General Training Reading hands you notices, advertisements and staff manuals instead of journal articles — and then marks you on a stricter table. The same 30 correct answers out of 40 that earn Band 7 on Academic Reading earn Band 6 on General Training Reading. The everyday texts are not a gift — they are priced in.
Here is the official paragraph, in full, from ielts.org:
"The IELTS Academic and General Training Reading tests are graded on the same scale. The Academic Reading test may contain texts which feature more difficult vocabulary or greater complexity of style. 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." — ielts.org, Understanding your score
Notice the hedges: "may contain" and "It is usual that". Even the test maker states the harder grading as a usual pattern, not an iron law. But the published numbers follow the pattern exactly, as you will see below.
The failure
The mistake this page prevents: preparing for GT Reading with Academic score expectations. Test takers see "notices and timetables", assume the easy version, practise casually, then look up an Academic conversion chart and think 30/40 has them at Band 7. On GT, it does not. If your visa or registration target is Band 7 in Reading, the official indicative figure is 35 out of 40 — you can afford roughly five wrong answers on the whole paper. That is a different preparation problem from the one most GT candidates think they have.
The three sections, as officially described
GT Reading has three sections, and ielts.org states plainly: "There are three sections of increasing difficulty."
Section 1 — everyday survival. ielts.org: "The texts in Section 1 deal with everyday topics, and they are the sort of texts that a person would need to be able to understand when living in an English-speaking country" — the examples given include notices, advertisements and timetables. On structure: "Section 1 may contain two or three short texts or several shorter texts." IDP calls this section a test of "your social survival skills".
Section 2 — the workplace. ielts.org: "The texts in Section 2 focus on work topics, for example, job descriptions, contracts, staff development and training materials." Structurally, "Section 2 contains two texts." IDP's label: "your workplace survival skills", with texts taken from "job descriptions, contracts, staff development and training manuals, as well as pay and workplace condition documents".
Section 3 — one long text. ielts.org: "In Section 3, there is one long text." It "deals with a topic of general interest", and "the style of writing in Section 3 is generally descriptive (containing detailed information) and instructive (telling you how to do something)". Sources: "newspapers, magazines, books and online resources". This is the section closest in feel to an Academic passage — it arrives when your hour is already partly spent.
The British Council sums up the material across the paper as "extracts from books, magazines, newspapers, notices, advertisements, company handbooks and guidelines. These are materials you are likely to encounter on a daily basis in an English-speaking environment."
Same questions, same marking — different texts
The question types are not GT-specific. ielts.org publishes an identical list of 11 question types for Academic and General Training Reading: multiple choice, identifying information (True/False/Not given), identifying writer's views/claims (Yes/No/Not given), matching information, matching headings, matching features, matching sentence endings, sentence completion, summary/note/table/flow-chart completion, diagram label completion, and short-answer questions.
The mechanics are also identical: 40 questions, "60 minutes (including transfer time)", total text length "2150–2750 words", and "Each correct answer receives 1 mark." There is no bonus transfer period — on the Academic page ielts.org warns, "Unlike the Listening test, no extra transfer time is given," and the GT timing is stated the same way. Where a word limit applies, the official Reading question-type descriptions are blunt: "You will lose the mark for writing more than the word limit."
The table, worked through
The official indicative figures — ielts.org calls them average marks that "will vary slightly from test version to test version" — line up like this:
| Raw marks (out of 40) | Academic Reading band | GT Reading band |
|---|---|---|
| 35 | 8 | 7 |
| 30 | 7 | 6 |
| 23 | 6 | 5 |
| 15 | 5 | 4 |
Read one row properly. At 30/40 you have answered three quarters of the paper correctly. On Academic, that is the Band 7 anchor. On GT, the same performance sits at Band 6 — and the Band 7 anchor moves to 35/40, which on Academic would anchor Band 8. Every published anchor shifts by a full band. If your visa route or employer sets a Reading band condition, this one-band shift is the single most consequential fact about GT Reading — and it appears on almost no preparation site. Check the receiving organisation's own page for the band you actually need.
What is official here, and what is not
Honesty about the gaps, because most GT guides fill them with invented numbers:
- Questions per section. Prep sites commonly state figures like "Section 1 has 14 questions". No official page we verified gives a per-section question count — only the 40-question total and the text structure quoted above.
- A full 0–40 conversion chart. ielts.org publishes only the anchor rows in the table above, with the vary-by-version caveat. Any complete GT chart you find elsewhere is unofficial.
- The harder grading itself is hedged. "It is usual that" is the official strength of the claim — treat the anchors as reliable planning figures, not guaranteed cut-offs.
- Spelling in Reading. The verified official penalty quote for spelling and grammar comes from the Listening section of the format pages. We found no Reading-specific equivalent, so we will not attribute one.
Who GT is for, in ielts.org's words: it "is suitable for those wishing to migrate to a country where English is spoken (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK), and for those wishing to train or study at below degree level" — and it "assesses everyday English language skills that you will need in social situations and in workplace environments".
What actually costs you
- Aiming at Academic anchors — on GT, add roughly five marks to every band target you have seen.
- Cruising through Sections 1 and 2 — the sections rise in difficulty, and the long Section 3 text needs whatever time you banked early.
- Writing over the word limit on completion questions — "You will lose the mark", even when the right answer is in there.
- Treating "everyday texts" as low-stakes practice — the stricter table means GT rewards near-perfect accuracy on material you think you already read well.
- Forgetting there is no extra transfer time — your answers must be down within the hour.
Try one
[Try a Reading task →] — one full task, marked, no card required.