Latest IELTS Reading Practice Test with Answers

Welcome to your latest IELTS reading practice! In this document, you will
find two contemporary practice tests designed to challenge and enhance
your reading abilities. These tests encompass a wide range of question
types commonly encountered in the IELTS exam, ensuring a
comprehensive assessment of your reading skills. Let's embark on this
learning journey together and make the most of these practice tests to
excel in your IELTS reading section. Good luck!

PRACTICE TEST 1

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14 which are based
on the Reading Passage below.

The Role of Accidents in Business

In 1894 Dr. John Kellogg and his brother. Will was supervising a hospital and
health spa in Michigan. The patients were on a restricted diet. One day, the
brothers left cooked wheat intended for more than 24 hours. When they
returned, they saw what they had done. It was no good to eat, but they
decided to run the stale wheat through rollers, just to see how it would turn
out. Normally, the process produced long sheets, but they were surprised to
discover that this time the rollers created flat flakes. They baked them and
then tried the same thing with corn. From this accidental discovery came
the corn flakes that generations have now been eating for breakfast.
Accidents happen; there is nothing predictable and orderly about
innovation. Nobel laureate Sir Alan Hodgkin, who discovered how nerve
cells transmit electrical impulses between the skin and the brain,
commented: ‘I believe that the record of my published papers conveys an
impression of directedness and planning which does not at all coincide
with the actual sequence of events.’
The same rule applies in business. The mistake that gave US cornflakes
keeps repeating itself in the history of disruptive innovation, the kind that
transforms markets. Louis Daguerre, for, instance, discovered the technique
that gave US photography in the 1830s, when drops of mercury from a
shattered thermometer produced a photographic image. The microwave
was discovered when Peroy Spender, a scientist with Raytheon, was testing
a new vacuum tube and discovered that the sweet in his pocket had
melted. The artificial sweetener, saccharin, was the unintentional result of a
medical scientist’s work on a chemical treatment for gastric ulcers. While
working for the firm 3M, researcher Art Fry had no idea he was taking the
first steps towards Post-It Notes when he used bits of adhesive office paper
that could be easily lifted off the page to replace the scrap paper
bookmarks that kept falling out of his hymn book.
Breakthrough and disruptive innovation are rarely driven by orderly
processes. Usually, they come out of a chaotic, haphazard mess, which is
why big companies, full of managers schooled in business programs
designed to eliminate random variation and mistakes, struggle with them.
In these sorts of environments, accidents are called failures and are
discouraged.
It is no surprise then that research from the late British economist Paul
Geroski and London Business School’s Constantinos Markides found that
companies that were skilled at innovation were usually not that skilled
when it came to commercialization, and vice versa. Their book, Fast
Second, divides businesses into ‘colonists’ and ‘consolidators’. Small and
nimble, colonists are adept at creating market niches but are terrible
institution builders. Consolidators, with their strong cultures of discipline
and cost control, know how to take clever ideas from other firms and turn
them into mass market items. Microsoft is a prime instance of this.
With companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars on research and
development, US academics Robert Austin and Lee Devin examined how
managers can encourage productive slip-ups. In their article Accident,
Intention and Expectation in the Innovation Process, they argue that
business processes actually prevent helpful missteps from occurring.
According to their catalog of accidents, not all false steps and mishaps are
equal. Accidents, they say, come from unlikely mental associations such as
memories and vague connections, looking for something and finding it in
an unexpected way, looking for one thing and finding something else, and
not looking for anything but finding something valuable.
Accident-prone innovation, they say, requires companies to get outside
the ‘cone of expectation’. It means throwing together groups from diverse
backgrounds and combining ideas in unpredictable ways, other strategies
also include having systems that watch out for accidents and examine
them for value, generating them when they do not happen often enough,
seizing oil the useful ones, capturing their valuable features, and building
on them to add value and give the potential for useful accidents.
All this, however, requires thinking that is often counterintuitive to the way
businesses operate. In other words, it is the kind of thinking that goes
against the beliefs of most business managers. It runs counter to the
notion frequently pushed by consultants that you can ‘harness’ creativity
and direct it to line up with intention. ‘The cost of accidents business,
people tend to call such efforts failure.’
There are tentative signs that more companies are starting to realize that
failure can lead to commercial gain and that this is part of the risk-talking
that underpins innovation. Australia’s largest brewing company, for
example, made a bad error when it launched a new beer called Empire
Lager, pitched at younger consumers. Having spent a fortune creating a
beer with a sweeter taste, designing a great-looking bottle, and a
television campaign, Foster’s was left with a drink that no one wanted to
buy. The target market was more interested in brands built up by word of
mouth.
Instead of wiping the unsuccessful product launch, Fosters used this lesson
learned to go on and develop other brands instead. One of them, Pure
Blonde, is now ranked as Australia’s fifth-largest beer brand. Unlike Empire
Lager, there has been almost no promotion, and its sales are generated
more by word of mouth.
Other companies are taking similar steps to study their own slip-ups. Intuit,
the company behind financial tools such as Quicken, holds regular ‘When
Learning Hurts’ sessions. But this sort of transformation is never easy. In a
market that focuses on the short-term, convincing employees and
shareholders to tolerate failure and not play it safe is a big thing to ask.

