One line of official small print decides how you should spend every minute of Academic Reading. ielts.org gives the timing as "60 minutes (including transfer time)" — and then spells out what that bracket means:
"You must transfer your answers during the hour you are given for the Reading test. Unlike the Listening test, no extra transfer time is given." — ielts.org, Academic test format in detail
Listening gave you a separate window to finalise answers. Reading gives you nothing. The hour is reading, answering and recording your answers, all on one clock. (On the paper test, Listening came with 10 extra minutes to transfer answers — but ielts.org announced on 5 March 2026 that paper IELTS is being withdrawn from mid-2026, so for most candidates the contrast now lives on screen: the principle is the same, Reading has no end-of-test buffer.)
The failure
The mistake this page prevents is treating the Reading hour as "reading time" with an imagined finishing-up phase at the end. Candidates who have just sat Listening — where the test structure itself handed them checking time — carry that expectation into Reading, park hard questions "for the transfer stage", and discover at minute 58 that the transfer stage does not exist. Every answer you have not recorded when the hour ends is a mark you do not get.
What you are actually facing
Three passages. ielts.org states there are 3 sections with a total text length of 2150–2750 words. British Council describes them as:
"Three long texts which range from the descriptive and factual to the discursive and analytical." — British Council, test format
On sources and register, the current ielts.org wording is:
"Texts come from books, journals, magazines, newspapers and online resources, written for a non-specialist audience." — ielts.org, Academic test format in detail
British Council adds that they are "selected for a non-specialist audience but are appropriate for people entering university courses or seeking professional registration". So no passage assumes you are a biologist or an economist — but all three assume you read like someone heading into a degree.
Forty questions, one mark each. ielts.org: "Each correct answer receives 1 mark. Your final score is given as a band score from 1–9 in whole or half bands." No question is worth more than any other — a brutal Matching Headings set and a quick sentence completion pay identically.
The eleven official question types
ielts.org lists exactly eleven types for Academic Reading. Each has its own trap, and each has its own page on this site — the map below is the official list, verbatim:
| Official type | |
|---|---|
| Multiple choice | Matching features |
| Identifying information (True/False/Not given) | Matching sentence endings |
| Identifying writer's views/claims (Yes/No/Not given) | Sentence completion |
| Matching information | Summary/note/table/flow-chart completion |
| Matching headings | Diagram label completion |
| Short-answer questions |
One penalty worth knowing now, from the same official page: where a word limit is given — "NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER" — "You will lose the mark for writing more than the word limit." Right idea, too many words, zero marks.
What the marks convert to
ielts.org publishes only partial "average marks" anchors, not a full 0–40 chart, and attaches this caveat: "The precise number of marks needed to achieve these band scores will vary slightly from test version to test version." The official Academic Reading anchors, out of 40:
| Band | Academic Reading marks (average) |
|---|---|
| 8 | 35 |
| 7 | 30 |
| 6 | 23 |
| 5 | 15 |
Band 7 is roughly 30 out of 40 — which means you can miss ten questions and still hit it. That number should shape your pacing: a question that is eating minutes can be guessed and left behind without ending your band ambitions. (General Training Reading uses the same 40 questions but grades harder — ielts.org: "It is usual that a greater number of questions must be answered correctly on a General Training Reading test to secure a given band score." See the GT page.)
The arithmetic — our coaching, not official policy
IELTS publishes the hour; it does not publish a per-passage schedule. What follows is AlmiPrep coaching, nothing more:
- 60 minutes ÷ 3 passages = 20 minutes per passage as a ceiling, not a target.
- 60 minutes ÷ 40 questions = 90 seconds per question — including reading the passage.
- A safer plan: 17–18 minutes per passage, banking 6–8 minutes. That buffer is your only "transfer time" — it has to come out of your own pacing, because the test provides none.
- Record answers as you finish each passage, not in one batch at the end. A batch plan is a bet that minute 55 will go well.
What is not official
Honesty about the gaps, because most guides fill them with invented certainty:
- There is no official statement that Academic passages get harder from 1 to 3. ielts.org says it for General Training ("three sections of increasing difficulty") — we found no equivalent official line for Academic. Plan for any passage to be the hard one.
- We cannot cite an official statement about moving freely between passages on the computer test. Do not build a strategy on navigation behaviour no official page confirms — practise under the assumption that time, not the interface, is the constraint.
- No full raw-to-band table exists officially. The four anchors above are the only published cells, labelled as averages. Any complete 0–40 chart you see elsewhere is unofficial.
What actually costs you
- Believing a transfer window exists. It does not — the hour is everything.
- Spending 25 minutes on passage one because it felt approachable.
- Exceeding a stated word limit — a correct idea over the limit scores zero.
- Chasing a perfect 40 when Band 7 averages around 30 — slow perfectionism loses more marks than it saves.
- Leaving blanks at the bell. An empty box is a guaranteed zero on that question — a recorded guess at least has a chance at its one mark.
Try one
[Try a Reading task →] — one full task, marked, no card required.