Why Cities Are Hotter Than the Countryside: Reading Answers & Explanations
IELTS Reading practice test · 14 questionsAcademicmedium
Haven't taken this test yet?
Looking at the answers first spoils the practice — you only get one honest first attempt at a passage. Take the test with the 20-minute timer, get an instant score and estimated band, then come back here to study every answer.
About this passage
The passage opens: “The discovery was made by an amateur. Luke Howard, a London chemist better known for giving clouds their names, spent the early years of the nineteenth century comparing thermometer readings taken in the city with readings taken in the fields beyond it.”
- Passage length: about 834 words
- Questions: 14
- Question types: Matching Headings, Matching Features, Summary Completion, Yes / No / Not Given
“Why Cities Are Hotter Than the Countryside” is an original IELTS-style practice passage written by IELTS-Bank. It is not taken from an official IELTS or Cambridge test, so these answers only apply to our version.
Answer key at a glance
Why Cities Are Hotter Than the Countryside answers with explanations
Questions 1–6: Matching Headings
The reading passage has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-ix , for each paragraph.
- i. Measuring what satellites cannot see
- ii. Cures that come with side effects
- iii. How air conditioners are designed
- iv. The first person to record the difference
- v. Who suffers most, and when
- vi. The rising price of urban land
- vii. Surfaces, shapes and waste heat
- viii. From single buildings to city policy
- ix. How weather forecasts are produced
- 1
Paragraph A
Show answerHide answer
Answer: iv — The first person to record the difference
Why: Paragraph A is about Luke Howard, the amateur who first compared city and country readings and documented the difference.
Where to find it · Paragraph A “Luke Howard, a London chemist better known for giving clouds their names, spent the early years of the nineteenth century comparing thermometer readings taken in the city with readings taken in the fields beyond it.”
- 2
Paragraph B
Show answerHide answer
Answer: vii — Surfaces, shapes and waste heat
Why: Paragraph B lists the three causes: absorbing surfaces, street canyon geometry, and heat produced by engines and air conditioning.
Where to find it · Paragraph B “The third is what the city itself produces: engines, factories, cooking and, increasingly, air conditioning, which cools interiors by pumping heat into the street, so that the hotter the night the more heat is added to it.”
- 3
Paragraph C
Show answerHide answer
Answer: i — Measuring what satellites cannot see
Why: Paragraph C contrasts satellite surface readings with the air temperature measurements taken by sensors on cars and bicycles.
Where to find it · Paragraph C “Satellites see the temperature of surfaces, and a black roof at midday may be forty degrees hotter than the air above it, which makes satellite maps dramatic but misleading if they are read as maps of what a person feels.”
- 4
Paragraph D
Show answerHide answer
Answer: v — Who suffers most, and when
Why: Paragraph D shows that poorer districts are hottest and that deaths rise when night-time temperatures fail to fall.
Where to find it · Paragraph D “What kills during a heatwave is less the afternoon peak than the failure of the night to cool: the body recovers from heat load while asleep, and when the overnight minimum stays high for several days in a row, deaths among the elderly, the ill and outdoor workers rise sharply.”
- 5
Paragraph E
Show answerHide answer
Answer: ii — Cures that come with side effects
Why: Paragraph E reviews cooling measures and the drawback attached to each one, from thirsty trees to glaring pavements.
- 6
Paragraph F
Show answerHide answer
Answer: viii — From single buildings to city policy
Why: Paragraph F moves from individual buildings to heat officers, heat action plans and building codes.
Where to find it · Paragraph F “Ahmedabad in India, after a heatwave that overwhelmed its hospitals, built the first heat action plan in South Asia, combining forecasts, text alerts, training for clinic staff and cool rooms in public buildings, and the death rate in later heatwaves fell.”
Questions 7–9: Matching Features
Look at the following statements and the list of cooling measures below. Match each statement with the correct measure, A-E.
- A. reflective roof coatings
- B. street trees
- C. green roofs
- D. reflective pavements
- E. cool rooms in public buildings
- 7
It can lower the air temperature while making people on foot feel hotter.
Show answerHide answer
Answer: D — reflective pavements
Why: Paragraph E says reflective pavements lower air temperature but bounce sunlight upward onto pedestrians, who may feel hotter.
Where to find it · Paragraph E “Reflective pavements are the most awkward case: they lower air temperature, but the sunlight they bounce upward strikes pedestrians, who may feel hotter on a cooler street.”
- 8
It reduces the amount of rainwater reaching the drainage system.
Show answerHide answer
Answer: C — green roofs
Why: Paragraph E notes that green roofs hold back a large share of the rain that would otherwise pour into the drains.
Where to find it · Paragraph E “Green roofs cool a little and, usefully, hold back a large share of the rain that would otherwise pour into the drains during a storm.”
- 9
It cools both by providing shade and by giving off water vapour.
Show answerHide answer
Answer: B — street trees
Why: Paragraph E describes street trees as cooling twice over, by shading surfaces and by releasing water vapour from their leaves.
Where to find it · Paragraph E “Street trees are the strongest single measure, cooling twice over, by shading surfaces before they heat up and by releasing water vapour from their leaves, but they need watering through exactly the droughts that make them most valuable, and in a very narrow canyon their canopy can trap exhaust fumes at head height.”
