Reading 2026-09 Test 14 — 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 Whale Goes to Court

In 1818 a whale became the subject of a controversial court case in New York City. The case involved an old law requiring those who sold fish oil to pay a fee in order to have their barrels inspected by city officials, and certified. However, an oil merchant named Samuel Judd refused to pay the inspection fee on three barrels of oil, claiming that no inspection was necessary because it was whale oil, and whales were not fish. The state disagreed, and so a date was set for a court to decide not a point of law, but the answer to a more fundamental question: is a whale a fish?

As simple as that question may appear today, the answer was far from obvious in the early nineteenth century. Indeed, the public debate in New York sparked off by the trial was sensational. At stake was nothing less than what most regarded as the order of nature. According to the commonly accepted scheme of things, if an animal was not a beast or a bird, it was a fish, regardless of whether it breathed air or suckled its young. For as long as anyone could remember, all non-human creatures had been organised according to the categories of birds, beasts and fish. For the average person the answer seemed perfectly obvious: whales swam in the sea and therefore they were fish.

Against this traditional framework stood the new Linnaean system of classification, which sought to introduce more scientific values into the classification of living things. Barely half a century old in 1818, the Linnaean system controversially classified whales as mammals because they shared two mammalian characteristics: they were warm-blooded and breathed air.

So the trial began in December 1818. Judd’s defence lawyers chose as their star witness one of New York’s most prominent figures, the congressman Samuel Mitchill. Referred to as a ‘living encyclopaedia’ and a ‘walking library’, Mitchill was a renowned natural history lecturer at the college of Physicians and Surgeons who liked to dare his students to test his knowledge of the natural world. ‘Show me the fin, and I will name the fish,’ he boasted. Scientifically, it was an open-and-shut case, and Judd’s defence lawyers believed they only had to do one simple thing to win the trial: insist that it be decided by biology alone. Mitchill seemed fully qualified for this role.

But this is where the case becomes interesting, and is the reason why the trial of the whale is not some dusty nineteenth-century obscurity. For rather than debate Mitchill on his area of expertise, lawyers for the New York City fish-oil inspectors chose a different tack. Lead counsel William Sampson turned the trial into a contest between scientific learning and common sense, by asking plain-spoken whalers to make their case before the jury.

The crux of Sampson’s case was the trial’s implication with regard to humans, should Judd be found not guilty. Sampson told jury members that if they accepted Mitchill’s testimony on whales, they were obliged to accept a lower place for their own kind in the natural order. As a result, Mitchill’s day in court did not go smoothly, not least because he was forced to acknowledge serious disputes among his peers regarding exactly how to classify biological organisms. Sampson then took aim at Mitchill himself and what he represented: privileged aristocrats from the scientific community who had lost touch with reality. The smooth-talking Sampson then claimed Mitchill’s beliefs had their origin in Europe – something he rightly judged would infuriate the citizens of always-independent New York. This revolutionary new thinking Sampson claimed, was something that honest working New Yorkers could do without. No longer was this a case about barrels of oil but the proper place of scientific knowledge in the U.S.A.

Ultimately, what won the case for Samuel Judd were not Mitchill’s scientific arguments, but testimony from a different sphere altogether. In New York’s markets, the merchants implicitly understood that whale oil and fish oil were not the same: whale oil could be used as a fuel for lamps because it could be burned without giving off smoke; fish oil, on the other hand, was nasty, impure stuff used primarily in tanning leather. In the end it was this testimony that led to Judd’s victory.

The trial of the whale still has relevance today, when the court of public opinion remains easily swayed by sceptics. The 1818 trial was really about this question: who gets to decide on the place of the natural world in the human world – scientific experts or public opinion? Whether the issue today is the effects of human activity on the climate of this planet, or one of many other contemporary topics, the legacy of Judd’s case continues to be of relevance.

Questions 1–7

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

In boxes 1–7 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1
An inspection fee on fish oil was introduced in New York in 1818.
- A. TRUE
- B. FALSE
- C. NOT GIVEN
2
Samuel Judd argued that the inspection fee should exclude whale oil.
3
Judd had been in trouble with city officials before the inspection fee disagreement.
4
Many New Yorkers were interested in the court case at the time.
5
Traditionally, non-human creatures had been classified in one of three groups.
6
Generally speaking, ordinary people thought fish were the lowest form of life.
7
Whales were excluded from the Linnaean system in 1818.

Questions 8–13

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answer in boxes 8–13 on your answer sheet.

The Trial of December 1818

The Personalities

Samuel Mitchill worked as a congressman and a (8) ________.

The defence wanted Mitchill to present the biology of the case.

