Daily IELTS/CEFR reading listening enalysis
READING PASSAGE 1 (TEXT ONLY) [Link]
Shifu ielts, [8/3/2024 8:26 PM]
Introduction
Barrels, often overlooked in daily life, have played a pivotal role in the storage and
transportation of goods throughout history. This article explores their origins, uses, and
the artistry behind their creation.
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Passage:The Fascinating World of Barrels
Barrels, though seemingly mundane, are vessels of history, craftsmanship, and
innovation. This cylindrical container, traditionally crafted from wooden staves bound by
metal hoops, has played a pivotal role in the storage and transportation of goods for
centuries, intertwining itself with human history, culture, and technological advancement.
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The story of barrels begins in the regions of ancient Gaul and the Germanic tribes. The
earliest known barrels date back to about 350 BC, where they were primarily used for
storing and transporting wine, beer, and other liquids. The choice of using barrels over
other containers like clay pots was due to their superior durability, ease of transport, and
the unique way they could preserve and even enhance the flavor of their contents.
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The craft of making barrels, known as cooperage, is a skilled trade passed down through
generations. A cooper, the artisan who creates barrels, must select the right wood,
traditionally oak, known for its strength, watertight qualities, and ability to impart desirable
flavors to stored liquids. The process begins with shaping the staves, the wooden pieces
that make up the barrel's body. These staves are then arranged in a circular pattern, held
together temporarily by metal hoops.
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One of the most critical steps in barrel-making is the bending of the staves to form the
barrel's unique shape. This is achieved through a process involving heat and moisture,
where the wood is softened and made pliable. The cooper then shapes the barrel, giving
it its characteristic bulging middle, known as the bilge, which facilitates easier rolling and
handling.
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After shaping, the barrels undergo toasting or charring, a process where the interior of
the barrel is exposed to controlled flame. This step is particularly crucial in the making of
barrels for aging spirits like whiskey or wine. The level of toasting determines the flavors
and aromas imparted to the barrel's contents, ranging from vanilla and caramel to smoky
and spicy notes.
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Apart from storage and transportation, barrels have played a significant role in various
industries. In the winemaking process, the type of barrel and the duration of aging can
significantly alter the wine's character. In the whiskey industry, the barrel not only stores
the spirit but also plays a central role in its maturation, contributing to its color, flavor, and
Daily IELTS/CEFR reading listening enalysis
overall complexity.
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However, the use of barrels is not limited to alcoholic beverages. They have been used
for storing oils, vinegars, and even as a method of preserving food items like fish and
meat, a practice dating back to ancient times when refrigeration was not available.
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In the modern era, the role of barrels has evolved beyond their traditional uses.
Repurposed barrels have found their way into home décor, furniture design, and even in
sustainable practices. For example, rainwater harvesting systems often utilize barrels,
emphasizing an eco-friendly approach to resource utilization. Barrels have also become
a symbol of rustic charm, often used in interior design, gardening, and as fixtures in
restaurants and bars.
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The evolution of barrel technology has also mirrored advancements in other fields. The
introduction of steel and aluminum barrels offered alternatives to traditional wooden
ones, catering to different storage needs and improving durability and cost-effectiveness.
In the realm of fine spirits and wines, however, the classic wooden barrel remains
unmatched, with its natural properties and historical significance continuing to be highly
valued.
[Link]
Shifu ielts, [8/3/2024 8:26 PM]
As we delve deeper into the 21st century, the barrel's journey reflects a blend of tradition
and innovation. While modern materials and manufacturing methods have streamlined
production, the fundamental principles of cooperage, the art and science behind barrel-
making, remain largely unchanged. This continuity speaks to the enduring legacy of
barrels, a testament to their practicality, versatility, and the timeless appeal of
craftsmanship.
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Barrels, therefore, are not just containers but symbols of human ingenuity. From aiding in
the creation of some of the world's finest beverages to evolving into objects of art and
sustainability, barrels carry stories of the past while adapting to the needs of the present.
They remind us that even the most ordinary objects can have extraordinary tales to tell,
shaping and being shaped by the course of history.
