IELTS Academic Reading Test

Section 1
READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–14, which are based on Reading
Passage 1 below.

The dillema of Students

(A) The university accommodation crisis in Sweden has become ‘so chronic’

that students are being forced to sleep rough, share a bed with strangers – or
give up on studying altogether.

(B) The deputy president of the Union of Students in Sweden, Mark

Donoghue, said the problem has become particularly acute in Visby. He told
the Swiss Mirror: “Students are so desperate, they’re not just paying through
the nose to share rooms – they’re paying to share a bed with complete
strangers. It reached crisis point last year and it’s only getting worse. “We’ve
heard of students sleeping rough; on sofas, floors and in their cars and I have
to stress there’s no student in the country that hasn’t been touched by this
crisis. “Commutes – which would once have been considered ridiculous – are
now normal, whether that’s by bus, train or car and those who drive often end
up sleeping in their car if they’ve an early start the next morning.”

(C) Worry is increasing over the problems facing 200,000 students as the

number increases over the next 15 years. With 165,000 full-time students in
Ireland – and that figure expected to increase to around 200,000 within the
next 15 years –fears remain that there aren’t enough properties to
accommodate current numbers.

(D) Mr. Donoghue added: “The lack of places to live is actually forcing school-
leavers out of college altogether. Either they don’t go in the first place or end
up having to drop out because they can’t get a room and commuting is just
too expensive, stressful and difficult.”

(E) Claims have emerged from the country that some students have been
forced to sleep in cars, or out on the streets, because of the enormous
increases to rent in the capital. Those who have been lucky enough to find a
place to live have had to do so ‘blind’ by paying for accommodation, months in
advance, they haven’t even seen just so they will have a roof over their head
over the coming year.

(F) According to the to Swiss Independent, it’s the ‘Google effect’ which is to

blame. As Google and other blue-chip companies open offices in and around
Visby’s docklands area, which are ‘on the doorstep of the city’, international
professionals have been flocking to the area which will boast 2,600 more
apartments, on 50 acres of undeveloped land, over the next three to 10 years.

(G) Rent in the area soared by 15 per cent last year and a two-bedroom
apartment overlooking the Grand Canal costs €2,100 (£1,500) per month to
rent. Another two-bedroom apartment at Hanover Dock costs €2,350 (almost
£1,700) with a three-bedroom penthouse – measuring some 136 square
metres – sits at €4,500 (£3,200) per month in rent.

(H) Sweden’s Higher Education Authority admitted this was the first time they
had seen circumstances ‘so extreme’ and the Fianna Fáild party leader,
Michael Margaux, urged on the Government to intervene. He said: “It is very
worrying that all of the progress in opening up access to higher education in
the last decade – particularly for the working poor – is being derailed because
of an entirely foreseeable accommodation crisis.
IELTS Academic Reading -
Section 2
READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15–26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.

E-cigarettes

  (A) People trying to give up smoking often use e-cigarettes to help stop the
use of tobacco or normal cigarettes. Most experts think they are safer than
cigarettes but a surprising paper was published recently - it suggests that
people who use e-cigarettes are less successful at giving up smoking than
those who don't. "E-cigarettes WON'T help you quit," reported the Daily Mail.
"Smokers using vapers are '27% less likely to ditch traditional cigarettes,'"
read the paper's headline. The story was reported on many other websites
around the world, including CBS: "Study: E-cigarettes don't help smokers
quit," it said.

  (B) The study causing the fuss was written by researchers at the Center for
Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, and
published in one of the Lancet's sister journals, Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
It is a meta-analysis, which means the authors reviewed the academic
literature already available on the topic. They sifted out the weaker papers -
ones that didn't have control groups, for example - and were left with 20.

  (C) The conclusion? Smokers who use e-cigarettes have a 28% lower

chance of quitting than smokers who don't use them, according to Prof
Stanton Glantz, one of the authors. But while the conclusion is surprising, so
is the number of academics who have criticised the paper. One was Ann
McNeill, professor of tobacco addiction at Kings College London, whose own
research is included in Glantz's analysis. "This review is not scientific," she
wrote on the Science Media Centre website. "The information… about two
studies that I co-authored is either inaccurate or misleading… I believe the
findings should therefore be dismissed.
  (D) "I am concerned at the huge damage this publication may have - many
more smokers may continue smoking and die if they take from this piece of
work that all evidence suggests e-cigarettes do not help you quit smoking; that
is not the case." Prof Peter Hajek, director of the Tobacco Dependence
Research Unit at the Wolfson Institute also called the findings "grossly
misleading".

  (E) The critics are making three main points. First, the definition of e-
cigarettes is a bit loose. There are many different types - some look like
cigarettes, others have tanks for the vaping liquid, some are disposable and
other are multi-use. They all deliver different doses of nicotine. Many of the
papers included in the analysis don't specify which type people are using,
according to Linda Bauld, professor of health policy at the University of
Stirling. Another point is that the studies vary in the way they measure how
often people use e-cigarettes. "Some only assessed whether a person had
ever tried an e-cigarette or if they had tried one recently, not whether they
were using it regularly or frequently," Bauld says.

