The problems of getting around the city of Dar es Salaam: reading answers and analysis
One of Africa's fastest-growing cities is stuck with four colonial-era roads and sprawling unplanned suburbs. Its answer is a bus rapid transit system, not a metro. The buses cut journey times but come with teething problems: broken card readers, flood-damaged buses and long queues.
Questions 14-26 · 13 marks · 2 question blocks
Where the answers sit
The TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN block (14-18) takes one paragraph each, A to E. The notes (19-26) come from F, G and H in order: features in F, problems in G and H.
Questions 14-18
One statement per paragraph, in order, so if you can't find one, move to the next paragraph. The two NOT GIVENs invent things the passage never says: a comparison with earlier forecasts, and residents being asked their opinion.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 14 | NOT GIVEN | — |
| 15 | FALSE | — |
| 16 | NOT GIVEN | — |
| 17 | TRUE | — |
| 18 | FALSE | — |
Questions 19-26
Eight gaps and eight nouns, all in order. The problem notes paraphrase the passage's list of failures, so the words around each gap point to a sentence. The easy mistake is taking the wrong item from a pair, like wheelchairs or buggies, gates or scanners.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 19 | lanes | — |
| 20 | boarding | — |
| 21 | wheelchairs | — |
| 22 | fuel | — |
| 23 | flood | — |
| 24 | smartcards | — |
| 25 | gates | — |
| 26 | queues | — |
The questions most people get wrong
Paragraph A gives several forecasts but never says growth is beating an earlier prediction. NOT GIVEN.
The city chose buses and, unlike many African cities, is not building a metro. The statement says it follows the majority, so FALSE.
Staff tear tickets 'by the gates'. There are no working scanners, so 'scanners' can't be where tickets are checked. The answer is gates.
Sit this test on Langujet, then come back
The full Cambridge 21 Test 3 reading paper: all three passages, 60 minutes, marked the second you finish with a review of every answer. Already done it? Take it again and see if the same traps still get you.
Cambridge IELTS 21, Test 3, Reading Passage 2. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.