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B Sample questions
2 Read the passage and answer the questions. Use the rules about the task from
Section A to help you. Then check your answers. Which questions did you find difficult?

IELTS PRACTICETASK
Biophilia in the city
Biophilia, as defined by evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson, is 'the human bond with other species', and the idea was
elaborated in his work Biophilia, published in 1 984, in which he argues that our very existence depends on this close
relationship with the natural world. The concept of biophilia with reference to whole cities is, however, a 21 st-century
phenomenon, as evidenced by the communique released at the end of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009
which stated: 'the future of our globe will be won or lost in the cities of the world.'
Climate change has probably been the single greatest influence on this debate. This idea has been further fuelled
by the United Nations identifying cities as the source of 75% of greenhouse gas emissions, which have an
environmental impact around the world. Cities are also the consumers of 75% of the world's natural resources, the
extraction of which affects many habitats across the globe.
Since 2009, work has been going on around Europe and beyond to encourage city leaders to adapt their policies
to the reality of climate change in a concerted manner. One group of cities has gone a step further and formed the
Biophilic Cities Network, which recognises people's need to access and respond to nature as part of their daily lives.
Any city joining the network is asked to commit to the following aims:
• Work diligently to protect and restore nature within their boundaries and to forge new links with the natural
world wherever possible.
• Share information and insights about tools, techniques, programmes and projects which have been
successfully applied in the city.
• Assist other cities outside the group, which are also striving to become more biophilic, offering help in data
collection and analysis, sharing technical expertise and knowledge, and other forms of professional support for
the expansion of urban nature.
• Meet periodically as a group to share experiences and insights and provide mutual support and guidance in
advancing the practice of biophilic urbanism.

Questions 1-6
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-1(, below.
Write the correct Jetter, A-K.

Biophilia Cities Network

Biophilia is the idea that human existence relies on maintaining a close relationship with the natural world, and it has
recently been acknowledged that cities play a key part in this. The United Nations identified that cities are responsible
for creating 75% of greenhouse gas emissions whilst at the same time consuming around the same
1 ...................................... of the world's natural resources.

This led to the 2 ...................................... of the Biophilic Cities Network, a group of city governments that has made a
3 ...................................... to work together in addressing not only the issue of climate change, but also the need for their
citizens to have access to nature as part of their everyday lives.

Each city in the group will work towards the 4 ...................................... of its own natural environment, as well as restoring
nature wherever possible. Through co-operation with the other members, cities will share information about
5 ................................ ...... which have worked. They will also help non-members to achieve the same goals through the sharing
of both skills and 6 ...................................... . Regular meetings of the group will help to further these aims.

A initiatives B formation C commitment D impact

E protection F management G non-members H expertise
I proportion J insights I< collection

ACADEMIC READING 143

 TASK TYPE 10 Summarv Completion (2)

C Tips a nd tactics
3 Work in pairs. Read the tips and tactics and discuss these questions.
a Which tips and tactics do you think are the most useful?
b Did you use any of these tips and tactics when you answered the sample questions
in Section B?
c Which tips will you use in the future?
1 Before you look at the passage, read the summary and underline the main words and ideas.
2 Think about the type of information that's missing in each gap. For example, are you
looking for a name, a number, a specific term or something else?
3 Read the passage and find the main words and ideas you underlined in the summary.
4 The summary usually relates to one section of the passage, but may also report the
meaning of the whole passage.
5 Go through the summary, gap by gap, and read the relevant sections of the passage.
6 A number of words from the box will fit each gap logically and grammatically. You have to
choose the one that reports the meaning of the passage exactly.
7 Don't just choose the first word you find that fits the gap - keep reading and keep
thinking about the meaning.
8 Remember that some of the words you need may not be in the passage, e.g. initiatives
summarises the idea of programmes and projects.
9 Remember that sometimes you may need to choose a word that has a different form to
the way it is used in the passage to complete the summary, e.g. commit -> commitment.
1 0 I f you aren't sure, always write something. No marks are taken off for wrong answers.

