Reading 2026-09 Test 6 — 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: Rubber

The plants that produce rubber are spread right across the globe, and grow in many different habitats. One might think it likely, therefore, that humankind has known about rubber for thousands of years. Yet, unlike other crops of economic importance, rubber led a relatively anonymous life until the last 150 years or so. The Indians of South America appear to be the first people to have understood the properties of rubber, and the Aztecs of what is now Mexico were the first to be recorded using the substance; a wall painting dating back to the sixth century depicts a scene of a tribute offering of crude rubber. With the arrival of Columbus in the Americas and the resulting Spanish influx, further evidence starts to appear concerning the Native American use of rubber. Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas describes a ritual game played with a rubber ball at the court of the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II, and the Mayan and Toltec people are known to have taken part in similar activities. Rubber was also used to make raincoats, shoes, jars, torches and musical instruments, all of which must have been made from the indigenous Castilla elastica, as the Para rubber plant now favoured for rubber cultivation does not grow in the Mexican region.

The first description of latex (liquid rubber) extraction was made by Juan de Torquemada, who noted that if a receptacle was not at hand the Native Americans would place the latex on their bodies to allow it to solidify. However, no real interest in rubber was shown by any European until Charles de la Condamine, a French mathematician, published an account of his journey to South America in 1735. The journey was undertaken on behalf of the Paris Academy of Sciences to measure an arc of the meridian line on the equator, but the journey home was to turn out to be more significant than the true purpose of the trip. Condamine explored Brazil and Peru and discovered how the local people used one single piece of coagulated latex to make boots. The boots were impervious to water and, when smoked, looked like real leather. In 1747 the first description of the rubber tree and latex tapping was made by a military engineer and amateur botanist, François Fresneau, who was posted to French Guiana. The publications of Condamine and Fresneau created considerable excitement among French scientists, and an attempt was made to discover a solvent that could turn the crude rubber into a substance for commercial exploitation.

In 1818 a British medical student named James Syme first used rubber to make waterproof cloth. Another early use of the substance was as an eraser of pencil marks, hence the name ‘rubber’. This was complemented by balloons, rubber bands, braces, boots for the army and other ideas that met with varying degrees of success. In 1820 Thomas Hancock, an English manufacturer of rubber goods such as driving belts, industrial rollers and rubber hoses, invented a machine he called the ‘masticator’, which chewed up waste strips for re-use. It was discovered that the masticated rubber was more malleable, while maintaining much of its elasticity. In Scotland at the same time, Charles Mackintosh had discovered a way of using rubber as waterproofing material, by a process he patented in 1823. Hancock and Mackintosh joined forces in 1834, and three years later Hancock invented a machine for spreading rubber onto material.

Despite their beneficial qualities, such as waterproofing, rubber goods were still not particularly popular as they had some major flaws, including the fact that they dissolved malodorously. They also became pliant when warm and rigid when cold. Then in 1839 the American Charles Goodyear discovered that it was possible to stabilise rubber by mixing it with sulphur while exposing it to heat — a process he called vulcanisation — and the full versatility of this extraordinary substance became apparent.

Rubber goods could now be manufactured which had all the beneficial qualities of the material, such as durability, elasticity and variability, but which were not sticky, soluble or governed by the vagaries of the weather. The economic potential of rubber was now clearly evident. It played an important role in the Industrial Revolution, being employed in the steam engines found in factories, mills, mines and railways. It made a triumphant entrance as a new and innovative material at the Great Exhibition of 1851, where shoes, airbeds, furniture and clothing made out of newly improved rubber were proudly displayed.

One of the most important rubber inventions was made in 1888, when an Irishman called John Boyd Dunlop produced the first pneumatic tyre. Solid rubber tyres had been used for the previous 18 years, but Dunlop’s new design, which he updated in 1890, immediately became popular. In 1895 Dunlop’s tyres were first used in motor cars, and with the mass production of cars just over the horizon the rubber industry had never looked healthier. The import levels of rubber over the nineteenth century bear witness to its irrepressible rise. In 1830 Britain had imported just 211 kg of crude rubber. This had risen to 10,000 kg in 1857, and by 1874 levels were just under six times as much again.

Questions 1–6

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

In boxes 1–6 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
Rubber plants grow only in certain regions of the world.
- A. TRUE
- B. FALSE
- C. NOT GIVEN
2
Rubber was extracted in Mexico as early as the sixth century.
3
Rubber from the Castilla elastica plant is of poorer quality than that from the Para plant.
4
A French mathematician inspired real interest in rubber amongst Europeans.
5
The process of vulcanisation was discovered by accident.
6
Imports of crude rubber into Britain fell during the nineteenth century.

Questions 7–13

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 7–13 on your answer sheet.

