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| IELTS Reading Practice Test-16 With Answers |
READING PASSAGE 1
You
should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which
are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
Bamboo,
A Wonder Plant
The
wonder plant with an uncertain future: more than a billion people rely on
bamboo for either their shelter or income, while many endangered species depend
on it for their survival. Despite its apparent abundance, a new report says
that species of bamboo may be under serious threat.
Section
A
Every
year, during the rainy season, the mountain gorillas of Central Africa migrate
to the foothills and lower slopes of the Virunga Mountains to graze on bamboo.
For the 650 or so that remain in the wild, it’s a vital food source. Although
they at almost 150 types of plant, as well as various insects and other
invertebrates, at this time of year bamboo accounts for up to 90 per cent of
their diet. Without it, says Ian Redmond, chairman of the Ape Alliance, their
chances of survival would be reduced significantly. Gorillas aren’t the only
locals keen on bamboo. For the people who live close to the Virungas, it’s a
valuable and versatile raw material used for building houses and making
household items such as mats and baskets. But in the past 100 years or so,
resources have come under increasing pressure as populations have exploded and
large areas of bamboo forest have been cleared to make way for farms and
commercial plantations.
Section
B
Sadly,
this isn’t an isolated story. All over the world, the ranges of many bamboo
species appear to be shrinking, endangering the people and animals (that depend
upon them). But despite bamboo’s importance, we know surprisingly little about
it. A recent report published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the
International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR) has revealed just how profound
is our ignorance of global bamboo resources, particularly in relation to
conservation. There are almost 1,600 recognised species of bamboo, but the
report concentrated on the 1,200 or so woody varieties distinguished by the
strong stems, or culms, that most people associate with this versatile plant.
Of these, only 38 ‘priority species’ identified for their commercial value have
been the subject of any real scientific research, and this has focused mostly
on matters relating to their viability as a commodity. This problem isn’t
confined to bamboo. Compared to the work carried out on animals, the science of
assessing the conservation status of plants is still in its infancy. “People
have only started looking hard at this during the past 10-15 years, and only
now are they getting a handle on how to go about it systematically,” says Dr
Valerie Kapos, one of the report’s authors and a senior adviser in forest
ecology and conservation to the UNEP.
Section
C
Bamboo
is a type of grass. It comes in a wide variety of forms, ranging in height from
30 centimetres to more than 40 metres. It is also the world’s fastest-growing
woody plant: some species can grow more than a metre in a day. Bamboo’s
ecological rote extends beyond providing food and habitat for animals. Bamboo
tends to grow in stands made up of groups of individual plants that grow from
root systems known as rhizomes. Its extensive rhizome systems, which tie in the
top layers of the soil, are crucial in preventing soil erosion. And there is
growing evidence that bamboo plays an important part in determining forest
structure and dynamics. “Bamboo’s pattern of mass flowering and mass death
leaves behind large areas of dry biomass that attract wildfire,” says Kapos.
“When these burn, they create patches of open ground within the forest far
bigger than would be left by a fallen tree.” Patchiness helps to preserve
diversity because certain plant species do better during the early stages of
regeneration when there are gaps in the canopy.
Section
D
However,
bamboo’s most immediate significance lies in its economic value. Modern
processing techniques mean that it can be used in a variety of ways, for
example, as flooring and laminates. One of the fastest-growing bamboo products
is paper-25 per cent of paper produced in India is made from bamboo fiber, and
in Brazil, 100,000 hectares of bamboo is grown for its production. Of course,
bamboo’s main function has always been in domestic applications, and as a
locally traded commodity, it’s worth about US$4.5 billion annually. Because of
its versatility, flexibility and strength (its tensile strength compares to
that of some steel), it has traditionally been used in construction. Today,
more than one billion people worldwide live in bamboo houses. Bamboo is often
the only readily available raw material for people in many developing
countries, says Chris Staple-ton, a research associate at the Royal Botanic
Gardens. “Bamboo can be harvested from forest areas or grown quickly elsewhere,
and then converted simply without expensive machinery or facilities,” he says.
“In this way, it contributes substantially to poverty alleviation and wealth
creation.”
