IELTS Academic Reading Sample 55

Tidal Power

Undersea turbines which produce electricity from the tides are set to become an important source of renewable energy for Dritain. lt is still too early to predict the extent of the impact they may have. but all the signs are that they will play a significant role in the future.

A Operating on the same principle as wind turbines, the power in sea turbines comes from tidal currents which turn blades similar to ships' propellers, but. unlike wind, the tides are predictable and the power input is constant. The technology raises the prospect of Britain becoming self-sufficient in renewable energy and drastically reducing its carbon dioxide emissions. lf  tide, wind and wave power are all developed. Britain would be able to close gas, coal and nuclear power plants and export renewable power to other parts of Europe. Unlike wind power which Britain originally developed and than abandoned for 20 years allowing the Dutch to make it a major industry. undersea turbines could become a big export earner to island nations such as Japan and New Zealand.

B Tidal sites have already been identified that will produce one sixth or more of the UK’s power - and at prices competitive with modern gas turbines and undercutting those of the already ailing nuclear industry. One site alone, the Pendand Firth. between Orkney and mainland Scotland, could produce 10% of the country's electricity with banks of turbines under the sea, and another at Alderney in the Channel islands three times the 1.200 megawatts of Britain's largest and newest nuclear plant, Sizewell B, in Suffolk. Other sites identified include the Bristol Channel and the west coast of Scotland, particularly the channel between Campbeltown and Northern Ireland.

C Work on designs for the new turbine blades and sites are well advanced at the University of Southampton‘s sustainable energy research group. The first station is expected to be installed off Lynmouth in Devon shortly to test the technology in a venture jointly funded by the department of Trade and Industry and the European Union. AbuBakr Bahaj, in charge of the Southampton  research. said: The prospects for energy from tidal currents are far better than from wind because the flows of water are predictable and constant. The technology for dealing with the hostile saline environment under the sea has been developed in the North Sea oil industry and much is already known about turbine blade design, because of wind power and ship propellers. There are a few technical difficulties, but I believe in the next live to ten years we will be installing commercial marine turbine farms.' Southampton has been awarded £2’l5.U.`D over three years to develop the turbines and is working with Marine Current Turbines. a subsidiary of IT power; on the Lynmouth project. EU research has now identified 1GB potential sites for tidal powen BG% round the coasts ol Britain. The best sites are between islands or around heavily indented coasts where there are strong tidal currents.

D A marine turbine blade needs to be only one third of the size of a wind generator to produce three times as much power. The blades will be about 20 metres in diameter so around 30 metres of water is required. Unlike wind power there are unlikely to be environmental objections. Fish and other creatures are thought unlikely to be at risk from the relatively slow turning blades. Each turbine will be mounted on a tower which will connect to the national power supply grid via underwater cables. The towers will stick out of the water and be lit. to warn shipping, and also be designed to be lifted out of the water for maintenance and to clean seaweed from the blades.

E Dr Baha has done most work on the Alderrney site, where there are powerful currents. The single undersea turbine farm would produce far more power than needed for the Channel Islands and most would be fed into the French Grid and be re-imported into Britain via the cable under the Channel.

F One technical difficulty is cavitations,. where low pressure behind a turning blade causes air bubbles. These can cause vibration and damage the blades of the turbines. Dr Bahaj said: 'We have to lest a number of blade types to avoid this happening or at least make sure it does not damage the turbines or reduce performance. Another slight concern is submerged debris floating into the blades. So far we do not know how much of a problem it might be. We will have to make the turbines robust because the sea is a hostile environment. but all the signs that we can do it are good.

Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter; A-F in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

14 the location of the first test site

15 a way of bringing the power produced on one site back into Britain

16 a reference to a previous attempt by Britain to find an alternative source of energy

17 mention of the possibility of applying technology from another industry

Questions 18-22

CHOOSE FIVE Letters A-J

Write the correct letters in boxes 18-22 on your answer street.

Which FIVE of the following claims about tidal power are made by the writer?

A It is a more reliable source of energy than wind power.

B It would replace all other forms of energy in Britain.

C Its introduction has come as a result of public pressure.

D It would cut down on air pollution.

E It could contribute to the closure of many existing power stations ln Britain.

F It could be a means of increasing national income.

G It could face a lot of resistance from other fuel industries.

H It could be sold more cheaply than any other type of fuel.

I It could compensate for the shortage of inland sites for energy production.

J It is best produced in the vicinity of coastlines with particular features.

Questions 23-26

Label the diagram below

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer

Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet,

An Undersea Turbine

Academic IELTS REading Sample 55

Whole tower can be raised for 23 .............and the extraction of seaweed from the blades. Sea life not in danger due to the fact that blades are comparatively 24..........

