True– False–Not Given questions: common mistakes

Statement: The trees from which quinine is derived grow only in South America.

Reading passage:……At the time, quinine was the only viable medical treatment for malaria. The drug is derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America.

Let’s start analyzing the task and looking for the answer.

STEP 1: I read the question. Question: The trees from which quinine is derived grow only in South America.

STEP 2: I understand that my keywords are tree (with quinine) + some location (I will be lucky if I find South America)

STEP 3: I start reading the passage from the sentence that follows the one in which I found the answer to the previous question. I read until I come across one of my key words and make sure that all of them are available, not just some of them. Reading passage:…...At the time, quinine was the only viable medical treatment for malaria. The drug is derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America.  In our case, I read the passage and come across ‘the cinchona tree’. Now I need to make sure that this is the tree that quinine is extracted from. The reading passage says that ‘the drug is derived from the cinchona tree’. Ok. Now I need to prove that quinine is ‘the drug’. If I prove it, so I find the tree with quinine. If I can’t find the evidence in the text, I need to continue reading. But, luckily, I see in the previous sentence that ‘quinine was the only treatment for malaria’. Malaria is a disease. And a treatment is a drug. I’ve found the first keyword. I’ve found out that the tree that quinine is derived from is the cinchona tree. 50% of the task is done. Now I need to understand if this tree grows ONLY in South America. The passage says that the cinchona tree is NATIVE TO South America. If something or someone is ‘native to some place’, this means that something or someone was born or started to develop there. Now let’s analyze the situation. Ask yourself. Is it possible that this tree was born in South America and grows only in that place? Sure, it is. Is it possible that some travellers brought this species of a tree to overseas countries, and now this tree grows in many places of the world? It is also possible. So the fact that the tree was BORN in South America doesn’t give us any information to help us understand what happened next, and where the tree is now.

The correct answer is NOT GIVEN. ⚠️The misleading word here is ‘native to’. By adding this word, IELTS test makers wanted you to say that it’s true, which is a common mistake.