Short answer: IELTS Yes/No/Not Given asks whether a statement agrees with, contradicts, or is not addressed by the writer's views, claims or opinions. Its close sibling, True/False/Not Given, does the same for factual information.
Answer Yes if the writer's view matches the statement, No if it contradicts it, and Not Given if the writer's position on it cannot be determined from the text — never from your own knowledge.
Yes/No/Not Given (YNNG) is one of the two tasks candidates fear most, and the fear is well earned: the difference between No and Not Given is subtle, and the temptation to answer from what you already know is constant. But YNNG is not random.
It rests on one clean idea — you are tracking the writer's opinion, not the state of the world — and once you hold that idea firmly, the task becomes a disciplined comparison you can run the same way every time.
This guide explains how YNNG differs from its factual sibling, what Not Given really means, why outside knowledge is the classic trap, a decision method you can apply to each statement, a worked example in the test's style, and how to practise.
If you want the factual version first, read our dedicated True/False/Not Given guide — this post is its opinion-based sibling and assumes you will use the two together.
YNNG vs TFNG — the crucial difference (opinions vs facts)
The two tasks share a machinery — three choices, statements in passage order, the same Not Given logic — but they point at different things, and the instruction tells you which. True/False/Not Given asks whether statements agree with the information in the passage: verifiable facts the text states.
Yes/No/Not Given asks whether statements agree with the views or claims of the writer: what the author thinks, argues, believes or predicts.
As the IELTS test format guide describes, TFNG typically appears on factual passages and YNNG on argumentative or discursive ones where a writer is advancing a position.
| Aspect | Yes/No/Not Given | True/False/Not Given |
|---|---|---|
| What you check against | The writer's views, claims and opinions | The factual information stated |
| Typical passage | Argumentative or opinion-based | Factual or descriptive |
| "Agrees" answer | Yes | True |
| "Contradicts" answer | No | False |
| "Cannot tell" answer | Not Given | Not Given |
| Follows passage order? | Yes | Yes |
The practical consequence of the opinion focus is that YNNG statements are often about evaluation — whether something is good, likely, justified, effective, exaggerated — and you must find where the writer expresses a stance on exactly that point.
Language that signals opinion is your friend here: watch for words such as surprisingly, arguably, it is clear that, critics overstate, the evidence suggests, unfortunately, there is little doubt. These signposts are where the writer's view lives, and they are what you compare the statement against.
The most important rule is to keep the two tasks mentally separate: never let the "factual match" instinct of TFNG make you answer a YNNG opinion question on the facts alone.
What Not Given really means
Not Given is the answer that decides your YNNG score, because Yes and No are usually clear once you find the right sentence — it is the third option that traps people.
In YNNG, Not Given means the writer never expresses a view on the statement: the passage neither confirms nor contradicts the opinion the statement attributes to the writer. The writer might mention the topic without taking a position, or might not raise it at all.
Crucially, Not Given is not a judgement about whether the statement is true in the real world — it is a statement about the absence of the writer's view in this text.
Hold the distinction between No and Not Given carefully, because it is where marks are won and lost. No requires the passage to contain a view that conflicts with the statement — the writer says the opposite, or something incompatible with it.
Not Given means the passage simply does not tell you what the writer thinks — there is nothing to conflict with. The test for No is: can I point to the writer's opposing view?
If you cannot point to it, you do not have No; you have Not Given.
Candidates lose marks by upgrading a Not Given to a No because the statement "feels" contrary to the passage's general tone — but tone is not a stated view, and a feeling is not evidence. Only a locatable, conflicting claim earns No.
The danger of using outside knowledge
The single biggest source of error in both YNNG and TFNG is the reader's own knowledge.
Because YNNG passages are argumentative and often on topics you have opinions about — education, technology, the environment, health — it is natural to read a statement and judge it against what you believe or know to be true. That instinct is fatal.
The task asks only what the writer says, and a statement can be factually true in the world while the writer never endorses it (Not Given), or factually dubious while the writer clearly argues for it (Yes).
Discipline yourself with a single question for every statement: where does the writer say this? If you cannot put your finger on the sentence that expresses the writer's view on the point, you cannot answer Yes or No — the honest answer is Not Given.
Your background knowledge, your common sense, and what "everyone knows" are all inadmissible; the only evidence is the writer's words on the page.
This is the same "read what is there, not what you expect" discipline that beats the distractors catalogued in our guide to IELTS Reading traps, and it is the habit that separates a reliable YNNG score from a coin-flip.
Decision method per statement
Run the same fixed routine on every statement, because a repeatable method removes the guesswork that pressure breeds. Step 1 — read the statement and identify the writer's view it claims. Reduce it to a plain proposition: what opinion is this saying the writer holds?