Air bubble result from the 25........., behind blades. This is known as 26............

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IELTS Academic Reading Sample 54

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 54 below:

Attitude of Language

It is not easy to be systematic and objective about language study. Popular linguistic debate regularly deteriorates into invective and polemic. Language belongs to everyone, so most people feel they have a right to hold an opinion about it And when opinions differ, emotions can run high. Arguments can start as easily over minor points of usage as over major policies of linguistic education.

Language, more oven is a very public behavior so it is easy for different usages to be noted and criticized  No part of society or social behavior is exempt: linguistic factors influence how we judge personality, intelligence, social status, educational standards, job aptitude, and many other areas of identity and social survival. As a result, it is easy to hurt, and to be hurt, when language use is unfeelingly attacked.

ln its most general sense. prescriptivism is the view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value than others, and that this ought to be imposed on the whole of the speech community. The view is propounded especially in relation to grammar and vocabulary, and frequently with reference to pronunciation. The variety which ls favoured, in this account, ls usually a version of the ‘standard’ written language, especially as encountered in literature, or in the formal spoken language which most closely reflects this style. Adherents to this variety are said to speak or write ‘correctly'; deviations from lt are said to be 'incorrect`.

All the main languages have been studied prescriptlvely, especially in the 18th century approach to the writing of grammars and dictionaries. The aims of these early grammarians were threefold: [a) they wanted to codify the principles of their languages, to show that there was a system beneath the apparent chaos of usage. (b] they wanted a means of settling disputes over usage, and (c] they wanted to point out what they felt to be common errors, in order to ‘improve' the language. The authoritarian nature of the approach is best characterized by its reliance on 'rules' of grammar Some usages are prescribed; to be learnt and followed accurately; others are proscribed to be avoided. ln this early period, there were no half-measures: usage was either right or wrong. and it was the task of the grammarian not simply to record alliterative  but to pronounce judgement upon them.

These attitudes are still with us, and they motivate a widespread concern that linguistic standards should be maintained. Nevertheless, there is an alternative point of view that is concerned less with standards than with the facts of linguistic usage. This approach ls summarized in the statement that it is the task of the grammarian to describe not prescribe to record the facts of linguistic diversity, and not to attempt the impossible tasks evaluating language variation or halting language change. In the second half of the 18th century, we already find advocates of this view, such as Joseph Priestley, whose Rudiments of English Grammar (1761) insists that ‘the custom of speaking is the original and only just standard of any language. `Linguistic issues, it is argued, cannot be solved by logic and legislation. And this view has become the tenet of the modem linguistic approach to grammatical analysis.

In our own time, the opposition between ‘descriptivists' and 'prescriptivists' has often become extreme. with both sides painting unreal pictures of the other. Descriptive grammarians have been presented as people who do not care about standards, because of the way they see all forms of usage as equally valid. Prescriptive grammarians have been presented as blind adherents to a historical tradition. The opposition has even been presented in quasi-political terms - of radical liberalism vs elitist conservatism.

Questions 1-8

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 54?

In boxes 1-8 in your answer sheet, write:

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims ol the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1 There are understandable reasons why arguments occur about language.

2 People feel more strongly about language education than about small differences in language usage.

3 Our assessment of a persons intelligence is affected by the way he or she uses language.

4 Prescriptive grammar books cost a lot of money to buy in the 18th century.

5 Prescriptivism still exists today.

6 According tc descriptivist it is pointless to try to stop language change.

7 Descriptivism only appeared alter the 18th century.

8 Both descriptivists and prescriptivists have been misrepresented.

Questions 9-12

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-l, below

Write the correct letter; A-l, in boxes 9-12 on your answer sheet.

The language debate

According  to 9 ………….., there is only one correct form of language. Linguists who take this approach to language place great importance on grammatical 10 ......................... Conversely, the view of 11 ………….., such as Joseph Priestley, is that grammar should be based on 12 ...................... .

Questions 13

Choose the correct letter A. B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in box 13 on your answer sheet.

What is the writers purpose in Reading Passage?

A to argue in favour of a particular approach to writing dictionaries and grammar books

B to present a historical account of differing views of language

C to describe the differences between spoken and written language

D to show how a certain view of language has been discredited

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IELTS Academic Reading Sample 53

Venus in Transit

June 2004 saw the first passage., known as a 'transit` of the planet Venus across the face of the Sun in  122 years. Transits have helped shape our view of the whole Universe, as Heather Cooper and Nigel Henbest explain 

A

On 8 June 2004, more than half the population of the world were treated to a rare astronomical event. For over six hours, the planet Venus steadily inched its way over the surface of the Sun. This “transit` of Venus was the first since 6 December l882. On that occasion, the American astronomer Professor Simon Newcomb led a party to South Africa to observe the event. They were based at a girls' school, where - if is alleged – the combined forces of three schoolmistresses outperformed the professionals with the accuracy of their observations.

