IELTS Reading: Diagram label completion
You label parts of a diagram — a machine, a process, a structure — using words from the passage. It appears mostly in Academic Reading, attached to a descriptive or technical passage, and the answers are nearly always concentrated in one stretch of text.
Why it is usually quicker than it looks
A diagram describes one thing, so the passage describes it in one place. Find the paragraph that matches the diagram and you have found every answer in the set. Reading the rest of the passage closely for these is wasted effort.
- Look at the diagram first and work out what it shows and which way it flows.
- Find the paragraph that describes it — usually signposted by the object being named.
- Follow the description in the order the diagram runs; technical descriptions almost always run in physical order.
- Copy labels exactly and respect the word limit.
The trap
Position words. The passage will say "above", "beneath", "to the left of", "surrounding" — and those words are doing the work. Two labels that both appear in the right sentence are separated only by which side of the diagram they sit on, so read the spatial language as carefully as the nouns.
Diagram labelling — FAQs
2 questions
No. Everything needed is in the passage, and the diagram is there to be filled from it rather than understood independently.
Yes, exactly as in sentence completion. Count what you write.
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Sources
Written from the test board's own published material and checked on 1 October 2026.