Questions 1-5
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in
Reading Passage? In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1. The delay in the process used by the Kellogg brothers affected the final
product.
2. Sir Alan Hodgkin is an example of someone whose work proceeded in a
logical and systematic way.
3. Daguerre is an exception to the general rule of innovation.
4. The discovery of saccharin occurred by accident during drug research.
5. The company 3M should have supported Art Fry by funding his idea of
Post-It Notes.

Questions 6-9
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-H, below.
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.
6. The usual business environment
7. Geroki and Markides’s book
8. Microsoft is an example of a company which
9. The origin of useful accidents
A. can be found in unusual thoughts and chance events.
B. can be taught in business schools.
C. has made a success from someone else’s invention.
D. is designed to nurture differences.
E. is unlikely to lead to creative innovation
F. says that all mistakes are the same.
G. shows that businesses are good at either inventing or selling.
H. suggests ways of increasing the number of mistakes

Questions 10-14
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D
Write the correct letter in boxes 10-14 on your answer sheet.

10. How do Austin and Devin advise companies to get out of the ‘cone of
expectation’?
A. by decreasing the number of company systems
B. by forming teams of different types of people
C. by hiring new and creative people
D. by holding regular brainstorming meetings

11. In recommending ‘counter-intuitive’ thinking, what do Austin and

Devin imply?
A. that failing at business is bad for staff morale
B. that innovation cannot be planned for
C. that most businesses should be devoted to avoiding mistakes
D. that the cost of mistakes is an important consideration

12. The writer describes the Empire Lager disaster in order to show that
A. success can come out of a business failure
B. the majority of companies now value risk-taking.
C. TV advertising works better on older people
D. Young beer drinkers do not like a sweet taste
13. Pure Blonde has been more successful than Empire Lager because
A. digital media other than TV were used.
B. it was advertised under a different brand name.
C. it was launched with very little advertising.
D. the advertising budget was larger

14. The writer concludes that creating a culture that learns from mistakes
A. brings short-term financial gains.
B. can be very difficult for some companies.
C. holds no risk for workers.
D. is a popular move with shareholders.

READING PASSAGE 2

Driverless Cars

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-27 which are based
on the Reading Passage below.

A. The automotive sector is well used to adapting to automation in

manufacturing. The implementation of robotic car manufacture from the
1970s onwards led to significant cost savings and improvements in the
reliability and flexibility of vehicle mass production. A new challenge to
vehicle production is now on the horizon and, again, it comes from
automation. However, this time it is not to do with the manufacturing
process, but with the vehicles themselves.
Research projects on vehicle automation are not new. Vehicles with limited
self-driving capabilities have been around for more than 50 years,
resulting in significant contributions toward driver assistance systems. But
since Google announced in 2010 that it had been trialing self-driving cars
on the streets of California, progress in this field has quickly gathered pace.
B. There are many reasons why technology is advancing so fast. One
frequently cited motive is safety; indeed, research at the UK’s Transport
Research Laboratory has demonstrated that more than 90 percent of road
collisions involve human error as a contributory factor, and it is the primary
cause in the vast majority. Automation may help to reduce the incidence
of this.
Another aim is to free the time people spend driving for other purposes. If
the vehicle can do some or all of the driving, it may be possible to be
productive, to socialize or simply to relax while automation systems have
responsibility for safe control of the vehicle. If the vehicle can do the
driving, those who are challenged by existing mobility models – such as
older or disabled travelers – may be able to enjoy significantly greater
travel autonomy.
C. Beyond these direct benefits, we can consider the wider implications for
transport and society, and how manufacturing processes might need to
respond as a result. At present, the average car spends more than 90
percent of its life parked. Automation means that initiatives for car-sharing
become much more viable, particularly in urban areas with significant
travel demand. If a significant proportion of the population chooses to use
shared automated vehicles, mobility demand can be met by far fewer
vehicles.
D. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology investigated automated
mobility in Singapore, finding that fewer than 30 percent of the vehicles
currently used would be required if fully automated car sharing could be
implemented. If this is the case, it might mean that we need to
manufacture far fewer vehicles to meet demand. However, the number of
trips being taken would probably increase, partly because empty vehicles
would have to be moved from one customer to the next.
Modeling work by the University of Michigan Transportation Research
Institute suggests automated vehicles might reduce vehicle ownership by
43 percent, but that vehicles’ average annual mileage doubles as a result.
As a consequence, each vehicle would be used more intensively and might
need replacing sooner. This faster rate of turnover may mean that vehicle
production will not necessarily decrease
E. Automation may prompt other changes in vehicle manufacture. If we
move to a model where consumers are tending not to own a single vehicle
but to purchase access to a range of vehicles through a mobility provider,
drivers will have the freedom to select one that best suits their needs for a
particular journey, rather than making a compromise across all their
requirements.
Since, most of the time, most of the seats in most cars are unoccupied, this
may boost the production of a smaller, more efficient range of vehicles
that suit the needs of individuals. Specialized vehicles may then be
available for exceptional journeys, such as going on a family camping trip
or helping a son or daughter move to university.
F. There are a number of hurdles to overcome in delivering automated
vehicles to our roads. These include the technical difficulties in ensuring
that the vehicle works reliably in the infinite range of traffic, weather, and
road situations it might encounter; the regulatory challenges in
understanding how liability and enforcement might change when drivers
are no longer essential for vehicle operation; and the societal changes that
may be required for communities to trust and accept automated vehicles
as being a valuable part of the mobility landscape.
G. It’s clear that there are many challenges that need to be addressed but,
through robust and targeted research, these can most probably be
conquered within the next 10 years. Mobility will change in such potentially
significant ways and in association with so many other technological
developments, such as telepresence and virtual reality, that it is hard to
make concrete predictions about the future. However, one thing is certain:
change is coming, and the need to be flexible in response to this will be
vital for those involved in manufacturing the vehicles that will deliver future
mobility.
Questions 15–19:
The Reading Passage has seven sections, A-G.
Which section contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

