Reading: True / False / Not Given for the IELTS Exam

Common failure modes

These are the patterns that cause most candidates to lose marks on this topic. Recognising them in advance is half the work.

• !Marking "False" when the passage says nothing about the claim — must be "Not Given"
• !Marking "True" based on outside knowledge instead of the passage text
• !Confusing TFNG (Reading) with YNN (Yes/No/Not Given for opinion-based passages)
• !Reading too superficially and missing qualifying words like "some", "always", "primarily"

Study tips

• 1Underline keywords in the question, then locate the corresponding passage sentence; never answer from memory.
• 2Apply the 3-step rule: (1) is the claim stated? (2) is it contradicted? (3) is it absent? Map to True/False/Not Given respectively.
• 3Watch qualifiers — "all", "every", "always" in a question often mean "False" if the passage uses "some" or "many".
• 4Practice 100 TFNG questions across topic types (science, history, social science) before sitting the test.

Sample IELTS Reading: True / False / Not Given questions

These sample items mirror the format and difficulty of real IELTS questions. Practice with thousands more on the free Koydo question bank.

1. 1

   Passage states: "Many architects in the 19th century rejected Gothic Revival." Question: "All 19th-century architects rejected Gothic Revival." This claim is:

   • ATrue
   • BFalseCorrect
   • CNot Given
   • DCannot determine
   Why this answer?

   The passage says "many" — not "all". The question asserts a stronger universal claim that contradicts the passage. Mark False. If the passage said nothing about how many architects, the answer would be Not Given.