IELTS General Training Reading – Task Type 6 – Summary Completion
Task Description
What are candidates required to do?
There are two types of summary completion task. In both types the candidate is required to fill gaps in a summary with a word or words. In the first type the candidate is required to choose a word or phrase from words and phrases provided in a box. There are always more words or phrases in the box than there are gaps in the summary. In the second type there is no box with words. The candidate is required to choose a word or phrase from the text to fill the gap.
How many words can be used to fill the gap?
If the candidates are required to choose words and/or numbers from the passage to complete the gaps, the instructions will indicate clearly whether they should choose one word only, no more than two, or three, four etc.
Do the answers occur in order in the passage?
Not necessarily. However, the answers will sometimes come from one section rather than the entire passage.
What type of text is this item type used with?
In IELTS General Training Reading, summary completion tasks are most likely to be used with passages in Section 3, though they may be used in other sections too.
Do the summaries summarise the whole text or just part of it?
The summaries may summarise the whole passage or they may summarise just part of it. Sometimes a heading is provided for the summary. This can help the candidate locate the part of the passage to which the summary refers.
What skills are being assessed?
Summary completion item types covering the whole passage are likely to test candidates’ ability to identify main ideas. Summary completion covering a smaller part of the passage is more likely to test the candidates’ ability to identify supporting details.
Understanding the Task
To see examples of this task type please click on the link below.
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 6. Complete the task, thinking about how you are doing it.
Sample
Task Type 6 Task (PDF)
Answers
Things to consider
Now look at these questions about how you approached the task and consider your answers.
- Did you read through the whole passage before you tried to fill the gaps?
- Did you think about the sort of information that needs to go into each gap?
- Did you choose several possible words or phrases before you decided on the correct word or phrase?
- Did you read the language around the gap particularly carefully?
