IREADING
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on
Reading Passage 1 below.
Save the Turtles
A Leatherback turtles follow the general sea turtle body plan of having a large, flattened,
round body with two pairs of very large flippers and a short tail. Like other sea turtles,
the leatherback’s flattened forelimbs are specially adapted for swimming in the open
ocean. Claws are noticeably absent from both pair of flippers. The leatherback’s
flippers are the largest in proportion to its body among the extant sea turtles.
Leatherback front flippers can grow up to 2.7 meters in large specimens, the largest
flippers (even in comparison to its body) of any sea turtle. As the last surviving
member of its family, the leatherback turtle has several distinguishing characteristics
that differentiate it from other sea turtles. Its most notable feature is that it lacks the
bony carapace of the other extant sea turtles.
B During the past month, four turtles have washed up along Irish coasts from Wexford to
Kerry. These turtles are more typical of warmer waters when they stray off course. It is
likely that they may have originated from Florida, America. Two specimens have been
taken to Coastal and Marine Resources Centre, University College Cork, where a
necropsy will be conducted to establish their age, sex and their exact origin. During
this same period, two Leatherback turtles were found in Scotland, and a rare Kemp’s
Ridley turtle was found in Wales, thus making it an exceptional month for stranded
turtles in Ireland and the UK.
C Actually, there has been extensive research conducted regarding the sea turtles’
abilities to return to their nesting regions and sometimes exact locations from hundreds
of miles away. In the water, their path is greatly affected by powerful currents. Despite
their limited vision, and lack of landmarks in the open water, turtles are able to retrace
their migratory paths. Some explanations of this phenomenon have found that sea
turtles can detect the angle and intensity of the earth’s magnetic fields.
D However, leatherback turtles are not normally found in Irish waters, because water
temperatures here are far too cold for their survival. Instead, adult Leatherback prefer
the warmers waters of the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and North America’s east
coast. The four turtles that were found have probably originated from the North
America. However it will require genetic analysis to confirm this assumption. It is
thought that after leaving their nesting beach as hatchlings, these tiny turtles enter the
North Atlantic Gyre that takes them from America, across to Europe, down towards
North Africa, before being transported back again to America via a different current.
This remarkable round trip may take many years during which these tiny turtles grow
by several centimeters a year. Leatherback may circulate around the North Atlantic
several times before they settle in the coastal waters of Florida or the Caribbean.
E These four turtles probably on their way around the Atlantic when they strayed a bit
too far north from the Gulf Stream. Once they did, their fate was sealed, as the cooler
waters of the North East Atlantic are too cold for Leatherback, unlike some other
turtles which have many anatomical and physiological adaptations to enable them to
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swim in different seas. Once in cool waters, the body of a Leatherback begins to shut
down as they get ‘cold stunned’, then get hypothermia and die.
F Leatherbacks are in imminent danger of extinction. A critical factor is the harvesting
of eggs from nests. Values as a food delicacy, Leatherback eggs are falsely touted to
have aphrodisiacal properties in some cultures. The Leatherback, unlike the Green Sea
turtles, is not often killed for its meat; however, the increase in human populations
coupled with the growing back market trade has escalated their egg depletion. Other
critical factors causing the leatherbacks’ decline are pollution such as plastics –
leatherbacks eat this debris thinking it is jellyfish; fishing practices such as longline
fishing and gill nets, and development on habitat areas. Scientists have estimated that
there only about 35,000 Leatherback turtles in the world.
G We are often unable to understand the critical impact a species has on the environment
–that is, until that species becomes extinct. Even if we do not know the role a creature
plays in the health of the environment, past lessons have taught us enough to know that
every animal and plant is one important link in the integral chain of nature. Some
scientists now speculate that the Leatherback may play an important role in the
recovery of diminishing fish populations. Since the Leatherback consumes its weight
in jellyfish per day, it helps to keep jellyfish populations in check. Jellyfish consume
large quantities of fish larvae. The rapid decline in Leatherback populations over the
last 50 years has been accompanied by a significant increase in jellyfish and a marked
decrease in fish in our oceans. Saving sea turtles is an International endeavor.
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Questions 1-6
Choose the most suitable heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of heading
below.
Write appropriate number (i-x) in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.
List of Headings
i Sea turtles are found in unusual locations
ii Unique features of the Leatherbacks
iii The Leatherback’s contribution
iv Methods used for routes tracking
v Predict the migration routes
vi Remains multiplicity within the species
vii The progress of hatching
viii The fate of the lost turtles
ix How trips suppose to look like?
x Factors leading to population decline
1 Paragraph B
2 Paragraph C
3 Paragraph D
4 Paragraph E
5 Paragraph F
6 Paragraph G
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Questions 7-13
Choose words from the passage to answer the questions 7-13.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
7 How many Leatherback turtles are there in the world?
8 What is the most noticeable difference between other sea turtles and
leatherbacks?
