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Academic Reading Practice Test 1

A full 60-minute IELTS Academic Reading mock test with three passages and 40 questions: True/False/Not Given, sentence completion, matching headings, multiple choice, summary completion and short answers. Instant band score and answer explanations.

  • • 60 minutes, 40 questions, 3 parts
  • • The timer starts when you press Start and the test submits itself when time runs out
  • • Your answers are saved on this device as you go
  • • Select words in the passage and press Highlight to mark them, just like the computer test

Short on time? Practise one part

About 20 minutes. Check your answers as you go, see why each one is right, and get an estimated band for that part.

What is in this test

  1. Passage 1: Bees on the Rooftops

    Question types: True / False / Not Given (1–6), Completion and short answer (7–13)

    For most of the twentieth century, keeping honeybees was considered a rural pursuit. Hives stood at the edges of orchards and farms, and city authorities in many countries actively discouraged residents from keeping them, fearing stings and swarms. That picture began to change in the 1990s, when a small number of enthusiasts in Paris, London and New York started placing…

  2. Passage 2: The White Gold of the Ancient World

    Question types: Matching (14–19), Multiple choice (20–23), Completion and short answer (24–26)

    Salt is so cheap and plentiful today that it is easy to forget how valuable it once was. Before refrigeration, salting was one of the few reliable ways to preserve meat and fish through the winter or on long journeys. Humans and their animals also need a regular intake of salt to stay healthy. For thousands of years, therefore, communities…

  3. Passage 3: Why We Forget — and Why It Might Be Useful

    Question types: Multiple choice (27–30), Yes / No / Not Given (31–36), Completion and short answer (37–40)

    In 1885 the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus published the results of a long and rather lonely experiment. Using himself as the only subject, he memorised lists of meaningless syllables such as 'DAX' and 'BOK' and then tested how many he could recall after different intervals. His results produced what is now called the forgetting curve: memory declined steeply within the…