Cambridge IELTS 15 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 15 Test 2 connects civic design, biotechnology and humour in an unusually paraphrase-heavy paper. Passage 1 asks whether urban engineers could learn from dance to make cities more pedestrian-friendly, drawing on choreographers' ideas about flow and shared space. Passage 2 weighs the ethics and feasibility of de-extinction, focusing on the lost passenger pigeon and modern gene-editing techniques. Passage 3, Having a laugh, summarises psychological research on humour and laughter, including how early in life a sense of humour appears.

Summary completion dominates the paper with seventeen gaps in total. Passage 1 has six matching information items and a seven-gap summary — start with the summary so you know which paragraphs hold the matching answers. Passage 2 brings four matching information, a five-gap summary and four matching items linking arguments to scientists. Passage 3 closes with five multiple choice, a five-gap summary and four True/False/Not Given items.

Aim for nineteen minutes on the dance and city passage, twenty on de-extinction, twenty on humour, with one minute to transfer. Three summaries in one paper means the tactic is constant: read the summary completely first, then attack the passage with that map in mind.

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.