READING QUESTION TYPES The features of an IELTS Reading Passage ‘Two important skills: Guessing the meaning of words and understanding referencing Question Type 1 - Notes Completion Question Type 2 - Short-Answer Questions Question Type 3 - Sentence Completion Question Type 4 - Labeling a diagram Question Type 5 - Table Completion Question Type 6 - Flow-chart completion Question Type 7 - Summary completion Question Type 8 - Summary completion with a box of words Question Type 9 - Classification Question Type 10 - Choosing from a list Question Type 11 - True/False/Not Given (Identifying information Question Type 12 - Yes/No/Not Given (Identifying writer’s views or claims Question Type 13 - Matching Headings Question Type 14 - Matching Information Question Type 15 - Matching features Question Type 16 - Matching Sentence Endings Question Type 17 - Multiple choice Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams ‘Two important skills: Guessing the meaning of words and understanding referencing Four steps for guessing new words from context Step 1: Look at the word, and check for prefixes/ suffixes Step 2: look at the sentence and the grammar Step 3: think about the overal meaning of the sentence, paragraph and text. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsStep 4: check your dictionary. Question Type 1 - Notes Completion Note completion may cover a larger part of the Reading passage. The information may not be presented in the same order as the information in the passage. Use the headings. in the notes to help you find the information in the passage. Eg 1: Ochre find reveals ancient knowledge of chemistry The oldest ochre-processing toolkits and workshop ever found have been unearthed, indicating that as far back as 100,000 years ago, humans had an understanding of chemistry. South Africa's Blombos Cave lies within a limestone cliff on the southern Cape coast, 300 km east of Cape Town. It's known for its 75,000-year-old rich deposits of artefacts such as beads, bone tools and ochre engravings. Some engravings date as far back as 100,000 years. Archaeologist Christopher S. Henshilwood from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and University of Bergen, Norway has been excavating at the site since 1992, and has reported the discovery of a mixture, rich in ochre, stored in two abalone, shells. It dates back to the Middle Stone Age — 100,000 years ago. Ochre is a term used to describe a piece of earth or rock containing red or yellow oxides or hydroxides of iron. It can be used to make pigments, or paints, ranging from golden-yellow and light yellow- brown to a rich red. Its use spans the history of humans — from those living more than 200,000 years ago, to modern indigenous communities Made from an array of materials, this mixture, which could have functioned as wall, object and skin decoration or skin protection (acting in a similar way to modern-day sunscreen), indicates the early developments that occurred in the people who originally used the site, “[Judging from] the complexity of the material that has been collected from different parts of the landscape and brought to the site, they {the people] must have had an Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examselementary knowledge of chemistry to be able to combine these materials to produce this form. It's not a straightforward process,” said Henshilwood The Blombos Cave discovery is the earliest-known example of a pigment- or paint- producing workshop. All of the materials were discovered at the same site, and they included an array of raw materials including samples of bone and charcoal, as well as pigment-producing equipment such as grindstones and hammerstones. Judging by the equipment, which shows signs of wear, Henshilwood and his team were able to deduce the process used to produce the ochre mixture First, the pieces of ochre were rubbed on quartzite slabs and crushed to produce a red powder. This was combined with ground-up mammal bone, the traces of which show signs that it was heated before being ground. The ochre powder and the bone pieces ‘were mixed with charcoal, stone chips, quartz grains and a liquid (perhaps water) and was then transferred to abalone shells to be gently stirred before being ready for application. Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD/AND OR A NUMBER from the passage. Blombos Cave discovery Background + Location: South Africa * The date digging began: 1 .. Previous ancient objects found in this area: Recent findings Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams+ A mixture containing a substance called 5 ... . (used to provide colour) + Equipment + A range of additional 6 including animal bone and charcoal Conclusion + in prehistoric times, humans knew basic 7.... Eg2: The First Cyber Criminals ‘Cyber crime’ sounds like a very new type of crime. In fact, it has been around since the 1970s — before the personal computer was invented, when computers far less powerful than today’s games consoles filed entire rooms and were monitored by technicians. The first cyber crimes were carried out across telephone lines, by a group of electronic enthusiasts known as phone phreakers’. Having studied the US telephone system, they realised that it used a series of musical tones to connect calls. They found they could imitate those tones, and steal free phone calls, by creating small musical devices called “blue boxes’. One famous ‘phreaker’, John Draper, even discovered that using a whistle given away inside a cereal box could do the same job as a blue box Cyber crime centred on the telephone for many years, until the first computer-to- ‘computer cyber crime took place in the 1980s. ‘Hacking, as it has since been referred to, gained new public visibilty after the popular 1984 film Wargames, in which a hacker breaks into a US military computer and Saves the world. Many hackers later said this, was their inspiration. It was the arrival of the Internet that was eventually to make cyber crime a big issue. When millions of home and business computer users began to visit the Internet in the early to mid 1990s, few were thinking about the dangers of cyber crime or about security and so it seemed only a matter of time before banks became the target for hackers. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsIn 1994 a group of hackers broke into US bank Citibank's computers and stole $10 milion. This was later nearly all recovered. With the rise of the Internet, credit cards became the tools of cyber criminals: Kevin Mitnick was arrested for stealing 20,000 credit card numbers over the net in 1995. This and other credit card crime prompted credit card companies to consider ways they could make cards more secure. Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer. Cyber crime First cyber criminals: called 1 ...... (1970s) Nature of crime: made free class by copying 2..... Computer rime: began in 3 Crime known as: 4... Promoted by hit movie: 5 (1984) Internet crime: intially unexpected, but quickly focused on 6 .. Current concem: 7... w fraud Key1 Key2 1. 1992 1. Phone phreakers 2. Beads 2. Musical tones 3. Tools 3, The 1980s 4, Engravings 4, hacking 5. Ochre 5. Wargames. 6. Materials 6. Banks 7. Chemistry 7. Credit card Group: Real IELTS Exams- 01Question Type 2 - Short-Answer Questions. Short-Answer questions often begin with wh-words because they are designed to test whether you can find concrete facts/information in the Reading passage. In a block of short-answer questions you will find that the answers occur in the text in the same order as the questions; ie. you will come across the answer to question 1 first, and so on Sifting through the sands of time When you're on the beach, you're stepping on ancient mountains, skeletons of marine animals, even tiny diamonds. Sand provides a mineral treasure- trove, a record of geology's earth-changing processes. Sand: as children we play on it and as adults we relax on it. Itis something we complain about when it gets in our food, and praise when it’s moulded into castles. But we don't often look at it. If we did, we would discover an account of a geological past and a history of marine life that goes back thousands and in some cases millions of years. Sand covers not just sea-shores, but also ocean beds, deserts and mountains. It is one of the most common substances on earth. And it is a major element in man-made items too concrete is largely sand, while glass is made of litle else. What exactly is sand? Well, it is larger than fine dust and smaller than shingle. In fact, according to the most generally accepted scheme of measurement, devised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, grains quality if their diameter is greater than 0.06 of a millimetre and less than 0.6 of a millimetre Depending on its age and origin, a particular sand can consist of tiny pebbles or porous granules. Its grain may have the shape of stars or spirals, their edges jagged or smooth. They have come from the erosion of rocks, or from the skeletons of marine organisms which accumulate on the bottom of the oceans, or even from voleanic eruptions. Colour is another clue to sand’s origins. If itis a dazzling white, its grains may be derived from nearby coral outcrops, from crystalline quartz rocks or from gypsum, like the white sands of New Mexico. On Pacific islands Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsjet black sands form from volcanic minerals. Other black beaches are magnetic. Some sand is very recent indeed, as is the case on the island of Kamoama in Hawaii, where a beach was created after a voleanic eruption in 1990. Molten lava spilled into the sea and exploded in glassy droplets. Usually, the older the granules, the finer they are and the smoother the edges. The fine, white beaches of northern Scotland, for i stance, are recycled from sandstone several hundred million years old. Perhaps they will be stone once more, in another few hundred million. Sand is an irreplaceable industrial ingredient whose uses are legion: but it has one vital function you might never even notice. Sand cushions our land from the sea's impact, and geologists say it often does a better job of protecting our shores than the most advanced coastal technology. Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. 1 What TWO liiaterials imiade by humans are mentioned in the passage? 2 Which part/6fa Grain of sand have scientists MBaSUred? diameter 3 What TWO factors determine the Size and Shape of a piece of sand? Age and origin 4 Whigh/eVent produced the beach on Kamoamalisland? Volcanic eruption 5 Where, according to the passage, can beaches made of érylaniciént sand be found? Northern scotland Who claims that sand can have amore, efficient furnction than coastal technology? Ochre find reveals ancient knowledge of chemistry ‘The oldest ochre-processing toolkits and workshop ever found have been unearthed, indicating that as far back as 100,000 years ago, humans had an understanding of chemistry. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsSouth Africa's Blombos Cave lies within a limestone cliff on the southern Cape coast, 300 km east of Cape Town. Its known for its 75,000-year-old rich deposits of artefacts such as beads, bone tools and ochre engravings. Some engravings date as far back as 100,000 years. Archaeologist Christophers. Hlenshilwood from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and University of Bergen, Norway has been excavating at the site since 1992, and has reported the discovery of a mixture, rich in ochre, stored in two abalone shells. It dates back to the Middle Stone Age - 100,000 years ago. Ochre is a term used to describe a piece of earth or rock containing red or yellow oxides or hydroxides of iron. It can be used to make pigments, or paints, ranging from golden- yellow and light yellow-brown to a rich red. Its use spans the history of humans - from those living more than 200,000 years ago, to modem indigenous communities. Made from an array of materials, this mixture, which could have functioned as wall, object and skin decoration or skin protection (acting in a similar way to modern-day sunscreen), indicates the early developments that occurred in the people who originally used the site “Judging from] the complexity of the material that has been collected from different parts of the landscapeand brought to the site, they {the people] must have had an elementary knowledge of chemistry to be able combine these materials to produce this form. I's not a straightforward process’, said Henshilwood Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer 1 WhiGH of the arféfaéts mentioned are the GIdést? Engravings 2 When was the ffiatériall HEAShiIW66d found originally M46? 100.000 years ago 3 What {WO Common Materials did ancient humans use {/6bIain their Gehre? Earth, rock 4 What did the angiéntipeople use to keep their ochre mixturélin? abalone shells 5 Nowadays, WHO makes use of 66hfe? indigenous commulities Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams6 Apart from Painting) WhAEEISE might ahcisnllhUMANS have used ochre for? Skin protection Sentence completion questions also test your abilty to find specific details or information in the passage. You must fill in the gaps in the sentences with appropriate words from the passage. The sentences will paraphrase the words and ideas. They also contain details that help you find the part you need to readin detail. Australia's first commercial wind farm It's some years since the rotor blades began spinning in Esperance. A Harvest time in Esperance is constant. As long as the wind blows - which is pretty much all the time - nine identical synchronised wind turbines reap the benefits of the dependable winds that gust up around the southern coastline of Western Australia. These sleek, white, robot-like wind turbines loom up on the horizon forming part of Australia’s first commercial wind farm. They're not only functional machines that help provide electricity for this secluded coastal town, but increasingly, they're also drawcards for curious tourists and scientists alike. B Because of its isolation, Esperance is not linked to Wester Power's grid which supplies electricity from gas-, coal- and oilired power stations the widespread population of Western Australia. Before the wind turbines went in, Esperance’s entire electricity needs were met by the diesel power station in town. € The $5.8 million Ten Mile Lagoon project is not Esperance's first wind farm. The success of a smaller, experimental wind farm, at a spot called Salmon Beach, encouraged the State's power utility to take Esperance wind seriously. Today, the wind turbines at Ten Mile Lagoon work in conjunction with the diesel power station, significantly reducing the amount of the town's electricity generated by expensive diesel power. