Cambridge IELTS 14 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 14 Test 2 mixes biography, architecture and organisational theory. Passage 1 profiles Alexander Henderson, the Scottish-born landscape photographer who emigrated to Canada in 1855. Passage 2, Back to the future of skyscraper design, argues that ingenious nineteenth-century buildings hold lessons for low-energy modern towers. Passage 3, Why companies should welcome disorder, takes on the multi-billion dollar productivity industry.

Eight True/False/Not Given questions and five note completions structure Passage 1 — these notes follow the chronology, so anchor on dates. Passage 2 features a five-item classifying task and an eight-gap summary, which together account for thirteen of the forty marks — start with the classifying questions, since each refers to a named architect. Passage 3 ends with eight headings on organisational themes plus three sentence completions and three True/False/Not Given.

Spend seventeen minutes on Henderson, twenty on skyscrapers, and twenty on disorder, with three minutes to transfer. Henderson took long exposures and stayed still — sometimes you must do the same with a tricky paragraph rather than re-reading too soon. The disorder passage is opinion-rich, so distinguish the writer's argument from the studies he cites before answering the True/False set.

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