B 

For centuries, transits of Venus have drawn explorers and astronomers alike to the four corners of the globe. And you can put it all down to the extraordinary polymath Edmond Halley.  In November 1677, Halley observed a transit of the innermost planet Mercury, from the desolate island of St Helena in the South Pacific. .He realized that from different latitudes, the passage of the planet across the Suns disc would appear to differ. By timing the transit from two widely-separated locations, teams of astronomers could calculate the parallax angle - the apparent difference in position of an astronomical body due to a difference in the observers position. Calculating this angle would allow astronomers to measure what was then the ultimate goal; the distance of the Earth from the Sun. This distance is known as the 'astronomical unit` or AU.

 

C  

Halley was aware that the AU was one of the most fundamental of all astronomical measurements. Johannes Kepler, in the early 17*h century, had shown that the distances of the planets from the Sun governed their orbital speeds, which were easily measurable. But no-one had found a way to calculate accurate distances to the planets from the Earth. The goal was to measure the AU; then, knowing the orbital speeds of all the other planets round the Sun, the scale of the Solar System would fall into place. However, Halley realized that Mercury was so far away that its parallax angle would be very difficult to determine. As Venus was closer to the Earth, its parallax angle would be larger and Halley worked out that by using Venus it would be possible to measure the Sun`s distance to 1 part in 500. But there was as problem: transits of Venus, unlike those of Mercury; are rare. occurring in pairs roughly eight years apart every hundred or so years. Nevertheless, he accurately predicted that Venus would cross the face of the Sun in both 1761 and 1769 - though he didn`t survive to see either.

 

D 

Inspired by Halley's suggestion of a way to pin down the scale of the Solar System, teams of British and French astronomers set out on expeditions to places as diverse as India and Siberia. But things weren’t helped by Britain and France being at war. The person who deserves most sympathy is the French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil.

 

 

 

He was thwarted by the fact that the British were besieging his observation site at Pondicherry in India. Fleeing on a French warship crossing the Indian Ocean, Le Gentil saw a wonderful transit - but the ship`s pitching and rolling ruled out any attempt at making accurate observations. Undaunted, he remained south of the equator, keeping himself busy by studying the islands of Mauritius and Madagascar before setting off to observe the next transit in the Philippines. Ironically after travelling nearly 50,000 kilometres, his view was clouded out at the last moment, a very dispiriting experience.

 

E

While the early transit timings were as precise as instruments would allow the measurements were dogged by the 'black drop' effect. When Venus begins to cross the Sun's disc, it looks smeared not circular - which makes it difficult to establish timings. This is due to diffraction of light. The second problem is that Venus exhibits a halo of light when it is seen just outside the Sun's disc. While this showed astronomers that Venus was surrounded by a thick layer of gases refracting sunlight around it, both effects made it impossible to obtain accurate timings.

F  

But astronomers labored hard to analyze the results of these expeditions to observe Venus transits. Jonathan Franz Encke, Director of the Belin Observatory, finally determined a value for the AU based on all these parallax measurements: 153340,000 km. Reasonably accurate for the time, that is quite close to todays value of 149,597,870 km, determined by radar, which has now superseded transits and all other methods in accuracy. The AU is a cosmic measuring rod, and the basis of how we scale the Universe today The parallax principle can be extended to measure the distances to the stars. If we look at a star in January - when Earth is at one point in its orbit - it will seem to be in a different position from where it appears six months later. Knowing the width of Earth`s orbit, the parallax shift lets astronomers calculate the distance.

G June 2004’s transit of Venus was thus more of an astronomical spectacle than a scientifically important event. But such transits have paved the way for what might prove to be one of the most vital breakthroughs in the cosmos - detecting Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars.

Questions 14-17

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

 14. examples of different ways in which the parallax principle has been applied

 15. a description of an event which prevented a transit observation

 16. a statement about potential future discoveries leading on from transit observations

 17. a description of physical states connected with Venus which early astronomical instruments failed to overcome

Questions 18-21

Look at the following statements (Questions 18-21) and the list of people below

Match each statement with the correct person, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter A, B, C or D. in boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet.

18. He calculated the distance of the Sun from the Earth based on observations of Venus with a fair degree of accuracy.

19. He understood that the distance of the Sun from the Earth could be worked out by comparing observations of a transit.

