Cambridge IELTS 19 Academic Reading Test 1

• 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 19 Test 1 ranges over sport, ancient maritime crime and modern misinformation. Passage 1 traces how tennis rackets have changed from wooden frames to graphite composites. Passage 2 examines the pirates of the ancient Mediterranean and the cliché of the modern pirate image. Passage 3, The persistence and peril of misinformation, by Brian Southwell, looks at how brains process and verify claims.

Passage 1 opens with seven True/False/Not Given and six note completions — both blocks are sequential to the racket history, so do not skip ahead. Passage 2 brings six matching information items, two two-answer multiple choice and a three-gap summary; the matching information block is the largest single task in the paper. Passage 3 closes with four multiple choice, a six-gap summary and four Yes/No/Not Given on Southwell's clear position.

Plan sixteen minutes on tennis, twenty-one on pirates, and twenty on misinformation, with three minutes to transfer. The pirates passage layers myth, history and scholarship, so distinguish what ancient sources claimed from what modern historians now think. Misinformation spreads when readers do not check sources — make sure each Yes/No/Not Given choice has its source paragraph noted in the margin.

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