Reading 2026-09 Test 12 — 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 History of the Pencil

(A) 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 thin rods of lead, silver or zinc. It is, however, generally accepted that the history of the modern pencil began in the 16th century, in the hilly, rural county of Cumberland in north-west England.

(B) Some time before 1565, an enormous deposit of the soft, dark grey mineral now known as graphite was discovered in the Borrowdale district of the county. Then, as now, Cumberland was a farming area, and the locals found the mineral useful for marking their sheep so they could identify the ones that belonged to them. It was thought to be a form of lead, and so was referred to as plumbago, a term deriving from the Latin name for that element. However, the mineral was later identified as a form of carbon, and in 1789 the German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner renamed it graphite, a word based on the ancient Greek grapho, meaning ‘draw’ or ‘write’.

(C) The graphite found at Borrowdale was extremely dense and it could easily be sawn into sticks to be used for marking, writing or drawing. But because graphite is also soft, it requires some form of encasement around it, and so the sticks were initially wrapped in string for stability and ease of use. The news of the usefulness of these early pencils spread far and wide, attracting the attention of artists throughout Europe.

(D) In England, the government soon realised the value of the Borrowdale find, particularly for national defence purposes, because graphite proved ideal for lining the moulds used in the making of cannon balls. The mines were therefore taken over by the government, which guarded and periodically flooded them to prevent theft. Because of this, there were occasions when supplies for use in pencils had to be smuggled out in secret. Nevertheless, England still became the centre of a thriving pencil-making industry.

(E) Although deposits of graphite existed in other parts of the world, they were not of the same exceptional purity and quality as Borrowdale graphite, and had to be crushed to a powder to get rid of the impurities. England therefore continued to enjoy a monopoly on the production of pencils until a method of reconstituting the graphite powder could be found. English pencils continued to be made with sticks cut from pure Borrowdale graphite into the 1860s, after which the design was modified. The town of Keswick, close to the Cumberland graphite find, still manufactures pencils today, the factory also being the location of the Cumberland pencil museum.

(F) Experimentation in pencil production was widespread across Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Around 1560, an Italian couple named Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti made what are probably the first blueprints for the modern, wood-encased pencil. Their concept involved the hollowing out of a stick of juniper wood, and placing a stick of graphite inside. Shortly thereafter, a superior technique to that of the Bernacottis was adopted: two wooden halves were carved, a graphite stick inserted, and the halves then glued together — essentially the same method in use to this day.

(G) The first attempt to manufacture graphite sticks from powdered graphite was in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1662, using a mixture of graphite together with the elements sulphur and antimony.

(H) Today, pencils are manufactured around the world, using graphite from a number of sources. Most manufacturers use a mix of graphite and clay as the core of their pencils. Each of these substances is ground into a fine powder, which goes on to be cleaned in order to remove any impurities. After the two types of powders have been dried, they are mixed together using water. The amount of clay added to the mixture depends on how hard the pencil is intended to be — higher proportions of clay will make the pencil harder — and the amount of time spent grinding the mixture determines the quality of the core. The graphite-clay mixture is then shaped into long sticks, and after drying these are heated in a kiln to 1,200°C. In the next step in the process, the graphite-clay sticks are immersed in melted wax, which is absorbed into the mixture and helps to make it write more smoothly. In the next stage, the manufacturers use thin planks of cedar wood or juniper wood. Several long parallel grooves are cut into the planks, and the graphite-clay sticks are inserted into these. A second plank which has been prepared in the same way is then glued on top. The whole assembly is then cut into separate pencils. The outside may then be varnished, retaining the natural colour of the wood, or painted in different colours.

1
In the 1500s, Borrowdale graphite was used by farmers in the area to indicate which ____ they owned.
2
In the 1500s, Borrowdale graphite was first believed to be a type of ____.
3
In the 1500s, Borrowdale graphite was recognised by the English ____ as important in the manufacture of cannon balls.
4
Borrowdale graphite was superior to all other forms of graphite.
- A. TRUE
- B. FALSE
- C. NOT GIVEN
5
Pencil production in the Borrowdale area only lasted until the 1860s.
6
The Cumberland pencil museum contains examples of pencils from different European countries.
7
A technique which improved on the Bernacottis’ method of making pencils is still used now.
8
In 1662, manufacturers in Nuremberg made pencils with graphite imported from England.
9
Graphite and clay are separately crushed to form powders, then ____ and dried.
10
Then, the sticks are dried, and ____.
11
The sticks are dipped into ____.
12
The sticks are put into ____ in a wooden plank and another plank is fixed on top.
13
The pencils are ____ or painted.

Reading Passage 2: The Importance of Law

The law influences all of us virtually all the time. It governs almost all aspects of our behaviour, 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 behaviour 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 helpdesk 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 organisations 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.

14
Choose the correct heading for Paragraph A.
- i. The value of expertise in different fields
- ii. Why criticism of lawyers is unfair
- iii. The need for more public legal education
- iv. Law’s presence throughout our lives
- v. The role of law in business
- vi. Negative views of lawyers
- vii. The increasing influence of ordinary people on law
- viii. Growth in laws
15
Choose the correct heading for Paragraph B.
16
Choose the correct heading for Paragraph C.
17
Choose the correct heading for Paragraph D.
18
Choose the correct heading for Paragraph E.
19
Choose the correct heading for Paragraph F.
20
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.
21
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Lawyers as professionals People sometimes say that ____ (22) 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 ____ (23) or scientific experts may also be driven purely by financial greed. However, criticising lawyers because their work is concerned with people’s problems would be similar to attacking IT staff or ____ (24) for the same reason. In fact, many lawyers focus on questions relating, for example, to housing or civil liberties, which requires them to have ____ (25) to their work. What’s more, a lot of lawyers’ time is spent writing ____ (26) rather than dealing with people’s misfortunes.

Reading Passage 3: The Costs of Brand Loyalty

A Londoner with a sudden urge for giant African snails could do worse than head to the bustling marketplace in Brixton, a part of south London that is home to many people from Africa. Markets like Brixton Market that cater to migrants are a testament to the fact that people often retain very strong preferences for the kinds of food they grew up eating. Just ask the expatriate Britons who flock to 'Tea and Sympathy' in New York's Greenwich Village for pots of Marmite, a yeast-based spread whose delights baffle other nationalities (and many of their own compatriots).

Past research has shown that people are often willing to pay much more for a favoured brand than for seemingly identical alternatives. It is not always obvious why. However, there is ample evidence to support the theory that certain food preferences form in childhood. Children have a predisposition to fear new foods, which is only overcome when they are repeatedly presented with, and encouraged to consume, a particular food. Evidence shows that children's instinctive wariness of new foods dates back to the times when humans had to forage for food, and it was important that they learnt which foods were safe to eat. In the modern world, people routinely express a strong liking for a brand even though they are unable to tell the brand apart from rival brands in blind tests, and many studies have found that advertising alone cannot explain the strength of brand loyalty.

A new study by economists from the universities of Tilburg and Chicago tracks the consumption patterns of 38,000 US households over two years, and confirms the theory that such brand loyalty is widespread, deep and long-lasting. There were clear local patterns in consumption, although the same brands were available everywhere. But 16% of people studied were migrants: they had grown up in one state and moved to another. These migrants had the same options, in terms of what was on offer and at what price, as everyone else in their adopted home, but although they consumed local favourites, they bought fewer than longtime residents. This gap between purchases of migrants and those of the locally born was quite stubborn: although it faded the longer a person lived in their new state, it still took 20 years to halve in magnitude. Even 50 years on, it was still large enough to show up in the data. This could mean that the benefits of being the first brand into a market could last longer than might be assumed.

David Atkin of Yale University has identified some important implications of local food favourites. He suggests in a recent paper that the effects of people being loyal to known brands may also lead economists to rethink the way they calculate the benefits resulting from trade. This is because opening up to trade is in some ways very similar to migrating, as it changes the composition and prices of the foods that are available to a person. In particular, trade can cause local foods to become relatively more expensive. Atkin's data show something many economists do not take into account: when a traditional food has to compete with imported foods, it may no longer be the cheapest food available for people to choose to eat. Atkin decided to look at this situation in the context of developing countries.

To illustrate his point, Atkin uses detailed data about people's food choices in India. India is a good choice because it covers a large number of climatic zones where different specialised crops are grown. Despite being part of the same country, the prevalence of internal barriers to trade means that its regions are best thought of as being only partially open to trade. Atkin's data show that the foods a region specialises in producing are instead cheaper in that region.

However, there has been some opening up of internal trade in India in recent years, and this has revealed that for every rupee spent on food, people's intake of calories declined most in regions where prices of local favourite foods had risen. In theory, when there is a greater choice of types of food, people should adjust their food habits and purchase the cheapest option so that they boost their calorie intake. However, in practice, food habits mean that consumers keep buying the things they know and like even though these foods have become relatively expensive. Atkin calculates that if all barriers to internal trade in India were abolished, the average Indian household would have to generate a rise of 3.3 percent in income to maintain their calorie intake.

In developing countries where there is a high prevalence of undernutrition, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, the habit of continuing to eat favourite foods could have a serious effect on development. There is clear evidence that nutritional shortfalls in children can affect their ability to work and earn as adults, and also have detrimental effects on their long-term health. Consequently, the nutritional declines that can occur as a result of the opening up of trade are of serious concern, because an entire generation that is malnourished as children will continue to suffer irreversible consequences for the rest of their lives, which could hinder the development of their country due to a lack of a quality workforce.

