IELTS Reading Passages with Answers and Explanations
Browse IELTS reading passages with full answer keys, per-question explanations, and exam-style practice links.
- Why don't we sleep?
Fifty-six million prescriptions for sleeping medication were handed out by doctors in America last year. Yet remarkably little is being done to understand insomnia's root causes. Socially and economically, the undertr...
- New Technology in New Zealand's Health Service
At some time in their lives, nearly all New Zealanders will have to attend an after-hours clinic following an emergency or accident. On entering the consulting room, the patient is faced with a barrage of questions. T...
- IQ Scores
Studies from numerous countries suggest that IQ scores have been rising fast since at least the 1950s - enough to mean that someone with an IQ classed as average at that time could be labelled as having low Intelligen...
- Science in the kitchen
There is a recent movement in the world of food, in which chefs are collaborating with scientists to teach themselves the chemistry and physics of cuisine. Even academics are getting excited about the results. Colin O...
- The Origins of Weather Forecasting
The world's first public weather forecast appeared in The Times newspaper over 150 years ago: the beginning of a service that gives everyone something to comment on. The pioneering forecast on August 1, 1861, was intr...
- The importance of icebergs to ocean life
The word iceberg refers to pieces of ice larger than five meters across. The waters surrounding Antarctica are home to most of the icebergs on Earth, although they can also be found in the Arctic region. The water sur...
- An enterprise education programme in Hong Kong
The Teen Entrepreneurs Competition (TEC) is an enterprise education programme developed by the Business Studies Division at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIED) - the major training body for school teachers in...
- Ahead of its time
One October afternoon, a young New Zealander, Sam Tobin, called his dogs and went for a walk down to the nearby Ruamahanga River. Having been very high for days, the river had at last fallen, and Tobin was eager to se...
- The internal body clock
From buffalo to bacteria, oaks to algae, all life follows the same relentless 24-hour cycle, which is driven by the rising and setting of the Sun. Or is it? Over 250 years ago, a French scientist performed a simple ex...
- William Gilbert and Magnetism
The 16th and 17th centuries saw two great pioneers of modern science: Galileo and Gilbert. The impact of their findings is eminent. Gilbert was the first modern scientist, also the accredited father of the science of...
- The History of the Chicken
Chicken is the universal food of our era, crossing cultural boundaries with ease. With its mild taste and uniform texture, chicken presents a blank canvas for the national flavours of almost any cuisine. However, unti...
- LIFE ON MARS?
When scientists began observing Mars with their first primitive telescopes, they assumed from the start that the planet was peopled. The 18th-century astronomer William Herschel, noting the seasons and atmosphere of M...
- Farmers
The chain of stores known as Farmers began one hundred years ago as a mail order company. Today the Farmers chain employs 3,500 staff across 58 branches making it the most venerable institution of its type in New Zeal...
- Herbal Medicine
There is an age-old practice of harvesting plants and herbs in their natural environment for use as medicines. And today there is huge potential for New Zealand to develop a herb industry based on the excellent growin...
- Western Immigration of Canada
By the mid-1870s Canada wanted an immigrant population of agricultural settlers established in the West. No urban centres existed on the prairies in the 1870s, and rural settlement was the focus of the federal governm...
- A mechanical friend for children
The development of robots that interact socially with people and assist them in everyday life has been an elusive goal of modern science. Despite impressive advances in the mechanical aspects of this problem, producin...
- Steam across the water
During the 1600s, very early in the development of steam engines, inventive spirits like the Frenchman Denis Papin dreamed of - and experimented with - boats driven by steam, rather than by the wind or human effort, b...
- Game theory
According to game theory, our chances of success in negotiations are based on the choices of others. Computer models have been developed to work out how events will unfold as people and organizations act in what they...
- Multi-tasking and the brain
Do you think you're a master of multi-tasking? Think again. Unless you are one of the three percent of super-taskers in the population, research shows that your brain is incapable of paying close attention to more tha...
- Seeing the colour of sounds, hearing the colour of numbers
What is the colour of five? What is the sound of blue? To most of us such questions are either meaningless or suitable only for poetry. But for some people these are questions to which very precise answers can be give...
- The Whale Goes to Court
In 1818 a whale became the subject of a controversial court case in New York City. The case involved an old law requiring those who sold fish oil to pay a fee in order to have their barrels inspected by city officials...
- A study of introvert and extrovert characters
We are often labelled as introverts or extroverts, and humans do seem to have biological propensities to behave in certain ways; some of us are naturally more talkative and sociable while others prefer more time alone...
- The Dunedin Study in New Zealand
The New Zealand city of Dunedin in the early 1970s can easily be made to sound idyllic. There was next to no unemployment and people left their doors unlocked at night. New Zealand was then the ninth richest country i...
- REMOVING UNWANTED NOISE
A noisy restaurant, a busy road, or a windy day are all situations that can be intensely frustrating for the hearing impaired when trying to understand what other people are saying. Some 10 million people in the UK su...
- Candles
One of the earliest forms of portable illumination, candles have served vital functions for humankind throughout history, a fact chronicled through the use of candles or candle-like objects in virtually every society....
- Optimism and Health
Medical studies are concluding that optimists really do have something to be cheerful about. If you have a positive outlook, the likelihood is that you will lead a longer life. Coincidental links between Optimism and...
- Practical Learning in the Classroom
The way we think about architecture in schools has come along way. Once, studying architecture in the art class meant learning to appreciate great buildings art- history style, through slide presentations. In recent y...
- The peopling of Patagonia
The human settlement of the southern extremity of the Americas has always fascinated pre-historians. Viewed from a global perspective, this was the last major continental land mass to be reached by human beings. The e...
- Jethro Tull (1674-1741) - Inventor of The Seed Drill
Jethro Tull was a major pioneer in the modernizing of agriculture. He was born in 1674 in Berkshire, southern England, into a family of land-owning gentry. He studied first at Oxford University and then at the Inns of...
- Australia's cane toad problem
In the north of Australia there are many sugar cane plantations, which early in the 20th century were being damaged by a particular pest. This was a species of beetle whose larvae, the infant form of the beetle, live...