Hi
A common mistake in TRUE, FALSE, NOT GIVEN questions in the IELTS Reading test is to choose answers by matching words in the questions with words in the text without reading the relevant parts of the text carefully.
To show you what I mean, here’s a TRUE, FALSE, NOT GIVEN question from Section 3 of the General Training Reading test in the Official IELTS Practice Materials (Volume 2) and an extract from the text.
Do the following statements agree with the information in the text?
Write:
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information given
34. The average person can name thousands of smells.
35. Participants in smell tests at Hill Top Research are required to avoid using certain products.
36. Most perfumes are made from natural materials.
Extract for question 34: “The average person can detect at least 10,000 odours. Being able to identify those smells is another story. If blindfolded, most people can put a name (‘roses’, ‘fish’, ‘oak’) to fewer than a hundred scents.”
In this example, many candidates would read ‘the average person can detect at least 10,000 odours’ and choose TRUE. The correct answer, however, is FALSE because most people can ‘put a name to fewer than a hundred scents’.
Have a look for the extracts below for questions 35 and 36, read the extracts very carefully, and then decide if the statements in questions 35 and 36 are TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN according to the text.
Extract for question 35: “Hill Top Research tests products for eliminating bad odours. People who volunteer to take part in a test are paid not to use soaps or perfumes for ten days.”
Extract for question 36: “James Bell started as a clerk at Givaudan Roure, leaders in the creation and manufacture of perfume. Put through a smelling test, Bell did well and was sent to a special school in France. ‘I had to learn to identify about 2800 synthetic and 140 natural materials,’ Bell says.”
I’ll post the answers in a couple of days.
Pete
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Average rating
37. false.
36. True
35, I can’t understand yet
Hi Alwen,
You can check the answers in our blog post ‘Is it true, false or not given? (2)‘.
Pete
The answers are:
False
True
Not Given
Hi
I need your advice for my essay. Can I post it & then you check it?
Hi Shabnam,
We can help you with your writing by providing you with some IELTS Writing tasks online and giving you some detailed feedback on your writing. We’ve helped many IELTS candidates improve their writing and get the IELTS band score they need.
Have a look at the ‘Get started – IELTS Writing’ option on the IELTS tutoring page of our website. If you have any questions about our IELTS tutoring, you can send us a message by completing the form on the Contact us page.
Pete