Reading 2026-06 Test 1 — IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test with Answers

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Reading Passage 1 — Health in the Wild

A For the past decade Dr Engel, a lecturer in environmental sciences at Britain’s Open University, has been collating examples of self-medicating behaviour in wild animals. She recently published a book on the subject. In a talk at the Edinburgh Science Festival earlier this month, she explained that the idea that animals can treat themselves has been regarded with some scepticism by her colleagues in the past. But a growing number of animal behaviourists now think that wild animals can and do deal with their own medical needs.

B One example of self-medication was discovered in 1987. Michael Huffman and Mohamedi Seifu, working in the Mahale Mountains National Park in Tanzania, noticed that local chimpanzees suffering from intestinal worms would dose themselves with the pith of a plant called Veronia. This plant produces poisonous chemicals called terpenes. Its pith contains a strong enough concentration to kill gut parasites, but not so strong as to kill chimps (nor people, for that matter; locals use the pith for the same purpose). Given that the plant is known locally as “goat-killer”, however, it seems that not all animals are as smart as chimps and humans. Some consume it indiscriminately and succumb.

C Since the Veronia-eating chimps were discovered, more evidence has emerged suggesting that animals often eat things for medical rather than nutritional reasons. Many species, for example, consume dirt—a behaviour known as geophagy. Historically, the preferred explanation was that soil supplies minerals such as salt. But geophagy occurs in areas where the earth is not a useful source of minerals, and also in places where minerals can be more easily obtained from certain plants that are known to be rich in them. Clearly, the animals must be getting something else out of eating earth.

D The current belief is that soil—and particularly the clay in it—helps to detoxify the defensive poisons that some plants produce in an attempt to prevent themselves from being eaten. Evidence for the detoxifying nature of clay came in 1999, from an experiment carried out on macaws by James Gilardi and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis. Macaws eat seeds containing alkaloids, a group of chemicals that has some notoriously toxic members, such as strychnine. In the wild, the birds are frequently seen perched on eroding riverbanks eating clay. Dr Gilardi fed one group of macaws a mixture of harmless alkaloid and clay, and a second group just the alkaloid. Several hours later, the macaws that had eaten the clay had 60% less alkaloid in their bloodstreams than those that had not, suggesting that the hypothesis is correct.

E Other observations also support the idea that clay is detoxifying. Towards the tropics, the amount of toxic compounds in plants increases—and so does the amount of earth eaten by herbivores. Elephants lick clay from mud holes all year round, except in September when they are bingeing on fruit which, because it has evolved to be eaten, is not toxic. And the addition of clay to the diets of domestic cattle increases the amount of nutrients that they can absorb from their food by 10-20%.

F A third instance of animal self-medication is the use of mechanical scours to get rid of gut parasites. In 1972 Richard Wrangham, a researcher at the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania, noticed that chimpanzees were eating the leaves of a tree called Aspilia. The chimps chose the leaves carefully by testing them in their mouths. Having chosen a leaf, a chimp would fold it into a fan and swallow it. Some of the chimps were noticed wrinkling their noses as they swallowed these leaves, suggesting the experience was unpleasant. Later, undigested leaves were found on the forest floor.

G Dr Wrangham rightly guessed that the leaves had a medicinal purpose—this was, indeed, one of the earliest interpretations of a behaviour pattern as self-medication. However, he guessed wrong about what the mechanism was. His (and everybody else’s) assumption was that Aspilia contained a drug, and this sparked more than two decades of phytochemical research to try to find out what chemical the chimps were after. But by the 1990s, chimps across Africa had been seen swallowing the leaves of 19 different species that seemed to have few suitable chemicals in common. The drug hypothesis was looking more and more dubious.

H It was Dr Huffman who got to the bottom of the problem. He did so by watching what came out of the chimps, rather than concentrating on what went in. He found that the egested leaves were full of intestinal worms. The factor common to all 19 species of leaves swallowed by the chimps was that they were covered with microscopic hooks. These caught the worms and dragged them from their lodgings.

I Following that observation, Dr Engel is now particularly excited about how knowledge of the way that animals look after themselves could be used to improve the health of livestock. People might also be able to learn a thing or two, and may, indeed, already have done so. Geophagy, for example, is a common behaviour in many parts of the world. The medical stalls in African markets frequently sell tablets made of different sorts of clays, appropriate to different medical conditions.