20. He realized that the time taken by a planet to go round the Sun depends on its distance from the Sun.

21. He witnessed a Venus transit but was unable to make any calculations.

List of People

A Edmond Halley

B Johannes Kepler

C Guillaume Le Gentil

D Johann Franz Encke

Questions 22-26

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?

Write answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet. write

TRUE it the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

22. Halley observed one transit of the planet Venus.

23. Le Gentil managed to observe a second Venus transit.

24. The shape of Venus appears distorted when it starts to pass in front of the Sun.

25. Early astronomers suspected that the atmosphere on Venus was toxic.

26. The parallax principle allows astronomers to work out how far away distant stars are from the Earth.

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IELTS Academic Reading Sample 52

READING PASSAGE SAMPLE- 52

A

Hearing impairment or other auditory function deficit in young children can have a major impact on their development of speech and communication, resulting in a detrimental effect on their ability to learn at school. This is likely to have major consequences for the individual and the population as a whole. The New Zealand Ministry of Health has found from research carried out over two decades that 6-10% of children in that country are affected by hearing loss.

B A preliminary study in New Zealand has shown that classroom noise presents a major concern for teachers and pupils. Modem treading practices, the organization of desks in the classroom. poor classroom acoustics, and mechanical means of ventilation such as air-conditioning units all contribute to the number of children unable to comprehend the teachers voice. Education researchers Nelson and Soli have also suggested that recent trends in learning often involve collaborative interaction of multiple minds and tools as much as individual possession of information. This all amounts to heightened activity and noise levels, which have the potential to be particularly serious for children experiencing auditory function deficit. Noise in classrooms can only exacerbate their difficulty in comprehending and processing verbal communication with other children and instructions from the teacher.

C Children with auditory function deficit are potentially failing to learn to their maximum potential because of noise levels generated in classrooms. The effects of noise on the ability of children to team effectively in typical classroom environments are now the subject of increasing concern. The International Institute of Noise Control Engineering(I-INCE), on the advice of the World Health Organization, has established an international working party, which includes New Zealand, to evaluate noise and reverberation control for school rooms.

D While the detrimental effects of noise in classroom situations are not limited to children experiencing disability, those with a disability that affects their processing of speech and verbal communication could be extremely vulnerable. The auditory function deficits in question include hearing impairment, autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention deficit disorders MDD/ADHD).

E Autism is considered a neurological and genetic life-long disorder that causes discrepancies in the way information is processed. This disorder is characterized by interlinking problems with social imaginations, social communication and social interaction. According to Jenzen, this affects the ability to understand and relate in typical ways to people, understand events and objects in the environment, and understand or respond to sensory stimuli. Autism does not allow learning or thinking in the same ways as in children who are developing normally. 

Autistic spectrum disorders often result in major difficulties in comprehending verbal information and speech processing. Those experiencing these disorders often find sounds such as crowd noise and the noise generated by machinery painful and distressing. This is difficult to scientifically quantify as such extra-sensory stimuli vary greatly from one autistic individual to another. But a child who finds any type of noise in their classroom or learning space intrusive is likely to be adversely affected in their ability to process information.

F The attention deficit disorders are indicative of neurological and genetic disorders and are characterized by difficulties with sustaining attention, effort and persistence, organization skills and disinhibition. Children experiencing these disorders find it difficult to screen out unimportant information, and focus on everything in the environment rather than attending to a single activity. Background noise in the classroom becomes a major distraction, which can affect their ability to concentrate.

G Children experiencing an auditory function deficit can often End speech and communication very difficult to isolate and process when set against high levels of background noise. These levels come from outside activities that penetrate the classroom structure, from teaching activities, and other noise generated inside, which can be exacerbated by room reverberation. Strategies are needed to obtain the optimum classroom construction and perhaps a change in classroom culture and methods of teaching. ln particular, the effects of noisy classrooms and activities on those experiencing disabilities in the form of auditory function deficit need thorough investigation. It is probable that many undiagnosed children exist in the education system with 'invisible' disabilities. Their needs are less likely to be met than those of children with known disabilities

H The New Zealand Government has developed a New Zealand Disability Strategy and has embarked on a wide-ranging consultation process. The strategy recognizes that people experiencing disability face significant barriers in achieving a full quality of life in areas such as attitude, education, employment and access to services. Objective 3 of the New Zealand Disability Strategy is to ’Provide the Best Education for Disabled People' by improving education so that all children, youth learners and adult learners will have equal opportunities to learn and develop within their already existing local school. For a successful education, the learning environment is vitally significant, so any effort to improve this is likely to be of great benefit to all children, but especially to those with auditory function disabilities.