15. reference to the amount of time when a car is not in use.

16. mention several advantages of driverless vehicles for individual road
users.
17. reference to the opportunity of choosing the most appropriate vehicle
for each trip.
18. an estimate of how long it will take to overcome a number of problems
19. a suggestion that the use of driverless cars may have no effect on the
number of vehicles manufactured.

Questions 20–23:
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.

The impact of driverless cars

Figures from the Transport Research Laboratory indicate that most motor
accidents are partly due to 20 ..................., so the introduction of driverless
vehicles will result in greater safety. In addition to the direct benefits of
automation, it may bring other advantages. For example, schemes for 21
................... will be more workable, especially in towns and cities, resulting in
fewer cars on the road.
According to the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute,
there could be a 43 percent drop in 22 ................... of cars. However, this would
mean that the yearly 23 ...................of each car would, on average, be twice as
high as it currently is. This would lead to a higher turnover of vehicles, and
therefore no reduction in automotive manufacturing.
Questions 24 and 25:
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 24 and 25 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO benefits of automated vehicles does the writer mention?

A. Car travelers could enjoy considerable cost savings.
B. It would be easier to find parking spaces in urban areas.
C. Travellers could spend journeys doing something other than driving.
D. People who find driving physically difficult could travel independently.
E. A reduction in the number of cars would mean a reduction in pollution.
Questions 26 and 27:
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 26 and 27 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO challenges to automated vehicle development does the
writer mention?
A. making sure the general public has confidence in automated vehicles
B. managing the pace of transition from conventional to automated
vehicles
C. deciding how to compensate professional drivers who become
redundant
D. setting up the infrastructure to make roads suitable for automated
vehicles
E. getting automated vehicles to adapt to various different driving
conditions
 READING PASSAGE 3

What is exploration?
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 24-40 which are based
on the Reading Passage below.