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsD The wind farm is connected to the power station by a 33-kilovolt powerline, and a radio link between the two allows operators to monitor and control each wind turbine. The nine 225-kilowatt Vestas wind turbines produce a total generating capacity of two megawatts and provide around 12 per cent of the energy requirements of Esperance and its surrounding districts. E The power produced by a wind turbine depends on the size and efficiency of the machine and, of course, on the energy in the wind. The energy in the wind available to the wind turbines is proportional to wind speed cubed. Thus, the greater the wind speed, the greater the output of the turbine. In order to achieve optimum wind speeds, the right location is imperative. You have to accept the nature of the beast,’ Mr Rosser, Westem Power's physicist, said. “As surface dwellers our perceptions of wind speeds are bad. As you go higher, wind speed increases significantly F The most favourable wind sites are on gently sloping hills, away from obstructions like trees and buildings and where the prevailing winds are not blocked. Computer modelling was used to select the optimum site for Esperance's wind farm. Scientists were coneemed not only with efficiency, but also with protecting the coastal health environment which is rich in plant life and home to tiny pygmy and honey-possums, and a host of bird species. In addition, the wind farm is adjacent to Esperance's popular scenic tourist drive. G Strict erosion controls have been implemented and access to the wind farm is limited to selected viewing areas. The wind turbine towers are painted white and devoid of corporate logos or signage. According to Mr Rosser there is something of a worldwide backlash against wind farms with regard to their ual impact. “But because wind turbines perform best in the most exposed positions, they will always be visible. There is a very real need to balance environmental and 80 technical requirements. | think the Ten Mile Lagoon Wind Farm sets the standard for environmentally friendly developments.” H In fact, the project has become something of a tourist attraction in itself. Esperance shire president lan Mickel said the wind turbines had been well accepted by locals. We have watched the wind farm develop with great interest, and now we find visitors to Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsEsperance are equally enthusiastic about it; he said. The aim now is to identify other remote locations where wind turbines will be a feasible means of supplementing existing power stations. Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer. 1 Esperance used to rely totally on... for energy. 2 About. cof Esperance's energy needs are met by the wind farm, 3 Both the . cof at wind turbine affect its energy output. 4 & 5 Wind farms should not be built near barriers to the wind, such as ... or. 6 Scientists chose the best location for the wind farm at Esperance with the aid of. The Blombos Cave discovery is the earliest-known example of a pigment- or paint producing workshop. All of the materials were discovered at the same site, and they included an array of raw materials including samples of bone and charcoal, as well as pigment-producing equipment such as grindstones and hammerstones. Judging by the equipment, which shows signs of wear, Henshilwood and his team were able to deduce the process used to produce thé ochre mixture. First, the pieces of ochre were rubbed on quartzite slabs and crushed to produce a red powder. This was combined with ground-up mammal bone, the traces of which show signs that it was heated before being ground. The ochre powder and the bone pieces were mixed with charcoal stone chips, quartz grains and a liquid (perhaps water) and was then transferred to abalone shells to be gently stirred before being ready for application Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams1 Two ingredients used to make paint found in the cave were .. and 2 Two examples of tools used to make the paint that were found in the cave are . and 3 The scientists used the. paint was made. on the equipment to help work out how the ‘Australia’s first commercial wind farm 1 diesel power The Blombos Cave discovery 1 charcoal 2.12 percent 2 grindstones and hammerstones 8 size and efficiency 8 signs of wear 4 trees 5 buildings 6 computer modeling Question Type 4 - Labeling a diagram In labeling a diagram tasks, you will see a diagram and a description of a process. You need to carefully read the part of the passage that describes the process and complete the diagram with words from the passage. The power of water Most hydropower plants rely on a dam that holds back water, creating a large reservoir behind it. Often, this reservoir is used as a recreational lake and is also known as the intake. Gates on the dam open and gravity pulls the water through the penstock, a line of pipe that leads to the turbine. Water builds up pressure as it lows through this pipe. ‘The water strikes and turns the large blades of a turbine, which is attached to a generator above it by way of a shaft. As the turbine blades turn, so do a series of magnets inside the generator producing alternating current (AC) by moving electrons. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsThe transformer, located inside the powerhouse, takes the AC and converts it to higher- voltage current, [ group: Real IELTS EXAMS ] Effects on Salmon Biodiversity The number of Pacific salmon has declined dramatically but the loss of genetic diversity may be a bigger problem Each year, countless salmon migrate from the rivers and streams along the western coasts of Canada and the US to the Pacific Ocean, while at the same time others leave the ocean and return to freshwater to spawn a new generation. This ritual has been going on for many millennia. But more than a century ago, the number of salmon returning from the sea began to fall dramatically in the Pacific Northwest. The decline accelerated in the 1970s and by the 1990s the US Endangered Species Act listed 26 kinds of salmon as endangered. In North America, there are five species of Pacific salmon: pink salmon, chum, Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examssockeye, coho and chinook. Most of these fish migrate to the sea and then return to freshwater to reproduce. They are also semelparous - they die after spawning once. The life cycle of a typical salmon begins with females depositing eggs in nests, or redds, on the gravel bottoms of rivers and lakes. There must be large quantities of gravel for this process to be successful. The young emerge from hee and live in freshwater for periods ranging from a few days to several years. Then the juveniles undergo a physiological metamorphosis, called smottification, and head towards the ocean. Once in the sea, the salmon often undertake extensive migrations of thousands of miles while they mature. After anywhere from a few months to a few years, adult salmon retum - with high fidelity - to the river where they were born. There they spawn and the cycle begins again Stream-type chinook spend one or more years in freshwater before heading to sea; they also undertake extensive offshore voyages and return to their natal streams during the spring or summer, often holding in freshwater for several months before spawning. In contrast, ocean-type chinook move out very early in life, before they reach one year of age. But once these salmon reach open water, they do not travel far offshore. They usually spend their entire ocean residence on the continental shelf and return to their natal streams immediately before spawning Because salmon typically return to reproduce in the river where they were spawned, individual streams are home to local breeding populations that can have a unique genetic signature and the state of the oceans influences this. Also, salmon react in complex ways to human-induced changes to their environment. ‘The extensive development of hydropower on the major rivers of the western US has clearly disrupted populations of salmon. Other problems come from the very engineering fixes made to protect these fish from harm. Dams on some rivers are equipped with submersible screens designed to divert migrating juveniles away from jurbinesUnfortunately, these measures do not benefit all fish. These screens steer as. many as 95 percent of the stream- type chinook around the turbines, but because of Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsidiosyncrasies in behaviour these measures redirect as few as 15 percent of ocean type chinook. One thus expects to see genetic shifts in favour of the stream types Fish ladders too have drawbacks. Although these devices have helped to bring survival rates for mature fish closer to historic levels, dams have certainly altered their upstream journey. Rather than swimming against a flowing river, adults now pass through a series of reservoirs punctuated by dams, where discharge from the turbine can disorient the fish and make it hard for them to find ladders. Such impediments do ‘ot kill the fish, but they affect migration rates. Dams may also modify salmon habitat in more subtle ways. An indirect effect of the 92- metre Brownlee Dam on the Snake River provides a dramatic example. Historically, the upper Snake River produced some 25,000 to 30,000 chinook salmon that spawned during the early fall. The completion of the dam in the late 1950s not only rendered the vast majority of their habitat inaccessible, but also led to more extreme water temperatures downstream from the dam. These changes, in turn, altered the life cycle of the small population of Snake River chinook that remained. Today young chinook emerge from the gravel later than they did before the dam was built, and thus they migrate downstream later, when temperatures are higher and water levels lower. A flow chart is a diagram that shows the sequence of events in a process. In flow-chart completion questions, the information may not be presented in the same order as in the passage. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsComplete the flowchart below. (Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage foreach answer. Lite eye of saimon =>) ere ere at Se leny 2 eS ay ‘Young samen occupy 3 {or up several years uy Process known as 4 ay Migration to oceans aE Retunio5 oti ‘Complete the table below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Effects of engineering projects on salmon Impact Outcome ‘submersible ‘keep young ‘mainly protect ‘one species will screens ‘migrating salmon 7 become more clear of chinook ‘numerous ny fish can't locate ‘negative ‘them because of ‘impact on turbine discharge 9 ‘Brownlee Dam fish can't getto 2 normal of Snake River 0 chinook changed ‘very great changes int Ochre find reveals ancient knowledge of c The oldest ochre-processing toolkits and workshop ever four unearthed, inaicating that as far back as 100,000 years ago, an understanding of chemistry. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams shemistry ind have been , humans hadSouth Africa's Blombos Cave lies within a limestone cliff on the southern Cape coast, 300 km east of Cape Town. It's known for its 75,000-year-old rich deposits of artefacts such as beads, bone tools and ochre engravings. Some engravings date as far back as 100,000 years Archaeologist Christopher S. Henshilwood from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and University of Bergen, Norway has been excavating at the site since 1992, and has reported the discovery of a mixture, rich in ochre, stored in two abalone shells. It dates back to the Middle Stone Age — 100,000 years ago. Ochre is a term used to describe a piece of earth or rock containing red or yellow oxides or hydroxides of iron. It can be used to make pigments, or paints, ranging from golden-yellow and light yellow- brown to a rich red. Its use spans the history of humans — from those living more than 200,000 years ago, to modern indigenous communities. Made from an array of materials, this mixture, which could have functioned as wall, object and skin decoration or skin protection (acting in a similar way to modern-day sunscreen), indicates the early developments that occurred in the people who originally used the site, “[Judging from] the complexity of the material that has been collected from different parts of the landscape and brought to the site, they [the people] must have had an elementary knowledge of chemistry to be able to combine these materials to produce this form. I's not a straightforward process,” said Henshilwood The Blombos Cave discovery is the earliest-known example of a pigment- or paint- producing workshop. All of the materials were discovered at the same site, and they included an array of raw materials including samples of bone and charcoal, as well as pigment-producing equipment such as grindstones and hammerstones. Judging by the equipment, which shows signs of wear, Henshilwood and his team were able to deduce the process used to produce the ochre mixture First, the pieces of ochre were rubbed on quartzite slabs and crushed to produce a red powder. This was combined with ground-up mammal bone, the traces of which show signs that it was heated before being ground. The ochre powder and the bone pieces Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams‘were mixed with charcoal, stone chips, quartz grains and a liquid (perhaps water) and was then transferred to abalone shells to be gently stirred before being ready for application. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. How pigment was made in ancient times A colourful 4. was created by rubbing the ochre against pieces of quartzite _— and then crushed and added to the ochre v The bones and ochre were mixed with other solids and the researchers believe 3 was then added ‘Animal bones were 2... Tho mixture was poured into 4 thon mixed by hand ————— The final mixture was ready to use for ether of walls or as an early type of 6 for the body Effects on Salmon ‘Ochre find reveais ancient | How pigment was made in Biodiversity knowledge of chemistry —_| ancient times 1 nests, or redds 6 turbines 1 powder. 