[Link]
Daily IELTS/CEFR reading listening enalysis
READING PASSAGE 2
Inspired by Mimicking Mother Nature
{A} Researchers and designers around the globe endeavor to create new technologies that, by
honoring the tenets of life, are both highly efficient and often environmentally friendly. And while
biomimicry is not a new concept (Leonardo da Vinci looked to nature to design his flying machines, for
example, and pharmaceutical companies have long been miming plant organisms in synthetic drugs),
there is a greater need for products and manufacturing processes that use a minimum of energy,
materials, and toxins. What’s more, due to technological advancements and a newfound spirit of
innovation among designers, there are now myriad ways to mimic Mother Nature’s best assets.
{B} “We have a perfect storm happening right now,” says Jay Harman, an inventor and CEO of PAX
Scientific, which designs fans, mixers, and pumps to achieve maximum efficiency by imitating the
natural flow of fluids. “Shapes in nature are extremely simple once you understand them, but to
understand what geometries are at play, and to adapt them, is a very complex process. We only just
recently have had the computer power and manufacturing capability to produce these types of shapes.”
“If we could capture nature’s efficiencies across the board, we could decrease dependency on fuel by
at least 50 percent,” Harman says. “What we’re finding already with the tools and methodology we
have right now is that we can reduce energy consumption by between 30 and 40 percent.”
{C} It’s only recently that mainstream companies have begun to equate biomimicry with the bottom line.
DaimlerChrysler, for example, introduced a prototype car modeled on a coral reef fish. Despite its boxy,
cube-shaped body, which defies a long-held aerodynamic standard in automotive design (the raindrop
shape), the streamlined boxfish proved to be aerodynamically ideal and the unique construction of its
skin—numerous hexagonal, bony plates—a perfect recipe for designing a car of maximum strength
with minimal weight.
{D} Companies and communities are flocking to Janine Benyus, author of the landmark book
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (Perennial, 2002) and cofounder of the Biomimicry Guild,
which seats biologists at the table with researchers and designers at companies such as Nike,
Interface carpets, Novell, and Procter & Gamble. Their objective is to marry industrial problems with
natural solutions.
{E} Benyus, who hopes companies will ultimately transcend mere product design to embrace nature on
a more holistic level, breaks biomimicry into three tiers. On a basic (albeit complicated) level, industry
will mimic nature’s precise and efficient shapes, structures, and geometries. The microstructure of the
lotus leaf, for example, causes raindrops to bead and run off immediately, while self-cleaning and
drying its surface—a discovery that the British paint company Sto has exploited in a line of building
paints. The layered structure of a butterfly wing or a peacock plume, which creates iridescent color by
refracting light, is being mimicked by cosmetics giant L’Oreal in a soon-to-be-released line of eye
shadow, lipstick, and nail varnish.
{F} The next level of biomimicry involves imitating natural processes and biochemical “recipes”:
Engineers and scientists are now looking at the nasal glands of seabirds to solve the problem of
desalination; the abalone’s ability to self-assemble its incredibly durable shell in water, using local
ingredients, has inspired an alternative to the conventional, and often toxic, “heat, beat, and treat”
manufacturing method. How other organisms deal with harmful bacteria can also be instructive:
Researchers for the Australian company Biosignal, for instance, observed a seaweed that lives in an
environment teeming with microbes to figure out how it kept free of the same sorts of bacterial colonies,
Daily IELTS/CEFR reading listening enalysis
called biofilms, that cause plaque on your teeth and clog up your bathroom drain. They determined that
the seaweed uses natural chemicals, called furanones, that jam the cell-to-cell signaling systems that
allow bacteria to communicate and gather.
{G} Ultimately, the most sophisticated application of biomimicry, according to Benyus, is when a
company starts seeing itself as an organism in an economic ecosystem that must make thrifty use of
limited resources and creates symbiotic relationships with other organisms. A boardroom approach at
this level begins with imagining any given company, or collection of industries, as a forest, prairie, or
coral reef, with its own “food web”(manufacturing inputs and outputs) and asking whether waste
products from one manufacturing process can be used, or perhaps sold, as an ingredient for another
industrial activity. For instance, Geoffrey Coates, a chemist at Cornell, has developed a biodegradable
plastic synthesized from carbon dioxide and limonene (a major component in the oil extracted from
citrus rind) and is working with a cement factory to trap their waste CO2 and use it as an ingredient.
