The Sentence Completion task in the IELTS Academic Reading test assesses your ability to understand specific information and accurately transfer it into a grammatical sentence. In this question type, you are given incomplete sentences related to the passage, and your job is to fill in the blanks with words taken directly from the text.
What the Task Involves
- You will see a set of sentences, each missing a word or short phrase.
- The instructions will specify the word limit (for example, “NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER”). This limit must be followed strictly—writing more words than allowed results in a wrong answer, even if the information is correct.
- The answers must come directly from the reading passage; you cannot paraphrase.
Skills Tested
This task measures your ability to:
- Identify key details in the passage.
- Recognize synonyms and paraphrased ideas.
- Understand the context to select the correct form of the word.
- Scan and locate information quickly.
Strategies for Success
- Read the instructions carefully – Pay close attention to the word limit and whether numbers are allowed.
- Predict the answer – Before scanning the text, look at the sentence and guess what type of word (noun, verb, number, etc.) is missing.
- Scan for keywords – Identify keywords in the incomplete sentence and locate the relevant part of the passage.
- Check grammar and meaning – Make sure the completed sentence is grammatically correct and makes sense.
- Avoid careless mistakes – Misspellings, using extra words, or altering word forms incorrectly will lose marks.
Example
Sentence:
The research revealed that the majority of participants preferred _______ as their main source of information.
Passage:
According to the survey, most respondents stated that television was their primary source of information.
Answer:
television (Correct: one word, directly from the passage, fits grammatically).