How to Do Short Answer Type of Questions in IELTS Reading?

Short answer questions are perhaps the easiest questions in IELTS reading exam. In these questions, you are to give your answers in one word and/or a number, at least two words and/or a number or at least three words and/or a number. Another thing about these questions is that you are able to find the answers easily as compared to the other type of questions. Let us see some useful tips about solving short answer type of questions.

Underline Keywords in the Question

The best strategy to solve any type of question in IELTS reading is to underline keywords in it. The main and important words in the question that help you to determine its meaning should be underlined. These are usually nouns, verbs etc. avoiding other words in the question such as prepositions, articles etc. For example,

Which programming language is used for designing DNA circuit?

How long was the biological structure that Voigt had designed?

In the above two short answer questions, the main keywords have been highlighted which you can prefer underlining in order to understand the question well and also, with the help of these keywords, you can find out one paragraph from the passage where you can find its reference.

Identify Focus in the Question

Now, other than underlining the important keywords in the question, you need to identify focus or stem of the question. Here, in short answer questions, you also need to keep your focus on words such as “what”, “where”, “when”, “which”, “how long” etc. so that you can predict whether your answer should be a word or a number, a noun or an adjective etc. Such words are important to avoid making silly mistakes as it is often seen that IELTS candidates do such mistakes in IELTS. For instance, in the above short answer questions, focus has been identified as follows:

Which programming language is used for designing DNA circuit?

How long was the biological structure that Voigt had designed?

Pay Attention to Nearby Words in Passage

While finding out answers from the reading passage, you can pay attention to words which are the same as you find in questions and which can help you to identify your answers. For example, in the above question, “is used for” is the phrase that you may find written in the passage also. Similarly, prepositions such as “in”, “had”, “have”, “at”, “into”, “for” etc. are also such you can look for to be the same between question and your IELTS reading passage.

Write Answers as per Word Instructions

A very basic yet important tip for short answer question is to always consider word instruction in your mind when you are locating your answers in the reading passage. Sometimes, you also have to write article such as “a”, “an” or “the” along with your answer. So, you should always be careful about the word instruction. Another thing to be always careful about is that you should never be having your answer written in more than three words in IELTS reading. – See more at:

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