The Silent Grammar of Gesture: Reading Answers & Explanations
IELTS Reading practice test · 14 questionsAcademicmedium
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About this passage
The passage opens: “For as long as people have spoken to one another, they have also moved their hands. Gesture is not an ornament added to language but a companion that appears wherever speech is found, in every documented society and at every age.”
- Passage length: about 851 words
- Questions: 14
- Question types: Matching Headings, Matching Sentence Endings, True / False / Not Given
“The Silent Grammar of Gesture” is an original IELTS-style practice passage written by IELTS-Bank. It is not taken from an official IELTS or Cambridge test, so these answers only apply to our version.
Answer key at a glance
The Silent Grammar of Gesture answers with explanations
Questions 1–6: Matching Headings
The passage has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
- i. A movement that reveals a readiness to learn
- ii. How gestures help the person who makes them
- iii. The earliest way children draw attention to things
- iv. Signs whose meaning depends on where you are
- v. Movements that keep time with the voice
- vi. A behaviour found wherever people speak
- vii. Why certain gestures are banned in public
- viii. The gradual disappearance of gesture in modern life
- ix. Machines that measure the speed of the hands
- 1
Paragraph A
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Answer: vi — A behaviour found wherever people speak
Why: Paragraph A describes gesture as a universal behavior accompanying speech in every society and age, supporting the heading "A behaviour found wherever people speak.
Where to find it · Paragraph A “Gesture is not an ornament added to language but a companion that appears wherever speech is found, in every documented society and at every age.”
- 2
Paragraph B
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Answer: v — Movements that keep time with the voice
Why: Paragraph B is about beats, which are gestures that synchronize with speech to emphasize important words, aligning with the heading "Movements that keep time with the voice.
Where to find it · Paragraph B “Beats carry no picture and no dictionary meaning; instead they fall on the words a speaker wishes to stress, rising and dropping in time with the voice like the movements of a conductor keeping an orchestra together.”
- 3
Paragraph C
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Answer: iv — Signs whose meaning depends on where you are
Why: Paragraph C discusses emblems, which are gestures with fixed meanings that vary by culture, highlighting how their interpretations depend on location, making "Signs whose meaning depends on where you are" an accurate heading.
Where to find it · Paragraph C “A very different class of gesture is the emblem, a movement with a fixed meaning that can stand on its own without any accompanying words.”
- 4
Paragraph D
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Answer: iii — The earliest way children draw attention to things
Why: Paragraph D is about infants using pointing as an early form of communication to draw attention, which aligns with the heading "The earliest way children draw attention to things.
Where to find it · Paragraph D “Pointing appears at around the end of the first year, weeks or months ahead of a child's first spoken word, and it is one of the surest early signs that a baby has begun to share attention with the people around it.”
- 5
Paragraph E
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Answer: ii — How gestures help the person who makes them
Why: Paragraph E explains that gestures assist the speaker by improving fluency and reducing pauses, indicating that gestures help the person making them by lightening the mental effort of talking.
Where to find it · Paragraph E “Experiments in which people describe how they solved a puzzle show that moving the hands lightens the mental effort of talking, freeing memory for other work and making it easier to hold an idea steady while a sentence is assembled.”
- 6
Paragraph F
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Answer: i — A movement that reveals a readiness to learn
Why: Paragraph F discusses how gesture aids learning by preparing the mind for speech, as seen when infants point before speaking, indicating a readiness to engage and share attention with others.
Where to find it · Paragraph D “Pointing appears at around the end of the first year, weeks or months ahead of a child's first spoken word, and it is one of the surest early signs that a baby has begun to share attention with the people around it.”
Questions 7–10: Matching Sentence Endings
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G, from the box below.
- A. before they are able to produce their first words.
- B. it may signal that they are ready to grasp a new idea.
- C. can carry an offensive meaning in another country.
- D. at the points a speaker most wishes to emphasise.
- E. only when a person is speaking a foreign language.
- F. because they have been formally taught in school.
- G. and this makes their speech impossible to follow.
- 7
Beat gestures tend to fall
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Answer: D — at the points a speaker most wishes to emphasise.
Why: Beat gestures fall at the points a speaker wishes to emphasise, as they align with the stressed words in speech to guide the listener's attention to the most important parts.
Where to find it · Paragraph B “Beats carry no picture and no dictionary meaning; instead they fall on the words a speaker wishes to stress, rising and dropping in time with the voice like the movements of a conductor keeping an orchestra together.”
- 8
An emblem such as the thumbs-up
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Answer: C — can carry an offensive meaning in another country.
Why: Emblems like the thumbs-up have fixed meanings agreed upon by a community, which can vary across cultures, leading to gestures being interpreted as offensive in different countries.
