IELTS Academic Reading gives you 60 minutes for 3 passages and 40 questions, with a total of 2,150 to 2,750 words to read. Passage 1 is normally the most descriptive of the three and the one to finish fastest — a sensible target is 17 minutes, banking time for Passage 3.
The 60 minutes includes transferring your answers, so there is no extra time at the end.
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A. The Eurasian beaver was hunted to extinction in Britain by the sixteenth century, valued for its fur, its meat and castoreum, a secretion once used in medicine and perfume. For four hundred years the species was absent from British rivers, and the landscape adjusted to that absence in ways that were not recognised as absences at all. Rivers were assumed to be naturally fast and straight; wet woodland was assumed to be rare. B. The first legal reintroduction took place in Scotland in 2009, when a small number of families were released in Knapdale under a licensed trial. A second, unlicensed population had already established itself on the River Tay, probably from escaped captive animals, and by the time it was discovered it numbered in the low hundreds. The authorities faced a choice between removal and acceptance, and after a survey period chose acceptance, granting the species legal protection in Scotland in 2019. C. Beavers alter watercourses rather than simply inhabiting them. A family will dam a small stream, creating a pond, and will maintain that dam continuously. The pond raises the local water table, kills some standing trees, and creates the shallow, sunlit water that supports amphibians and invertebrates. Downstream, the dam slows the flow. In catchments studied after reintroduction, peak flows following heavy rain were measurably lower and the water leaving beaver ponds carried less sediment than the water entering them. D. These effects have made beavers attractive to flood managers. A cascade of beaver dams in a headwater stream stores water during a storm and releases it slowly, which is precisely the function that expensive engineered attenuation ponds are built to perform. The comparison is imperfect: beaver dams are not designed to a specification, they can fail, and their location is chosen by the animals rather than by a hydrologist. But they are also built and maintained at no public cost, and they persist for as long as the family remains. E. Not all landowners welcome them. Beavers fell trees close to water, and a mature riverside willow or fruit tree can be lost in a night. Where farmland lies at the same level as a dammed stream, the raised water table can waterlog fields. In the Tay catchment, some farmers removed dams and, before legal protection, shot animals. The conflict is real and largely economic, and it falls unevenly: the flood benefits accrue to communities downstream while the costs fall on the landowner whose field floods. F. Management responses have therefore focused on making coexistence cheaper. Flow devices — pipes set through a dam at a chosen height — cap the pond level without removing the dam, because a beaver responds to the sound and feel of flowing water rather than to the water level itself, and a well-placed pipe is silent. Tree protection is cruder but effective: wire mesh around individual trunks, or sand-and-paint mixtures that beavers dislike gnawing. Compensation schemes and licensed dam removal cover the cases where neither works. G. Reintroduction in England followed later and more cautiously. A trial on the River Otter in Devon ran from 2015, and the population was allowed to remain after a five-year assessment. In 2022 the species was granted legal protection in England, though releases into the wild continued to require a licence, which meant that most English beavers lived in fenced enclosures rather than open catchments. The distinction between enclosed and wild-living populations remains the central question in English beaver policy, because only the second delivers landscape-scale hydrological effects. H. What the beaver case illustrates is a general difficulty with restoring a species that engineers its own habitat. A reintroduced bird changes little. A reintroduced beaver changes the shape of the water, and every downstream interest — farming, fishing, drainage, road engineering — has a stake in that shape. The ecological argument for reintroduction was settled comparatively quickly. The distributional argument, about who bears the costs of a wetter landscape, was not. |
Do the following statements agree with the information in the passage? Write TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN.
Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-H.
Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
| Q | Answer | Evidence | Why not the alternative |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | TRUE | “valued for its fur, its meat and castoreum” (A) | Three products, so “more than one” is supported |
| 2 | FALSE | “A second, unlicensed population” (B) | The passage states the opposite, so FALSE not NOT GIVEN |
| 3 | TRUE | “carried less sediment than the water entering them” (C) | Direct restatement |
| 4 | NOT GIVEN | Paragraph D says beaver dams cost nothing publicly and that engineered ponds are “expensive” | No comparison of the two costs is made, so the ranking is not stated |
| 5 | FALSE | “a beaver responds to the sound and feel of flowing water rather than to the water level itself” (F) | The passage says beavers respond to something other than level, not that they cannot detect level |
| 6 | FALSE | “most English beavers lived in fenced enclosures rather than open catchments” (G) | Directly contradicted |
| 7 | F | Flow devices, tree protection, compensation | — |
| 8 | E | “benefits accrue to communities downstream while the costs fall on the landowner” | Paragraph H restates it generally; E gives the specific explanation |
| 9 | A | “Rivers were assumed to be naturally fast and straight” | — |
| 10 | D | “expensive engineered attenuation ponds” | — |
| 11 | castoreum | Paragraph A | — |
| 12 | water table | Paragraph C | Two words, within the limit |
| 13 | distributional | Paragraph H | — |
These two decide most True/False/Not Given scores, and the distinction is mechanical rather than a matter of judgement.
| Question 4 | Question 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Statement | Engineered ponds cost more to build than beaver dams cost to maintain | Flow devices work because beavers cannot detect water level |
| What the passage says | Engineered ponds are expensive; beaver dams are free to the public | Beavers respond to sound and feel rather than to level |
| Gap | The two figures are never set against each other | — |
| Contradiction | None | “rather than” attributes a different cause, and the statement asserts an inability the passage does not |
| Answer | NOT GIVEN — absent, not denied | FALSE — the stated mechanism is different |
The test is always the same: does the passage say the opposite, or does it not say? Your own knowledge of beavers, hydrology or economics is irrelevant to both.
| Step | Time | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Skim | 2 min | First and last sentence of each paragraph; note the topic of each |
| Read the questions | 2 min | Identify the question types and which need paragraph locations |
| Answer | 12 min | Location questions first, then True/False/Not Given |
| Transfer | 1 min | Write on the answer sheet as you go, not at the end |
| Total | 17 min | Leaves 20 for Passage 2 and 23 for Passage 3 |
| Type | Answers in passage order? | Key rule |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple choice | Yes | All options usually appear; only one answers the stem |
| Identifying information (True/False/Not Given) | Yes | Test against the passage only |
| Matching information | No | A paragraph may hold more than one answer |
| Matching headings | No | More headings than paragraphs; some are unused |
| Sentence completion | Yes | Words must come from the passage, unchanged |
| Summary or note completion | Yes | Check the word limit before writing |
| Short-answer questions | Yes | Answer with passage words, within the limit |
Matching information and matching headings are the two types whose answers do not follow passage order. Doing them first, while the passage structure is fresh from your skim, is more efficient than meeting them halfway through.
About 17 minutes. Passage 1 is usually the most descriptive of the three, so finishing it under 20 minutes leaves 20 for Passage 2 and 23 for Passage 3, which is where the harder argumentative text sits.
No. Unlike the Listening section, the Reading section gives you no additional transfer time — the 60 minutes includes writing your answers on the answer sheet, which is why writing them as you go is safer than batching them at the end.
False means the passage states the opposite of the statement. Not Given means the passage does not address the statement at all. The test is what the passage says, never whether the statement is true in the real world.
Between 2,150 and 2,750 words across the three passages combined. Sources are books, journals, magazines, newspapers and online material written for a non-specialist audience, and at least one passage contains a logical argument.
Most types do, including True/False/Not Given, sentence completion and multiple choice. Matching information and matching headings do not, which is why it is efficient to tackle those first.
No. Completion answers must use words taken from the passage exactly as written, within the stated word limit. Changing a form or substituting a synonym scores zero.
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