Questions 10–11: Summary Completion
Questions 10 and 11. Complete the summary below.
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Why the heat stays in the streets Materials such as (10) ______ reflect very little of the sunlight that falls on them, so almost all of that energy is absorbed and then released slowly once the sun has gone down. The shape of a street matters too. Where buildings stand close together, only a narrow strip of (11) ______ can be seen from the pavement, and heat given off by one wall is caught by another instead of escaping upwards.
- 10
Gap 10(max 2 words)
Show answerHide answer
Answer: asphalt (also accepted: fresh asphalt / brick)
Why: Paragraph B: fresh asphalt reflects only a small percentage of the sunlight that lands on it, so nearly all the energy is absorbed.
Where to find it · Paragraph B “Fresh asphalt reflects only a small percentage of the sunlight that lands on it, so nearly all of that energy is absorbed, and brick, concrete and stone store it in bulk and release it slowly for hours after dark.”
- 11
Gap 11(max 2 words)
Show answerHide answer
Answer: sky (also accepted: open sky)
Why: Paragraph B: in a narrow canyon the strip of open sky visible from the pavement is small, so radiated heat is intercepted.
Where to find it · Paragraph B “A narrow street is a canyon whose walls face each other, and the strip of open sky visible from the pavement is small; heat radiated upward by one wall is intercepted by another instead of escaping, a relationship the climatologist Tim Oke set out in detail in the 1970s.”
Questions 12–14: Yes / No / Not Given
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the reading passage? Write YES, NO or NOT GIVEN.
- 12
Planting trees gives cities more cooling for the money spent than any other measure.
Show answerHide answer
Answer: YES
Why: In paragraph E the writer states that the evidence still favours trees over every alternative for cost per degree.
Where to find it · Paragraph E “In my view the evidence still favours trees over every alternative for cost per degree, provided a city is willing to wait fifteen years for the canopy to grow.”
- 13
Cooling city surfaces removes the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Show answerHide answer
Answer: NO
Why: Paragraph F calls it a serious error to treat cool surfaces as a substitute for reducing emissions.
Where to find it · Paragraph F “None of this addresses the cause of the warming that is making each summer worse, and it would be a serious error to treat cool surfaces as a substitute for reducing emissions.”
- 14
Every city with more than a million residents should appoint a heat officer.
Show answerHide answer
Answer: NOT GIVEN
Why: The writer reports that some cities have appointed heat officers but never recommends a population threshold for doing so.
Closest related text · Paragraph A “More than a century later the effect acquired a name, the urban heat island, and it has since been measured in every city where anyone has looked, from tropical capitals to towns inside the Arctic Circle.”
Estimated band score for this test
Your raw score out of 14 scaled to the 40-question IELTS Reading (Academic) conversion table. This is the same estimate the practice page shows after you submit. A single passage is a small sample, so treat it as a guide.
| Correct answers | Estimated band |
|---|---|
| 14 / 14 | 9.0 |
| 13 / 14 | 8.5 |
| 12 / 14 | 7.5 |
| 11 / 14 | 7.0 |
| 10 / 14 | 6.5 |
| 8–9 / 14 | 6.0 |
| 7 / 14 | 5.5 |
| 6 / 14 | 5.0 |
| 5 / 14 | 4.5 |
| 4 / 14 | 4.0 |
| 3 / 14 | 3.5 |
| 2 / 14 | 3.0 |
| 1 / 14 | 2.0 |
| 0 / 14 | 0.0 |
Full-test score? Use the IELTS band calculator.
Tips for the question types in this test
Matching Headings
- Read the list of headings first so you know the options, and notice how they differ from one another — often two headings are deliberately similar.
- Read the first paragraph and ask yourself: "In one sentence, what is this paragraph mainly saying?" before you look back at the headings.
Common trap: Picking a heading because it repeats a word from the paragraph, when that word only appears in a minor detail.
Full Matching Headings strategyMatching Features
- Read the list of options (the features) and locate each one in the passage, underlining every place it appears — names and dates are easy to spot.
- Read the statements and identify the claim or characteristic each one describes.
Common trap: Assuming each option is used exactly once — some are reused and some are distractors.
Full Matching Features strategySummary Completion
- Read the full summary first and identify which passage section it covers.
- Predict the grammar and meaning required in every blank.
Common trap: Choosing an option only because it repeats a passage word.
Full Summary Completion strategyYes / No / Not Given
- Identify the claim in the statement and, crucially, whose opinion it represents — these passages often quote several people, so track who is speaking.
- Scan the passage for opinion signals: verbs like "argues", "believes", "suggests", "claims", and phrases such as "in the author’s view".
Common trap: Treating a reported opinion (someone else’s view mentioned by the writer) as the writer’s own conclusion.
Full Yes / No / Not Given strategyPractise “Why Cities Are Hotter Than the Countryside” under exam conditions
Free, auto-marked, with the 20-minute timer and an instant band estimate.
Take this test first (timed)More IELTS Reading tests with answers
Finding the Way Across the Pacific
medium
From Bean to Bar: The Making of Chocolate
medium
Getting Started with Backyard Birdwatching
easy
Greenfield Public Library Services
easy
Guided Walking Tours of the Old Town
easy
Hillcrest Leisure Centre: Notices for Members
easy