14 QUESTION TYPES IN IELTS ACADEMIC

READING

1. Matching headings
2. Locating information
3. True false not given
4. Multiple choice questions
5. Summary completion
6. Diagram labelling
7. Matching sentence endings
8. Matching features
9. Sentence completion
10. Short answer questions
11. Flow chart Completion
12. Note completion
13. Yes no not given
14. Table completion

Locating Information

Tips for answering locating information questions

1. Look for specific information like bold characters, underlined, double quotes, etc.
2. Focus on the main ideas, not the words.
3. Follow the order of the questions and the text.
4. Practise different exam strategies.

Example for location information

Answer questions 1-5 which are based on the reading passage below.

Surrealism
A. In 1924, a small group of writers and artists in Paris founded a Surrealism movement
which is about tapping the unconscious mind to unlock the power of the imagination. It
became an influential movement in the twentieth century. Salvador Dali and Man Ray are
some of the popular surrealists who bring forth surrealism in commercial works. Andre
Berton wrote in his Manifesto of Surrealism that artists and writers should access the
unconscious mind to express psychic automatism in its pure state.

B. Surrealists disdained rationalism and realism, which they perceived as restrictors of

imagination. They are powerfully influenced by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalyst, who
stated that our repressed thoughts and feelings are embedded in our unconscious mind.
Surrealists believed that the conscious mind represses the power of imagination. Also,
influenced by Karl Marx, they thought that the unconscious mind reveals internal
contradictions in everyday’s life which can seed the revolution.

C. Surrealism has the shades of Dada, which characterizes anti-rationalism. Breton

believed that artists can unite to protest war by actualizing the subconscious thoughts.
They were interested in disclosing the inner worlds of sexuality and violence and the
topic they’ve touched upon most is transgressive behaviour. Artworks in Surrealism are
mostly in bizarre and weird fashion. They derived archetypal symbols from their
unconscious mind.

D. Most often, Surrealism is identified with a group of men and as this was envisioned
women as a cultured. But, it is found that women were also part of the surrealist group in
the 1930s. Some of the famous surrealists such as Salvador Dali depicted the female
form as muses. Many female surrealists depicted themselves as animals or mythical
creatures.

E. Max Ernst, a German Artist, quoted, “Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp
mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition”. He views that
creativity has the ability to create new and unique realities and can derive inspiration by
criss crossing those realities in our mind.

Questions 1- 5
This reading passage has five paragraphs, A–E.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

 Write the correct letter, A - E, as your answer to each question.

Note: You may use any letter more than once.

1. Mention of women participation in surrealism

2. Surrealists are influenced by Sigmund Freud
3. Max Ernst view on creativity
4. The style of surrealism is bizarre and weird
5. Salvador dali popularized the surrealism by bringing it into commercial works

Answers:
(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from
where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer
in detail.)

1. Paragraph D
Explanation: But, it is found that women were also part of the surrealist group in the
1930s. Some of the famous surrealists such as Salvador Dali depicted the female form
as muses. Many female surrealists depicted themselves as animals or mythical
creatures.

2. Paragraph B
Explanation: They are powerfully influenced by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalyst, who
stated that our repressed thoughts and feelings are embedded in our unconscious mind.

3. Paragraph E
Explanation: Max Ernst, a German Artist, quoted, “Creativity is that marvelous capacity
to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition”

4. Paragraph C
Explanation: They were interested in disclosing the inner worlds of sexuality and
violence and the topic they’ve touched upon most is transgressive behaviour. Artworks in
Surrealism are mostly in bizarre and weird fashion.
 5.Paragraph A
Explanation: Salvador Dali and Man Ray are some of the popular surrealists who bring
forth surrealism in commercial works.

Locating Information Practice Exercise 1

Answer questions 1-6 which are based on the reading passage below.

Incredible Journeys Reading Passage

A. The nervous system of the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis, with around 100,000
neurons, is about 1 millionth the size of a human brain. Yet, in the featureless deserts
of Tunisia, this ant can venture over 100 meters from its nest to find food without
becoming lost. Imagine randomly wandering 20 kilometres in the open desert, your
tracks obliterated by the wind, then turning around and making a beeline to your
starting point - and no GPS allowed! That's the equivalent of what the desert ant
accomplishes with its scant neural resources. How does it do it?

