8A Skills Practice: Facts

Some tasks in IELTS require us to decide whether a statement is TRUE, FALSE
or NOT GIVEN in relation to a reading text. Questions like this are often
quite difficult. Not only is the information in the text paraphrased (See 3A
and 7A), we also have to be careful to only use the information in the text.

For example, look at the following sentence and consider whether the
options (a, b or c) are TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN.

“My brother lives in Italy and he has a Ferrari sports car.”

(a) I have a brother
(b) My brother lives in Australia
(c) My brother is rich

Obviously (a) is TRUE and (b) is FALSE, but what about (c) ? The answer is
NOT GIVEN. We might assume that it’s true because of our personal
knowledge, but that information is not EXPLICITLY given.