J Africans brought to the Americas as slaves continued this tradition, which gave their owners one more excuse to affect to despise them. Yet, as Dr Engel points out, Rwandan mountain gorillas eat a type of clay rather similar to kaolinite—the main ingredient of many patent medicines sold over the counter in the West for digestive complaints. Dirt can sometimes be good for you, and to be “as sick as a parrot” may, after all, be a state to be desired.

Questions 1–4: True/False/Not Given

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1–4 on your answer sheet, write TRUE if the statement is true, FALSE if the statement is false, NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage.

1
It is for 10 years that Dr Engel has been working on animal self-medication.
2
In order to find plants for medication, animals usually need to walk a long distance.
3
Birds such as Macaw, are seen eating clay because it is a part of their natural diet.
4
According to Dr Engel, it is exciting that research into animal self-medication can be helpful in the invention of new painkillers.

Questions 5–9: Note Completion

Complete the notes below using NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage. Write your answers in boxes 5–9 on your answer sheet.

Date Name Animal Food Mechanism

Michael Huffman and Mohamedi Seifu 1987 Chimpanzee Veronia 5 ____________ of 6 ____________ which can kill parasites

James Gilardi and his colleagues 1999 Macaw Seeds (contain 7 ____________) and clay Clay can 8 ____________ the poisonous contents in food

9. Richard Wrangham 1972 Chimpanzee Leaves with tiny ____________ on surface Such leaves can catch and expel worms from intestines

Questions 10–13: Summary Completion

Complete the summary below using words from the box. Write your answers, A–H, in boxes 10–13 on your answer sheet.

A. mineral

B. plants

C. unpleasant

D. toxic

E. clay tablets

F. nutritional

G. geophagy

H. harmless

10
One piece of evidence particularly deals with ____________, a soil-consuming behaviour commonly found across animal species, because the earth, often clay, can neutralize the 11 ____________ content of their diet. Such behaviour can also be found among humans in Africa, where people purchase 12 ____________ at market stalls as a kind of medication to their illnesses. Another example of this is found in chimps eating leaves of often 13 ____________ taste but with no apparent medicinal value until its unique structure came into light.
- A. mineral
- B. plants
- C. unpleasant
- D. toxic
- E. clay tablets
- F. nutritional
- G. geophagy
- H. harmless

Reading Passage 2 — Orientation of Birds

A. For many of us, the way birds are able to orientate is both astounding and difficult to appreciate fully. For instance, the annual migration of the golden plover of the Pacific takes it from Alaska to Hawaii on a flight of well over 3000 kilometres, and if it were to deviate by only one degree, it would miss the island on which it nests.

B. The first systematic studies on orientation in birds were made possible by the ‘homing instinct’ exhibited by so many species. Birds are caught at a time when they show an attachment to their territory, especially during the nesting season. They are taken to some spot, released, and the percentage of returns is recorded. The distance can be varied, and the direction, as well as the method of transporting them, and then the influence of climatic and other factors on their ability to find their way home can be studied. These experiments have shown a wide variation in ability to home, and three types of homing behaviour have been identified.

C. In the first type, birds methodically explore the area in which they are released until they pick up some familiar feature, and then they quickly find their way back to the nest. Such birds possess a highly developed visual memory, as experiments with pigeons have shown. Domestic pigeons have been trained to peck at a certain point on an aerial photograph, with a system of rewards, and four years later the birds were still able to respond to this training when placed on the aerial photograph. Birds’ eyes have a power of resolution two to three times greater than ours, enabling them to pick up very fine details. If a bird uses only this type of homing behaviour, however, it can only succeed if the point of release is not too far away. If the birds are transported 800 kilometres from their nest, it is only by good fortune that they find their way back as a result of long exploratory flights. Usually, the area known to a bird is its feeding territory. Released within this area, the birds soon make their return; release them outside it and far fewer return. However, if a bird is released for a second time in the same place, its visual memory comes into play, and the bird, no longer requiring tedious exploratory flights, will return much more quickly.