The Commercial Development of Rubber

Early European travellers gave accounts of various rubber objects in use in Central and South America, and these accounts created interest in the commercial exploitation of rubber. In 1818, (7) ________ was produced using rubber, and in 1820 a machine was invented for recycling (8) ________ of rubber. Over the next few years, other attempts were made to improve rubber, but some problems remained. For example, rubber products smelt bad when they were dissolved, and could turn either soft or (9) ________ depending on the temperature. However, in 1839 a new process to (10) ________ the substance greatly increased its potential. For example, rubber was used in the creation of the (11) ________ industry during the Industrial Revolution. Then in 1888 the (12) ________ was developed, and a few years later the (13) ________ of the motor car began.

Reading Passage 2: From princes to paupers: how Goya's portraits tell the story of Spain

There are, according to current scholarship, 160 existing portraits by Francisco de Goya - about a third of his painted output. The real number, though, is much greater since there are no pure landscapes in Goya's work, in that everything he ever painted deals with people. In the work of no other great portraitist are a nation's people, history, traumas, folk traditions, and superstitions so comprehensively and relentlessly captured. His subject was a good one since Goya lived in interesting times: his lifetime was a period that saw Spain pass through the effects of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the restoration of the monarchy; it was ruled by a succession of authoritarian and liberal governments; and was simultaneously marked by the Enlightenment. Put his work together—the public and private paintings, the personal drawings and sketches, and the unsettling and sinister etching series—and what you have is a portrait in the round of Spain itself.

His work as a portraitist has its origins in the 45 tapestry cartoons he painted after he moved to Madrid in 1775. Although his designs don't show portraits, they do show types—the majos and majas who gave Madrid its street swagger, peasants and rich men, courting couples, singers, hunters, children, and young men and women playing blind man's buff or tossing a mannequin into the air. The pictures have a light, rococo palette and the faces are individualised without being those of individuals. But in them, Goya practised poses and groupings and a way of handling light on and around figures that was to be invaluable.

The tapestry designs also show social roles rather than the people inhabiting them, but when it came to painting portraits proper, Goya would turn this on its head. His greatest strength as a portraitist is that regardless of the status of the sitter, be they a king and queen, the Duke of Wellington, or a doctor or writer, it was the person he showed first and their position second. It was this trait, most apparent in his royal portraiture, that has led him to be seen as satirising the Bourbon monarchy rather than as a painter who depicted what he saw without showing obeisance to the usual flattering conventions. In Robert Hughes's phrase, he did not 'pay reflexive homage to authority' but instead walked a fine line between respect and truth.

Goya's success was rapid; in 1785 he was made deputy director of painting at the Royal Academy (his main message to his students was subversive—'there are no rules in painting') and in 1786 became pintor de cámara, required to paint 'works required for royal service'. He immediately spent some of his 15,000-reales salary on a two-wheeled gig (one of only three in Madrid) which he promptly crashed on his first outing. His amour propre untouched, he wrote to his childhood friend Martín Zapater: 'I have now established an enviable way of living: I do not wait on anyone in antechambers, and if anyone wants anything from me they must come to me; I have made myself more in demand and unless it is a person of rank or at the request of a friend I would do nothing for anyone...'

Part of the reason for his success was that, unlike Gainsborough, for example, he did not resent portraiture as an economically necessary chore that ate away at the time he could devote to higher art. He embraced the genre as a means of exploring human character. This genuine interest allowed him to penetrate the facade of his sitters, capturing not just their likeness but their psychological state. His portraits from the 1790s, particularly of the royal family, are masterclasses in this approach. He presented them with a stark realism that was unprecedented, grouping them in a way that highlighted their familial dynamics and individual personalities, however flawed or ordinary they might appear.

This commitment to psychological truth became even more pronounced following his near-fatal illness in 1793, which left him deaf. Isolated from the world of sound, Goya’s focus turned inwards, and his work grew darker and more introspective. The light rococo tones of his tapestry cartoons gave way to a richer, somber palette and a dramatic use of chiaroscuro. His portraits from this period, such as those of the Duchess of Alba, are charged with a complex mixture of intimacy, mystery, and power. The line between observer and subject seemed to dissolve, as Goya used the portrait not for public glorification but as a form of private, almost philosophical, inquiry.

Ultimately, Goya’s career traces the arc of Spain’s tumultuous age. The enlightened optimism of his early court paintings gradually soured into a profound disillusionment, vividly recorded in his later, so-called 'Black Paintings'. These murals, painted directly onto the walls of his country house, are a far cry from the formal portraits of princes and dukes. They depict haunting, mythological scenes and grotesque figures, reflecting the despair and chaos of a nation ravaged by war and repression. In this final phase, the portrait of Spain was no longer found in the faces of individuals, but in the tormented soul of its people.

Questions 14–19

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A–G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A–G, in boxes 14–19 on your answer sheet.

