IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 1: Answers & Explanations

All 40 answers below, each with the exact line of the passage that proves it and the reason the tempting wrong option was tempting. If you have not sat the test yet, do that first — a key read before the attempt teaches nothing.

Passage 1: The Return of the Urban Beehive

13 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 1
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
Paragraph A	vi — A practice once considered unsuitable for cities	“For most of the twentieth century, keeping bees was understood as a rural occupation.”	The paragraph is about beekeeping having been seen as rural, with rooftop colonies thought "eccentric" — a practice once considered unsuitable for cities.
Paragraph B	iii — Why cities suit bees better than farmland	“The reason is not sentimental.”	The whole paragraph contrasts one flowering crop on farmland with the varied, longer season a city offers.
Paragraph C	ii — An unexpected finding about honey composition	“Honey yields reflect this.”	Yields were merely equal; the stated surprise was the "chemical profile" — pollen range and heavy metals. Heading iv is a trap: the passage never discusses commercial value.
Paragraph D	v — A criticism of the focus on one species	“Enthusiasm has not gone unchallenged.”	Entomologists argue the focus on the honeybee has distorted understanding, since wild bees are the group in trouble.
Paragraph E	vii — Evidence that depends on local conditions	“Evidence for that competition is mixed but not negligible.”	The findings held only near dense clusters and vanished where flower cover was high — the conclusion is explicitly "conditional".
Paragraph F	i — A change in what campaigners request	“This has quietly shifted what campaigners ask for.”	The ask has moved from permitting hives to changing mowing and planting.
Paragraph G	viii — Beekeepers adopting a broader view	“Beekeepers themselves have proved receptive to this argument.”	Beekeepers capping hive numbers and requiring forage checks is the trade taking the wider view. Heading ix is a trap: subsidies appear only as the old recommendation in F.
8	TRUE	“in several capitals urban colonies now outnumber those in the surrounding countryside”	"Several capitals" and "outnumber" match the statement directly.
9	FALSE	“levels of heavy metals were generally below the thresholds set for food safety”	The text says levels were below food-safety thresholds — the opposite of dangerous.Trap: Opposite Meaning
10	FALSE	“it is not, on any conventional measure, endangered”	The passage states directly that the honeybee is not endangered.Trap: Opposite Meaning
11	FALSE	“though the effect disappeared where flower cover was high”	The effect was conditional on flower cover, so "regardless of how many flowers were available" contradicts the text.Trap: Extreme Language
12	TRUE	“all raise forage across an entire district at a fraction of the cost”	"At a fraction of the cost" of the hive-based approach described in the previous sentence supports the comparison.
13	FALSE	“require new members to demonstrate nearby forage before approval”	Associations set a condition on new members, not a refusal, and the text says "several" associations, not most.Trap: Extreme Language