D. The second type of homing behaviour is shown by birds that are capable of choosing their flight direction and holding to it for the rest of their journey. How do they decide what direction to take? They appear to choose their normal migration direction even if they are released in a different place from their usual starting point. If, for example, birds which normally fly to the north-east to reach latitude 45 degrees north are released at that latitude, they will immediately start flying north-east anyway. So if they’re released further to the west, they’ll maintain the correct direction, but fly west of their destination, and so fail to arrive.

E. The third type of homing behaviour shows the highest degree of orientation. Released at one point, the birds immediately take stock of it, compare its position with that of the nest, decide on the direction and fly off. This happens even if the birds are in a country right off their migration routes, where they have never been before. In one example, a laysan albatross returned to its nesting area on Midway Island in the middle of the Pacific, having flown over 5000 kilometres from the west coast of the USA in just over ten days. This is a perfect example of the third type of homing, for the albatross clearly couldn’t rely on any landmarks over the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

F. The percentage of successful birds varies greatly, being highest in those species with a strong migratory behaviour. Thus the lesser black-backed gull is more migratory than the herring gull and more often reaches ‘home’. Great migrants such as the swift have the highest percentage of returns. In one case, seven out of nine alpine swifts were recaptured at their nests after being displaced some 1400 kilometres; one made the journey in three days.

G. What part does heredity play in all this? Two research studies suggest that instinctive, i.e. genetically inherited, behaviour patterns play a part in navigation. The first was carried out by Ernst Schuz and it is highly significant. Schuz caught first year European storks and released them later, after the departure of the adult storks at a time when they normally make their south-west autumn migration to Africa. The recaptures showed that, in spite of the fact that there were no adults to guide them, the birds unanimously headed south-west. This was a most striking finding, for it showed that the birds had an innate and unlearned attraction for the African wintering area that they have occupied for thousands of years.

H. The case of starlings is a little different. These birds have a great aptitude for homing, but this behaviour differs in the different age groups. Birds that were shifted to the south-east of their normal migration route split into two lots. The adults, in full possession of their gift for orientation, found their wintering area by modifying their direction by 90 degrees, whereas the juveniles sought their winter quarters to the south-east of their real position.

Questions 14–18: Summary Completion

Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 14–18 on your answer sheet.

Types of homing behaviour

14. First type: Birds rely on their sophisticated ____________. However, they are generally most successful if they are released within their feeding territory.

Second type: Birds select their accustomed 15 ____________, no matter where they are released. As a result, they may miss their 16 ____________.

Third type: Birds orientate correctly, even when they are released in an unfamiliar place and have no 17 ____________ to make use of. One bird with this type of skill is the 18 ____________.

Questions 19–22: Matching Information

Reading Passage has eight paragraphs, A–H. Write the correct letter, A–H, in boxes 19–22 on your answer sheet. NB You may use any letter more than once.

19
the effects of distance on some birds’ ability to find their nests
20
a methodology for testing the general ability of birds to find their nests
21
one aspect of physical ability in humans and birds
22
how some birds’ migration was delayed for experimental purposes

Questions 23–26: Matching

Look at the following types of birds (Questions 23–26) and the list of points which the author wishes to illustrate below. Match each bird with the point which it illustrates, A–G. Write the correct letter, A–G, in boxes 23–26 on your answer sheet.

List of points which the author wishes to illustrate

A. an ability to orientate without previous training

B. the speed at which birds can fly

C. the ability to remember things seen previously

D. the effect of age on homing ability

E. the strength required to fly a great distance

F. a high success rate in finding nests

G. the importance of seasonal cues for migrating birds

23
domestic pigeon
24
alpine swift
25
European stork
26
starling

Reading Passage 3 — Women and the vision thing

Many believe that bias against women lingers in the business world, particularly when it comes to evaluating their leadership ability. Recently, we had a chance to see whether that assumption was true. In a study of thousands of 360-degree assessments collected by INSEAD’s executive education program over the past five years, we looked at whether women actually received lower ratings than men. To our surprise, we found the opposite: as a group, women outshone men in most of the leadership dimensions measured. There was one exception, however, and it was a big one: Women scored lower on ‘envisioning’—the ability to recognize new opportunities and trends in the environment and develop a new strategic direction for an era.

