General Training Reading is not the easy version of Academic Reading. It is the same 60 minutes, the same 40 questions, the same ten question types — attached to different texts, and scored on a harsher conversion table. Candidates who walk in expecting a gentler exam lose band scores to the two things nobody warned them about: the section-three text that reads like Academic anyway, and a conversion table that demands more correct answers for the same band. This lesson is the map.
What actually differs — and what doesn't
The texts differ. Academic gives you three long passages from journals and magazines. General Training gives you a staircase: Section 1 is two or three short everyday texts — advertisements, notices, timetables, hotel information. Section 2 is two workplace texts — job descriptions, staff handbooks, training manuals. Section 3 is one long prose text on a general-interest topic, and here is the part that surprises people: it is built like an Academic passage. Same length, same paragraph structure, same question types. The staircase ends at the Academic front door.
The question types do not differ. TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN, matching headings, matching information, sentence completion, multiple choice — the same ten types, behaving the same way. Every method lesson in this course's reading module applies to General Training unchanged: TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN works identically on a tenancy agreement and on a research summary; matching headings works identically on a staff handbook and on a journal article. You are not learning a different skill. You are applying the same skill to friendlier paper — until Section 3.
The scoring differs, against you. This is the number that should organise your whole strategy: to score Band 7, an Academic candidate needs roughly 30 of 40; a General Training candidate needs roughly 34 of 40. The easier texts are priced into the conversion table. GT Reading is not an exam you can coast through on comprehension — it is an accuracy exam. Six careless errors that would still leave an Academic candidate at Band 7 will drop you to Band 6.
The method: bank, then climb
Because the sections rise in difficulty while every question is worth the same one mark, the winning shape is speed at the bottom, care at the top.
Sections 1 and 2: bank them (20 minutes, near-perfect). These 26-or-so questions live in short texts with headers, prices, dates and bullet points — the answers are locatable in seconds if you go to the question first and scan for its anchor (a name, a number, a capitalised word). Two rules keep this section clean: read the question before the text, always; and never leave a Section 1–2 answer unresolved "to check later" — at this text difficulty, later never comes cheaper than now. Your target here is not "mostly right." It is 24 or more out of 26, in 20 minutes, because Section 3 will need everything you have left.
Section 3: climb it (30 minutes, Academic rules). Treat the long text exactly as the Academic lessons teach: preview the structure before the questions (the preview ritual), respect paragraph-level reading order, and apply the full type methods. The ten minutes you saved by banking Sections 1–2 quickly are spent here, where each question genuinely costs a minute or more.
The remaining 10 minutes are your accuracy pass. On the harsher conversion table, checking transfers is not optional hygiene — it is where Band 6.5 becomes Band 7. Spelling, singular/plural, word limits: the error log discipline applies with double force in GT because your error budget is smaller.
The trap list
Three GT-specific ways candidates donate marks:
- Skimming Section 1 texts like prose. Notices and adverts are not prose — they are lookup tables wearing sentences. Scan for the question's anchor; do not "read" an advertisement top to bottom.
- Word-limit violations on completion questions. Everyday texts tempt you to copy natural phrases ("the main reception desk") when the limit says NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS. The text's friendliness makes carelessness feel safe. It isn't.
- Budgeting time equally across sections. Twenty minutes per section is the printed suggestion and a strategic error: it overspends where questions are cheap and starves the section priced like Academic.
Your drill
Sit one full General Training test from the library under real conditions — 60 minutes, no pause, answers on the sheet as you go: General Training Reading 2026-01 Test 1 is the most recent. Bank Sections 1–2 in 20 minutes, climb Section 3 with the Academic methods, spend the last 10 on the accuracy pass. Score it against the answer key, then check the arithmetic that matters: are you at 24+ on the first 26? If not, your problem is discipline at speed. Are you losing most marks in Section 3? Then your next lessons are the Academic type methods, applied to a second GT test — same staircase, different month. The full GT library, dated by exam month, lives at General Training Reading; the sitting protocol that turns practice tests into diagnosis is in the full test protocol.