Twenty-eight ways an IELTS Reading item is made hard, each one taken from a task Cambridge published itself. Cambridge writes the test; these are its habits.
The largest family, and the one that decides the most marks. Nothing is invented: every figure in the wrong option is a real figure from the passage, moved.
A number is lifted from the passage and hung on a different thing. The number checks out, so the eye stops.
The passage reports that about a fifth of American farmland was losing topsoil. The wrong option says productivity fell by twenty per cent. Same figure; one describes an area, the other an output.
Academic Reading sample — Multiple choice, Q10
A qualifying phrase is dropped, so a claim about part of something becomes a claim about all of it.
The passage says smoking causes thirty per cent of deaths from cancer. The statement says thirty per cent of deaths in the United States. Answer: NO.
Academic Reading sample — Identifying writer's views, Q4
Two things are discussed side by side — fertiliser and pesticide, quantity and frequency — and the option swaps them.
One option says Danish farmers applied fertiliser far more often than in 1960. The passage gives a rise in frequency for pesticides and a rise in quantity for fertiliser. Both facts are real; the pairing is not.
Academic Reading sample — Multiple choice, Q11
The passage gives two values under two conditions. The question names one condition; the more prominent value belongs to the other.
A recall notice pays ten dollars for an unopened jar and five for an opened one. The question asks about an opened jar.
General Training Reading sample — Short-answer questions, Q6
Two officials, two departments, two researchers — each responsible for a different action. The answer is whichever one matches the verb in the question.
In the same recall notice, one manager hears from people who ate the product and a different manager handles reward information. The question asks which to contact after eating it.
General Training Reading sample — Short-answer questions, Q7
Four things are listed in one paragraph. Three moved one way and one moved the other. The question asks for the odd one.
After New Zealand ended farm subsidies, incomes fell, fertiliser use fell and over-stocking stopped — while farms began to diversify. The question asks what increased.
Academic Reading sample — Multiple choice, Q12
One adverb decides the mark: later, before, after, then, already. Names and dates are all correct.
A man Cambridge describes as someone the employer hired later is offered in a statement as an employee at the time of the invention. Nothing else in the statement is wrong.
Pattern; used in our Paper 01, Q10, and Paper 02, Q28
This family manufactures NOT GIVEN. Nothing is contradicted; two facts are placed near each other and the connecting relation is left for you to supply. Supply it and you lose the mark.
Two entities are genuinely linked, but by a different relation from the one the statement asserts — published in, not funded by; supplied, not paid for; advised, not decided.
A study appeared in a medical association's journal, and the association is described as a strong opponent of smoking. The statement says opponents of smoking financed the study. Answer: NOT GIVEN.
Academic Reading sample — Identifying writer's views, Q7
The statement is about the right people and the right topic, but asserts something the passage never took a position on.
The passage discusses the health risk to the non-smoking partner in a marriage. The statement says that partner is likely to take up smoking. Answer: NOT GIVEN.
Academic Reading sample — Identifying writer's views, Q5
The passage claims a record on one measure — deepest, oldest, first — and the statement claims it on a neighbouring one.
A structure is described as having the deepest known shaft, and its length is given in the same sentence without any claim of a record. The statement calls it the longest.
Pattern; used in our Paper 02, Q9
Two events are joined by and, or simply by sequence. The statement joins them with because.
Surgeons objected, and outcomes improved. Whether the first caused the second is never discussed.
Mechanism — not currently set in either paper; watch for it in the real exam
The option says something the passage nearly says. The gap is one of degree, and degree is a claim.
A hedged claim is returned without its hedge: may becomes does, often becomes always, some becomes all.
A passage says a large part of a cargo melted. The statement says none of it survived. The number is not given, so the reader cannot verify — but a large part and none are different claims, which makes it FALSE rather than NOT GIVEN.
Pattern; used in our Paper 01, Q7
An argumentative passage states a moderate thesis and explicitly rejects its strong form. The strong form is then offered as an option.
A writer argues that individuals are substitutable, then says plainly that they are not interchangeable. The option offers individuals contribute nothing.
Pattern; used in our Paper 01, Q40
The passage says something holds under one condition and something else under another. The option states one of them as universal.
A wide tree ring means a wet year on dry ground and a warm summer at the treeline. Both are offered as what a wide ring means.
Pattern; used in our Paper 02, Q25
Cambridge builds distractors out of the passage rather than out of thin air. A wrong option is usually a correct statement that belongs somewhere else.
The option is entirely accurate. It simply does not answer the question asked.
Asked why supermarkets avoid the single queue, an option offers that such a queue is slower for the individual — true, and stated two paragraphs earlier for a different purpose.
Pattern; used in our Paper 01, Q26
In a first-invented or first-used question, the passage names a party who took the idea up, adopted it, or became interested — next to the party who actually originated it.
Asked who first used rockets as weapons of war, the passage has Europe becoming seriously interested in the eighteenth century, while the impetus is credited to India. Answer: the Indians.
Academic Reading sample — Matching features, Q9
These patterns punish scanning. Each one makes the word you searched for lead somewhere other than the answer.
The question paraphrases the answer, so the passage's own keyword appears somewhere else — beside a wrong option.
A question converts a decade into ten years. Scanning for the passage's word finds nothing; the word appears only where it will mislead.
