IELTS Reading Passages with Answers and Explanations

Browse IELTS reading passages with full answer keys, per-question explanations, and exam-style practice links.

• The Origin of Paper

  The word paper derives from the Greek term for the ancient Egyptian writing material called papyrus. In about 2400 BC, the Egyptians discovered how to make a writing surface out of papyrus, a type of reed that grows a...

• The Exploration of Mars

  In 1877, Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer, made drawings and maps of the Martian surface that suggested strange features. The images from telescopes at that time were not as sharp as today’s. Schiaparelli...

• Sorry - who are you?

  It was Jacob Hodes' first day at college. He recalled spending an enjoyable afternoon being shown around campus by a second year students name Daniel Byrne, who happened to be from his home town, Jacob then spent the...

• The Blockbuster Phenomenon: A New Museum Trend

  Since the 1980s, the term ‘blockbuster’ has become the fashionable word for spectacular, high-profile museum exhibitions that have the ability to attract large crowds. A blockbuster is a ‘large-scale loan exhibition t...

• Conformity

  During your childhood, there will have been some kind of craze which affected all the people in your school. It may have been to do with a particular toy or possibly a must-have item of clothing. It may have been some...

• Ideal Homes

  The traditional kampung houses of Malaysia do not need air-conditioning. Built on stilts and with steep roofs, they have year-round ventilation. The raised structure ensures a cooling breeze comes up through the floor...

• The importance of law

  The law influences all of us virtually all the time, it governs almost all aspects of our behavior, and even what happens to us when we are no longer alive. It affects us from the embryo onwards. It governs the air we...

• What is an unfair advantage in sport?

  What happened to the Australian athlete Ron Clarke in the 10,000 metres at the Mexico City Olympics of 1968 is now virtually forgotten, though at the time it was headline news. Clarke was the greatest distance runner...

• Mammoth Kill

  Although it’s hard to imagine in this age of urban sprawl and automobiles, North America once belonged to huge, elephant-like mammoths, camels, bear-sized beavers and other giant beasts, collectively known as ‘megafau...

• Clarence Birdseye and the Development of Frozen Food

  Born in 1886 in New York, the American naturalist Clarence Birdseye had an instinctive curiosity, a love of food, and a strong entrepreneurial streak. At the age of ten, he was hunting, selling live animals, and teach...

• A new look for Talbot Park

  The new Talbot Park is immediately eye-catching because the buildings look quite different to other state-housing projects in Auckland. ‘There is no reason why state housing should look cheap in my view,’ says archite...

• New Zealand home textile crafts of the 1930s to 1950s

  Domestic crafts do not build monuments to their makers, nor do they create wealth, and too often they have not survived. In consequence, the domestic crafts produced by mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers in...

• A survivor's story

  *The morepork*

• The Voynich Manuscript

  The starkly modern Beinecke Library at Yale University is home to some of the most valuable books in the world: first folios of Shakespeare, Gutenberg Bibles and manuscripts from the early Middle Ages. Yet the library...

• The Importance of Business Cards

  The ritual may be universal, but the details of business cards and how they are swapped vary across countries. Americans throw their cards casually across a table; the Japanese make the exchange of cards a formal cere...

• Book Review:

  The English explorer and writer John Franklin (1786-1847) joined the Navy at the age of 14, and fought at the battle of Trafalgar. When peace came, he turned his attention to Arctic exploration, and in particular to s...

• Book review: Triumph of the City

  *Triumph of the City*, by Edward Glaeser, is a thrilling and very readable hymn of praise to an invention so vast and so effective that it is generally taken for granted. More than half the global population already l...

• Mind Music

  Ever had a song stuck in your head, playing on an endless loop? Scientists call them 'involuntary musical images', or 'earworms, and a wave of new research is shining light on why they occur and what can be learned fr...

• The People of Patagonia

  Anthropologists continue to investigate human migration to Patagonia at the southern tip of South America. The human settlement of the southern extremity of the Americas has always fascinated pre-historians. Viewed fr...

• The problem with graffiti

  The term graffiti derives from the Italian graffito meaning 'scratching' and can be defined as uninvited marking or writing scratched or applied to objects, built structures and natural features. It is not a new pheno...

• How a prehistoric predator took to the skies

  Pterosaurs existed from the Triassic period, 220 million years ago, to the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, when South America pulled away from Africa and the South Atlantic was formed. They are amo...

• The return of monkey life

  Hacienda La Pacifica, a remote working cattle ranch in Guanacaste province of northern Costa Rica, has for decades been home to a community of mantled howler monkeys. Other native primates- white-faced capuchin monkey...

• Movement Underwater

  Self-propelled motion is a fundamental ability in many organisms. From the beating flagella of tiny plankton keeping afloat near the ocean surface to the playful perfection of dolphins surfing the bow wave of a ship,...

• Desertification

  The world's great deserts were formed by natural processes interacting over long intervals of time. During most of these times, deserts have grown and shrunk independent of human activities. Paleodeserts, large sand s...

• A unique golden textile

  A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders has gone on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. To produce the golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting...

• The conquest of malaria in Italy

  The word ‘malaria’ means ‘bad air’ in Italian, and this terrible disease marked the life of the people of that country for thousands of years. Yet by 1962, Italy was officially declared malaria-free, and it has remain...

• Tunnelling under the Thames

  At the beginning of the 19th century, the port of London was the busiest in the world. Cargoes that had travelled thousands of miles and survived all the hazards of the sea were unloaded on the banks of the Thames, on...

• The Fascinating World of Attine Ants

  Leaf-cutting ants and their fungus 'farm' are a marvel of nature and perhaps the best-known example of symbiosis the mutual dependence of two species. Ants cultivate a mushroom-like fungus in 'farms'. Both the ants an...

• The history of the pencil

  Pencils have existed for millennia. It is known that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all used small pieces of metal as writing instruments, and that 14th-century European artists made pale grey drawings with...

• Inside the Mind of a Fan: How Watching Sport Affects the Brain

  At about the same time that the poet Homer invented the epic hero, the ancient Greeks started a festival in which men competed in a single race, about 200 metres long. The winner received a branch of wild olives. The...