2 gravel 7 stream- type 2 heated 3 freshwater 8 Fish ladders 3.water 4 smottfication 9 migration rates. 4 shells 5 river 10 habitat 5 decoration 11 temperatures 6 sunscreen 12 life cycle Question Type 7 - Summary completion ‘Summaries aim to provide a shortened version of the information in a text. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsGerard Leonhard has seen the future of the music business - and it's incredibly dull. In his book The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Revolution, co-authored by Dave Kusek, he predicts that music will be consumed exactly like water or any other household utility. 0 Anew book on music compares it toa For a monthly subscription fee of, say, $5, anyone will be able to tap into the ‘celestial jukebox’, a continuously updated collection that spans the history of recorded music. And given the increasing ubiquity of the Internet, the music will flow easily to listeners, via computers, TV sets, mobile phones and other devices not yet invented. Artists, in turn, will be paid using a subscription pool based on ‘pro rata, per second’ usage. Free from the constraints of having to manufacture and distribute plastic discs, any musi n with a laptop can release whatever, whenever. This will drive musicians to engage listeners - in terms of both price and quality - as never before. In the process, music will become more of a service and less of a product. 1 According to the writer, fees to musicians will come from ... 2 In future, the two issues of... will be very important to consumers. ‘A summary of the two paragraphs above might look like this. A new book on music compares it to a. ... According to the writer, fees to musicians will come from... and listeners will probably pay for their music on a monthly basis. The loss of discs will mean that in future, the issues of will be highly significant to consumers. There are signs that the brave new world of subscription music is not that far off. A recent survey found interest in subscription services highest among consumers in the allimportant 18-24 age group and those aficionados who spend large sums of money on music each year. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsMusicians themselves are also adapting to a service model. The key is to build online communities of fans who feel engaged in the creative process, giving ‘users’ an unprecedented degree of participation in the music they listen to. Some famous artists, such as Metallica, Prince and David Bowie, maintain onlinexollections of live concert downloads, exclusive digital-only tracks, videos, online journals and interactive forums where like-minded fans can meet. Young listeners, it seems, are increasingly unimpressed with the album format — however cleverly the songs are arranged and attractively designed the cover art is. The album is "traditional not inevitable’ according to William Higham of Next Big Thing, a London-based youth trend consultancy. The next generation of music fans is growing up in a ‘compilation culture’, he says, pointing out that the single-track purchases make up a much larger percentage of digital music sales than singles do for ‘offline’ music purchases. Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer. The Young Market Selling music by 1 .. ones aged 2... is popular among buyers, particularly young Musicians are aware that they need to encourage large groups of their 3 .. downloads and other 4 .. to take part in music-making through live concert activities. The fact is that young people are losing their appreciation of the 5. even though it may be well produced and packaged. According to one expert, in the world of digital music sales, 6 are much more common. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsMeerkat study Dr Alex Thorton from the University of Cambridge recently led a study into meerkat society. Meerkats are highly social mongooses that live in large social groups and take turns foraging for food and standing guard to look out for predators. Research has shown that the animals have their own traditions within their group. For example, while members of one meerkat troop will consistently rise very early, those of another will emerge from their burrows much later in the morning. In an attempt to assess whether meerkats simply copy these behavior pattems or are taught them, Thornton and his team travelled to the Kalahari Desert and set a series of tests for a group in the wild. One test involved putting a sebrpion (the meerkats’ favourite food) into a transparent container. The meerkats had to work out how to open the opaque lid of the container in order to reach the scorpion inside. The tests showed that the more subordinate juvenile members of meerkat troops are the most innovative when it comes to foraging - these low-ranking males were best at solving problems and obtaining the treat. However, Dr Thornton conceded that the meerkats didn't ever appear to work out that it was the opaque surface of the box that they should attack in preference to the transparent ones. So, this may simply be evidence of persistence rather than actual intelligence. A recent study at Cambridge University discovered that different meerkat groups 1. .. at different times of the day. This demonstrates that each group has distinct customs. They also learned that young, male meerkats were more 2 _.than other members of their social groups when it came to problem solving. The researchers conducted an experiment where the meerkats had to try to open a container. If they did, they were rewarded with a 3 However, they also found that the meerkats never learned that it was the 4, part of the container that they needed to open Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsThe Young Market Meerkat study 0 household utility. 1 subscription services. Trise 218-24 1 subscription pool 2 innovation 2 price and quality 3 Fans 3 scbrpion/ treat 4 interactive 4 opaque 5 album format, 6 single- track purchase With a box of possible answers, the options may be actual words from the passage, or synonyms of words in the passage. Prehistoric insects spawn new drugs By Steve Connor A Insects entombed in fossilised amber for tens of millions of years have provided the key to creating a new generation of antibiotic drugs that could wage war on modern diseases. Scientists have isolated the antibiotics from microbes found either inside the intestines of the amber-encased insects or in soil particles trapped with them when they were caught by sticky tree resin up to 130 milion years ago. Spores of the microbes have survived an unprecedented period of suspended animation, enabling scientists to revive them in the laboratory. B Research over the past two years has uncovered at least four antibiotics from the microbes and one has been able to kill modern drug-resistant Dacteria that can cause potentially deadly diseases in humans. Present-day antibiotics have nearly all been isolated from micro-organisms that use them as a form of defence against their predators or competitors. But since the introduction of antibiotics into medicine 50 years ago, an alarming number have become ineffective because many bacteria have Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsdeveloped resistance to the drugs. The antibiotics that were in use millions of years ago may prove more deadly against drug-resistant modem strains of disease- causing bacteria. € Raul Cano, who has pioneered the research at the California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, said the ancient antibiotics had been successful in fighting drug-resistant strains of staphylococcus bacteria, a ‘superbug’ that had threatened the health of patients in hospitals across the globe. He now intends to establish whether the antibiotics might have harmful side effects. "The problem is how toxic they are to other cells and how easy they are to purify, said Cano. D A biotechnology company, Ambergene, has been set up to develop the antibiotics into drugs. If any ancient microbes are revived that resemble present-day diseases, they will be destroyed in case they escape and cause new epidemics. Drug companies will be anxious to study the chemical structures of the prehistoric antibiotics to see how they differ from modern drugs. They hope that one ancient molecule could be used as a basis to synthesise a range of drugs. E There have been several attempts to extract material such as DNA from fossilised life-forms ranging from Egyptian mummies to dinosaurs but many were subsequently shown to be contaminated. Cano's findings have been hailed as a break-through by scientists. Edward Golenburg, an expert on extracting DNA from fossilised life-forms at Wayne State University in Detroit, said: ‘They appear to be verifiable, ancient spores. They do seem to be real.’ Richard Lenski, professor of microbial ecology atMichigan State University, said the fight against antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria such as tuberculosis and staphylococcus could be helped by the discovery. F However, even the use of ancient antibiotics may not halt the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. Stuart Levy, a micro-biologist at Tufts University in Boston, warned that the bacteria would eventually evolve to fight back against the new drugs. "There might also be an enzyme already out there that can degrade it. So the only way to keep the Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examslife of that antibiotic going is to use it sensibly and not excessively,’ he said. Complete the summary using the list of words, A-P, below. NEW DRUGS Scientists believe that microbes that may supply new antibiotic drugs have been 1 in the bodies of fossilised insects. Raul Cano says these microbes may help us destroy some of the bacteria that have become 2 to current medicines. What needs to be done first, however, is to make sure the antibiotics are 3 When doing this, microbes that seem to have the characteristics of Cano has been 5 by some scientists; others are already saying that the use of any new antibiotics should be 6... modern diseases will have to be 4 .. ‘Acombined B connected Calive D safe E deadly F criticized G killed H limited rejected J placed K preserved L prescribed M praised Nreal O immune P welcomed Living with Mies Lafayette Park is a group of modernist townhouses in the US designed by the architect Mies van der Rohe. A few blocks east of downtown Detroit sits Lafayette Park, an enclave of single- and two-storey modernist townhouses set amid a forest of locust trees. Like hundreds of developments nationwide, they were the result of postwar urban renewal; unlike almost all of them, it had a trio of world-class designers behind it: Ludwig Hilbersheimer as urban planner; Alfred Caldwell as landscape designer; and Mies van der Rohe as. architect The townhouses were built between 1958 and 1962 on land previously occupied by a working-class neighbourhood. While much of Detroit began a steep deciine soon after, Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsLafayette Park stayed afloat, its residents bucking the trend of suburban flight. Lafayette Park today is one of the most racially integrated neighbourhoods in the city. Itis economically stable, despite the fact that Detroit has suffered enormous population loss. We wanted to know what residents think about this unique modernist environment created by a famous architect, and how they confront and adapt it to meet their needs. During our research, we were struck by the casual attitude that many residents have toward the architecture. Then again, Detroit has an abundance of beautiful housing options: one can live in a huge Victorian mansion, a beautiful arts and crafts house or a cavernous loft-conversion space in a former factory. Living in a townhouse built by a renowned architect isn't as noteworthy as one might think. At the same time, such nonchalance is a mark of success: the homes are great because they work, not because they come affixed with a famous name. Indeed, their beauty isn't always obvious. There is a kind of austere uniformity to the Lafayette Park townhouses when viewed from the outside. Some visitors find them unappealing; one contractor described them as ‘bunkers’. The interior layouts are nearly identical. The units are compact in size and some people find them too small, though the floor-to-ceiling windows on the front and back of each building open the living spaces to the outside. While they may have strong aesthetic preferences, the residents we spoke with do not necessarily favour mid-century modernism in their interiors or architecture. But they make it work: several people remarked on the way the interiors in the Lafayette Park townhouses can function as blank canvases for a variety of decorating styles. Indeed, the best design doesn't force a personality on its residents. Instead, it helps them bring out their own. The residents of Lafayette Park Lafayette Park was originally quite a 1 area of Detroit. Nowadays, the area is unusual because its residents are more 2 .. ..than those in other areas Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsof the city. In general, the residents of Lafayette Park feel quite 3... about the famous architecture they live in. But the residents do appreciate the fact that they can 4. the townhouses and make them their own. Ksettled B adapt Cneutral D poor E afford F strongly keEY NEW DRUGS Living with Mies 1K 1D 20 20 3D 3c 4c 4B 5M 6H Penguins show signs of stress Previous research by scientists from Keil penguins in Germany Monitored adelie penguins and noted that the birds' heart rates increased dramatically at the sight of a human as far as 30 metres away. But new research using an “artificial egg, which is equipped to measure heart rates, disputes this. Scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge say that a slow-moving human who does not approach the nest too closely is not perceived as a threat by penguins. The earlier findings have been used to partly explain the 20 per cent drop in Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examspopulations of certain types of penguin near tourist sites. However, tour operators, have continued to insist that their activities do not adversely affect wildlife in Antarctica, saying they encourage non-disruptive behaviour in tourists, and that the decline in penguin numbers is caused by other factors, Amanda Nimon of the Scott Polar Research Institute spent three southern hemisphere summers at Cuverville Island in Antarctica studying penguin behaviour towards humans. “A nesting penguin will react very differently to a person rapidly and closely approaching the nest," says Nimon. "First they exhibit large and prolonged heart rate changes and then they often flee the lie nest leaving it open for predators to fly in and art remove eggs or chicks.” The artificial egg, specially developed for the project, monitored both the parent who had been ‘disturbed’ when the egg was placed in the nest and the other parent as they both took it in turns to guard the nest. However, Boris Culik, who monitored Adele penguins, believes that Nimon's findings do not invalidate his own research. He points out that species behave differently and Nimon's work was with Gentoo penguins. Nimon and her colleagues believe that Culik’s research was methodologically flawed because the monitoring of penguins’ responses entailed capturing and restraining the birds and fitting them with heart-rate transmitters. Therefore, argues Nimon, it would not be surprising if they became stressed on seeing a human subsequently. Often this type of question (choosing from a list) is used to test ideas and arguments across the passage, rather than in one small area. Questions 1-3 Choose THREE letters, A-E. Which THREE of the following arguments are stated in the passage? ‘A Penguins are not afraid of people who behave calmly. B Penguins are becoming an endangered species. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams€ Tourists are not responsible for the fact that there are fewer penguins nowadays. D Penguins are harder to research when they have young E Penguins will not leave a nest with eggs in it. F A penguin’s behaviour may depend on its species. G Penguin stress may result from being with other aggressive penguins. In classification tasks you have to match statements to categories. There may also be both and/or neither categories. Classification questions can range from testing detail (for example, features of animals) to testing ideas and arguments. Classify the following statements as being true of A the research on Adelie penguins B the research on Gentoo penguins C both research projects D neither research project Write the correct letter, A, B,C or D. Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D. 1 An individual species of penguin was tested. C A 3 Physical changes occurred when a human was nearby.~ 4 Tourists were permitted to observe the experiments. 2 Penguins were caught for the experiment. —D 5 Heart rates were measured by an item manufactured for the experiment. What do hurricanes mean for dolphins? Hurricanes are typically associated with loss of life, loss of property and economic devastation. Hurricane Katrina, which blew through the gulf coast of North America in 2005, brought all those things and more. It also brought lots of baby dolphins. Hurricanes tend to be related to increased strandings of marine mammals, so why might a hurricane be associated with more dolphins, rather than fewer? Scientist Lance J. Miller reasoned that there were probably several related Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsphenomena that, combined, could explain the apparent increase. Firstly, after a female dolphin loses her calf, she can give birth again much sooner than if her calf had matured to adulthood. “If a large number of calves perished as a result of Hurricane Katrina, this would allow for a greater percentage of females to become reproductively active the follo ing year.” By itself, this didn't seem to adequately, explain the increase in dolphin calves. Something else was going on. That something was distinctively human. When Hurricane Katrina blew through the gulf, the local shrimping, crabbing and fishing industries were ravaged. In Mississippi, according to one estimate, 87% of commercial fishing vessels were damaged or destroyed. This meant a decrease in the amount of seafood brought into shore, of nearly 15%. Despite the common notion that dolphins enjoy playing in the wakes created by boats, there is plenty of evidence that dolphins actually avoid them. Miller deduced that, with a reduction in the number of boats in the water, both commercial and recreational, dolphins may have been apple to spend more time eating, and less time travelling or diving in an effort to avoid boats. Which TWO possible issues did Miller believe may have caused the rise in dolphin numbers? ‘A More female dolphins survived the hurricane than males € The dolphins had access to greater numbers of shrimp and fish. D There was a decrease in the number of dolphins being caught for sport or food. E The dolphins had less contact with humans after the hurricane. Question Type 11 - True/False/Not Given (Identifying information TRUE ifthe statement agrees with the information FALSE it the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN __ if there is no information on this TRUE = The passage tells this is correct. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsFALSI = The passage tells this is wrong. You can correct it with the information based on the passage. NOT GIVEN = We don’t know from this passage alone. NOT GIVEN means: It could be TRUE or it could be FALSE. New dolphin species Identified by DNA tests, the new mammals were right under researchers’ noses. A previously unknown species of dolphin has been identifier in Australia. One of only three new dolphin species found since the 1800s, the Burrunan dolphin has been named after an Australian Aboriginal phrase that means “large sea creature of the porpoise kind. Only two populations have been discovered so far, both of them in the state of Victoria. Around a hundred have been located in Port Phillip Bay, a built-up area very close to Melbourne, Australia's second most populous city, while another fifty are known to frequent the saltwater coastal lakes of the rural Gippsland region, a couple of hundred miles away. It's long been known that distinct dolphin populations roam off southeastern Australia. But now DNA tests have shown that these dolphins are genetically very different from the other two local species, the common bottlenose and the Indo- Pacific bottlenose. The results were so surprising that the team initially thought there was a mistake and reran the tests. As Kate Charlton-Robb, a marine biologist at Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsMonash University, says: The main focus of our research was to figure out which of the two known bottlenose species these dolphins belonged to. But from the DNA sequences that we got, it turned out that they were very different from either of them.” The team also examined dolphin skulls collected and maintained by Australian museums over the last century, and determined that Burrunan dolphins have slight cranial differences that sets the species apart. And there are other observable differences too, such as the Burrunan’s more curved dorsal fin, stubbier beak, and unique colouring that includes dark grey, mid-grey and white, So how did the dolphins escape researchers’ notice for so long? Physical variations in dolphins in south-eastern Australia have been reported for decades, though the new study is the first to use muitiple lines of evidence to make a strong case for a distinct species. In fact, the Burrunan dolphin was almost discovered as far back as 1915, when a biologist captured and examined two very different dolphins from Australian waters. Scientists at the time concluded that both the animals were common bottlenose dolphins, and that their differences were due to one being male and the other female. After reviewing the female dolphin's skeleton recently, though, Charlton- Robb’s team determined she was a Burrunan. Because so few individuals belonging to the new dolphin species have been identified, Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsthe research team has petitioned the Australian government to list the animals as endangered. ‘Given the small size of the population, Chariton-Robb says "i's really crucial that we make an effort to protect them." 1 The Burrunan dolphin was given its name by Australian Aborigines. 2 Both of the recently discovered populations of dolphins were found near urban areas. 3 The common bottlenose and the Indo-Pacific bottlenose are difficult to tell apart. 4 Scientists using DNA evidence immediately realised that the Burrunan was a previously unidentified species. 5 Burranan dolphins share the same colouring as other bottlenose dolphins. 6 The skeletons of two dolphins captured in 1915 have been re-examined recently. 7 The Australian government intends to put the Burrunan dolphin on the endangered list. Going digital Electronic libraries will make today’s Internet pale by comparison. But building them will not be easy. Allover the world, libraries have begun the Herculean task of making faithful digital copies of the books, images and recordings that preserve the intellectual effort of humankind, For armchair scholars, the work promises to bring such a wealth of information to the desktop that the present Internet may seem amateurish in retrospect. Librarians see three clear benefits to going digital. First, it helps them preserve rare Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsand fragile objects without denying access to those who wish to study them. The British Library, for example, holds the only medieval manuscript of Beowulf in London. Only qualified scholars were allowed to see it until Kevin S. Kiernan of the University of Kentucky scanned the ancient manuscript with three different light sources (revealing details not normally apparent to the naked eye) and put the images up on the Internet for anyone to peruse. Tokyo's National Diet Library is similarly creating detailed digital photographs of 1,236 woodblock prints, scrolls and other materials it considers national treasures so that researchers can scrutinise them without handling the originals. A second benefit is convenience. Once books are converted to digital form, patrons ccan retrieve them in seconds rather than minutes. Several people can simultaneously read the same book or view the same picture. Clerks are spared the chore of reshelving. And libraries could conceivably use the Internet to lend their virtual collections to those who are unable to visit in person. The third advantage of electronic copie is that they occupy millimetres of space on a magnetic disk rather than metres on a shelf. Expanding library buildings is increasingly costly. The University of California at Berkeley recently spent $46 milion on an underground addition to house 1.5 million books - an average cost of $30 per volume. The price of disk storage, in contrast, has fallen to about $2 per 300- page publication and continues to drop. TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsNOT GIVEN _ if there is no information on this 1 Digital libraries could have a more professional image than the Internet. 7 Only experts are permitted to view the scanned version of Beowulf. 3 The woodblock prints in Tokyo have been damaged by researchers. 4 Fewer staff will be required in digital libraries. 5 People may be able to borrow digital materials from the library. 6 Digital libraries will occupy more space than ordinary libraries. 7 The cost of newly published books will fall. Key New dolphin species Going digital 1NG 17 2F 2F 3NG 3NG 4F 4NG SF 5T 6F 6F 7NG 7NG YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer NOT GIVEN _ ifitis impossible to say what the writer thinks about this Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsThe main difference between True/False/Not Given questions and Yes/No/Not Given questions is that the former is based on factual information in the Reading passage while the latter asks you interpret the views or claims of the writer. A view is a personal opinion. A claim is a statement made by the writer and presented as a fact Look at these extracts and decide whether you think they are views or claims. 1 Like hundreds of developments nationwide, they were the results of post-war urban renewal. 2 While much of Detroit began a steep decline soon after, Lafayette Park stayed afloat. 3 Detroit has an abundance of beautiful housing options. 4 There is a kind of austere uniformity to the Lafayette Park townhouses when viewed from the outside. 