True / False / Not Given is the most feared question type in IELTS Reading, and the fear comes from treating it as three separate puzzles. It is one decision, applied once per statement. This lesson installs that single decision rule, the trap patterns the test uses to manufacture wrong answers, and — the part everyone struggles with — how to stop confusing Not Given with False.
One decision rule
For every statement, locate the relevant sentence using the location routine, then ask exactly one question:
Does the passage confirm this claim, contradict this claim, or stay silent about this claim?
- Confirms it → TRUE
- Contradicts it → FALSE
- Stays silent → NOT GIVEN
Everything else you have heard about this question type is a corollary of that rule. Two consequences matter immediately:
- The claim being tested is the statement's claim, exactly as written — not a looser version of it. If the statement says "most researchers agree", the passage must confirm most, not just some.
- Your outside knowledge is not the passage. A statement can be factually true in the real world and NOT GIVEN in the test, because the passage never says it. You are grading the passage's testimony, not reality.
FALSE vs NOT GIVEN: the real test
Almost every lost mark on this question type is a FALSE/NOT GIVEN confusion. The boundary is sharp once you state it properly:
FALSE means the passage makes the statement impossible. NOT GIVEN means the passage is compatible with the statement being true — and also compatible with it being false.
Work through three short cases. (These are constructed examples in the style of the test.)
Passage says: The bridge was completed in 1932, two years behind schedule. Statement: The bridge was finished on time. → FALSE. Two years behind schedule makes "on time" impossible.
Passage says: The bridge was completed in 1932. Statement: The bridge was the longest in the country when it opened. → NOT GIVEN. Maybe it was; maybe it wasn't. The passage doesn't take a side. Notice the pull to answer from general knowledge or from "it sounds plausible" — resist it.
Passage says: The bridge attracted engineers from across Europe, who came to study its cable design. Statement: The bridge's design was widely admired by engineers. → TRUE. No word matches — attracted… came to study confirms widely admired by meaning. TRUE answers are usually paraphrased this heavily.
The self-check that resolves 90% of hesitation: try to point at the contradicting words. If you can put your finger on the phrase in the passage that makes the statement impossible, it is FALSE. If you cannot — if you are inferring, assuming, or "reading between the lines" — it is NOT GIVEN. FALSE requires evidence; NOT GIVEN is the absence of evidence.
The trap factory
Statements are engineered, not written casually. Four patterns account for most FALSE and NOT GIVEN answers:
| Trap | How it works | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Scope widening | Passage says some/many/often; statement says all/every/always | Passage: many species declined → Statement: all species declined → FALSE |
| Extreme words | Statement adds only, must, never, the first, the most — absolutes the passage never commits to | Passage: an important cause → Statement: the only cause → FALSE (or NOT GIVEN if no other causes are discussed — check what the passage actually rules out) |
| Relative vs absolute | Passage makes a comparison; statement makes an absolute claim, or vice versa | Passage: method A is cheaper than method B → Statement: method A is cheap → NOT GIVEN. Cheaper than B tells you nothing about cheap in absolute terms |
| Cause vs correlation | Passage says two things occur together; statement says one caused the other | Passage: sales rose as the campaign ran → Statement: the campaign caused the rise in sales → NOT GIVEN |
Train yourself to underline quantifiers and absolutes (all, only, most, never, first) in every statement before you scan. They are the pivot on which the answer turns, and they are also poor scanning keywords — scan with the names and nouns, judge with the quantifiers.
Procedure and probabilities
- Statements follow passage order. Locate question 7 below question 6's sentence, never from the top.
- Judge each statement independently. "I've already written three TRUEs" is not evidence about the fourth.
- If a statement's keyword genuinely cannot be located after two scans and a keyword downgrade, the likely answer is NOT GIVEN — statements about things the passage never mentions are, by definition, hard to locate. But confirm the topic area exists in the passage first; if even the topic is absent, NOT GIVEN with confidence.
- Under the 90-second circuit breaker from the time budget lesson, an unresolved statement gets a guess, and the highest-value blind guess on this type is NOT GIVEN for un-locatable statements, TRUE otherwise.
- Write the words the instructions use. If the question says TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN, do not write YES — that variant belongs to the next lesson.
Your drill
Twenty minutes, focused entirely on the FALSE/NOT GIVEN boundary.
- Open Reading 2026-03 Test 1 and find the True/False/Not Given set. Answer it untimed, but for every FALSE you write, underline the contradicting words in the passage. If you cannot underline anything, change your answer to NOT GIVEN.
- Check your answers. For each miss, classify it against the trap table above — scope, extreme, relative/absolute, or cause/correlation — and write the trap name next to it.
- Repeat with the TFNG set in Reading 2026-05 Test 3, now timed at 90 seconds per statement.
Two sessions like this and the three-way choice collapses into what it really is: one located sentence, one comparison, one decision.