Reading 2026-10 Test 15 — IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test with Answers

About this set: compiled and lightly cleaned up from real test material that test-takers recalled. IELTS draws from a global question pool, so this material circulates worldwide. To give you a complete, sittable test, material reported around the same period is assembled together — so a set may combine content from several exam dates, not one single sitting. Any audio is a recreation for practice. Organized for study convenience. Based on test-taker recalls — not official IELTS material.

Reading Passage 1: Steam Across The Water

During the 1600s, very early in the development of steam engines, inventive spirits like the Frenchman Denis Papin dreamed of—and experimented with—boats driven by steam, rather than by the wind or human effort, but many decades passed before those visions became reality.

Englishman Jonathan Hulls took out patents on a steamboat in 1736, but it was to be driven by a Newcomen engine, which was heavy and therefore inefficient, and would never be a success. In 1763, William Henry, an American, put a Watt steam engine in a boat, but it sank. Nearly 20 years later, in the 1780s, a steam-powered paddle-wheeler managed to last fifteen minutes against the current on the River Saone in France, but lacked the endurance for longer trips. Developments elsewhere included a boat driven by a steam-powered water-jet and able to do six kilometres per hour. However, all these steamboats were either too slow or too expensive to run. For example, American John Fitch successfully trialled his first steamboat in 1787, but although he tried a number of designs and solved many technical challenges—one of his boats could even travel at 13 km/h—he could never convince sceptics that steamboats would pay.

The 19th century came before real success could be claimed. In Scotland in 1802, Lord Dundas launched the steamboat Charlotte Dundas, which was driven by a paddle wheel and had an improved engine designed by William Symington. Barges, some weighing as much as 70 tonnes, were towed by this steamboat 30 kilometres along the Forth and Clyde Canal to Glasgow, Scotland’s second city. Soon after, success came to American Robert Fulton, whose countrymen called him "the father of the steamboat". Inspired by news of the Charlotte Dundas, Fulton ran steamboat trials on the River Seine, in an attempt to attract French support for his submarine Nautilus. He later imported a Boulton-Watt steam engine and built a boat to use it in. In 1807, the Clermont began a scheduled passenger steamboat service between New York and Albany, 250 kilometres up the Hudson River, taking 30 hours for the trip. Within a few years, steamers were running on the St Lawrence River in Canada and would soon appear on other rivers and lakes, including the Mississippi River, a most famous venue for the paddle-wheelers.

Back in Scotland, Fulton’s ideas inspired Henry Bell, who launched his Comet in 1812 on the Clyde between Glasgow and Greenock. Inside a decade, dozens of steamboats were to be seen on the rivers, lochs and canals of Scotland, carrying cargo and occasionally passengers. The age of steamboats had come.

Once steamboats were carrying passengers and industrial goods along the inland waterways and sheltered coastlines of Europe, North America and elsewhere, the challenge became to send steamboats onto the open ocean, such as across the Atlantic Ocean, between Europe and the US. Travelling under steam power alone would require engines to use less coal so the ship could stay at sea for several weeks. In order to provide a reliable service, it was also necessary to replace paddle wheels as a source of power with something less affected by the rolling of the ship.

Without waiting for such breakthroughs, crossings under a combination of steam and sail got underway in 1819 with the American ship Savannah. A regular service took another two decades and introduced the famous name of Cunard. Securing the British government contract for the mail service across the Atlantic, Samuel Cunard established a shipping line in 1840, soon carrying passengers as well, and offering guaranteed sailing dates. Cunard’s first ships used a sail-steam combination, but the era of the passenger liner, using steam alone, was getting close. When it came to building the ships, the versatile British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel set the pace. Brunel, brilliant and daring, had already built the Great Western Railway. He created ever bigger ships—faster, more luxurious and comfortable for passengers. The Great Western, launched in 1838, was 70 metres long and crossed from Bristol to New York in just fifteen days. The largest paddle steamer ever built was Brunel’s Great Eastern. Ultimately too expensive to run as a passenger ship, it was leased to lay the first submarine telegraph cable from Europe to America. His 1853 Great Britain, nearly 100 metres long and luxuriously appointed, was the first ocean-going steamship made of iron, and the first to use the underwater screw propeller for powering movement in place of paddle wheels. The idea of the screw had been around since the experiments of the American John Stevens in 1803, but only in 1838 did a large steamer use one, the riverboat Archimedes built by Francis Pettit Smith. Later ships had twin screws for reliability.

In many modern ships, steam turbines have replaced engines with pistons, with fuel oil instead of coal to fire the boilers. Diesel engines keep others moving. The largest ships afloat now would dwarf Brunel’s Great Eastern, launched in 1860; the Atlantic can be crossed in only four days. But in whatever form, the ever-evolving descendants of the original visions of Denis Papin and Robert Fulton continue to travel the seas in vast numbers.

