Quick answer: You have 60 minutes for 3 passages and 40 questions, and there is no extra time to transfer answers - you write them straight onto the answer sheet. The reliable plan is to spend about 20 minutes per passage, but because the passages get harder, budget a little less on the first and protect time for the third: roughly 17, 20 and 23 minutes. Don't read every word - skim for structure, then scan for answers. Set a hard limit per passage, guess anything you are stuck on, and move on. The most common failure is spending too long on passage one and never properly finishing passage three.
The only way to fix your pace is to practise against the clock. Sit our free practice test and time each passage.
The maths of the test
Sixty minutes, forty questions - that is an average of 90 seconds per question, but that figure hides the real challenge. You also have to read three passages inside those 60 minutes, and the third is the hardest with the trickiest questions. Treat the test as three mini-tests with their own clocks, not one long block, and you stop the early passages stealing time from the late ones. Remember too that Reading has no separate answer-transfer time - the minute you spend deciding is a minute gone, so write each answer as you find it.
A per-passage time budget
- Passage 1 - about 17 minutes. It is the easiest, so bank these questions efficiently and hand the saved minutes to passage three.
- Passage 2 - about 20 minutes. Steady pace; this is the "average" difficulty passage.
- Passage 3 - about 23 minutes. The hardest text and questions get the most time. This is the whole point of front-loading your speed.
- Leave a couple of minutes' buffer. Use any spare time to fill blanks with guesses and re-check the answers you were unsure of.
- Enforce the limits. When a passage's time is up, transfer what you have, guess the rest, and move on - do not borrow from the next passage.
These numbers are a guide, not a rule. If passage one is unusually kind, take even less; if you naturally read academic English quickly, an even split of 20/20/20 may suit you. The principle is fixed even when the minutes flex: never let one passage eat another's time.
Skim first, then scan
You cannot read three passages word-for-word and still answer 40 questions in an hour. Use two speeds:
- Skim the passage first for about a minute to get its shape - what each paragraph is broadly about, where the topic shifts. You are building a map, not memorising.
- Scan for specific answers once you read the questions. Because most Reading questions follow the order of the text, you can move down the passage as you move down the question set, jumping to the region where each answer lives.
The exceptions are matching-headings and matching-information questions, which do not follow passage order; leave those until you have already read the passage once via the order-based questions. There is a full method in the matching headings strategy.
Answer order and question type
Not every question deserves equal time. Completion and True/False/Not Given questions tend to be quick because they are order-based - see how to beat True/False/Not Given - while matching tasks are slower. A smart order within a passage is: do the order-based questions first (they walk you through the text), then the matching questions, which are easier once you know the passage. If a single question is fighting you, mark it, guess, and come back only if time allows.
Habits that protect your clock
- Don't re-read for perfection. "Good enough and moving on" beats a perfect answer that costs three others.
- Write answers immediately. There is no transfer time, so record each answer the moment you decide it.
- Guess every blank before the hour ends. No penalty for wrong answers means a blank is pure waste.
- Keep an eye on the clock, not a stopwatch on every question. Check the time at each passage change, not obsessively.
- Practise timed, always. Untimed practice teaches accuracy but not pace; you need both.
What "enough correct answers" looks like
Because Reading is scored on your raw number of correct answers out of 40, shaving time is only worth it if accuracy holds. The goal is the best combination of speed and correctness - enough questions attempted properly to hit your target band. To see how a given raw score maps to a band, and how many more answers you need, use the band-score estimator. For the full set of question types and their methods, start with the pillar, IELTS Reading and Listening question types and strategies.
Reading fluently under pressure is a skill that pays off well beyond the exam. Many of our readers go on to train to teach English abroad with an accredited TEFL/TESOL course once they have the score their visa or university requires.