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IELTS READING MOCK TEST

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

Henry Moore (1898-1986)

The British sculptor Henry Moore was a leading figure in the 20th-century
art world
Henry Moore was born in Castleford, a small town near Leeds in the north
of England. He was the seventh child of Raymond Moore and his wife
Mary Baker. He studied at Castleford Grammar School from 1909 to 1915,
where his early interest in art was encouraged by his teacher Alice
Gostick. After leaving school, Moore hoped to become a sculptor, but
instead he complied with his father’s wish that he train as a schoolteacher.
He had to abandon his training in 1917 when he was sent to France to
fight in the First World War.
After the war, Moore enrolled at the Leeds School of Art, where he studied
for two years. In his first year, he spent most of his time drawing.
Although he wanted to study sculpture, no teacher was appointed until his
second year. At the end of that year, he passed the sculpture examination
and was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London. In
September 1921, he moved to London and began three years of advanced
study in sculpture.
Alongside the instruction he received at the Royal College, Moore visited
many of the London museums, particularly the British Museum, which
had a wide-ranging collection of ancient sculpture. During these visits, he
discovered the power and beauty of ancient Egyptian and African
sculpture. As he became increasingly interested in these ‘primitive’ forms
of art, he turned away from European sculptural traditions.
After graduating, Moore spent the first six months of 1925 travelling in
France. When he visited the Trocadero Museum in Paris, he was
impressed by a cast of a Mayan* sculpture of the rain spirit. It was a male
reclining figure with its knees drawn up together, and its head at a right
angle to its body. Moore became fascinated with this stone sculpture,
which he thought had a power and originality that no other stone
sculpture possessed. He himself started carving a variety of subjects in
stone, including depiction of reclining women, mother-and-child groups,
and masks.
Moore’s exceptional talent soon gained recognition, and in 1926 he started
work as a sculpture instructor at the Royal College. In 1933, he became a
member of a group of young artists called Unit One. The aim of the group

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was to convince the English public of the merits of the emerging

international movement in modern art and architecture.
Around this time, Moore moved away from the human figure to
experiment with abstract shapes. In 1931, he held an exhibition at the
Leicester Galleries in London. His work was enthusiastically welcomed by
fellow sculptors, but the reviews in the press were extremely negative and
turned Moore into a notorious figure. There were calls for his resignation
from the Royal College, and the following year, when his contract expired,
he left to start a sculpture department at the Chelsea School of Art in
London.
Throughout the 1930s, Moore did not show any inclination to please the
British public. He became interested in the paintings of the Spanish artist
Pablo Picasso, whose work inspired him to distort the human body in a
radical way. At times, he seemed to abandon the human figure altogether.
The pages of his sketchbooks from this period show his ideas for abstract
sculptures that bore little resemblance to the human form.
In 1940, during the Second World War, Moore stopped teaching at the
Chelsea School and moved to a farmhouse about 20 miles north of London.
A shortage of materials forced him to focus on drawing. He did numerous
small sketches of Londoners, later turning these ideas into large coloured
drawings in his studio. In 1942, he returned to Castleford to make a series
of sketches of the miners who worked there.
In 1944, Harlow, a town near London, offered Moore a commission for a
sculpture depicting a family. The resulting work signifies a dramatic
change in Moore’s style, away from the experimentation of the 1930s
towards a more natural and humanistic subject matter. He did dozens of
studies in clay for the sculpture, and these were cast in bronze and issued
in editions of seven to nine copies each. In this way, Moore’s work became
available to collectors all over the world. The boost to his income enabled
him to take on ambitious projects and start working on the scale he felt
his sculpture demanded.
Critics who had begun to think that Moore had become less revolutionary
were proven wrong by the appearance, in 1950, of the first of Moore’s
series of standing figures in bronze, with their harsh and angular pierced
forms and distinct impression of menace. Moore also varied his subject
matter in the 1950s with such works as Warrior with Shield and Falling
Warrior. These were rare examples of Moore’s use of the male figure and
owe something to his visit to Greece in 1951, when he had the opportunity
to study ancient works of art.
In his final years, Moore created the Henry Moore Foundation to promote
art appreciation and to display his work. Moore was the first modern
English sculptor to achieve international critical acclaim and he is still
regarded as one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century.
___________
*Mayan: belonging to an ancient civilisation that inhabited parts of
current-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras.

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Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading
Passage 1?

In boxes 1-7 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

1
On leaving school, Moore did what his father wanted him to do.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
2
Moore began studying sculpture in his first term at the Leeds School of
Art.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
3
When Moore started at the Royal College of Art, its reputation for
teaching sculpture was excellent.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
4
Moore became aware of ancient sculpture as a result of visiting London
Museums.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
5
The Trocadero Museum’s Mayan sculpture attracted a lot of public
interest.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
6
Moore thought the Mayan sculpture was similar in certain respects to
other stone sculptures.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN

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7
The artists who belonged to Unit One wanted to make modern art and
architecture more popular.
TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

Moore’s career as an artist

1930s

● Moore’s exhibition at the Leicester Galleries is criticised by the press

● Moore is urged to offer his 8………………… and leave the Royal College.

1940s

● Moore turns to drawing because 9…………………. for sculpting are not

readily available

● While visiting his hometown, Moore does some drawings

of 10………………….

● Moore is employed to produce a sculpture of a 11…………………

● 12………………. start to buy Moore’s work

● Moore’s increased 13…………………. makes it possible for him to do

more ambitious sculptures

1950s

● Moore’s series of bronze figures marks a further change in his style

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PASSAGE 2:
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based
on Reading Passage 2 below.