22
In the first paragraph, the writer's purpose is
- A. show that London has a multicultural society
- B. point out that people grow up eating food from markets
- C. give examples of the wide variety of food available in Britain
- D. illustrate the way adults enjoy eating food from their childhood
23
Economists from the universities of Tilburg and Chicago found that people who have migrated from one American state to another
- A. were poorer than longtime residents of the new state
- B. sometimes returned to their home states to buy their favourite foods
- C. bought only some of the brands which were popular in their new state
- D. were particularly sensitive to price increases on food items
24
Atkin's research shows that
- A. trade makes favourite foods hard to find.
- B. trade results in increasing levels of migration.
- C. imported food is of a higher quality than local food.
- D. economists fail to understand all the effects of increased trade.
25
The writer thinks Atkin was wise to choose India for his study because
- A. trade barriers create food shortages between regions.
- B. food is cheap in India in comparison to developed countries.
- C. cultural variation results in a wide range of food preferences.
- D. the varying weather patterns have resulted in regional crop types.
26
The Tilburg and Chicago study shows that brand loyalty is greater in some states of the United States than in others.
- A. YES
- B. NO
- C. NOT GIVEN
27
The study shows that the differences in shopping habits between migrants and native residents increased in the first 20 years.
28
First brands to enter a new market only hold their advantage if they are supported by advertising.
29
Atkin originally chose India as a case study because trade within the country was unrestricted.
30
In India, if a region focuses on certain foods, the cost of those foods remains comparatively low.
31
Food habits and trade in developing countries: Trade is not always beneficial for the citizens of developing countries. Data show that a wider ____ of foods does not necessarily result in a corresponding ____ in the amount of calories in people's diets. This is because people's ____ on continuing to eat the foods they grew up eating could result in insufficient calories in their diets if the cost of these foods rises as a result of more open trade conditions. This is especially true in countries where adequate ____ is already a problem and could result in a whole section of society being unable to contribute fully to their country's ____ in the future. (Choose from: A. nutrition B. range C. progress D. dislike E. incentive F. increase G. independence H. production I. insistence)

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1. sheep
The answer is 'sheep' because the passage says farmers used Borrowdale graphite to mark which sheep they owned.
2. lead
The answer is 'lead' because in the 1500s, Borrowdale graphite was first thought to be a type of lead.
3. government
The answer is 'government' because the English government saw Borrowdale graphite as important for making cannon balls.
4. A
The answer is TRUE because the passage states Borrowdale graphite was better than all other types of graphite.
5. B
The answer is FALSE because pencil production in Borrowdale continued after the 1860s, not only until then.
6. C
The answer is NOT GIVEN because there is no information about pencils from other European countries in the museum.
7. A
The answer is TRUE because the passage says a better technique than the Bernacottis’ is still used today.
8. C
The answer is NOT GIVEN because the passage does not say if Nuremberg pencils used English graphite in 1662.
9. cleaned
The answer is 'cleaned' because after crushing, graphite and clay are cleaned and dried.
10. heated
The answer is 'heated' because after drying, the sticks are heated.
11. wax
The answer is 'wax' because the sticks are dipped into wax.
12. grooves
The answer is 'grooves' because the sticks are put into grooves in a wooden plank.
13. varnished
The answer is 'varnished' because the pencils are varnished or painted.
14. iv
The answer is iv because Paragraph A gives examples of how law is present in many parts of our lives.
15. vii
The answer is vii because Paragraph B talks about how ordinary people now have more influence on law.
16. i
The answer is i because Paragraph C discusses the value of expertise in different fields.
17. viii
The answer is viii because Paragraph D describes the growth in the number of laws.
18. vi
The answer is vi because Paragraph E talks about negative views of lawyers.
19. ii
The answer is ii because Paragraph F explains why criticism of lawyers is unfair.
20. C / D
The answers are C and D because the writer says knowledge of law is as important as computer skills and that society could not work well without legal experts. Option B is tempting but the passage does not say commercial lawyers are most in demand.
21. truth / journalists / nurses / dedication / documents
The answers are: 22. 'truth' (people say truth is not important to lawyers), 23. 'journalists' (like some journalists), 24. 'nurses' (or nurses), 25. 'dedication' (lawyers need dedication), 26. 'documents' (much time is spent writing documents).
22. D
The answer is D because the first paragraph gives examples of adults enjoying food from their childhood.
23. C
The answer is C because the study found migrants only bought some of the brands popular in their new state.
24. D
The answer is D because Atkin's research shows economists do not understand all the effects of more trade.
25. D
The answer is D because the writer says India was a good choice because different weather causes different crops in each region. Option C is tempting but the passage focuses on weather, not culture.
26. C
The answer is NOT GIVEN because the passage does not say if brand loyalty is greater in some states than others.
27. B
The answer is NO because the study shows the differences did not increase in the first 20 years.
28. C
The answer is NOT GIVEN because there is no information about advertising and first brands in the passage.
29. B
The answer is NO because Atkin did not choose India because trade was unrestricted.
30. A
The answer is YES because the passage says if a region focuses on certain foods, their cost stays low.
31. B / F / I / A / C
The answers are: B (range), F (increase), I (insistence), A (nutrition), C (progress). The passage explains that a wider range of foods does not always mean an increase in calories, and people’s insistence on their traditional foods can cause nutrition problems, affecting the country's progress.

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Reading Passage 1: The History of the Pencil

Reading Passage 2: The Importance of Law

Reading Passage 3: The Costs of Brand Loyalty

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