B. Jason, a graduate student studying the development of human and animal cognition,
discusses a remarkable series of experiments on the desert ant on his blog,
The Thoughtful Animal. In work spanning more than 30 years, researchers from
Rüdiger Wehner's laboratory at the University of Zurich Institute of Zoology carefully
tracked the movements of ants in the desert as the insects foraged for food. One of
the researchers' key questions was how the ants calculated the direction to their
nest.

C. To check for the possibility that the ants used landmarks as visual cues, despite the
relatively featureless desert landscape, the researchers engaged in a bit of trickery.
They placed a food source at a distance from a nest, then tracked the nest's ants
until the ants found the food. Once the food was found, the ants were relocated from
that point so that the way back to their nest was a different direction than it would
have been otherwise. The relocated ants walked away from the nest, in the same
direction they should have walked if they had never been moved. This suggested that
the ants are not following features, but orienting themselves relative to an internal
navigation system or (as turned out to be the case) the position of the Sun in the sky.

D. No matter how convoluted a route the ants take to find the food, they always return in
a straight-line path, heading directly home. The researchers discovered the ants
 navigation system isn't perfect, small errors arise depending on how circuitous their
initial route was. But the ants account for these errors as well, by walking in a
corrective zigzag pattern as they approach the nest. So how do the ants know how
far to travel? It could still be that they are visually tracking the distance they walk. The
researchers tested this by painting over the ants' eyes for their return trip, but the
ants still walked the correct distance, indicating that the ants are not using sight to
measure their journeys.

E. Another possibility is that the ants simply count their steps. In a remarkable
experiment published in Science in 2006, scientists painstakingly attached 'stilts'
made of pig hairs to some of the ants' legs, while other ants had their legs clipped,
once they had reached their food target. If the ants counted their steps on the journey
out, then the newly short-legged ants should stop short of the nest, while stilted ants
should walk past it. Indeed, this is what occurred! Ants count their steps to track their
location. (If only you had remembered to do this before you started on your 20-
kilometre desert trek!)

F. But other creatures have different navigation puzzles to solve. In a separate post,
Jason explains a study showing how maternal gerbils find their nests. When a baby
is removed from the nest, the gerbil mother naturally tries to find and retrieve it.
Researchers placed one of the babies in a cup at the centre of a platform, shrouded
in darkness. When the mother found the baby, the platform was rotated. Did she
head for the new position of her nest, with its scents and sounds of crying babies?
No, she went straight to the spot where the nest had been, ignoring all these other
cues. For gerbils, relying on the internal representation of their environment normally
suffices, so the other information goes unheeded.

G. Migratory birds, on the other hand, must navigate over much larger distances, some
of them returning to the identical geographic spot year after year. How do they
manage this trick? One component, University of Auckland researcher and teacher
Fabiana Kubke reports, is the ability to detect the Earth's magnetic field. Though
we've known about this avian sixth sense for some time, the location of a bird's
magnetic detector is still somewhat of a mystery. Last November, however, a team
led by Manuela Zapka published a letter in Nature that narrowed the possibilities.
Migratory European Robins have magnetic material in their beaks, but also
molecules called cryptochromes in the back of their eyes that might be used as a sort
of compass. The team systematically cut the connections between these two areas
and the Robins' brains, finding that the ability to orient to compass points was only
 disturbed when the connection to cryptochromes was disrupted.

H. Much remains to be learned about how birds can successfully migrate over long
distances. Unlike ants and gerbils, they can easily correct for large displacements in
location and return to the correct spot.

Questions 1- 6
This reading passage has eight paragraphs, A–H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A - H, as your answer to each question.

1. An explanation of how adjustments are made when navigating

2. Recent news about how navigation systems work
3. A comparison of tracking abilities
4. A study showing that scent and sound are not important
5. Explaining the importance of counting
6. A description of how ants navigate

Locating Information Practice Exercise 2

Answer questions 1-7 which are based on the reading passage below.

