Completion tasks – sentences, summaries, notes, tables, flow-charts and diagrams

One method for every gap-fill task in IELTS Reading - predict the word type, locate, copy exactly and check grammar and the word limit.

Completion tasks ask you to fill gaps with words taken from the passage (or, in one version, from a box of options). They appear in almost every test and, taken together, usually account for more marks than any other family of questions. The good news is that one method works for all of them.

The formats

In all of them except the box version, the instructions give a word limit, such as Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer, and your answer must be the exact word(s) used in the text.

The five-step method

Step 1 – Read the instruction and note the limit

ONE WORD ONLY, NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS, ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER. Say it to yourself. The most painful mistakes in IELTS are correct ideas that break the limit.

Step 2 – Read the title and the whole task quickly

A summary or set of notes has a title (‘Beavers and farmland’). It tells you which part of the passage is covered. Reading all the notes also gives you a free outline of that part of the text.

Step 3 – Predict each gap

Before you look at the passage, decide two things for every gap:

• Grammar: what kind of word is missing? A noun (singular or plural)? A verb? An adjective? A number?
• Meaning: what sort of thing could it be? A material? A place? A person? A period of time?

makers in Nuremberg combined powdered graphite with ________ → a noun, a substance of some kind.

the first ________ minutes of every ride are free → a number.

a pencil could be made harder by increasing the amount of ________ → an uncountable noun, an ingredient.

Prediction makes the answer ‘jump out’ when you reach it, and it protects you from writing a word that is the wrong part of speech.

Step 4 – Locate and read closely

Use the anchor words around the gap (names, dates, technical terms) to find the place. The gaps normally follow the order of the passage. In a summary, the sentences are paraphrases of the passage, so apply everything from Lesson 3: covered with may be wrapped in; heated may be baked.

Step 5 – Copy, then check three things

1. Limit – count the words.
2. Grammar – read the completed sentence. Does it make sense? Singular or plural? If the gap follows ‘an’, the answer must begin with a vowel sound.
3. Spelling – compare your word with the text letter by letter.

Worked example: summary completion

Cork is the bark of the cork oak, a tree that grows around the western Mediterranean. Unlike almost any other tree, it survives having its bark removed, and a new layer grows to replace it. The first harvest cannot take place until a tree is about twenty-five years old, and the bark obtained at that stage is too rough for anything but flooring and insulation. Only from the third harvest, when the tree is over forty, is the cork of sufficient quality to make stoppers for wine bottles. Stripping is carried out by hand in early summer, using a special axe, and is highly skilled work: a careless blow that cuts into the living wood beneath can permanently damage the tree. After each harvest the trunk is painted with a number showing the year, since the law requires an interval of at least nine years before it is stripped again.

Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Harvesting cork The cork oak is unusual because it is not killed when its 1 ________ is taken away. Cork from the first harvest is used only for products such as insulation and 2 ________. Bottle stoppers can be made from the 3 ________ harvest onwards. Workers remove the cork with an 4 ________, taking care not to harm the wood underneath. A 5 ________ is then painted on the tree to record when it was harvested.

Predict: 1 – noun, part of a tree. 2 – noun, a product. 3 – an ordinal (first, second…). 4 – singular noun beginning with a vowel sound (after ‘an’), a tool. 5 – singular noun.

Locate and check:

1. ‘it survives having its bark removed’ → bark (not killed = survives; taken away = removed)
2. ‘too rough for anything but flooring and insulation’ → flooring
3. ‘Only from the third harvest…’ → third
4. ‘using a special axe’ → axe. The ‘an’ in the summary confirms a vowel sound. (‘special axe’ would be two words.)
5. ‘the trunk is painted with a number showing the year’ → number. Not ‘year’: the thing painted is a number.

Look again at gap 5. A careless reader sees ‘painted’ and ‘year’ close together and writes year. Reading the completed sentence back, ‘A year is then painted on the tree’, shows that it does not fit as well as ‘A number is then painted on the tree’. Step 5 exists for exactly this reason.

Summary completion with a box of words

Complete the summary using the list of words, A–H, below.

Differences from the ordinary version:

• You write a letter, not a word.
• The words in the box are usually not the words in the passage; they are synonyms. The passage says made more errors; the box offers accuracy.
• There are more words than gaps, and they are often the same part of speech, so grammar alone will not give you the answer.

Method: predict the meaning of each gap, find the relevant sentence in the passage, express its idea in your own words, then find the box word that matches. Cross out words as you use them.

Notes, tables and flow-charts

• Notes are written in shortened English (no articles, few verbs). Use the headings to find the right part of the passage.
• Tables: read the column and row headings carefully. They tell you exactly what category the answer belongs to (a date? a material? a disadvantage?). Answers usually run across each row from left to right, in passage order.
• Flow-charts describe a sequence. Look in the passage for sequence language: first, then, next, once, after which, finally. The stages in the chart are in order, even if the passage mentions something out of order.

Diagram labelling

You see a drawing with some labels missing. Find the paragraph that describes the object (it usually contains position words: at the top, beneath, attached to, surrounding). Read it while looking at the diagram and identify each part in turn. The answers do not always follow the order of the text, so follow the numbers on the diagram.

Short checklist of typical errors

Key points

• Note the word limit first; it is never flexible.
• Predict the grammar and meaning of each gap before you search.
• Answers are exact words from the passage (except in the box version) and usually follow passage order.
• Read every completed sentence back to check sense, grammar and spelling.

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