5 _ Indeed, the best design doesn't force a personality on its residents. Books, Films and Plays The novelist's medium is the written word, one might almost say the printed word; the Novel as we know it was a born with the invention of printing. Typically the novel consumed by a silent, solitary reader, who may be anywhere at the time. The paperback novel is still the cheapest, most portable and adaptable form of narrative entertainment. Itis limited to a single channel of information - writing. But within that restriction it is the most versatile of narrative forms. The narrative can go, effortlessly, anywhere: into space, people's heads, palaces, prisons and pyramids, without any Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsconsideration of cost or practical feasibility. In determining the shape and content of his narrative, the writer of prose fiction is constrained by nothing except purely artistic criteria This does not necessarily make the task any easier than that of the writer of plays and screenplays, who must always be conscious of practical constraints such as budgets, performance time, casting requirements, and so on. The very infinity of choice enjoyed by the novelist is a source of anxiety and difficulty. But the novelist does retain absolute control over his text until it is published and and received by the audience. He may be advised by his editor to revise his text, but if the writer refused to meet this condition no one would be surprised. Itis not unknown for a well-established novelist to deliver his or her manuscript and expect the publisher to print it exactly as written, However, not even the most well-established playwright or screenplay writer would submit a script and expect itto be performed without any rewriting. This is because plays and motion pictures are collaborative forms of narrative, using more than one ‘channel of communication. The production of a stage play involves, as well as the words of the author, the physical presence of the actors, their voices and gestures as orchestrated by the director, spectacle in the form of lighting and ‘the set’, and possibly music. In film, the element of spectacle is more prominent in the sequence of visual” images, heightened by various devices of perspective and focus. In film too, music tends to be more pervasive and potent than in straight drama. So, although the script is the essential basis of both stage play and film, itis a basis for subsequent revision negotiated Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsbetween the writer and the other creative people involved; in the case of the screenplay, the writer may have little or no control over the final form of his work. Contracts for the production of plays protect the rights of authors in this respect. They are given ‘approval' of the choice of director and actors and have the right to attend rehearsals. Often a good deal of rewriting takes place in the rehearsal period and sometimes there is an opportunity for more rewriting during previews before the official opening night. In film or television work, on the other hand, the screenplay writer has no contractual right to this degree of consultation. Practice in this respect varies very much from one production company to another, and according to the nature of the project and the individuals involved. In short, while the script is going through its various drafts, the writer is in the driver's seat, albeit receiving advice and criticism from the producer and the director. But once the production is under way, artistic control over the project tends to pass to the director. This is a fact overlooked by most journalistic critics of television drama, who tend (unlike film critics) to give all the credit or blame for success or failure of a production to the writer and actors. ignoring the contribution, for good or ill, of the director. YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer NOT GIVEN ‘if itis impossible to say what the writer thinks about this 1 Novelists have fewer restrictions on their work than other artists. 2 Novelists must agree to the demands of their editors. 3 Playwrights envy the simplicity of the novelist's work Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams4 Music is a more significant element of theatre than cinema. 5 Experience in the theatre improves the work of screenplay writers. 6 Playwrights are frequently involved in revising their work. 7 creenplay writers usually have the final say in how a TV drama will turn out. 8 TV critics often blame the wrong people for the failure of a programme. Living with Mies Lafayette Park is a group of modernist townhouses in the US designed by the architect Mies van der Rohe. A few blocks east of downtown Detroit sits Lafayette Park, an enclave of single- and two-storey modernist townhouses set amid a forest of locust trees. Like hundreds of developments nationwide, they were the result of postwar urban renewal; unlike almost all of them, it had a trio of world-class designers behind it: Ludwig Hilbersheimer as urban planner; Alfred Caldwell as landscape designer; and Mies van der Rohe as architect. ‘The townhouses were built between 1958 and 1962 on land previously occupied by a ‘working-class neighbourhood. While much of Detroit began a steep decline soon after, Lafayette Park stayed afloat, its residents bucking the trend of suburban flight. Lafayette Park today is one of the most racially integrated neighbourhoods in the city. Itis economically stable, despite the fact that Detroit has suffered enormous population loss. We wanted to know what residents think about this unique modernist environment created by a famous architect, and how they confront and adapt it to meet their needs. During our research, we were struck by the casual attitude that many residents have Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examstoward the architecture. Then again, Detroit has an abundance of beautiful housing options: one can live in a huge Victorian mansion, a beautiful arts and crafts house or a cavernous loft-conversion space in a former factory. Living in a townhouse built by a renowned architect isn’t as noteworthy as one might think. At the same time, such nonohalance is a mark of success: the homes are great because they work, not because they come affixed with a famous name. Indeed, their beauty isn’t always obvious. There is a kind of austere uniformity to the Lafayette Park townhouses when viewed from the outside. Some visitors find them unappealing; one contractor described them as ‘bunkers’. The interior layouts are nearly identical. The units are compact in size and some people find them too small, though the floor-to-ceiling windows on the front and back of each building open the living spaces to the outside. While they may have strong aesthetic preferences, the residents we spoke with do not necessarily favour mid-century modernism in their interiors or architecture. But they make it work: several people remarked on the way the interiors in the Lafayette Park townhouses can function as blank canvases for a variety of decorating styles. Indeed, the best design doesn't force a personality on its residents. Instead, it helps them bring out their own. YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this 1 itis the era in which Lafayette Park was developed that makes it special Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams2 Since 1962, many people have moved away from Detroit 3 Mies van der Rohe's designs influenced other architects in Detroit. 4 The exterior of each building in Lafayette Park has a distinct style. 5 Good architecture allows its occupants to reveal their identity Books, Films and Plays Living with Mies 1 YES 1.NO 2NO 2YES 3 NOT GIVEN 3 NOT GIVEN 4 NO 4NO 5 NOT GIVEN 5 YES 6 YES 7 NO 8 YES In today's world of conflict, greed and constant struggles for power, Auroville - aka ‘the City of Dawn’ - claims on its website that it was planned and built to create the ultimate model of unity, peace and harmony that can be projected across all humanity. A The reason why attempts to create the perfect city always fail B An urban ideal designed for an imperfect world C A conflict between reality and imitation In today's world of conflict, greed and constant struggles for power, Auroville - aka "the Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsCity of Dawn' - claims on its website that it was planned and built to create the ultimate model of unity, peace and harmony that can be projected across all humanity. It has no government, no one owns any property, and money rarely, if ever, changes hands. There is no leader and rules do not exist. While most experiments at creating the perfect city do not meet with success, the majority of Auroville's residents believe their city to be an exception. Although its critics point to the fact that levels of crime have been creeping up for some years now, its citizens choose to remain there, still believing in its utopian dream, still following its path towards a better world, Longyearbyen, Norway, holds the record for being the furthest north city in the world, boasting the world’s most northerly school, airport and university. A An unwelcoming place to die B A city at the top of the world An unusual approach to regulation Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard Archipelago of Norway, holds the record for being the furthest north city in the world, boasting the world's most northerly school, airport and university. But what really sets it apart is that it can also lay claim to some of the world's strangest rules. In Longyearbyen, for example, it has been forbidden to die since 1950, the year in which scientists discovered that bodies simply cannot decompose there - the cold is too extreme. To this day, anyone found ill or dying is not given the chance to pass away, and is instead immediately taken by airplane or ship to another part of Norway so that they can die and be buried safely. But it doesn't end there. Aside from prohibiting death, there are more peculiar rules Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsand freedoms in Longyearbyen. Residents are permitted to openly walk the streets with high-powered guns (there are 3,000-polar bears living locally). At the same time, no one is allowed to own any cats, which are forbidden because they are a danger to the bird population. Despite the fact the town of Marloth Park is close to the Kruger National Park, one of the largest game reserves in Africa, and despite the constant threat of visits from wild animals such as lions and hippopotamuses, its anxious residents are not allowed to build fences around their houses to keep out their neighbours. An unusual approach to regulation B Dealing with the occasional dangers of the wild C Where humans and animals cautiously co-exist Despite the fact the town of Marloth Park is close to the Kruger National Park, one of the largest game reserves in Africa, and despite the constant threat of visits from wild animals such as lions and hippopotamuses, its anxious residents are not allowed to build fences around their houses to keep out their neighbours.|n fact the only fence Permitted in the town was built by the local authority, interestingly, with the aim of keeping humans out of the park, rather than containing the animals inside. Consequently, it is not unusual to see giraffes or elephants causing traffic jams, for example, and even predator attacks on humans are unnervingly common - a lion was recently said to have mauled and eaten an escaping burglar. Yet even after this, while some residents then called for all ions to be rounded up and shot, others suggested Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsthat they be allowed to walk the thoroughfares as a type of crime control, after an increase in the number of burglaries. Everywhere in Marloth Park, a wary understanding exists between man and beast. The real Hallstat is in Austria and is proud to be a traditional UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Chinese Hallstat is a carbon copy, built in Guangdong province, China, by a millionaire who sponsored the construction of the imitation town. It cost approximately $940 million to build, and looks exactly ike the real Hallstat, all the way down to its wooden houses, its narrow streets, and its funicular railway. When the residents of Austria's Hallstat (including the mayor) were invited to visit it, they expressed pride that their town was considered so improbably beautiful that it had been reproduced in its entirety, but they still had cause for complaint. Originally, the Chinese company had promised to meet with the Austrian residents to confirm that they were happy for their homes to be copied; instead, they simply sent pheir employees to Austria to take photos, and they returned home to China without speaking to a single resident of the original Hallstat. A A conflict between reality and imitation B The importance of official recognition C The result of encouraging wider investment 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-vll 1 Paragraph A Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams2 Paragraph B 3 Paragraph C 4 Paragraph D 5 Paragraph E 6 Paragraph F List of headings | The benefits of collaboration ii Aforerunner of the modern metropolis, ili A period of intense activity and plans completed iv A clear contrast between then and now v The rise and mysterious decline of Cahokia vi An archaeological theory to explain Cahokia's development vi The light and dark of archaet-logical finds vili A city completely unlike any of its contemporaries AA thousand years ago the Mississippians, a diverse group of Native Americans who lived in the area which is today known as the south- eastern United States, took a small village on the Mississippi River and turned it into one of the world's first great urban centres. Cahokia, as it has been called by archaeologists, became as large as London was in the Ith century, and some would argue that it was just as forward- looking and prosperous as its European equivalents. Sophisticated, Cosmopolitan and ahead of its time, Cahokia was at the heart of ancient society in North America; an ancestor of today's capital cities. