I had a special request for this Academic Passage 3 because it's difficult, but honestly, it's a very early test (Book 7) and is just badly-written.

I think the reading itself is very useful as an example of academic writing, with lots you can learn from it, but the questions are simply not good - you can guess 3 of them without even needing to understand what they mean (a sure sign of a bad test), and there is too much similar language (very few synonyms required).

If you struggled with this one - forget it and move on (but listen for practice 😊.)

Learning points: Hedging - listen to an earlier podcast about hedging:

https://anchor.fm/ieltsetc/episodes/IELTS-Writing-How-to-hedge-in-Task-2-eo21n7/a-a465qt4

and read the blog:

https://ieltsetc.com/2020/12/hedging-in-academic-writing/