Passage 2: The Economics of Repair

13 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 2
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
14	B — a change in the relative prices of goods and skilled labour.	“it begins with the relative price of two things: manufactured goods and skilled labour”	Stated directly at the end of paragraph A and developed throughout paragraph B. A: The passage names this explanation only to reject it — "often explained as a moral decline… but the arithmetic tells a less comfortable story". C: High-street premises are mentioned as a feature of 1960, not offered as a cause. This is a real detail placed in the wrong causal role. D: Planned obsolescence is never mentioned anywhere in the passage.
15	B — responding correctly to the prices they can see.	“is responding accurately to the prices in front of them”	A direct restatement of the final sentence of paragraph B. A: The passage says the opposite: replacement "stopped being" irrational for the owner. C: Awareness is not discussed; the argument is about price, not information. D: Desire for new features never appears in the passage.
16	B — It excludes costs that are borne by other people.	“costs that fall on people other than the buyer”	Paragraph C defines these excluded costs as externalities. A: The passage says manufacturing costs fell while labour costs rose — the reverse. C: The paragraph argues prices are "incomplete", not accurate. D: Cross-country price variation is not discussed.
17	C — repair volumes rose substantially only when both measures applied.	“Only where both conditions held did repair volumes rise substantially”	Stated directly, and reinforced by "the barrier is a compound one". A: Where labour alone was subsidised, "uptake was modest". B: Where parts alone were mandated, they were bought mainly by a small group of self-repairers. D: Both measures had effects; they were just insufficient alone.
18	A — a shortage of trained repair workers.	“repair demand created by subsidy is outrunning the supply of people able to meet it”	The paragraph is entirely about the contracted workforce and lost apprenticeships. B: Parts availability is paragraph D; their cost is not the final paragraph's subject. C: Demand is described as rising, not lacking. D: Regulatory inconsistency is not raised.
19	containerised	“driven by containerised shipping, automated assembly and the relocation of production”	The passage lists three drivers; the missing one before "shipping" is "containerised".
20	externalities	“Economists call these externalities”	The term is given directly. One word, so it fits the limit.
21	sales tax	“Reduced sales tax on repair services, adopted in Sweden and later in Austria”	Two words, within the limit. "Tax" alone would not match the passage wording.
22	apprenticeships	“the collapse of the sector removed the apprenticeships through which the skill passed on”	A direct lift of one word.
23	Paragraph A	“a description of how many appliances a household owned at two points in time”	Paragraph A contrasts "perhaps a dozen powered appliances" in 1960 with "several dozen devices" by 2010.
24	Paragraph B	“the point at which two cost curves crossed”	Paragraph B: "At some point in the 1990s the two lines crossed for most product categories."
25	Paragraph D	“a requirement placed on manufacturers”	Paragraph D: right-to-repair provisions "require manufacturers to supply spare parts and technical documentation".
26	Paragraph E	“an explanation of why partial policy produces less than half the benefit”	Paragraph E concludes that "policy addressing half of it produces less than half the effect".

Passage 3: Remembering Is Not Retrieval

14 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 3
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
27	NO	“each has misled us in its own way”	The writer says the metaphors have misled us, which contradicts the claim that they clarified.Trap: Opposite Meaning
28	NO	“the error is not a detail but the central one”	The writer explicitly calls the error central rather than a detail.Trap: Opposite Meaning
29	NO	“They are not lying.”	A three-word sentence rejects the claim outright.
30	NO	“a memory frequently rehearsed is not thereby more accurate”	The passage states the opposite and gives the mechanism — each reconstruction can drift.Trap: Opposite Meaning
31	YES	“treat a witness's later certainty as evidence about the process rather than about the event”	Reframing certainty as evidence about the questioning process rather than the event is a recommendation to treat it cautiously.
32	NO	“None of this makes memory unreliable in ordinary life, and it is worth resisting that conclusion”	The final paragraph exists to block exactly this inference, and goes on to call reconstruction an adaptation.Trap: Extreme Language
33	connections	“What persists is not a recording but a pattern of connections”	A direct lift; one word.
34	introspection	“the assembly is not available to introspection”	One word, taken exactly as printed.
35	unstable	“returns to an unstable state when it is brought to mind and must be stabilised again”	The adjective is "unstable"; "an unstable state" would exceed a sensible reading of the blank.
36	misinformation	“This is the mechanism behind the misinformation effect”	The named effect is given directly in paragraph D.
37	fidelity	“Memory is optimised for usefulness rather than fidelity”	The contrast pair is "usefulness" and "fidelity".
38	a hard drive (also accepted: hard drive)	“and, most persistently, a hard drive”	"Most persistently" signals the answer; three words or fewer either way.
39	only weakly (also accepted: weakly)	“Confidence in a memory correlates only weakly with its accuracy”	The passage gives the strength as "only weakly".
40	the gist (also accepted: gist)	“what an organism needs is the gist”	A direct lift from the final paragraph.

Convert your score out of 40

Count your correct answers across all three passages. There is no penalty for a wrong answer, so an unanswered question and a wrong guess score the same.

IELTS Academic Reading raw score to band score
Band	Correct (of 40)
9.0	39–40
8.5	37–38
8.0	35–36
7.5	33–34
7.0	30–32
6.5	27–29
6.0	23–26
5.5	19–22
5.0	15–18
4.5	11–14
4.0	7–10
3.5	0–6

Academic conversion. General Training Reading is stricter: band 7 needs 34 correct there against 30 here. Both tables are on the Reading band calculator.

IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 1: Answers & Explanations

Passage 1: The Return of the Urban Beehive

Passage 2: The Economics of Repair

Passage 3: Remembering Is Not Retrieval

Convert your score out of 40

Turn the wrong answers into a band