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsB In one respect in particular, Cahokia was quite unusual compared to other cities around at the same time. Archaeologists working on the site have found enough evidence over the past fifty years to conclude that, at a certain time, around 35% of the population were not from Cahokia at al; it seems that many of the tribes that lived all along the Mississippi River at some point began to relocate to Cahokia. These researchers have been unable to find more than a handful of other examples of ‘such relocation of tribes, but they do know that something about Cahokia attracted thousands of people to this regional centre. And that, they postulated, appears to have been thanks to a small group of planners who one day decided to redesign the entire village. C After the redesigns of the village were put in place, the Native Americans at Cahokia ‘worked with tireless determination to carry them out. Over the course of a few decades, they transported huge volumes of soil from the nearby countryside to create 120 huge mounds of earth, the biggest of which rose to one hundred feet. On top of these, they built a vast urban environment, complete with a vibrant town centre, municipal buildings, and a fifty-acre plaza at the foot of the biggest mound. What makes it even more impressive to our modern imaginations is that, with no machinery then, they used their bare hands and woven baskets to dig up and carry the soil from the surrounding regions back to their city- in-waiting. Eventually, after these efforts, the vision of the city planners was fulfilled, but even they could not have predicted how popular Cahokia would become. D From this period on, Cahokia was alive with intense activity, and grew in size every year, partly because of the co-operation between the residents. While the men busied Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsthemselves with manual work, like constructing new buildings, or hunting and fishing in the forests and rivers within a day's walk of the city, the women made sure that the fields stayed healthy and grew crops, and the homes were kept clean. In many ways, it seems to have been the ideal place to live, and one with an exciting and prosperous future ahead of it. And yet, having become a major population centre around AD 1050, by 1350 it had been almost completely abandoned. Somewhere in the course of 300 years, something happened to Cahokia to cause this, but it is an enigma that even archaeologists or historians themselves struggle to resolve. E This rather curious state of affairs exists today because researchers have never found a single piece of evidence that can conclusively explain why the residents lett Academics who have studied other Native American sites have always found weapons of war buried deep underground. And yet, the bows, arrows and swords that littered the ground at these other sites were nowhere to he seen at Cahokia. Otherfactors, such as disease or colonisation from European invasion, do not seem to be possible in this case, as common as they were elsewhere at that time. The absence of definitive theories as to Cahokia’s decline is highly unusual, but then again, Cahokia was no ordinary city and perhaps comparisons with other urban centres of the time ‘cannot be made. F While academics remain bemused as to why the residents fled the city, we can stil marvel at the individual artefacts that archaeologists have discovered: the jewellery worn, the pots used to cook in, the small workshop at the base of one of the mounds. That said, there is also a more unpleasant side to their investigations. Human sacrifice, it seems, was a common fact of life in Cahokia; even if we cannot be sure Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examswhether this was for religious or for other reasons, we can have no doubt that it happened frequently. The bodies of hundreds of people, mostly young women, have been found buried in mass graves, and the way in which they died was often horrific. A sombre reminder that even ‘advanced city states had their shadowy sides. List of Headings i Benefiting from an earlier model ii Important operative conditions iii Examining the public confusion iv Where to go from here? v How it’s all linked up vi How a suitable location was found vii Comparing wind speeds in Australian cities viii Matching operational requirements with considerations of appearance ix What makes Esperance different? x More than just a source of power Example Answer Paragraph A 1 Paragraph B 2 Paragraph C 3 Paragraph D 4 Paragraph E 5 Paragraph F 6 Paragraph G Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams7 Paragraph H Australia’s first commercial wind farm It's some years since the rotor blades began spinning in Esperance. A Harvest time in Esperance is constant. As long as the wind blows which is pretty much all the time - nine identical synchronised wind turbines reap the benefits of the dependable winds that gust up around the southern coastline of Western Australia. These sleek, white, robot-like wind turbines loom up on the horizon forming part of Australia's first commercial wind farm. They're not only functional machines that help provide electricity for this secluded coastal town, but increasingly, they're also drawcards for curious tourists and scientists alike. B Because of its isolation, Esperance is not linked to Wester Power's grid which supplies electricity from gas-, coal- and oil-fired power stations the widespread population of Western Australia. Before the wind turbines went in, Esperance's entire electricity needs were met by the diesel power station in town. € The $5.8 million Ten Mile Lagoon project is not Esperance's first wind farm. The success of a smaller, experimental wind farm, at a spot called Salmon Beach, encouraged the State's power utility to take Esperance wind seriously. Today, the wind turbines at Ten Mile Lagoon work in conjunction with the diesel power station, significantly reducing the amount of the town's electricity generated by expensive diesel power. D The wind farm is connected to the power station by a 33-kilovolt powerline, and a radio link between the two allows operators to monitor and control each wind turbine. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsThe nine 225-kilowatt Vestas wind turbines produce a total generating capacity of two megawatts and provide around 12 per cent of the energy requirements of Esperance and its surrounding districts E The power produced by a wind turbine depends on the size and efficiency of the machine and, of course, on the energy in the wind. The energy in the wind available to the wind turbines is proportional to wind speed cubed. Thus, the greater the wind speed, the greater the output of the turbine. In order to achieve optimum wind speeds, the right location is imperative. You have to accept the nature of the beast;’ Mr Rosser Western Power's physicist, said, “As surface dwellers our perceptions of wind speeds are bad. As you go higher, wind speed increases significantly. F The most favourable wind sites are on gently sloping hills, away from obstructions like trees and buildings and where the prevailing winds are not blocked. Computer modelling was used to select the optimum site for Esperance's wind farm. Scientists were concerned not only with efficiency, but also with protecting the coastal health envir ment which is rich in plant life and home to tiny pygmy and honey-possums, and a host of bird species. In addition, the wind farm is adjacent to Esperance's popular scenic tourist drive. G Strict erosion controls have been implemented and access to the wind farm is limited to selected viewing areas. The wind turbine towers are painted white and devoid of corporate logos or signage. According to Mr Rosser there is something of a worldwide backlash against wind farms with regard to their visual impact. "But because wind turbines perform best in the most exposed positions, they will always be visible. There is a very real need to balance environmental and 80 technical Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsrequirements. | think the Ten Mile Lagoon Wind Farm sets the standard for environmentally friendly developments.” H In fact, the project has become something of a tourist attraction in itself. Esperance shire president lan Mickel said the wind turbines had been well accepted by locals. We have watched the wind farm develop with great interest, and now we find visitors to Esperance are equally enthusiastic about it; he said. The aim now is to identify other remote locations where wind turbines will be a feasible means of supplementing existing power stations, TH 2M Sill 4v 5 Vill 6Vl Meerkats devote a significant part of their day to foraging for food with their sensitive noses. When they find it, they eat on the spot. Primarily, meerkats are insectivores, These animals are transient by nature and move if their food is in short supply or if they're forced out by a stronger gang. The group’s dominant male, the alpha male, marks the group's territory to protect the boundary from rivals and predators. Which paragraph contains the following information? Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams1 two situations that force meerkats to change where they live 2 how meerkats generally spend their time A Water is forced at pressure through a narrow pipe. The water hits the top of the water wheel, causing it to turn B_ The water is warm thanks to a natural hot spring beneath the riverbed. © Our study looked at the surrounding environment while previous researchers have concentrated on diet. D_ We achieved this by weighing the animals both before and after periods of exercise. E They live in dark, humid areas and so tend to be found in and around tropical rainforests. F — Amonth later, we were able to test it again and the results showed a significant. change in temperature when the insulation was used. G After ten years, they gave up. The experiment had failed and, as a result, the public grew angry at the waste of public funds. H__Ittakes 35 days for the chick to leave the nest and tly. ‘Types of information 1. the findings of a study 2. the method used in a research study 3. the reaction to something 4 adescription of a habitat 5. the difference between current and past studies ° a description of something works Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams7 the cause of something 8 the amount of time needed for something The complexity of animal communication ‘A Communication is by no means a human monopoly, although our languages make possible by far the most detailed and subtle forms of communication that we know of. Most vertebrates (that is, mammals, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians) can distinguish the sounds made by different individuals, so they are able to tell whether a sound is made by a parent or offspring, another member of their species, or a stranger. Virtually all owners of cats and dogs can provide evidence of their pet's skills at communicating: not just with their own species - to wam off an intruding cat or dog, say - but also with their owners: demanding food, asking to be let out, greeting them when they return home. B Apes, monkeys and many other primates have evolved fairly elaborate systems of calls for communicating with other members of their species. These sounds can be placed in three main categories: food calls, warnings of the presence of predators, and calls for help. The ‘vocabulary’ of most species amounts to only a handful of distinct. sounds. However, the vervet monkeys of the Rift Valley in Kenya appear to have developed many more calls, each with its own meaning, making theirs by far the most complex communication system of any animals other than human beings. C The monkeys spend most of their time in the treetops, where they are generally safe from predators. However, every morning at first light they climb down to search for food at ground level. Here they are far more exposed, and so at greater risk from predators. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsIn order to minimise that risk. one of the vervets acts as a guard. D I the guard sees a leopard approaching; it emits a loud barking call and the monkeys tun into the trees, where the leopard can't follow them. When an eagle is sighted, the ‘warning is a double-syllable cough. Other vervets respond by looking up into the air, then seeking shelter among the dense branches of trees or bushes, where the eagle ‘won ‘t follow them for fear of damaging its wings. The warning that a snake is approaching is a noise which the researchers who first studied vervet communication called a 'chutter’ sound (apparently from the noise made by a motorcycle engine that is getting a lot of fuel). The monkeys stand up on two legs and look in the grass, then run to safety. E Each sound is only used in its own precise situation. In effect, it means "There's a leopard - or eagle , or snake — coming.’ Experiments using recordings of the alarm calls when no predators are present show the same responses. The monkeys understand and respond to the call itself. F Young vervets ir tate the calls, and , like young children , at first overgeneralise their meaning. A toddler brought up in an English-speaking environment will come to the conclusion that the past tense of all verbs ends in -ed, and will use goed and runned as the past of go and run, before discovering that not all verbs follow that ‘rule’. Similarly, infant vervets also use the leopard warning call when they see various other mammals, the eagle alarm for other birds, and the snake cry for anything similar to a snake. As they mature and gain experience, they begin to use the calls correctly. G Eagles are not only a danger to vervet monkeys: they also prey on small birds, such Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsas the superb starling. This species has its own alarm call for eagles, which vervets recognise. When a starling squeaks the warning ‘danger in the air’, nearby monkeys repeat it - translating it into their own term - and all the birds and monkeys rush for safety. 1 how a species organises protection for itself 2. evidence that animals react to warnings even when they are not in danger“iE 3 why animals place themselves in a dangerous position IG 4 examples of communication between animals and human beings- A 5 an account of different reactions to different sounds! 6 an instance of one non-human species understanding sounds made by anotheSi@ 7 aclassification of all animal sounds according to their function 8 an explanation of the reasons for using a particular terms). 