The problems and benefits created by the spread of the water hyacinth in Kenya: reading answers and analysis
An ornamental plant escapes into Lake Victoria and chokes it, while the women who smoke the lake's fish breathe in woodsmoke and walk miles for firewood. A village project mixes the weed with cow dung to make clean cooking gas. It works, but the machines cost more than most villages can pay.
Questions 1-13 · 13 marks · 3 question blocks
Where the answers sit
The TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN block (1-7) covers paragraphs B to D. The flow-chart (8-10) is all paragraphs F and G. The notes (11-13) come from H and J.
Questions 1-7
In order, with two NOT GIVENs that both ask you to go one step further than the passage: a cause for falling fish numbers, and a health ranking of charcoal against wood. The passage mentions both topics but never makes either claim.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | TRUE | — |
| 2 | FALSE | — |
| 3 | TRUE | — |
| 4 | NOT GIVEN | — |
| 5 | NOT GIVEN | — |
| 6 | FALSE | — |
| 7 | TRUE | — |
Questions 8-10
Two words are allowed here, and question 8 needs both. The steps follow the stomach comparison in G: what goes in, what happens inside, how the gas leaves. Earlier paragraphs mention a different kind of manure, so be sure you're reading the Dunga project.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | cow dung | — |
| 9 | fermentation | fermentation process |
| 10 | pipes | — |
Questions 11-13
The benefits come from H and the drawback from J. All three answers are plain everyday nouns. The only risk is writing a longer phrase from the passage when the notes allow one word.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | time | — |
| 12 | money | — |
| 13 | price | — |
The questions most people get wrong
The Nigerian research (E) used chicken manure. The Dunga digesters (F) take cow dung. The flow-chart is about Dunga, so the answer is cow dung, and it needs both words.
Paragraph D describes huge piles of weed that villagers had pulled out of the lake. Removal clearly happened, so 'impossible' is FALSE.
Paragraph C groups wood and charcoal together as solid fuels. It never ranks one above the other, so NOT GIVEN.
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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 1. 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.