D Skills-building exercises
Q FOCUS 4 Read the summary and think about the type of information that is needed to complete
each gap. Which gaps are likely to need:
Identifying what
information is a a verb form? b a singular noun? c a plural noun? d an adjective?
missing Summary
The Ancient Romans used large 1 . ........ .. .... ... ... .. jars called amphorae to 2 . .... .................
. . .... .... .. ...

liquid goods such as olive oil from one part of their empire to another. The cone-shaped
amphorae were not 3 . . .. .. .. .... .. .. , however, and most ended up in rubbish heaps. I n
. . . .... ... . . . ... .

Rome, for example, there is a hill, fifty metres in height, that is composed almost entirely of
4 . .. .. .. amphorae, whereas in the port city of Aries in what is now southern France,
. ... ... ...... ..

they tended to end up in the River Rhone.

Two thousand years ago, Aries was an important port where goods were 5 ......
from ocean-going vessels to river boats before continuing their journey inland. Little is left of
the Roman port today, however, although it is still possible to identify a 6 . . . ... ... .. . ... under
the water that indicates where the Roman rubbish dump used to be. In 2004, a diver spotted
an interesting wooden 7 . . ......... , which turned out to be part of a thirty-metre barge
...... ..

that was largely still 8 Archaeologists later discovered the boat's final
...................................... .

9. .. ............... as well a s some of the crew's personal 10 ............. ....................... .

5 Underline the main words and ideas in the summary, for example: jars, Rome, etc.
6 Read the passage on page 145 quickly to get a general idea of its content, and mark
the parts where the main ideas are discussed.

1 Look at each gap in the summary in Exercise 4. Find the relevant section of the main
passage and read it carefully to find the information you need.

8 Look at the gaps (1-5) in the summary and choose the best word to complete them.
1 clay ship olive oil
2 make transport barge
3 re-used drained opened
4 re-used tossed broken
5 transported transferred reloaded

144 ACADEMIC READING

 TASK TYPE 10 Summary Comp�etion (2)
-

9 Complete the rest of the summary (6-10) using the list of words, A-I<, below.

A intact B layers C rubbish D shadow

E financed F possessions G object H cargo
I sheltered J boat K excavations

1 0 Work in pairs. Check your a nswers for Exercises 8 and 9. Underline the sections of
the passage that you needed to answer each of the questions i n the summary.
Then compare your answers with another pair.

1 1 Look at the passage again and discuss these questions.

1 How did the wording of the summary help you to find the correct information?
2 Why do some words in the box fit the gaps and others do not?

1 2 Look at this student's answers. Why are they wrong?

6F 7J 5 1-l qC 10 G

• •
.. '

The Ancient Romans had a serious rubbish problem, that seated 20,000 spectators for gladiator fights.
though by our standards it was good-looking But of the port that financed all this, and that
rubbish. Their problem was amphorae. These were stretched half a mile or more along the right bank,
jars made of clay and the Romans needed millions not much remains-only a shadow in tile riverbed
of them to ship liquids like olive oil and fish sauce that reveals the presence of the Roman rubbish.
a round the empire. Often, they didn't recycle their
empties. sometimes they didn't even bother to
open them-it was quicker to cut off tile neck or
the pointy base, drain the thing, then throw it away.
In Rome there's a hill rising to fifty meters called
Monte Testaccio, that consists almost entirely of
shattered amphorae, mostly seventy-liter olive oil
jars from Spain. Tiley were tossed out the back
of warehouses along the River Tiber. Spanish
archaeologists who've been digging into tile dump
believe its rise probably began in the first century,
a s tile empire itself was rising toward its greatest
heights.
Around that time in Aries, on the Rhone River in
what is now southern France, port workers did
things a bit differently: they threw their empties Rubbish to them, not to us. In tile summer of 2004
into the river. Aries in the first century was the a diver surveying the dump for archaeological
thriving gateway to Roman Gaul. Freight from riches noticed a large lump of wood sticking out of
a l l over the Mediterranean was unloaded from the mud at a depth of four meters. It turned out to
sea-going vessels and reloaded into riverboats, be the side of a thirty-meter barge. Tile barge was
before being hauled up the Rhone by teams of almost intact; most of it was still buried under the
men to supply tile northern reaches of the empire. layers of mud and ampl1orae that had sheltered it
"It was a city at the intersection of all roads, which for nearly 2,000 years. Subsequent archaeological
received products from everywhere," says David excavations revealed that it had held on to its last
Djaoui, an archaeologist at tile local antiquities cargo ancl even to a few personal effects left bet1ind
museum. In the city centre today, on tile left bank by its crew. It can now be seen in a brand-new wing
of the Rhone, you can still see tt1e amphitt1eatre of the Aries Museum of Antiquity.