9 acomparison between the numbers of sounds used by different specieis!1B 10 aclassification of sounds according to who produced them3JA 11 evidence of a learning process in animals: How geckos cope with wet feet ‘A Geckos are remarkable little lizards, clinging to almost any dry surface, and Alyssa Stark, from the University of Akron, US, explains that they appear to be equally happy scampering through tropical rainforest canopies as they are in urban settings. ‘A lot of gecko studies look at the very small adhesive structures on their toes to understand how the system works at the most basic level’, says Stark. She adds that the animals rip surfaces with microscopic hairs on the soles of their feet, which make close enough Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examscontact to be attracted to the surface by the minute forces between atoms. B However, she and her colleagues Timothy Sullivan and Peter Niewiarowski were curious about how the lizards cope on surfaces in their natural habitat. Explaining that previous studies had focused on the reptiles clinging to artificial dry surfaces, Stark says "We know they are in tropical environments that probably have a lot of rain and geckos don't suddenly fall out of the trees when it's wet’. Yet, the animals do seem to have trouble getting a grip on smooth, wet, artificial surfaces, sliding down wet vertical glass after several steps. The team decided to find out how geckos with wet feet cope on both wet and dry surfaces. C First, they had to find out how well their geckos clung onto glass with dry feet. Fitting a tiny hamess around the lizard’s pelvis and gently lowering the animal onto a plate of smooth glass, Stark and Sullivan allowed the animal to become well attached before connecting the harness to a tiny motor and gently pulling the lizard until it came unstuck. The geckos hung on tenaciously, and only came unstuck at forces of around 20N ~ about 20 times their own body weight. ‘In my view, the gecko attachment system is over-designed,’ says Stark. D Next, the trio sprayed the glass plate with a mist of water and re-tested the lizards, but this time the animals had problems holding tight. The droplets were interfering with the lizards’ attachment mechanism, but it wasn’t clear how. And when the team immersed the geckos in a bath of room- temperature water with a smooth glass bottom, the animals were completely unable to anchor themselves to the smooth surface. ‘The toes are super-hydrophobic,’ (i.e. water repellent) explains Stark, who could see a Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examssilvery bubble of air around their toes. But, they were unable to displace the water around their feet to make the tight contact that usually keeps the geckos in place. E Then the team tested the lizard’s adhesive forces on the dry surface when their feet had been soaking for 90 minutes, and found that the lizards could barely hold on, detaching when they were pulled with a force roughly equalling their own weight. ‘That might be the sliding behaviour that we see when the geckos climb vertically up misted glass’, says Stark. So, geckos climbing on wet surfaces with damp feet are constantly on the verge of slipping and Stark adds that when the soggy lizards were faced with the misted and immersed horizontal surfaces, they slipped as soon as the rig started pulling. Therefore geckos can walk on wet surfaces, as long as their feet are reasonably dry. However, as soon as their feet get wet, they are barely able to hang on, and the team is keen to understand how long it takes geckos to recover from a drenching. Which paragraph contains the following information? NB. You may use any letter more than once Write the correct letter, A-E, next to questions 1-7 below. 1 visual evidence of the gecko’s ability to resist water- D. 2 a question that is yet to be answered by the researchers- 3. the method used to calculate the gripping power of geckos- G 4 the researcher's opinion of the gecko’s gripping ability- 6 5 amention of the different environments where geckos can be found#/A 6 the contrast between Stark's research and the work of other researchers- B 7 the definition of a scientific term@1D Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsMatching features tasks are used with Reading passages that contain theories or comments about different people, places, years and things. For these tasks, the different options are listed in a box and you need to match them to the questions (sentences that paraphrase the information in the passage). The questions will not be in the same order as the passage. For some questions, you may need to match a person to a study or an action, rather than a theory or opinion. Look at the following statements (Questions 1-8) and the list of people below. Match each statement with the correct person, A-G. NB You may use any letter more than once. 1 Current conservation concerns are focused on a broad range of problems. Conserving land is too expensive for farmers. Holding farmers responsible for land misuse makes no sense Australia should review its imporvexport practices. Much of the land in Australia is unspoilt. 2 3 4 5 More conservation funds should be put into helpful, practical projects. 6 7 Weather research can help solve conservation problems. 8 Those involved in conservation are working together more efficiently than before, Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsList of people A. Jason Alexandra B_ Robert Hadler © Dean Graetz D_ Helen Alexander E Neil Clark F Michael Pitman G Steve Morton Australia’s Growing Disaster Farming is threatening to destroy the soil and native flora and fauna over vast areas of Australia. What price should be put on conservation? Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Committee estimates that burning wood from cleared forests accounts for about 30 per cent of Australia's emissions of carbon dioxide, or 156 million tonnes a year. And water tables are rising beneath cleared land In the Western Australian wheat belt, estimates suggest that water is rising by up to 1 metre a year. The land is becoming waterlogged and unproductive or is being poisoned by salt, which is brought to the surface. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) reckons that 33 million hectares have been degraded by salination. The federal government estimates the loss in production from salinity at A$200 million a year. According to Jason Alexandra of the ACE, this list of woes is evidence that Australia is depleting its resources by trading agricultural commodities for manufactured goods. In effect, it sells topsoil for technologies that will be worn out or redundant in a few years. The country needs to get away from the “colonial mentality’ of exploiting resources and adopt agricultural practices suited to Australian conditions, he says. Robert Hadler of the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) does not deny that there is a problem, but says that it is "illogical" to blame farmers. Until the early 1980s, farmers were given tax incentives to clear land because that was what people wanted. If farmers are given tax breaks to manage land sustainably, they will Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsdo so. Hadler argues that the two reports on land clearance do not say anything which was not known before, Australia is still better off than many other developed counties, says Dean Graetz, an ecologist at the CSIRO, the national research organisation. "A lot of the country is stil notionally pristine, he says. “It is not transformed like Europe where almost nothing that is left is natural." Graetz, who analysed the satellite photographs for the second land clearance report, argues that there is now better co-operation between Australian scientists, government officials and farmers than in the past. But the vulnerable state of the land is now widely understood, and across Australia, schemes have started for promoting environment friendly farming. In 1989, Prime Minister Bob Hawke set up Landcare, a network of more than 2000 regional conservation groups. About 30 per cent of landholders are members. “It has become a very significant social movement.” Says Helen Alexander from the National Landcare Council. "We started out worrying about not much more than erosion and the replanting of trees but it has grown much more diverse and sophisticated." But the bugbear of all these conservation efforts is money. Landcare's budget is $110 million a year, of which only A$6 million goes to farmers. Neil Clark, an agricultural consultant from Bendigo in Victoria, says that farmers are not getting enough. “Farmers may want to make more efficient use of water and nutrients and embrace more sustainable practices, butit all costs money and they just don't have the spare funds; “he says. Clark also says scientists are taking too large a share of the money for conservation. Many problems posed by agriculture to the environment have been “researched to death" he says. "We need to divert the money for a while into getting the solutions into place." Australia's chief scientist, Michael Pitman, disagrees. He says that science is increasingly important. Meteorologists, for example, are becoming confident about predicting events which cause droughts in Australia. "If this can be done with accuracy then it will have immense impact on stocking levels and how much Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsfeed to provide,” says Pitman. "The end result will be much greater efficiency. Steve Morton of the CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology says the real challenge facing conservationists is to convince the 85 per cent of Australians who live in cities that they must foot a large part of the bill. "The land is being used to feed the majority and to produce wealth that circulates through the financial markets of the cities, he says. One way would be to offer incentives to extend the idea of stewardship to areas outside the rangelands, so that more land could be protected rather than exploited. Alexander agrees. "The nation will have to debate to what extent itis willing to support rural communities,” she says. "It will have to decide to what extent it wants food prices to reflect the true cost of production. That includes the cost of looking after the environment.” Maths shows why words persist over time In a finding that parallels the evolution of genes, researchers have shown that the more frequently a word is used, the less likely itis to change over long periods of time. The question of why some words evolve rapidly through time while others are preserved — often with the same meaning in multiple languages — has long plagued linguists. Two independent teams of researchers have tackled this question from different angles, each arriving at a remarkably similar conclusion. “The frequency with which specific words are used in everyday language exerts a general and law-like influence on their rates of evolution," writes Mark Pagel, author of one of two studies published this week. Anyone who has tried to learn English will have been struck by its excess of stubbornly irregular verbs, which render grammatical rules unreliable. The past tense of regular verbs is formed by adding the suffix '-ed’, but this luxury is not afforded to their Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsirregular kin. Over time, however, some irregular verbs ‘regularise’. For instance, the past tense of ‘help’ used to be ‘holp’, but now it is ‘helped’. Mathematician Erez Lieberman, from Harvard University in Massachusetts, US, performed a quantitative study of the rate at which English verbs such as ‘help’ have become more regular with time. Of the list of 177 irregular verbs they took from Old English, only 98 are still irregular today. Amazingly, the changes they observed obey a very precise mathematical description: the half-life of an irregular verb is proportional to the square root of its frequency. In other words, they found that the more an irregular verb is used, the longer it will remain irregular. A separate group of academics, led by evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel from the University of Reading, in the UK, used a statistical modelling technique to study the evolution of words from 87 different Indo-European languages. “Throughout its 8,000-year history, all Indo-European-language speakers have used a related sound to communicate the idea of ‘two’ objects — duo, due, deux, dos, etc.” Pagel commented, “But,” he adds, “there are many different and unrelated sounds for the idea of, for example, a bird - uccello, oiseau, pouli, pajaro, vogel, etc.” Before now, however, nobody had proposed a mechanism for why some words should evolve more quickly than others. According to Pagel, “our research helps us to understand why we can still understand bits of Chaucer [a medieval poet]" and points out that this likely explains “why we can instinctively recognise words in other Indo- European languages, just from their sounds”. Psychologist and language expert Russell Gray, from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, was impressed by both findings. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams“Despite all the vagaries and contingencies of human history, it seems that there are remarkable regularities in the processes of language change,” he commented 1 Weare able to recognise certain words used by people in other cultures. 2 Regardless of what happens in the world, there appear to be fixed rules that govern the way words alter over time. 3. Words that don't follow a standard pattern will remain that way if they are used often. 4° Certain words have kept a similar sound across many years and many countries. 5 We focused on the historical changes that have occurred in one particular language researcher APagel B Liberman CGray KEY 4: 2 3 4 5. Gs % 8 KEY 2: LA 2 3. 4 5 enmom>om w>ano Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsAnother type of question that requires you to match information is matching sentence endings. For this type of task, you need to understand how ideas are connected within the Reading passage. 1 When I pressed the switch, 2 Ifyou heat ice, 3. The respondents to the survey 4 Children who attend small schools a Parents with overactive children all came from similar economic backgrounds. tend to need more sleep at night. the light came on. reported that she has been successful. generally get more individual attention. Sri Tl ci CoC! itmelts. Talk your way into another language ‘Need to learn another language for a job abroad? Textbooks and tutors may be the worst approach. Go into a coffee bar, sit down, relax and try to talk to someone. It may look to others as though you are wasting your time. It may even feel that way to you. But so long Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsas you are doing this in a foreign country, where you speak the language badly or not at all, you are probably acquiring a new language better than you ever could by formal study with a teacher and a textbook. The social situation, properly used, beats the classroom hollow. Itis full of native speakers asking you questions, telling you to do things, urging you to take an active part in conversation, and using gestures freely to make their intentions clearer like your parents did when you were an infant. So plunge in. All you have to do is talk back. The proposition that infants can acquire languages by prolonged exposure to them is selt-evidently true: itis the only way available to them. Older children and teenagers who move to a different country can pick up a new language with a speed that baffles their parents, But in adulthood we find ourselves envying our rare contemporaries who can still acquire languages easily. There may be biological reasons why the capacity to learn languages falls away with age, even more than the capacity to learn other things. The brain may be designed to do its best language-learning in infancy, and then to redeploy its resources at puberty But psychological factors play a big part too. As we get older, we get more self- conscious, more inhihited, more dependent on other people's judgements. This process may undermine our capacity to acquire a new language, because language underpins our sense of personality and identity. We fear to make mistakes in it. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsStepen Krashen, an expert on second-language acquisition, makes a strong case for the dominance of psychological factors. According to Mr Krashen, people with outgoing personalities do best at learning a new language because “they have the ego to make the necessary mistakes involved in learning.’ When we want to learn a new language in mid-life for reasons of career or curiosity, ‘we commonly but wrongly tackle it with the sense of doing something difficult and unnatural. We turn to grammar books and compact discs expecting a fight. We are going to ‘struggle’ with the language. We will ‘master’ it, unless it defeats us. And with that sort of attitude, it probably will. All other things being equal, the best learner will be the person who is the most, relaxed in conversation, and the most self-confident. Complete each sentence with the correct sentence ending, A-H, below. 1 For adult language learners, an informal setting is better than 2 Itis obviously the case that children learn language as a result of 3. Adults who have a natural talent for new langauges are generally 4. Contident people learn languages fast because they are not afraid of 5 Middle-aged language learners are often unaware that they are A taking a negative approach B_ demonstrating an unusual ability © worrying about the views of others Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsD_ being in a classroom situation E losing all sense of identity F producing errors in front of others G moving to another country living with other speakers of the language. Aesop's fable ‘The crow and the pitcher’ more fact than fiction New research indicates that rooks, members of the crow family, are able to solve complex problems using tools. In Aesop's fictional fable ‘The crow and the pitcher’, a thirsty crow uses stones to raise the level of water in a jug to quench its thirst. A recent study demonstrates that rooks, birds belonging to the corvid (or crow) family, are in fact able to solve complex problems using tools and can easily master the same technique used in the story. cl istopher Bird of the University of Cambridge, who led the study, highlighted the importance of the findings, stating: 'Corvids are remarkably intelligent, and in many ways rival the great apes in their physical intelligence and ability to solve problems. The only other animal known to complete a similar task is the orang-utan. This is remarkable considering their brain is so different to the great apes. Although it has been speculated in folklore, empirical tests are needed to examine the extent of their intelligence and how they solve problems.” In their first experiment, the researchers varied the height of the water in a tube and the Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsfour rooks, which were the subject of the research, used stones to raise the water level to reach a worm floating on top. The clever birds proved very adept and were highly successful, regardless of the starting level of the water or the number of the stones needed. Two of the birds were successful on their first attempt in raising the water to the correct height whilst the other two birds needed a second try. In addition to the speed with which they completed the task, the birds were also highly accurate in their ability, adding the exact number of stones needed to reach the worm. Furthermore, rather than attempting to reach the worm after each stone was dropped in, they apparently estimated the number needed from the outset, and waited until the appropriate water level was reached before dipping their beaks into the tube. In the second experiment, the rooks were presented with stones that varied in size. Here, the rooks selected larger stones over smaller ones (though they didn't do this straight away). The scientists speculate that the birds quickly realised that the larger stones displaced more water, and they were thus able to obtain the reward more quickly than by using small stones. According to the team, in the final experiment, the rooks recognised that sawdust could not be manipulated in the same manner as water. Therefore, when presented with the choice between a tube hall-flled with either sawdust or water, rooks dropped the pebbles into the tube containing water and not the sawdust. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsDespite the fact that the study clearly demonstrates the flexible nature of tool use in rooks, they are not believed to use tools in the wild. ‘Wild tool use appears to be dependent on motivation,’ remarked Bird. ‘Rooks do not use tools in the wild because they do not need to, not because they can't. They have access to other food that can be acquired without using tools.” As Bird noted, that fits nicely with Aesop's maxim, demonstrated by the crow: ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.” Read the passage again and complete sentences 1-6 with endings A-H. 1 Anew study has actually 2. The intelligence of birds has been suggested in stories, but 3. Half of the birds in the experiment were immediately successful; however, 4. The birds promptly realised the advantage of using big stones, and so 5 The research showed rooks can use tools with ease, though 6 The rooks worked out the properties of different materials and as a result, A others needed several attempts B experts think that they don't do this in their natural habitat C they achieved their goal sooner D confirmed a fictional account E helped us to understand a mysterious event F only scientific studies can prove this G they were able to protect themselves H consistently rejected one particular type. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsKey 1: Key 2 1D 1-D 2H 2F 3B 3A 4 F 4c 5A &B 6-H Question Type 17 - Multiple choice To answer multiple choice questions, you often need to carefully read two or more. connected sentences or several connected sentences. Some multiple-choice questions begin with a direct question and then have four possible answers. Some begin with an incomplete sentence and then have four possible endings. Linguists agree that language is needed during reading, but at which stage language becomes a necessity has come under debate. Past research has shown that animals have the ability to discriminate letters from one another, but previously, experts thought the ability to recognise written words was dependent on an ability to understand language. Findings recently published in the journal Science challenge this long-held notion, showing that despite having no linguistic skills, monkeys are able to tell the difference between sequences of letters that form real English words, and those that do not. According to the paragraph, what point do linguists have different views on? Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsanimals are intelligent enough to learn how to read our ability to read words is linked to our writing ability when our language ability begins to affect reading ability vom > when early humans developed the ability to read and write Sometimes, multiple-choice questions ask you to consider the writer’s purpose or aim. You may be asked to identify: + Why the writer made a particular reference + What the purpose of a part of the text is + The opinion or attitude of the writer One of the reasons Jurassic Park was so successful — as a novel and a blockbuster film — is that it presented a plausible way to bring dinosaurs back to life. The idea that viable dinosaur DNA might be retrieved from bloodsucking prehistoric insects seemed like a project that could actually succeed. Even though the actual methodology is hopelessly flawed and would never work, the premise was science-ish enough to let us suspend our disbelief and revel in the return of the dinosaurs. 1 What is the writer's purpose in this paragraph? ‘A. to suggest that scientists should look to science fiction for inspiration entertained € to persuade us that art and science can be skilfully linked D_ to demonstrate that scientific research can provide a source of entertainment y What is the writer's opinion of Jurassic Park? > the film was not a faithful rendition of the original book o it shows how important thorough research is for successful writers D itis a good example of the importance of science fact in science Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsHow to win the blame game People are often more concered about avoiding blame than achieving results. But blame can actually be a positive force in the workplace. The trick, says one former Major League baseball pitcher, is knowing how to use it. When anew product flops in the marketplace, or a new recruit turns out to be a poor worker, blaming somebody for the mistakes seems to be a bit rude. So people talk politely around the blunder, saying things like ‘sales targets were missed’ or ‘mistakes ‘occurred’, as if the error happened all by itself. Indeed, at many companies, blame is never mentioned. At other organizations, people are all too quick to point fingers, leaving employees more concerned about avoiding blame than about achieving results. Such organizations have given blame a bad name. The truth is, blame can be a powerful constructive force. For starters, it can be an effective teaching tool, helping people to avoid their mistakes. When used judiciously — and sparingly — blame can prod people to put forth their best efforts while maintaining both their confidence and their focus on goals. Indeed, blame can have a very helpful effect when its used for the right reasons. The key, then, is the way in which blame is managed, which can influence how people make decisions and perform their jobs, and ultimately affect the culture and character of an organization. Baseball managers spend most of their time and energy managing things that go wrong. Thus, baseball provides an excellent microcosm in which to study blame because mistakes and failures are a routine part of every game. In a typical game, managers, coaches and players can easily make more than 100 bad decisions - and still end up winning. Even very successful pitchers average more than two bad pitches per batter and if a batter bats well 40% of the time but badly the other 60% he is having a miraculous season. Thus, if managers and coaches got upset about every Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Examsmistake, they would go mad by the end of the season. Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. 1 In the first paragraph, one of the writer's main points is that companies tend to A perform better when blame is avoided. B respond differently to errors in the workplace. associate blame with poor sales figures. D blame employees rather than managers for things that go wrong. 2 In the second paragraph, the writer claims that one of the positive features of blame is that A everyone feels the same about it B people can learn how to deal with it. Cit can build confidence in less secure employees. Ditcan encourage employees to work hard. 3 Why does the writer choose to refer to baseball? A Itis a well-known American sport. B The managers dislike blaming their players. C Error is an important aspect of the game. D Even good players have bad days. Magazine circulations are in the millions and advertising revenue is rising despite the growth of TV and electronic media, reports David Short A Print is not dead yet - at least not when it comes to magazines. Despite ever- growing competition from television and electronic media, a new report shows. that worldwide advertising expenditure in consumer magazines has doubled over the past decade. A The amount of money spent on magazine advertising is increasing. Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original ExamsB The rivalry between magazines and other media is surprising. C Some magazines sell better than others. B The report also shows that many magazines in Europe continue to enjoy circulations in the millions. Although there are more and more television channels, whether cable, satelite, terrestrial, analogue, or digital, and despite the incursion of the Internet, magazines are still a regular shopping or subscription item. A Magazines are more popular than they used to be. B A lot of people are still reading magazines. C TV is more available than ever. C Advertising expenditure worldwide was $225 billion last year, according to the report World Magazine Trends. $32 billion of this, or 14%, was taken by magazines. In Europe, the share of consumer magazine expenditure was $12 billion or 21% of an estimated overall spend of $57 billion. But the share had dropped in the past 15 years from 30%, with decline having been particularly severe in Belgium and Germany, where commercial television was introduced relatively late. A Europe allocates a greater proportion of its advertising budget to magazines than the world average B Belgium and Germany spend more on magazine advertising than other European countries: C The figures for magazine advertising in Europe are decreasing. D However, the type of magazines which Europeans choose to flip through still varies dramatically according to country, with few signs that European magazine with a common title is making inroads across nations. Interests which can create top- selling titles in one country are nowhere to be seen in the circulation lists of others Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams‘A Across Europe, people read very different kinds of magazines. B The idea of a ‘European’ magazine is becoming popular. © Magazines that cover popular activities can become best sellers. E But whatever their relative importance across the world, magazines have one real advantage over broadcast media. For advertisers such as tobacco and alcohol producers, which are barred or severely restricted on television in some countries, magazines remain a safe haven for their messages. And new French research has revealed that magazines are still powerful tools for owners of brands. A Cigarette advertising is banned in some countries. B Magazines advertise a smaller range of products than television. What is the purpose of the writer of the passage? A to compare European and world magazines B to attract more magazine readers D to illustrate the advantages of electronic magazines Group: Real IELTS Exams- Original Exams