Cambridge IELTS 18 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 18 Test 2 puts ancient mystery alongside modern AI alongside Renaissance utopia. Passage 1 surveys the long-debated mysteries of Stonehenge — the 100 massive upright stones on Salisbury Plain and the estimated 1,500 years of construction. Passage 2, Living with artificial intelligence, asks whether powerful AI must eventually police human values, drawing on a decade of dramatic machine-learning achievements. Passage 3, An ideal city, examines Leonardo da Vinci's centuries-ahead-of-its-time vision of a planned urban environment with multiple levels for traffic and water.

Note completion (eight gaps) and True/False/Not Given (five) structure Passage 1 — the notes follow the construction phases. Passage 2 mixes six multiple choice, four Yes/No/Not Given and a three-gap summary; multiple choice is unusually heavy in the AI section, so eliminate clearly wrong options first. Passage 3 ends with seven True/False/Not Given and a seven-gap summary, both substantial blocks tied to da Vinci's drawings and notebooks.

Plan eighteen minutes on Stonehenge, twenty-one on AI, twenty on da Vinci, with one minute to transfer. Stonehenge was built in stages over centuries — your reading plan only needs sixty minutes, but the same staged discipline applies.

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