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B1–C2 · IELTS General Training

IELTS General Training Practice Test 49

AI-generated practice paper in the style of IELTS General Training — original material, not a reproduction of any real exam paper, following the official four-module structure (Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking). Listening audio is read aloud by your browser's voice, Writing tasks can be scored by AI, and for Speaking you can record yourself and compare with a model answer.

Listening

Part 1

Listen and answer questions 1–10.

Complete the booking form below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

1. Type of tour: ______ tour

2. Date: Saturday ______ April

3. Start time: ______ pm

4. Surname: ______

5. Number of tickets provisionally booked: ______

6. Senior ticket price: ______ pounds

7. Meeting point: writers' ______

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

8. How will the guests be recognised?

9. The tour will be cancelled if it is

10. At the end, the group

Part 2

Listen and answer questions 11–20.

Complete the notes below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

11. Building constructed in: ______

12. Became a museum in: ______

13. Adult entry price: ______ dollars

What does the speaker say about each of the following areas? Choose the correct letter, A-F, for questions 4 to 7.

14. The Courtroom

15. The Famine Room

16. The Trades Gallery

17. The Costume Room

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

18. Entry is free

19. The Research Room can be booked for up to

20. Photography without flash is not allowed in

Part 3

Listen and answer questions 21–30.

21. What does David decide about his side of the debate?

22. What does Dr. Lee ask Carla to check?

23. What should David add to balance his maturity argument?

24. How should Carla use examples from other countries?

25. How should they prepare for rebuttals?

26. How many minutes will each speaker actually get?

27. What does Dr. Lee say about visual aids?

What does Dr. Lee decide about each of these? Choose your answers from the list, A-E: A Restate the strongest point simply; B Bring sources checked and ready; C Not used in this debate format; D Find the original study; E Balance with a responsibility point.

28. Carla's statistic

29. Visual aids

30. Closing arguments

Part 4

Listen and answer questions 31–40.

Complete the notes below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.

31. The first heat-transfer process, ______, needs direct physical contact.

32. A metal spoon in hot tea becomes warm because metals are good ______.

33. Saucepan handles are made from plastic or wood, which are good thermal ______.

34. The second process, ______, involves heat carried by moving fluid.

35. Warm air naturally ______ toward the ceiling in a heated room.

36. Radiators are positioned low so warm air can ______ and circulate.

37. The third process, ______, needs no physical material medium at all.

38. Radiation explains how sunlight crosses the vacuum of ______ to reach Earth.

39. Good insulation uses trapped pockets of still ______ to reduce convection.

40. Good insulation also uses materials that are poor ______ to reduce conduction.

Reading

Section 1: Notices

You should spend about 20 minutes on Section 1.

NOTICE A — Riverside Cycling Club: Meeting Point Change The Sunday morning club ride will now start from the car park at Riverside Park instead of the previous meeting point outside the bike shop on Mill Street, as the bike shop's car park is being resurfaced for the foreseeable future. The new meeting point offers considerably more parking space for members driving to the start with their bikes, along with public toilets and a small café for pre-ride coffee. Ride start time remains unchanged at 8am sharp, with the group setting off promptly to make the most of quieter early-morning road conditions. Members are reminded to bring a spare inner tube, a basic repair kit, and a fully charged mobile phone in case of mechanical issues during the ride. Ride leaders will continue to offer both a faster-paced route and a more relaxed route option, splitting at the two-mile mark and reconvening at the café for refreshments afterward. NOTICE B — Elmwood Apartments: Electric Vehicle Charging Points Six new electric vehicle charging points will be installed in the car park from next month, funded partly through a government grant supporting residential charging infrastructure and partly through this year's communal improvement budget. Charging points will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, with a maximum charging session of eight hours to ensure fair access for other residents wishing to charge their vehicles. Residents wishing to use the charging points will need to register for an account with the charging network operator and will be billed directly by that operator based on actual electricity usage, separate from the building's service charge. Residents without an electric vehicle are asked not to park in the designated charging bays even briefly, as this prevents other residents from being able to charge their vehicles when needed. A booking app will be introduced in a future phase to allow residents to reserve a charging slot in advance.