Questions 1–6

Complete the table below.

Write ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

The engine of Jonathan Hulls’ steamboat was (1) ________ due to its weight.

A French paddle steamer did not have the (2) ________ to keep going for more than a quarter of an hour.

John Fitch overcame a number of (3) ________ problems with his steamboat designs.

In France, Fulton used a steamboat to try to raise interest in a (4) ________.

Passengers in the US began to be carried regularly by a steamboat called the (5) ________.

In Scotland, steamboats transported some passengers, but mostly (6) ________.

Questions 7–13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 7–13 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the information

NO if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

7
For steamboats to cross the Atlantic Ocean, engines which used fuel economically were needed.
- A. YES
- B. NO
- C. NOT GIVEN
8
Using paddle wheels guaranteed reliability on ocean crossings.
9
The Savannah was much faster than a regular paddle steamer.
10
Brunel preferred designing railways to steamships.
11
The Great Britain had more than one innovative feature.
12
The design of the riverboat Archimedes was widely admired.
13
Modern ships that cross the Atlantic use the same energy source as the early steamships.

Reading Passage 2: John Ray And The Study Of Plants

A The 17th-century English scholar and botanist John Ray was well aware that he lived through, and participated in, a profound revolution in the way people interacted with nature. In the preface to his Synopsis of British Plants, published in 1690, he gave thanks that he had been born at a time when traditional dependence on the teaching of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) had given way to a new philosophy, based on experiment and observation of the real world, that we now call science.

B Ray was born in 1627. His father was a village blacksmith, and his mother was also a respected member of the community, a healer who was an expert in folk medicine and the use of herbs to treat ailments. Ray must have stood out as an unusually bright boy among his schoolmates, and his talents were recognised by a church official, Samuel Covell, who had graduated from Cambridge University in 1600, and maintained his links with his university. Through his influence, Ray was admitted to Cambridge University in 1644 at the age of seventeen - a huge step for a village blacksmith's son. There he made a solid start, and quickly gained a reputation as a brilliant student. He studied the classics (Greek, Latin and Hebrew) and mathematics, but there was nothing yet we would now call science in the curriculum. After graduating in 1648, he became a minor member of staff at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was appointed Lecturer in Greek in 1651, Lecturer in Mathematics in 1653, and Lecturer in Humanities in 1655.

C Almost immediately after graduating, Ray also seems to have developed the interest to which he would devote the rest of his life: the study of the natural world. He explains this conversion into a naturalist - in particular into a botanist - in the preface to his first book, the Cambridge Catalogue of English Plants. Here Ray tells us that he suffered an illness in his early twenties, and was advised to take long walks and ride in the fresh air while recovering. While doing this, he became interested in the local flora, and finding nobody able to teach him, Ray investigated it for himself. He then went on to pass on the knowledge he acquired to others.

D By the mid-1650s, even the first-year students at Trinity College were able to identify the plants and flowers around Cambridge, as they were being taught (unofficially - none of this was part of their formal education) by Ray. Many of them were the sons of landowners, and so had a natural, if amateurish, interest in country matters. But a few of them took his efforts to understand the natural world much more seriously. One of these, Francis Willughby, later played an important part in Ray's life.

E Having himself had no authority on the subject of plants on which to draw, Ray also started work on what would become his Cambridge Catalogue of English Plants. The work was not published until 1660 because, as Ray explained in the preface, he had to start from scratch: "I had first to become familiar with the literature, to compare the plants that I found with the pictures, and when there seemed to be a resemblance, to go fully into any unknown descriptions. Gaining skill by experience, I acquired at last the ability to recognise to what tribe and family similars or could be assigned; this taught me to search for similarities and saved a vast deal of labour, which others would have spent in their difficulties. I was eager to make the most of this and was fortunate to share my enthusiasm with my friends..."

F Ray's Cambridge Catalogue of English Plants was much more than a simple list of species. It gave the names of plants found in the area around Cambridge and included information about where they grew and how common they were. In doing this, Ray was producing something that would be of practical use to students and other readers interested in the local natural world. At the same time, the book showed his determination to describe plants accurately, on the basis of direct examination rather than reliance on old authorities. In this respect, it reflected the spirit of the new learning that Ray admired.

G Ray's studies of plants were only the beginning of a much larger ambition. With the support of Francis Willughby, he began to imagine a more comprehensive investigation of nature, one that would attempt to classify living things according to careful observation of their shared characteristics. This was an ambitious undertaking, especially at a time when many aspects of the natural world remained poorly described. Yet Ray believed that by collecting evidence systematically and comparing related forms, it would be possible to build a more reliable understanding of nature than scholars had possessed before.

