Prediction Test · Academic Module

IELTS
Practice Test

Full simulation · 4 sections · Automatic scoring

🎧

Listening Test

30 MIN · 40 QUESTIONS · BAND 1–9
ℹ️ In the real IELTS test, you listen to recordings. Here, read the transcripts carefully and answer the questions based on what you read — this simulates actual listening comprehension.
Section 1 · Social Context

A conversation between a customer and a travel agency representative

TRANSCRIPT
Agent: Good morning! Welcome to Horizon Travel. How can I help you today?

Customer: Hi, I'm looking to book a holiday. I was thinking about going to New Zealand for two weeks in July.

Agent: Wonderful choice! July is their winter, so temperatures are mild — around 12 to 18 degrees in most regions. Are you interested in the North Island, South Island, or both?

Customer: Ideally both. I really want to see Queenstown and also do a day trip to Milford Sound.

Agent: Excellent. Milford Sound is absolutely spectacular. The standard day cruise departs at 10:30 AM and costs $89 per person including lunch. Would you prefer a guided coach tour or a self-drive rental?

Customer: A self-drive rental sounds better — we like flexibility. We'll be a group of three adults.

Agent: Perfect. For three adults, I'd recommend a medium-sized SUV. That will be approximately $65 per day from Queenstown Airport. You'll need to book at least 14 days in advance to secure that rate.

Customer: That's fine. We also need accommodation. Something mid-range — preferably with a kitchen.

Agent: We have excellent serviced apartments at Lake Wakatipu. The nightly rate is $145 and includes free parking and Wi-Fi. Breakfast is an optional extra at $18 per person.

Customer: That sounds perfect. Can I also ask about travel insurance? My last policy had a $500 excess.

Agent: Our Platinum Cover plan has a zero excess and covers medical emergencies up to $5 million. It's $72 per person for two weeks.
1What month does the customer want to travel?
2What is the cost of the Milford Sound day cruise?
3How many days in advance must the car rental be booked?
4Complete the sentence: The nightly rate for the serviced apartment is $.
5What is the excess on the Platinum Cover insurance plan?
Section 2 · Monologue

A museum tour guide introducing an exhibition

TRANSCRIPT
Welcome, everyone, to the Natural History Museum's new exhibition — Ocean Futures. This exhibition runs until the 30th of November and is free for all visitors under 16. Adults pay a £9 entry fee, and concessions — that's students and seniors — pay £6.

The exhibition is spread across three galleries. In Gallery A on the ground floor, you'll find interactive displays showing ocean biodiversity. Gallery B on the first floor focuses on climate change and rising sea levels — this is probably the most striking section. Gallery C, also on the first floor, features live specimens from our marine research station in Plymouth.

Guided tours depart every hour from 10 AM to 4 PM. Each tour lasts approximately 45 minutes. Photography is permitted throughout the exhibition, but we ask that you use silent mode on your devices and refrain from using flash near the live specimens.

We also have a café on the ground floor, which closes at 5 PM. Our gift shop stocks a range of educational materials and is open until 6 PM. Feedback forms are available at the exit — we'd really appreciate if you could take a moment to complete one.
6How much is the adult entry fee for the Ocean Futures exhibition?
7Where are live marine specimens displayed?
8How long does each guided tour last?
9What time does the gift shop close?
10What are visitors asked NOT to use near live specimens?
Section 3 · Academic Discussion

Two university students discuss their research project on renewable energy

TRANSCRIPT
Maya: So we need to narrow down the focus for our dissertation. I was thinking solar energy — it's the most rapidly growing renewable sector globally.

Tom: I agree it's growing fast, but I wonder if wind energy might be more interesting to analyse. The offshore wind sector has seen massive investment in the UK and Germany particularly.

Maya: That's a fair point. But the data on solar panel efficiency improvements is more striking — efficiency has gone from roughly 6% in the 1950s to over 23% for commercial panels today.

Tom: That is impressive. Though for our methodology, we discussed using comparative analysis. So maybe we should compare solar versus wind versus hydroelectric — a broader scope?

Maya: I think that would make the paper too unfocused. Our supervisor specifically advised against comparing more than two energy types. She said it dilutes the argument.