We are all explorers. Our desire to discover, and then share that new-found
knowledge, is part of what makes us human – indeed, this has played an
important part in our success as a species. Long before the first caveman
slumped down beside the fire and grunted news that there was plenty of
wildebeest over yonder, our ancestors had learned the value of sending
out scouts to investigate the unknown. This questing nature of ours
undoubtedly helped our species spread around the globe, just as it
nowadays no doubt helped the last nomadic Penan maintain their
existence in the depleted forests of Borneo, and a visitor negotiated the
subways of New York.
Over the years, we’ve come to think of explorers as a peculiar breed –
different from the rest of us, different from those of us who are merely ‘well
traveled’, even; and perhaps there is a type of person more suited to
seeking out the new, a type of caveman more inclined to risk venturing out.
That, however, doesn’t take away from the fact that we all have this
enquiring instinct, even today; and that in all sorts of professions – whether
artist, marine biologist or astronomer – borders of the unknown are being
tested each day.
Thomas Hardy set some of his novels in Egdon Heath, a fictional area of
uncultivated land, and used the landscape to suggest the desires and
fears of his characters. He is delving into matters we all recognize because
they are common to humanity. This is surely an act of exploration, and into
a world as remote as the author chooses. Explorer and travel writer Peter
Fleming talks of the moment when the explorer returns to the existence he
has left behind with his loved ones. The traveler ‘who has for weeks or
months seen himself only as a puny and irrelevant alien crawling
laboriously over a country in which he has no roots and no background,
suddenly encounters his other self, a relatively solid figure, with a place in
the minds of certain people’.
In this book about the exploration of the earth’s surface, I have confined
myself to those whose travels were real and who also aimed at more than
personal discovery. But that still left me with another problem: the word
‘explorer’ has become associated with a past era. We think back to a
golden age, as if exploration peaked somehow in the 19th century – as if
the process of discovery is now on the decline, though the truth is that we
have named only one and a half million of this planet’s species, and there
may be more than 10 million – and that’s not including bacteria. We have
studied only 5 percent of the species we know. We have scarcely mapped
the ocean floors, and know even less about ourselves; we fully understand
the workings of only 10 percent of our brains.
Here is how some of today’s ‘explorers’ define the word. Ran Fiennes,
dubbed the ‘greatest living explorer’, said, ‘An explorer is someone who has
done something that no human has done before – and also done
something scientifically useful.’ Chris Bonington, a leading mountaineer,
felt exploration was to be found in the act of physically touching the
unknown: ‘You have to have gone somewhere new.’ Then Robin
Hanbury-Tenison, a campaigner on behalf of remote so-called ‘tribal’
peoples, said, ‘A traveler simply records information about some far-off
world and reports back, but an explorer changes the world.’ Wilfred
Thesiger, who crossed Arabia’s Empty Quarter in 1946, and belongs to an
era of non mechanized travel now lost to the rest of us, told me, ‘If I’d gone
across by camel when I could have gone by car, it would have been a
stunt.’ To him, exploration meant bringing back information from a remote
place regardless of any great self-discovery.
Each definition is slightly different – and tends to reflect the field of
endeavor of each pioneer. It was the same whoever I asked: the prominent
historian would say exploration was a thing of the past, and the
cutting-edge scientist would say it was of the present. And so on. They
each set their own particular criteria; the common factor in their approach
being that they all had, unlike many of us who simply enjoy travel or
discovering new things, both a very definite objective from the outset and
also a desire to record their findings.
I’d best declare my own bias. As a writer, I’m interested in the exploration of
ideas. I’ve done a great many expeditions and each one was unique. I’ve
lived for months alone with isolated groups of people all around the world,
even two ‘uncontacted tribes’. But none of these things is of the slightest
interest to anyone unless, through my books, I’ve found a new slant, and
explored a new idea. Why? Because the world has moved on. The time has
long passed for the great continental voyages – another walk to the poles,
another crossing of the Empty Quarter. We know how the land surface of
our planet lies; exploration of it is now down to the details – the habits of
microbes, say, or the grazing behavior of buffalo. Aside from the deep sea
and deep underground, it’s the era of specialists. However, this is to
disregard the role the human mind has in conveying remote places; and
this is what interests me: how a fresh interpretation, even of a well-traveled
route, can give its readers new insights.
Questions 28 – 33
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.
28. The writer refers to visitors to New York to illustrate the point that
A. exploration is an intrinsic element of being human.
B. Most people are enthusiastic about exploring.
C. exploration can lead to surprising results.
D. Most people find exploration daunting.
29. According to the second paragraph, what is the writer’s view of
explorers?
A. Their discoveries have brought both benefits and disadvantages.
B. Their main value is in teaching others.
C. They act on an urge that is common to everyone.
D. They tend to be more attracted to certain professions than to others.

30. The writer refers to a description of Egdon Heath to suggest that

A. Hardy was writing about his own experience of exploration.
B. Hardy was mistaken about the nature of exploration.
C. Hardy’s aim was to investigate people’s emotional states.
D. Hardy’s aim was to show the attraction of isolation.

31. In the fourth paragraph, the writer refers to ‘a golden age’ to suggest
that
A. the amount of useful information produced by exploration has
decreased.
B. fewer people are interested in exploring than in the 19th century.
C. Recent developments have made exploration less exciting.
D. we are wrong to think that exploration is no longer necessary.

32. In the sixth paragraph, when discussing the definition of exploration,

the writer argues that
A. people tend to relate exploration to their own professional interests.
B. certain people are likely to misunderstand the nature of exploration.
C. The generally accepted definition has changed over time.
D. historians and scientists have more valid definitions than the general
public.

33. In the last paragraph, the writer explains that he is interested in

A. how someone’s personality is reflected in their choice of places to visit.
B. the human ability to cast new light on places that may be familiar.
 C. how travel writing has evolved to meet changing demands.
D. the feelings that writers develop about the places that they explore.

Questions 34 – 38

Look at the following statements (Questions 33-37) and the list of

explorers below.
Match each statement with the correct explorer, A-E.
Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 33-37 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
34. He referred to the relevance of the form of transport used.
35. He described his feelings about coming back home after a long
journey.
36. He worked for the benefit of specific groups of people.
37. He did not consider learning about oneself an essential part of
exploration.
38. He defined exploration as being both unique and of value to others.