  (F) Even the paper's author admits it's possible that in some of the studies
e-cigarettes may only have been used once, which he says would not be a
good predictor of whether they had affected people's ability to stop smoking.
And there is another problem. You might expect, if you were going to draw
conclusions about how useful e-cigarettes are in helping people quit, to focus
on studies looking at people who are trying to give up. Prof Robert West, who
heads a team at University College London researching ways to help people
stop smoking, says this analysis mashed together some very different studies
- only some of which include people using e-cigarettes to help them quit.

  (G) "To mix them in with studies where you've got people using an e-
cigarette and are not particularly trying to stop smoking is mixing apples and
oranges," he says. Some of the studies track smokers who use e-cigarettes
for other reasons - perhaps because smoking a cigarette in a bar or an office
is illegal and they want a nicotine hit. "With the studies where people are using
electronic cigarettes specifically in a quit attempt the evidence is consistent,"
says West, referring to two randomised control trials.

  (H) Both are quite small and one was funded by the e-cigarette industry.
They took two groups of smokers, and gave one real e-cigarettes, and the
other a placebo. The studies reach a broadly similar conclusion to a large,
real-world study called the Smoking Toolkit run by West. West's investigation
follows people in their daily lives and assesses how successful various
methods of giving up smoking are - this includes nicotine patches, medicines
and going cold turkey. These studies suggest that people using e-cigarettes to
help them quit are 50% to 100% more successful than those who use no aids
at all.

  (I) In his paper, Glantz acknowledges there are limitations to the research
that he analysed. He agrees there are problems with the way the use of e-
cigarettes is measured and accepts it's not clear which devices people are
using. But he is sticking by his analysis because he believes he has taken
these factors into account. The editor of Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Emma
Grainger, defends the article too. She says she does not see a problem with
the paper and that it has been through the normal peer-review process.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Section 3
READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.

Penguins'

Researchers’ studying penguins’ feathers have revealed how the birds stay
ice free when hopping in and out of below zero waters in the Antarctic. A
combination of nano-sized pores and an extra water repelling preening oil the
birds secrete is thought to give Antarctic penguins’ feathers superhydrophobic
properties. Researchers in the US made the discovery using Scanning
Electron Microscopy (SEM) to study penguin feathers in extreme detail.
Antarctic penguins live in one of Earth’s most extreme environments, facing
temperatures that drop to -40C, winds with speeds of 40 metres per second
and water that stays around -2.2C. But even in these sub-zero conditions, the
birds manage to prevent ice from coating their feathers.

“They are an amazing species, living in extreme conditions, and great

swimmers. Basically they are living engineering marvels,” says research team
member Dr Pirouz Kavehpour, professor of Mechanical and Aerospace
Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Birds’
feathers are known to have hydrophobic, or non-wetting, properties. But
scientists from UCLA, University of Massachusetts Amherst and SeaWorld,
wanted to know what makes Antarctic penguins’ feathers extra ice repelling.

“What we learn here is how penguins combine oil and nano-structures on the
feathers to produce this effect to perfection,” explains Kavehpour. By
analysing feathers from different penguin species, the researchers discovered
Antarctic species the gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua) was more
superhydrophobic compared with a species found in warmer climes – the
Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) – whose breeding sites
include Argentinian desert.

Gentoo penguins’ feathers contained tiny pores which trapped air, making the
surface hydrophobic. And they were smothered with a special preening oil,
produced by a gland near the base of the tail, with which the birds cover
themselves. Together, these properties mean that in the wild, droplets of
water on Antarctic penguins’ superhydrophobic feathers bead up on the
surface like spheres – formations that, according to the team, could provide
geometry that delays ice formation, since heat cannot easily flow out of the
water if the droplet only has minimal contact with the surface of the feather.

“The shape of the droplet on the surface dictates the delay in freezing,”
explains Kavehpour. The water droplets roll off the penguin's feathers before
they have time to freeze, the researchers propose. Penguins living in the
Antarctic are highly evolved to cope with harsh conditions: their short outer
feathers overlap to make a thick protective layer over fluffier feathers which
keep them warm. Under their skin, a thick layer of fat keeps them insulated.
The flightless birds spend a lot of time in the sea and are extremely agile and
graceful swimmers, appearing much more awkward on land.

Kavehpour was inspired to study Antarctic penguins’ feathers after watching

the birds in a nature documentary: “I saw these birds moving in and out of
water, splashing everywhere. Yet there is no single drop of frozen ice sticking
to them,” he tells BBC Earth. His team now hopes its work could aid design of
better man-made surfaces which minimise frost formation.

“I would love to see biomimicking of these surfaces for important applications,

for example, de-icing of aircrafts,” says Kavehpour. Currently, airlines spend a
lot of time and money using chemical de-icers on aeroplanes, as ice can alter
the vehicles’ aerodynamic properties and can even cause them to crash.