. There are no per-question band descriptors. The score rises by applying the right decision rule reliably across question types.

True / False / Not Given

receptive · raw score /40 Grounded · BC (Tier 0) + Liz + buddy status: draft
Focus onDeciding from the passage alone, and matching the statement's meaning (not its keywords) to what the text says.
AvoidChoosing FALSE when the passage is merely silent (that's NOT GIVEN), and answering from outside knowledge.

A True / False / Not Given task gives you statements under the instruction Do the following statements agree with the text? You make the choice solely based on the information provided in the text — Answers based on general knowledge is an absolute no.

Everything in italic green is official British Council wording — the Academic Reading question-types video (clean captions, Tier 0, verbatim-safe). IDP, IELTS Liz and IELTS buddy corroborate the method, but their tracks are auto-captioned or Tier-1, so their facts are put in our own words, never greened.

the decision rule

TRUEThe statement agrees with the information in the passage.
FALSEIf the statement contradicts the information in the text, meaning it's the opposite of what's being said, it is marked as False.
NOT GIVENWhen the text lacks the necessary information to answer the question, the statement is marked as Not given.
The one distinction that decides most questions: opposite vs. absent. FALSE means the passage says the opposite. If the passage simply doesn't say, it is NOT GIVEN — never FALSE.

the routine — how to answer one

  1. Read the statement first and pin down exactly what it claims — the subject and the specific detail being asserted about it.
  2. Find the matching place in the passage. Statements follow the passage order, so work downward; locate the idea by its meaning and synonyms, not by identical words.
  3. Compare the statement's MEANING against what the passage says at that point — read the surrounding sentence, not just a keyword.
  4. Decide.
    • the passage confirms the claim → TRUE
    • the passage states the opposite → FALSE
    • the passage does not say, or you cannot tell from it → NOT GIVEN
  5. Before choosing FALSE, apply the safety check: does the passage actually contradict the statement, or is it merely silent? Silent means NOT GIVEN. Never decide from outside knowledge.

Same technique answers Yes / No / Not Given — the only change is that YNNG asks about the writer's views or claims, not factual information.

the trap gallery

Each trap is a way the test tempts a wrong answer — and a named failure-cause the diagnostic can tag.

opposite-vs-absent · cause: trap

FALSE requires the passage to say the OPPOSITE. If the passage is simply silent on the point, the answer is NOT GIVEN, not FALSE. Confusing 'not stated' with 'contradicted' is the single most common error.

paraphrase-miss · cause: paraphrase_miss

The statement usually restates the passage in synonyms. Match MEANING, not identical words — a keyword match is not agreement, and agreement can hide behind fully paraphrased wording.

extreme-qualifier · cause: trap

Absolute words in the statement — all, always, only, never, none — often make it FALSE or NOT GIVEN even when the topic clearly appears, because the passage typically supports a weaker, qualified claim.

outside-knowledge · cause: trap

Decide only from the passage. A statement that is true in the real world but not supported by the text is NOT GIVEN.

label-mismatch · cause: parsing

TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN is for factual information; YES/NO/NOT GIVEN is for the writer's views or claims. Answer with the label the instructions specify.

practise it — the decision drill

The Decision Drill (T/F/NG) lives in the Revise tab, alongside the other practice games: read a passage, decide the statement, then see the answer with why the other two are wrong and the trap that was set. The passages are ours — answer-first and blind-solver-verified, never a real exam text.

how it's scored

Reading has no band descriptors — your band is your raw score out of 40. On Academic, ~23/40 is band 6 and ~30/40 is band 7; General Training needs more (~30 and ~35). There is no penalty for wrong answers, so never leave a TFNG blank — a reasoned NOT GIVEN is better than nothing.

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