IELTS Reading summary completion: from-the-text vs word-bank, and why grammar solves both

Summary completion hands you a paragraph that restates part of the passage with gaps in it, and it comes in two versions that reward different instincts: from-the-text, where each gap takes words copied exactly from the passage under a stated limit, and word-bank, where you choose from a lettered list that has more options than gaps. Candidates treat it as a search task — read gap, scan wildly, hope. The reliable method inverts that: solve as much of each gap as possible grammatically, before looking at the passage at all, so the search has a target shape instead of a vague topic — the same grammar-first habit that pays in sentence completion.

First: find the summary's territory

The summary covers a section of the passage, not all of it — often two to four paragraphs — and the gaps sit in passage order within that stretch. Spend thirty seconds locating the territory: take the summary's first sentence, find its content in the passage, do the same with the last sentence. Everything you need lies between those anchors. Skipping this step is why the task feels endless: you are searching seven paragraphs for answers that live in three.

The grammar pass

For every gap, before touching the passage, answer two questions from the summary's own sentence:

1. What part of speech must this be? A gap after the and before of is a noun; after has been it's a past participle or adjective; after to a base verb. This is mechanical and it is never wrong — the completed summary must read as correct English.
2. What does the sentence already assert about it? "…caused mainly by ______ from farms" wants a noun, probably uncountable, that farms emit. You now know the shape and the neighbourhood.

In the word-bank version, the grammar pass alone typically eliminates half the options per gap before any reading. In the from-text version, it tells your eye what to catch — you are no longer scanning for meaning, you are scanning for a plural noun near the word "farms".

Version-specific traps

From the text:

• The limit is a grading rule. NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS means a three-word answer scores zero even when correct in substance. When the passage phrase is long, the gap's own sentence has already absorbed the rest — take only what the grammar slot needs.
• Copy exactly. No changing number, tense or form; if the passage's form doesn't fit the gap's grammar, you have the wrong word or the wrong gap.
• Nearby is not correct. The classic distractor places a plausible word one sentence from the true answer, attached to a subtly different claim. Reread the summary sentence's claim, not just its topic, before committing.

Word bank:

• More options than gaps, and the extras are near-misses — right topic, wrong relation ("cause" offered where the passage says "result"), or right meaning with wrong grammar. Anything surviving the grammar pass must then match the passage's direction of claim.
• Each option is used once. Certainty elsewhere is information: lock the gaps you're sure of first and the hard gaps' menus shrink.
• Write the letter if the answer sheet asks for letters. Writing the word where a letter is required is a real, recurring, zero-mark error.

A worked micro-example

Summary: "Coral bleaching occurs when unusually warm water forces the coral to expel the ______ living in its tissues." Grammar pass: noun, plural or uncountable, a living thing, object of expel. Passage sentence: "…the polyps eject the microscopic algae that provide both their colour and most of their nutrition." The catchable target was "a living-thing noun near expel/a synonym" — algae — and the limit question answers itself: algae alone fits the slot; microscopic algae only if the limit allows two words and the gap's grammar wants the adjective (here it doesn't — the summary already says living in its tissues).

That is the whole method: territory, grammar, targeted catch, limit check. Telling the two versions apart takes one glance at the instruction line — the recognition skill that generalises across every Reading task. Ninety seconds a gap, and the task stops being a search and becomes an inspection. Practise the inspection on a free Academic passage with real exam question types.