The Dodo Reading Passage

A. The dodo, formerly known as 'Didus ineptus', has been renamed 'Raphus cuculatus’.
The dodo is the most famous extinct species in the history of planet Earth. Its fire
contact with Europeans was in 1598, when a Dutch expedition headed by Admiral
Jacob Cornelius van Neck landed on an island, thick with dense forests of bamboo
and ebony, off the east coast of Africa. The island was named Mauritius by the
adventurous and artistic admiral – the first man to draw the extraordinary and unique
flightless bird, now universally known as the dodo (from the Dutch
word 'dodoor' meaning sluggard) The demise of the dodo has been attributed to
hungry Dutch sailors en route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. They would take a
dinner break on the tropical island and consume the defenceless dodo, but it was
clearly an acquired taste as the sailors named it ‘valghvogel’ - meaning disgusting
 bird.

B. The island of Mauritius is only 10 million years old, and until the arrival of European
settlers, there were no island predators to threaten the easy-going existence of the
dodo, a bird that had evolved from the African fruit-eating pigeons of the genus
'Treron'. This benign, predator-free paradise had allowed the dodo to evolve into a
pedestrian bird with tiny wings unable to rise even a few inches off the ground. The
dodo was no match for the cunning, domestic pets of Europe and within less than a
100 years after the first landing of van Neck and his band of adventurers, the dodo
was extinct -- the last egg devoured, no doubt, by an overstuffed rat whose ancestors
had emigrated from the sewers of Amsterdam with the original Dutch colonists.

C. The popular image of a fat and stupid creature comes from the celebrated painting
the dodo by Jan Savery (1589–1654). On his visits to the Oxford University Museum,
Lewis Carroll was inspired by this image and the only remaining dodo skull and claw
(both are still on display there) to create his own fictionalversion for ‘Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland' - "When they had been running for half an hour, or so, the
Dodo suddenly called out, 'The race is over', and they all crowded round it, panting,
and asking, ‘But who has won?’”

D. That image of the weird, flightless, dim-witted dodo is now being challenged by
contemporary scientific research. Dr Andrew Kitchener has created two life-size
reproductions of the dodo - one is housed in the Royal Museum of Scotland in
Edinburgh, and the other is in the Oxford University Museum. They are based on
research using hundreds of actual dodo skeletons and bones unearthed by
naturalists in the Mare aux Songes swamp in South-East Mauritius.

E. The new slimmer streamline dodo is very different from the fat cuddly buffoon
celebrated in the picture of Jan Savery. Dr Kitchener's research presents us with a
lithe, active, smart dodo superbly adapted to live and survive prosperously in the
forests of its native Mauritius. The popular image of a fat, immobile, flightless dodo
was drawn by Savery and his contemporaries because the live specimens that they
used as models had been shipped over to Europe on a diet of ships biscuits and
weevils and then overstuffed by their overzealous owners as they exhibited them to
the general public.

F. In 1991 further credence was given to this new image of the dodo when a series of
long-lost drawings by Harmenszoon dating from 1601 was discovered in the Hague
 after having been lost for over 150 years. These drawings confirm the thin streamline
image first seen in van Neck's drawings of the dodo frsual, careless extinction will
continue to fascinate generations to come.

Questions 1- 7
This reading passage has eight paragraphs, A–F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A - F, as your answer to each question.

Note: You may use any letter more than once.

1. The reason for the dodo being a flightless bird

2. Reference to a study on which a new theory about dodo is based
3. Mention of the type of vegetation found at a place
4. Two contrasting depictions of the dodo
5. Reference to the birth of a fictional character
6. Further evidence supporting the new perception of the dodo
7. The reason for the wrong portrayal of the dodo

Locating Information Practice Exercise 3

Answer questions 1-6 which are based on the reading passage below.

World's oldest leather shoe found in Armenia Reading

Passage
A. A perfectly preserved shoe, 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in
Egypt and 400 years older than Stonehenge in the UK, has been found in a cave in
Armenia. The 5,500- year-old shoe, the oldest leather shoe in the world, was
discovered by a team of international archaeologists.

