Reading 2026-05 Test 23 — 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: 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 breathe, the food and drink we consume, our travel, family relationships, and our property. It applies at the bottom of the ocean and in space. Each time we examine a label on a food product, engage in work as an employee or employer, travel on the roads, go to school to learn or to teach, stay in a hotel, borrow a library book, create or dissolve a commercial company, play sports, or engage the services of someone for anything from plumbing a sink to planning a city, we are in the world of law.

Law has also become much more widely recognised as the standard by which behavior needs to be judged. A very telling development in recent history is the way in which the idea of law has permeated all parts of social life. The universal standard of whether something is socially tolerated is progressively becoming whether it is legal, rather than something that has always been considered acceptable. In earlier times, most people were illiterate. Today, by contrast, a vast number of people can read, and it is becoming easier for people to take an interest in law, and for the general population to help actually shape the law in many countries. However, law is a versatile instrument that can be used equally well for the improvement or the degradation of humanity.

This, of course, puts law in a very significant position. In our rapidly developing world, all sorts of skills and knowledge are valuable. Those people, for example, with knowledge of computers, the internet, and communications technology are relied upon by the rest of us. There is now someone with IT skills or an IT help desk in every UK school, every company, every hospital, every local and central government office. Without their knowledge, many parts of commercial and social life today would seize up in minutes. But legal understanding is just as vital and as universally needed. The American comedian Jerry Seinfeld put it like this, 'We are all throwing the dice, playing the game, moving our pieces around the board, but if there is a problem, the lawyer is the only person who has read the inside of the top of the box.' In other words, the lawyer is the only person who has read and made sense of the rules.

The number of laws has never been greater. In the UK alone, about 35 new Acts of Parliament are produced every year, thereby delivering thousands of new rules. The legislative output of the British Parliament has more than doubled in recent times from 1,100 pages a year in the early 1970s, to over 2,500 pages a year today. Between 1997 and 2006, the legislature passed 365 Acts of Parliament and more than 32,000 legally binding statutory instruments. In a system with so much law, lawyers do a great deal not just to vindicate the rights of citizens and organizations but also to help develop the law through legal arguments, some of which are adapted by judges to become laws. Law courts can and do produce new law and revise old law, but they do so having heard the arguments of lawyers.

However, despite their important role in developing the rules, lawyers are not universally admired. Anti-lawyer jokes have a long history going back to the ancient Greeks. More recently the son of a famous Hollywood actor was asked at his junior school what his father did for a living, to which he replied, 'My daddy is a movie actor, and sometimes he plays the good guy, and sometimes he plays the lawyer.' For balance, though, it is worth remembering that there are and have been many heroic and revered lawyers such as the Roman philosopher and politician Cicero and Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian campaigner for independence.

People sometimes make comments that characterise lawyers as professionals whose concerns put personal reward above truth, or who gain financially from misfortune. There are undoubtedly lawyers that would fit that bill, just as there are some scientists, journalists and others in that category. But, in general, it is no more just to say that lawyers are bad because they make a living from people's problems than it is to make the same accusation in respect of nurses or IT consultants. A great many lawyers are involved in public law work, such as that involving civil liberties, housing and other issues. Such work is not lavishly remunerated and the quality of the service provided by these lawyers relies on considerable professional dedication. Moreover, much legal work has nothing to do with conflict or misfortune, but is primarily concerned with drafting documents. Another source of social disaffection for lawyers, and disaffection for the law, is a limited public understanding of how law works and how it could be changed. Greater clarity about these issues, maybe as a result of better public relations, would reduce many aspects of public dissatisfaction with the law.