Section
E
Given
bamboo’s value in economic and ecological terms, the picture painted by the
UNEP report is all the more worrying. But keen horticulturists will spot an
apparent contradiction here. Those who’ve followed the recent vogue for
cultivating exotic species in their gardens will point out that if it isn’t
kept in check, bamboo can cause real problems. “In a lot of places, the people
who live with bamboo don’t perceive it as being endangered in any way,” says
Kapos. “In fact, a lot of bamboo species are actually very invasive if they’ve
been introduced.” So why are so many species endangered? There are two separate
issues here, says Ray Townsend, vice president of the British
Bamboo Society and arboretum manager at the Royal Botanic Gardens. “Some plants
are threatened because they can’t survive in the habitat – they aren’t strong
enough or there aren’t enough of them, perhaps. But bamboo can take care of
itself – it is strong enough to survive if left alone. What is under threat is
its habitat.” It is the physical disturbance that is the threat to bamboo, says
Kapos. “When forest goes, it is converted into something else: there isn’t
any-where for forest plants such as bamboo to grow if you create a cattle
pasture.”
Section
F
Around
the world, bamboo species are routinely protected as part of forest eco-systems
in national parks and reserves, but there is next to nothing that protects
bamboo in the wild for its own sake. However, some small steps are being taken
to address this situation. The UNEP-INBAR report will help conservationists to
establish effective measures aimed at protecting valuable wild bamboo species.
Towns end, too, see the UNEP report as an important step forward in promoting
the cause of bamboo conservation. “Until now, bamboo has been perceived as a
second-class plant. When you talk about places such as the Amazon, everyone
always thinks about the hardwoods. Of course, these are significant, but there
is a tendency to overlook the plants they are associated with, which are often
bamboo species. In many ways, it is the most important plant known to man. I
can’t think of another plant that is used so much and is so commercially important
in so many countries.” He believes that the most important first step is to get
scientists into the field. “We need to go out there, look at these plants and
see how they survive and then use that information to conserve them for the
future.”
Questions 1-7
Reading
Passage 1 has six section A-F.
Which section contains the following information?
Write
the correct letter A-F in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet
NB
You may use any letter more than once
1
The limited extent of existing research
2
Comparison of bamboo with other plant species
3
Commercial application of bamboo
4
Example of an animal which relies on bamboos for survival
5
The human activity that damaged large areas of bamboo
6
The approaches used to study bamboo
7
Bamboo helps the survival of a range of plants
Questions 8-11
Use
the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-D) with
opinions or deeds below.
Write
the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 8-11 on your answer
sheet.
NB You
may use any letter more than once
A
Ian Redmond
B
Valerie Kapos
C
Ray Townsend
D
Chris Stapleton
8
Destroying bamboo jeopardizes to wildlife.
9 People
have very confined knowledge of bamboo.
10
Some people do not think that bamboo is endangered.
11
Bamboo has loads of commercial potentials.
Questions 12-13
Answer
the questions below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for
each answer.
Write
your answers in boxes 12-13 on your answer sheet
12
What problem does the bamboo’s root system prevent?
13
Which bamboo product is experiencing market expansion?
READING PASSAGE 2
You
should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.
Activities
for Children
A
Twenty-five
years ago, children in London walked to school and played in parks and playing
fields after school and at the weekend. Today they are usually driven to school
by parents anxious about safety and spend hours glued to television screens or
computer games. Meanwhile, community playing fields are being sold off to
property developers at an alarming rate. ‘This change in lifestyle has, sadly,
meant greater restrictions on children,’ says Neil Armstrong, Professor of
Health and Exercise Sciences at the University of Exeter. ‘If children continue
to be this inactive, they’ll be storing up big problems for the future.’
B
In
1985, Professor Armstrong headed a five-year research project into children’s
fitness. The results, published in 1990, were alarming. The survey, which
monitored 700 11-16-year-olds, found that 48 per cent of girls and 41 per cent
of boys already exceeded safe cholesterol levels set for children by the
American Heart Foundation. Armstrong adds, “heart is a muscle and need
exercise, or it loses its strength.” It also found that 13 per cent of boys and
10 per cent of girls were overweight. More disturbingly, the survey found that
over a four-day period, half the girls and one-third of the boys did less
exercise than the equivalent of a brisk 10-minute walk. High levels of
cholesterol, excess body fat and inactivity are believed to increase the risk
of coronary heart disease.
C
Physical
education is under pressure in the UK – most schools devote little more than
100 minutes a week to it in curriculum time, which is less than many other
European countries. Three European countries are giving children a head start
in PE, France, Austria and Switzerland – offer at least two hours in primary
and secondary schools. These findings, from the European Union of Physical
Education Associations, prompted specialists in children’s physiology to call
on European governments to give youngsters a daily PE programme. The survey
shows that the UK ranks 13th out of the 25 countries, with Ireland’s bottom,
averaging under an hour a week for PE. From age six to 18, British children
received, on average, 106 minutes of PE a week. Professor Armstrong, who
presented the findings at the meeting, noted that since the introduction of the
national curriculum there had been a marked fall in the time devoted to PE in
UK schools, with only a minority of pupils getting two hours a week.