14
A description of a personal purchase that ended in an accident.
15
The reason why Goya’s body of work provides such a complete representation of his country.
16
A contrast between Goya's early work and his later, more mature style.
17
An explanation of why Goya was able to be so successful as a portrait painter.
18
Reference to a specific artistic technique that Goya developed in his early career.
19
The claim that Goya’s final works moved away from depicting specific people.

Questions 20–22

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 20–22 on your answer sheet.

Goya's Tapestry Cartoons

Before becoming a renowned portraitist, Goya created designs for tapestries after moving to Madrid. These cartoons did not feature true (20) ________, but instead depicted various social (21) ________. The artistic style of these works was light and rococo, and while the faces were distinctive, they were not of specific, identifiable people. However, these early projects were crucial as they allowed Goya to practise arranging figures and mastering the effect of (22) ________ on his subjects.

Questions 23–26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 23–26 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

23
Goya believed that his teaching role at the Royal Academy was more important than his work for the royal family.
- A. TRUE
- B. FALSE
- C. NOT GIVEN
24
Robert Hughes believed that Goya balanced respect and truth in his portraits of authority figures.
25
Goya's illness directly caused him to change his subject matter from portraits to landscapes.
26
The 'Black Paintings' were originally intended for public display.

Reading Passage 3: Rebranding art museums

As anyone with even a passing interest in cultural institutions will know, art museums are adapting to keep up with changes in society. Do any of these newly developed spaces indicate a fundamental shift in the ways we engage with art at the beginning of the twenty-first century? The answer is a qualified Yes and also, it must be said, No. A clear sense of this can be gained by considering the 2003 redevelopment of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, in the light of the aspirations embodied in the original building that served as its template.

The first building was considered a thoroughly modern museum when it opened to the public in 1968. We should not forget that it was also bold, entrepreneurial and innovative in ways that have done great credit to the vision and foresight of the architect, Roy Grounds. For one thing, the 1968 building signalled a strong sense of engagement with Asian and Pacific cultures, both in its architecture and through the layout of its collections. Its entrance lobby was designed to facilitate the rapid and efficient circulation of visitors. It also contained a series of greatly expanded temporary exhibition galleries and a vast Great Hall, which represented an unprecedented emphasis on the ancillary roles of corporate functions and public performances in the contemporary museum.

This last feature might have seemed excessive to some, yet how wise it has proven over the years as museums have come to place increasing emphasis on corporate sponsorship, and on the need to generate additional funds via room hire. Furthermore, the Great Hall has for forty years provided an area for children to roam at large before being escorted through the much less spatially accommodating galleries themselves. As an unintimidating introduction to the lifelong rigours of visiting art museums, its impact on attendance cannot be overestimated.

At the same time, other aspects of the 1968 NGV have not withstood the test of time so well. Foremost among these are the huge expanse of the exterior’s windowless wall and the surrounding moat, which creates a rather unwelcoming expression of the museum as a temple of culture set apart from the everyday world. Over time, this idea has been questioned, and has been superseded by the growing impetus towards the alternative model of the museum as a more open-ended and visitor-friendly forum that engages the public more effectively.

With these considerations in mind, Mario Bellini’s redeveloped NGV opened in 2003 and his design reflects what the new, improved, twenty-first century global museum feels it should be emphasising to its visitors. Here the institution’s energies are focused, not so much on the technical subtleties of how to design the galleries themselves, as on presenting to the public a spectacular image of the museum itself as a welcoming yet efficient facilitator of social interaction, popular entertainment and public knowledge. All of this is certainly impressive, but where has the art gone? We are not allowed to see the exhibitions until we have completed the necessary inductions. We are greeted by a hugely expanded cloakroom screening off our vision to the right, followed by a large visitor information office leading to the ticket booths. Above us is the cafe and to our left we cannot escape the NGV shop set alongside the exit.

And what of the redesigned galleries themselves? In fact, they represent a wonderfully elegant reframing of the permanent collections in ways that should offer first-time visitors and seasoned members alike many new avenues for engagement in the years to come. But herein lies the conundrum posed by the NGV renovation and by the global sweep of new museum projects more generally. The mainstay elements of a permanent collection can become all too easily lost in the increased prominence that these rebranding exercises tend to place on the more glamorously spectacular aspects of the institution itself. At its most extreme, this results in the construction of new buildings that supplant the artworks inside them to become the major attractions themselves.

These challenges are most keenly felt in the area of the temporary exhibition. Entrance to the NGV permanent collection is now free, so the NGV needs something to keep the paying public coming back. The answer lies in the international ‘blockbuster’ exhibition. The Impressionists, for example, netted a total of 380,000 visitors, making it one of the most popular exhibitions in Australian history. There has also been, it needs to be said, a commendable attempt to leaven the international masterpieces with selected highlights from the permanent collection. Overall, though, the prevalence of these ‘rental’ blockbusters cannot but help introduce a certain ‘off the rack’ feeling to the institution’s exhibition programme. More importantly perhaps, they clearly narrow the options for other worthy but less glamorous projects, and they take energy away from the curators’ potential to do further work on and around the permanent collection itself.