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Paragraph A
- i. Different areas of professional expertise
- ii. Reasons why it is unfair to criticize lawyers
- iii. The disadvantages of the legal system
- iv. The law applies throughout our lives
- v. The law has affected historical events
- vi. A negative regard for lawyers
- vii. public's increasing ability to influence the law
- viii. growth in laws
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Paragraph B
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Paragraph C
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Paragraph D
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Paragraph E
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Paragraph F
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Which TWO of the following statements does the writer make about legal skills in today's world?
- A. There should be a person with legal training in every hospital.
- B. Lawyers with experience in commercial law are the most in demand.
- C. Knowledge of the law is as important as having computer skills.
- D. Society could not function effectively without legal experts.
- E. Schools should teach students about the law.
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People sometimes say that ______ is of little interest to lawyers, who are more concerned with making money. This may well be the case with some individuals, in the same way that some ______ or scientific experts may also be driven purely by financial greed. However, criticizing lawyers because their work is concerned with people's problems would be similar to attacking IT staff or ______ for the same reason. In fact, many lawyers focus on questions relating, for example, to housing or civil liberties, which requires them to have ______ to their work. What's more, a lot of lawyers' time is spent writing ______ rather than dealing with people's misfortunes.

Reading Passage 2: Mind Music: Scientists investigate ‘earworms’, the music we can’t get out of our heads

A 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 from them. Some neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists are studying earworms to explore the mysteries of memory and the part of the brain that is beyond our conscious control. ‘The idea that we have full control over our thought processes is an illusion,’ says psychologist Lauren Stewart, who founded the master’s program in music, mind and brain at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, where recent research has taken place. Researchers haven’t been able to watch what happens in the brain when earworms occur, because they happen unpredictably. Much of what is known about them comes from surveys, questionnaires, diaries and lab experiments.

B A Goldsmiths study published in the journal Memory and Cognition this year showed that the singing we hear in our heads tends to be true to actual recordings. Researchers had 17 volunteers tap to the beat of any earworm they heard during a four-day period while a device attached to their wrist recorded their movements. The tapping tempos were within 10% of the tempos of the original recordings. Another Goldsmiths study, published this year in Consciousness and Cognition, found that people who report hearing earworms often, and find them most intrusive, have slightly different brain structures, with more gray matter in areas associated with processing emotions.

C Studies also show that the music in our heads often starts playing during times of ‘low cognitive load’, such as while showering, getting dressed, walking, or doing chores. Dr Stewart likens earworms to ‘sonic screen savers’ that keep the mind entertained while it is otherwise unoccupied. She and her colleagues tested that theory by having volunteers listen to songs and giving them various tasks afterwards. The volunteers who sat idly for the next five minutes were the most likely to report hearing the music in their heads. Dr Stewart observed that the more challenging the activity, the less likely the volunteers were to hear the music. Diary studies also show songs tend to match people’s moods and therefore they are not random. If you are energized and upbeat, an earworm that occurs is likely to be uptempo too.

D Songs the brain fixates on are usually those it has been exposed to recently, surveys show, which is why tunes getting heavy radio play frequently top the earworm charts. Even tunes you may have heard but didn’t pay attention to can worm their way into your subconscious, says Ira Hyman, a psychologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham, USA. In an unpublished study there, participants who listened to music while doing other tasks were more likely to report that the songs returned as earworms later on, compared with participants who simply listened.

E Some earworms are just fragments of a song that repeat like a broken record. So, when the mind hits a part of a song it can’t remember, it loops back rather than moving on. That could make an earworm even more entrenched, Dr Hyman says. According to a theory known as the Zeigarnik effect, named for a Soviet psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, unfinished thoughts and activities weigh on the mind more heavily than those that are completed, although experiments exposing students to interrupted songs have yielded mixed results.

F Researchers say they can’t pinpoint a spot in the brain where earworms live. Imaging studies by Andrea Halpern at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, USA, have shown that deliberately imagining music and actually listening to music activate many of the same neurological networks. Dr Halpern’s earlier studies showed that when subjects listened to the first few notes of familiar music, areas in the right frontal and superior temporal portions of the brain became activated, along with the supplementary motor area at the top, which is typically involved in remembering sequences. When the same subjects listened to unfamiliar music and were asked to recall it, there was activity in the left frontal portions of the brain instead.

G One factor that makes some songs stick might be repetition. ‘Repetition leads to familiarity which leads to anticipation, which is satisfied by hearing the song,’ says John Seabrook, author of The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, about how producers pump pop songs full of aural ‘hooks’, the punchy melodic phrases designed to target the brain and leave it wanting more. The researchers are comparing the melodic structure of 100 often mentioned songs with 100 similarly popular songs that weren’t cited as earworms, to assess the difference. Songs with earworm potential appear to share certain features: a repeating pattern of ups and downs in pitch, and irregular musical intervals.

H The researchers plan next to test their results in reverse, and play ringtones from songs of both the earworm and non-earworm variety for volunteers several times a day to see which ones get stuck. Drs Stewart and Halpern are now working together to recruit survey participants for a study looking at whether people at different stages of life experience earworms differently. ‘You can argue that older people might get them more often because they know more songs,’ Dr Halpern says. ‘But the few responses we have so far indicate that they have earworms less often. It could be that they don’t play music as often as younger people do.’

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a description of the characteristics common to songs with earworms
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a justification for research into earworms
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a description of the brain’s reaction to known and unknown songs
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details of proposed research into the frequency with which earworms occur in different age groups
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Researchers from Goldsmiths concluded that the music we imagine in our minds is quite similar to recordings. They proved this by asking volunteers to record the rhythm of music using a monitor on their ________.
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Further research has demonstrated that those who hear earworms more frequently have brains that may deal with ________ differently from other people.
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Dr Stewart also believes that the brain is ________ by earworms when it is not focused on a task.
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In fact, a reduction in the occurrence of earworms was found to be directly related to how ________ the task was.
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Some musicians create music that is intentionally memorable.
- A. Lauren Stewart
- B. Ira Hyman
- C. Andrea Halpern
- D. John Seabrook
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People are unable to completely regulate how they think.
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We can remember songs without knowing that we have heard them.
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Thinking about music has a similar effect on the brain to hearing music.
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Earworms are more persistent when only a short section of the song is constantly replayed.

Reading Passage 3: The New Zealand writer Margaret Mahy

In a career spanning some fifty years, Margaret Mahy has come to occupy a unique place in New Zealand writing with innovative fiction and original characterisation. In our solidly realist tradition, the linguistic fireworks of Mahy’s children’s fiction and the explorations of human behaviour at the heart of her supernatural teenage fiction stand gloriously alone. Mahy’s clearest heir, I have always thought, is Elizabeth Knox — and maybe the true inheritance there is sheer singularity. Just as there is no one else like Knox in New Zealand writing, Mahy, too, has ventured into imaginative territory unknown to other local writers. So it was with great pleasure that I visited Mahy recently at her Governor’s Bay home to talk about her new book. As with all journalists, she is generous to a fault with her time and attention; and, as always — despite her careful consideration of questions and thoughtful answers — I’m reminded she isn’t truly comfortable making herself or her life the heart of any conversation.

Certainly, any consideration of the style of Mahy’s novels and picture books throws up some irresistible theories. As a writer committed to supporting herself through her art, she has seldom had the time for formal research. Rather, it has been a matter of going out and finding inspiration from her immediate environment: the writing on the side of a bus; a spelling mistake in a note to herself; the similarity between a cat and a fur hat. But despite these sometimes mundane origins, the settings for her stories are delightfully varied, as these books celebrate the dramatic plot twists and unpredictability of adventures on the high seas or in Antarctica, and also in quite unassuming places like the library or even down the back of a chair at home. Mahy has a lifelong affection for characters who are agents of upheaval and disturbance. Her junior and picture books are peppered with pirates, robbers and lions, though they appear alongside librarians, mothers and children, working against comfortable stereotype. Her fictions often have at their heart a young adult burdened with special powers, such as the ability to cast spells in order to transform their world in supernatural and fantastical ways. Another common feature is that, while the conclusions of her tales are usually predictable, they leave the reader feeling absolutely complete, the moral questions resulting from our hero’s powers having been resolved.

Many of these themes can be found in her new novel, The Magician of Hoad. The book was begun more than 15 years ago and envisioned as an ‘entire’ fantasy — one set in a fully imagined world with detailed history and complex tribal inter-relationships, a classical hero quest at its heart. The story ballooned at one point to 800 pages and has been through at least two substantial rewrites. Now half its original size, it is a fascinating read — an adventure, a romance, and a gold mine of Mahy literary preoccupations.

The other splendid Mahy publication this year is a re-issue of Bubble Trouble in a now-illustrated edition. This tongue-twister tale first appeared in 1991, was included in 100 New Zealand Poems (1993) and has been recited by Mahy at countless private and public functions. Perhaps more than any other work, Bubble Trouble is the Mahy that New Zealand children and their parents know so well, the rollicking story of a clown who serves up a joyous torrent of word-play and unexpected rhyme.

Those connections are four or five deep now. I read The Lion in the Meadow in the School Journal in the late 1960s; my step-daughter listened to The Boy Who Was Followed Home over and over in the 1970s; my own children sat very still mouthing The Great White Man-Eating Shark in the 80s and 90s; now, in the 21st century, my grandchildren have heard Down the Dragon’s Tongue, A Summery Saturday Morning and Dashing Dog many times.

Of course, readers are important to any working writer, but Mahy’s espousal of the act of reading goes beyond that: a book is not properly finished, she has often said, until it has been read, because a reader brings something important to the book. So, doubtless out of need to build a market — she’s not ignorant of her popularity — but also out of genuine care for that other dynamic part of the author-reader relationship, Mahy has, until recently, kept up a punishing schedule of public appearances.

Private conversation with Mahy has always been a wild ride — marvellous, in the true sense of the word, the product of a hungry head and an infinite capacity to be astonished. She races away at one stage to consult an encyclopaedia for L. M. Montgomery’s date of death, and speculates about the ‘real’ Montgomery, creator of the ever-popular Anne of Green Gables. Although I’d come to talk about her new book, I couldn’t help but be captivated by her infectious curiosity.

A few years ago, the writer David Hill told a funny story. Though his writing was, he conceded, very different from Mahy’s, he had been affected by her peculiarly alert way of looking at the world, particularly the mad, slippery life of language. Once, Hill said, in a motel room, a sign on a door caught his eye: ‘This door is alarmed.’ Mahy would like that, thought Hill. She would enjoy the comedy just below the surface of the formal warning; she would leap immediately to the possibilities for story and language play: ‘Yes, and this window is concerned, this light fitting is irritated.’ His story was a wonderful comment on Mahy’s vision.

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27. Mahy explores the traditional themes of New Zealand literature.
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28. Mahy’s children’s books have been more popular than her teenage books.
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29. Mahy and Knox have sometimes criticised each other’s work.
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30. Mahy is welcoming to interviewers.
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31. Mahy is at ease speaking about her experiences.
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32. Mahy’s determination to earn a living from writing has encouraged her to find the ideas for her work in ________ places.
- A. disruptive and unpredictable
- B. everyday
- C. loveable
- D. controversial
- E. exotic and ordinary
- F. isolated
- G. unconfident
- H. unsurprising but satisfying
- I. magical
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33. The stories themselves are set in locations that are ________.
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34. In terms of characterisation, almost all of her books feature unruly people, and very often an adolescent who possesses ________ abilities.
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35. Finally, the endings of the stories tend to be ________.
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36. What does the writer say about The Magician of Hoad?
- A. It is partly based on true history.
- B. It was restructured in the writing process.
- C. It is quite different from conventional stories.
- D. It does not reflect the usual themes of Mahy’s work.
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37. According to the writer, Bubble Trouble
- A. was first illustrated in 1991.
- B. is written in plain language.
- C. is an old favourite for many families.
- D. has not been read aloud by Mahy before.
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38. The writer’s purpose in the fifth paragraph is to
- A. show how Mahy’s style has changed through generations.
- B. criticise Mahy’s children’s stories for being repetitive.
- C. describe how new media have changed entertainment.
- D. illustrate Mahy’s popularity with generations of children.
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39. According to the sixth paragraph, which of the following is true?
- A. Readers sometimes do not finish Mahy’s books.
- B. Mahy actively encourages feedback from readers.
- C. Readers are necessary in order to complete a book.
- D. Mahy does not realise how important she is to some readers.
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40. What is the writer doing in the final paragraph?
- A. illustrating Mahy’s view of the world
- B. comparing Mahy with another writer
- C. correcting a misconception about Mahy
- D. suggesting reasons for Mahy’s approach

