When it comes to IELTS Reading, there are about six main types of questions, and one of those is the Matching type. Within this category, you'll encounter three fun sub-types: matching headings, matching information, and matching features. We’re here to guide you through everything you need to know about IELTS reading matching features questions, with helpful samples, examples, and handy tips. So, let’s jump in together and make this journey a lot more enjoyable for you.
Table of Contents
In the IELTS reading question, matching features tasks require test-takers to align a list of provided options with corresponding statements from a passage. The options, which can include features or names mentioned in the text, are typically presented in a separate box. It's important to note that the statements you need to match are often paraphrased and may not follow the same sequence as the original text. In addition, matching features IELTS reading type of task generally includes more options than statements, adding an extra layer of complexity to the exercise.
The IELTS reading matching features question type involves three main types of tasks. Familiarizing yourself with these question types can enhance your comprehension and improve your score. Below is a breakdown of each type:
Understanding these question types can significantly help you navigate the IELTS reading question more effectively.
This section covers matching features IELTS reading practice questions with the passage.
Here is an IELTS reading matching features questions sample for your reference. Practicing with this type of sample can help you achieve 8+ bands on the IELTS exam.
IELTS Reading Passage: Undoing Our Emotions Reading Answers
Paragraph A Three generations ago, 180 young women wrote essays describing why they wanted to join a convent (a religious community of nuns). Years later, a team of psychological researchers came across these autobiographies in the convent’s archives. The researchers were seeking material to confirm earlier studies hinting at a link between having a good vocabulary in youth and a low risk of Alzheimer’s disease in old age. What they found was even more amazing. The researchers found that, although the young women were in their early twenties when they wrote their essays, the emotions expressed in these writings were predictive of how long they would live: those with upbeat autobiographies lived more than ten years longer than those whose language was more neutral. Deborah Danner, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky who spearheaded the study, noted that the results were particularly striking because all members of the convent lived similar lifestyles, eliminating many variables that normally make it difficult to interpret longevity studies. It was a phenomenal finding’, she says. ‘A researcher gets a finding like that maybe once in a lifetime.’ However, she points out that no one has been able to determine why positive emotions might have such life-extending effects.
Paragraph B Barbara Fredrickson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, believes that part of the answer is the ‘undo effect’. According to this theory, positive emotions help you live longer by shutting down the effects of negative ones. Fredrickson’s theory begins with the observation that negative emotions, like fear and stress, enhance our flight-or-fight response to very real threats. However, even when the emergency is gone, negative emotions produce lingering effects. Brooks Gump, a stress researcher at the State University of New York, explains that one of these effects is excessive cardiovascular reactivity. Behaviourally, Gump says, this reactivity is related to excessive vigilance: the state of being constantly on guard for potential dangers. Not only is it physically draining to live in a perpetual state of high vigilance, but high cardiovascular reactivity could be linked to increased chances of a heart attack.
Paragraph C Fredrickson believes positive emotions work their magic by producing a rapid unwinding of pent-up tension, restoring the system to normal. People who quickly bounce back from stress often speed the process by harnessing such emotions as amusement, interest, excitement, and happiness, she says. To test her theory, Fredrickson told a group of student volunteers that they had only a few minutes to prepare a speech that would be critiqued by experts. After letting the students get nervous about that, Fredrickson then told them they wouldn’t actually have to deliver their speeches. She monitored heart rates and blood pressure. Not surprisingly, all students got nervous about their speeches, but those who viewed the experiment with good-humored excitement saw their heart rates return to normal much more quickly than those who were angry about being fooled. In a second experiment, Fredrickson reported that even those who normally were slow to bounce back could be coached to recover more quickly by being told to view the experiment as a challenge, rather than a threat.
Paragraph D Fredrickson believes that positive emotions make people more flexible and creative. Negative emotions, she says, give a heightened sense of detail that makes us hypersensitive to minute clues related to the source of a threat. But that also produces ‘tunnel vision’ in which we ignore anything unrelated to the danger. Fredrickson speculated that just as positive emotions can undo the cardiovascular effects of negative ones, they may also reverse the attention-narrowing effects of negative feelings: broadening our perspectives.
Paragraph E To verify her theory, Fredrickson showed a group of students some film clips- some saw frightening clips, some saw humorous ones or peaceful ones. They then did a matching test in which they were shown a simple drawing and asked which of two other drawings it most resembled. The drawings were designed so that people would tend to give one answer if they focused on details, and another answer if they focused on the big picture. The results confirmed Fredrickson’s suspicion that positive emotions affect our perceptions. Students who had seen the humorous or peaceful clips were more likely to match objects according to broad impressions.
