IELTS Reading Passages with Answers and Explanations
Browse IELTS reading passages with full answer keys, per-question explanations, and exam-style practice links.
- What Lucy Taught Us
On a Sunday morning in late November 1974, a team of scientists were digging in an isolated spot in the Afar region of Ethiopia. Surveying the area, palaeoanthropologist Donald Johanson spotted a small piece of bone....
- Marketing and The Information Age
For the early practitioners of marketing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the business of selling was simply a matter of continually finding new customers. By contrast, marketing managers in the current era...
- The Origin of Paper
The word paper derives from the Greek term for the ancient Egyptian writing material called papyrus. In about 2400 BC, the Egyptians discovered how to make a writing surface out of papyrus, a type of reed that grows a...
- The Exploration of Mars
In 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, made drawings and maps of the Martian surface that suggested strange features. The images from telescopes at that time were not as sharp as today’s. Schiaparelli...
- Sorry - who are you?
It was Jacob Hodes' first day at college. He recalled spending an enjoyable afternoon being shown around campus by a second year students name Daniel Byrne, who happened to be from his home town, Jacob then spent the...
- The Blockbuster Phenomenon: A New Museum Trend
Since the 1980s, the term ‘blockbuster’ has become the fashionable word for spectacular, high-profile museum exhibitions that have the ability to attract large crowds. A blockbuster is a ‘large-scale loan exhibition t...
- Conformity
During your childhood, there will have been some kind of craze which affected all the people in your school. It may have been to do with a particular toy or possibly a must-have item of clothing. It may have been some...
- Ideal Homes
The traditional kampung houses of Malaysia do not need air-conditioning. Built on stilts and with steep roofs, they have year-round ventilation. The raised structure ensures a cooling breeze comes up through the floor...
- The importance of law
The law influences all of us virtually all the time, it governs almost all aspects of our behavior, and even what happens to us when we are no longer alive. It affects us from the embryo onwards. It governs the air we...
- What is an unfair advantage in sport?
What happened to the Australian athlete Ron Clarke in the 10,000 metres at the Mexico City Olympics of 1968 is now virtually forgotten, though at the time it was headline news. Clarke was the greatest distance runner...
- Mammoth Kill
Although it’s hard to imagine in this age of urban sprawl and automobiles, North America once belonged to huge, elephant-like mammoths, camels, bear-sized beavers and other giant beasts, collectively known as ‘megafau...
- Clarence Birdseye and the Development of Frozen Food
Born in 1886 in New York, the American naturalist Clarence Birdseye had an instinctive curiosity, a love of food, and a strong entrepreneurial streak. At the age of ten, he was hunting, selling live animals, and teach...
- A new look for Talbot Park
The new Talbot Park is immediately eye-catching because the buildings look quite different to other state-housing projects in Auckland. ‘There is no reason why state housing should look cheap in my view,’ says archite...
- New Zealand home textile crafts of the 1930s to 1950s
Domestic crafts do not build monuments to their makers, nor do they create wealth, and too often they have not survived. In consequence, the domestic crafts produced by mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers in...
- A survivor's story
*The morepork*
- The Voynich Manuscript
The starkly modern Beinecke Library at Yale University is home to some of the most valuable books in the world: first folios of Shakespeare, Gutenberg Bibles and manuscripts from the early Middle Ages. Yet the library...
- The Importance of Business Cards
The ritual may be universal, but the details of business cards and how they are swapped vary across countries. Americans throw their cards casually across a table; the Japanese make the exchange of cards a formal cere...
- Improving Patient Safety
One of the most prominent design issues in pharmacy is that of drug packages and the patient information leaflets (PILs) included in them. Many pharmacists are concerned that current designs are 'accidents waiting to...
- Book Review:
The English explorer and writer John Franklin (1786-1847) joined the Navy at the age of 14, and fought at the battle of Trafalgar. When peace came, he turned his attention to Arctic exploration, and in particular to s...
- Book review: Triumph of the City
*Triumph of the City*, by Edward Glaeser, is a thrilling and very readable hymn of praise to an invention so vast and so effective that it is generally taken for granted. More than half the global population already l...
- Mind Music
Ever had a song stuck in your head, playing on an endless loop? Scientists call them 'involuntary musical images', or 'earworms, and a wave of new research is shining light on why they occur and what can be learned fr...
- The People of Patagonia
Anthropologists continue to investigate human migration to Patagonia at the southern tip of South America. The human settlement of the southern extremity of the Americas has always fascinated pre-historians. Viewed fr...
- Hunting Perfume in Madagascar
Ever since the unguentari plied their trade in ancient Rome, perfumers have had to keep abreast of changing fashions. These days they have several thousand ingredients to choose from when creating new scents, but ther...
- The problem with graffiti
The term graffiti derives from the Italian graffito meaning 'scratching' and can be defined as uninvited marking or writing scratched or applied to objects, built structures and natural features. It is not a new pheno...
- How a prehistoric predator took to the skies
Pterosaurs existed from the Triassic period, 220 million years ago, to the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, when South America pulled away from Africa and the South Atlantic was formed. They are amo...
- The return of monkey life
Hacienda La Pacifica, a remote working cattle ranch in Guanacaste province of northern Costa Rica, has for decades been home to a community of mantled howler monkeys. Other native primates- white-faced capuchin monkey...
- Computer Games for Preschoolers: Nintendo's Research and Design Process
Designing computer games for young children is a daunting task for game producers, who, for a long time, have concentrated on more "hardcore" game fans. This article chronicles the design process and research involved...
- Movement Underwater
Self-propelled motion is a fundamental ability in many organisms. From the beating flagella of tiny plankton keeping afloat near the ocean surface to the playful perfection of dolphins surfing the bow wave of a ship,...
- Desertification
The world's great deserts were formed by natural processes interacting over long intervals of time. During most of these times, deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human activities. Paleodeserts, large sand s...
- A unique golden textile
A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders has gone on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. To produce the golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting...