Reading 2026-07 Test 27 — IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test with Answers

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Reading Passage 1: William Gilbert and Magnetism

A The 16th and 17th centuries saw two great pioneers of modern science: Galileo and Gilbert. The impact of their findings is eminent. Gilbert was the first modern scientist, the accredited father of the science of electricity and magnetism, an Englishman of learning and a physician at the court of Elizabeth. Prior to him, all that was known of electricity and magnetism was what the ancients knew: nothing more than that the lodestone possessed magnetic properties and that amber and jet, when rubbed, would attract bits of paper or other substances of small specific gravity. However, he is less well known than he deserves.

B Gilbert’s birth predated Galileo’s. Born into an eminent local family in Colchester, Essex, on 24 May 1544, he went to grammar school and then studied medicine at St John’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 1573. Later he travelled on the Continent and eventually settled in London.

C He was a very successful and eminent doctor. All this culminated in his election as president of the Royal Society. He was also appointed personal physician to Queen Elizabeth I and was later knighted by her. He faithfully served her until her death. However, he did not outlive the Queen for long and died on 30 November 1603, only a few months after his appointment as personal physician to King James.

D Gilbert was first interested in chemistry but later changed his focus because alchemy contained too great a portion of mysticism (such as the transmutation of metals). He gradually developed an interest in physics, inspired by the great minds of the ancients, particularly the knowledge the ancient Greeks had about lodestones—strange minerals with the power to attract iron. In the meantime, Britain became a major seafaring nation in 1588 when the Spanish Armada was defeated, opening the way to British settlement of America. British ships depended on the magnetic compass, yet no one understood why it worked. Did the Pole Star attract it, as Columbus once speculated; or was there a magnetic mountain at the pole, as described in the Odyssey, which ships would never approach because the sailors thought its pull would yank out all their iron nails and fittings? For nearly 20 years, William Gilbert conducted ingenious experiments to understand magnetism. His works include On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and The Great Magnet of the Earth.

E Gilbert’s discoveries were of great importance to modern physics. He investigated the nature of magnetism and electricity, and he even coined the word “electric”. Early beliefs about magnetism were largely entangled with superstitions—for instance, sailors believed that rubbing garlic on a lodestone could neutralise its magnetism and that even the smell of garlic would interfere with the action of a compass, which is why helmsmen were forbidden to eat it near a ship’s compass. Gilbert also found that metals can be magnetised by rubbing materials such as fur on them. He named the ends of a magnet the “north pole” and “south pole”. The magnetic poles can attract or repel, depending on polarity; ordinary iron, however, is always attracted to a magnet. Though he began to study the relationship between magnetism and electricity, he did not complete this work. His research into static electricity using amber and jet only demonstrated that objects with electrical charges can attract small pieces of paper and the like. It was a French scientist named du Fay who later discovered that there are actually two electrical charges—positive and negative.

F He also questioned traditional astronomical beliefs. Though a Copernican, he did not state explicitly whether the Earth is at the centre of the universe or in orbit around the Sun. However, he believed that stars are not equidistant from the Earth but have their own Earth-like planets orbiting around them. The Earth itself is like a giant magnet, which is also why compasses always point north: they align with the planet’s polarity. He likened the polarity of a magnet to the polarity of the Earth and built an entire magnetic philosophy on this analogy. In his explanation, magnetism is the soul of the Earth. Thus a perfectly spherical lodestone, when aligned with the Earth’s poles, would wobble all by itself in 24 hours. Further, he believed that the Sun and other stars wobble just as the Earth does around a crystal core, and he speculated that the Moon might also be a magnet caused to orbit by its magnetic attraction to the Earth. This was perhaps the first proposal that a force might cause a heavenly orbit.

G His research method was revolutionary in that he used experiments rather than pure logic and reasoning, as the ancient Greek philosophers had done. This represented a new attitude towards scientific investigation; until then, systematic experiments were not in fashion. Because of this scientific attitude, together with his contribution to our knowledge of magnetism, a unit of magnetomotive force—also known as magnetic potential—was named the gilbert in his honour. His approach of careful observation and experimentation, rather than reliance on authoritative opinion or deductive philosophy, laid the very foundation for modern science.

1
Paragraph A
- i. Early years of Gilbert
- ii. What was new about his scientific research method
- iii. The development of chemistry
- iv. Questioning traditional astronomy
- v. Pioneers of early science
- vi. Professional and social recognition
- vii. Becoming the president of the Royal Society
- viii. The great works of Gilbert
- ix. His discovery about magnetism
- x. His change of focus
2
Paragraph B
3
Paragraph C
4
Paragraph D
5
Paragraph E
6
Paragraph F
7
Paragraph G
8
Gilbert is less famous than he should be.
9
Gilbert was famous as a doctor before he was employed by the Queen.
10
Gilbert lost faith in the medical theories of his time.
11
Which THREE of the following are parts of Gilbert’s discovery?
- A. Metal can be transformed into another.
- B. Garlic can remove magnetism.
- C. Metals can be magnetised.
- D. Stars are at different distances from the Earth.
- E. The Earth wobbles on its axis.
- F. There are two charges of electricity.

Reading Passage 2: 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 ‘megafauna’. Some 11,000 years ago, however, these large-bodied mammals—about 70 species in all—disappeared. Their demise coincided roughly with the arrival of humans on the continent and dramatic climate change—factors that have inspired several theories about the die-off. Yet despite decades of scientific investigation, the exact cause remains a mystery. Now new findings offer support to one of these controversial hypotheses: that human hunting drove these huge megafauna species to extinction.

This belief resulted in the overkill model which emerged in the 1960s, when it was put forth by Paul S. Martin of the University of Arizona. Since then, critics have charged that no archaeological remains exist to support the idea that the first Americans hunted to the extent necessary to cause these extinctions, but at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Mexico City in October 1999, specialist John Alroy of the University of California at Santa Barbara argued that, in fact, hunting-driven extinction is not only plausible, it was unavoidable. He has determined, using a computer simulation, that even a very modest amount of hunting would have wiped out these animals.

Assuming an initial human population of 100 people that grew no more than two per cent annually, Alroy determined that, if each band of, say, 50 people killed 15 to 20 large animals a year, humans could have eliminated the animal populations within 1,000 years. Large mammals in particular would have been vulnerable to the pressure because they have longer gestation periods than smaller mammals and their young require extended care.

However, not everyone agrees with Alroy’s assessment. For one thing, the results depend on population-size estimates for the extinct animals—estimates that are not necessarily reliable. But a more specific criticism comes from mammal expert Ross D. E. MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, who points out that the relevant archaeological record contains barely a dozen examples of stone points embedded in mammoth bones (and none, it should be noted, are known from other megafaunal remains)—hardly what one might expect if hunting drove these animals to extinction. Furthermore, some of these species had a vast range, covering the whole continent—the Jefferson’s ground sloth, for example, lived as far north as the Yukon and as far south as Mexico—which would have made hunting them in numbers sufficient to cause their extinction rather unlikely, he says.

MacPhee agrees that humans most likely brought about these extinctions (as well as others around the world that coincided with human arrival), but not directly. Rather than through hunting, he suggests that people may have introduced a deadly disease, perhaps through their dogs or accompanying vermin, which then spread wildly among the native species because of their low resistance to the new introductions. Repeated outbreaks of a deadly disease could thus quickly drive them to the point of no return. So far, MacPhee does not have empirical evidence for this theory, and it will not be easy to come by: such disease would kill far too quickly to leave its signature on the bones themselves. But he hopes that analyses of tissue and DNA from the most recent animal remains will eventually reveal the microbes responsible.

The third explanation for what brought on this North American extinction does not involve human beings. Instead, its proponents blame the loss on the climate. The Pleistocene epoch in question witnessed considerable climate instability, explains Russell W. Graham of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. As a result, their regular habitats disappeared, and species that had once formed communities split apart. For some animals, this brought opportunity. For much of the megafauna, however, the increasingly uniform terrain left them with shrinking geographical ranges—a death sentence for large animals, which need correspondingly large ranges. Although these creatures managed to maintain viable populations through most of the Pleistocene period, the final major climate fluctuation pushed them over the edge, Graham says.

For his part, Alroy is still convinced that human hunters were the destroyers of the giant animals. The overkill model explains everything the disease and climate scenarios explain, he asserts, and in addition makes accurate predictions about which species would eventually become extinct.

12
Three theories have been put forward to explain the disappearance of the different species of large mammals that inhabited ________ 11,000 years ago.
13
The ________, proposed around fifty years ago by Paul S. Martin, blames ________ by people for mass extinction.
14
The second theory suggests that humans introduced a ________ which wiped out the large mammals. However, so far this theory also lacks any ________.
15
The final theory suggests that this period experienced significant ________, which eventually led to the loss of habitat and to the division of the ________ that some of the large mammals had organized.
16
Too little evidence exists to support the hunting theory.
- A. John Alroy
- B. Ross D. E. MacPhee
- C. Russell W. Graham
17
The bigger the animal, the bigger the territory it requires for survival.
18
Globally, humans have been indirectly responsible for the elimination of many species.
19
Population estimates can be used to understand how large mammals became extinct.
20
Scientific examination of fossil remains may provide some proof for one of the theories.
21
Environmental changes negatively affected the social groupings of some large species.