Paragraph F This fits with the role that positive emotions might have played in early human tribes, Fredrickson says. Negative emotions provided focus, which was important for surviving in life-or-death situations, but the ability to feel positive emotions was of long-term value because it opened the mind to new ideas. Humour is a good example of this. She says: ‘The emotions are transient, but the resources are durable. If you building a friendship through being playful, that friendship is a lasting resource.’ So while the good feelings may pass, the friendship remains. On an individual level, Fredrickson’s theory also says that taking time to do things that make you feel happy isn’t simply self-indulgent. Not only are these emotions good for the individual, but they are also good for society.
Paragraph G Other researchers are intrigued by Fredrickson’s findings. Susan Folkman, of the University of California, has spent two decades studying how people cope with long-term stresses such as bereavement, or caring for a chronically ill child. Contrary to what one might expect, she says, these people frequently experience positive emotions. ‘These emotions aren’t there by accident’, she adds. ‘Mother Nature doesn’t work that way, I think that they give a person time out from the intense stress to restore their resources and keep going. This is very consistent with Fredrickson’s work.’
Questions for Reading Passage: Undoing Our Emotions
Question 1-4
Look at the following statements (Questions 7-10) and the list of researchers below.
Match each statement with the correct researcher, A-D.
Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
List of Researchers
A Deborah Danner
B Barbara Fredrickson
C Brooks Gump
D Susan Folkman
1. People whose daily lives are stressful often have surprisingly positive emotions.
2. The body’s reaction to a crisis may trigger a life-threatening event.
3. It is unusual to have a study group whose circumstances were very alike.
4. The reasons for a link between positive emotions and a longer life have not been established.
Answer of an Undoing Our Emotions Reading Passage with an Explanation
Answer: D (Susan Folkman)
Explanation: Ms. Folkman noted that most people under stress experience a wave of positive emotions.
Answer: C (Brooks Gump)
Explanation: Mr. Gump is a researcher studying behaviors in crises, indicating he is a stress-free researcher.
Answer: A (Deborah Danner)
Explanation: Mr. Danner states that more energetic people tend to have longer lifespans.
Answer: A (Deborah Danner)
Explanation: Mr. Danner also suggests that those with positive emotions are likely to live longer, though the reason is unclear.
Explore 100+ IELTS Reading Practice Tests with Answers to Prepare for Reading Section
Here is second sample of matching features IELTS question that will help you get a higher IELTS band score in the reading section.
IELTS Reading Passage: The Cells from Hell
Paragraph- 1
Recently, an international team of biologists met to discuss what they believe is a global crisis in the sudden appearance of strange marine microorganisms capable of poisoning not just fish but people too.
Paragraph- 2
In the mid-1980s, fishermen in North Carolina, on the eastern coast of the United States, began complaining about mysterious fish kills. They were convinced that pollution was responsible but nobody would listen. That changed in 1988 after an accident at. a research center. Tank after tank of fish suddenly died. Researchers spotted an unknown microorganism in the water. It was later named pfiesteria.
Paragraph- 3
Pfiesteria belongs to a prehistoric group of algae that are part plant, part animal. They are called dinoflagellates after the liny whips or flagella that propel them through the wafer. Magnified a thousand limes, they are some of the strangest and most beautiful creatures in the sea. They are at the bottom of the food chain but, to deter fish from swallowing them, some have evolved powerful toxins.
Paragraph- 4
As the researchers were to discover, pfiesteria doesn’t just discourage fish. It actively hunts them, then eats them. Fish are one of its preferred foods but one of the intriguing things about pfiesteria is that it will eat everything from bacteria to dead plant and animal remains all the way up to mammalian tissues. So its food spans the entire food web of an estuary. Gradually the researchers realized that nothing in the water was safe from pfiesteria. It could harm humans too. A mis-directed air-conditioning duct from a room containing the toxins nearly killed one of the researchers. He suffered a host of symptoms ranging from profuse sweating, tingling hands and feet, to liver and kidney problems, as well as memory
Paragraph- 5
As the research intensified, some startling discoveries were made. In tanks, pfiesteria was quite content to behave like a plant and photosynthesis. However, when fish were added, a dramatic transformation occurred, pfiesteria switched to attack mode. In a matter of minutes it changed shape and secreted a toxin. The fish quickly became disoriented and within five minutes all were dead. Pfiesteria changed shape again and devoured them. When it had had its fill, it vanished. No one had ever seen an organism do this.
