How could multilingualism benefit India's poorest schoolchildren?: reading answers and analysis
Delhi is full of languages, yet many Indian children don't show the advantages multilingual children get in Europe. A Cambridge-led study of 1,000 pupils asks whether teaching in an unfamiliar language such as English holds poorer children back. Along the way it finds that slum children do better than expected.
Questions 14-26 · 13 marks · 3 question blocks
Where the answers sit
The summary (14-19) is all paragraphs A and B, in order. YES / NO / NOT GIVEN (20-23) sits in C to E. The multiple choice (24-26) points you to F, G and H.
Questions 14-19
Ten options, six gaps. The options are two-word phrases, so every wrong one has a real word from the passage in it. Match meaning: 'more than 20 million people' is a dense population, and 'the overriding aim' is the primary objective. 'Distant country' is a trap, because people come from across India, not from abroad.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 14 | I | — |
| 15 | J | — |
| 16 | H | — |
| 17 | B | — |
| 18 | E | — |
| 19 | F | — |
Questions 20-23
Question 20 needs you to compare two figures, and question 23 flips what the researchers plan to do. Only one is NOT GIVEN. It's about recruiting female students, which the passage never discusses. Girls come up only in the dropout figures.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | NO | — |
| 21 | NOT GIVEN | — |
| 22 | YES | — |
| 23 | NO | — |
Questions 24-26
Question 25 quotes Tsimpli's 'that ship has sailed'. Read the words right before it: she is not asking for English to be withdrawn. Question 26 asks what surprised the researchers, so look for 'unanticipated' or 'unexpected', not the first finding in the paragraph.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 24 | C | — |
| 25 | D | — |
| 26 | D | — |
The questions most people get wrong
Over half the ten-year-olds can't read a younger child's text, and just under half can't do the subtraction. Reading is the weaker skill, so 'better at literacy' is NO.
Option A is also true (no difference in intelligence), but it isn't the surprise. The unanticipated finding is that slum children don't lag behind other poor urban children (D).
Some arrive from surrounding neighbourhoods, which is a nearby district (H). 'Distant country' fails because the other movers come from across India, not from abroad.
Sit this test on Langujet, then come back
The full Cambridge 21 Test 4 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 4, 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.