Questions 14–20

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A–G.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i–ix, in boxes 14–20 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Ray's account of his working methods

ii The botanical expert who inspired Ray

iii A succession of academic achievements

iv Ray's informal tuition

v Ray's appreciation of his contemporary academic culture

vi A childhood interest in plants

vii Plans for a bold new project

viii A description of the content of Ray's first book

ix A change of direction for Ray

14
Paragraph A
15
Paragraph B
16
Paragraph C
17
Paragraph D
18
Paragraph E
19
Paragraph F
20
Paragraph G

Questions 21–24

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 21–24 on your answer sheet.

A New Approach to Knowledge

John Ray was a scholar and self-taught botanist, whose work reflected the (21) ________ that was taking place during the 17th century in people's way of thinking about the natural world. This new approach is the basis of the modern field of (22) ________. It represented a complete break from the ideas of Aristotle, which had dominated thinking up until that time.

As Ray himself explained, his interest in plants was aroused after graduating, when he had to spend time outdoors after a period of (23) ________. He taught himself, in addition to many Cambridge (24) ________, and began compiling his catalogue of plants, which was published in 1660.

Questions 25–26

Choose TWO letters, A–E.

Write the correct letters in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet.

25–26
Which TWO of the following statements are true of Ray's early life?
- A. His teacher recommended that he should go to university.
- B. His school record was not exceptional in any way.
- C. He was helped by a former student of Cambridge University.
- D. His parents were both valued by the people in their local area.
- E. He originally planned to take up his father's occupation.

Reading Passage 3: Robert Louis Stevenson

The writer of some of the best-known stories in the English language, including Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

(A) It is more than 100 years since the death of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson on the South Pacific island of Samoa, and it seems that time has not been kind to Stevenson’s memory. Immediately after his death, his family and friends set to work to fashion the legend of Robert Louis Stevenson, or R. L. S., as he became known, one of the few writers familiar from his initials alone. Subsequent works of biography then turned him into a writer of almost religious importance. One example was literary critic Balfour, who in 1901 portrayed Stevenson’s family as ministering angels to the dying genius during his final illness. Similarly, the biographer Crouch absurdly overstated Stevenson’s significance by placing him in the same company as those most revered names in English literature: Shakespeare and Keats. The reaction to this nonsense was a number of highly critical assessments of Stevenson’s legacy in the 1920s.

(B) Normally, the critical pendulum can be relied on to swing back again, but there are several aspects of Stevenson’s work that have, until recently, acted against a more balanced appraisal. First is the allegation that Stevenson was a mere master of linguistic fireworks, who lacked moral depth. Some critics accused him of being a literary charlatan, of juggling words very prettily to strike effects which overawed an ignorant public, and served to distract from the inadequacy of his ideas.

(C) Then there has long been a prejudice against the adventure story as the proper medium for deep moral seriousness, a prejudice which is still extremely influential today. It seems that we can accept that an adventure film can successfully express profound moral truths, but we reject the same idea for a book. The absurdity of this becomes apparent when we think of writers like Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene, but it is no use pretending that this bias against adventure stories is not part of our high culture. A further problem is that Stevenson has often not found favour in the land of his birth because his conservatism so often collides with the strong radical tradition in Scotland. His many escapist stories and preference for living abroad have led to accusations that he camouflaged Scotland’s problems. Lastly, the high adventure of Stevenson’s own lifestyle has sometimes obscured his output, his life a greater story than any he could devise. This was precisely what his friends feared would happen towards the end of his short life: his art might be overwhelmed by the drama of life in Samoa.

(D) One consequence of this has been that Stevenson’s influence on other writers has too often been neglected. The writer and poet Oscar Wilde was deeply influenced by Stevenson, even though he declared that Stevenson would have produced better work if he had lived in London rather than Samoa. Stevenson tends to stick in the throat even of those writers who would like to spit him out, such as Shaw, who claimed to have learned from him that the romantic hero is always mocked by reality. Likewise, the writer Galsworthy, who began as a determined critic, later changed his mind and said that the superiority of Stevenson over the novelist Hardy was that Stevenson was all life and Hardy all death. The influence on the novelist Chesterton would also repay detailed study, for it was through him that Stevenson has managed to cross the ages, emerging as an influence on the modernist movement and our own contemporary Latin American school of “magical realism”.

(E) When making an assessment of his life and work one question must inevitably be asked: was Robert Louis Stevenson Scotland’s greatest writer of English prose? For most commentators this honour falls to Sir Walter Scott, author of Ivanhoe among many other classic novels, and it is true that in terms of craftsmanship, precision and the ability to minutely regulate language to create the desired effect, Scott takes the prize. However, this is not the same thing at all as inherent talent; by way of comparison one may take the example of the two great Russian composers Shostakovich and Prokofiev, of whom the former had learned more precise skills of execution but the latter’s intrinsic genius was greater, and so it seems to be with Scott and Stevenson. Admittedly, Scott’s detailed style does permit his stories to explore levels of tragedy that are beyond Stevenson’s reach, but in this regard they have the musty smell of the museum, somehow artificial and removed from modern day reality. On the other hand, Stevenson’s skill with plotting and narrative gives his books a timeless quality, so that they still live today, and Stevenson was also the shrewder judge of behaviour and psychology. For example, his compelling descriptions of a man with a split personality in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have proved so accessible and accurate that the expression “Jekyll and Hyde” has entered common English usage. Even if we do not see a revival of critical interest in this great Scottish writer, it is to be hoped that readers go back to Robert Louis Stevenson’s magnificent stories and reassess this neglected genius.