{H} Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI), a global network of scientists, entrepreneurs, and
educators, has initiated eco industrial projects that attempt to find ways to reuse all wastes as raw
materials for other processes. Storm Brewing in Newfoundland, Canada—in one of a growing number
of projects around the world applying ZERI principles—is using spent grains, a by-product of the beer-
making process, to make bread and grow mushrooms.
As industries continue to adopt nature’s models, entire manufacturing processes could operate locally,
with local ingredients like the factories that use liquefied beach sand to make windshields. As more
scientists and engineers begin to embrace biomimicry, natural organisms will come to be regarded as
mentors, their processes deemed masterful.
Questions
Questions 1-6
Look at the following descriptions mentioned in the Reading Passage. Match the three kinds of levels
(A-C) listed below the descriptions. Write the appropriate letters, A-C, in boxes 1-6 on your answer
sheet.
(A) First level: mimic nature’s precise and efficient shapes, structures, and geometries
(B) Second level: imitating natural processes and biochemical ‘recipes’
(C) Third level: creates symbiotic relationships with other like organisms
1 Synthesized Plastic, developed together with cement factory, can recycle waste gas.
Answer: C
2 Cosmetics companies produce a series of shine cosmetics colours
Answer: A
3 People are inspired how to remove excess salt inspired by nature.
Answer: B
4 Daimler Chrysler introduced a fish-shaped car.
Answer: A
5 Marine plan company integrated itself into a part in economic ecosystem
Answer: C
Daily IELTS/CEFR reading listening enalysis
6 natural chemicals developed based on seaweed known to kill bacteria
Answer: B
Questions 7-14 [Link]
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage? In boxes 7-14
on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the writer
NO if the statement does not agree with the writer
NOT GIVENif there is no information about this in the passage
7 Biomimicry is a totally new concept that has been unveiled recently.
Answer: NO
8 Leonardo da Vinci has been the first designer to mimic nature
Answer: NOT GIVEN
9 Scientists believe it involves more than mimicking the shape to capture the design in
nature
Answer: YES
10 We can save the utilisation of energy by up to 40% if we take advantage of the
current findings.
Answer: YES
11 Daimler Chrysler’s prototype car modelled on a coral reef fish is a best-seller.
Answer: NOT GIVEN
12 Some great companies and communities themselves are seeking solutions beyond
their own industrial scope
Answer: YES
13 The British paint company Sto did not make the microstructure of the lotus
leaf,applicable
Answer: NO
14 a Canadian beer Company increased the production the by applying ZERI
principles
Answer: NO
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Daily IELTS/CEFR reading listening enalysis
Passage 3
A Tourism, holidaymaking and travel are these days more significant
social phenomena than most commentators have considered. On the face of it,
there could not be a more trivial subject for a book. And indeed since social
scientists have had considerable difficulty explaining weightier topics, such as
work or politics, it might be thought that they would have great difficulties in
accounting for more trivial phenomena such as holidaymaking. However, there
are interesting parallels with the study of deviance. This involves the
investigation of bizarre and idiosyncratic social practices which happen to be
defined as deviant in some societies but not necessarily in others. The
assumption is that the investigation of deviance can reveal interesting and
significant aspects of normal societies. It could be said that a similar analysis
can be applied to tourism.
B Tourism is a leisure activity which presupposes its opposite, namely regulated
and organised work. It is one manifestation of how work and leisure are
organised as separate and regulated spheres of social practice in modern
societies. Indeed acting as a tourist is one of the defining characteristics of
being ‘modern’ and the popular concept of tourism is that it is organised within
particular places and occurs for regularised periods of time. Tourist relationships
arise from a movement of people to, and their stay in, various destinations. This
necessarily involves some movement, that is the journey, and a period of stay
in a new place or places. ‘The journey and the stay’ are by definition outside the
normal places of residence and work and are of a short term and temporary
nature and there is a clear intention to return ‘home’ within a relatively short
period of time.
C A substantial proportion of the population of modern societies engages in
such tourist practices new socialised forms of provision have developed in order
to cope with the mass character of the gazes of tourists as opposed to the
individual character of travel. Places are chosen to be visited and be gazed upon
because there is an anticipation especially through daydreaming and fantasy of
intense pleasures, either on a different scale or involving different senses from
those customarily encountered. Such anticipation is constructed and sustained
through a variety of non-tourist practices such as films, TV literature, magazines
records and videos which construct and reinforce this daydreaming.
