Cambridge IELTS 17 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 17 Test 2 spans biblical archaeology, plant breeding and the psychology of discovery. Passage 1 tells the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls, beginning with Bedouin shepherds near Qumran in 1946–47. Passage 2 reports a second domestication of the wild tomato, accomplished in three years by Brazilian and Chinese teams using gene editing. Passage 3, Insight or evolution?, weighs whether scientific discovery springs from genius or gradual learning.

The Dead Sea Scrolls passage opens with eight True/False/Not Given and five note completions in clear chronological order. Passage 2 brings a five-item classifying task on tomato traits, five matching items linking findings to researchers and three sentence completions — the matching block is the hardest single task in the paper. Passage 3 closes with five multiple choice, five Yes/No/Not Given and a four-gap summary.

Plan eighteen minutes on the Scrolls, twenty-one on tomatoes, nineteen on insight, with two minutes to transfer. The Scrolls survived because they were hidden carefully in caves; your answers survive marking only if you transfer them just as carefully. Take a steady breath after each passage and check your answer numbers match the question numbers before moving on.

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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