Step 2 — find the relevant part of the passage. The statements follow the passage order, so the sentence you need lies below your last confirmed answer; scan for the statement's key phrase, expecting paraphrase.
Step 3 — locate the writer's actual view on that exact point. Read for the opinion signposts and pin down what the writer says. Step 4 — compare and decide. If the writer's view matches the statement, answer Yes.
If the writer's view conflicts with it, answer No. If you cannot find a view from the writer on this specific point — the topic is absent, or mentioned without a stance — answer Not Given.
The decisive discipline is in Step 4: you may only choose No if you can point to a conflicting view, and you must resist the urge to reason from tone or from your own knowledge.
Because there is no negative marking, never leave a blank — but on this task a guess is genuinely a last resort, since the method usually resolves the statement if you trust it.
| You find… | Answer |
|---|---|
| The writer expresses a view that matches the statement | Yes |
| The writer expresses a view that conflicts with the statement | No |
| The writer expresses no view on the statement's point | Not Given |
A worked example
The passage and statements below were written for this article as a teaching example, in the style of a test paper. The passage is argumentative, so the questions are Yes/No/Not Given.
"Advocates of the four-day working week point to trials in which output held steady while staff reported less burnout. I find the enthusiasm premature. Most of these trials ran for only a few months and involved companies that volunteered precisely because they expected to succeed, so the results tell us little about workplaces less suited to the change. It is also striking how rarely the trials measure the effect on customers, whose experience surely matters as much as the staff's. None of this means a shorter week can never work; it means the confident claims currently being made outrun the evidence."
Statements: 1. The writer believes the evidence for the four-day week is currently overstated. 2. The writer thinks the trials paid too little attention to customers. 3. The writer argues that a four-day week reduces company profits.
Work each statement by the method. Statement 1 claims the writer's view is that the evidence is overstated. Locate the writer's stance: "I find the enthusiasm premature… the confident claims currently being made outrun the evidence."
That is a direct match for "overstated", so the answer is Yes. Statement 2 claims the writer thinks the trials neglected customers. Locate: "It is also striking how rarely the trials measure the effect on customers, whose experience surely matters as much as the staff's."
The writer clearly holds this view, so the answer is Yes. Statement 3 claims the writer argues the four-day week reduces profits.
Search for the writer's view on profits: the passage discusses output holding "steady", burnout, trial length and customers — but it never expresses a view on profits at all. There is nothing to match and nothing to conflict with, so the answer is Not Given.
A candidate who reasons "surely fewer working days must cut profits" has imported outside knowledge and would wrongly write No; the writer simply does not address it.
Notice how statement 3 separated No from Not Given. The temptation was to call it No because a shorter week "feels" like it should hurt profits — but the writer states no such view, so the only honest answer is Not Given. That single distinction is the whole task.
Practice
YNNG rewards deliberate, feedback-rich practice more than raw volume, because the errors are conceptual: confusing No with Not Given, and leaking in outside knowledge.
You need to see, question by question, why the answer was Not Given rather than No, and a single official Reading test rarely gives you more than one YNNG set — not enough to build the reflex or to expose your habitual error.
That is what IELTSbiz practice is for — it generates fresh Cambridge-style passages targeted at a single question type, Yes/No/Not Given among the eleven supported, and when you choose No where Not Given was right the feedback explains that the writer expressed no conflicting view, which is exactly the distinction you need to internalise.
Per-type band tracking shows whether YNNG specifically is dragging your Reading score.
Calibrate against official material under timed conditions — the British Council's free Reading practice tests are the benchmark — and always drill YNNG alongside its factual sibling, True/False/Not Given, so the opinion-versus-fact distinction stays sharp.
Keep a log of every question where you picked No but the answer was Not Given: that single confusion accounts for most YNNG losses, and naming it each time it happens trains it out.
Managing these slow, careful judgements inside the 60-minute paper is its own skill, covered in our IELTS Reading time management guide.
Conclusion
Yes/No/Not Given is the opinion-based sibling of True/False/Not Given: same machinery, but you are tracking the writer's views rather than the facts.
Answer Yes when the writer's stated view matches the statement, No when it conflicts, and Not Given when the writer expresses no view on the point — and remember that Not Given is about the absence of the writer's opinion in the text, not about whether the statement is true in the world.
The two habits that decide your score are keeping outside knowledge out and never upgrading a Not Given to a No without a locatable conflicting view.
Run the same four-step method on every statement, trust the passage order, and drill YNNG and TFNG together until telling opinion from fact, and No from Not Given, becomes automatic.