9 What caused leatherback turtles to die in Irish waters?
10 Where did the four turtles probably come from?
11 By which means can sea turtles retrace their migratory paths?
12 For what purpose are Green Sea turtles killed by people?
13 What kind of species will benefit from a decline in Leatherback population?
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READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below.
Desertification
A The world’s great deserts were formed by natural processes interacting over long
intervals of time. During most of these times, deserts have grown and shrunk
independent of human activities. Paleodeserts, large sand seas now inactive because
they are stabilized by vegetation, extend well beyond the present margins of core
deserts, such as the Sahara. In some regions, deserts are separated sharply from
surrounding, less arid areas by mountains and other contrasting landforms that reflect
basic structural differences in the regional geology. In other areas, desert fringes form
a gradual transition from a dry to a more humid environment, making it more difficult
to define the desert border.
B These transition zones have very fragile, delicately balanced ecosystems. Desert
fringes often are a mosaic of microclimates. Small hollows support vegetation that
picks up heat from the hot winds and protects the land from the prevailing winds. After
rainfall the vegetated areas are distinctly cooler than the surroundings. In these
marginal areas, human activity may stress the ecosystem beyond its tolerance limit,
resulting in degradation of the land. By ponding the soil with their hooves, livestock
compact the substrate, increase the proportion of fine material, and reduce the
percolation rate of the soil, thus encouraging erosion by wind and water. Grazing and
the collection of firewood reduces or eliminates plants that help to bind the soil.
C This degradation of formerly productive land – desertification – is a complex process.
It involves multiple causes, and it proceeds at varying rates in different climates.
Desertification may intensify a general climatic trend toward greater aridity, or it may
initiate a change in local climate.
D Desertification does not occur in linear, easily mappable patterns. Deserts advance
erratically, forming patches on their borders. Areas far from natural deserts can
degrade quickly to barren soil, rock, or sand through poor land management. The
presence of a nearly desert has no direct relationship to desertification. Unfortunately,
an area undergoing desertification is brought to public attention only after the process
is well underway. Often little or no data are available to indicate the previous state of
the ecosystem or the rate of degradation. Scientists still question whether
desertification, as a process of global change, is permanent or how and when it can be
halted or reversed.
E Desertification became well known in the 1930’s when part of the Great Plains in the
United States turned into the “Dust Bowl” as a result of drought and poor practices in
farming, although the term itself was not used until almost 1950. During the dust bowl
period, millions of people were forced to abandon their farms and livelihoods. Greatly
improves methods of agriculture and land and water management in the Great Plains
have prevented that disaster from recurring, but desertification presently affects
millions of people in almost every continent. Increased population and livestock
pressure on marginal lands has accelerated desertification. In some areas, nomads
moving to less arid areas disrupt the local ecosystem and increase the rate of erosion of
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the land. Nomads are trying to escape the desert, but because of their land-use
practices, they are bringing the desert with them.
F It is a misconception that drought cause desertification. Droughts are common in arid
and semiarid lands. Well-managed lands can recover from drought when the rains
return. Continued land abuse during droughts, however, increases land degradation. By
1973, the drought that began in 1968 in the Sahel of West Africa and the land-use
practices there had caused the deaths of more than 100,000 people and 12 million
cattle, as well as the disruption of social organizations from villages to the national
level.
G At the local level, individuals and governments can help to reclaim and protect their
lands. In areas of sand dunes, covering the dunes with large boulders or petroleum will
interrupt the wind regime near the face of the dunes and prevent the sand from moving.
Sand fences are used throughout the Middle East and the United States, in the same
way snow fences are used in the north. Placement of straw grids, each up to a square
meter in area, will also decrease the surface wind velocity. Shrubs and trees planted
within the grids are protected by the straw until they take root. In areas where some
water is available for irrigation, shrubs planted on the lower one third of a dune’s
windward side will stabilize the dune. This vegetation decreases the wind velocity near
the base of the dune and prevents much of the sand from moving.
H Oases and farmlands in windy regions can be protected by planting tree fences or grass
belts. Sand that manages to pass through the grass belts can be caught in strips of trees
planted as wind breaks 50 to 100 meters apart adjacent to the belts. Small plots of trees
may also be scattered inside oases to stabilize the area. On a much larger scale, a
“Green Wall”, which will eventually stretch more than 5,700 kilometers in length,
much longer than the famous Great Wall, is being planted in northeastern China to
protect “sandy lands” –deserts believed to have been created by human activity.
