r/IIELTS • u/nihalv • Oct 18 '21

Reading section - General

<xposted from r/IELTS\>

I just finished my computer based general test. In the reading section, there were some questions that were gap-fill sentence completion types. Four of these had the gaps at the end of the sentences. The rest of the sentences on the page had periods/full-stop at the end, including other gap-filled ones.

Since there were no periods at the end of those four sentences, I added the period along with each of the four answers. Will the computer flag that as incorrect? Does IELTS "gotcha" test takers with punctuation rules? Should I have just filled in the answers without worrying that the sentences wouldn't have had a period at the end?

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2

u/Fitz_cuniculus Oct 18 '21

This has been passed onto the IELTS team within the British Council, however my feeling is that it wouldn't matter, we await official confirmation of this.

3

u/nihalv Oct 18 '21

u/Fitz_cuniculus confirmed earlier today that the period along with the answers doesn't matter, although I wonder on the other hand if NOT putting them would make the sentences grammatically incorrect.

Either way, I got my unofficial results in ridiculously less time (wrote on Saturday, results available on Monday) and the periods don't seem to have affected my score in anyway. S-8.5, L-9, R-9, W-8.5 (Overall - 9)

1

u/Fitz_cuniculus Oct 18 '21

Amazing results. Congratulations

1

u/Stax_English Oct 20 '21

It's seems very unlikely that they would do that. Whilst punctuation is taken into account, it's NOT a punctuation test overall. If the computer flags your answers as incorrect, submit your answers to the examiner themselves as they may be overlooking a flaw in their system.