What are the types of IELTS? – Global Education Services - TC Global

The IELTS is offered in many countries, and depending on your objective behind taking the IELTS exam; there are different versions of the IELTS exam. The IELTS exams primarily have two versions - The IELTS Academic and the IELTS General Training. Each of these two IELTS exams have four key sections on which the applicants are tested:

Reading
Writing
Listening
Speaking

Let us look at the structure of the IELTS exam, which is standard across the Academic and the General Training versions of the IELTS:

Listening – 30 minutes of audio played once with 10 minutes extra given to transfer your answers to the answer sheet in the end.

Reading – 60 minutes test which comprises of 3 passages and 40 questions

Writing – 60 minutes test which comprises of two tasks: Visual Representation (Academic)/ Letter (General) and an essay

Speaking – 11- 15 minutes of test conducted on a separate date as an in-person examination with an examiner.

Now, let us understand how are the IELTS Academic and the IELTS General Training are different depending on the objective behind taking the test:

The IELTS Academic is primarily for university or college applicants who desire to take admissions into foreign universities at a degree level. These students are required to take the IELTS Academic exam and achieve the required scores/band to assess their English language proficiency to the appropriate level as required by the educational institution.

On the other hand, the IELTS General Training is taken by individuals looking to immigrate or seeking employment in countries such as the USA, Ireland, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, among other English speaking countries. The IELTS General Training tests individuals on the basis of their English proficiency to work in a particular country effectively.

The IELTS Academic and General Training are fundamentally similar in nature. However, there exist subtle differences in the following aspects that we will cover briefly:

Types of Questions in the Reading and Writing Sections of the two variations of the IELTS exam.
Scoring in the Reading Sections in the two IELTS exams.

Types of Questions in IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training:

The Reading and Writing sections in the two versions of the IELTS have different types of questions for the test takers. Take a look at two tabular representations below to appreciate the differences:

IELTS Components	IELTS Academic	IELTS General Training
Reading	40 Questions on Assigned Readings Content: Relevant to professionals and students - texts taken directly from Academic Journals, Textbooks and Newspaper to test the students’ comprehension skills	40 Questions on Assigned Readings Content: Content as is found in employee manuals - texts taken from advertisements, guidebooks and magazines
Writing	Two Writing Tasks Expectation: Well-structured essays and letters in an academic tone of writing	Two Writing Tasks Expectation: General letter writing and necessary essay writing skills

Scoring Differences in IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training

The Listening, Writing and Speaking sections are scored the same way in the Academic and the General Training versions of the IELTS. However, there are critical differences observed in the way the Reading section is scored in the two versions of the exam. Take a look at the table below to understand how scoring is done differently in the two versions of the IELTS:

IELTS Reading Score	9.0	8.5	8.0	7.5	7.0	6.5	6.0	5.5	5.0	4.5
Raw Scores in IELTS Academic Reading	39-40	37-38	35-36	33-34	30-32	27-29	23-26	19-22	15-18	13-14
Raw Scores in IELTS General Training Reading	40	39	37-38	36	34-35	32-33	30-31	27-29	23-26	19-22