But was this weakness a perception or a belief? And how could someone not perceive explored these issues with successful female executives, we arrived at another question: Was a reputation for vision even something many of them wanted to achieve?

A brilliant career

A leading services company CEO well call Anne Dumas typified in many ways the women we spoke with. The pillar of her leadership style was a principle taught to her 20 years ago by her first boss: Always stay close to the details. As she explained it: “I think strategy comes naturally from knowing your business and the forces that influence your market, clients, and suppliers—not at a high level but at a detailed level. Intermediaries kill your insight. You obviously can’t monitor everything, but nothing should keep you from knowing in detail the processes on which your company runs—not supervising everything but understanding at a detailed level what is going on. Otherwise, you are hostage to people who will play politics. At best you don’t have full information; at worst you’re vulnerable to hidden agendas. My job is to go to the relevant detail level.”

In her four years as CEO, Dumas had achieved some impressive results. She had doubled revenues and operating margins, given the company a new strategic direction, and undertaken a fundamental reorganization of the company’s core processes and structures. More recently, she had turned her attention to developing her leadership team.

Another executive, Sarah Lin, a tech industry veteran, echoed this sentiment. She believed that the traditional concept of a visionary leader—a solitary figure announcing a grand, top-down strategy—was outdated. "My 'vision' isn't a prophecy I deliver from on high," Lin stated. "It's a collaborative synthesis. It emerges from deep immersion in the work my team is doing, from understanding the granular challenges and the small, incremental innovations. The big picture is built from a mosaic of details." This hands-on approach, while highly effective in fostering agile and responsive teams, often remains invisible in traditional leadership assessments, which tend to value charismatic, broad-stroke pronouncements.

This discrepancy points to a potential gender-based bias in how "vision" is defined and recognized. The archetype of a visionary leader is often male, associated with bold, future-oriented rhetoric. Female leaders, who may build strategy from the ground up through collaboration and detailed mastery, might not fit this mould. Consequently, their strategic contributions are sometimes overlooked or undervalued as mere operational excellence, rather than being recognized as a different, yet equally valid, form of visionary leadership. The question, therefore, may not be whether women lack vision, but whether the business world has a narrow definition of what vision looks like in practice.

Questions 27–31: True/False/Not Given

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 27–31 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.

27
The study from INSEAD confirmed that women receive lower overall leadership ratings than men.
28
The study found that women outperformed men in every single leadership dimension.
29
Anne Dumas believes that understanding detailed processes protects a leader from office politics.
30
Anne Dumas's first boss was the CEO of a leading services company.
31
Sarah Lin works in the technology sector.

Questions 32–36: Multiple Choice

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 32–36 on your answer sheet.

32
The INSEAD study was surprising because it showed that women
- A. were significantly better at envisioning than men.
- B. received higher ratings in most leadership areas.
- C. were biased against male leaders.
- D. had not improved their leadership skills over five years.
33
According to the passage, 'envisioning' is the ability to
- A. manage a team of executives effectively.
- B. double a company's revenues and margins.
- C. identify new opportunities and set a new strategic direction.
- D. understand the detailed processes of a company.
34
The core principle of Anne Dumas's leadership style is to
- A. supervise every single company process.
- B. delegate all strategic planning to intermediaries.
- C. remain closely connected to the details.
- D. avoid hidden agendas by playing politics.
35
What impressive achievement did Anne Dumas accomplish as CEO?
- A. She increased the company's market share by 100%.
- B. She developed a new leadership team from scratch.
- C. She doubled the company's revenues and operating margins.
- D. She taught her first boss a new leadership principle.
36
According to the passage, the traditional concept of a visionary leader is often
- A. collaborative and detail-oriented.
- B. female and operational.
- C. charismatic and broad-strokes.
- D. invisible and undervalued.

Questions 37–40: Summary Completion

Complete the summary using the list of words, A–G, below. Write the correct letter, A–G, in boxes 37–40 on your answer sheet.