Paragraph- 6
Initially scientists believed this was part of a natural cycle, but on closer examination, it seemed pollution was to blame. When the water containing the biggest fish kills was analyzed, scientists found high levels of pollution. But this is just one of the factors that can boost the transformation in pfiesteria. Others include large numbers of fish traveling together which feed in poorly flushed places with a lot of algae to eat and other rich food sources. That is the perfect habitat for pfiesteria.
Paragraph- 7
But pfiesteria is not the only concern. In the oceans all around the world similar kinds of algae are now materializing and turning toxic. In the last decade these algal blooms1 have poisoned sea-lions in California, caused catastrophic fish kills in the Pacific, the Mediterranean and the North Sea, and devastated the shellfish industry in New Zealand. Researchers from forty-seven nations met recently to share the latest information about harmful algal blooms. They heard about new kinds of toxins and discussed possible links between algae and whale standings. But what dominated the proceedings was news that toxic algae are spreading to new shores in ballast water carried by ships.
Paragraph- 8
That may have already happened in Australian waters. A tuna kill in 1996 cost fish farmers an estimated $45 million. The official explanation was that a storm was to blame. But there were also reports of orange-brown streaks in the water. When a water sample was examined, it was found to be teeming with an alga never before seen in Australia, called chattonella. The same chattonella killed half a billion dollars’ worth of fish in Japan in 1972.
Paragraph- 9
This toxin was also present in the livers of the dead tuna. Despite this powerful evidence, the official explanation remains that a storm was the killer. However, in Japan this was a prime example of an algal bloom induced by the waste products of the aquaculture industry itself, and of course that is not something that the tuna industry wants to hear.
Paragraph- 10
It is clear that chattonella is present in Australian waters. But there is little knowledge of what else may surface or where it may have come from. What is of greater concern is that, in Australia and around the world, there is a reluctance to acknowledge that it is human activity which is triggering the transformation of normally benign organisms into increasingly dangerous forms. If we continue to mismanage the way nutrients and pollutants are released into the environment, we will have to confront new versions of the cells from hell.
Questions for Reading Passage: The Cells from Hell
Questions 1-5
Classify the following as:
1. caused by Pfiesteria
2. caused by chattonella
3. caused by an unidentified micro-organism
4. death of sea-lions off the coast of California (1990s)
5. fish kill in Japan (1972)
6. shellfish industry losses in New Zealand (1990s)
7. tuna industry losses in Australia (1990s)
8. fish kill in North Carolina (1980s)
Answers for the Cells from Hell Reading Passage with Explanations
Answer: C (caused by an unidentified micro-organism)
Explanation: The third line of paragraph 7 reveals that, in the last decade, algal blooms have poisoned and killed sea lions in California. Although it does not specify the cause of the poisoning, it suggests that it could be due to an unidentified microorganism. Therefore, C is the correct answer.
Answer: B (caused by citronella)
Explanation: The last line of paragraph 8 states that Chattonella, which had never been seen in Australia before, killed fish worth half a billion dollars in Japan in 1972. Thus, B is the correct response to the question.
Answer: C (caused by an unidentified micro-organism)
Explanation: The third line of paragraph 7 mentions that in the 1990s, the shellfish industry in New Zealand lost many fish, possibly due to an unidentified micro-organism. At that time, algal blooms also poisoned sea lions in California and killed fish in the Pacific and other regions. Hence, C is the correct answer.
Answer: B (caused by citronella)
Explanation: The first line of paragraph 9 indicates that the toxin was also present in the livers of dead tuna. This suggests that Chattonella was responsible for the losses in the tuna industry in Australia. Therefore, B is an accurate response.
Answer: A (caused by Pfiesteria)
Explanation: The first line of paragraph 2 provides the correct answer, stating that in the mid-1980s, fishermen in North Carolina began reporting mysterious fish kills. Since Pfiesteria has been associated with such unexplained fish kills, A is the correct response.
This section provides 10 excellent passage examples that feature IELTS reading matching questions for your practice. It is crucial to strategize effectively before taking the IELTS exam. In addition, understanding of the IELTS syllabus and format, is crucial to ace the reading part of IELTS. Take a look below for more example:
Utilizing the IELTS reading practice test will enhance your understanding of the exam syllabus and format, helping you achieve success.
Here are several tips to help you solve matching features questions in the IELTS reading section, enabling you to attain your desired band score:
Summing up, this guide provides an overview of effective strategies for tackling matching features questions in the reading section of the IELTS exam. It includes sample passages and practical tips aimed at helping candidates achieve a high band score. Regular practice and the application of these strategies can enhance your familiarity with this specific question type. For further assistance, professional IELTS coaching from Gradding is available, where experienced experts can offer tailored support in this area.
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