Cambridge IELTS 17 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 17 Test 4 weaves together conservation, economic history and cognitive sport. Passage 1, Bats to the rescue, explains how Madagascar's bats are helping protect the island's vanishing forests. Passage 2 asks whether education really fuels economic growth, drawing on a long-term database of southwest German villagers. Passage 3 profiles Timur Gareyev, the blindfold chess champion preparing to play nearly fifty opponents simultaneously.

Passage 1 carries six True/False/Not Given and a seven-row table completion — start with the table, since its rows track distinct paragraph topics. Passage 2 features a five-item classifying task on education claims, a four-gap summary and two two-answer multiple choice questions, with the classifying block the trickiest because the named scholars hold subtly different views. Passage 3 ends with six matching information, four True/False/Not Given and a four-gap summary.

Aim for eighteen minutes on bats, twenty-one on education, twenty on chess, with one minute to transfer. The bat conservation table at the start is the friendliest entry point in the paper, so don't waste time skipping ahead to look at later questions. A blindfold chess player keeps fifty boards in mind at once; you only need three passages, but with equal discipline and steady eyes on the question paper.

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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