Questions 27–31

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 27–31 on your answer sheet.

27
In the opinion of the writer, the biographers Balfour and Crouch
- A. understated the role played by Stevenson’s family.
- B. misunderstood Stevenson’s religious beliefs.
- C. overestimated other writers’ influence on Stevenson.
- D. elevated Stevenson above his true status as a writer.
28
What is the writer’s main point about Stevenson in the second paragraph?
- A. The public judged him more fairly than the critics.
- B. Recent criticism of him has been justified.
- C. Critics argued that his style covered up his faults.
- D. The ethical nature of his stories was often criticized.
29
According to the writer, the adventure story
- A. is more appropriate for books than films.
- B. can be used by writers to tell moral stories.
- C. is more fashionable today than in the past.
- D. has been used by other writers but not Stevenson.
30
What point does the writer make about Stevenson and Scotland?
- A. His ideas contrasted with those of many Scots.
- B. He demonstrated great sympathy for Scotland’s problems.
- C. He was not considered a true Scot as he was not born there.
- D. His unflattering stories about Scotland angered many Scots.
31
According to the writer, Stevenson’s own lifestyle
- A. was envied by his friends.
- B. was responsible for his early death.
- C. attracted more attention than his books.
- D. did not prepare him for living in Samoa.

Questions 32–35

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 32–35 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

32
Although Oscar Wilde admired Stevenson’s work, he believed Stevenson could have written something better.
- A. YES
- B. NO
- C. NOT GIVEN
33
Stevenson encouraged Oscar Wilde to start writing.
34
Galsworthy had greater respect for Hardy than Stevenson.
35
More research is needed regarding Stevenson’s influence on Chesterton.

Questions 36–40

Complete the summary using the list of words and phrases, A–I, below.

Write the correct letter, A–I, in boxes 36–40 on your answer sheet.

Opinions differ as to whether Robert Louis Stevenson or Sir Walter Scott should be considered Scotland’s best writer. Scott had greater (36) ________, but Stevenson had more (37) ________, and the same distinction can be made between the two composers Shostakovich and Prokofiev. It is true that Scott’s books showed more (38) ________ when it came to tragedy, though in an old-fashioned way, while Stevenson’s books are still popular because of his (39) ________. And Stevenson’s understanding of (40) ________ has resulted in the widespread use of an expression from one of his books.

A natural ability

B critical acclaim

C humour

D romance

E colourful language

F technical control

G storytelling

H depth

I human nature

Answer sheet

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Show answer key

1. inefficient
2. endurance
3. technical
4. submarine
5. Clermont
6. cargo
7. A
The answer is YES because the passage says 'Travelling under steam power alone would require engines to use less coal so the ship could stay at sea for several weeks.' This means fuel-efficient engines were needed for Atlantic crossings.
8. B
The answer is NO because the passage says paddle wheels needed to be replaced 'with something less affected by the rolling of the ship.' Paddle wheels did not guarantee reliability on ocean crossings.
9. C
The answer is NOT GIVEN because the passage only says the Savannah made crossings under steam and sail, but does not compare its speed to regular paddle steamers.
10. C
The answer is NOT GIVEN because the passage says Brunel built both railways and ships, but does not say he preferred designing railways.
11. A
The answer is YES because the passage says the Great Britain was 'the first ocean-going steamship made of iron, and the first to use the underwater screw propeller.' It had more than one innovative feature.
12. C
The answer is NOT GIVEN because the passage only says the Archimedes was the first large steamer to use a screw propeller, but does not mention if its design was widely admired.
13. B
The answer is NO because the passage says modern ships use 'steam turbines... with fuel oil instead of coal' and 'diesel engines,' which are different from the early steamships' energy sources.
14. v
15. iii
16. ix
17. iv
18. i
19. viii
20. vii
21. revolution
22. science
23. illness
24. students / first-year students
25. C / D
26. C / D
27. D
28. C
29. B
30. A
31. C
32. A
33. C
34. B
35. A
36. F
37. A
38. H
39. G
40. I

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Reading Passage 1: Steam Across The Water

Reading Passage 2: John Ray And The Study Of Plants

Reading Passage 3: Robert Louis Stevenson

Answer sheet

Answer key