IELTS Reading Time Management: A Realistic Plan for 60 Minutes
Kurz zusammengefasst
- IELTS Reading is 60 minutes for three sections totalling 2,150-2,750 words and 40 questions. The hour includes transfer time: unlike Listening, no extra time is given to copy answers onto the answer sheet.
- IELTS states that the three General Training sections increase in difficulty. It publishes no equivalent claim for Academic, so the case for an unequal split rests on question density and fatigue rather than on a published difficulty gradient.
- A better default is roughly 17 minutes on Passage 1, 20 on Passage 2 and 23 on Passage 3.
- There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so every one of the 40 questions should have something written next to it.
- Marks are lost for incorrect spelling and grammar on the answer sheet, so a correctly understood answer copied wrongly still scores zero.
IELTS Reading is 60 minutes, three sections, 40 questions. IELTS states that the 60 minutes includes transfer time and that, "Unlike the Listening test, no extra transfer time is given." On paper, the answer sheet has to be filled in inside that hour. That single fact costs a surprising number of candidates marks every year, because they plan their timing as though the Listening transfer window applies here too. It does not.
Every format claim below is linked to the IELTS page it comes from, and the full list is repeated under Sources at the end.
This post is about how to spend the hour. It assumes you can already read the material; if the passages themselves are the problem rather than the clock, the timing plan below will not save you and how to choose reading material at your level is the more useful place to start.
What is actually in the hour
Academic Reading has three sections taken from books, journals, magazines, newspapers and online resources, written for a non-specialist audience on topics of general interest to undergraduate or postgraduate students. IELTS publishes a total text length of 2,150-2,750 words. At least one text contains detailed logical argument, and where technical vocabulary appears a simple dictionary definition is provided.
General Training Reading also has 60 minutes, 40 questions and the same 2,150-2,750 word total, split into "three sections of increasing difficulty" — Section 1 everyday texts such as notices, advertisements and timetables; Section 2 work topics such as job descriptions and training materials; Section 3 one longer, more complex general-interest text.
Both are marked the same way: one mark per correct answer, converted to a band score from 1 to 9 in whole or half bands.
Both use the same pool of question types: multiple choice, identifying information (True/False/Not Given), identifying a writer's views (Yes/No/Not Given), matching information to paragraphs, matching headings, matching features, matching sentence endings, sentence completion, summary/note/table/flow-chart completion, diagram label completion, and short-answer questions.
The split: not 20-20-20
The advice you will hear most often is twenty minutes per passage. It is easy to remember and it is slightly wrong — but it is worth being precise about why, because the usual justification is overstated.
For General Training, IELTS says it outright: the paper has "three sections of increasing difficulty", and Section 3 is "longer and more complex" than the first two. An equal split there demonstrably overspends on the cheapest marks.
For Academic, IELTS publishes no such gradient. It says the texts may be narrative, descriptive or discursive and that at least one contains detailed logical argument — not that they are ordered by difficulty. So the case for an unequal split on Academic is weaker than the internet suggests, and rests on two softer facts: question density varies between sections, and you are more tired at minute fifty than at minute five.
Either way, the failure mode is the same. Candidates finish Passage 1 with time to spare, spend it double-checking answers they already had right, and then run out of clock in Passage 3 with six questions unanswered.
A better default:
| Passage | Time | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 17 minutes | Easiest text, most findable answers. Bank the three minutes. |
| 2 | 20 minutes | Middle difficulty. Roughly the honest cost. |
| 3 | 23 minutes | Hardest text, densest questions. Where the saved minutes go. |
That is 60 minutes exactly, with no slack — which is the point. If you are on paper, carve two of those minutes back for the answer sheet, or better, write answers directly onto the sheet as you go rather than transferring at the end.
The rule that matters more than the exact numbers: when a passage's time is up, move on even if questions are unanswered. Guess, mark them, go. An unanswered question in Passage 2 and an unanswered question in Passage 3 are worth the same, and the one in Passage 3 is cheaper to get right than the one you were stuck on.
The IELTS reading timer exists for exactly this: it works out the pace you need and counts down per passage rather than for the whole hour, which is the only version of the clock that actually changes behaviour.
