AcademIELTS Original — Reading Test 1

• Read each passage carefully. You can highlight text by selecting and right-clicking.
• Answer all 40 questions. Move freely between parts using the question palette.
• Submit before time runs out — auto-submit at 60:00.

This first AcademIELTS Originals paper takes you across three corners of the natural and built world. Passage 1 follows a swarming honeybee colony as it leaves the hive and chooses a new home through a remarkable democratic process of scout reports and waggle-dance voting. Passage 2 traces the rediscovery of the cliff bellflower, a plant once declared extinct, and the modern fieldwork that brought it back. Passage 3 looks at an experimental Hamburg apartment block whose façades are clad in panels of living algae.

The mix here is deliberately broad: True/False/Not Given and note completion in Passage 1, headings, sentence completion and multiple choice in Passage 2, and a closing combination of multiple choice, sentence endings and Yes/No/Not Given in Passage 3. The headings task in Passage 2 is the swing block; the paragraphs are short but several share themes, so resist locking in your first instinct and skim each heading against two paragraphs before committing.

Aim for sixteen minutes on Passage 1, eighteen on Passage 2 and twenty-three on Passage 3, with three minutes spare to transfer answers. Trust the science of swarms; trust the process of elimination.