Reading Passage 3: Does Class Size Matter?

Of all the ideas for improving education, few are as simple or attractive as reducing the number of pupils per teacher. Unlike competing proposals for reform, class-size reductions rarely elicit huge outcries or involve structural change. The testing of educators, by contrast, generally arouses the anger of unions. Similarly, establishing special ‘charter’ schools involves privileging some schools over others, with the credits provided usually coming out of the budgets of struggling local schools. With its uncomplicated appeal, class-size reduction in the U.S. has lately gone from being a subject of primary academic interest to a policy juggernaut with over twenty states aiming at decreasing class sizes.

Do small classes improve school achievement? To answer this, investigators have attempted to analyse existing data, such as records at the U.S. Department of Education. These reveal that there were steep drops in pupil-teacher ratios between 1969 and 1997, but no significant gains in academic performance.

But do these findings mean that class size makes no difference? Not necessarily. For instance, schools strive for more than just high test scores; they also usually try to keep their drop-out rates low. And, indeed, the drop-out rate for older students fell considerably over that period. Because drop-outs generally come from the low end of the achievement distribution, a reduction in the drop-out rate could be expected to pull down average test scores.

Another reason for discounting those data is the difficulty of ensuring a level playing field. In a perfect world, U.S. students would all come from well-off families, with two highly educated English-speaking parents who are involved in their children’s schooling. Teachers would all be creative and have complete mastery of the subject matter. The reality is very different.

Over the past 35 years, some studies of existing data have produced evidence that smaller classes benefit students, but most of these studies were poorly designed. The exception was the Tennessee study called Project STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio). Frederick Mosteller of Harvard University has called it ‘one of the greatest experiments in education in United States history’.

Students entering kindergarten were randomly assigned to one of three kinds of classes: a small class of 13 to 17 students, a regular-size class of 22 to 26 or a regular-size class with both a teacher and a full-time teacher’s aide.

The students remained in whatever category they had been assigned to throughout the third grade, after which they joined a regular classroom in the fourth. To ensure that teaching quality did not differ, teachers were randomly assigned to small and regular-size classrooms. Few teachers received any special training for working with small classes, and there were no new curricular materials.

At the end of STAR, researchers analysed the data. Jeremy Finn of New York University and Charles Achilles of Eastern Michigan University found evidence for ‘an array of benefits of small classes’. They calculated that students in smaller classes were outperforming their counterparts in regular-sized classes by the first grade and that this advantage persisted even after students returned to larger classes. They also found that the effect was stronger for black and Hispanic minority groups – a significant finding for policy-makers.

Eric Hanushek of Stanford, however, criticises some of STAR’s key conclusions. He argues that STAR does not prove that gains persist long after students return to regular classes. It was debatable how much later improvement stemmed from other factors, such as a supportive home. Nor does he accept that the benefits accumulate, with participants widening the gap with their peers in larger classes year by year.

Hanushek and others have also shown that during the study too many children moved from regular to small classes, probably because school personnel caved in to parent demands. And Hanushek also asserts that STAR failed to ensure good randomisation of teacher and student assignments. However, these points do not undermine STAR’s basic findings.

The largest public class size reduction programme so far, California’s, stands more as a warning than as worthy of emulation. That state is trying to reduce classes in kindergarten through grade three despite a shortage of teachers that is most acute in low-income areas.

This is exacerbating the disparity in resources available to rich and poor schools in California, because more affluent areas can attract the best teachers. Indeed, some of the extra teachers needed are being recruited from the poorer schools. Researchers found a statistically significant achievement advantage in reading, writing and mathematics for students in classes that had been reduced to 20. What is more, the effect did not vary for students of different backgrounds.

Wisconsin’s Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) was a five-year pilot study to do some of the groundwork for a major project. Class sizes were reduced in only 14 schools, but it was noteworthy for targeting schools at which 30% of the students were below poverty level, compared with California’s across-the-board approach. SAGE lowered the average pupil-teacher ratio in kindergarten through third grade to 12–15:1 from 21–25:1. Analysts have studied the results of first-grade students in these schools and similar first-grade students elsewhere and found the results accord with those from STAR.

STAR and SAGE have made it hard to argue against reducing class sizes. But the California initiative shows that reductions made with too little forethought can yield minuscule gains. Administrators need solid information before they can make sensible policy decisions.