Two rules that recover the most marks
Never leave a blank
Nothing is deducted for a wrong answer. IELTS publishes one marking rule for Reading — "Each correct answer receives 1 mark", with your raw score out of 40 converted to a band — and no rule anywhere that takes a mark away. A blank is a guaranteed zero and a guess is not.
This sounds obvious and it is still the single most common way candidates give away marks. With three minutes left and eight questions unanswered, the correct move is to stop reading and fill in all eight — True/False/Not Given questions alone will yield roughly one in three by chance. Then go back and think about them if any time remains.
Spelling counts
This is not folklore; it is on the IELTS format page for both papers, in bold: "be careful when writing your answers on the answer sheet" because "you will lose marks for incorrect spelling and grammar." A word copied incorrectly from the passage is wrong, even when your comprehension was perfect. Since nearly all completion answers are lifted directly from the text, this is a pure transcription problem and it is entirely avoidable — copy the word, then look at the passage again and compare letter by letter.
Watch the word limit too. "No more than two words and a number" means exactly that; a three-word answer scores zero regardless of correctness.
Where the time actually goes
Most candidates who run out of time are not slow readers overall. They are losing disproportionate time to two or three specific question types.
| Question type | Typical time cost | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Matching Headings | High | Do these first for that passage, before answering anything else. They force you to read paragraph openings, which then makes the other questions faster. |
| True/False/Not Given | Medium, but high variance | The trap is deciding between False and Not Given. Give it 60 seconds, pick one, move on. Do not re-litigate. |
| Matching information to paragraphs | Very high | The answers are not in order, so each one is a fresh search of the whole passage. Leave these until last. |
| Summary completion | Low | Answers usually come in order and sit in one region. Fast marks — do them early. |
| Multiple choice | Medium | Answers are in passage order, which makes them much cheaper than they look. |
| Short answer | Low | Usually the cheapest questions on the paper. |
The single biggest structural improvement most candidates can make is reordering: do the in-order question types first (summary completion, multiple choice, short answer), then the ones that need a full-passage search (matching information). Doing them in the printed order means starting with the most expensive questions while you are still unfamiliar with the text.
Skim first, but only for two minutes
There is a long-running argument about whether to read the passage first or go straight to the questions. Both extremes are wrong.
Reading the passage properly first costs eight or nine minutes and you will read most of it again anyway. Going straight to the questions with no sense of the text means every single question becomes a search through unfamiliar territory.
What works for most candidates is a two-minute structural skim: title, first and last sentence of each paragraph, any headings or figures. You are not trying to understand the argument. You are building a map so that when a question mentions coral bleaching you already know it was paragraph four.
Then go to the questions.
Building the speed underneath all of this
Timing strategy redistributes the hour. It does not make you faster. If your underlying reading rate is too low, no plan fixes that on exam day.
The three sections total 2,150 to 2,750 words by IELTS's own figure. The hour has to cover the reading, 40 questions and the transfer of answers, which means the reading itself needs to happen at something like 150 to 200 words per minute with real comprehension — comfortably inside the 238 words per minute average that Brysbaert's meta-analysis found for adults reading non-fiction in their first language, and well above where most intermediate learners start in a second one. That is a training target, not a test-day trick, and it comes from volume — see reading speed in a second language for how rate actually improves and extensive vs intensive reading for the balance of practice that gets you there.
Six weeks out, a reasonable weekly shape is three timed passages under exam conditions plus three or four sessions of unpressured reading at a comfortable level. The timed passages train the strategy. The easy reading trains the speed. Doing only the first is the most common preparation mistake, and it is why people plateau at 6.5 having done nothing but practice tests.
If you want passages at a specific difficulty to practise against, LingoRead generates them at a CEFR level you choose with comprehension questions attached — useful for the volume half of that split, where the supply of appropriately-hard material usually runs out first.
Sources
- IELTS. IELTS Academic: Reading test format. Source for the 60 minutes including transfer time, the 2,150-2,750 word total, the 40 questions, the marking rule, the spelling warning and the question-type list.
- IELTS. IELTS General Training: Reading test format. Source for "three sections of increasing difficulty" and the section-by-section content.
- IELTS. IELTS scoring in detail. Source for "The IELTS Reading test contains 40 questions. Each correct answer is awarded 1 mark", and for how a raw score out of 40 becomes a band score. Neither this page nor the format pages describe any deduction for a wrong answer.
- Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. Source for the first-language reading-rate benchmark.