The Paraphrase Habit: How IELTS Rewrites the Passage in the Questions

In IELTS Reading, the question and passage may express the same information with different words and grammar. This is paraphrase. Some keywords may also repeat exactly; a matching word alone does not confirm an answer. Check the complete meaning of the candidate sentence before choosing.

Compare:

Passage: The city's population has increased substantially in recent decades. Question: The number of people living in the city has grown considerably in recent decades.

Here the city's population becomes the number of people living in the city, and increased substantially becomes grown considerably. Both sentences refer to the same group and growth over the same period; some words repeat while the structure and other wording change. This skill is useful in tasks such as True/False/Not Given, matching headings and sentence completion. For an intermediate reader, the key habit is searching for meaning: predict a possible counterpart for a keyword, then check it in context.

The pairs below are the paraphrase examples that appear most frequently in IELTS Reading. Learn them not as separate words but as pairs: when you see one side, your brain should automatically recall the counterpart. You can test yourself by covering the right-hand columns of the table and recalling the counterpart of each phrase on the left.

These are possible paraphrase pairs to check in context, not expressions that are interchangeable everywhere. Confirm that time, degree and the group being discussed also match.

Apply the following sequence to each question:

1. Read the question and underline only the content words (nouns, verbs, numbers, adjectives).
2. For each word, think of 2–3 likely synonyms before scanning.
3. In the passage, look not for the word but for the idea: the same information may come in different grammar — a verb may become a noun, an active sentence may become passive.
4. Read the candidate sentence to the end: even if one word matches, confirm that the whole meaning matches.

Example:

Question: Most visitors travel to the region during the dry season. Prediction: most → the majority of; visitors → tourists; dry season → months with little rainfall. Passage: The majority of tourists arrive between November and March, when rainfall is minimal.

All three predictions were confirmed — the answer is exactly this line. Repeat this routine consciously in every practice session. After a few weeks, compare your timing and accuracy with earlier results; there is no fixed period or guarantee for the routine to become automatic or for your speed to increase.