William Sampson called (9) ________ as witnesses in order to appeal to the common sense of the jury.

The Arguments

Sampson’s case was based on the consequences for humans if Judd won.

Mitchill admitted that scientists had disputes about classification.

New Yorkers disliked Mitchill because his ideas came from (10) ________.

Conclusions

In the end it was statements from local (11) ________, not Mitchill’s testimony which helped Judd win.

Whale oil made a good (12) ________ because it was clean.

Judd’s case is relevant today, e.g. in the debate about Earth’s (13) ________.

Reading Passage 2: The Myth of the Eight-hour Sleep

(A) We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night—but it could be good for you. Indications from both science and history suggest that the eight-hour sleep may not be a natural or inborn pattern for humans. In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted research which implies just that. Wehr kept a group of people in a darkened room for 14 hours a day for a month. It took some time for their sleep to regulate, but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. First, they slept for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep. Though sleep scientists were impressed by the implications of the study, the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists amongst the general public.

(B) In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech University in the US published a paper drawn from 16 years of research, revealing historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct periods of time each night. Ekirch’s research found more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern—in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from the ancient Greeks to tribes in Nigeria. Much like Wehr’s findings, these references describe a first sleep which began not long following sunset. Then there was a waking period of one or two hours and after that a second sleep. During the waking period, people could be quite active. They sometimes got up and moved around the house, although most people stayed in bed, and perhaps read or wrote if they had enough money for candles. In many historic accounts, Ekirch found that people used the time that they were awake between periods of sleep to think about and attempt to analyse their dreams. In his book, Evening’s Empire, historian Craig Koslofsky suggests an explanation for this divided sleep pattern in Europe. ‘Associations with night before the 17th century were not good,’ he writes. He goes on to explain that the streets of the cities and towns at night were often populated by thieves or worse. The streets at night consequently scared many people. Even the wealthy, who could afford to light their way, had better things to spend their nights on.

(C) Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th century. The pattern began to alter first among the upper classes in northern Europe and, over the course of the next 200 years, began changing amongst the rest of Western society. By the 1920s, the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness. Ekirch attributes the initial shift to improvements in street and home lighting. As the night became a time for all kinds of activity, the length of time people slept declined. In 1667, Paris became the first city in the world to light its streets, using wax candles in glass lamps. It was followed by another French city, Lille, in the same year and by Amsterdam in Holland two years later, where a much more efficient oil-powered lamp was developed. London didn’t light its streets until 1684, but by the end of the 17th century, more than 50 of Europe’s major towns and cities were lit at night. Coffee houses emerged as a fashionable phenomenon and many were open virtually around the clock. Going out at night became commonplace, and spending hours lying in bed was considered a waste of time. ‘People were becoming increasingly time-conscious and sensitive to efficiency, certainly before the 19th century,’ says Ekirch. ‘But the Industrial Revolution intensified that attitude considerably.’ Strong evidence of this shifting attitude is contained in a medical journal from 1829 which urged parents to force their children out of the pattern of first and second sleep.

(D) Today, most people seem to have adapted quite well to the eight-hour sleep, but Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body’s natural preference for divided sleep, as well as in difficulties caused by extended exposure to artificial light in the modern world. This could be the cause of a condition called sleep maintenance insomnia, where people wake during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep. The condition first appears in literature at the end of the 19th century, at the same time as accounts of interrupted sleep disappear.

(E) Sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs says that the idea that we must sleep for an extended period of time could be damaging if it makes people who wake up in the night anxious, as this anxiety can itself discourage sleep and is likely to affect waking life too. Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people simply rested and relaxed, could have played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally. Russell Foster, a professor of circadian (body clock) neuroscience at Oxford University in the UK, shares this point of view. ‘Over 30% of the medical problems that doctors are faced with stem directly or indirectly from sleep. But sleep has been ignored in medical training, and there are very few centres where sleep is studied,’ Foster says. He feels this needs to change.

Questions 14–18

Reading Passage 2 has five sections, A–E.

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

Write the correct number, i–vii, in boxes 14–18 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i Historical reasons why interrupted sleep became uncommon

ii Brain structures involved in sleep patterns

iii Potential health issues related to sleep

iv Famous cases in literature of sleep problems

v An analysis of old documents to discover sleep patterns

vi Biological and environmental factors preventing people from falling asleep again

vii Scientific evidence that divided sleep is a natural phenomenon

14
Section A
15
Section B
16
Section C
17
Section D
18
Section E

Questions 19–23

Look at the following statements (Questions 19–23) and the list of researchers below.

Match each statement with the correct researcher, A–E.

