IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 5: 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 Invention of the Weekend

13 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 1
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
1	FALSE	“Rest was frequent but irregular”	The passage says rest was frequent but irregular, which contradicts "regular intervals".Trap: Opposite Meaning
2	TRUE	“Employers disliked it and could not easily stop it”	"Could not easily stop it" matches "difficult to prevent" directly.
3	TRUE	“offered a half-day on Saturday in exchange for a full and sober Monday”	"In exchange for a full and sober Monday" is the same trade the statement describes.
4	NOT GIVEN	“Some American employers found it simpler to close for both days than to operate a divided workforce”	The passage attributes the decision to employers finding it simpler. No campaign by workers is mentioned anywhere, in either direction.Trap: Outside Text
5	FALSE	“his stated reasoning was commercial”	He is "often credited with generosity", but his stated reasoning was commercial — the passage separates the two explicitly.Trap: Partial Truth
6	FALSE	“by making longer hours expensive rather than illegal”	The Act made long hours expensive and explicitly not illegal.Trap: Opposite Meaning
7	weather	“the rhythm of work followed daylight, harvest and weather rather than a calendar”	One word, third in a list of three.
8	Saint Monday	“widespread enough to acquire an ironic name: Saint Monday”	Two words, within the limit; the capital letters come from the passage.
9	consume	“workers without time could not consume”	One word; keep the base form the sentence requires.
10	withdraw	“it made it difficult to withdraw”	One word, from the last sentence of paragraph E.
11	B — Skilled workers were scarce and were paid per item produced.	“because skilled workers were scarce and the work was paid by the piece”	The reason is given directly, introduced by "because". A: The passage calls it "an informal custom rather than a law". C: The five-day week arrives in paragraph D, in 1926 — long after the custom described here. D: Employers "disliked it".
12	B — It contributed without anyone intending it to.	“Religion supplied the second ingredient, and it did so by accident.”	"By accident" is exactly the claim: an unintended contribution. A: It is called the second ingredient of several, and no claim is made about every country. C: It helped produce the two-day closure rather than delaying it. D: The passage describes factories with a substantial Jewish workforce, not Jewish ownership.
13	C — They depend on conditions that no longer apply as they once did.	“none of those conditions holds in the same way now”	Paragraph F lists the three conditions and says none holds in the same way now. A: The writer calls the history "less encouraging than advocates usually allow". B: No prediction of failure is made; the point is that the earlier conditions were specific and slow. D: The reverse: those workers were "the parts of the workforce it reached last".

Passage 2: The Ocean's Carbon Pump

13 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 2
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
Paragraph A	vii — How much the ocean absorbs, and by what route	“Every year the ocean absorbs roughly a quarter of the carbon dioxide released.”	The quantity absorbed (about a quarter) and the route (biological) are both given here.
Paragraph B	i — A downward journey made largely of waste	“The sinking material is unglamorous.”	Faecal pellets, dead cells and marine snow — the paragraph is about what the sinking material actually consists of.
Paragraph C	ii — Why the depth reached decides the timescale	“Depth is what converts a temporary store into a long one.”	A thousand metres means a century; two hundred metres means a few years. Depth sets the timescale.
Paragraph D	iii — A pump that needs no living organisms	“A second pump operates without biology at all.”	The solubility pump works on temperature and density, with no organism involved.
Paragraph E	iv — The daily migration that carries carbon down	“Animals contribute in a way that was long overlooked.”	The nightly rise and daily return of fish and zooplankton, moving carbon actively.
Paragraph F	v — Why the totals remain so uncertain	“Measurement remains the field's central difficulty.”	Traps disturb the flow, satellites infer, profiles are sparse, and the estimates differ twofold.
Paragraph G	vi — Caution about deliberate intervention	“Proposals to strengthen the pump deliberately have met with caution.”	Iron fertilisation produces blooms; whether the carbon stays down is unproven, which is the objection.
21	B — the speed at which the particles fall	“sinking speed rather than total production determines how much carbon reaches depth”	Stated directly at the end of paragraph B. A: Explicitly rejected: sinking speed matters "rather than total production". C: Temperature governs the separate solubility pump in paragraph D, not this. D: Animals move carbon actively (paragraph E), but the passage does not make their number the determinant here.
22	C — The process it depends on reverses as surface water warms.	“since the same process runs in reverse as the surface warms”	The reason is given in the same sentence, introduced by "since". A: The solubility pump "operates without biology at all". B: High latitudes are where chilling happens, but that is not why warming threatens it. D: No comparison of the two pumps' volumes is made in the passage.
23	B — Proving the carbon reaches and stays at depth is far harder than producing a bloom.	“demonstrating that the resulting carbon reaches depth and stays there is a far harder measurement than demonstrating the bloom itself”	The gap between producing a bloom and proving sequestration is named as where the objection sits. A: The opposite: "blooms have been produced repeatedly in controlled experiments". C: Cost is never mentioned in the passage. D: Controlled experiments are described as having been run repeatedly.
24	marine snow	“the sticky aggregates that oceanographers call marine snow”	Two words, named directly in the passage.
25	a century (also accepted: century, over a century, a century or)	“isolated from the atmosphere for a century or more”	The passage says "a century or more"; any form of that within three words is accepted.
26	two (also accepted: 2, factor of two, a factor of)	“Published estimates of the total flux differ by a factor of two”	The number alone answers the question; the full phrase is also within three words.

Passage 3: What Museums Are For

14 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 3
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
27	NO	“they are pursuing different mandates that the institution has never chosen between”	The passage says explicitly that neither is making an error — the fault lies with an institution that has never chosen between the mandates.Trap: Partial Truth
28	NO	“Attendance figures have become the measure of success by default rather than by decision”	"By default rather than by decision" contradicts "deliberate choice" directly.Trap: Opposite Meaning
29	YES	“which is a genuine gain”	Searchability and wider access are called a genuine gain, even though the paragraph is otherwise sceptical.
30	NO	“appears not to reduce physical visits, which was the fear and is now the reassurance”	The fear was not realised: digitisation appears not to reduce physical visits.Trap: Opposite Meaning
31	YES	“a museum cannot optimise for all of its purposes and should say which it is choosing”	This is the stated conclusion of the final paragraph.
32	five	“displays under five per cent of what it holds”	One word, written as a word in the passage.
33	deaccessioning	“Deaccessioning — selling or transferring items”	The term is defined by the dash that follows it.
34	evidence	“changes the object into evidence”	One word from paragraph C.
35	objects	“advanced almost exclusively by institutions that happened to hold the objects”	Keep the plural as the passage has it.
36	corrections	“attracts corrections from people the institution never employed”	One word; "institution" in the passage becomes "museum" in the summary, but the gap word is unchanged.
37	finds the same disputes recurring.	“A museum that claims all five purposes equally”	Paragraph G: those claiming all five purposes equally "are the ones whose disputes recur".
38	is being presented as though it explains itself.	“An object displayed with only a date and a place”	Paragraph C: such an object "is presented as self-explanatory".
39	are slow, disputed and costly to establish.	“Measures of success other than attendance”	Paragraph E: the alternative measures are "slow, contested and expensive to establish".
40	have found their other decisions easier.	“Institutions that have named a single priority”	Paragraph G: stating a priority left institutions with "their other decisions easier".

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 5: Answers & Explanations

Passage 1: The Invention of the Weekend

Passage 2: The Ocean's Carbon Pump

Passage 3: What Museums Are For

Convert your score out of 40

Turn the wrong answers into a band