This book covers the IELTS Reading section only — for both Academic and General Training. It is not a four-skills course and does not cover Listening, Writing or Speaking.

You read every word, understand the passage completely — and still score lower than your comprehension deserves.

Sixty minutes. Three passages. Forty questions. IELTS Reading isn’t testing whether you can read English — you already can. It’s testing whether you can find specific information fast, recognize the same idea in different words, and hold a strict clock across harder and harder material without losing your composure.

Most candidates don’t lose marks on understanding. They lose them to a small set of very fixable habits: confusing False with Not Given, ignoring a word limit, running out of time on Passage 3, scanning for exact words the question deliberately never uses. That gap between reading well and scoring well is completely closeable — and it usually only takes seeing the traps once, clearly.

What’s inside

• A full chapter for every one of the 9 question types — Multiple Choice, True/False/Not Given, Matching Headings, Matching Information and Features, Sentence Completion, Summary/Note/Table/Flow-Chart Completion, Short-Answer, Diagram/Plan/Map Labelling, Matching Sentence Endings. Each chapter has: what the type really tests, a step-by-step method, a full-length academic passage, 9 worked questions, then a separate worked-answer walkthrough tracing each answer line by line to the passage, a traps list, and 9 practice passages of your own for that question type, each with its own questions and a marked answer key.
• 10 hand-drawn maps and plans — the Diagram/Plan/Map chapter is taught with real vector floor-plans and site maps (a science park, a museum, a library, a park, a campsite, a garden, a leisure centre, a nature reserve, a house), plus a labelled water-treatment process diagram — not a paragraph pretending to be a picture.
• 9 drawn tables, flow-charts and note forms — the Summary/Note/Table/Flow-Chart chapter shows each process as a real table with gap cells, a drawn flow-chart or a note form, so no completion format can surprise you.
• The band-score conversion table — Reading is scored on correct answers, not descriptive criteria, so you always know the raw score you’re aiming for.
• Academic vs. General Training — exactly how the two versions differ, and why the strategy transfers directly between them.
• 10 strategy toolkits — skim vs. scan, a 3-passage time budget, paraphrase recognition, unpacking complex academic sentences, working a passage that mixes three or four question types, and a dedicated breakdown of the False vs. Not Given trap.
• The 10 mistakes that cost the most marks — named and fixed.
• Five complete, exam-length mock reading papers — four Academic and one full General Training, at genuine passage length (about 800–950 words each), 15 passages in all, 200 questions numbered 1–40 per paper and mixing every format, each paper with its own separate Answer Key. True/False/Not Given answers are kept balanced across the three verdicts, so the practice matches the real test rather than rewarding a guessing habit.
• A quick-reference cheat sheet — every strategy on a few pages for the morning of the exam.
• An optional “Identity Shift” section — a short, supplementary mindset exercise for walking in already thinking like the careful reader who catches every trap. Skip it if you only want the exam material.

Who it’s for

Anyone preparing for IELTS Academic or General Training who already reads English well but keeps losing marks to the test’s structure. Written in clear B1–B2 English; works as a first pass or a final-week sharpening.

Who’s behind it

Written by Dr. Henry English, founder of Concord Black — a school director with a BA in English Language and Literature, a BA in English Language Teaching, a master’s degree in English Language Teaching, and a PhD in English Language and Philosophy who has spent years watching strong readers underperform on structured tests simply because nobody explained the test’s actual mechanics: the difference between reading well and scoring well on a strict, strategic format.

Get instant access to IELTS Reading Mastery — a full teaching chapter plus 9 practice passages for every question type, and five full mock papers (four Academic, one General Training) — for $9.

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