B. The cow-hide shoe dates back to 3,500 BC (the Chalcolithic period) and is in perfect
condition. It was made of a single piece of leather and was shaped to fit the wearer’s
foot. It contained grass; although the archaeologists were uncertain as to whether
this was to keep the foot warm or to maintain the shape of the shoe, a precursor to
 the modern shoe-tree perhaps? “It is not known whether the shoe belonged to a man
or woman,” said lead author of the research, Dr Ron Pinhasi, University College
Cork, Ireland “as, while small, (European size 37; US size 7 women), the shoe could
well have fitted a man from that era.” The cave is situated in the Vayotz Dzor
province of Armenia, on the Armenian, Iranian, Nakhichevanian and Turkish borders,
and was known to regional archaeologists due to its visibility from the highway below.

C. The stable, cool and dry conditions in the cave resulted in exceptional preservation of
the various objects that were found, which included large containers, many of which
held well-preserved wheat and barley, apricots and other edible plants. The
preservation was also helped by the fact that the floor of the cave was covered by a
thick layer of sheep dung which acted as a solid seal over the objects, preserving
them beautifully over the millennia!

D. “We thought initially that the shoe and other objects were about 600-700 years old
because they were in such good condition,” said Dr Pinhasi. “It was only when the
material was dated by the two radiocarbon laboratories in Oxford, UK, and in
California, US that we realised that the shoe was older by a few hundred years than
the shoes worn by Ötzi, the Iceman.” Three samples were taken to determine the
absolute age of the shoe and all three tests produced the same results. The
archaeologists cut two small strips of leather off the shoe, and sent one strip to the
Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford and another to the
University of California – Irvine Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Facility. A piece of
grass from the shoe was also sent to Oxford to be dated and both shoe, and grass
were shown to be the same age.

E. The shoe was discovered by Armenian PhD student, Ms Diana Zardaryan, of the
Institute of Archaeology, Armenia, in a pit that also included a broken pot and wild
goat horns. “I was amazed to find that even the shoe-laces were preserved,” she
recalled. “We couldn’t believe the discovery,” said Dr Gregory Areshian, Cotsen
Institute of Archaeology at UCLA, US, co-director who was at the site with Mr Boris
Gasparyan, co-director, Institute of Archaeology, Armenia when the shoe was found.
“The crusts had sealed the artefacts, and archaeological deposits and artefacts
remained fresh dried, just like they were put in a can,” he said.

F. The oldest known footwear in the world, to the present time, are sandals made of
plant material, that were found in a cave in the Arnold Research Cave in Missouri in
the US. Other contemporaneous sandals were found in the Cave of the Warrior,
 Judean Desert, Israel, but these were not directly dated so that their age is based on
various other associated artefacts found in the cave.

G. Interestingly, the shoe is very similar to the pampooties worn on the Aran Islands (in
the West of Ireland) up to the 1950s. “In fact, enormous similarities exist between the
manufacturing technique and style of this shoe and those found across Europe at
later periods, suggesting that this type of shoe was worn for thousands of years
across a large and environmentally diverse region,” said Dr Pinhasi.

H. “We do not know yet what the shoe or other objects were doing in the cave or what
the purpose of the cave was,” said Dr Pinhasi. “We know that there are children’s
graves at the back of the cave, but so little is known about this period that we cannot
say with any certainty why all these different objects were found together.” The team
will continue to excavate the many chambers of the cave.

Questions 1- 6
This reading passage has eight paragraphs, A–H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A - H, as your answer to each question.

Note: You may use any letter more than once.

1. Testing different parts of the shoe to confirm the age

2. Comparison of an artefact with ancient monuments
3. Mention of a particular footwear of relatively modern era
4. Unanswered questions about the shoe
5. Mention of natural factors that aided conservation of the artefacts
6. A reference to limited knowledge restricting conclusion

Answers for Practice Exercises

Here you will find the the answers for practice exercise 1,2 and 3.

Incredible Journeys Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from
where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer
in detail.)

Paragraph D
Explanation: The researchers discovered that the ants’ navigation system isn’t perfect;...
But the ants account for these errors as well, by walking in a corrective zigzag
pattern as they approach the nest.

Paragraph G
Explanation: Last November, however, a team led by Manuela Zapka published a letter
in Nature that narrowed the possibilities. Migratory European Robins have magnetic
material in their beaks, but also molecules called cryptochromes in the back of
their eyes that might be used as a sort of compass.

