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IELTS Academic Reading

Discover our official preparation materials for the IELTS Academic Reading test. Discover free practice tests, support tools and more.

The Academic Reading test assesses a wide range of reading skills including your ability to follow an argument, recognise a writer’s opinion, attitude or purpose. It looks at how well you can read to understand main ideas, details, opinions and implied meanings. Your reading comprehension skills are tested, covering skimming, scanning and reading for detail.

The Academic Reading test is made up of 3 long texts which are taken from current books, journals, magazines and newspapers. The texts are related to topics you might face if you were to study at an undergraduate or postgraduate level or apply for professional registration in an English-speaking environment.

You will have to answer 40 questions in the Academic Reading test. These questions can range from multiple choice to identifying information or a writer’s view, matching headings, features and sentence endings, as well as sentence, summary, note, table and flow-chart completions, and short-answer questions.

IELTS - paper sample tests

Academic Reading (60 minutes)

Texts for the Academic Reading test are taken from books, journals, magazines and newspapers.

A variety of tasks is used, including: multiple-choice questions, 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.

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