Cambridge IELTS 13 Academic Reading Test 4

• 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 4 covers maritime engineering, soil science and the politics of happiness. Passage 1 profiles the Cutty Sark, the fastest sailing ship ever built. Passage 2, Saving the Soil, summarises a UN report warning that a third of the world's farmable soil is at risk. Passage 3 reviews William Davies's book The Happiness Industry, on the commodification of well-being.

True/False/Not Given is heaviest in Passage 1 with eight items, plus five sentence completions. Passage 2 has a four-gap summary, four sentence endings and a five-item classifying task on soil-protection methods — the classifying section is the pinch point because the categories overlap. Passage 3 ends with three multiple choice, a five-gap summary and six Yes/No/Not Given items where the reviewer's stance and the author's stance must be carefully separated.

Plan eighteen minutes on the Cutty Sark, twenty on soil, twenty on the book review, with two minutes to transfer. Tackle the Cutty Sark's True/False set first, since the technical history is concrete; save the reflective Yes/No on happiness for last. The Cutty Sark won races by trimming sail in time — trim your reading and don't loiter on a single hard True/False question.

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.

Looking for written strategy? See the IELTS Blog for in-depth posts.