TRUE, FALSE, or NOT GIVEN? Be careful – sometimes the questions are harder than they look.
Everyone has encountered TRUE/FALSE questions on tests before, but in IELTS the third option of NOT GIVEN can cause confusion if you are not familiar with this type of question. In this post, I’ll try to clarify some of that confusion and suggest some strategies to help you make sure you always get the right answer.
1. First, you must understand the meanings of TRUE, FALSE, and NOT GIVEN.
TRUE means the statement agrees with the information in the text. (By ‘the statement’ I mean the test question.)
FALSE means the statement contradicts the information in the text.
NOT GIVEN means there is no information in the text to determine whether the statement is true or false.
Examples
(a) IELTS 10, Test 3, Passage 2, Q. 24
Statement: The ‘light screen’ hypothesis would initially seem to contradict what is known about chlorophyll.
Text: Perhaps the most plausible suggestion as to why leaves would go to the trouble of making anthocyanins when they're busy packing up for the winter is the theory known as the 'light screen' hypothesis. It sounds paradoxical, because the idea behind this hypothesis is that the red pigment is made in autumn leaves to protect chlorophyll, the light-absorbing chemical, from too much light. Why does chlorophyll need protection when it is the natural world's supreme light absorber? Why protect chlorophyll at a time when the tree is breaking it down to salvage as much of it as possible?
The whole paragraph tells us that the statement is true. Scientests already know that chlorophyll is a light-absorbing chemical in plants. But the ‘light screen’ hypothesis says that anthocyanins (i.e., red pigments) protect chlorophyll from too much light. It seems like a contradiction. Thus the text agrees with the statement, and we should choose TRUE
(b) IELTS 10, Test 1, Passage 2, Q. 23
Statement: It is likely that the red pigments help to protect the leaf from freezing temperatures.
Text: The source of the red is widely known: it is created by anthocyanins, water-soluble plant pigments reflecting the red to blue range of the visible spectrum . . . Some theories about anthocyanins have argued that they might act as a chemical defence against attacks by insects or fungi, or that they might attract fruit-eating birds or increase a leaf’s tolerance to freezing. However there are problems with each of these theories, . . .
To get the right answer you need to put together information from three sentences occurring in different paragraphs. The first sentence tells us that anthocyanins are red pigments. Then in the next paragraph, it tells us that it is theorised that that anthocyanins may increase a leaf’s tolerance to freezing (i.e., protect it in freezing conditions). Then the following sentence reports that there are problems with this and other therories. Thus, it is unlikely to be true, and therefore contradicts the statement. So we must choose FALSE.
(c) IELTS 10, Test 1, Passage 2, Q. 25
Statement: Leaves which turn colours other than red are more likely to be damaged by sunlight.
Paragraph H of the text certainly suggests this might be true.
Text: …on many trees, the leaves that are the reddest are those on the side of the tree which gets most sun. Not only that, but the red is brighter on the upper side of the leaf. It has also been recognised for decades that the best conditions for intense red colours are dry, sunny days and cool nights, conditions that nicely match those that make leaves susceptible to excess light. And finally, trees such as maples usually get much redder the more north you travel in the northern hemisphere. It's colder there, they're more stressed, their chlorophyll is more sensitive and it needs more sunblock.
But then paragraph I says:
What is still not fully understood, however, is why some trees resort to producing red pigments while others don't bother, and simply reveal their orange or yellow hues. Do these trees have other means at their disposal to prevent overexposure to light in autumn?
In other words, we don’t know whether or not trees whose leaves turn yellow and orange are more easily damged by the sun. Maybe they are. Or maybe they have some other form of protection. We don’t know, and the article doesn’t tell us. Thus we must choose NOT GIVEN.
2. Read the statement carefully.
Make sure you understand what the whole statement means and what kind of information in the text would confirm or contradict it. Pay particular attention to
negative words, e.g., not
prefixes that change the meanings of words, e.g., unlikely, disagree, etc.
words with commonly occurring opposites, e.g., increase/decrease
3. Locate the relevant part of the text.
As usual, you would identify keywords (especially names) in the statement, recognise their synonyms, and rely on your memory of reading the text for first time. As usual, the questions relate to information occurring sequentially in the text. There is no need to explain this skill in detail here.
4. If you do not find any information that agrees with or contradicts the statement in the relevant paragraph, choose NOT GIVEN and move on.
Don’t waste time searching through the whole text. However, you if you have time at the end to read through the article one more time, then you may want to check your answer.
5. Beware of information that text merely suggests or what you think is common sense.
Example:
IELTS 10, Test 1, Passage 1, Q.4
Statement: It took workers many years to build the stone steps characteristic of the stepwells.
The text describes how these wells are “architecturally complex” and descend as many as eleven storeys, so common sense suggests that they took a long time to build. Thus, while the statement is probably true, it may also be false. In fact, the text never mentions how long they took to build. So we must choose NOT GIVEN.
6. Finally, beware that sometimes you will be asked to search information that agrees with or contradicts the writer's opinion. There, you must answer, YES, NO, or NOT GIVEN. If you write TRUE instead of YES or FALSE instead of NO, you will not receive any points.
