IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 6: 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: Reading the Rings of Trees

13 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 1
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
Paragraph A	i — A shared pattern that works as a signature	“Anyone who has looked at a cut stump knows that a tree adds a ring each year.”	Rings vary in width, the pattern is shared by trees in one climate, and that pattern "is a signature".
Paragraph B	ii — Joining samples to reach further back in time	“The technique was worked out in Arizona in the early twentieth century.”	Douglass overlapped a living tree with an older beam, and repeating the overlap extends the record.
Paragraph C	iii — Exact years, but only where a reference exists	“The method's precision is its distinguishing feature and its limitation.”	Accurate to the calendar year, but useless without a reference chronology for that species and region.
Paragraph D	iv — Uses outside archaeology	“Its uses have spread well beyond archaeology.”	Fire scars, art panels and violins — applications beyond archaeology.
Paragraph E	v — The difficulty of reconstructing past climate	“The most contested application is climate reconstruction.”	Temperature against rainfall, contested assumptions, and the unexplained divergence.
6	TRUE	“an astronomer who was studying sunspots and wanted a long record of climate”	The passage names his research subject and the reason he wanted a climate record.
7	FALSE	“accurate to the exact calendar year, which radiocarbon dating cannot approach”	Exact-year accuracy is what ring dating achieves and radiocarbon dating explicitly cannot.Trap: Opposite Meaning
8	FALSE	“the sample cannot be dated at all, however well preserved it is”	Without a reference chronology for that species and region, preservation is irrelevant.Trap: Extreme Language
9	NOT GIVEN	“Instrument makers have used it on violins, with results that were not always welcome to their owners”	The passage says the results were sometimes unwelcome, which invites the inference but never states that any instrument was shown to be a forgery.Trap: Outside Text
10	insect outbreaks	“Rings record drought, fire scars, insect outbreaks and volcanic dust years”	Two words; the remaining item in the list of four.
11	the season (also accepted: season)	“in favourable cases to the season within that year”	Either with or without the article is within the limit.
12	a reference chronology (also accepted: reference chronology)	“the pattern must match a reference chronology built for that species and that region”	Three words at most; the qualifying clause is not part of the answer.
13	the divergence (also accepted: divergence)	“the divergence is real, unexplained”	One word plus its article, taken from the final sentence.

Passage 2: The Bridge That Taught Engineers About Crowds

13 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 2
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
14	Paragraph F	“a comparison with a lesson learned earlier in a different branch of engineering”	Paragraph F: wind engineering "had learned the same lesson from suspension bridges seventy years earlier".
15	Paragraph C	“why a bridge can pass a test and still fail in use”	Paragraph C: the transition is abrupt, "which is why testing with a light crowd can pass a bridge that will fail with a heavy one".
16	Paragraph D	“the share of the original budget that the repair consumed”	Paragraph D: the retrofit "cost roughly a fifth of the original construction budget".
17	Paragraph B	“an explanation of why walkers fall into step without choosing to”	Paragraph B: "The crowd does not decide to walk in step; the bridge recruits them."
18	B — The structure turned out to be strong enough.	“The bridge was strong enough.”	Stated in a four-word sentence at the end of paragraph A. A: Pedestrian density matters to the mechanism, but the first assumption was about miscalculated loads, and the passage rejects it by saying the bridge was strong enough. C: Wind appears only in paragraph F, and as a parallel case rather than a cause here. D: The dampers were fitted afterwards, as the remedy.
19	B — sideways motion makes walking uncomfortable.	“A bridge with a slight sideways motion makes walking uncomfortable, and pedestrians instinctively adjust their step to stay balanced”	Discomfort and balance are given as the cause, and the adjustment is called instinctive. A: The passage denies any decision: "The crowd does not decide to walk in step." C: No instruction to pedestrians is mentioned anywhere. D: The walkers end up matching the bridge's frequency, but the passage does not say the bridge matched normal walking rate.
20	B — The behaviour appears suddenly above a certain crowd density.	“The transition is abrupt rather than gradual, which is why testing with a light crowd can pass a bridge that will fail with a heavy one”	Threshold behaviour: below the density nothing happens, above it the amplitude grows within seconds. A: Walking speed is not discussed in the passage. C: The dampers were the remedy fitted afterwards, not part of the test. D: Explicitly denied — the transition is "abrupt rather than gradual".
21	B — Design codes, since the physics was known but unused.	“The episode changed practice rather than theory.”	Practice rather than theory: codes now specify lateral pedestrian loading explicitly. A: The physics "had been described decades earlier" — it did not change. C: The codes are precisely what changed. D: The two cases are now taught together, but the change described is to design codes.
22	excitation	“synchronous lateral excitation”	One word completing the technical term.
23	energy	“which adds energy to the motion rather than damping it”	One word, lifted directly.
24	mass	“Engineers fitted viscous dampers and tuned mass dampers”	One word inside a compound term.
25	fifth	“the retrofit cost roughly a fifth of the original construction budget”	One word; "roughly" becomes "about" in the summary.
26	weight	“treats a crowd as a static weight will not find this failure”	One word from paragraph F.

Passage 3: Against Originality

14 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 3
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
27	YES	“it is historically recent”	Stated in the opening sentence and supported by the account of pre-eighteenth-century praise.
28	NO	“the more concrete driver was commercial”	The writer reports that attribution and then corrects it: the concrete driver was the replacement of patronage by a market.Trap: Partial Truth
29	YES	“The practical consequence for how artists train has been substantial and mostly unremarked.”	"Substantial" is the writer's own assessment, and the paragraph explains what was lost with it.
30	NO	“nobody regards the resulting musician as derivative”	Jazz training is offered as a counter-example: transcription produces the vocabulary that makes improvisation possible.Trap: Opposite Meaning
31	YES	“coherent in principle and unstable in application”	The writer grants that it is coherent in principle while calling it unstable in application.
32	NO	“What is genuinely new is the scale and the automation, not the principle that new work is made out of old work”	Scale and automation are new; the principle is explicitly said not to be.Trap: Extreme Language
33	jazz training	“Its students still learn by reproducing existing work exactly.”	Paragraph D: a jazz player transcribes solos "note for note" until the phrasing is automatic.
34	training in painting	“It gave up the method by which technique used to be passed on.”	Paragraph C: removing copying "removed the mechanism by which technique had been transmitted".
35	copyright law	“It rests on a distinction that works better in theory than in practice.”	Paragraph E: expression versus ideas is "coherent in principle and unstable in application".
36	generative systems	“It has made an old argument more visible without altering it.”	Paragraph F: digital tools "made the tension visible rather than creating it".
37	compliment	“Imitation was the method, the curriculum and the compliment”	One word, third in a list of three.
38	merchandising	“Novelty is a merchandising property before it is an aesthetic one”	One word, lifted unchanged.
39	constraint	“players describe the process as the opposite of constraint”	One word from the end of paragraph D.
40	takes	“what the work does with what it takes”	One word; the verb form must stay as the passage has it.

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 6: Answers & Explanations

Passage 1: Reading the Rings of Trees

Passage 2: The Bridge That Taught Engineers About Crowds

Passage 3: Against Originality

Convert your score out of 40

Turn the wrong answers into a band