Reading 2026-05 Test 51 — IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test with Answers

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Reading Passage 1: Dirty River but Clean Water

Floods can occur in rivers when the flow rate exceeds the capacity of the river channel, particularly at bends or meanders in the waterway. Floods often cause damage to homes and businesses if they are in the natural flood plains of rivers. While riverine flood damage can be eliminated by moving away from rivers and other bodies of water, people have traditionally lived and worked by rivers because the land is usually flat and fertile and because rivers provide easy travel and access to commerce and industry.

Fire and flood are two of humanity’s worst nightmares. People have, therefore, always sought to control them. Forest fires are snuffed out quickly. The flow of rivers is regulated by weirs and dams. At least, that is how it used to be. But foresters have learned that forests need fires to clear out the brush and even to get seeds to germinate. And a similar revelation is now dawning on hydrologists. Rivers – and the ecosystems they support – need floods. That is why a man-made torrent has been surging down the Grand Canyon. By Thursday, March 6th it was running at full throttle, which was expected to be sustained for 60 hours.

Floods once raged through the canyon every year. Spring snow from as far away as Wyoming would melt and swell the Colorado river to a flow that averaged around 1,500 cubic metres (50,000 cubic feet) a second. Every eight years or so, that figure rose to almost 3,000 cubic metres. These floods infused the river with sediment, carved its beaches and built its sandbars.

However, in the four decades since the building of the Glen Canyon dam, just upstream of the Grand Canyon, the only sediment that it has collected has come from tiny, undammed tributaries. Even that has not been much use as those tributaries are not powerful enough to distribute the sediment in an ecologically valuable way.

This lack of flooding has harmed local wildlife. The humpback chub, for example, thrived in the rust-red waters of Colorado. Recently, though, its population has crashed. At first sight, it looked as if the reason was that the chub were being eaten by trout introduced for sport fishing in the mid-20th century. But trout and chub co-existed until the Glen Canyon dam was built, so something else is going on. Steve Gloss, of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), reckons that the chub’s decline is the result of their losing their most valuable natural defense, Colorado’s rusty sediment. The chub were well adapted to the poor visibility created by the thick, red water which gave the river its name and depended on it to hide from predators. Without the cloudy water, the chub became vulnerable.

And the chub are not alone. In the years since the Glen Canyon dam was built, several species have vanished altogether. These include the Colorado pike-minnow, the razorback sucker and the roundtail chub. Meanwhile, aliens including fathead minnows, channel catfish and common carp, which would have been hard put to survive in the savage waters of the undammed canyon, have moved in.

So flooding is the obvious answer. Unfortunately, it is easier said than done. Floods were sent down the Grand Canyon in 1996 and 2004 and the results were mixed. In 1996 the flood was allowed to go on too long. To start with, all seemed well. The floodwaters built up sandbanks and infused the river with sediment. Eventually, however, the continued flow washed most of the sediment out of the canyon. This problem was avoided in 2004, but unfortunately, on that occasion, the volume of sand available behind the dam was too low to rebuild the sandbanks. This time, the USGS is convinced that things will be better. The amount of sediment available is three times greater than it was in 2004. So if a flood is going to do some good, this is the time to unleash one.

Even so, it may turn out to be an empty gesture. At less than 1,200 cubic metres a second, this flood is smaller than even an average spring flood, let alone one of the mightier deluges of the past. Those glorious inundations moved massive quantities of sediment through the Grand Canyon, wiping the slate dirty, and making a muddy mess of silt and muck that would make modern river rafters cringe.