I More efficient use of existing water resources and control of salinization are other
effective tools for improving arid lands. New ways are being sought to use surface-
water resources such as rain water harvesting or irrigating with seasonal runoff from
adjacent highlands. Research on the reclamation of deserts also is focusing on
discovering proper crop rotation to protect the fragile soil, on understanding how sand-
fixing plants can be adapted to local environments, and on how grazing lands and
water resources can be developed effectively without being overused.
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Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 contains 9 paragraphs A-I.
Which paragraphs state the following information?
Write the appropriate letters A-I in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
14 Desertification poses a threat to people worldwide.
15 It is difficult to describe the process of desertification.
16 Desertification may alter local climates.
17 People have misconceptions regarding desertification origins.
18 It is hard to notice desertification in its early stages.
19 Straw grids diminish the swiftness of the surface wind.
Questions 20-23
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading
Passage 2?
In boxes 20-23 write
YES if the statement agree with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts with the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.
20 All desert borders are difficult to define.
21 Desertification is a reversible process.
22 Part of the Great Plains did not become a so-called “Dust Bowl” until almost
1950.
23 Nomads cannot get away from the desert because of their current land-use
methods.
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Questions 24-26
Complete the summary below.
Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Tree fences or grass belts planted inside oases can catch sand in the wind and
24 ………………. these areas as well. The “Green Wall” is an example. Water
resource management and prevention of 25 ………………. are also effective in
protecting lands. Scientists are trying to find 26 ………………. to protect the
vulnerable soil.
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READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on
Reading Passage 3 below.
The Ingenuity Gap
Ingenuity, as I define it here, consists not only of ideas for new technologies like computers
or drought-resistant crops but, more fundamentally, of ideas for better institutions and
social arrangements, like efficient markets and competent governments.
How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society requires depends on a range of factors,
including the society’s goals and the circumstances within which it must achieve those
goals—whether it has a young population or an ageing one, an abundance of natural
resources or a scarcity of them, an easy climate or a punishing one, whatever the case may
be.
How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society supplies also depends on many factors,
such as the nature of human inventiveness and understanding, the rewards an economy
gives to the producers of useful knowledge, and the strength of political opposition to
social and institutional reforms.
A good supply of the right kind of ingenuity is essential, but it isn’t, of course, enough by
itself. We know that the creation of wealth, for example, depends not only on an adequate
supply of useful ideas but also on the availability of other, more conventional factors of
production, like capital and labor. Similarly, prosperity, stability and justice usually depend
on the resolution, or at least the containment, of major political struggles over wealth and
power. Yet within our economies ingenuity often supplants labor, and growth in the stock
of physical plant is usually accompanied by growth in the stock of ingenuity. And in our
political systems, we need great ingenuity to set up institutions that successfully manage
struggles over wealth and power. Clearly, our economic and political processes are
intimately entangled with the production and use of ingenuity.
The past century’s countless incremental changes in our societies around the planet, in our
technologies and our interactions with our surrounding natural environments, have
accumulated to create a qualitatively new world. Because these changes have accumulated
slowly, it’s often hard for us to recognize how profound and sweeping they’ve been. They
include far larger and denser populations; much higher per capita consumption of natural
resources; and far better and more widely available technologies for the movement of
people, materials, and especially information.
In combination, these changes have sharply increased the density, intensity, and pace of
our interactions with each other; they have greatly increased the burden we place on our
natural environment; and they have helped shift power from national and international
institutions to individuals in subgroups, such as political special interests and ethnic
factions.
As a result, people in all walks of life—from our political and business leaders to all of us
in our day-to-day—must cope with much more complex, urgent, and often unpredictable
circumstances. The management of our relationship with this new world requires immense
and ever-increasing amounts of social and technical ingenuity. As we strive to maintain or
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increase our prosperity and improve the quality of our lives, we must make far more
sophisticated decisions, and in less time, than ever before.
When we enhance the performance of any system, from our cars to the planet’s network of
financial institutions, we tend to make it more complex. Many of the natural systems
critical to our well-being, like the global climate and the oceans, are extraordinarily
complex, to begin with. We often can’t predict or manage the behavior of complex systems
with much precision, because they are often very sensitive to the smallest of changes and
perturbations, and their behavior can flip from one mode to another suddenly and
dramatically. In general, as the human-made and natural systems, we depend upon
becoming more complex, and as our demands on them increase, the institutions and
technologies we use to manage them must become more complex too, which further boosts
our need for ingenuity.