I A number of countries are already in the process of formulating their own standards for the control and reduction of classroom noise. New Zealand will probably follow their example. The literature to date on noise in school rooms appears to focus on the effects on schoolchildren in general, their teachers and the hearing impaired. Only limited attention appears to have been given to those students experiencing the other disabilities involving auditory function deficit. lt is imperative that the needs of these children are taken into account in the setting of appropriate international standards to be promulgated in future.

Questions 1-6

Reading Passage 52 has nine sections, A-I.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-l, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

an account of a national policy initiative

a description of a global team effort

a hypothesis as to one reason behind the growth in classroom noise

a demand for suitable worldwide regulations

a list of medical conditions which place some children more at risk from noise than others

the estimated proportion of children in New Zealand with auditory problems

Questions 11-12

Choose TWO letters, A-E

Write the correct letters in boxes 11 and 12 on your answer sheet. The list below includes factors contributing to classroom noise.

Which TWO are mentioned by the writer of the passage?

A current teaching methods

B echoing corridors

C cooling systems

D large class sizes

E loud-voiced teachers

F playground games

Questions 13

Choose the correct letter A, B. C or D.

Write the correct letter in box 13 on your answer sheet.

What is the writer‘s overall purpose in writing this article?

A to compare different methods oi dealing with auditory problems

B to provide solutions for overly noisy learning environments

C to increase awareness of the situation oi children with auditory problems

D to promote New Zealand as a model for other countries to follow

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IELTS Academic Reading Sample 51

THE HISTORY OF THE TORTOISE 

If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea. At various points in evolutionary history, enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto the land, sometimes even to the most parched deserts, taking their own private seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids. In addition to the reptiles, birds, mammals and insects which we see all around us, other groups that have succeeded out of water include scorpions, snails, crustaceans such as woodlice and land crabs, millipedes and centipedes, spiders and various worms. And we mustn’t forget the plants, without whose prior invasion of the land none of the other migrations could have happened. Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thoroughgoing land animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and returned to the Water Seals have only gone part way back. They show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their close cousins the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the full marine habits of their remote ancestors. They don‘t even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air. However, they are, in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still lay their eggs on beaches. There is evidence that all modem turtles are descended from a terrestrial ancestor which lived before most of the dinosaurs. There are two key fossils called Progaochelys quenstedtiand Palaeochersis talampayensis dating from early dinosaur times, which appear to be close to the ancestry of all modem turtles and tortoises. You might wonder how we can tell whether fossil animals lived on land or in water, especially if only fragments are found. Sometimes it`s obvious. Ichthyosarus were reptilian contemporaries of the dinosaurs, with fins and streamlined bodies. The fossils look like dolphins and they surely lived like dolphins, in the water. With turtles it is a little less obvious. One way to tell is by measuring the bones of their forelimbs.

Walter Joyce and Jacques Gauthier, at Yale University, obtained three measurements in these particular bones of 71 species of living turtles and tortoises. They used a kind of triangular graph paper to plot the three measurements against one another. All the land tortoise species formed a tight cluster of points in the upper part of the triangle; all the water turtles cluster in the lower part of the triangular graph. There was no overlap, except when they added some species that spend time both in water and on land. Sure enough, these amphibious species show up on the triangular graph approximately half way between the ‘wet cluster' of sea turtles and the ‘dry cluster' of land tortoises. 'The next step was to determine where the fossil fell. The bones of P quenstedtiand P. talampayensis leave us in no doubt. Their points on the graph are right in the thick of the dry cluster. Both these fossils were dry-land tortoises. They come from the era before our turtles returned to the water. You might think, therefore, that modem land tortoises have probably stayed on land ever since those early terrestrial times, as most mammals did after a few of them went back to the sea. But apparently not. If you draw out the family tree of all modern turtles and tortoises, nearly all the branches are aquatic. Today’s land tortoises constitute a single branch, deeply nested among branches consisting of aquatic turtles. This suggests that modern land tortoises have not stayed on land continuously since the time of P. quenstedti and P. talampayensis. Rather, their ancestors were among those who went back to the water, and they then re-emerged back onto the land in (relatively) more recent times. Tortoises therefore represent a remarkable double return. In common with all mammals, reptiles and binds, their remote ancestors were marine fish and before that various more or less worm-like creatures stretching back, still in the sea, to the primeval bacteria. Later ancestors lived on land and stayed there for a very large number of generations. Later ancestors still evolved back into the water and became sea turtles. And finally they returned yet again to the land as tortoises, some of which now live in the driest of deserts.

Questions 27-30

Answer the questions below

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer

Write your answers in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27. What had to transfer from sea to land before any animals could migrate?