1
Damage caused by a fire is worse than that caused by the flood.
2
The flood peaks at almost 1500 cubic meters every eight years.
3
Contribution of sediments delivered by tributaries has little impact.
4
The decreasing number of chubs is always caused by introducing of trout since the mid 20th century.
5
It seemed that the artificial flood in 1996 had achieved success partly at the very beginning.
6
In fact, the yield of artificial flood water is smaller than an average natural flood at present.
7
Mighty floods drove fast-moving flows with clean and high-quality water.
8
The Eco-Impact of the Canyon Dam Floods are people’s nightmare. In the past, the canyon was raged by flood every year. The snow from far Wyoming would melt in the season of ________ and caused a flood flow peak in Colorado river. In the four decades after people built the Glen Canyon Dam, it only could gather ________ together from tiny, undammed tributaries. Humpback chub population reduced, why? Then several species disappeared including Colorado pike-minnow, ________ and the round-tail chub. Meanwhile, some moved in such as fathead minnows, channel catfish and ________. The non-stopped flow led to the washing away of the sediment out of the canyon, which poses a great threat to the chubs because it has poor ________ away from predators. In addition, the volume of ________ available behind the dam was too low to rebuild the bars and flooding became more serious.

Reading Passage 2: The Evolutionary Mystery: Crocodile Survives

A Even though crocodiles have existed for 200 million years, they're anything but primitive. As crocodiles' ancestors, crocodilia came to adapt to an aquatic lifestyle. When most of the other contemporary reptiles went extinct, crocodiles were able to make it because their bodies changed and they adapted better to the climate. They witnessed the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, which once ruled the planet, and even the 65 million years of alleged mammalian dominance didn't wipe them off. Nowadays, the crocodiles and alligators are not that different from their prehistoric ancestors, which proves that they were (and still are) incredibly adaptive.

B The first crocodile-like ancestors came into existence approximately 230 million years ago, and they had many of the features which make crocodiles natural and perfect stealth hunters: streamlined body, long tail, protective armour and long jaws. They are born with four short, webbed legs, but this does not mean that their capacity to move on the ground shall ever be underestimated. When they move, they are so fast that you won't even have any chance to try making the same mistake again by getting too close, especially when they're hunting.

C Like other reptiles, crocodiles are poikilothermal animals (commonly known as cold-blooded, whose body temperature changes with that of the surroundings) and consequently, require exposure to sunlight regularly to raise body temperature. When it is too hot, they would rather stay in water or shade. Compared with mammals and birds, crocodiles have a slower metabolism, which makes them less vulnerable to food shortage. In the most extreme case, a crocodile can slow its metabolism down even further, to the point that it would survive without food for a whole year, enabling them to outlive mammals in relatively volatile environments.

D Crocodiles have a highly efficient way to prey catching. The prey rarely realises there might be a crocodile under the water because the crocodile makes a move without any noise or great vibration when spotting its prey. It only keeps its eyes above the water level. As soon as it feels close enough to the victim, it jerks out of the water with its wide open jaws. Crocodiles are successful because they are capable of switching feeding methods. It chases after fish and snatches birds at the water surface, hides in the waterside bushes in anticipation of a gazelle, and when the chance to ambush presents itself, the crocodile dashes forward, knocks the animal out with its powerful tail and then drags the prey into the water to drown.

E In many crocodilian habitats, the hot season brings drought that dries up their hunting grounds, leaving it harder for them to regulate body temperatures. This actually allowed reptiles to rule. For instance, many crocodiles can protect themselves by digging holes and covering themselves in mud, waiting for months without consuming any food or water until the rains finally return. They transform into a quiescent state called aestivation.

F The majority of crocodilian is considered to go into aestivation during the dry season. In a six-year study by Kennett and Christian, the King Crocodiles, a species of Australian freshwater crocodiles, spent nearly four months a year underground without access to water resources. Doubly labelled water was applied to detect field metabolic rates and water flux, and during some years, plasma fluid samples were taken once a month to keep track of the effects of aestivation regarding the accumulation of nitrogenous wastes and electrolyte concentrations.

