Here are the Cambridge IELTS 21 Academic Reading Test 4 answers — the final paper in the book, marked up in full: Cambridge IELTS 21, Academic Test 4 — all 40 answers exactly as the official key lists them. Score the three passages with the tables above, then follow the walkthroughs below for the reasoning behind every single answer.

The paper starts in Kenya with the water hyacinth, an invasive weed that chokes lakes and waterways, moves to Delhi to ask whether multilingual classrooms could help India’s poorest schoolchildren, and closes with The Globemakers, the story of a craftsman who set out to build a globe by hand. This page carries the complete 40-answer key and links to each passage walkthrough, starting with the water hyacinth answers for Questions 1–13.

Cambridge IELTS 21 Academic Reading Test 4 Reading Answers

Questions and Answers

Passage Walkthroughs

Spread of the water hyacinth in Kenya IELTS Reading Answers

Passage 1 explains how water hyacinth, native to South America, spread across Kenyan waters after arriving in Africa in the early 1900s — and why locals found benefits as well as problems in it. Questions 1–13 open with True/False/Not Given (1–7), then a flow-chart (8–10) and notes (11–13). The hyacinth answer page pins each response to the text.

Multilingualism and India’s Poorest Schoolchildren Answers

Delhi’s streets carry a multitude of languages, and this passage asks whether that reality could serve the children who arrive in its schools with little Hindi or English. The 14–26 block includes summary completion (14–19), Yes/No/Not Given (20–23) and multiple choice (24–26). Its walkthrough covers all thirteen answers with the evidence for each.

The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft IELTS Reading Answers

Peter Bellerby’s decade-long quest to hand-build a globe for his father’s eightieth birthday anchors the last passage. Questions 27–40 bring summary completion (27–32), Yes/No/Not Given (33–36) and multiple choice (37–40). The Globemakers walkthrough shows where the craft story hides each answer.

Study Tips

Treat the hour as 20 + 20 + 20 and hold the line even when a task such as the Passage 1 flow-chart tempts you to keep hunting. An unanswered question earns nothing, so mark your best guess and move on when the clock says so. The reading time management guide shows how to budget minutes per task type so all forty questions actually get answered.

Review your mistakes when they are still warm: the same day, reopen only the questions you missed and locate the proof sentence for the official answer. That is how you learn whether the problem was vocabulary, location or logic. Put your corrected total into the reading band score calculator to track progress from paper to paper, and read the True/False/Not Given strategy before your next attempt — this test mixes a TRUE set with two YES sets, so the judgement questions deserve extra practice.

Refresh every task format before test day with the question types overview lesson, then take full-length timed mocks from the free exams library.

Practice More Cambridge Tests

Every answer above matches the official Cambridge key, and Simply IELTS built the free IELTS reading course to take you from marking papers to raising bands. If Passage 3 was your weakest, start the review with the Globemakers walkthrough and rebuild it untimed.