IELTS Reading · Academic · Computer-delivered

IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 5: The Rise of Vertical Farming, Decision Fatigue and Cognitive Depletion, Quantum Computing and the Future of Cryptography

This is IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 5 on the computer-delivered screen, with 3 passages: The Rise of Vertical Farming, Decision Fatigue and Cognitive Depletion, Quantum Computing and the Future of Cryptography. You can start it free in your browser — no download.

• 60 minutes
• 40 questions
• Reading passages on screen

What is in this test

• Passage 1

  The Rise of Vertical Farming

  Stacked indoor farms promise food grown next to the people who eat it, but the electricity bill decides whether they work.

• Passage 2

  Decision Fatigue and Cognitive Depletion

  Evidence that the quality of your choices drops as the day goes on, and the experiments used to test that claim.

• Passage 3

  Quantum Computing and the Future of Cryptography

  Why a working quantum computer would break the encryption that protects online payments, and what is being built to replace it.

Question types in this test

This test uses 7 of the Reading question types. Each one links to what it asks for and the mistakes that cost marks:

• True / False / Not Given
• Sentence completion
• Matching headings
• Note completion
• Matching features
• Multiple choice (one answer)
• Summary completion

Timing and marking

You get 60 minutes for all 40 questions, and there is no extra time at the end to copy answers across — on screen, what you type is already your answer.

There are 40 questions, one mark each, so your raw score is out of 40. The results screen shows which questions you got right, grouped by question type, so you can see where the marks went.

What is different on a computer

The passage sits on one side and the questions on the other, with a divider you can drag. You select text and highlight it instead of underlining with a pencil, and you can search the passage. Practising that is the point of this site.