G The study discovered that the crocodiles' metabolic engines function slowly, creating waste and exhausting water and fat reserves. Waste is stored in the urine, becoming more and more concentrated. Nevertheless, the concentration of waste products in blood doesn't fluctuate much, allowing the crocodiles to carry on their normal functions. Besides, even though the crocodiles lost water reserves and body weight when underground, the losses were proportional; upon emerging, the aestivating animals had no dehydration and displayed no other harmful effects such as a slowed-down growth rate. The two researchers reckon that this capacity of crocodiles to get themselves through the harsh times and the long starvation periods is sure to be the answer to the crocodilian line's survival throughout history.

9
14. Paragraph A
- i. The favourable feature in the impact of a drought
- ii. A unique finding that was recently achieved
- iii. Slow metabolism which makes crocodile a unique reptile
- iv. The perfectly designed body for a great land roamer
- v. Shifting eating habits and food intake
- vi. A project on a special mechanism
- vii. Regulating body temperature by the surrounding environment
- viii. Underwater aid in body structure offered to a successful predator
- ix. A historical story for the supreme survivors
- x. What makes the crocodile the fastest running animal on land
- xi. The competition between the crocodiles and other animals
10
15. Paragraph B
11
16. Paragraph C
12
17. Paragraph D
13
18. Paragraph E
14
19. Paragraph F
15
20. Paragraph G
16
21. In many places inhabited by crocodilians, most types of crocodiles have evolved a successful scheme to survive in the drought brought by a ________.
17
22. According to Kennett and Christian's six-year study of Australian freshwater crocodiles' aestivation, they found estivating crocodiles spent around ________ of the year and had no access to ________.
18
23. According to Kennett and Christian's six-year study of Australian freshwater crocodiles' aestivation, they found estivating crocodiles spent around four months of the year and had no access to ________.
19
24. The amount of water in the body declined proportionately with ________; thus there is no sign of dehydration and other health-damaging impact on the crocodiles even after an aestivation period.
20
25. The amount of water in the body declined proportionately with body weight; thus there is no sign of ________ and other health-damaging impact on the crocodiles even after an aestivation period.
21
26. This super capacity helps crocodiles endure the tough drought without slowing their speed of ________.

Reading Passage 3: Looking at daily life in ancient Rome

If our ideas on Roman life are not to become lost in confusion, we must study it within a strictly defined time. Nothing changes more rapidly than human customs. Looking at our own more familiar world, apart from the great scientific discoveries of recent centuries which have turned it upside down—steam, electricity, railways, motor cars and aeroplanes, for example—it is clear that the elementary forms of everyday life have been subject to increasing change. Potatoes, for example, were not introduced into Europe until the sixteenth century, coffee was first drunk there in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth, and the banana was used in desserts in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth. The law of change was not less operative in antiquity. It was a commonplace of Roman rhetoric to contrast the crude simplicity of the Republic (509BC–27BC) with the luxury and refinement of the imperial times which followed. There is no common measure, whether of home, or house, or furniture, between ages which are so different.

Since a choice of time must necessarily be made, this history will confine itself to studying the generation which was born about the middle of the first century AD, toward the end of the reign of Claudius (41–54AD) or the beginning of the reign of Nero (54–68AD), and which lived on into the reign of Trajan (98–117AD) or of Hadrian (117–138AD). This generation saw the Roman Empire at its most powerful and prosperous. It was witness to the last conquests of the Caesars: the conquest of Dacia, in modern-day eastern Europe, which brought vast mineral wealth into the Empire, and the conquest of Arabia, which helped to bring the riches of India and East Asia flooding into Rome. In the material domain, this generation attained the pinnacle of ancient civilisation.

By a fortunate coincidence—all the more fortunate in that Latin literature was soon to run nearly dry—this generation is the one whose records combine to offer us the most complete picture of Roman life that we possess. We have a profusion of vivid and picturesque descriptions, precise and colourful, in such works as the Epigrams of Martial, the Satires of Juvenal and the Letters of Pliny. In addition, the Forum of Trajan in Rome itself and the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the two prosperous resorts buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, supply an immense fund of archaeological evidence. Later excavations have also restored to us the ruins of the city of Ostia, which date in the main from the time when the Emperor Hadrian created this great commercial city as a realisation of his town planning ideas. Fortune has favoured the historian of this time.