List of Explorers
A. Peter Fleming
B. Ran Fiennes
C. Chris Bonington
D. Robin Hanbury-Tenison
E. Wilfred Thesiger

Questions 39 – 40
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet.
The writer’s own bias
The writer has experience with a large number of 39 ……………., and was the
first stranger that certain previously 40 ……………… people had encountered. He
believes there is no need for further exploration of Earth’s surface except to
answer specific questions such as how buffalo eat.

PRACTICE TEST 2

READING PASSAGE 1

Roman Tunnels

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based
on the Reading Passage below.

The Romans, who once controlled areas of Europe, North Africa and Asia
Minor, adopted the construction techniques of other civilizations to build
tunnels in their territories

The Persians, who lived in present-day Iran, were one of the first civilizations
to build tunnels that provided a reliable supply of water to human
settlements in dry areas. In the early first millennium BCE, they introduced
the qanat method of tunnel construction, which consisted of placing posts
over a hill in a straight line, to ensure that the tunnel kept to its route, and
then digging vertical shafts down into the ground at regular intervals.
Underground, workers removed the earth from between the ends of the
shafts, creating a tunnel. The excavated soil was taken up to the surface
using the shafts, which also provided ventilation during the work. Once the
tunnel was completed, it allowed water to flow from the top of a hillside
down towards a canal, which supplied water for human use. Remarkably,
some qanats built by the Persians 2,700 years ago are still in use today.

They later passed on their knowledge to the Romans, who also used the
qanat method to construct water-supply tunnels for agriculture. Roma
qanat tunnels were constructed with vertical shafts dug at intervals of
between 30 and 60 meters. The shafts were equipped with handholds and
footholds to help those climbing in and out of them and were covered with
a wooden or stone lid. To ensure that the shafts were vertical, Romans
hung a plumb line from a rod placed across the top of each shaft and
made sure that the weight at the end of it hung in the center of the shaft.
Plumb lines were also used to measure the depth of the shaft and to
determine the slope of the tunnel. The 5.6-kilometer-long Claudius tunnel,
built in 41 CE to drain the Fucine Lake in central Italy, had shafts that were
up to 122 meters deep, took 11 years to build and involved approximately
30,000 workers.

By the 6th century BCE, a second method of tunnel construction appeared

called the counter-excavation method, in which the tunnel was
constructed from both ends. It was used to cut through high mountains
when the qanat method was not a practical alternative. This method
required greater planning and advanced knowledge of surveying,
mathematics and geometry as both ends of a tunnel had to meet
correctly at the center of the mountain. Adjustments to the direction of the
tunnel also had to be made whenever builders encountered geological
problems or when it deviated from its set path. They constantly checked
the tunnel’s advancing direction, for example, by looking back at the light
that penetrated through the tunnel mouth, and made corrections
whenever necessary. Large deviations could happen, and they could result
in one end of the tunnel not being usable. An inscription written on the side
of a 428-meter tunnel, built by the Romans as part of the Saldae aqueduct
system in modern-day Algeria, describes how the two teams of builders
missed each other in the mountain and how the later construction of a
lateral link between both corridors corrected the initial error.

The Romans dug tunnels for their roads using the counter-excavation
method, whenever they encountered obstacles such as hills or mountains
that were too high for roads to pass over. An example is the 37-meter-long,
6-meter-high, Furlo Pass Tunnel built in Italy in 69-79 CE. Remarkably, a
modern road still uses this tunnel today. Tunnels were also built for mineral
extraction. Miners would locate a mineral vein and then pursue it with
shafts and tunnels underground. Traces of such tunnels used to mine gold
can still be found at the Dolaucothi mines in Wales. When the sole purpose
of a tunnel was mineral extraction, construction required less planning, as
the tunnel route was determined by the mineral vein.

Roman tunnel projects were carefully planned and carried out. The length
of time it took to construct a tunnel depended on the method being used
and the type of rock being excavated. The qanat construction method was
usually faster than the counter-excavation method as it was more
straightforward. This was because the mountain could be excavated not
only from the tunnel mouths but also from shafts. The type of rock could
also influence construction times. When the rock was hard, the Romans
employed a technique called fire quenching which consisted of heating
the rock with fire, and then suddenly cooling it with cold water so that it
would crack. Progress through hard rock could be very slow, and it was not
uncommon for tunnels to take years, if not decades, to be built.
Construction marks left on a Roman tunnel in Bologna show that the rate of
advance through solid rock was 30 centimeters per day. In contrast, the
rate of advance of the Claudius tunnel can be calculated at 1.4 meters per
day. Most tunnels had inscriptions showing the names of patrons who
ordered construction and sometimes the name of the architect. For
example, the 1.4-kilometer Çevlik tunnel in Turkey, built to divert the
floodwater threatening the harbor of the ancient city of Seleuceia Pieria,
had inscriptions on the entrance, still visible today, that also indicate that
the tunnel was started in 69 CE and was completed in 81 CE.

