Azmoon
Answers and a full breakdown of your mistakes are shown as soon as you finish.
The decision at the centre of this test is one of the strangest in business history. McLean's company held the patent on the fitting that lets containers be lifted and locked together, and gave it away for nothing — because a container is only useful if every port in the world is built to the same dimensions. Giving away the patent is what made the system work, and question 9 turns on it.
Passage 2 is about why expert forecasts fail, and it ends with the most uncomfortable sentence in our whole set: the remedy is simple, it works, and almost nobody adopts it, because it creates a permanent record of how often senior people were wrong.
Three passages, 40 questions at the upper end of Academic Reading difficulty. How a steel box reorganised world trade; what decades of research reveal about expert prediction; and three specialists disagreeing about whether cities should build tall. Recommended for candidates already scoring 6.5 and above who need practice at band 7 pace.
READING PASSAGE 1 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1 – 13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. The Box That Moved Everything How a steel container reorganised the world economy Before 1956, loading a ship was a task performed almost entirely by hand. Cargo arrived at a port as barrels, sacks, crates and loose items of every conceivable shape, and gangs of dockworkers stowed each piece individually into the hold, packing around awkward objects and securing the result. A medium-sized vessel could take a week…
These give away part of the answer. Take the test first.
It is an original practice test written to the same format, question types and timing as the official IELTS reading paper. It is not a past paper.
Allow 60 minutes, the same as the real exam. Practising under time pressure is most of the value.
Yes. All 40 answers are shown as soon as you finish, along with a breakdown of which kind of mistake cost you marks.
You can take this test for free. An account lets you save your results and track progress.
See scores, strengths, weak areas and progress after each practice.
Azmoon AI recommends the smartest task for your next study session.
Follow a personalised route based on your target band and progress.
Track improvement across Task 1 and Task 2 over time.
Set your display preferences for Azmoon.
See scores, strengths, weak areas and progress after each practice.
Azmoon AI recommends the smartest task for your next study session.
Follow a personalised route based on your target band and progress.
Track improvement across Task 1 and Task 2 over time.
Set your display preferences for Azmoon.