Pattern; used in our Paper 02, Q40
In a sentence of the form from X to Y, the answer is Y and the eye takes X. The first figure in a sentence is usually the wrong one.
Costs fall from thirty cents to ten; losses fall from two thirds to under a third. In both cases the required figure is the second.
Pattern; used in our Paper 01, Q7 and Q8
The former, the latter, this, they, such species. The fact you need is two sentences from the name it belongs to.
A passage on beetles describes two species, then continues with the former and the latter, and the table wants the generation counts sorted by species.
Academic Reading sample — Table completion, Q10–11
Two or three options differ by a single phrase. The work is not identifying the topic but separating the twins.
A heading list offers government policy in rich countries, in poor countries, and on food output. A word box for a diagram offers a species name and the same name with one word added.
Academic Reading samples — Matching headings, Q1–5; Diagram label completion, Q6–8
A paragraph's last sentence hands its subject to the next paragraph. Read only the first and last lines and you take the following paragraph's heading.
A section on filling waiting time ends by raising memory; the section on memory follows. The heading about memory belongs to the second.
Pattern; used in our Paper 01, Q18
A paragraph's own claim is only named in the paragraph after it, which opens by summarising what came before.
A section sets out a list of propositions; only the opening of the following section tells you those propositions concern the individual.
Pattern; used in our Paper 01, Q15
Marks lost here have nothing to do with comprehension. They are lost to the rules of the format.
Most tasks follow the passage top to bottom. Matching information, matching headings and matching features do not, and they permit repeats.
A matching-information set runs C, F, E, H, A, D across eight paragraphs. A matching-features set uses the same letter twice, and the instruction says so.
Academic Reading samples — Identifying information, Q14–19; Matching features, Q7–10
A correct idea written in too many words scores zero. Articles and optional modifiers are usually tolerated; qualifying clauses are not part of the answer.
Official keys record alternatives with slashes and mark some words optional in brackets — for instance a verb with or without its adverb, or a noun with or without its adjective.
Cambridge sample answer keys, Academic and General Training
The gap's syntax fixes the form of the answer: a verb tense, a plural, a comparative. Copying the passage's form blindly fails.
A gap requiring a bare verb, or a comparative adjective, only accepts the form the sentence needs.
Sentence and summary completion, all papers
A table's columns are attributes; the passage's sentences are not organised by attribute. You have to re-index as you read.
A beetle table asks for climate, start of season and generations per year for three species, from prose that discusses each species in a different order and in a different sentence shape.
Academic Reading sample — Table completion, Q9–13
A diagram wants a position; the passage supplies a comparison — shallowest, uppermost, innermost — rather than a measurement.
Two species are placed on a depth scale by their stated depths in centimetres; a third is placed only by being called the shallowest.
Academic Reading sample — Diagram label completion, Q6–8
The passage gives a span. The question asks for the maximum, the minimum, or the starting point.
A reward is offered as a range between two sums; the question asks for the maximum.
General Training Reading sample — Short-answer questions, Q8
Which task types each pattern can appear in. Use this to predict what you are about to be attacked with.
| Code | Pattern | Appears in |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | Quantity re-attached | MCQ, T/F/NG, completion |
| A2 | Scope widened or narrowed | T/F/NG, Y/N/NG |
| A3 | Category swap | MCQ, table completion |
| A4 | Right value, wrong condition | Short answer, completion |
| A5 | Wrong agent | Short answer, matching features |
| A6 | Direction reversed | MCQ, T/F/NG |
| A7 | Time relation reversed | T/F/NG, Y/N/NG, MCQ |
| B1 | Relation swap | T/F/NG, Y/N/NG |
| B2 | Adjacent proposition | T/F/NG, Y/N/NG |
| B3 | Superlative moved | T/F/NG |
| B4 | Cause supplied by reader | Y/N/NG, MCQ |
| C1 | Overstatement | T/F/NG, Y/N/NG, MCQ |
| C2 | Refused extreme version | MCQ (global), sentence endings |
| C3 | Local fact generalised | MCQ, T/F/NG |
| D1 | Moved from another paragraph | MCQ, sentence endings |
| D2 | Intermediate actor | Matching features, MCQ |
| E1 | Synonym substitution | every type |
| E2 | Answer after its distractor | all completion types |
| E3 | Referent chains | Table, summary, matching features |
| E4 | Minimal-pair options | Headings, features, endings, word boxes |
| E5 | Bridge sentence | Matching headings, matching information |
| E6 | Confirmation in the next paragraph | Matching headings |
| F1 | Answers out of order | Matching info, headings, features |
| F2 | Word limit | all completion types, short answer |
| F3 | Grammatical fit | Sentence and summary completion |
| F4 | Prose re-sorted into a table | Table and note completion |
| F5 | Ordinal to position | Diagram label completion |
| F6 | One end of a range | Short answer, completion |
Evidence base: the Academic Reading and General Training Reading sample tasks published by Cambridge, seven and eight tasks respectively, each with its official answer key. Patterns marked mechanism are ones we built into our own papers by extension from those tasks rather than lifting from a single published item. Cambridge develops and writes the IELTS test; the British Council and IDP administer it, so what Cambridge publishes is the primary evidence for how items are made. Nothing from the Cambridge tasks is reproduced here beyond the short descriptions needed to name each mechanism.