28. Which TWO processes are mentioned as those in which animals had to make big changes as they   moved onto land?

29. Which physical feature. possessed by their ancestors, do whales lack?

30. Which animals might ichthyosaurs have resembled?

Questions 31-33

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE    if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE    if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN    if there is no information on this more than once.

   

31.Turtles were among the first group of animals to migrate back to the sea.

32.It is always difficult to determine where an animal lived when its fossilized remains are incomplete.

33.The habitat of ichthyosaurs can be determined by the appearance of their fossilized remains.

Questions 34-39

Complete the flow-chart  below

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer

Write your answers in boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet.

Method of determining where the ancestors of turtles and tortoises come from

Step 1: 71 species of living turtles and tortoises were examined and a total of 34 ................were taken from the bones of their forelimbs.

Step 2: The data was recorded on a 35 ................... (necessary for comparing the information). Outcome: Land tortoises were represented by a dense 36 .................. of points towards the top. Sea turtles were grouped together in the bottom part.

Step 3: The same data was collected from some living 37 .................. species and added to the other results. Outcome: The points for these species turned out to be positioned about 38 .................. up the triangle between the land tortoises and the sea turtles.

Step 4: Bones of R quenstedti and P talampayensis were examined in a similar way and the results added.

Outcome: The position of the points indicated that both these ancient creatures were

39......................

Questions 40

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

According to the writer, the most significant thing about tortoises is that

A they are able to adapt to life in extremely dry environments.

B their original life form was a kind of primeval bacteria,

C they have so much in common with sea turtles.

D they have made the transition from sea to land more than once.

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IELTS Academic Reading Sample 50

A Neuroscintist Reveals How to Think Differently

In the last decade a revolution has occurred in the way that scientists think about the brain. We now know that the decisions humans make can be traced to the firing patterns of neurons in specific parts of the brain. These discoveries have led to the field known as neuroeconomics, which studies the brains secrets to success in an economic environment that demands innovation and being able to do things differently from competitors. A brain that can do this is an iconoclastic one. Briefly, an iconociost is a person who does something that others say can't he done. This definition implies that iconoclasts are different from other people, but more precisely, it is their brains that are different in three distinct ways: perception, fear response, and social intelligence. Each of these three functions utilizes a different circuit in the brain. Naysayers might suggest that the brain is irrelevant, that thinking in an original, even revolutionary. way is more a matter of personality than brain function. But the held of neuroeconomics was born out of the realization that the physical workings of the brain place limitations on the way we make decisions. By understanding these constraints, we begin to understand why some people march to a different drumbeat. The first thing to realize is that the brain suffers from limited resources. It has a fixed energy budget, about the same as a 40 watt light bulb, so it has evolved to work as efficiently as possible. This is where most people are impeded from being an iconoclast. For example, when confronted with information streaming from the eyes, the brain will interpret this information in the quickest way possible. Thus it will draw on both past experience and any other source of information, such as what other people say, to make sense of what it is seeing. This happens all the time. The brain takes shortcuts that work so well we are hardly ever aware of them. We think our perceptions of the world are real, but they are only biological and electrical rumblings. Perception is not simply a product of what your eyes or ears transmit to your brain. More than the physical reality of photons or sound waves, perception ls a product of the brain.   Perception is central to iconoclasm. Iconoclasts see things differently to other people. Their brains do not fall into efficiency pitfalls as much as the average person’s brain. iconoclasts, either because they were born that way or through learning, have found ways to work around the perceptual shortcuts that plague most people. Perception ls not something that is hardwired into  the brain. It is a learned process, which is both a curse and an opportunity for change. The brain faces the fundamental problem of interpreting physical stimuli from the senses.

