What to Do If You Finish a Task Early

Finishing a task with meaningful time still on the clock is a genuinely good position to be in, but a surprising number of candidates waste it. The instinct, once you've reached the end of a task and answered every question, is often either to submit immediately out of a sense that the job is done, or to sit passively rereading the same material without a clear plan for what you're actually checking. Neither response makes good use of the time. The candidates who benefit most from finishing early are the ones who go in with a specific, rehearsed checklist for exactly what to check, rather than a vague intention to "look it over again" — because a vague review pass tends to catch far less than a targeted one, and because each of the four skills has genuinely different, specific error patterns worth checking for.

In Reading, if you finish all 40 questions with meaningful time remaining, the highest-value use of that time is revisiting specifically the questions you weren't fully confident about when you first answered them, rather than rereading the entire passage from the start. Flag or mentally note uncertain answers as you go through the test the first time, so that in your remaining time you can go directly to those specific items rather than searching for them again. Re-reading the relevant section of the passage once more, now without the pressure of a looming deadline, often reveals a distinction you missed on a faster first read — particularly for True/False/Not Given items, where the difference between "False" and "Not Given" frequently hinges on a precise, easily rushed-past detail.

In Listening, the extra time available during the answer-transfer period at the end of the test (in the paper-based format) or during any pause before submission (in the computer-based format) should be spent checking a specific, narrow set of error categories rather than re-listening to content from memory. Check spelling of every written answer, particularly names and less common words; check that your answers actually match the stated word limit (an answer of three words when the instruction says "no more than two words" scores zero regardless of whether the content is correct); and check number formatting, including dates, times, and any figures that could be transcribed ambiguously. These three categories — spelling, word limits, and number formatting — account for a large share of otherwise avoidable lost marks, and reviewing time is disproportionately well spent here rather than on questions you already feel confident about.

In Writing, finishing with genuine time remaining — after comfortably meeting the minimum word count for both tasks — is an opportunity for a structured proofreading pass rather than simply adding more content for its own sake. A useful checklist, worked through in order: confirm both tasks meet their minimum word count with a real margin, not just barely over; check that every part of the prompt has actually been addressed (for a two-part question or GT Task 1's bullet points, confirm each element received genuine coverage, not just a passing mention); scan for the specific grammar and spelling errors you personally tend to make, which is more effective than a generic scan since everyone's characteristic error patterns differ; and check that your paragraphing and linking words are actually present and used correctly, since these are visible at a glance and directly affect the Coherence and Cohesion score. Adding extra sentences purely to fill remaining time, without a specific reason, risks diluting an already-complete response and introducing new errors you then don't have time to catch.