Where to find it · Paragraph C “The thumbs-up, the beckoning finger and the ring made of thumb and forefinger are all emblems, and it is precisely because their meanings are agreed by a community rather than given by nature that they refuse to travel.”
- 9
Children usually begin to point
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Answer: A — before they are able to produce their first words.
Why: The passage states that pointing appears around the end of the first year, weeks or months ahead of a child's first spoken word, indicating that children usually begin to point before they can produce their first words.
Where to find it · Paragraph D “Pointing appears at around the end of the first year, weeks or months ahead of a child's first spoken word, and it is one of the surest early signs that a baby has begun to share attention with the people around it.”
- 10
When a learner's gestures do not match their words,
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Answer: B — it may signal that they are ready to grasp a new idea.
Why: The passage suggests that gestures assist the speaker by lightening mental effort, implying that mismatched gestures may indicate a cognitive transition or readiness to grasp a new concept.
Where to find it · Paragraph E “Experiments in which people describe how they solved a puzzle show that moving the hands lightens the mental effort of talking, freeing memory for other work and making it easier to hold an idea steady while a sentence is assembled.”
Questions 11–14: True / False / Not Given
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage? Write TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN.
- 11
Beat gestures have a fixed meaning that is recognised in every culture.
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Answer: FALSE
Why: Beat gestures do not have a fixed meaning but instead accompany speech to emphasize important words, and they are not universally recognized across cultures.
Where to find it · Paragraph B “Beats carry no picture and no dictionary meaning; instead they fall on the words a speaker wishes to stress, rising and dropping in time with the voice like the movements of a conductor keeping an orchestra together.”
- 12
Infants typically begin to point before they can speak.
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Answer: TRUE
Why: The passage states that infants start pointing around the end of their first year, which is weeks or months before they speak their first word.
Where to find it · Paragraph D “Pointing appears at around the end of the first year, weeks or months ahead of a child's first spoken word, and it is one of the surest early signs that a baby has begun to share attention with the people around it.”
- 13
Preventing speakers from moving their hands tends to make them less fluent.
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Answer: TRUE
Why: The passage states that when speakers are instructed to keep their hands still, they become less fluent, pause more often, and struggle to find words, indicating that preventing hand movement reduces fluency.
Where to find it · Paragraph E “When speakers are told to keep their hands still, they become noticeably less fluent, pause more often and struggle to retrieve the words they are hunting for.”
- 14
Emblems are easier for children to learn than spoken words.
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Answer: NOT GIVEN
Why: The statement claims emblems are easier for children to learn than spoken words, but the passage does not confirm or deny this, only mentioning that emblems must be learned like foreign language words.
Closest related text · Paragraph C “Travellers who assume that their hands will be understood everywhere are frequently caught out, for emblems must be learned deliberately, exactly as the words of a foreign language are learned.”
Estimated band score for this test
Your raw score out of 14 scaled to the 40-question IELTS Reading (Academic) conversion table. This is the same estimate the practice page shows after you submit. A single passage is a small sample, so treat it as a guide.
| Correct answers | Estimated band |
|---|---|
| 14 / 14 | 9.0 |
| 13 / 14 | 8.5 |
| 12 / 14 | 7.5 |
| 11 / 14 | 7.0 |
| 10 / 14 | 6.5 |
| 8–9 / 14 | 6.0 |
| 7 / 14 | 5.5 |
| 6 / 14 | 5.0 |
| 5 / 14 | 4.5 |
| 4 / 14 | 4.0 |
| 3 / 14 | 3.5 |
| 2 / 14 | 3.0 |
| 1 / 14 | 2.0 |
| 0 / 14 | 0.0 |
Full-test score? Use the IELTS band calculator.
Tips for the question types in this test
Matching Headings
- Read the list of headings first so you know the options, and notice how they differ from one another — often two headings are deliberately similar.
- Read the first paragraph and ask yourself: "In one sentence, what is this paragraph mainly saying?" before you look back at the headings.
Common trap: Picking a heading because it repeats a word from the paragraph, when that word only appears in a minor detail.
Full Matching Headings strategyMatching Sentence Endings
- Read each beginning and predict its grammatical and logical continuation.
- Eliminate endings that cannot fit grammatically before consulting the text.
Common trap: Choosing an ending that is grammatically smooth but unsupported.
Full Matching Sentence Endings strategyTrue / False / Not Given
- Read the statement first and underline the key idea, especially any qualifiers like "all", "only", "never", "always", "more than" or dates and numbers.
- Because the questions follow the order of the passage, scan for the paragraph that deals with the same topic rather than re-reading everything.
Common trap: Confusing "False" with "Not Given": choose False only when the passage actively contradicts the statement; if the passage is silent, it is Not Given.
Full True / False / Not Given strategyPractise “The Silent Grammar of Gesture” under exam conditions
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