It is not enough to focus our study of Roman life only on a fixed time. It would lack foundation and consistency if we did not also focus it in space—in the country or in the town. Even today when the facilities for communication bring something of the city into the smallest and most isolated country cottage, there remains a significant difference between rural existence and the excitement of city life: a much greater gulf separated the peasant from the townsman of antiquity. So large was the inequality between them that, according to the historian Rostovtzeff, it pitted one against the other in a fierce and silent struggle which pierced the wall protecting the Roman privileged classes from the barbarian flood from the north. When the barbarian forces began to invade Roman territory, the peasants decided to fight alongside them.

The townsman, in fact, enjoyed all the goods and resources of the earth. The peasant knew nothing but unending labour without profit, and was unable to enjoy the activities available in even the poorest of cities: the liveliness of the sports field, the warmth of the public baths and the magnificence of public spectacles. In a work on the history of everyday life, we must give up any attempt to blend two such dissimilar pictures into one, and must choose between them. The time which we have chosen to describe day by day is that of those Roman subjects who spent their time exclusively in the town, or rather in The City, Rome, which they regarded as the hub and centre of the universe, proud and wealthy ruler of a world which seemed at that time to have been pacified for ever.

To perform our task well, we must first try to form an adequate picture of the surroundings in which our subjects lived, and by which their lives were coloured, freeing ourselves from any misconceptions concerning it. We must seek to reconstruct the physical nature of the great city and the social milieu of the various classes of the hierarchy by which it was governed. We must also investigate the moral background of thought and sentiment which can help explain both its strength and its weaknesses. The way in which the Romans of Rome employed their time can only be studied satisfactorily after we have plotted out the main lines of the framework within which they lived and outside of which the routine of their daily life would be more or less unintelligible.

22
27 What does the writer say about the period mentioned in the second paragraph?
- A. There was a high level of immigration into Rome.
- B. The export of minerals made Rome rich.
- C. Rome sent armies to control trade with India and East Asia.
- D. The Roman standard of living reached its highest level.
23
28 Ostia is mentioned as
- A. a city which often features in literature.
- B. an important area for archaeological research.
- C. the birthplace of a Roman Emperor.
- D. a city whose layout was similar to that of Rome.
24
29 The statement that ‘Fortune has favoured the historian of this time’ refers to the fact that
- A. historians of this period have become wealthy as a result of their discoveries.
- B. works on this period are popular among the reading public.
- C. a wide range of sources is available for this period.
- D. this period has been less studied than many others.
25
30 In comparing urban and rural life in the Roman Empire, the writer states that
- A. rural Romans were largely illiterate.
- B. rural life and urban life had little in common.
- C. little information is available concerning rural life.
- D. most readers of history are more interested in city life.
26
31 Rome’s conquest of Arabia resulted in large-scale immigration from the east into Rome.
27
32 More can be learned about Roman life from the literature of the period studied in this book than from later Latin literature.
28
33 Discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii showed that certain beliefs about Roman life were wrong.
29
34 Roman peasants provided assistance to the Empire when it was attacked.
30
35 Rural inhabitants of the Roman Empire had a difficult life.
31
36 Entertainment facilities were limited to the city of Rome itself.
32
37–40 Complete the summary using the list of words, A–I, below. The scope of the writer’s study It was important for the writer to limit several aspects of his _____. He decided to focus on a limited _____ in Roman history, and to concentrate on the section of the population who were _____. The writer was interested in the physical environment, the people that ruled the country and the _____ that contributed both to Rome’s strength and to its weaknesses.
- A. emperors
- B. setting
- C. values
- D. peasants
- E. city-dwellers
- F. social classes
- G. myths
- H. period
- I. investigation