Write the correct letter, A–E, in boxes 19–23 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

List of Researchers

A Thomas Wehr

B Roger Ekirch

C Craig Koslofsky

D Gregg Jacobs

E Russell Foster

19
In certain historical periods, the threat of criminal danger led to segmented sleep.
20
Physicians should learn more about treating people with sleeping difficulties.
21
Historically, when people experienced interrupted sleep, they used the waking periods at night for different activities.
22
Technological changes in Europe made people more likely to sleep through the night.
23
The belief that humans should have a long continuous sleep can be psychologically harmful.

Questions 24–26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 24–26 on your answer sheet.

Historical patterns of interrupted sleep

Historical evidence seems to show that humans had common sleep patterns which were quite unlike today’s eight hours of unbroken sleep each night.

People habitually went to bed early, soon after (24) ________, slept for a while,

then woke up for a few hours of activity or perhaps to consider, for example, the meaning of their (25) ________.

There was little else to do at home in the dark, since what little means of lighting they had, such as using candles, was costly.

In 16th-century Europe, people tended to stay at home at night because they feared (26) ________ on largely unlit city streets.

Once urban street lighting improved, nightlife in cities became popular, and recreational spots like coffee houses came to be considered fashionable. Consequently, sleeping patterns also began to change.

Reading Passage 3: The Significant Role of Mother Tongue in Education

One consequence of population mobility is an increasing diversity within schools. To illustrate, in the city of Toronto in Canada, 58% of kindergarten pupils come from homes where English is not the usual language of communication. Schools in Europe and North America have experienced this diversity for years, and educational policies and practices vary widely between countries and even within countries. Some political parties and groups search for ways to solve the problem of diverse communities and their integration in schools and society. However, they see few positive consequences for the host society and worry that this diversity threatens the identity of the host society. Consequently, they promote unfortunate educational policies that will make the “problem” disappear. If students retain their culture and language, they are viewed as less capable of identifying with the mainstream culture and learning the mainstream language of the society.

The challenge for educators and policy-makers is to shape the evolution of national identity in such a way that the rights of all citizens (including school children) are respected, and the cultural, linguistic, and economic resources of the nation are maximised. To waste the resources of the nation by discouraging children from developing their mother tongues is quite simply unintelligent from the point of view of national self-interest. A first step in providing an appropriate education for culturally and linguistically diverse children is to examine what the existing research says about the role of children's mother tongues in their educational development.

In fact, the research is very clear. When children continue to develop their abilities in two or more languages throughout their primary school, they gain a deeper understanding of language and how to use it effectively. They have more practice in processing language, especially when they develop literacy in both. More than 150 research studies conducted during the past 25 years strongly support what Goethe, the famous eighteenth-century German philosopher, once said: the person who knows only one language does not truly know that language. Research suggests that bilingual children may also develop more flexibility in their thinking as a result of processing information through two different languages.

The level of development of children's mother tongue is a strong predictor of their second language development. Children who come to school with a solid foundation in their mother tongue develop stronger literacy abilities in the school language. When parents and other caregivers (e.g., grandparents) are able to spend time with their children and tell stories or discuss issues with them in a way that develops their mother tongue, children come to school well-prepared to learn the school language and succeed educationally. Children's knowledge and skills transfer across languages from the mother tongue to the school language. Transfer across languages can be two-way: both languages nurture each other when the educational environment permits children access to both languages.

Some educators and parents are suspicious of mother tongue-based teaching programs because they worry that they take time away from the majority language. For example, in a bilingual program when 50% of the time is spent teaching through children's home language and 50% through the majority language, surely children won't progress as far in the latter? One of the most strongly established findings of educational research, however, is that well-implemented bilingual programs can promote literacy and subject-matter knowledge in a minority language without any negative effects on children's development in the majority language. Within Europe, the Foyer program in Belgium, which develops children's speaking and literacy abilities in three languages (their mother tongue, Dutch and French), most clearly illustrates the benefits of bilingual and trilingual education (see Cummins, 2000).

It is easy to understand how this happens. When children are learning through a minority language, they are learning concepts and intellectual skills too. Pupils who know how to tell the time in their mother tongue understand the concept of telling time. In order to tell time in the majority language, they do not need to re-learn the concept. Similarly, at more advanced stages, there is transfer across languages in other skills such as knowing how to distinguish the main idea from the supporting details of a written passage or story, and distinguishing fact from opinion. Studies of secondary school pupils are providing interesting findings in this area, and it would be worth extending this research.