Tom: Right, she did say that. Okay — so solar versus wind then. What sources were you planning to use? I've found a useful World Energy Council report from 2023 with comprehensive data.

Maya: Great. I'll focus on the IRENA database — the International Renewable Energy Agency. It has country-by-country breakdowns which will be useful for our case studies. I was thinking Germany and Australia as our two country cases.

Tom: Germany makes sense. Australia is interesting because they have one of the highest residential solar adoption rates in the world. But shouldn't we include a developing country for contrast?

Maya: That's a really good idea. Maybe Kenya? They've been doing remarkable things with geothermal and solar in East Africa.

Tom: Perfect. And our deadline — the draft is due on the 15th of March, right?

Maya: Actually, the supervisor moved it to the 22nd. She sent an email last Tuesday.
11What research methodology did the students initially discuss?
12What is the current commercial solar panel efficiency mentioned?
13What database does Maya plan to use for data?
14Which country was suggested as a developing-country case study?
15What is the revised deadline for the draft?
Section 4 · Academic Lecture

A lecture on the psychology of decision-making

TRANSCRIPT
Today I want to examine the cognitive biases that affect how humans make decisions. The field of behavioural economics, pioneered by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the 1970s, fundamentally challenged the assumption that humans are rational actors.

Kahneman later introduced what he called System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 is fast, instinctive and emotional — it operates automatically and without effort. System 2 is slower, more deliberate, and logical. The key insight is that humans default to System 1 far more often than we realise, which leads to predictable errors in judgment.

One of the most well-documented biases is the anchoring effect. This occurs when individuals rely too heavily on the first piece of information they receive — the "anchor" — when making decisions. In one classic study, participants were asked to estimate the percentage of African countries in the United Nations after spinning a wheel that stopped at either 10 or 65. Those who saw 65 gave consistently higher estimates than those who saw 10, despite the number being entirely random.

Another key bias is the availability heuristic — where people overestimate the probability of events that are easy to recall, often because they're dramatic or recent. For example, people tend to overestimate the risk of dying in a plane crash and underestimate the risk of dying in a car accident, because plane crashes receive more media coverage.

Finally, loss aversion — the finding that people feel losses about twice as strongly as equivalent gains. This explains why people irrationally hold onto losing investments and why "free shipping" promotions are so effective in e-commerce.

Understanding these biases has significant practical implications — from public policy design to financial advising to marketing. Nudge theory, developed by Thaler and Sunstein, uses these insights to guide behaviour without restricting choice.
16Who pioneered behavioural economics in the 1970s?
17System 1 thinking is best described as:
18The anchoring effect refers to:
19According to loss aversion, losses are felt how much more strongly than gains?
20Nudge theory was developed by:
📖

Reading Test

60 MIN · 40 QUESTIONS · 3 PASSAGES
Passage 1 · General Interest

The Remarkable Intelligence of Crows

For centuries, crows have occupied a peculiar place in human culture — simultaneously admired for their cunning and feared for their association with death and ill omen. Modern scientific research has vindicated the admiration while rendering the superstition irrelevant, revealing corvids to be among the most cognitively sophisticated animals on the planet.

The New Caledonian crow, a species native to a Pacific island of the same name, has become something of a scientific celebrity. Unlike most birds, which rely on instinct to use rudimentary tools, New Caledonian crows manufacture tools with a level of complexity previously thought exclusive to humans and great apes. They bend wire into hooks, select specific leaves for their structural properties, and even pass tool-making techniques to younger birds — a form of cultural transmission observed in very few non-human species.

Perhaps most remarkably, research conducted at the University of Auckland demonstrated that these crows can understand the concept of causal relationships. In one experiment, crows were presented with a trap — a tube with a hole in the bottom — and learned to avoid it. When the trap was rotated 90 degrees so that the hole was irrelevant to function, most crows still avoided it, suggesting they had memorised a visual pattern rather than understood the mechanics. However, a subset of birds consistently adapted their behaviour, indicating genuine causal reasoning — a cognitive feat that young children do not achieve until around age five.

