Cambridge IELTS 15 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 15 Test 4 takes you from Peruvian dryland ecology to a whistled language and finally to corporate environmentalism. Passage 1 follows the return of the huarango tree to the arid valleys of southern Peru. Passage 2 documents Silbo Gomero, the whistle language of La Gomera in the Canary Islands. Passage 3 examines the environmental practices — and incentives — of large corporations.

Note completion dominates again, with twelve gaps in total. Passage 1 mixes five note completions, a three-gap table and five True/False/Not Given. Passage 2 has six True/False/Not Given and seven note completions — do the True/False set first, since the topic flow is linear. Passage 3 finishes with a five-gap summary, four multiple choice and five Yes/No/Not Given. Yes/No/Not Given is decisive here because the writer takes a clear stance on corporate accountability.

Spend nineteen minutes on the huarango, twenty on Silbo, twenty-one on big businesses, with no slack. The Silbo passage is dense with technical vocabulary about whistled tones, so highlight the key terms on a single first read rather than re-reading. Whistled language carries across canyons; clear marking carries you across forty answers.

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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