IELTS Reading · Academic · Computer-delivered

IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 7: A Brief History of Tea, How Birds Learn to Sing, The Science of Glass

This is IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 7 on the computer-delivered screen, with 3 passages: A Brief History of Tea, How Birds Learn to Sing, The Science of Glass. 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

  A Brief History of Tea

  Tea began as one evergreen shrub on the China-Myanmar border and became the world's second most popular drink after water.

• Passage 2

  How Birds Learn to Sing

  Young birds learn their songs rather than inherit them, and the passage follows the experiments that showed it.

• Passage 3

  The Science of Glass

  Glass is neither quite solid nor quite liquid, and that odd state is what makes windows, lenses and fibre optics possible.

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 headings
• Sentence completion
• Matching features
• Table completion
• 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.