Answer sheet

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1. iv
The answer is iv because the paragraph explains that the law is present in all parts of our lives, from birth to death.
2. vii
The answer is vii because the paragraph discusses how the public now has more power to influence the law than before.
3. i
The answer is i because the paragraph describes different areas where lawyers work, showing their various professional skills.
4. viii
The answer is viii because the paragraph talks about the increasing number of laws and how the legal system has grown.
5. vi
The answer is vi because the paragraph mentions that lawyers are often viewed negatively by the public.
6. ii
The answer is ii because the paragraph explains why it is not fair to criticize lawyers, comparing them to other professionals.
7. C / D
C is correct because the passage says knowledge of the law is as important as computer skills; D is correct because it states society could not function well without legal experts. B is tempting but fails because the passage does not say commercial law is the most in demand.
8. truth / journalists / nurses / dedication / documents
The correct words fit the context: 'truth' is said to be of little interest to lawyers, 'journalists' and 'nurses' are compared to lawyers, 'dedication' is needed for certain legal work, and 'documents' are what lawyers often write.
9. G
The answer is G because this section describes what makes a song likely to become an earworm, such as being simple and repetitive.
10. A
The answer is A because this part explains why it is important to study earworms, mentioning their effect on people's lives.
11. F
The answer is F because it describes how the brain reacts differently to familiar and unfamiliar songs.
12. H
The answer is H because it talks about future research into how often people of different ages get earworms.
13. wrist
The answer is 'wrist' because volunteers recorded the rhythm of music using a monitor on their wrist.
14. emotions
The answer is 'emotions' because the research found that people who get earworms more often may process emotions differently.
15. entertained
The answer is 'entertained' because Dr Stewart believes earworms keep the brain entertained when it is not busy.
16. challenging
The answer is 'challenging' because the passage says fewer earworms happen when the task is more challenging.
17. D
The answer is D because John Seabrook is mentioned as someone who talks about musicians making memorable music on purpose.
18. A
The answer is A because Lauren Stewart says people cannot fully control their thoughts.
19. B
The answer is B because Ira Hyman says people can remember songs even if they do not know they have heard them.
20. C
The answer is C because Andrea Halpern explains that thinking about music affects the brain like actually hearing it.
21. B
The answer is B because Ira Hyman found that earworms last longer when only a short part of the song repeats.
22. NO
The answer is NO because the passage says Mahy does not focus on traditional New Zealand themes.
23. NOT GIVEN
The answer is NOT GIVEN because the passage does not compare the popularity of Mahy’s children’s and teenage books.
24. NOT GIVEN
The answer is NOT GIVEN because there is no information about Mahy and Knox criticizing each other's work.
25. YES
The answer is YES because the passage says Mahy is friendly and welcoming to interviewers.
26. NO
The answer is NO because the passage says Mahy is not comfortable talking about her own experiences.
27. B
The answer is B because the passage says Mahy finds ideas for her work in everyday places.
28. E
The answer is E because the stories are set in both exotic and ordinary locations.
29. I
The answer is I because many of her books have characters, especially adolescents, with magical abilities.
30. H
The answer is H because the endings of her stories are described as unsurprising but satisfying.
31. B
The answer is B because the passage says The Magician of Hoad was restructured during the writing process.
32. C
The answer is C because Bubble Trouble is described as a favourite for many families over the years.
33. D
The answer is D because the paragraph shows Mahy’s stories are loved by different generations of children.
34. C
The answer is C because the passage says a book is not complete until it is read, so readers are needed to finish it.
35. A
The answer is A because the writer is showing Mahy’s unique and positive view of the world in the last paragraph.

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Reading Passage 1: The Importance of Law

Reading Passage 2: Mind Music: Scientists investigate ‘earworms’, the music we can’t get out of our heads

Reading Passage 3: The New Zealand writer Margaret Mahy

Answer sheet

Answer key