IELTS Online: Course

Analysing the organisation and instructions in each section

In the IELTS test, you will have 30 seconds at the beginning of each section to look at the Question Booklet before listening. During these 30 seconds, you should:

• become familiar with the organisation and the instructions in the section, then
• read the questions.

Organisation

You can become familiar with the organisation of each section by finding all the questions in the section – remember that there are ten questions in each section.

You should next look at how many question types there are. Usually, there are two different question types in each section. However, sometimes there may be three.

Instructions

Every time there is a new question type, you will see new instructions. The instructions are in italics and sometimes in BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS. It is very important to read these instructions carefully. The instructions tell you the number of questions and the instructions for the question type.

When you read the instructions, you should:

• look for the instruction verb. This tells you what you should do for those questions.
• look very carefully at the KEY WORDS IN THE INSTRUCTIONS, which are in bold capital letters. The key words in the instructions are the most important words, because they tell you how to answer the question.

Let’s look at the instructions in two examples.