IELTS General Training Reading – Task Type 3 – Short-answer Questions

Task Description

What are candidates required to do?
For questions that require short answers, candidates have to answer questions about details in the passage. Candidates must write their answers in words or numbers on the Answer Sheet as instructed.

Candidates are usually told to answer each question USING NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the text. Sometimes candidates are instructed to use just one word or no more than two words or four words. The instructions may also ask for a number or numbers on their own. Numbers can be written using figures or words.

Are candidates penalised for writing more than the stated number of words?
Yes. If candidates write more than the number of words asked for, they will lose the mark even if their answer includes the correct word(s).

What about contractions or hyphenated words?
Contracted words will not be tested. Hyphenated words count as single words.

What skills are tested by this item type?
The candidate needs to be able to skim through the text to find the appropriate section, scan for the relevant lines and then read for detail.

Are the questions in text order?
The questions are usually arranged so that the answers appear in order in the passage.

Understanding the Task

To see an example of this task type please click on the link below.

Example of Task Type 3

To understand better how candidates need to approach this task, it may help you to do the task yourself and analyse what you had to do to find the right answer.

Look at this sample Task Type 3. Complete the task, thinking about how you are doing it.

Sample Task Type 3 Task (PDF)
Answers

Things to consider

Now look at these questions about how you approached the task and consider your answers.

1. How did you approach this task type?
   
   
2. What kind of information did the instructions give you?
   
   
3. Did you read through the whole passage before trying to answer the questions?
   
   
4. Did the answer to each question involve finding a single word or phrase in the passage?
   
   
5. Did you check that you had followed the instructions correctly?
   
   
6. What skills would you need to answer these types of questions?