Cambridge IELTS 14 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 14 Test 4 looks at biology, captivity and the ocean. Passage 1, The secret of staying young, profiles Pheidole dentata, an ant species that appears not to age. Passage 2, Why zoos are good, has scientist David Hone arguing that good zoos can match wild conditions. Passage 3, How Bad Is Ocean Garbage, Really?, follows ecologist Chelsea Rochman as she audits the dangers of marine plastic.

This paper is unusually completion-heavy: fourteen note completions and seventeen True/False/Not Given items in total. Passage 1 has eight note completions and five True/False/Not Given — the notes are precise paraphrases, so check word forms carefully. Passage 2 brings four matching information, five True/False/Not Given and two two-answer multiple choice items. Passage 3 has the densest single block: seven True/False/Not Given, six note completions and one multiple choice — manage that block as if it were two passages.

Spend sixteen minutes on the ant, eighteen on zoos, twenty-three on ocean garbage, with three minutes to transfer. The Passage 3 cluster of seven True/False/Not Given followed immediately by six note completions is unusually heavy, so save the cleanest minutes for it. Ageing is hard to detect; bad timing is easy to fix.

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.