The good news, though, is that the last century’s stunning changes in our societies and
technologies have not just increased our need for ingenuity; they have also produced a
huge increase in its supply. The growth and urbanization of human populations have
combined with astonishing new communication and transportation technologies to expand
interactions among people and produce larger, more integrated, and more efficient markets.
These changes have, in turn, vastly accelerated the generation and delivery of useful ideas.
But—and this is the critical “but”—we should not jump to the conclusion that the supply of
ingenuity always increases in lockstep with our ingenuity requirement: while it’s true that
necessity is often the mother of invention, we can’t always rely on the right kind of
ingenuity appearing when and where we need it. In many cases, the complexity and speed
of operation of today’s vital economic, social, and ecological systems exceed the human
brain’s grasp. Very few of us have more than a rudimentary understanding of how these
systems work. They remain fraught with countless “unknown unknowns,” which makes it
hard to supply the ingenuity we need to solve problems associated with these systems.
In this book, I explore a wide range of other factors that will limit our ability to supply the
ingenuity required in the coming century. For example, many people believe that new
communication technologies strengthen democracy and will make it easier to find solutions
to our societies’ collective problems, but the story is less clear than it seems. The crush of
information in our everyday lives is shortening our attention span, limiting the time we
have to reflect on critical matters of public policy, and making policy arguments more
superficial.
Modern markets and science are an important part of the story of how we supply ingenuity.
Markets are critically important because they give entrepreneurs an incentive to produce
knowledge. As for science, although it seems to face no theoretical limits, at least in the
foreseeable future, practical constraints often slow its progress. The cost of scientific
research tends to increase as it delves deeper into nature. And science’s rate of advance
depends on the characteristic of the natural phenomena it investigates, simply because
some phenomena are intrinsically harder to understand than others, so the production of
useful new knowledge in these areas can be very slow. Consequently, there is often a
critical time lag between the recognition between a problem and the delivery of sufficient
ingenuity, in the form of technologies, to solve that problem. Progress in the social sciences
is especially slow, for reasons we don’t yet understand; but we desperately need better
social scientific knowledge to build the sophisticated institutions today’s world demands.
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Questions 27-30
Complete each sentence with the appropriate answer, A, B, C, or D.
Write the correct answer in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet
A depends on many factors including climate.
B depends on the management and solution of disputes.
C is not only of technological advance but more of institutional renovation.
D also depends on the availability of some traditional resources.
27 The definition of ingenuity
28 The requirement for ingenuity
29 The creation of social wealth
30 The stability of society
Questions 31-33
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet.
31 What does the author say about the incremental change of the last 100 years?
A It has become a hot scholastic discussion among environmentalists.
B Its significance is often not noticed.
C It has reshaped the natural environments we live in.
D It benefited a much larger population than ever.
32 The combination of changes has made life:
A easier
B faster
C slower
D less sophisticated
33 What does the author say about the natural systems?
A New technologies are being developed to predict change with precision.
B Natural systems are often more sophisticated than other systems.
C Minor alterations may cause natural systems to change dramatically.
D Technological developments have rendered human being more independent of
natural systems.
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Questions 34-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading
Passage 3?
In boxes 34-40 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
34 The demand for ingenuity has been growing during the past 100 years.
35 The ingenuity we have may be inappropriate for solving problems at hand.
36 There are very few who can understand the complex systems of the present
world.
37 More information will help us to make better decisions.
38 The next generation will blame the current government for their conduct.
39 Science tends to develop faster in certain areas than others.
40 Social science develops especially slowly because it is not as important as
natural science.
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TEST 1
READING
19 G
Reading Passage 1, 20 NO
Questions 1-13 21 NOT GIVEN
22 NO
1i 23 YES
2 iv 24 stabilize
3 ix 25 salinization
4 viii 26 proper crop rotation
5x
6 iii Reading Passage 3,
7 35,000 Questions 27-40
8 the bony carapace
9 cold waters / temperature 27 C
10 Florida / America / the North 28 A
American 29 D
11 (detecting) magnetic fields 30 B
12 its meat 31 B
13 jellyfish 32 B
33 C
Reading Passage 2, 34 TRUE
Questions 14-26 35 TRUE
36 TRUE
14 E 37 FALSE
15 D 38 NOT GIVEN
16 C 39 TRUE
17 F 40 FALSE
18 D
If you score…
1-18 19-27 28-40
you are unlikely to get an you may get an acceptable you are likely to get an
acceptable score under score under examination acceptable score under
examination conditions and conditions but we examination conditions
we recommend that you recommend that you think but remember that
spend a lot of time about having more different institutions will
improving your English practice or lessons before find different scores
before you take IELTS. you take IELTS. acceptable.
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