Everything the brain sees, hears, or touches has multiple interpretations. The one that is ultimately chosen is simply the brain's best theory. ln technical terms, these conjectures have their basis in the statistical likelihood of one interpretation over another and are heavily influenced by past experience and, importantly for potential iconoclasts what other people say.   The best way to see things differently to other people is to bombard the brain with things it has never encountered before. Novelty releases the perceptual process from the chains of past experience and forces the brain to make new judgments. Successful iconoclasts have an extraordinary willingness to be exposed to what is fresh and different. Observation of iconoclasts shows that they embrace novelty while most people avoid things that are different. The problem with novelty, however, is that lt tends to trigger the brain's fear system. Fear is a major impediment to thinking like an iconoclast and stops the average person in his tracks. There are many types of fear, but the two that inhibit iconoclastic thinking and people generally find difficult to deal with are fear of uncertainty and fear of public ridicule. These may seem like trivial phobias. But fear ol public speaking, which everyone must do from time to time, afflicts one third of the population. This makes it too common to be considered a mental disorder. It is simply a common variant of human nature, one which iconoclasts do not let inhibit their reactions   Finally, to be successful iconoclasts, individuals must sell their ideas to other people. This is where social intelligence comes in. Social intelligence is the ability to understand and manage people in a business setting. ln the last decade there has been an explosion of knowledge about the social brain and how the braln works when groups coordinate decision making. Neuroscience has revealed which brain circuits are responsible for functions like understanding what other people think, empathy, fairness, and social identity. These brain regions play key roles in whether people convince others of their ideas. Perception is important in social cognition too. The perception of someone's enthusiasm, or reputation, can make or break a deal. Understanding how perception becomes intertwined with social decision making shows why successful iconoclasts are so rare. Iconoclasts create new opportunities in every area from artistic expression to technology to business They supply creativity and innovation not easily accomplished by committees. Rules aren't important to them. Iconoclasts face alienation and failure, but can also be a major asset to any organization. It is crucial for success in any field to understand how the iconoclastic mind works.

Questions 27-31

Choose the correct letter A. B. C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

27. Neuroeconomics is a field of study which seeks to

     A. cause a change in how scientists understand brain chemistry.

     B. understand how good decisions are made in the brain.

     C .understand how the brain is linked to achievement in competitive fields.

     D. trace the specific firing patterns of neurons in different areas of the brain.

     

28. According to the writer, iconoclasts are distinctive because

     A. they create unusual brain circuits.

     B. their brains function differently.

     C. their personalities are distinctive.

     D. they make decisions easily.

29. According to the writer, the brain works efficiently because

    A. it uses the eyes quickly.

    B. it interprets data logically.

    C. it generates its own energy.

    D. it relies on previous events.

30. The writer says that perception is

     A. a combination of photons and sound waves.

     B. a reliable product of what your senses transmit.

     C. a result of brain processes.

     D. a process we are usually conscious of.

31. According to the writer an iconoclastic thinker

      A. centralizes perceptual thinking in one part of the brain.

      B. avoids cognitive traps.

      C. has a brain that is hardwired for learning.

      D. has more opportunities than the average person.

Questions 32-37

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 50?

In boxes 32-37 on your answer sheet, write

 YES it the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

 NO it the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

 NOT GIVEN it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

32. Exposure to different events forces the brain to think differently.

33. iconoclasts are unusually receptive to new experiences.

34. Most people are too shy to try different things.

35. If you think in an iconoclastic way, you can easily overcome tear.

36. When concern about embarrassment matters less, other fears become irrelevant.

37. Fear of public speaking is a psychological illness.

Questions 38-40

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-E, below

Write the correct letter A-E, in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.

38. Thinking like a successful iconoclast is demanding because it

39. The concept of the social brain is useful to iconoclasts because it

40. Iconoclasts are generally an asset because their way of drinking

  A.  requires both perceptual and social intelligence skills.

  B.  focuses on how groups decide on an action.

  C. works in many fields, both artistic and scientific.

  D. leaves one open to criticism and rejection.

  E.  involves understanding how organizations manage people.

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IELTS Academic Reading Sample 49

IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence

The question of whether we are alone in the Universe has haunted humanity forcenturies, but we may now stand poised on the brink of the answer to that question, as we search for radio signals from other intelligent civilizations. This search often known by the acronym SETI [search for extraterrestrial intelligence], is a difficult one. Although groups around the world have been searching intermittently for three decades, it is only now that we have reached the level of technology where we can make a determined attempt to search all nearby stars for any sign of life.