Questions 1 – 6
Label the diagrams below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
The Persian Qanat Method

Cross-section of a Roman Qanat Shaft

Questions 7 – 10
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the
Reading Passage?

In boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet, write -

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

 FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

7. The counter-excavation method completely replaced the qanat

method in the 6th century BCE.
8. Only experienced builders were employed to construct a tunnel using
the counter-excavation method.

9. The information about a problem that occurred during the construction

of the Saldae aqueduct system was found in an ancient book.
10. The mistake made by the builders of the Saldae aqueduct system was
that the two parts of the tunnel failed to meet.

Questions 11 – 13
Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.

11. What type of mineral were the Dolaucothi mines in Wales built to
extract?
12. In addition to the patron, whose name might be carved onto a tunnel?
13. What part of Seleuceia Pieria was the Çevlik tunnel built to protect?

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based
on the Reading Passage below.

Changes in reading habits

What are the implications of the way we read today?

Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies
and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones;
older kids don’t read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other
passengers read on tablets or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds.
Unbeknown to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation
links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s
ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing and this has implications for
everyone from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult.

As work in neurosciences indicates, the acquisition of literacy necessitated

a new circuit in our species’ brain more than 6,000 years ago. That circuit
evolved from a very simple mechanism for decoding basic information,
like the number of goats in one’s herd, to the present, highly elaborated
reading brain. My research depicts how the present reading brain enables
the development of some of our most important intellectual and affective
processes: internalized knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference;
perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of
insight. Research surfacing in many parts of the world now cautions that
each of these essential ‘deep reading’ processes may be under threat as
we move into digital-based modes of reading.
This is not a simple, binary issue of print versus digital reading and
technological innovations. As MIT scholar Sherry Turkle has written, we do
not err as a society when we innovate but when we ignore what we disrupt
or diminish while innovating. In this hinge moment between print and
digital cultures, society needs to confront what is diminishing in the expert
reading circuit, what our children and older students are not developing,
and what we can do about it.
We know from research that the reading circuit is not given to human
beings through a genetic blueprint like vision or language; it needs an
environment to develop. Further, it will adapt to that environment’s
requirements – from different writing systems to the characteristics of
whatever medium is used. If the dominant medium advantages processes
that are fast, multi-task oriented and well-suited for large volumes of
information, like the current digital medium, so will the reading circuit. As
UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield writes, the result is that less attention
and time will be allocated to slower, time-demanding deep reading
processes.
Increasing reports from educators and from researchers in psychology
and the humanities bear this out. English literature scholar and teacher
Mark Edmundson describes how many college students actively avoid the
classic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries in favour of something
simpler as they no longer have the patience to read longer, denser, more
difficult texts. We should be less concerned with students’ ‘cognitive
impatience’, however, than by what may underlie it: the potential inability
of large numbers of students to read with a level of critical analysis
sufficient to comprehend the complexity of thought and argument found in
more demanding texts.
Multiple studies show that digital screen use may be causing a variety of
troubling downstream effects on reading comprehension in older high
school and college students. In Stavanger, Norway, psychologist Anne
Mangen and colleagues studied how high school students comprehend
the same material in different mediums. Mangen’s group asked subjects
questions about a short story whose plot had universal student appeal;
half of the students read the story on a tablet, the other half in paperback.
Results indicated that students who read on print were superior in their
comprehension to screen-reading peers, particularly in their ability to
sequence detail and reconstruct the plot in chronological order.
Ziming Liu from San Jose State University has conducted a series of studies
which indicate that the ‘new norm’ in reading is skimming, involving
word-spotting and browsing through the text. Many readers now use a
pattern when reading in which they sample the first line and then
word-spot through the rest of the text. When the reading brain skims like
this, it reduces time allocated to deep reading processes. In other words,
we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings,
to perceive beauty, and to create thoughts of the reader’s own.
The possibility that critical analysis, empathy and other deep reading
processes could become the unintended ‘collateral damage’ of our digital
culture is not a straightforward binary issue about print versus digital
reading. It is about how we all have begun to read o various mediums and
how that changes not only what we read, but also the purposes for which
we read. Nor is it only about the young. The subtle atrophy of critical
analysis and empathy affects us all equally. It affects our ability to
navigate a constant bombardment of information. It incentivizes a retreat
to the most familiar stores of unchecked information, which require and
receive no analysis, leaving us susceptible to false information and
irrational ideas.
There’s an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or
lose it. It is a very hopeful principle when applied to critical thought in the
reading brain because it implies choice. The story of the changing reading
brain is hardly finished. We possess both the science and the technology to
identify and redress the changes in how we read before they become
entrenched. If we work to understand exactly what we will lose, alongside
the extraordinary new capacities that the digital world has brought us,
there is as much reason for excitement as caution.
Questions 14 – 17
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

14. What is the writer’s main point in the first paragraph?

A. Our use of technology is having a hidden effect on us.

B. Technology can be used to help youngsters to read.
C. Travellers should be encouraged to use technology on planes.
D. Playing games is a more popular use of technology than reading.