Questions 1–3. Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

1. Why is the Sunday ride meeting point changing?

2. How many new electric vehicle charging points will be installed at Elmwood Apartments?

3. What are residents without an electric vehicle asked not to do?

Questions 4–6. Do the following statements agree with the information in Notice A? Write TRUE if the statement agrees, FALSE if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

4. The new meeting point has public toilets and a small café.

5. The ride start time is changing along with the meeting point.

6. The group sets off promptly to make the most of quieter early-morning road conditions.

Questions 7–8. Complete the sentence below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Notice A for each answer.

7. Members are reminded to bring a spare inner tube, a basic repair kit, and a __________.

8. Ride leaders will continue to offer both a faster-paced route and a more __________ route option.

Question 9. Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Notice A.

9. Where do the faster and relaxed route options split?

Questions 10–11. Do the following statements agree with the information in Notice B? Write TRUE if the statement agrees, FALSE if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

10. There is a maximum charging session of eight hours.

11. Charging costs will be included in the building's service charge.

Question 12. Complete the sentence below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Notice B for each answer.

12. The installation is funded partly through a __________ supporting residential charging infrastructure.

Questions 13–14. Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Notice B.

13. What will be introduced in a future phase to allow advance reservations?

14. Who bills residents directly for electricity used at the charging points?

Section 2: Workplace

You should spend about 20 minutes on Section 2.

TEXT A — Human Resources: New Diversity Recruitment Targets The company has set new diversity recruitment targets aimed at improving representation across underrepresented groups at senior levels within the next three years, informed by an external benchmarking exercise comparing the company's current representation against both industry peers and the broader available talent pool. These are described internally as aspirational targets to guide recruitment practice and monitor progress over time, rather than strict, legally binding quotas that would determine any individual specific hiring decision. All shortlists for senior roles must now include at least one candidate from an underrepresented group where practically achievable given the specific available applicant pool for that particular role, though the final hiring decision remains based purely on individual merit and genuine role suitability in every case. Recruitment panels will receive updated unconscious bias training before the new targets take effect, and progress against the targets will be reported transparently to the board on a quarterly basis. The company has committed to publishing an annual progress update, including both genuine successes and any areas requiring further improvement, on its public careers website. TEXT B — Reward Team: Staff Anniversary Rewards Update The existing service anniversary rewards scheme will be simplified from next year, replacing the previous system of varied physical gifts at each milestone with a single flexible points-based system that staff can redeem through an online catalogue offering a considerably wider range of options than the previous fixed gift list. Points awarded increase at each five-year milestone, with additional bonus points awarded specifically at ten, twenty, and thirty years to particularly recognise longer-serving staff. Points do not expire and can be accumulated across multiple milestones before being redeemed, allowing staff to save toward a specific larger item if preferred rather than redeeming smaller amounts at each individual milestone. The online catalogue includes options ranging from small homeware items to larger experience vouchers such as spa days or short breaks. Staff with questions about their specific accumulated points balance should contact the reward team directly rather than their line manager, as points balances are managed centrally rather than at department level.

Questions 15–17. Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

15. What are the new diversity recruitment targets described as internally?

16. What will replace the previous system of varied physical gifts?

17. Why should staff contact the reward team rather than their line manager about points?

Questions 18–20. Do the following statements agree with the information in Text A? Write TRUE if the statement agrees, FALSE if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

18. The final hiring decision remains based purely on individual merit and role suitability.

19. Progress against the targets will be reported to the board annually only.

20. Shortlists for senior roles must always include at least one candidate from an underrepresented group, with no exceptions.

Question 21. Complete the sentence below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Text A for each answer.

21. Recruitment panels will receive updated __________ before the new targets take effect.

Question 22. Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Text A.

22. Where will the company publish its annual progress update?

Questions 23–24. Do the following statements agree with the information in Text B? Write TRUE if the statement agrees, FALSE if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

23. Points expire if not redeemed within one year.

24. Additional bonus points are awarded at ten, twenty, and thirty years.

Questions 25–26. Complete the sentence below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Text B for each answer.

25. The online catalogue includes options ranging from small homeware items to larger __________.

26. Points awarded increase at each __________ milestone.

Question 27. Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from Text B.

