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IELTS matching headings practice

How do you do matching headings? Read the paragraph first and say its main idea in a few words.

Paragraph A

When e-books and search engines arrived, many commentators predicted that public libraries would empty within a generation. Why visit a building to borrow a book, they asked, when almost any text could be read on a screen at home? For a while the figures seemed to agree: in many towns, the number of books lent fell year after year.

Choose the best heading for paragraph A.

Question 1 of 5

Pick an answer

Your result

Questions people ask

How do you do matching headings?

Read the paragraph first and say its main idea in a few words. Then find the heading with the same idea, even if it uses different words.

Why do the wrong headings use words from the paragraph?

That is the trap. A heading that repeats a word often matches one detail, not the whole paragraph.

Can a heading be used twice?

No. Each heading fits one paragraph at most, and there are more headings than paragraphs.

How we work this out

What it does

Read each paragraph, choose its heading, and see which words were the trap.

IELTS Reading, Academic and General Training: the matching headings task.

Method

  1. One original passage of five paragraphs, with eight headings: five fit, three are distractors.
  2. The right heading names the paragraph's main idea. Wrong ones repeat a word from the paragraph or match only one detail.

Sources

Checked .