Duration: 90 minutesModule: General Training ReadingFocus: Three sections · 40 questions · 60 minutes · marked on the General Training scale
Objectives
Sit a complete General Training Reading paper under exam conditions.
Hold the 15 / 20 / 25 time budget under pressure, and recover from falling behind it.
Convert a raw score using the General Training band table and interpret it honestly.
Sort every wrong answer into one of six error categories.
Leave the session with one specific, named thing to work on before the real test.
0:00 – 0:10
Briefing: How to Sit This Paper
Sixty minutes, three sections, forty questions. The test opens in the same computer-delivered player you will meet on test day: a review screen, flags, and a countdown.
Write these three numbers down before you start
15 · 20 · 25. When the clock shows 45 minutes remaining you should be leaving Section 1. When it shows 25 remaining you should be leaving Section 2. If you are behind, move on and flag what you left — an unanswered Section 3 question costs exactly as much as an unanswered Section 1 question.
Never leave a blank. There is no penalty for a wrong answer. In the last two minutes, fill every empty box with something.
Flag and move. Two minutes on one question is two questions lost elsewhere.
Check the instruction line on every group: how many words? TRUE or YES?
Do not go back to Section 1 to "check" once you have left it. You will find nothing and lose four minutes.
Phones away. The player keeps its own clock and saves your answers as you go, so a dropped connection will not lose your work. When the timer ends, submit and stop.
A word about the marking
When your score appears it is converted using the General Training band table, not the Academic one. Some of you will find your band lower than the same raw score has given you on practice websites. That is not the mock being harsh — it is the mock being accurate, and it is much better to meet that number today than on test day.
1:10 – 1:30
Error Analysis — The Part That Actually Raises Your Band
Your score tells you where you are. Your error pattern tells you what to do next week. Go through every wrong answer and put it in exactly one box.
Category
What it looks like
The fix
Ran out of time
Blanks or guesses clustered at the end of Section 3.
Time budget, not comprehension. Practise Sections 1 and 2 against a clock until they take 35 minutes together.
Could not find it
You searched, gave up, wrote NOT GIVEN or guessed.
Paraphrase prediction. Before hunting, write down the two or three words you expect the text to actually use.
Found it, misread it
You were in the right paragraph and still got it wrong.
Slow down for eight seconds on any sentence with a condition, an exception or a number in it.
Wrong form or too many words
The idea was right; the answer was not accepted.
Re-read the instruction line before writing. Count the words.
Wrong answer words
You wrote TRUE where YES was required, or the reverse.
Free marks. Circle the instruction line for every group before you begin it.
Genuinely did not understand
You read the sentence and it meant nothing to you.
The only category that is actually about English. Usually vocabulary — collect the words.
Be honest in this table
Almost every candidate wants their errors to be in the last row, because that feels like a language problem rather than a carelessness problem. In practice, for most people sitting this paper, the last row is the smallest category. The marks are in rows one to five, and every one of those is fixable in a week.
Your error analysis
Target: 100+ words
Words: 0Not saved yet
Wrap-up
Wrap-Up & Homework
Whatever your band today, the number is not the point of the session — the error table is. A candidate who moves four "ran out of time" errors and three "wrong form" errors into the correct column has found seven marks, which on this paper is a band and a half at the bottom of the scale and half a band at the top.
Tonight: rework every wrong answer, with a written reason for each.