22
27. detailed criticism of the methodology of a project
23
28. a comparison of the data from class-size reduction projects
24
29. the level of public interest in the issues of class-size reduction
25
30. details of action taken to protect the validity of a project
26
31. reasons why class composition changed during a project
27
32. The student composition of each class was left to chance.
- A. Project STAR
- B. The California Project
- C. SAGE
28
33. A long-term improvement in performance was claimed.
29
34. Similar results were obtained for all social groups.
30
35. The project was a preliminary to a more comprehensive study.
31
36. Several different class types were involved in the project.
32
37. A special group of schools was selected to take part.
33
38. Classroom assistants were used as part of the project.
34
39. The project was responsible for aggravating existing problems.
35
40. Certain groups of pupils within the sample were identified as having benefited.

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1. v
Option v is correct because Paragraph A talks about the early scientists and how Gilbert was among the pioneers of early science.
2. i
Option i is correct because Paragraph B describes Gilbert's early life and background.
3. vi
Option vi is correct because Paragraph C discusses Gilbert's professional achievements and social recognition.
4. x
Option x is correct because Paragraph D explains how Gilbert changed his focus from medicine to studying magnetism.
5. ix
Option ix is correct because Paragraph E describes Gilbert's discovery about magnetism.
6. iv
Option iv is correct because Paragraph F discusses how Gilbert questioned traditional astronomy.
7. ii
Option ii is correct because Paragraph G explains what was new about Gilbert's scientific research method.
8. TRUE
TRUE is correct because the passage says Gilbert is not as well-known as he deserves to be.
9. TRUE
TRUE is correct because the passage states that Gilbert was already famous as a doctor before working for the Queen.
10. NOT GIVEN
NOT GIVEN is correct because the passage does not mention whether Gilbert lost faith in the medical theories of his time.
11. C / D / E
C, D, and E are correct because the passage says Gilbert discovered metals can be magnetised, stars are at different distances, and the Earth wobbles on its axis. Option A is wrong because the passage does not mention transforming metals; B is wrong because garlic removing magnetism is not part of his discovery; F is wrong because two charges of electricity are not mentioned.
12. North America
'North America' is correct because the passage says the large mammals disappeared from North America 11,000 years ago.
13. overkill model / hunting
'overkill model' and 'hunting' are correct because the passage says Paul S. Martin's overkill model blames hunting by people for the extinction.
14. deadly disease / empirical evidence
'deadly disease' and 'empirical evidence' are correct because the passage says the second theory is about a deadly disease introduced by humans, but there is no empirical evidence.
15. climate instability / communities
'climate instability' and 'communities' are correct because the passage says the final theory is about climate instability causing loss of habitat and breaking up communities of large mammals.
16. B
B (Ross D. E. MacPhee) is correct because he argues there is too little evidence to support the hunting theory.
17. C
C (Russell W. Graham) is correct because he states that larger animals need bigger territories to survive.
18. B
B (Ross D. E. MacPhee) is correct because he says humans have been indirectly responsible for eliminating many species worldwide.
19. A
A (John Alroy) is correct because he uses population estimates to understand how large mammals became extinct.
20. B
B (Ross D. E. MacPhee) is correct because he believes scientific examination of fossils may provide proof for one theory.
21. C
C (Russell W. Graham) is correct because he says environmental changes affected the social groupings of some large species.
22. D
D is correct because this section gives a detailed criticism of the project's methodology.
23. F
F is correct because this section compares data from different class-size reduction projects.
24. A
A is correct because this section discusses the level of public interest in class-size reduction.
25. C
C is correct because this section gives details about actions taken to protect the project's validity.
26. D
D is correct because this section explains why class composition changed during the project.
27. A
A (Project STAR) is correct because the passage says the student composition was left to chance in this project.
28. A
A (Project STAR) is correct because it is claimed that there was a long-term improvement in performance.
29. B
B (The California Project) is correct because similar results were found for all social groups in this project.
30. C
C (SAGE) is correct because the passage says this project was a preliminary to a more comprehensive study.
31. A
A (Project STAR) is correct because several different class types were involved in this project.
32. C
C (SAGE) is correct because a special group of schools was selected to take part in this project.
33. A
A (Project STAR) is correct because classroom assistants were used in this project.
34. B
B (The California Project) is correct because the project made existing problems worse.
35. A
A (Project STAR) is correct because certain groups of pupils were identified as having benefited from the project.

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Reading Passage 1: William Gilbert and Magnetism

Reading Passage 2: Mammoth Kill

Reading Passage 3: Does Class Size Matter?

Answer sheet

Answer key