Yet the show must go on, and shows can’t exist without the public. Even the most adroit organisation, as the NGV assuredly is, needs to be able to juggle numerous, often conflicting priorities: the need to advance scholarship, on the one hand, versus the imperative of access on the other; the need to introduce audiences to new areas, versus the necessity of luring them in with instant brand recognition. Nobody said it was going to be easy, and the effect of too much innovation in museums can be disastrous.

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 is the writer doing in the first paragraph?
- A. comparing the old NGV with the new NGV
- B. describing the role of art museums in Australian culture
- C. considering the influence of gallery design on art appreciation
- D. suggesting there has been little recent change in gallery design
28
The writer criticises the old NGV because
- A. the permanent collection was poorly displayed.
- B. the building tended to make art seem remote.
- C. Asian and Pacific art was neglected.
- D. the foyer resembled a shop.
29
What does the writer notice about the new NGV?
- A. He thinks the ticket booths are well positioned.
- B. He is upset that he is made to move so quickly.
- C. He is frustrated because the art is obscured by the entrance.
- D. He thinks the redevelopment fails to keep up with international trends.
30
The writer argues that rental ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions
- A. should be cheaper.
- B. are a financial necessity.
- C. should be increased in number.
- D. allow the museum to present an original programme.

Questions 31–35

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

In boxes 31–35 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

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

31
Roy Grounds’s design failed to recognise the importance of functions and performances in museums.
- A. YES
- B. NO
- C. NOT GIVEN
32
Mario Bellini’s new NGV rejects international museum design trends.
33
Mario Bellini’s work on subsequent museum projects has been less successful than that on the NGV.
34
The NGV monitors the number of first-time visitors to permanent collections.
35
Too much change may have negative impacts on museums.

Questions 36–40

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A–G, below.

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

A the museum programme will lose its individuality.

B the museum will lose credibility.

C the art loses its importance.

D it will have to balance opposing demands.

E this will encourage museum visitors in the future.

F it will have the capability of increasing revenue.

G the architect’s reputation might suffer.

36
If a large space is available in the museum, ________
37
If children are allowed to move freely in parts of the gallery, ________
38
If too much emphasis is placed on the museum building itself, ________
39
If there is an over-reliance on ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions, ________
40
If the NGV wants to continue to be successful, ________

Answer sheet

Fill in as you go — checking is instant and local, and every miss lands in your mistake log with the lesson that fixes it.

Saved on this device — no account needed. Sign in on your progress page if you want it synced elsewhere.

Show answer key

1. B
The passage says rubber plants are native to South America but does not say they grow only in certain regions, so the answer is FALSE.
2. C
There is no information in the passage about rubber being extracted in Mexico as early as the sixth century, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
3. C
The passage does not compare the quality of rubber from the Castilla elastica plant and the Para plant, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
4. A
The passage states that a French mathematician inspired real interest in rubber among Europeans, so the answer is TRUE.
5. C
The passage does not say how the process of vulcanisation was discovered, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
6. B
The passage says imports of crude rubber into Britain increased, not fell, during the nineteenth century, so the answer is FALSE. The tempting wrong answer is TRUE, but this is incorrect because the trend was upward, not downward.
7. waterproof cloth
8. waste strips
9. rigid
10. stabilise / stabilize
11. steam engines
12. pneumatic tyre / pneumatic tire / first pneumatic tyre / first pneumatic tire
13. mass production
14. D
Option D matches a description of a personal purchase that ended in an accident, as described in the passage.
15. A
Option A explains that Goya’s body of work provides a complete representation of his country because he painted all levels of society and many events.
16. F
Option F shows a contrast between Goya's early work, which was light and decorative, and his later, more mature style, which was darker and more serious.
17. E
Option E explains that Goya was successful as a portrait painter because he was able to capture both the appearance and the character of his subjects.
18. B
Option B refers to a specific artistic technique Goya developed early in his career: arranging figures and using light effectively.
19. G
Option G claims that Goya’s final works, the 'Black Paintings', moved away from depicting specific people and instead showed more general, emotional themes.
20. portraits
21. roles
22. light
23. C
24. A
25. B
26. B
27. C
28. B
29. C
30. B
31. B
32. B
33. C
34. C
35. A
36. F
37. E
38. C
39. A
40. D

Want the full timed experience? Try the free full mock exam — real recalled questions, in the real exam interface.

Start mock exam →

Reading Passage 1: Rubber

Reading Passage 2: From princes to paupers: how Goya's portraits tell the story of Spain

Reading Passage 3: Rebranding art museums

Answer sheet

Answer key