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IELTS Academic Reading library
Each article has focused questions for detail, inference, vocabulary, purpose, and overall meaning. Start with one passage at a time, then come back for the next set.
Format note
IELTS Academic Reading is a 60-minute test with three sections and 40 questions. This page gives shorter article drills for daily practice.
On hot summer nights, city residents often notice that pavements keep radiating heat long after sunset. This is not simply a feeling. Since the nineteenth century, researchers ha...
For much of the twentieth century, domestic appliances were expected to be repaired. Radios came with circuit diagrams, sewing machines were sold with replacement belts, and loca...
Until recently, many archaeologists assumed that DNA would rarely survive long enough to answer questions about ancient populations. Heat, water, soil chemistry, and time break g...
Coastal wetlands were once treated mainly as empty margins between land and sea. Mangrove forests were cleared for shrimp ponds, salt marshes were drained for roads, and seagrass...
Universities have traditionally organised learning into large qualifications: degrees, diplomas, and certificates that take months or years to complete. Recently, however, many i...
Soil is often described as dirt, a word that makes it sound lifeless. In reality, a spoonful of healthy soil can contain bacteria, fungi, tiny insects, worms, and countless chemi...
Predictions about the death of public libraries have appeared whenever a new information technology becomes popular. Television, home computers, the internet, and smartphones wer...
Waiting is not measured only by clocks. Two queues of equal length can feel very different depending on what people know, what they can see, and whether they believe the process ...
Solar panels are most often imagined on rooftops or open land, but a growing number of projects place them on reservoirs, quarry lakes, and irrigation ponds. This approach, known...
Museums once measured success mainly by the size of their collections and the number of visitors who passed through the door. Those measures still matter, but many institutions n...
Many students treat breaks as a reward earned after long effort, but cognitive research suggests that breaks are part of effective work itself. Attention is not a fixed beam that...
Citizen science projects invite members of the public to collect or classify data for research. Volunteers may count birds, photograph plastic waste, record local rainfall, monit...
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