Cambridge IELTS 11 Academic Reading Test 1

• Read each passage carefully. You can highlight text by selecting and right-clicking.
• Answer all 40 questions. Move freely between parts using the question palette.
• Submit before time runs out — auto-submit at 60:00.

Cambridge 11 Test 1 lines up three engineering and environmental topics. Passage 1, Crop-growing skyscrapers, makes the case for vertical farms as urban populations climb to eighty per cent of the planet by 2050. Passage 2, The Falkirk Wheel, describes Scotland's rotating boat lift and the canal restoration project it serves. Passage 3, Reducing the Effects of Climate Change, surveys ambitious geo-engineering proposals being explored to slow warming.

Watch for the diagram in Passage 2: the Falkirk Wheel passage carries seven diagram-labelling questions on the lift's mechanism, alongside six True/False/Not Given. Build a quick sketch on your question paper as you read. Passage 1 mixes seven sentence completions with six True/False/Not Given. Passage 3 is unusually structured: three matching information, a seven-row table completion and four matching of geo-engineering schemes — start with the table, since its rows are sequential in the passage, then return for the matching tasks.

Allow eighteen minutes on the skyscraper farms, nineteen on the Wheel diagram, and twenty-three on climate engineering. The Falkirk Wheel rotates with perfect balance — let your time across passages do the same.

New to this skill? Read the Reading question types guide for tactics, scoring rules, and frequency analysis across Cambridge 10–20. Or browse all Reading practice tests.

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