D
As a
former junior football international, Professor Armstrong is a passionate
advocate for the sport. Although the Government has poured millions into
beefing up the sport in the community, there is less commitment to it as part
of the crammed school curriculum. This means that many children never acquire
the necessary skills to thrive in team games. If they are no good at them, they
lose interest and establish an inactive pattern of behaviour. When this is
coupled with a poor diet, it will lead inevitably to weight gain. Seventy per
cent of British children gives up all sport when they leave school, compared
with only 20 per cent of French teenagers. Professor Armstrong believes that
there is far too great an emphasis on team games at school. “We need to look at
the time devoted to PE and balance it between individual and pair activities,
such as aerobics and badminton, as well as team sports. “He added that children
need to have the opportunity to take part in a wide variety of individual,
partner and team sports.
E
The
good news, however, is that a few small companies and children’s activity
groups have reacted positively and creatively to the problem. ‘Take That,
shouts Gloria Thomas, striking a disco pose astride her mini-space hopper.
‘Take That, echo a flock of toddlers, adopting outrageous postures astride
their space hoppers. ‘Michael Jackson, she shouts, and they all do a spoof
fan-crazed shriek. During the wild and chaotic hopper race across the studio
floor, commands like this are issued and responded to with untrammeled glee.
The sight of 15 bouncing seven-year-olds who seem about to launch into orbit at
every bounce brings tears to the eyes. Uncoordinated, loud, excited and
emotional, children provide raw comedy.
F
Any
cardiovascular exercise is a good option, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be
high intensity. It can be anything that gets your heart rate up: such as
walking the dog, swimming, running, skipping, hiking. “Even walking through the
grocery store can be exercise,” Samis-Smith said. What they don’t know is that
they’re at a Fit Kids class and that the fun is a disguise for the serious
exercise plan they’re covertly being taken through. Fit Kids trains parents to
run fitness classes for children. ‘Ninety per cent of children don’t like team
sports,’ says company director, Gillian Gale.
G
A
Prevention survey found that children whose parents keep in shape are much more
likely to have healthy body weights themselves. “There’s nothing worse than
telling a child what he needs to do and not doing it yourself,” says Elizabeth
Ward, R.D., a Boston nutritional consultant and author of Healthy Foods,
Healthy Kids. “Set a good example and get your nutritional house in order
first.” In the 1930s and ‘40s, kids expended 800 calories a day just walking,
carrying water, and doing other chores, notes Fima Lifshitz, M.D., a pediatric
endocrinologist in Santa Barbara. “Now, kids in obese families are expending
only 200 calories a day in physical activity,” says Lifshitz, “incorporate more
movement in your family’s life – park farther away from the stores at the mall,
take stairs instead of the elevator, and walk to nearby friends’ houses instead
of driving.”
Questions 14-17
The
Reading Passage 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
Health and living condition of children
15
Health organization monitored physical activity
16
Comparison of exercise time between the UK and other countries
17
Wrong approach for school activity
Questions 18-21
Do
the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In
boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement is true
FALSE
if the statement is false
NOT
GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
18
According to the American Heart Foundation, cholesterol levels of boys are
higher than girls’.
19
British children generally do less exercise than some other European countries.
20
Skipping becomes more and more popular in schools in the UK.
21
According to Healthy Kids, the first task is for parents to
encourage their children to keep the same healthy body weight.
Questions 22-26
Choose
the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write
your answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.
22
According to paragraph A, what does Professor Neil Armstrong concern
about?
A
Spending more time on TV affect the academic level
B
Parents have less time to stay with their children
C
Future health of British children
D
Increasing speed of property’s development
23
What does Armstrong indicate in Paragraph B?
A
We need to take a 10-minute walk every day
B
We should do more activity to exercise heart
C
Girls’ situation is better than boys
D
Exercise can cure many diseases
24
What is the aim of First Kids’ training?
A
Make profit by running several sessions
B
Only concentrate on one activity for each child
C
To guide parents on how to organize activities for children
D
Spread the idea that team sport is better
25
What did Lifshitz suggest at the end of this passage?
