Examples:

Source: Cambridge IELTS 11, Test 2 – Reading, Passage 3, Questions 27 – 30

Source: Cambridge IELTS 11, Test 2 – Reading, Passage 3, Questions 27 – 30

Strategies:

1. Read the instruction to see:

• what kind of summary completion the task is (With or Without Box)
  • if this is Summary Completion with Box: check if you can use any option more than once
  • if this is Summary Completion without Box: check the word limit

2. Skim the summary to understand the overall meaning

3. Based on the title or the key words, decide which part of the reading text the summary relates to

4. Predict what kind of information is needed in each blank:
– parts of speech, e.g, noun/ verb/ adj/ prep, etc
– type of info, e.g, people/ things/ places/ number, etc

5. For Summary Completion with Box: Identify the possible options from the word list before looking at the text. Try to eliminate options that would make the sentence ungrammatical => narrow down your answer choices

6. Scan the key words/ their synonyms/ paraphrases to find the related chunk of text from the passage => read around

7. Compare the sentence in the summary with the related text chunk => decide on the word needed in the blank.

8. Double check your answers to ensure the sentence in the summary is grammatical and meaningful

• For Summary Completion with Box: make sure to write the letters (A, B, C, D, etc) on your answer sheet, instead of the full words
• For Summary Completion without Box: make sure your answers are spelt correctly.

Tips:

• Check if the Summary paragraph has a title/ heading. If yes, the paragraph summarizes ideas of certain parts in the passage and you need to locate them. Otherwise, you have to scan the whole text for the answers.
• Key words around the gaps are usually paraphrased in the text => think of paraphrases/ synonyms of those key words & scan for those in the text