Common crows — the species most familiar to urban populations worldwide — display a different but equally impressive intelligence: social cognition. Studies have shown that crows can recognise individual human faces and remember them for years. Crucially, they can communicate threat information about specific individuals to other crows — a form of social warning that spreads through crow populations in urban environments. Researchers wearing masks while conducting crow captures at the University of Washington found that years later, crows would scold, dive-bomb, and even recruit other birds to harass the researchers when they wore those masks — but not when they wore different masks.

The neurological basis for this intelligence is counterintuitive. Birds lack the neocortex — the brain region associated with higher cognition in mammals. Yet the corvid pallium, a different brain region, appears to support analogous cognitive functions through convergent evolution. This finding has profoundly challenged the assumption that intelligence and consciousness require a mammalian brain architecture.

21True / False / Not Given: New Caledonian crows can make hooked tools from wire.
22True / False / Not Given: The majority of crows in the causal reasoning experiment understood the trap mechanics.
23True / False / Not Given: The crow face recognition study was conducted in Canada.
24What brain region supports higher cognition in corvids?
25According to the passage, tool-making cultural transmission is observed in:
Passage 2 · Academic Text

The Urban Heat Island Effect and Mitigation Strategies

Cities are, by their nature, warmer than the surrounding countryside. This phenomenon — the urban heat island (UHI) effect — has been documented in virtually every major city on Earth and is intensifying as both urbanisation and global temperatures increase. The temperature difference between an urban core and nearby rural areas can range from 1°C to as much as 12°C on calm, clear nights, with implications for public health, energy consumption, and urban ecology.

The primary drivers of the UHI are well understood. First, the built environment replaces vegetation with impervious surfaces — roads, pavements, and buildings — which absorb solar radiation and re-emit it as heat rather than facilitating evaporative cooling. Second, urban geometry — the arrangement of tall buildings in close proximity — creates "urban canyons" that trap longwave radiation and reduce wind speeds. Third, cities generate substantial anthropogenic heat from vehicles, air conditioning systems, and industrial processes.

The health consequences are considerable. During the record European heatwave of 2003, excess mortality attributable to heat was estimated at over 70,000 deaths, with urban populations disproportionately affected. Children, the elderly, and people with pre-existing cardiovascular conditions are particularly vulnerable. Furthermore, the UHI effect exacerbates air quality problems, as higher temperatures accelerate the formation of ground-level ozone.

Urban planners and policymakers have developed several mitigation strategies with varying degrees of effectiveness. Green infrastructure — including parks, street trees, green roofs, and urban wetlands — can significantly reduce surface temperatures through shading and evapotranspiration. Studies suggest that a 10% increase in urban green cover can reduce peak summer temperatures by up to 2.5°C. Cool roofs, which use high-albedo materials to reflect solar radiation, have demonstrated temperature reductions of 1°C to 3°C in adjacent outdoor spaces. Permeable pavements, which allow rainwater infiltration and promote evaporative cooling, represent another promising intervention.

Singapore offers perhaps the most ambitious example of urban heat mitigation at a national scale. The city-state's extensive "City in a Garden" programme mandates green cover in new developments, has planted over one million trees, and has integrated greenery into building facades and infrastructure. Thermal studies suggest these measures have partially offset the UHI effect despite Singapore's intense urbanisation and tropical climate.

26What is the maximum temperature difference between urban and rural areas mentioned in the passage?
27How many excess deaths were estimated during the 2003 European heatwave?
28According to the passage, a 10% increase in green cover can reduce summer temperatures by up to:
29Which country is cited as the most ambitious example of urban heat mitigation?
30The term "urban canyons" in the passage refers to:
Passage 3 · Advanced Academic

The Fermi Paradox and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi posed a deceptively simple question during a lunch conversation with colleagues: "Where is everybody?" The question — now known as the Fermi Paradox — encapsulates a profound contradiction. Given the age of the universe (approximately 13.8 billion years), the vast number of stars in the Milky Way (estimated at 100–400 billion), and the growing evidence that planetary systems are ubiquitous, simple probability suggests that intelligent life should have arisen many times over. Yet we observe no evidence of extraterrestrial civilisations.

