Two pieces of advice about IELTS Reading are repeated everywhere in coaching, and both are usually stated as rules: read the passage first, and answers always come in order.
One of them is backed by the exam owners and stated the other way round. The other is true only for some question types, and ielts.org publishes exactly which ones.
The video above runs through both in two minutes. Here they are with the sources.
Questions first — and this is not my opinion
Cambridge English publishes an IELTS Academic FAQ document. Two of its bullets, in this order:
IDP's examiner-approved tips give the same sequence in different words: "Read every question carefully first before reading the passages", then read the passage quickly "in order to get a general idea of what it's about".
So the answer to "questions or passage first?" is: both, in that order. Skim the questions to know what you are hunting for, then read the passage quickly to learn its shape — not to absorb it.
What has no official backing at all is the habit I see most in practice papers: five or six minutes spent reading the whole passage carefully, before seeing a single question. Nothing on ielts.org, Cambridge or IDP asks for that, and the hour does not have room for it.
Which question types follow the text
Here is the part almost nobody teaches, and it is published in the open — under each question type on the ielts.org Reading format page.
| Question type | What ielts.org says about order |
|---|---|
| Multiple choice | "The questions are in the same order as the information in the text" |
| Matching sentence endings | "The sentence beginnings are in the same order as the information in the text" |
| Sentence completion | "The questions are in the same order as the information in the text" |
| Short-answer questions | "The answers come in the same order as the information in the text" |
| Summary, note, table, flow-chart completion | "The answers may not come in the same order as in the text" |
| Diagram label completion | "The answers may not come in the same order as in the text" |
| Matching information, matching headings, matching features | Nothing about order is stated |
| Identifying information (True/False/Not Given), identifying writer's views (Yes/No/Not Given) | Nothing about order is stated |
Read the first four rows again, because they change how you move through a passage. In those sets, once you have answered question 7, the answer to question 8 is after it. You never need to go back to the top.
Cambridge's FAQ says the same thing as an instruction: "Don't go back to the beginning of the text for each question when you know from the task type that the answers will come in the order of the information in the text." And next to it: "Don't waste time reading the whole text each time for each set of questions."
What that means minute by minute
In an ordered set, your reading has a direction. You answer question 5, note where you found it, and continue from that line for question 6. A set of ten sentence-completion items can be done in one pass down the passage.
In an unordered set, there is no "from here" — every item is a fresh search. That is why a matching-headings task and a sentence-completion task of the same length are not the same job, and why budgeting your hour by passage rather than by task type quietly fails: what ten blank answers cost in bands, and how to budget by question type.
Thirty seconds before the passage
Three habits, in this order, before you read a word of the text.
- Read the instruction line. "NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS" is an instruction, not decoration — a correct answer written in three words scores zero. Cambridge's own warning: "It is important to do exactly what you are asked to do."
- Name the question type. From the table above you now know whether the answers run in order. That single fact decides whether you read forward or search.
- Mark the names, dates and numbers in the questions. IDP's tips say to circle or underline key words as you read, and to circle place names and dates as you go. These are the items that survive paraphrase — which is the whole subject of why the question's words are not in the passage.
Half a minute, and it saves you the wandering that eats the hour.
Practise it on a real paper
Technique on a page is easy to agree with and easy to forget under a clock. The way to fix it is one paper at a time: before each question set, say the type out loud and decide — forward, or search.
Our Cambridge papers are free and run on a screen built to match the computer-delivered test, with passage and questions side by side, a highlighter and a flag for what you left. Reading and Listening are marked the moment you submit, so you can check the answers you found by moving forward against the ones you found by searching. We are not affiliated with Cambridge, IDP or the British Council.
Quotations checked on 29 September 2026 against Cambridge English's IELTS Academic FAQs, IDP's examiner-approved tips and the ielts.org Academic Reading format page.
