Completion & Labelling Tasks
Sentence, summary, note, table, flow-chart and diagram completion, plus short-answer questions — all the tasks where you write words into gaps. One rule governs almost all of them, and breaking it turns a correct idea into a lost mark: the word limit. Here's how to hit it every time.
What you'll be able to do
- Recognise every completion and labelling task and how each is marked
- Apply the word-limit rule correctly, including hyphens and numbers
- Predict the type of word a gap needs before scanning for it
- Copy answers from the passage with the exact spelling the mark scheme requires
Completion tasks are the most literal questions in IELTS Reading. Most of the time the answer is a word — or two or three — sitting in the passage, and your job is to find it and copy it into a gap. That sounds like the easiest thing on the paper, and in terms of comprehension it often is. Yet these questions catch out strong readers again and again, and almost always for the same two reasons: they write too many words, or they change the word they copied. Neither is a reading mistake. Both are avoidable.
Everything here applies to Academic and General Training alike. Let's map the family first, then nail the rule that decides your score.
The completion family
They look different on the page but behave almost identically:
- Sentence completion — finish a sentence with words from the passage.
- Summary completion — fill gaps in a short summary of part of the passage. Two flavours: fill from the passage itself, or fill from a box of supplied words.
- Note / Table / Flow-chart completion — the same idea arranged as notes, a grid, or a sequence of steps with arrows.
- Diagram labelling — write words onto parts of a picture, map or apparatus.
- Short-answer questions — answer a direct question in a few words, again taken from the text.
With one exception, all of these want words copied exactly from the passage, and all of them are governed by a word limit.
The one exception: summary from a box
When summary completion gives you a box of words to choose from, the answers are usually synonyms — the box word paraphrases what the passage says rather than repeating it, so don't expect to find the exact box word in the text. For every other completion type, the answer is lifted word-for-word from the passage, and spelling counts.
The word-limit rule — the one that decides the mark
Above each completion task is an instruction like "NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER". It is not a suggestion. If the answer is fifteen hundred years but the limit is two words and a number, then "fifteen hundred years" is three words and it is marked wrong — even though your understanding was perfect. Exceeding the limit fails the answer regardless of meaning. This is the single most common way to lose marks you'd already earned.
So two habits matter enormously. First, read the limit for every task — it changes from task to task on the same paper. Second, when you write your answer, count the words.
Count words the way the examiner does
Hyphenated words count as one word — "well-being" and "twenty-five" are each a single word. A number written in figures counts as "a number", not as a word — so "1997" or "40" satisfies the "…and/or a number" clause. But a number written out in letters ("forty") counts as a word. When in doubt, prefer the figure: "40" is safer than "forty" under a tight limit.
| Instruction | Allowed answer | Marked wrong because… |
|---|---|---|
| ONE WORD ONLY | "erosion" | "soil erosion" — that's two words |
| NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS | "soil erosion" | "rapid soil erosion" — three words |
| NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER | "25 species" · "well-being" · "1990" | "25 different species" — two words plus a number is fine, but "different" makes it three words |
| NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS | "a coral reef" | "a large coral reef" — four words |
Predict the word, then scan for it
The strongest completion habit is to work out what kind of word the gap needs before you go looking. Read the sentence with the gap and ask: does the grammar demand a noun, a verb, an adjective, a number? A gap after "the" and before "of" almost certainly wants a noun. A gap after "was" probably wants an adjective or a past participle. This does two jobs — it stops you writing a grammatically impossible answer, and it tells your eye exactly what to snatch when you scan.
Sentence, note, table and flow-chart completion answers generally follow the order of the passage, so once you've found the first, the next is downstream. Diagram labelling is the odd one out — you may have to jump around the relevant paragraph to find each label — so anchor yourself on the part names given in the diagram and match them to the description in the text.
A method that works for every completion task
- Read the instruction and note the word limit. Write it at the top of the task box so you don't forget mid-set.
- Read the gapped sentence and predict the word type — noun, verb, adjective, number. Predict the meaning too, in your own words.
- Scan the passage for the surrounding context, not the answer itself. The words either side of the gap are usually paraphrased in the text; find them and the answer is next to them.
- Copy the answer exactly — same spelling, same form. If the passage says "pollinated", don't write "pollination".
- Count your words and check the grammar fits the gap before moving on.
Spelling is marked — and it's on you
Because the answer is copied straight from the passage, a misspelled answer is a wrong answer, and you have no excuse — the correct spelling is printed in front of you. Copy carefully, especially longer or technical words. American and British spellings ("colour"/"color") are both accepted, but a genuine slip is not.
💡 Sentence completion — two gaps
Passage extract: "The lighthouse was built in 1854 from local granite, and for eighty years its lamp was fuelled entirely by whale oil. Only in 1934 did the keepers switch to paraffin, which burned more cleanly and cost far less to ship out to the island."
Complete each sentence. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.
1. The lighthouse was constructed using __________ from the surrounding area.
2. Until __________, the lamp ran on whale oil.
Answer:
1. local granite 2. 1934
Gap 1 needs a noun for the building material; the passage says "built … from local granite", and "local granite" is two words — within the limit. Writing "granite from the surrounding area" would be both too many words and a paraphrase, so it fails. Gap 2 needs a date; the keepers switched "only in 1934", so up to that year the lamp used whale oil. "1934" is a number, which the instruction explicitly allows. Note the trap in gap 2: "eighty years" is also in the passage, but it doesn't fit the grammar or the meaning of "Until __________".
Short-answer questions
These ask a direct question — "What material was used to build the lighthouse?" — and want a short answer, again from the passage and again under a word limit. Treat them exactly like sentence completion: predict the word type, scan for the context, copy exactly, count the words. The only wrinkle is that you must answer the question actually asked, not the interesting fact nearby, so read the question stem to the end.
Once completion tasks feel automatic, the bottleneck becomes finding the right lines fast enough. That's a skimming-and-scanning skill, which is exactly what comes next.
Frequently asked questions
What happens if I write more than the word limit in a completion task?
The answer is marked wrong, even if the meaning is completely correct. If the instruction says no more than two words, a three-word answer scores zero, so always count your words before moving on.
Does a hyphenated word count as one word or two?
A hyphenated word such as well-being or twenty-five counts as a single word. A number written in figures, like 1990 or 40, counts as a number rather than a word, which is why the safer choice under a tight limit is usually the figure.
Do I have to spell completion answers correctly?
Yes. For most completion tasks the answer is copied directly from the passage, so a misspelling is marked wrong and the correct spelling is printed right there for you to copy. Both British and American spellings are accepted.
When are completion answers synonyms rather than exact words?
Only in summary completion where you choose from a box of supplied words — there the answers are usually synonyms of what the passage says. Every other completion and labelling task requires the exact words taken from the text.