15. What main point does Sherry Turkle make about innovation?

A. Technological innovation has led to a reduction in print reading.

 B. We should pay attention to what might be lost when innovation
occurs.
C. We should encourage more young people to become involved in
innovation.
D. There is a difference between developing products and
developing ideas.

16. What point is the writer making in the fourth paragraph?

A. Humans have an inborn ability to read and write.

B. Reading can be done using many different mediums.
C. Writing systems make unexpected demands on the brain.
D. Some brain circuits adjust to whatever is required of them.

17. According to Mark Edmundson, the attitude of college students

A. has changed the way he teaches.

B. has influenced what they select to read.
C. does not worry him as much as it does others.
D. does not match the views of the general public.

Questions 18 – 22
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-H, below.
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.

Studies on digital screen use

There have been many studies on digital screen use, showing some 18
………………… trends. Psychologist Anne Mangen gave high-school students a
short story to read, half using digital and half using print mediums. Her
team then used a question-and-answer technique to find out how 19
………………… each group’s understanding of the plot was. The findings showed
a clear pattern in the responses, with those who read screens finding the
order of information 20 ………………… to recall.

Studies by Ziming Liu show that students are tending to read 21 …………………
words and phrases in a text to save time. This approach, she says, gives
the reader a superficial understanding of the 22 ………………… content of
material, leaving no time for thought.

A fast B isolated C emotional D worrying

E many F hard G combined H thorough

Questions 23 – 26
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in the
Reading Passage?
In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, write -

TRUE if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

FALSE if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

23. The medium we use to read can affect our choice of reading content.
24. Some age groups are more likely to lose their complex reading skills
than others.
25. False information has become more widespread in today’s digital era.
26. We still have opportunities to rectify the problems that technology is
presenting.

READING PASSAGE 3

Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based
on the Reading Passage below.
A. Artificial intelligence (AI) can already predict the future. Police forces are
using it to map when and where crime is likely to occur. Doctors can use it
to predict when a patient is most likely to have a heart attack or stroke.
Researchers are even trying to give AI imagination so it can plan for
unexpected consequences.

Many decisions in our lives require a good forecast, and AI is almost always
better at forecasting than we are. Yet for all these technological advances,
we still seem to deeply lack confidence in AI predictions. Recent cases
show that people don’t like relying on AI and prefer to trust human experts,
even if these experts are wrong.

If we want AI to really benefit people, we need to find a way to get people

to trust it. To do that, we need to understand why people are so reluctant to
trust AI in the first place.

B. Take the case of Watson for Oncology, one of technology giant IBM’s
supercomputer programs. Their attempt to promote this program to
cancer doctors was a PR disaster. The AI promised to deliver top-quality
recommendations on the treatment of 12 cancers that accounted for 80%
of the world’s cases. But when doctors first interacted with Watson, they
found themselves in a rather difficult situation. On the one hand, if Watson
provided guidance about a treatment that coincided with their own
opinions, physicians did not see much point in Watson’s
recommendations. The supercomputer was simply telling them what they
already knew, and these recommendations did not change the actual
treatment.

On the other hand, if Watson generated a recommendation that

contradicted the experts’ opinion, doctors would typically conclude that
Watson wasn’t competent. And the machine wouldn’t be able to explain
why its treatment was plausible because its machine-learning algorithms
were simply too complex to be fully understood by humans. Consequently,
this has caused even more suspicion and disbelief, leading many doctors
to ignore the seemingly outlandish AI recommendations and stick to their
own expertise.

C. This is just one example of people’s lack of confidence in AI and their

reluctance to accept what AI has to offer. Trust in other people is often
based on our understanding of how others think and having experience of
their reliability. This helps create a psychological feeling of safety. AI, on the
other hand, is still fairly new and unfamiliar to most people. Even if it can be
technically explained (and that’s not always the case), AI’s
decision-making process is usually too difficult for most people to
comprehend. And interacting with something we don’t understand can
cause anxiety and give us a sense that we’re losing control.

Many people are also simply not familiar with many instances of AI
actually working, because it often happens in the background. Instead,
they are acutely aware of instances where AI goes wrong. Embarrassing AI
failures receive a disproportionate amount of media attention,
emphasising the message that we cannot rely on technology. Machine
learning is not foolproof, in part because the humans who design it aren’t.