A
Create opportunities to exercise your body
B
Taking elevator saves your time
C
Kids should spend more than 200 calories each day
D
We should never drive but walk
26
What is the main idea of this passage?
A
health of the children who are overweight is at risk in the future
B
Children in the UK need proper exercises
C
Government mistaken approach for children
D
Parents play the most important role in children’s activity
READING
PASSAGE 3
You
should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on
Reading Passage 3 below.
Save
Endangered Language
“Obviously
we must do some serious rethinking of our priorities, lest linguistics go down
in history as the only science that presided obviously over the disappearance
of 90 percent of the very field to which it is dedicated.” – Michael Krauss,
“The World’s Languages in Crisis”.
A
Ten
years ago Michael Krauss sent a shudder through the discipline of linguistics
with his prediction that half the 6,000 or so languages spoken in the world
would cease to be uttered within a century. Unless scientists and community
leaders directed a worldwide effort to stabilize the decline of local
languages, he warned, nine-tenths of the linguistic diversity of humankind
would probably be doomed to extinction. Krauss’s prediction was little more
than an educated guess, but other respected linguists had been clanging out
similar alarms. Keneth L. Hale of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
noted in the same journal issue that eight languages on which he had done
fieldwork had since passed into extinction. A 1990 survey in Australia found
that 70 of the 90 surviving Aboriginal languages were no longer used regularly
by all age groups. The same was true for all but 20 of the 175 Native American
languages spoken or remembered in the US., Krauss told a congressional panel in
1992.
B
Many
experts in the field mourn the loss of rare languages, for several reasons. To
start, there is scientific self-interest: some of the most basic questions in
linguistics have to do with the limits of human speech, which are far from
fully explored. Many researchers would like to know which structural elements
of grammar and vocabulary – if any – are truly universal and probably,
therefore, hardwired into the human brain. Other scientists try to reconstruct
ancient migration patterns by comparing borrowed words that appear in otherwise
unrelated languages. In each of these cases, the wider the portfolio of
languages you study, the more likely you are to get the right answers.
C
Despite
the near-constant buzz in linguistics about endangered languages over the past
10 years, the field has accomplished depressingly little. “You would think that
there would be some organized response to this dire situation,” some attempt to
determine which language can be saved and which should be documented before
they disappear, says Sarah G. Thomason, a linguist at the University of
Michigan at Ann Arbor. “But there isn’t any such effort organized in the
profession. It is only recently that it has become fashionable enough to work
on endangered languages.” Six years ago, recalls Douglas H. Whalen of Yale University,
“when I asked linguists who were raising money to deal with these problems, I
mostly got blank stares.” So Whalen and a few other linguists founded the
Endangered Languages Fund. In the five years to 2001, they were able to collect
only $80,000 for research grants. A similar foundation in England, directed by
Nicholas Ostler, has raised just $8,000 since 1995.
D
But
there are encouraging signs that the field has turned a corner. The Volkswagen
Foundation, a German charity, just issued its second round of grants totaling
more than $2 million. It has created a multimedia archive at the Max Planck
Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands that can house recordings,
grammars, dictionaries and other data on endangered languages. To fill the archive,
the foundation has dispatched field linguists to document Aweti (100 or so
speakers in Brazil), Ega (about 300 speakers in Ivory Coast), Waima’a (a few
hundred speakers in East Timor), and a dozen or so other languages unlikely to
survive the century. The Ford Foundation has also edged into the arena. Its
contributions helped to reinvigorate a master-apprentice program created in
1992 by Leanne Hinton of Berkeley and Native Americans worried about the
imminent demise of about 50 indigenous languages in California. Fluent speakers
receive $3,000 to teach a younger relative (who is also paid) their native
tongue through 360 hours of shared activities, spread over six months. So far
about 5 teams have completed the program, Hinton says, transmitting a least
some knowledge of 25 languages. “It’s too early to call this language
revitalization,” Hinton admits. “In California, the death rate of elderly
speakers will always be greater than the recruitment rate of young speakers.
But at least we prolong the survival of the language.” That will give linguists
more time to record these tongues before they vanish.
E
But
the master-apprentice approach hasn’t caught on outside the U.S., and Hinton’s
effort is a drop in the sea. At least 440 languages have been reduced to a mere
handful of elders, according to the Ethnologue, a catalogue of languages
produced by the Dallas-based group SIL International that comes closest to
global coverage. For the vast majority of these languages, there is little or
no record of their grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or use in daily life.
