IELTS Reading · Academic · Computer-delivered

IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 6: The Discovery of Longitude, The Language of Bees, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Concrete

This is IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 6 on the computer-delivered screen, with 3 passages: The Discovery of Longitude, The Language of Bees, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Concrete. 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 Discovery of Longitude

  Sailors could find their latitude but not their longitude, and the prize that pushed a clockmaker to solve it.

• Passage 2

  The Language of Bees

  How a returning honeybee tells the hive where food is, and how researchers decoded the dance that carries the message.

• Passage 3

  The Rise and Fall of the Roman Concrete

  Roman harbour concrete has lasted two thousand years in seawater, and chemists have only recently worked out why.

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
• Matching information to paragraphs
• Table completion
• Sentence completion
• Matching headings
• 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.