A Chronicle of Timekeeping — reading answers
Answer key for Cambridge IELTS 8 Test 1 Passage 1, covering the paragraph-matching, nationality-matching and flow-chart blocks with notes on each.
Questions 1-13 · 13 marks · 3 question blocks
Questions 1-4
Only four of the eight paragraphs are used, so scanning every paragraph in order wastes time you need for Passage 3. Read the four statements first, fix one keyword for each, then sweep the passage once and assign as you go.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | D | — |
| 2 | B | — |
| 3 | F | — |
| 4 | E | — |
Questions 5-8
Nationalities are proper nouns, which makes them the fastest thing on the page to scan for. Locate every occurrence of each nationality first and only then read around it, because the events, not the nationalities, are what get paraphrased.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | B | — |
| 6 | F | — |
| 7 | D | — |
| 8 | A | — |
Questions 9-13
The chart follows the mechanism in the order the passage describes it, so the answers appear in sequence. Three of the five accept a shorter form, which tells you the marker wants the mechanical part named rather than the full descriptive phrase.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 9 | ship's anchor | anchor / an anchor / the anchor |
| 10 | escape wheel | wheel |
| 11 | tooth | — |
| 12 | long pendulum | pendulum |
| 13 | second | — |
What your score on this passage actually tells you
One passage is 13 of the 40 marks in the paper, so it is a sample, not a band score. What it is good for is diagnosis: look at which of the question types above you lost marks in and whether the same type has hurt you before.
If your errors cluster in one question type, that is a technique problem and it is fixable in a week. If they are spread evenly, it is usually speed — you are running out of time and guessing the last few, which shows up as scattered wrong answers rather than a bad block.
Cambridge IELTS 8, Test 1, Reading Passage 1. The passage or section name belongs to Cambridge University Press; no passage text, audio, or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the commentary is our own.
Know the number. Now move it.
A conversion table tells you where you stand today. Langujet's AI marks your writing and speaking against the real rubric and tells you exactly which criterion is holding your score down.