27. Who should staff contact with questions about their points balance?

Section 3: The Curious Case of Synaesthesia

You should spend about 20 minutes on Section 3.

Synaesthesia, a genuinely rare neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory pathway involuntarily and automatically triggers an additional, unrelated experience in a completely different sensory pathway, such as perceiving specific musical notes as having distinct, consistent colours, or specific numbers or letters as inherently possessing a fixed, consistent personality or gender, has moved from being dismissed by early twentieth-century psychologists as a curious but largely irrelevant psychological oddity to becoming a genuinely serious and increasingly well-funded area of contemporary cognitive neuroscience research. Estimates of synaesthesia's actual prevalence in the general population vary considerably across different studies, ranging from roughly one in a hundred to as high as one in twenty depending significantly on the specific diagnostic criteria and particular type of synaesthesia being measured in each study, with grapheme-colour synaesthesia, involving the automatic and involuntary perception of letters or numbers as having a fixed, specific colour, generally considered the single most extensively studied and best-documented specific variant among researchers. Critically, and distinguishing genuine synaesthesia from mere imaginative association or simple creative metaphor, the specific triggered sensory experience must remain remarkably and measurably consistent for a given individual over long periods of time, sometimes even decades, with the same specific number or letter reliably triggering precisely the same specific colour experience in retesting conducted many years after an individual's initial assessment. The precise underlying neurological mechanism generating synaesthesia remains genuinely and actively debated among specialists, though brain imaging studies have consistently identified unusual, atypical patterns of neural connectivity and cross-activation between brain regions that process different sensory modalities in synaesthetic individuals, which are typically much more functionally and anatomically separate and distinct in non-synaesthetic individuals. One influential and widely cited hypothesis, termed the 'cross-activation theory,' specifically proposes that synaesthesia results from atypically increased, more extensive neural connections between adjacent brain regions that would ordinarily process entirely distinct sensory information largely independently of one another, with these unusual additional cross-connections potentially arising, at least in some documented cases, from a specific reduced, incomplete degree of synaptic pruning, the entirely normal developmental process of gradually and selectively eliminating unused or redundant neural connections that typically and extensively occurs during early childhood brain development in the general population. Synaesthesia shows a well-documented, statistically robust tendency to run distinctly in families, strongly suggesting a meaningful genetic contributing component, though specific identified genetic variants associated with the condition, much like handedness discussed elsewhere, appear individually to exert only modest, partial statistical effects rather than following any single simple, dominant pattern of straightforward genetic inheritance, again suggesting a complex, multi-gene genetic architecture broadly similar in this specific respect to numerous other complex, multifactorial neurological and cognitive traits studied by contemporary genetics researchers. Rather than representing any kind of neurological or cognitive deficit or impairment, as researchers had sometimes initially assumed and mistakenly implied in earlier characterisations, synaesthesia appears in several rigorous, methodologically sound studies to correlate positively and measurably with certain specific cognitive advantages, including notably enhanced memory performance for information that specifically happens to align well with an individual's own particular synaesthetic associations, and researchers have further documented a modestly but measurably higher overall prevalence of synaesthesia specifically among visual artists, professional musicians, and other creative professionals relative to the general population, prompting considerable ongoing scientific interest and continued active investigation into synaesthesia's genuinely complex, still only partially understood relationship with broader human creativity and creative cognitive processes more generally.

Questions 28–30. Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

28. What is grapheme-colour synaesthesia, according to the passage?

29. How is synaesthesia now viewed by researchers, compared with earlier assumptions?

30. How do prevalence estimates for synaesthesia vary across studies, according to the passage?

Questions 31–34. Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage? Write TRUE if the statement agrees, FALSE if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

31. Genuine synaesthetic experiences remain remarkably consistent for an individual over long periods of time.

32. Synaesthesia is the same phenomenon as simple creative metaphor or imaginative association.

33. Synaesthesia has a modestly higher prevalence among visual artists and musicians than the general population.

34. Early twentieth-century psychologists generally treated synaesthesia as a serious area of major research funding.

Question 35. Complete the sentence below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

35. The 'cross-activation theory' proposes synaesthesia results from atypically increased neural connections between __________ brain regions.

Questions 36–38. Answer the question below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage.

