Summary completion hands you a word bank. Sentence completion does not. The instruction is colder: "Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each answer." The answer is somewhere in the passage — you have to find it, and it has to fit the sentence's grammar. That last constraint is the whole game: the unfinished sentence tells you what kind of word it needs before you ever open the passage.

The grammar-cue system: read the gap first

Every gap has a shape. Before you touch the passage, mark it:

  • A gap after "the" needs a noun or noun phrase: The study found that the ______ decreased. (noun)
  • A gap after "is/are/was" needs an adjective or noun: The process is ______. (adjective or noun)
  • A gap before "by" often needs a person, group, or method: The survey was conducted by ______.
  • A gap ending in "-ed" or "-ing" context tells you the tense: The treatment was first ______ in 2019. (past participle)

This is not guesswork — it is filtering. If the gap needs a plural noun and the candidate phrase in the passage is singular, it is wrong no matter how well the topic matches. Grammar is the first test; meaning is the second.

Word limits kill more marks than vocabulary does

The most common way candidates lose these marks is not a wrong answer — it is an answer that breaks the word limit. "NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS" means exactly that: a fourth word makes the answer wrong even if every word is correct. (The limit varies — it can be ONE, TWO, or THREE — so read the instruction on the day, not from memory.)

The counting conventions that matter:

1. Numbers count as one word. 3 million = two words. 2019 = one word. 2. Hyphenated words count as one word. well-known = one word. 3. Articles and prepositions count. the north-west passage = three words.

Read the gap's natural length too: a single article + one gap before a full stop almost certainly wants ONE or TWO words, not three. If you are writing four words into a gap that sits after "the," something has gone wrong — go back and cut.

Copy exactly, change nothing

Because the answer must come from the text, copy it exactly as it appears — spelling, word order, pluralisation, everything. Two traps here:

1. Paraphrase the location, not the answer. The passage paraphrases the question stem — that is how it hides the answer. Find the idea by meaning ("caused the population to fall"), then lift the actual words ("a 40% decline"). Never reword the answer itself. 2. Plurals are decided by the gap, not the passage. If the passage says "the samples were tested" and the gap reads "The researchers tested the ______," the answer is samples — the gap's article and context fix the form. Copy the passage's words, in the passage's form, as the grammar requires.

Order saves you: work the questions, not the passage

Sentence completion questions almost always follow passage order — question 1 comes before question 2, which comes before question 3. That is a search boundary: once you find question 2's answer, question 3 lives after it, and question 1 lives before it. Work the set together, narrowing the zone as you go.

The method, start to finish:

1. Read the unfinished sentences and mark each gap's grammar shape (noun, adjective, number, person). 2. Underline the stem's content words — the ideas, not the exact words. 3. Scan for those ideas paraphrased in the passage, staying inside the question-order zone. 4. When you find the spot, lift the words that fit the gap — and check the word count before you write.

The two near-miss traps

The synonym that changes the category. The passage says "approximately 200 species"; the stem says "nearly two hundred types of plant." The answer is species, not plants — the gap's grammar wants the noun the passage used, and paraphrased answers are not accepted. Fit the gap, copy the passage.

The summary that jumps around. Sometimes the sentences summarise a whole paragraph, paraphrasing several lines into one. When the paraphrase is heavy, drop keyword scanning entirely and read for the claim: which sentence of the passage makes the same claim as the unfinished sentence? The answer sits in that sentence.

The CLB 9 bottom line

Sentence completion is one of the gentlest-looking question types on IELTS Reading — and one of the most precise. Every mark it offers is really testing two things at once: can you find the claim (meaning), and can you fit it (grammar). Read the gap first, copy exactly, and count your words. At band 8.0 in Reading (35/40 Academic), you cannot afford to give away marks to a four-word answer in a three-word gap.

Put it to work

Practise finding and fitting answers: [Try the free Reading practice →](/practice/reading) · Find out which question type is leaking your marks: [Take the free 4-skill diagnostic →](/diagnostic) · Complete the Reading question-type cluster: IELTS Reading True/False/Not Given, Reading matching headings: the question type that blocks Band 8, Reading summary completion: the word-bank question type, GT Reading: the 60-minute game plan.

Fact-check anchor: instruction reads "NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS" (limit varies 1–3 — read it on the day); hyphenated words count as one ("well-known" = 1), a number counts as one ("2019" = 1), articles and prepositions count ("the north-west passage" = 3); over-limit answers score zero even with the correct words; answer must be copied exactly as in the passage; questions follow passage order; Academic 8.0 ≈ 35/40. Verified Oct 8 2026 — format rules change slowly, re-verify before quoting.