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Reading, listening and vocabulary · · 3 min read

True, False, Not Given: Beating the Trickiest IELTS Reading Question

A reliable method for True/False/Not Given questions: what Not Given really means, the tester traps to expect and a drill routine that builds accuracy.

By Verbola Editorial Team · Last reviewed

A learner working through a reading passage with notes and a laptop

Ask a room of IELTS candidates which Reading question type costs them the most marks and the answer is nearly unanimous: True, False, Not Given. The format looks simple, a statement and three options, but it is engineered to punish two natural habits: reading with your general knowledge switched on, and treating "not mentioned exactly" as false.

The good news is that TFNG is the most rule-governed question type on the paper. Learn the decision rule, know the traps, and accuracy climbs quickly.

The decision rule, stated precisely

For each statement, ask one question only: what does this passage say?

  • True: the passage states the same thing, usually in different words.
  • False: the passage states the opposite. You can point to the sentence that contradicts the statement.
  • Not Given: the passage takes no position. Nothing in it confirms or contradicts the statement.

The whole trick is in the False/Not Given boundary. False requires evidence of contradiction, not absence of confirmation. If you cannot underline the words in the passage that make the statement wrong, the answer is Not Given, however implausible the statement sounds. Your outside knowledge, and the author's probable opinion, are both irrelevant; only stated content counts.

The traps, catalogued

Test writers build TFNG items from a small set of reliable traps. Knowing them converts guesses into decisions:

  • The scope swap. The passage says "some researchers believe"; the statement says "researchers believe". Quantity words (some, most, all, only, mainly) are the most common hinge. Match them exactly.
  • The cause swap. Passage: two facts happened together. Statement: one caused the other. Co-occurrence stated, causation Not Given.
  • The comparison stretch. Passage: "method A is effective." Statement: "method A is more effective than method B." No comparison made, Not Given.
  • The familiar truth. The statement is common knowledge and sounds obviously true, but the passage never addresses it. This trap works precisely because you know things; the exam is checking whether you can ignore what you know.
  • The flipped verb. A single negation or antonym buried mid-sentence ("declined" for "rose", "rarely" for "often") makes a statement False while everything around it matches.

A method that survives time pressure

  1. Read the statement first and mark its claim words: the quantity, the comparison, the verb, the who. These are the things the passage must confirm.
  2. Locate the territory, not the answer. Statements follow passage order, so scan for the paragraph using names, numbers and unmissable nouns as anchors.
  3. Read the relevant sentences properly. This is the step time pressure eats. Skimming produced the wrong answer; the two sentences around your anchor deserve slow reading.
  4. Apply the rule mechanically. Same meaning: True. Pointable contradiction: False. Neither: Not Given. If you are torn between False and Not Given, you are almost always missing a contradiction, which means Not Given.

Never leave a blank; there is no penalty for a wrong answer anywhere in IELTS Reading.

Drill it as a skill, not a hope

TFNG rewards deliberate practice more than any other question type because the errors are so diagnosable. Work in small, reviewed batches: ten questions, then for every miss, write down which trap caught you. Most people discover they have one dominant leak, usually the scope swap or the False/Not Given boundary, and fixing one leak moves a whole section score. Track the pattern over two or three weeks of reading practice sessions and re-test.

Vocabulary depth quietly matters here too: paraphrase recognition is the substrate of every TFNG decision, and it grows with the same spaced repetition system that feeds the rest of the exam.

Where it fits in your preparation

Question-type drills are phase-one work: master the mechanics untimed, then fold TFNG into full timed passages during the middle weeks of your study plan, where the real test is holding the method while the clock runs. By exam week, the three options should feel like a checklist you execute, not a judgment you agonize over. That shift, from intuition to rule, is worth several raw marks, and in the tight conversion zone around bands 6 to 7.5, several raw marks are the band.

Sources

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