Many people marvel at how quickly bilingual children seem to “pick up” conversational skills in the majority language at school (although it takes much longer for them to catch up with native speakers in academic language skills). However, educators are often much less aware of how quickly children can lose their ability to use their mother tongue, even in the home context. The extent and rapidity of language loss will vary according to the concentration of families from a particular linguistic group in the neighborhood. Where the mother tongue is used extensively in the community, then language loss among young children will be less. However, where language communities are not concentrated in particular neighborhoods, children can lose their ability to communicate in their mother tongue within 2–3 years of starting school. They may retain receptive skills in the language but they will use the majority language in speaking with their peers and siblings and in responding to their parents. By the time children become adolescents, the linguistic division between parents and children has become an emotional chasm. Pupils frequently become alienated from the cultures of both home and school with predictable results.

Questions 27–30

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 27–30 on your answer sheet.

27
What point did the writer make in the second paragraph?
- A. Some present studies on children's mother tongues are misleading.
- B. A culturally rich education programme benefits some children more than others.
- C. Bilingual children can make a valuable contribution to the wealth of a country.
- D. The law on mother tongue use at school should be strengthened.
28
Why does the writer refer to something that Goethe said?
- A. to lend weight to his argument
- B. to contradict some research
- C. to introduce a new concept
- D. to update current thinking
29
The writer believes that when young children have a firm grasp of their mother tongue
- A. They can teach older family members what they learnt at school.
- B. They go on to do much better throughout their time at school.
- C. They can read stories about their cultural background.
- D. They develop stronger relationships with their family than with their peers.
30
Why are some people suspicious about mother-tongue-based teaching programmes?
- A. They worry that children will be slow to learn to read in either language.
- B. They think that children will confuse words in the two languages.
- C. They believe that the programmes will make children less interested in their lessons.
- D. They fear that the programmes will use up valuable time in the school day.

Questions 31–35

Complete the summary using the list of words, A–J, below.

Write the correct letter, A–J, in boxes 31–35 on your answer sheet.

Bilingual Children

It was often recorded that bilingual children acquire the (31) ________ to converse in the majority language remarkably quickly.

The fact that the mother tongue can disappear at a similar (32) ________ is less well understood.

This phenomenon depends, to a certain extent, on the proportion of people with the same linguistic background who have settled in a particular (33) ________.

If this is limited, children are likely to lose the active use of their mother tongue, and thus no longer employ it even with (34) ________, although they may still understand it.

It follows that teenage children in these circumstances experience a sense of (35) ________ in relation to all aspects of their lives.

A teachers

B school

C dislocation

D rate

E time

F family

G communication

H type

I ability

J area

Questions 36–40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 36–40 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

36
Less than half of the children who attend kindergarten in Toronto have English as their mother tongue.
- A. YES
- B. NO
- C. NOT GIVEN
37
Research proves that learning the host country language at school can have an adverse effect on a child's mother tongue.
38
The Foyer program is to be accepted by the French education system.
39
Bilingual children are taught to tell the time earlier than monolingual children.
40
Bilingual children can apply reading comprehension strategies acquired in one language when reading in the other.

Answer sheet

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Show answer key

1. B
The passage says the inspection fee was on whale oil, not fish oil, so the answer is FALSE.
2. A
Judd argued that whale oil should not be included in the inspection fee, so the answer is TRUE.
3. C
There is no information about Judd having trouble with city officials before, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
4. A
The passage says many New Yorkers followed the court case, so the answer is TRUE.
5. A
The passage explains that non-human creatures were traditionally put into three groups, so the answer is TRUE.
6. C
There is no information about what ordinary people thought about fish, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
7. B
The passage says whales were included in the Linnaean system, not excluded, so the answer is FALSE.
8. lecturer
9. whalers
10. Europe
11. merchants
12. fuel
13. climate
14. vii
Section A is about scientific evidence for segmented sleep, matching option vii.
15. v
Section B analyzes old documents, matching option v.
16. i
Section C discusses why segmented sleep became uncommon, matching option i.
17. vi
Section D is about biological and environmental causes of insomnia, matching option vi.
18. iii
Section E discusses health issues related to sleep, matching option iii.
19. C
The passage does not mention criminal danger as a reason for segmented sleep, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
20. E
Section E says physicians should learn more about treating sleep difficulties.
21. B
Section B explains that people used waking periods at night for different activities.
22. B
Section B says technological changes in Europe led to more people sleeping through the night.
23. D
Section D says believing in long continuous sleep can be psychologically harmful.
24. sunset
25. dreams
26. thieves
27. C
28. A
29. B
30. D
31. I
32. D
33. J
34. F
35. C
36. A
37. B
38. C
39. C
40. A

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Reading Passage 1: The Whale Goes to Court

Reading Passage 2: The Myth of the Eight-hour Sleep

Reading Passage 3: The Significant Role of Mother Tongue in Education

Answer sheet

Answer key