A. archetype

B. collaboration

C. bias

D. operational excellence

E. study

F. prophecy

G. principle

37
The passage suggests a potential ____________ in how leadership vision is perceived. The authors argue that the common 38 ____________ of a visionary leader is typically male and associated with bold rhetoric. Female leaders like Sarah Lin, however, often develop strategy through 39 ____________ and a deep understanding of details. Because this approach does not fit the traditional mould, their strategic work might be misclassified as 40 ____________ instead of visionary leadership.
- A. archetype
- B. collaboration
- C. bias
- D. operational excellence
- E. study
- F. prophecy
- G. principle

Phiếu trả lời

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Hiện đáp án

1. TRUE
This is TRUE because the passage says Dr Engel has been collating examples of self-medicating behaviour in wild animals 'for the past decade,' which means 10 years.
2. NOT GIVEN
This is NOT GIVEN because the passage does not mention how far animals travel to find medicinal plants.
3. FALSE
This is FALSE because macaws eat clay not as a natural diet, but to detoxify poisons from seeds they eat, as shown by the experiment where clay reduced alkaloids in their blood.
4. FALSE
This is FALSE because Dr Engel is excited about using animal self-medication knowledge to improve livestock health, not to invent new painkillers.
5. pith
'Pith' is correct because the passage says chimpanzees dose themselves with the pith of the Veronia plant to kill gut parasites.
6. terpenes
'Terpenes' is correct because the passage explains that Veronia produces poisonous chemicals called terpenes, which kill parasites.
7. alkaloids
'Alkaloids' is correct because the passage says macaws eat seeds containing alkaloids and clay.
8. detoxify
'Detoxify' is correct because the passage says clay helps to detoxify the defensive poisons in plants.
9. hooks
'Hooks' is correct because the passage says the leaves swallowed by chimps are covered with microscopic hooks that catch worms.
10. G / D / E / C
'Geophagy' is correct because the passage discusses geophagy as soil-eating behaviour found in many species.
14. visual memory
'Visual memory' is correct because the passage says birds like pigeons have a highly developed visual memory, helping them return home.
15. migration direction
'Migration direction' is correct because the passage says some birds choose their normal migration direction no matter where they are released.
16. destination
'Destination' is correct because the passage explains that if birds keep their usual direction from a new place, they may miss their destination.
17. landmarks
'Landmarks' is correct because the passage says some birds orientate correctly even when released in unfamiliar places with no landmarks.
18. laysan albatross
'Laysan albatross' is correct because the passage gives an example of this bird returning home over 5000 km, showing this skill.
19. C
C is correct because section C discusses how distance affects birds' ability to find their nests, saying birds succeed only if released not too far away.
20. B
B is correct because section B describes the method of testing birds' homing ability by releasing them and recording returns.
21. C
C is correct because section C compares the visual resolution of birds and humans, discussing a physical ability.
22. G
G is correct because section G describes how storks' migration was delayed for an experiment.
23. C
C is correct because section C talks about domestic pigeons and their visual memory.
24. F
F is correct because section F gives an example of alpine swifts returning after being displaced.
25. A
A is correct because section G describes the experiment with European storks.
26. D
D is correct because section H discusses starlings and their homing behaviour.
27. FALSE
This is FALSE because the passage says women actually received higher ratings than men in most leadership dimensions.
28. FALSE
This is FALSE because the passage says women outshone men in most, but not all, leadership dimensions; they scored lower on 'envisioning.'
29. TRUE
This is TRUE because Anne Dumas says knowing details protects her from people who 'play politics' and hidden agendas.
30. FALSE
This is FALSE because Anne Dumas's first boss taught her a principle, but there is no information that her first boss was a CEO.
31. TRUE
This is TRUE because the passage calls Sarah Lin a 'tech industry veteran,' meaning she works in technology.
32. B
B is correct because the passage says the study was surprising as women received higher ratings in most leadership areas.
33. C
C is correct because the passage defines 'envisioning' as the ability to recognize new opportunities and develop a new strategic direction.
34. C
C is correct because Anne Dumas's core principle is to stay close to the details, not to supervise everything or delegate all planning.
35. C
C is correct because the passage says Anne Dumas doubled the company's revenues and operating margins as CEO.
36. C
C is correct because the passage says the traditional concept of a visionary leader is associated with 'bold, future-oriented rhetoric,' which is charismatic and broad-strokes.
37. C / A / B / D
C is correct because the passage suggests there is a 'potential gender-based bias' in how leadership vision is perceived.

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