36. What normal developmental process may be incomplete in some synaesthetic individuals, according to one hypothesis?

37. What cognitive advantage is specifically mentioned as correlating with synaesthesia?

38. What have brain imaging studies consistently identified in synaesthetic individuals?

Questions 39–40. Do the following statements agree with the writer's claims? Write YES if the statement agrees with the writer's claims, NO if it contradicts, or NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks.

39. Synaesthesia shows a well-documented tendency to run in families, suggesting a genetic component.

40. A single simple, dominant gene has been identified as the sole cause of synaesthesia.

Speaking

Part 1: Introduction and interview

The examiner asks you questions about yourself and familiar topics (4–5 minutes).

Part 1 (Friends / Messaging) — the examiner asks about two familiar topics. Topic 1: Friends Q1. Do you prefer to spend time with one or two close friends, or with a large group? Q2. How did you meet your best friend? Topic 2: Messaging Q3. How often do you send text messages? Q4. Do you prefer sending a message or making a phone call?
Recorded on your device only — play it back and compare with the model answer.
Show sample answer
Model answer: 1. I'd say one or two close friends. In a big group I tend to go quiet, whereas with a couple of people I can have a proper conversation. 2. We met at secondary school, in a chemistry class, because the teacher sat us next to each other. We complained about the lessons together, and that was the start of it. 3. Constantly! I probably send fifty or sixty messages a day, mostly to friends and family, and a few for work. 4. It depends. For quick things like arranging a time, a message is easier. But if I have to explain something complicated, or if it's sad news, I'd rather ring, because tone of voice matters.

Part 2: Individual long turn

You have one minute to prepare, then speak for one to two minutes.

Describe a time when you got lost. You should say: - where you were - why you got lost - what you did about it and explain how you felt. You will be given one minute to prepare, then speak for one to two minutes.
Recorded on your device only — play it back and compare with the model answer.
Show sample answer
Model answer: I once got completely lost in the narrow streets of an old town in Morocco, during a holiday with two friends. We'd decided to explore on our own for a couple of hours, and I'd left my friends at the hotel to go shopping for souvenirs. The trouble was that the alleys all looked the same, with high walls, tiny shops and endless corners, and I wasn't paying attention to the way I'd come. After about forty minutes I realised I had no idea where I was, and unfortunately my phone had no signal, so I couldn't use the map. At first I panicked a little, because it was getting dark and I didn't speak any Arabic or French. However, I decided to stay calm, and I asked a boy who was selling oranges. He didn't understand the name of our hotel, but I showed him a card from my wallet with the address, and he walked me all the way there, refusing to take any money. My friends were relieved, and we laughed about it over dinner. It was scary at the time, but I now think it was an adventure, and since then I always carry a paper map and a hotel card.

Part 3: Two-way discussion

The examiner asks more abstract questions linked to the Part 2 topic.

Part 3 (privacy) — the examiner asks four related questions. Q1. How has the idea of personal privacy changed since the growth of the internet? Q2. Do you think people worry enough about how their personal data is used? Q3. Should companies be required to explain clearly how they use customer data? Q4. How might attitudes towards privacy change in the future?
Recorded on your device only — play it back and compare with the model answer.
Show sample answer
Model answer: 1. Privacy has become much harder to protect, since so much personal information, from location to shopping habits, is now collected constantly, often without people fully realising it. 2. Honestly, I don't think most people worry enough, partly because the process feels abstract and invisible, unlike a more obvious, immediate risk that people naturally take seriously. 3. Definitely; clear, simple explanations, rather than long complicated terms and conditions, would help people genuinely understand what they're agreeing to when they use a service. 4. I expect stricter data protection laws globally, alongside growing public demand for more transparency, as high-profile data misuse cases continue to raise awareness of the issue.

Writing Task 1

You are organising a talk for a local community group and would like to invite a guest speaker with relevant expertise. Write a letter to the potential speaker. In your letter: explain the purpose of the talk, describe the audience, and provide the proposed date and details. Write at least 150 words. You do NOT need to write your own address. Begin your letter 'Dear ...,'

Writing Task 2

Some people believe that artificial intelligence will greatly improve healthcare, while others are concerned about its risks and limitations. Discuss both views and give your own opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.
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