IELTS Academic and IELTS General Training are similar to each other by about 70%, you could say. This means that on both exams, 70% of the material will be the same. The Writing sections on these two IELTS exams are roughly the same, and Task 2 is the same on both the Academic and General Training versions of the exam in addition to the same Listening and Speaking sections. IELTS Academic Reading and IELTS General Training Reading can be compared to one another as being three-quarters alike. IELTS Academic contains three academic sections that are of the same length; IELTS General Training just has one.