LanguageCert Reading Part 2: how to find the missing sentences

In LanguageCert Academic Reading Part 2, six sentences have been taken out of a text, and you have eight sentences to choose from. Two of them do not fit anywhere. The task tests whether you can follow how a writer connects ideas, so the strongest clues are small words like this, however and others, not the topic vocabulary. Most candidates who lose marks here pick a sentence because it is "about the same thing" as the paragraph.

This guide gives a five-step method, an original practice text with answers explained, and the mistakes we see most often in AIL classes.

What does Reading Part 2 look like?

As of October 2026, the official LanguageCert Academic description says the Reading section has 30 questions in 50 minutes, in four parts. In Part 2, six sentences have been removed from a text, and you match the correct sentences from a choice of eight to complete it. Each sentence can only be used once.

The text is usually an article or a report on a general academic subject, a few paragraphs long. The gaps can come anywhere: at the start of a paragraph, in the middle, or as the last sentence.

For the whole Reading section, including how long to spend on each part, see our 50-minute Reading plan. A sensible target for Part 2 is about 12 minutes.

Why topic words mislead you

Imagine a paragraph about the cost of electric cars, with a gap in the middle. Three of the eight sentences mention electric cars. Only one of them fits, because only one connects grammatically and logically to the sentence before and the sentence after.

The two unused sentences are usually written to be on topic. They mention the right subject but they don't link to anything in the text. If you choose on topic alone, you will often pick one of them.

A five-step method

1. Read the whole text first, with the gaps. Spend about two minutes. You are looking for what each paragraph is about and how the argument moves. Don't look at the options yet.

2. Read the eight sentences and mark the clue words. Underline anything that has to refer to something else:

• Pronouns and determiners: this, these, that, such, it, they, them, its
• Contrast: however, but, yet, instead, in fact, even so
• Sequence and addition: the second, another, also, finally, the first
• Comparison: others, in contrast, similarly, the same
• Result: as a result, so, this means

A sentence that begins "This lesson..." must follow a sentence where a lesson was mentioned or implied.

3. Check before and after. For each gap, read the sentence before and the sentence after. Then test a candidate sentence in the gap and ask two questions:

• Does it follow from the sentence before? (Does this have something to point to?)
• Does the sentence after follow from it?

Many wrong choices pass the first test and fail the second.

4. Fill the gaps you are sure of first. Every sentence you place removes one option. With six gaps and eight sentences, filling four confident gaps leaves you choosing two answers from four sentences, which is much easier.

5. Read the completed text once. Read straight through with your answers in place. A wrong choice usually sounds wrong somewhere: a they with no plural before it, or a however that does not contrast with anything.

Try it: an original practice text

This is a shorter version of the task, written by AIL for practice: four gaps and five sentences, so one sentence is not used. The real test has six gaps and eight sentences.

Chess on the timetable

Several primary schools in Melbourne have added a weekly chess lesson to the timetable. (1) ____ Teachers who run the lessons say the benefits show up well beyond the board.

The first benefit they mention is patience. Children who usually rush through tasks learn that a hasty move is punished within a few turns. (2) ____ One teacher described a boy who started checking his maths answers after a term of losing games to careless mistakes.

The research picture is less tidy. Some studies have found that children who play chess do better in maths, but many of these studies were small. (3) ____ That makes it hard to know whether chess improved their maths, or whether children who were already good at maths were the ones who chose chess.

(4) ____ Even if chess does not raise test scores, it gives quiet children a way to compete, and it costs very little: a few boards and a teacher willing to learn the rules.

Sentences

• A. In others, the children chose to join a chess club rather than being placed in one at random.
• B. Until recently, most of them had offered the game only as a lunchtime club.
• C. This lesson, several teachers report, carries over into their schoolwork.
• D. For many principals, however, the case for chess does not depend on research.
• E. Chess has been played in schools in many countries for over a century.

Try it before reading the answers.

Answers explained

Sentence E is the kind of distractor you will meet in the test: accurate, on topic, and connected to nothing.

Look also at gap 3. Sentence C (This lesson...) could be tested there, because the paragraph is about learning. But "this lesson" has nothing to point to in a paragraph about research studies, and the next sentence about children choosing chess only makes sense after A.

Common mistakes in Part 2

• Choosing on topic words. If the main reason for your choice is a shared noun, check the grammar links before you commit.
• Checking only the sentence before the gap. The sentence after is just as important, and it is where many distractors fail.
• Ignoring the unused sentences. Knowing that two sentences are extra should make you suspicious of any option that seems to fit two gaps equally well.
• Getting stuck on one gap. If a gap is not clear after a minute, move on. Filling the others narrows the choice.
• Not reading the finished text. One wrong answer often causes a second, because you have used up the sentence that belonged elsewhere. A final read-through catches both.

A weekly practice routine

1. Take any well-edited article (a university news page or a quality newspaper works well). Copy three paragraphs and delete one sentence from each.
2. A day later, try to rebuild the text, and write down the clue word you used for each gap.
3. Underline every this, these and such in one article and say what each one refers to. If you can't, reread the sentence before.
4. Once a week, do a timed Part 2 with eight options and review every wrong answer: which clue did you miss?

Our free LanguageCert Academic-style Reading practice includes a Part 2 text and a Part 4 text, 11 questions in 20 minutes, with an estimated 0–100 score. The practice material is written by AIL and is not produced by PeopleCert or LanguageCert. To see how Reading scores relate to CEFR levels, read LanguageCert Academic scores explained.

If you are taking LanguageCert Academic for an Australian visa, remember that Home Affairs accepts the test only when it is taken at a test centre, not the online version taken at home. AIL is an official LanguageCert test centre in Melbourne; dates and booking are on the AIL LanguageCert page.