Cambridge IELTS 20 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 20 Test 2 lines up gentle mammals, a universal bad habit and a baseball innovation. Passage 1 introduces the manatee, a slow-moving aquatic mammal of the order Sirenia. Passage 2 explains why we procrastinate and how the habit can be broken. Passage 3, Invasion of the Robot Umpires, follows the Automated Ball-Strike System trialled in minor league baseball.

Passage 1 features seven True/False/Not Given and six note completions on manatee biology — ideal for warming up. Passage 2 brings three matching information items, a six-gap summary and two two-answer multiple choice; the summary is the central task here, so read it before you scan the passage. Passage 3 ends with six Yes/No/Not Given, a five-gap summary and three multiple choice on the robot umpire.

Allow seventeen minutes on manatees, twenty on procrastination, twenty-one on robot umpires, with two minutes to transfer. The procrastination summary is heavily paraphrased, so read the gapped paragraph fully before scanning for each answer. The robot umpire passage takes a clear sceptical position, so let tone guide the Yes/No/Not Given decisions. Procrastination beats this paper if you let it — start Passage 1 immediately.

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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