Paragraph A
Explanation: Yet, in the featureless deserts of Tunisia, this ant can venture over 100
meters from its nest to find food without becoming lost. Imagine randomly
wandering 20 kilometres in the open desert, your tracks obliterated by the
wind, then turning around and making a beeline to your starting point - and no GPS
allowed! That's the equivalent of what the desert ant accomplishes with its scant
neural resources.

Paragraph F
Explanation: Did she head for the new position of her nest, with its scents and
sounds of crying babies? No, she went straight to the spot where the nest had
been, ignoring all these other cues. For gerbils, relying on the internal representation
of their environment normally suffices, so the other information goes unheeded.

Paragraph E
 Explanation: If the ants counted their steps on the journey out, then the newly short-
legged ants should stop short of the nest, while stilted ants should walk past it. Indeed,
this is what occurred! Ants count their steps to track their location.

Paragraph C
Explanation: This suggested that the ants are not following features, but orienting
themselves relative to an internal navigation system or (as turned out to be the case) the
position of the Sun in the sky.

The Dodo Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from
where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer
in detail.)

1. Paragraph B

Explanation: This benign, predator free paradise had allowed the dodo to evolve into
a pedestrian bird with tiny wings unable to rise even a few inches off the ground

2. Paragraph D

Explanation: That image of the weird, flightless, dim-witted dodo is now being
challenged by contemporary scientific research... They are based on research using
hundreds of actual dodo skeletons and bones unearthed by naturalists in the Mare
aux Songes swamp in South East Mauritius.

3. Paragraph А

Explanation: ... when a Dutch expedition headed by Admiral Jacob Cornelius van
Neck landed on an island, thick with dense forests of bamboo and ebony, off the east
coast of Africa

4. Paragraph E

Explanation: The new slimmer streamline dodo is very different from the fat cuddly
buffoon celebrated in the picture of Jan Savery.
5. Paragraph C

Explanation: On his visits to the Oxford University Museum, Lewis Carroll was
inspired by this image and the only remaining dodo skull and claw (both are still on
display there) to create his own fictional version for 'Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland'...

6. Paragraph F

Explanation: In 1991 further credence was given to this new image of the dodo when
a series of long-lost drawings by Harmenszoon dating from 1601 was discovered in
the Hague ...

7. Paragraph E

Explanation: The popular image of a fat, immobile, flightless dodo was drawn by
Savery and his contemporaries because the live specimens that they used as
models had been shipped over to Europe on a diet of ships biscuits and weevils and
then overstuffed by their overzealous owners as they exhibited them to the general
public.

World's oldest leather shoe found in Armenia Reading

Answers
(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from
where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer
in detail.)

1. Paragraph D

Explanation: The archaeologists cut two small strips of leather off the shoe, and sent
one strip to the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford and
another to the University of California...A piece of grass from the shoe was also sent
to Oxford to be dated and both shoe, and grass were shown to be the same age.

2. Paragraph A
 Explanation: A perfectly preserved shoe, 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid of
Giza in Egypt and 400 years older than Stonehenge in the UK, has been found in a
cave in Armenia.

3. Paragraph G

Explanation: Interestingly, the shoe is very similar to the pampooties worn on the
Aran Islands (in the West of Ireland) up to the 1950s.

4. Paragraph B

Explanation: It contained grass; although the archaeologists were uncertain as to

whether this was to keep the foot warm or to maintain the shape of the shoe, a
precursor to the modern shoe-tree perhaps? “It is not known whether the shoe
belonged to a man or woman,” said lead author of the research, Dr Ron Pinhasi,...

5. Paragraph C

Explanation: The stable, cool and dry conditions in the cave resulted in exceptional
preservation of the various objects that were found,...The preservation was also
helped by the fact that the floor of the cave was covered by a thick layer of sheep
dung which acted as a solid seal over the objects, preserving them beautifully over
the millennia!

6. Paragraph H

Explanation: ...so little is known about this period that we cannot say with any
certainty why all these different objects were found together.

Also check IELTS academic reading true - false - not given

Conclusion
These tips, strategies and exercises will definitely upgrade your capability in skill building
, solving IELTS academic reading locating information. But, the real change comes only
if you start applying this in your regular practice. So, use these tips for answering
previous IELTS question papers along with mock test. If you have any questions or
suggestions, email us.