A The primary reason for the search is basic curiosity - the same curiosity about the natural world that drives all pure science. We want to know whether we are alone in the Universe. We want to know whether life evolves naturally if given the right conditions, or whether there is something very special about the Earth to have fostered the variety of life forms that we see around us on the planet. The simple detection of a radio signal will be sufficient to answer this most basic of all questions. In this sense, SETI is another cog in the machinery of pure science which is continually pushing out the horizon of our knowledge. However, there are other reasons for being interested in whether life exists elsewhere. For example, we have had civilization on Earth for perhaps only a few thousand years, and the threats of nuclear war and pollution over the last few decades have told us that our survival may be tenuous. Will we last another two thousand years or will we wipe ourselves out? Since the lifetime of a planet like ours is several billion years, we can expect that if other civilizations do survive in our galaxy, their ages will range from zero to several billion years. Thus any other civilization that we hear from is likely to be far older on average than ourselves. The mere existence of such a civilization will tell of that long term survival is possible, and gives us some cause for optimism. It is even possible that the older civilization may pass on the benefits of their experience in dealing with threats to survival such as nuclear war and global pollution, and other threats that we haven't yet discovered. B In discussing whether we are alone, most SETI scientists adopt two ground rules. First. UFOs [Unidentified Flying objects] are generally ignored since most scientists don`t consider the evidence for them to be strong enough to bear serious consideration (although it is also important to keep an open mind in casa any really convincing evidence emerges in the future). Second, we make a very conservative assumption that we are looking for a life form that is pretty well like us, since if it differs radically from us we may well not recognize it as e life form, quite apart from whatever  we are able to communicate with it. In other words, the life form we are looking for may well have two green heads and seven fingers, but it will nevertheless resemble us in that it should communicate with its fellows. Be interested in the Universe, Live on a planet orbiting a star like our Sun, and perhaps most restrictively have chemistry, like us, based on carbon and water. C Even when we make these assumptions. our understanding of other life forms is still severely limited. We do not even know. for example, how many stars have planets, and we certainly do not know how likely it is that life will arise naturally,  given the right conditions. However, when we look at the 100 billion stars in our galaxy [the Milky Way], and 100 billion galaxies. In the observable Universe, It seems inconceivable that at least one of these planets does not have a life form on it; in fact, the best educated guess we can make using the little that we do know about the conditions for carbon-based life, leads us to estimate that perhaps one in 100,000 stars might have a life-bearing planet orbiting it. That means that our nearest neighbors are perhaps 1000 light years away. which is almost next door in astronomical terms.

D An alien civilization could choose many different ways of sending information across the galaxy, but many of these either require too much energy. or else are severely attenuated while traversing the vast distances across the galaxy. lt bums out that. for a given amount of transmitted power: radio waves in the frequency range 1000 to 3000 MHz travel the greatest distance. and so all searches to date have concentrated on looking for radio waves in this frequency range. So far there have been a number of searches by various groups around the world,  including Australian searches using the radio telescope at Parkes, New South Wales. Until now there have not been any detections from the few hundred stars which have been searched. The scale of the searches has been increased dramatically since 1992, when the US Congress voted NASA $10 million per year for ten years to conduct a thorough search for extra-terrestrial life. Much of the money in this project is being spent on developing the special hardware needed to search many frequencies et once. The project has two parts. One part is a targeted search using the world's largest radio telescopes. The American-operated telescope in Arecibo. Puerto Rico and the French telescope in Nancy in France. This part of the project is searching the nearest 1000 likely stars with high sensibility for signals in the frequency range 1000 to 3000 MHz. The other part of the project is an undirected search which is monitoring all of space with a lower   using the smaller antennas of NASA`s Deep Space Network. E There is considerable debate over how we should react if we detect a signal from an alien civilization. Everybody agrees that we should not reply immediately. Quite apart from the impracticality of sending e reply over such large distances at short notice, it raises a host of ethical questions that would have to be addressed by the global community before any reply could be sent. Would the human race face the culture shock if faced with a superior and much older civilization? Luckily, there is no urgency about this. The stars being searched are hundreds of light years away. so it takes hundreds of years for their signal to reach us, and a further few hundred years for our reply to reach them. lt's not important, then, if there`s a delay of a few years, or decades, while the human race debates the question of whether to reply and perhaps carefully drafts a reply.

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 on the following pages.

Questions 14—17

Reading Passage 2 has five paragraphs, A-E.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-E from the headings below.

Write the correct number: i-vii, in boxes 14—17 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

     I.     Seeking the transmission of radio signals from planets

     II.    Appropriate responses to signals from other civilizations

     III.   Vast distances to Earth’s closest neighbors

     IV.   Assumptions underlying the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence

     V.    Reasons for the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence

     VI.   Knowledge of extra-terrestrial life forms

     VII.  Likelihood of lite on other planets

Example                                                                      Answer

Paragraph A                                                                       v

14.  Paragraph B

15.  Paragraph C

16.  Paragraph D

17.  Paragraph E

Question 18-20

Answer the Questions Below

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer

Write your answers in boxes 18-20 on your answer sheet.

18. What is the life expectancy of Earth?

19. What kind of signals from other intelligent civilizations are SETI scientists searching for?

20. How many stars are the world’s most powerful radio telescopes searching?

Questions 21-26

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this more than once.

21.   Alien civilizations may be able to help the human race to overcome serious problems

23.   SETI scientists are trying to find a life form that resembles humans in many ways.

23.   The Americans and Australians have cc-operated on joint research projects.

24.   So far SETI scientists have picked up radio signals from several stars.

25.   The NASA project attracted criticism from some members of Congress.

26.   If a signal from outer space is received, it will be important to respond promptly.

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