D. Feelings about AI run deep. In a recent experiment, people from a range

of backgrounds were given various sci-fi films about AI to watch and then
asked questions about automation in everyday life. It was found that,
regardless of whether the film they watched depicted AI in a positive or
negative light, simply watching a cinematic vision of our technological
future polarised the participants’ attitudes. Optimists became more
extreme in their enthusiasm for AI and sceptics became even more
guarded.

This suggests people use relevant evidence about AI in a biased manner to

support their existing attitudes, a deep-rooted human tendency known as
“confirmation bias”. As AI is represented more and more in media and
entertainment, it could lead to a society split between those who benefit
from AI and those who reject it. More pertinently, refusing to accept the
advantages offered by AI could place a large group of people at a serious
disadvantage.

E. Fortunately, we already have some ideas about how to improve trust in

AI. Simply having previous experience with AI can significantly improve
people’s opinions about the technology, as was found in the study
mentioned above. Evidence also suggests the more you use other
technologies such as the internet, the more you trust them.

Another solution may be to reveal more about the algorithms which AI

uses and the purposes they serve. Several high-profile social media
companies and online marketplaces already release transparency reports
about government requests and surveillance disclosures. A similar
practice for AI could help people have a better understanding of the way
algorithmic decisions are made.

F. Research suggests that allowing people some control over AI

decision-making could also improve trust and enable AI to learn from
human experience. For example, one study showed that when people were
allowed the freedom to slightly modify an algorithm, they felt more
satisfied with its decisions, more likely to believe it was superior and more
likely to use it in the future.

We don’t need to understand the intricate inner workings of AI systems, but

if people are given a degree of responsibility for how they are
implemented, they will be more willing to accept AI into their lives.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40, which are based
on the reading passage below.
Questions 27 – 32
The Reading Passage has six sections, A-F.
Choose the correct heading for each sectiofrom the list of headings
below.
Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i. An increasing divergence of attitudes towards AI
ii. Reasons why we have more faith in human judgment than in AI
iii.The superiority of AI projections over those made by humans
iv.The process by which AI can help us make good decisions
v.The advantages of involving users in AI processes
vi.Widespread distrust of an AI innovation
vii.Encouraging openness about how AI functions
viii.A surprisingly successful AI application

27. Section A
28. Section B
29. Section C
30. Section D
31. Section E
32. Section F

Questions 33 – 35
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet.

33. What is the writer doing in Section A?

A. providing a solution to a concern

B. justifying an opinion about an issue
C. highlighting the existence of a problem
 D. explaining the reasons for a phenomenon

34. According to Section C, why might some people be reluctant to

accept AI?

A. They are afraid it will replace humans in decision-making jobs.

B. Its complexity makes them feel that they are at a disadvantage.
C. They would rather wait for the technology to be tested over a
period of time.
D. Misunderstandings about how it works make it seem more
challenging
35. What does the writer say about the media in Section C of the text?
A. It leads the public to be mistrustful of AI.
B. It devotes an excessive amount of attention to AI.
C. Its reports of incidents involving AI are often inaccurate.
D. It gives the impression that AI failures are due to designer error.

Questions 36 – 40
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in
Reading Passage?
In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

36. Subjective depictions of AI in sci-fi films make people change their

opinions about automation.
37. Portrayals of AI in media and entertainment are likely to become more
positive.
38. Rejection of the possibilities of AI may have a negative effect on many
people’s lives.
39. Familiarity with AI has very little impact on people’s attitudes to the
technology.
40. AI applications which users are able to modify are more likely to gain
consumer approval.

Answers

Practice Test 1

1. YES
2. NO
3. NO
4. YES
5. NOT GIVEN
6. F
7. G
8. C
9. A
10. B
11. D
12. A
13. C
14. B
15. C
16. B
17. E
18. G
19. D
20. human error
21. car(-)sharing
22. ownership
23. mileage
24. & 25. C, D [In either order]
26. & 27. A, E [In either order]
28. A
29. C
30. C
31. D
32. A
33. B
34. E
35. A
36. D
37. E
38. B
39. (unique) expeditions
40. uncontacted/isolated

Practice Test 2

1. posts
2. canal
3. ventilation
4. lid
5. weight
6. climbing
7. FALSE
8. NOT GIVEN
9. FALSE
10. TRUE
11. gold
12. (the) architect('s) (name)
13. (the) harbour / harbor
14. A
15. B
16. D
17. B
18. D
19. H
20. F
21. B
22. C
23. TRUE
24. FALSE
25. NOT GIVEN
26. TRUE
27. iii
28. vi
29. ii
30. i
31. vii
32. v
33. C
34. B
35. A
36. NO
37. NOT GIVEN
38. YES
39. NO
40. YES
For improving the level of your preparation, use our IELTS Reading Books.

You’ve got this! Best of luck!