Phiếu trả lời

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Hiện đáp án

1. NOT GIVEN
There is no information in the passage about whether fire damage is worse than flood damage, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
2. FALSE
The passage does not say the flood peaks at almost 1500 cubic meters every eight years; this statement is not supported, so the answer is FALSE.
3. NOT GIVEN
The passage does not mention the impact of sediments from tributaries, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
4. FALSE
The passage says the number of chubs decreased, but does not say it was always because of trout being introduced, so the answer is FALSE.
5. TRUE
The passage says the artificial flood in 1996 had some early success, so the answer is TRUE.
6. TRUE
The passage says the amount of water from artificial floods is less than from natural floods now, so the answer is TRUE.
7. NOT GIVEN
There is no information about mighty floods having fast, clean, high-quality water, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
8. spring / sediment / razorback sucker / common carp / visibility / sand
The answers are found directly in the passage: 'spring' (when snow melts), 'sediment' (gathered from tributaries), 'razorback sucker' (species that disappeared), 'common carp' (species that moved in), 'visibility' (poor for chubs), and 'sand' (volume behind the dam was too low).
9. ix
Paragraph A is about the crocodile's history as a survivor, matching 'ix. A historical story for the supreme survivors.'
10. iv
Paragraph B describes the crocodile's body as perfect for moving on land, matching 'iv. The perfectly designed body for a great land roamer.'
11. iii
Paragraph C talks about the crocodile's slow metabolism, matching 'iii. Slow metabolism which makes crocodile a unique reptile.'
12. v
Paragraph D discusses changes in eating habits and food intake, matching 'v. Shifting eating habits and food intake.'
13. i
Paragraph E mentions the positive effect of drought, matching 'i. The favourable feature in the impact of a drought.'
14. vi
Paragraph F is about a project on a special mechanism, matching 'vi. A project on a special mechanism.'
15. ii
Paragraph G describes a unique recent finding, matching 'ii. A unique finding that was recently achieved.'
16. hot season
The passage says crocodiles survive drought in the hot season, so the answer is 'hot season.'
17. four months
The study found crocodiles spent around four months of the year estivating and had no access to water, so the answer is 'four months.'
18. water resources
The study found crocodiles had no access to water resources during aestivation, so the answer is 'water resources.'
19. body weight
The passage says water in the body declined with body weight, so the answer is 'body weight.'
20. dehydration
The passage says there was no sign of dehydration, so the answer is 'dehydration.'
21. growth
The passage says this ability helps crocodiles keep growing during drought, so the answer is 'growth.'
22. D
The passage says the Roman standard of living was highest in this period, so D is correct. Option B is tempting but the passage focuses on living standards, not exports.
23. B
Ostia is described as important for archaeological research, so B is correct. Option D is tempting but the passage does not compare layouts.
24. C
The passage says there are many sources for this period, so C is correct. Option D is tempting but the passage says the opposite.
25. B
The passage says rural and urban life had little in common, so B is correct. Option A is tempting but not mentioned.
26. NOT GIVEN
There is no information about immigration from Arabia to Rome, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
27. YES
The passage says more can be learned from the literature of this period than from later Latin literature, so the answer is YES.
28. NOT GIVEN
The passage does not say discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii showed certain beliefs were wrong, so the answer is NOT GIVEN.
29. NO
The passage says peasants did not help the Empire when attacked, so the answer is NO.
30. YES
The passage says rural people had a hard life, so the answer is YES.
31. NO
The passage says entertainment was not limited to Rome, so the answer is NO.
32. I / H / E / C
The writer had to limit his investigation (I), focus on a period (H), concentrate on city-dwellers (E), and study values (C), all found in the passage.

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Reading Passage 1: Dirty River but Clean Water

Reading Passage 2: The Evolutionary Mystery: Crocodile Survives

Reading Passage 3: Looking at daily life in ancient Rome

Phiếu trả lời

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