True/False/Not Given is the question type candidates most often describe as unfair, and the reason is almost always the same: they are treating it as a comprehension question when it is a logic question. The task is not "is this statement correct?" but "what relationship does this statement have to the text?" — and there are exactly three possible relationships, with strict definitions.
Once the definitions are precise, most of the difficulty disappears. Not all of it: the type is genuinely designed so that careless reading produces plausible wrong answers. But the errors become systematic instead of random, and systematic errors can be trained out.
What the three answers actually mean
| Answer | Condition |
|---|---|
| TRUE | The passage says the same thing, in different words. |
| FALSE | The passage says something that contradicts the statement. |
| NOT GIVEN | The passage neither confirms nor contradicts it. The information is absent. |
The crucial word is contradicts. FALSE requires the text to actively assert something incompatible. Silence is never FALSE — silence is NOT GIVEN. This single distinction accounts for the majority of errors on this question type.
A second rule follows from it: your own knowledge is irrelevant. A statement can be perfectly true in the real world and still be NOT GIVEN, because the passage did not say it. The question is about the text, not about the world.
False versus Not Given
Take a passage sentence: "The museum opened in 1897 and was funded entirely by a local merchant."
| Statement | Answer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The museum was financed by a single private individual. | TRUE | A paraphrase of "funded entirely by a local merchant". |
| The museum received government funding. | FALSE | "Entirely by a local merchant" contradicts any other source. |
| The merchant was a well-known figure in the town. | NOT GIVEN | Plausible, probably true — but the text never says it. |
Notice what makes the second one FALSE: the word entirely. Without it, "received government funding" would be NOT GIVEN. The contradiction lives in a single qualifier, which is why scanning for keywords fails on this question type — the keywords match in all three statements.
The test that settles it
Ask: can I point at the words that make this wrong? If you can quote them, it is FALSE. If you are reasoning — "well, it probably wasn't, because…" — it is NOT GIVEN. Inference is the signature of a NOT GIVEN answer.
Why Yes/No/Not Given is a different question
The same three-way logic, aimed at a different target. TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN asks about factual information in the passage. YES/NO/NOT GIVEN asks about the writer's views or claims.
In practice this means YES/NO questions appear with opinion-led texts — argument, review, commentary — and the thing you are matching against is the author's stance rather than a stated fact. A statement can describe something the passage mentions and still be NO, because the writer clearly takes the opposite position on it.
Two consequences worth internalising. First, attribution matters: if the passage reports what a critic or a study claimed, that is not automatically the writer's own view. Second, hedging matters: a writer who says a policy may have contributed is not asserting that it did, so a statement claiming they believe it did is not YES.
Answer with the wording the instructions use. Writing TRUE on a YES/NO/NOT GIVEN set is marked wrong, and it is a genuinely common way to lose several marks at once.
A four-step decision procedure
- Read the statement and identify what is being claimed — especially any qualifier: all, only, never, the first, more than. The claim usually turns on that word, not on the topic noun.
- Locate the region of the passage. These questions follow the order of the text, so the answer to question 5 sits between the answers to 4 and 6. Search that band, not the whole passage.
- Read the surrounding sentences properly. Not the keyword — the sentence containing it, plus the one before and after. The qualifier that decides the answer is frequently in a neighbouring clause.
- Apply the contradiction test. Same meaning → TRUE. Can quote the contradiction → FALSE. Cannot find it without inferring → NOT GIVEN.
Step 2 is the one candidates skip, and it is the one that saves the time. If you cannot find the region at all, that itself is evidence — but only once you are confident you searched the right band of text.
The four traps
1. The qualifier swap
The passage says some researchers; the statement says most researchers. Everything else matches. This is FALSE, and it is invisible to keyword scanning.
2. The plausible extension
The statement adds a detail the text never mentions but which sounds reasonable — a motive, a consequence, a comparison. NOT GIVEN. Your brain supplies the missing link because it is a sensible link; the examiner is testing whether you notice you supplied it.
3. The synonym decoy
A keyword from the statement appears in the passage, but in a different context — a different subject, a different time period, a different study. Matching the word instead of the meaning lands you on the wrong sentence entirely.
4. The comparison that was never made
The passage describes A, then describes B. The statement says A is larger, faster or older than B. Unless the text explicitly compares them, this is NOT GIVEN — even if the figures given would support the comparison. Doing the arithmetic yourself is inference.
Timing and when to move on
Academic Reading gives you 60 minutes for 40 questions across three passages, and there is no transfer time at the end — answers go straight onto the answer sheet. That is about 20 minutes per passage including reading it, so roughly 90 seconds per question. A True/False/Not Given item should take under a minute once you have located the region.
If you are past two minutes on one item, mark your best answer and move on. There is no negative marking, and the marks lost by rushing the last passage always exceed the mark gained by resolving one stubborn question.
For context on what those marks are worth: in Academic Reading, band 6.0 starts at 23 correct and band 7.0 at 30 — so seven questions is the gap between them. Reading question types are unevenly distributed in most candidates' error logs, and True/False/Not Given plus matching headings usually account for a large share of that seven. The full raw-score to band chart shows exactly where you currently sit and what the next half band costs.
Frequently asked
What is the difference between False and Not Given in IELTS Reading?
False means the passage states something that contradicts the statement. Not Given means the passage neither confirms nor contradicts it — the information simply is not there. If you have to reason from outside knowledge or assumption to call something false, the answer is Not Given.
What is the difference between True/False/Not Given and Yes/No/Not Given?
True/False/Not Given tests factual information in the passage. Yes/No/Not Given tests the views or claims of the writer. The decision procedure is the same, but for Yes/No you are matching against what the writer believes, not against what is objectively stated.
Are True/False/Not Given answers in the same order as the passage?
Yes. These questions follow the order of the text, so the answer to question 4 lies after the answer to question 3. Use that to limit your search area instead of rereading the whole passage.
Should I use my own knowledge in True/False/Not Given questions?
No. Only the passage counts. A statement that is true in the real world but unsupported by the text is Not Given, and this is one of the most common sources of lost marks.
Is it better to guess Not Given when unsure?
There is no negative marking, so always answer. Not Given is a reasonable default when you have searched the correct region of the text and genuinely cannot find the information — but only after confirming you are looking in the right place.