Matching sentence endings looks like a grammar exercise. You have half a sentence and a list of ways to finish it, and several of them make a perfectly good sentence.
That is the trap. The question is not which ending makes a good sentence. It is which ending makes a sentence the passage agrees with.
The rules, in short
| You are given | Sentence beginnings and a longer list of endings |
| Answer format | A letter — A, B, C |
| Order | Beginnings follow the passage; endings do not |
| Extra endings | Always. Some are never used |
| Reuse | Each ending is normally used once |
| What is tested | Understanding the main ideas and how they connect |
Why “it sounds right” fails
Take this beginning:
Farmers who switched to the new seed variety…
And these endings:
A saw their yields increase within two years. B found that it needed far less water. C were given financial support by the government.
All three are grammatical. All three are plausible. Anyone could finish this sentence sensibly without reading a word of the passage, and that is how the task takes marks from people who try.
The endings are written to be believable. Often every one of them is true of something in the passage. The only question is which is true of these farmers.
Method
- Read all the beginnings first. Underline what each is about: a name, a place, a date, a group. Do not look at the endings yet.
- Predict loosely. What kind of ending does it need? A result, a reason, a contrast? You are not guessing the answer, just the shape.
- Find the first beginning in the passage. This is the slowest step in the whole task. Once you have it, the others follow in order below it.
- Read that part of the passage carefully and say in your own words what it says about the subject.
- Now go to the endings and pick the one that matches your summary. Use grammar only to rule out endings that cannot attach.
- Read the finished sentence against the passage one more time. Then cross the ending off and move down.
Use grammar to eliminate, not to choose
Grammar is useful for removing options.
The researchers concluded that… needs a clause: the method was unreliable. The decline was caused by… needs a noun phrase: a change in rainfall.
An ending that cannot follow the beginning is out. But expect three or four endings to survive that test. From there, only the passage can decide.
A worked example
An original passage, written for this guide.
When the town of Harlow replaced its street lamps with low-energy lights in 2019, the council expected lower electricity bills, and it got them: costs fell by almost half in the first year. What nobody had predicted was the effect on wildlife. Bats, which had avoided the brightly lit centre for years, began to return within months. Residents were less pleased. A survey found that many felt less safe walking home, although police records showed no rise in crime over the same period.
Beginnings:
- The council’s main aim in changing the lights was…
- After the change, bats…
- According to official figures, crime in the town…
Endings:
- A to make the streets safer at night.
- B did not increase.
- C to spend less on electricity.
- D were seen in the centre again.
- E fell by almost half.
1 → C. The council expected lower electricity bills. Ending A is tempting because safety is mentioned later, but it was a worry of residents, not the council’s aim.
2 → D. Began to return has become were seen in the centre again.
3 → B. No rise in crime is did not increase. Ending E fits the grammar perfectly and uses a phrase straight from the passage, fell by almost half, but that phrase describes costs, not crime.
Ending E is the model of a trap in this task: correct words, correct grammar, wrong subject.
The traps
The grammatical fit. An ending that completes the sentence smoothly and contradicts the text.
The borrowed phrase. An ending that repeats words from the passage but attaches them to the wrong subject.
The true-but-elsewhere ending. Something the passage does say, about something else.
Starting from the endings. Trying to place each ending in the passage, when the beginnings are the ones in order.
Using an ending twice. If two beginnings seem to need the same ending, one of them is wrong.
Timing
About a minute a question on average, with more for the first and less for the last. If the first beginning will not turn up in the passage, find the second and work back from there.
What costs marks
- Choosing by sense or grammar without checking the passage.
- Matching on a repeated word.
- Reading all the endings in detail before reading any beginning.
- Writing words on the answer sheet when a letter is required.
Practise it
Cover the endings and try to finish each beginning from the passage in your own words. Then uncover them. The right ending should be the one closest to what you wrote, and if none is close, you have misread the passage, not the list.
You can practise IELTS Reading with timed tests on IELTS Studio, which mark every answer and show the band straight away.
Related: sentence completion asks you to finish sentences with words from the passage, and multiple choice uses the same kind of distractor.
Sources
- IELTS Reading test format Official description of matching sentence endings: more endings than beginnings, beginnings in the order of the text, and a test of understanding the main ideas.
Last reviewed October 5, 2026. See our editorial policy for how guides are checked and corrected.
Frequently asked questions
- What is matching sentence endings in IELTS Reading?
- You are given the first half of a sentence based on the passage and must choose the best ending from a list. There are more endings than beginnings, so some are never used. The answer is a letter.
- Are matching sentence endings in the same order as the passage?
- The sentence beginnings are, so the answer to question 2 is found after the answer to question 1. The list of endings is in no particular order.
- Can I answer matching sentence endings using grammar alone?
- No. Grammar can remove one or two endings that clearly do not fit, but several endings are written to fit grammatically and to sound sensible. Only the passage tells you which one is right.
- Can an ending be used twice in matching sentence endings?
- Normally not. Each beginning takes a different ending, and the extra endings are left over. Read the instructions on your test in case they say otherwise.
- Should I read the endings or the beginnings first?
- The beginnings. They follow the passage, so they tell you where to read. Going through a long list of endings first costs time, and most of them will turn out not to matter.
- Which question in matching sentence endings takes longest?
- The first, because every ending is still possible. Each answer removes one option, so the last question is usually the quickest. Do not panic if the first one takes a couple of minutes.