Reading practice
IELTS Reading Matching Sentence Endings practice
Complete sentences from a list.
This page is for doing Matching Sentence Endings questions: start the drill, then use the routine and the checks below to make each attempt count. For the strategy behind it, read the Matching Sentence Endings guide.
Practise Matching Sentence Endings only
4 Matching Sentence Endings questions from Academic Practice Test 2, with the passage and instructions they were written for. Your answers are saved and marked exactly as in a full section.
- Questions
- 4 questions
- Time
- 10 minutes
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What Matching Sentence Endings looks like on screen
Each question gives the first half of a sentence, and a list of lettered endings sits with the set. You choose the ending that completes each sentence so that it agrees with the passage. There are more endings than sentence beginnings, so some endings are never used.
Where you will meet it
The sentence beginnings follow the order of the passage even though the endings are mixed up, so the set walks you through one stretch of text from start to finish. It is set in Academic and General Training, often as a short set beside another task on the same passage.
A routine for doing a set against the clock
Reading gives you 60 minutes for 40 questions — about 90 seconds a question, including the time spent reading. Decide the set's share before you start, then work it like this:
- Read the list of endings once before you start, sorting them roughly by topic so you know what is on offer.
- Take the beginnings in order, moving forward through the passage each time.
- For each beginning, shortlist the two or three endings on the same topic, then let the passage decide between them.
- Flag any guess, and when you come back to it, check the endings you have not used yet first.
Traps when the clock is running
Testing every ending against every beginning. With seven or eight endings and five beginnings, checking every combination is the slowest route. Shortlist by topic first.
Choosing the ending you understand best. Under time pressure the clearest-sounding ending is tempting. It still has to say what the passage says about that beginning.
Losing your place in the passage. Because beginnings run in passage order, jumping around for one tricky sentence breaks the sequence for the rest. Note the paragraph each answer came from.
Check yourself after the drill
Mark the drill first, then answer these honestly. A pattern across two or three attempts tells you more than any single score.
- For each wrong answer, which word in the ending made it untrue?
- Did your answers move forward through the passage in order?
- Did you read the endings list once at the start, or over and over?
- Did the set finish inside your time budget?