Cambridge IELTS 13 Academic Reading Test 2

• 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 13 Test 2 follows commerce and biology. Passage 1, Bringing cinnamon to Europe, traces the spice from biblical references through Portuguese, Dutch and British control of the Sri Lankan trade. Passage 2 introduces oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, balancing its bonding effects against newer findings on aggression and bias. Passage 3, Making the Most of Trends, summarises Harvard Business School advice on spotting and exploiting market shifts.

Note completion is heavy in Passage 1, with nine gaps and four True/False/Not Given. Passage 2 brings four matching information, three matching of researchers and a six-gap summary — six gaps means the paraphrase is heavy, so map the answer area first using the matching tasks. Passage 3 ends with five multiple choice, six matching items linking strategies to companies and three sentence endings.

Allow sixteen minutes on cinnamon, twenty on oxytocin, twenty-one on trends, leaving three minutes to transfer. The cinnamon notes follow a clear chronology of trading powers, so anchor on dates. Oxytocin's matching block is the test's tactical centre — read each finding twice and link it to the lab before scanning. The spice trade rewarded those who got there first and stayed organised — a worthwhile reading principle today.

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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