Hi, and welcome back to IELTS Online reading.

In this video, you'll learn how to answer another

completion question type - Diagram label completion. You will learn four steps that will help you to
answer the diagram completion task effectively. We'll look at how to gain a general understanding of
the diagram, identify the word forms needed for the gaps and scan the passage, and read intensively to
locate the correct answer. Let's now have a look at the first step. The first step is to look at the diagram,
to get a general understanding of the topic and content. This can help you understand how the reading
relates to the image. Don't spend too much time doing this. You only need a general understanding of
the diagram to help you answer the questions.
Here's a sample diagram label completion question. Remember to read the instructions carefully, which
in this case are to complete the questions by using "No more than three words and/or numbers" from
the passage for each answer. This means you can use a maximum of three words or numbers, or any
combination of the two. We will take a closer look at this diagram. At a quick glance, you can see that
this diagram represents a food pyramid. First, you should locate the title "Food pyramid", which is at the
bottom. Inside the pyramid, there are pictures of some basic foods. Looking at the KEY in the top
right corner, you can see that the white dots represent fat and sugars. Around the sides of the pyramids
are the names of different foods, and the number of recommended servings.
By looking at these features, you now have a general understanding of the diagram. It shows how many
servings of these foods you should eat and whether they are high in fat and sugar. Now, answer this
quick question "What does this diagram show?". Read the options and choose one. The answer is C, the
diagram shows food categories with recommended daily intakes. Answer A - "food chain cycle" is not
correct, because the chain indicates a sequence, or series of steps, which are linked, whereas our
diagram, the pyramid, shows different foods according to their type. Similarly, answer B is also not
correct as the pyramid makes no mention of shopping for food.
Next, you need to identify the word forms needed for the gaps. In this step, look again at the pyramid
and decide which word form, that is noun, adjective, verb, or adverb, or even a number, or numbers, is
necessary for questions 28 to 30. How exactly can you do this? Let's find out.
Sometimes you can use the format of the other labels in the diagram to identify which word form you
need. For example, you can see that question 30 needs a noun, because in each of the other labels,
there is a noun in that position in the label. Another way to predict the required words is to think about
the meaning. You should also look at the diagram and predict what possible answers you may need.
Think logically. Based on the image, what answer would be possible? In this case, you could logically
predict that the answers are types of food, or the number of servings advised per day.
In the next step, you need to scan the passage. Do you remember what scanning is? Scanning is when
you search a reading passage quickly to locate a particular word, or piece of information. You need to
find the section of the passage which describes the diagram. Often, this is one specific paragraph or
section. You can find this by scanning the passage for the heading of the diagram, or for other key
words. Remember that the text may use synonyms. For example, if the diagram says bread, you should
search not only for this word, but other related words, such as cereals, grains, or carbohydrates. In
terms of synonyms, if you see a word on the diagram, such as consume, you should search for a word in
the reading passage that has the same meaning, like eat.
In the following example, the appropriate section of the reading passage has already been found for
you. This paragraph is taken from a longer IELTS reading passage. You can see that the title of the
diagram, the food pyramid, as well as some key words that were written on the diagram have been
highlighted. The test taker has scanned and found these words, so that they can be quite sure that this
is the section that contains the answers.

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The final step is to read intensively, to look for the information, to fill in the gaps in the diagram.
Remember in this type of question, the information you're looking for will not always be in the same
order as the questions. Please note that as with all completion type questions, your answers should
come directly from the passage. This means that you must not change the form of the words in your
answer. For example, if the information you're looking for is written as an adjective in the reading
passage, do not change the adjective to a noun when you write your answer. Also, do not add extra
words that are not found in the reading passage.
When you read carefully, you'll see that the answer to question 28 is "six to 11 servings"; for question
29, the answer is "fruit"; and for question 30, the answer is "dairy". After scanning the passage, then
reading carefully to make sure we have the correct information, we can put in our answers for questions
28 to 30. Note that for question 28, there are different ways we can write the numbers "six to 11", as
long as we keep to the word limit. That's how you answer diagram completion questions in the IELTS
reading.

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