Even if a language has been fully documented, all that remains once it vanishes
from active use is a fossil skeleton, a scattering of features that the
scientist was lucky and astute enough to capture. Linguists may be able to
sketch an outline of the forgotten language and fix its place on the
evolutionary tree, but little more. “How did people start conversations and
talk to babies? How dis husbands and wives converse?” Hinton asks. “Those are
the first things you want to learn when you want to revitalize the
language.”
F
But
there is as yet no discipline of “conservation linguistics,” as there is for
biology. Almost every strategy tried so far has succeeded in some places but
failed in others, and there seems to be no way to predict with certainty what
will work where. Twenty years ago in New Zealand, Maori speakers set up
“language nests,” in which preschoolers were immersed in the native language.
Additional Maori-only classes were added as the children progressed through
elementary and secondary school. A similar approach was tried in Hawaii, with
some success – the number of native speakers has stabilized at 1,000 or so,
reports Joseph E. Grimes of SIL International, who is working on Oahu. Students
can now get instruction in Hawaiian all the way through university.
G
One
factor that always seems to occur in the demise of a language is that the
speakers begin to have collective doubts about the usefulness of language
loyalty. Once they start regarding their own language as inferior to the
majority language, people stop using it in all situations. Kids pick up on the
attitude and prefer the dominant language. In many cases, people don’t notice
until they suddenly realize that their kids never speak the language, even at
home. This is how Cornish and some dialects of Scottish Gaelic is still only
rarely used for daily home life in Ireland, 80 years after the republic was
founded with Irish as its first official language.
H
Linguists
agree that ultimately, the answer to the problem of language extinction is
multilingualism. Even uneducated people can learn several languages, as long as
they start as children. Indeed, most people in the world speak more than one
tongue, and in places such as Cameroon (279 languages), Papua New Guinea (823)
and India (387) it is common to speak three of four distinct languages and a
dialect or two as well. Most Americans and Canadians, to the west of Quebec,
have a gut reaction that anyone speaking another language in front of them is
committing an immoral act. You get the same reaction in Australia and Russia.
It is no coincidence that these are the areas where languages are disappearing
the fastest. The first step in saving dying languages is to persuade the
world’s majorities to allow the minorities among them to speak with their own
voices.
Questions 27-33
The
reading passage has eight paragraphs, A-H
Choose
the correct heading for paragraphs A-H from the list below.
Write
the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.
List
of headings
i
data consistency needed for language
ii
consensuses on an initial recommendation for saving dying out languages
iii
positive gains for protection
iv
minimum requirement for saving a language
v
Potential threat to minority language
vi
a period when there was absent of real effort made.
vii
native language programs launched
viii
Lack of confidence in young speakers as a negative factor
ix
Practise in several developing countries
x
Value of minority language to linguists.
xi
government participation in the language field
27
Paragraph A
28
Paragraph B
Example: Paragraph C vi
29
Paragraph D
30
Paragraph E
31
Paragraph F
32
Paragraph G
33
Paragraph H
Questions 34-38
Use
the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-F) with
opinions or deeds below.
Write
the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 34-38 on your answer
sheet.
A
Nicholas Ostler
B Michael Krauss
C Joseph E. Grimes
D Sarah G. Thomason
E Keneth L. Hale
F Douglas H. Whalen
34
Reported language conservation practice in Hawaii
35
Predicted that many languages would disappear soon
36
The experienced process that languages die out personally
37
Raised language fund in England
38
Not enough effort on saving until recent work
Questions 39-40
Choose
the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write
your answers in boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet.
39
What is the real result of a master-apprentice program sponsored
by The Ford Foundation?
A
Teach children how to speak
B
Revive some endangered languages in California
C
postpone the dying date for some endangered languages
D
Increase communication between students
40
What should the majority language speakers do according to the last
paragraph?
A
They should teach their children endangered language in free lessons
B
They should learn at least four languages
C
They should now their loyalty to a dying language
D
They should be more tolerant of minority language speaker
ANSWERS
1. B
2. E
3. D
4. D
5. A
6. B
7. C
8. A
9. B
10. B
11. D
12. Soil erosion
13. paper
14. A
15. B
16. C
17. D
18. NOT GIVEN
19. TRUE
20. NOT GIVEN
21. FALSE
22. C
23. B
24. C
25. A
26. B
27. v
28. x
29. iii
30. i
31. vii
32. viii
33. ii
34. C
35. B
36. E
37. A
38. D
39. C
40. D
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