IELTS Academic Reading Practice Tests

The Academic Reading test is 60 minutes long.

There are 3 sections. The total text length is 2,150-2,750 words.

Each section contains one long text.
Texts are authentic and are taken from books, journals, magazines and newspapers.
They have been written for a non-specialist audience and are on academic topics of general interest.
Texts are appropriate, and accessible, to test-takers entering undergraduate or
postgraduate courses, or seeking professional registration.
Texts range from descriptive and factual to the discursive and analytical.
Texts may contain non-verbal materials, such as diagrams, graphs or illustrations.
If texts contain technical terms, a simple glossary is provided.

Question types

A variety of questions is used, chosen from the following types: multiple choice, identifying information,

identifying writer’s views/claims, matching information, matching headings, matching features,

matching sentence endings, sentence completion, summary completion, note completion,

table completion, flow-chart completion, diagram label completion, short-answer questions.

Each correct answer receives 1 mark.

Scores out of 40 are converted to the IELTS 9-band scale. Scores are reported in whole and half bands.