ACADEMIC READING 145

 TASKTYPE 10 Summatv Completicm (2)

IELTS PRACTICETASK
Gannet feeding territories
The gannet, with its two-metre wingspan, is the largest European seabird. Unlike many other species,
gannets have been increasing in number in recent years. Scientists studying gannet colonies around the
coasts of Britain and Ireland have made a surprising discovery about the feeding habits of these huge
seabirds. Each colony has its own fishing territory where the birds feed undisturbed by intruders from
neighbouring colonies. These divisions persist even though gannets do not engage in aggressive territorial
behaviour. Birds entering from a neighbouring colony could fish unhindered - but choose not to do so.
'The accepted view is that exclusive foraging territories are associated with species such as ants, which
aggressively defend the feeding areas around their colonies, but this opens the door to a completely new
way of thinking about territory,' says Ewan Wakefield of Leeds University in the UK, joint leader of the study
published in the journal Science. 'We found the gannet colonies also had adjoining, but clearly defined,
feeding areas,' he says. 'Gannets may be a byword for gluttony in popular folklore, but clearly they don't eat
off each other's plates:
Researchers from 14 institutions tracked 200 gannets flying from 1 2 colonies around Britain and Ireland.
Instead of criss-crossing flight paths from neighbouring colonies as the birds headed out to fish, a tightly
defined non-intersecting pattern emerged. The Irish colonies at Bull Rock and Little Skellig are within sight of
each other, but their inhabitants always head off in opposite directions. The explanation seems to be that each
colony started fishing in the closest waters, and this preference has been reinforced by cultural transmission
between generations.
'Finding such separation between colonies, even when visible from each other, indicates that competition
for food cannot be the only explanation and suggests cultural differences between gannet colonies may be
important,' says Thomas Bodey of Exeter Unive rsity. 'As with humans, birds have favoured routes to travel,
and if new arrivals at a colony follow experienced old hands then these patterns can quickly become fixed,
even if other opportunities potentially exist:
For Stuart Bearhop, also at Exeter, this raises the question of how many other species show segregated
feeding patterns. 'We understand an awful lot about what seabirds like these do on land, but until recently we
knew shockingly little about what they do at sea. The technology is now allowing us to leave the coast with
them and we are discovering more and more of these amazing and unexpected patterns. The answer will be
important for formulating conservation strategies.'

146 ACADEMIC READING

 TASK TYPE 10 Summary Completion (2)

Questions 1-6
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-K, below.

Write the correct Jetter, A-I( in spaces 1-6 below.

Scientists studying the feeding habits of gannets, Europe's largest seabirds, were surprised to discover that
each group or 'colony' of birds has its own clearly defined feeding territory. Other species which exhibit such
behaviour, such as ants, tend 1 .. . ..
. .... ...... . ... ..... .. . their territories aggressively, but this is not so in the case of gannets.
According to Ewan Wakefield of Leeds University, we need 2 . . .... . .. .. . traditional ideas about both gannets
and territorial animals in general. Researchers taking part in the study have suggested that knowledge about the
territories is passed on to members of the gannet colony through a process of 3 .. . . . .. . . . . . ........... . . . . . . Thomas Bodey of
Exeter University suggests that new arrivals in a colony may prefer 4 ...................................... existing members rather than
find new feeding areas. Stuart Bearhop predicts that other seabirds may have similar 5 .. ..... . ......... ... ....... and that
such knowledge could be useful when 6 ............ ... ........ ........ are drawn up.

A popular folklore B conservation strategies C to defend D to respect

E feeding patterns F opposite directions G flight paths H to rethink
I to fix J to follow K cultural transmission

Which statement best describes how you feel about Summary Completion (2) tasks?

I feel confident about doing Summary Completion (2) tasks.

I did OK, but I still need to do more work on Summary Completion (2) tasks.
I need more practice with Summary Completion (2) tasks. I need to focus on . . .

ACADEMIC READING 147