Band 8+ 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: Why Cities Have Accents

13 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 1
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
1	Paragraph D	“a reason why predicting speech features from location works badly”	Paragraph D: the sharpest features belong to those invested in local networks, "which is why prediction from geography alone performs badly".
2	Paragraph F	“the claim that two apparently opposite processes are one process”	Paragraph F: "dialect levelling and dialect creation are the same process observed at different stages".
3	Paragraph B	“an account of features being lost rather than gained”	Paragraph B: levelling is "largely subtractive" and features "tend to be dropped within a generation".
4	Paragraph C	“the stage at which entirely new features appear”	Paragraph C: "the point at which a new variety acquires features that none of its sources possessed".
5	Paragraph E	“an argument that a change does not reduce precision”	Paragraph E: a lost distinction "has not lost precision" because it is recoverable or replaced.
6	Paragraph A	“the observation that mixed populations do not produce an average”	Paragraph A: a city drawing on many sources "might be expected to produce speech that averages them out, and it does not".
7	TRUE	“varieties as distinct from their sources as the sources were from each other”	The new varieties were as distinct from their sources as those sources were from one another.
8	FALSE	“What survives is not the average of the inputs but the subset that is either shared by many varieties or perceptually neutral”	Widely shared features are precisely what survives levelling; what is dropped is what marks a speaker as local to one place.Trap: Opposite Meaning
9	NOT GIVEN	“Children acquiring a language from a mixed adult input do not select randomly among the variants they hear”	Children are described as doing something different from adults — regularising and simplifying — but no comparison of speed is made anywhere in the passage.Trap: Outside Text
10	FALSE	“not in the most isolated speakers but in those most invested in local networks”	The studies find the opposite: investment in local networks, not isolation, predicts the sharpest features.Trap: Opposite Meaning
11	levelling	“The first stage is levelling, and it is largely subtractive.”	One word, named in the topic sentence of paragraph B.
12	regularise	“they regularise, extending a pattern to cases where no adult applies it”	The verb must keep the form the sentence requires, exactly as in the passage.
13	simpler	“settle on a variant that was rare in the input because it was structurally simpler”	One word; the comparative form is what the passage uses.

Passage 2: The Thermodynamics of Living Things

13 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 2
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
Paragraph A	i — Why the apparent paradox is not one	“The observation that living things become more ordered has been offered as a paradox.”	The paradox "has never been one": the second law constrains isolated systems and organisms are not isolated.
Paragraph B	ii — Two quantities that everyday language runs together	“Stating it precisely requires distinguishing two quantities.”	Energy versus the capacity of energy to do work — the two quantities ordinary language merges.
Paragraph C	iii — A famous phrase that both helped and hindered	“Schrödinger put this to a general audience in 1944.”	"Feeds on negative entropy" is called correct on one reading and misleading on another.
Paragraph D	iv — What accuracy costs, and why it is worth paying	“The costs can be counted, and counting them constrains what is possible.”	Copying fidelity costs far more than the theoretical minimum, and the excess buys accuracy.
Paragraph E	v — Why larger animals spend less per gram	“The same accounting explains a puzzle about size.”	Sub-linear scaling of metabolic rate with mass, and the network geometry that may explain it.
Paragraph F	vi — The limits of arguing from physics to origins	“Attempts to run the argument backwards have been more suggestive than conclusive.”	Dissipation-based origin proposals describe real phenomena but predict nothing in advance.
Paragraph G	vii — Hard limits rather than an explanation	“What the thermodynamic view supplies is a set of hard limits.”	The view supplies limits, not a theory; expecting more has been the recurring error.
21	B — the capacity of energy to perform work	“what is consumed is the capacity of energy to do work”	Stated directly, and restated as needing energy "in a low-entropy form". A: Energy "is conserved and therefore cannot be used up". C: This is precisely the misreading of Schrödinger that paragraph C warns against. D: Nothing in the passage describes organisms consuming one another's waste.
22	B — because the additional expenditure purchases accuracy	“the excess buys accuracy: proofreading steps discard intermediates, and each discard is paid for”	The colon introduces the mechanism: proofreading discards, each paid for. A: The minimum is treated as a known quantity that the observed cost exceeds. C: The opposite — cells that reduce the expenditure make more errors, which implies the expenditure is regulated. D: Size affects metabolic rate in paragraph E, not copying efficiency.
23	C — They explain events afterwards and rule nothing out beforehand.	“A principle that explains a phenomenon after it has occurred and forbids nothing in advance is doing less work than it appears to.”	The final sentence of paragraph F states exactly this. A: The writer grants that they "do describe real phenomena", naming convection cells. B: The complaint is that they predict too little, not too much. D: No inconsistency with the second law is alleged anywhere.
24	1944 (also accepted: in 1944)	“Schrödinger put this to a general audience in 1944”	A date counts as one word.
25	negative entropy	“an organism feeds on negative entropy”	Two words, quoted directly from the passage.
26	sub-linear (also accepted: sublinear)	“the fact that the scaling is sub-linear at all”	One hyphenated word, from the last clause of paragraph E.

Passage 3: The Limits of Expertise

14 marks

Answer key and explanations for passage 3
Q	Answer	Evidence in the passage	Why, and the trap
27	YES	“it is better posed as a question about the environment in which the expertise was acquired”	The opening sentence sets credentials against environment and endorses the second framing.
28	NO	“The difference is not in the difficulty of the task but in the availability of the answer”	Difficulty is explicitly ruled out as the explanation; feedback availability is the variable.Trap: Opposite Meaning
29	NO	“it is not corrected by knowing about it”	The final clause of paragraph D denies exactly this.Trap: Opposite Meaning
30	YES	“improves calibration measurably within months”	Numerical, recorded and scored judgements are said to improve calibration measurably.
31	NO	“None of this supports the conclusion that expertise is worthless, which is the misreading it most often attracts.”	The writer names this reading and rejects it, then lists what experts remain better at.Trap: Extreme Language
32	YES	“Experts remain far better than novices at knowing which question to ask, which data are relevant”	This is the ability the writer explicitly preserves while denying the other.
33	the result of what they do appears almost immediately.	“Anaesthetists develop reliable skill because”	Paragraph B: "the effect of an intervention appears within minutes and is not in doubt".
34	was weakly associated with poorer accuracy.	“Being well known within a forecasting field”	Paragraph C: "fame within a field was weakly negatively correlated with accuracy".
35	when the available evidence is thinnest.	“Subjective certainty tends to be at its highest”	Paragraph D: coherence is easiest when evidence is thin, so certainty is highest where it is least warranted.
36	beats judging the whole at once, even for one person.	“Breaking a judgement into separate components”	Paragraph E: structured decomposition "outperforms holistic judgement… including when both are done by the same person".
37	unambiguous	“feedback that is both prompt and unambiguous”	One word, the second half of a paired condition.
38	chance	“the average expert performed at about the level of chance”	One word; "about" in the passage becomes "roughly" in the sentence.
39	style	“distinguished by cognitive style rather than by qualification”	One word completing the term.
40	format	“to change the format of the question”	One word from the final sentence.

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.

Band 8+ Academic Reading Practice Test 1: Answers & Explanations

Passage 1: Why Cities Have Accents

Passage 2: The Thermodynamics of Living Things

Passage 3: The Limits of Expertise

Convert your score out of 40

Turn the wrong answers into a band