Numerous solutions to the paradox have been proposed. The "Great Filter" hypothesis, developed by economist Robin Hanson, posits that there exists some catastrophic barrier that either prevents life from developing intelligence, or prevents intelligent life from becoming spacefaring. If the filter lies behind us — perhaps in the rarity of complex multicellular life — humanity's existence is remarkable good fortune. If the filter lies ahead, it represents an existential warning about our civilisation's future.

The "Dark Forest" solution, popularised by Chinese novelist Liu Cixin, proposes that advanced civilisations deliberately conceal their existence because the universe is inherently competitive, and revealing one's location is potentially fatal. This hypothesis has the unsettling implication that our own broadcasts of radio signals into space may have been a profound error.

More optimistic perspectives note that the universe's sheer scale makes detection extremely difficult. Even travelling at the speed of light, it would take 100,000 years to cross the Milky Way. The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project, despite decades of scanning, has examined only a tiny fraction of candidate star systems.

Recent discoveries of exoplanets in the "habitable zones" of their stars — including seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1 — have reinvigorated the search. The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope has added unprecedented capability to analyse the atmospheric composition of distant planets. Whether or not we find evidence of life, the search continues to yield profound insights into our own cosmic origins.

31The Fermi Paradox was formulated in which year?
32According to Robin Hanson's hypothesis, if the "Great Filter" lies ahead of us, it implies:
33The "Dark Forest" hypothesis was popularised by:
34How many Earth-sized planets orbit the star TRAPPIST-1?
35True / False / Not Given: Enrico Fermi was a chemist.
✍️

Writing Test

60 MIN · TASK 1 (150 words min) + TASK 2 (250 words min)
Task 1 · Academic Writing

The graph below shows the percentage of households owning different types of electronic devices in the UK between 2000 and 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

CHART DATA
Device 2000 2010 2020
Mobile phones35%82%96%
Computers40%72%78%
Tablets0%8%58%
Smart TVs0%5%65%
Words: 0 / minimum 150
Task 2 · Essay

Some people believe that technology has made it easier for workers to maintain a healthy work-life balance, while others argue it has made the boundary between work and personal life increasingly difficult to define. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.

💡 Write at least 250 words. Structure your essay with a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Support your arguments with examples.
Words: 0 / minimum 250
🎤

Speaking Test

11–14 MIN · 3 PARTS · SELF-ASSESSED
🎤 In a real IELTS Speaking test, you speak with an examiner. Here, read each question and write your response as if speaking — or speak aloud and evaluate yourself honestly using the rating scale.
Part 1 · Introduction (4–5 min)

The examiner will ask you general questions about familiar topics. Answer naturally and give reasons for your answers.

S1Do you work or are you a student? Tell me about what you do.
S2Do you prefer spending time indoors or outdoors? Why?
S3How important is learning new skills to you? Do you enjoy it?
Part 2 · Individual Long Turn (3–4 min)
CUE CARD

Describe a skill you have learned that has been particularly useful in your life.

You should say:

  • What the skill is
  • When and how you learned it
  • How often you use it
  • Why it has been particularly useful in your life

You have 1 minute to prepare, then speak for 1–2 minutes. Write your full response below.

Part 3 · Discussion (4–5 min)

The examiner will ask abstract, opinion-based questions related to the Part 2 topic.

S5In your view, has technology made it easier or harder to learn new skills compared to previous generations?
S6Some people argue that formal education systems do not adequately prepare young people for the skills needed in modern workplaces. To what extent do you agree?
Speaking Self-Assessment

Rate your speaking performance honestly:

Fluency & Coherence

How naturally and smoothly did you speak? Could you develop ideas without long pauses?

Lexical Resource

Did you use a wide range of vocabulary? Did you avoid repetition?

Grammatical Range & Accuracy

Did you use complex sentence structures? Were your sentences mostly grammatically correct?

Pronunciation

Was your pronunciation clear? Did you stress words naturally?

—
Overall

Your IELTS Prediction Score

🎧
Listening
—
out of Band 9
📖
Reading
—
out of Band 9
✍️
Writing
—
out of Band 9
🎤
Speaking
—
out of Band 9