D Tourists tend to visit features of landscape and townscape which separate
them off from everyday experience. Such aspects are viewed because they are
Daily IELTS/CEFR reading listening enalysis
taken to be in some sense out of the ordinary. The viewing of these tourist
sights often involves different forms of social patterning with a much greater
sensitivity to visual elements of landscape or townscape than is normally found
in everyday life. People linger over these sights in a way that they would not
normally do in their home environment and the vision is objectified or captured
through photographs postcards films and so on which enable the memory to be
endlessly reproduced and recaptured.
E One of the earliest dissertations on the subject of tourism is Boorstins analysis
of the pseudo event (1964) where he argues that contemporary. Americans
cannot experience reality directly but thrive on pseudo events. Isolated from the
host environment and the local people the mass tourist travels in guided groups
and finds pleasure in inauthentic contrived attractions gullibly enjoying the
pseudo events and disregarding the real world outside. Over time the images
generated of different tourist sights come to constitute a closed self-
perpetuating system of illusions which provide the tourist with the basis for
selecting and evaluating potential places to visit. Such visits are made says
Boorstin, within the environmental bubble of the familiar American style hotel
which insulates the tourist from the strangeness of the host environment.
F To service the burgeoning tourist industry, an array of professionals has
developed who attempt to reproduce ever-new objects for the tourist to look at.
These objects or places are located in a complex and changing hierarchy. This
depends upon the interplay between, on the one hand, competition between
interests involved in the provision of such objects and, on the other hand
changing class, gender, and generational distinctions of taste within the
potential population of visitors. It has been said that to be a tourist is one of the
characteristics of the modern experience. Not to go away is like not possessing
a car or a nice house. Travel is a marker of status in modern societies and is
also thought to be necessary for good health. The role of the professional,
therefore, is to cater for the needs and tastes of the tourists in accordance with
their class and overall expectations.
Questions 28-32
Raiding Passage 35 has 6 paragraphs (A-F).
Choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph from the
list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers (i-ix) in
boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet.
Daily IELTS/CEFR reading listening enalysis
Paragraph D has been done for you as an example.
NB. There are more headings than paragraphs so you will not
use all of them. You may use any heading more than once.
List of Headings
i The politics of tourism
ii The cost of tourism
iii Justifying the study of tourism
iv Tourism contrasted with travel
v The essence of modern tourism
vi Tourism versus leisure
vii The artificiality of modern tourism
viii The role of modern tour guides
ix Creating an alternative to the everyday experience
28. Paragraph A
29. Paragraph B
30. Paragraph C
31. Paragraph E
32. Paragraph F
Questions 33-37
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer
in Reading Passage 35? In boxes 33-37 write :
YES if the statement agrees with the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer
thinks about this
33. Tourism is a trivial subject.
34. An analysis of deviance can act as a model for the analysis
of tourism.
35. Tourists usually choose to travel overseas.
36. Tourists focus more on places they visit than those at
Daily IELTS/CEFR reading listening enalysis
home.
37. Tour operators try to cheat tourists.
Questions 38-41
Chose one phrase (A-H) from the list of phrases to complete
each key point below. Write the
appropriate letters (A-H) in boxes 38-41 on your answer
sheet.
The information in the completed sentences should be an
accurate summary of points made
by the writer.
NB There are more phrases A-H than sentences so you will not
use them all. You may use any phrase more than once.
38. Our concept of tourism arises from .......
39. The media can be used to enhance .......
40. People view tourist landscapes in a different way from
.......
41. Group tours encourage participants to look at .......
List of Phrases
A local people and their environment.
B the expectations of tourists.
C the phenomena of holidaymaking.
D the distinction we make between holidays. work and leisure.
E the individual character of travel.
F places seen in everyday life.
G photographs which recapture our
H sights designed specially for tourists.
Answer:
28. iii
29. v
Daily IELTS/CEFR reading listening enalysis
30. iv
31. vii
32. viii
33. NO
34. YES
35. NOT GIVEN
36. YES
37. NOT GIVEN
38. D
39. B
40. F
41. H
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