Fossil Files “The Paleobiology Database”

A. Are we now living through the sixth extinction as our own activities
destroy ecosystems and wipe out diversity? That’s the doomsday scenario
painted by many ecologists, and they may well be right. The trouble is we
don’t know for sure because we don’t have a clear picture of how life
changes between extinction events or what has happened in previous
episodes. We don’t even know how many species are alive today, let alone
the rate at which they are becoming extinct. A new project aims to fill
some of the gaps. The Paleobiology Database aspires to be an online
repository of information about every fossil ever dug up. It is a huge
undertaking that has been described as biodiversity’s equivalent of the
Human Genome Project. Its organizers hope that by recording the history
of biodiversity they will gain an insight into how environmental changes
have shaped life on Earth in the past and how they might do so in the
future. The database may even indicate whether life can rebound no
matter what we throw at it, or whether a human induced extinction could
be without parallel, changing the rules that have applied throughout the
rest of the planet’s history.

B. But already the project is attracting harsh criticism. Some experts

believe it to be seriously flawed. They point out that a database is only as
good as the data fed into it, and that even if all the current fossil finds
were catalogued, they would provide an incomplete inventory of life
because we are far from discovering every fossilised species. They say that
researchers should get up from their computers and get back into the dirt
to dig up new fossils. Others are more sceptical still, arguing that we can
never get the full picture because the fossil record is riddled with holes
and biases.

C. Fans of the Paleobiology Database acknowledge that the fossil record

will always be incomplete. But they see value in looking for global
patterns that show relative changes in biodiversity. “The fossil record is
the best tool we have for understanding how diversity and extinction work
in normal times,” says John Alroy from the National Center for Ecological
Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara. “Having a background
extinction estimate gives US a benchmark for understanding the mass
extinction that’s currently under way. It allows us to say just how bad it is
in relative terms.”

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D. To this end, the Paleobiology Database aims to be the most thorough

attempt yet to come up with good global diversity curves. Every day
between 10 and 15 scientists around the world add information about
fossil finds to the database. Since it got up and running in 1998, scientists
have entered almost 340,000 specimens, ranging from plants to whales to
insects to dinosaurs to sea urchins. Overall totals are updated hourly at
www.paleodb.org. Anyone can download data from the public part of the
site and play with the numbers to their heart’s content. Already, the
database has thrown up some surprising results. Looking at the big
picture, Alroy and his colleagues believe they have found evidence that
biodiversity reached a plateau long ago, contrary to the received wisdom
that species numbers have increased continuously between extinction
events. “The traditional view is that diversity has gone up and up and up,”
he says. “Our research is showing that diversity limits were approached
many tens of millions of years before the dinosaurs evolved, much less
suffered extinction.” This suggests that only a certain number of species
can live on Earth at a time, filling a prescribed number of niches like
spaces in a multi-storey car park. Once it’s full, no more new species can
squeeze in, until extinctions free up new spaces or something rare and
catastrophic adds a new floor to the car park.

E. Alroy has also used the database to reassess the accuracy of species
names. His findings suggest that irregularities in classification inflate the
overall number of species in the fossil record by between 32 and 44 per
cent. Single species often end up with several names, he says, due to
misidentification or poor communication between taxonomists in different
countries. Repetition like this can distort diversity curves. “If you have
really bad taxonomy in one short interval, it will look like a diversity
spike—a big diversification followed by a big extinction-when all that has
happened is a change in the quality of names,” says Alroy. For example,
his statistical analysis indicates that of the 4861 North American fossil
mammal species catalogued in the database, between 24 and 31 per cent
will eventually prove to be duplicates.

F. Of course, the fossil record is undeniably patchy. Some places and times
have left behind more fossil-filled rocks than others. Some have been
sampled more thoroughly. And certain kinds of creatures—those with
hard parts that lived in oceans, for example–are more likely to leave a
record behind, while others, like jellyfish, will always remain a mystery.
Alroy has also tried to account for this. He estimates, for example, that
only 41 per cent of North American mammals that have ever lived are
known from fossils, and he suspects that a similar proportion of fossils are
missing from other groups, such as fungi and insects.

G. Not everyone is impressed with such mathematical wizardry.

Jonathan Adrain from the University of Iowa in Iowa City points out that
statistical wrangling has been known to create mass extinctions where

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none occurred. It is easy to misinterpret data. For example, changes in sea

level or inconsistent sampling methods can mimic major changes in
biodiversity. Indeed, a recent and thorough examination of the literature
on marine bivalve fossils has convinced David Jablonsky from the
University of Chicago and his colleagues that their diversity has increased
steadily over the past 5 million years.

H. With an inventory of all living species, ecologists could start to put the
current biodiversity crisis in historical perspective. Although creating such
a list would be a task to rival even the Palaeobiology Database, it is
exactly what the San Francisco-based ALL Species Foundation hopes to
achieve in the next 25 years. The effort is essential, says Harvard biologist
Edward o. Wilson, who is alarmed by current rates of extinction. “There is
a crisis. We’ve begun to measure it, and it’s very high,” Wilson says. “We
need this kind of information in much more detail to protect all of
biodiversity, not just the ones we know well.” Let the counting continue.

The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-F

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-F from the list below.

Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Potential error exists in the database
ii Supporter of database recleared its value
iii The purpose of this paleobiology data
iv Reason why some certain species were not included in it
v Duplication of breed but with different names
vi Achievement of Paleobiology Databasesince
vii Criticism on the project which is waste of fund

14 Paragraph A

15 Paragraph B

16 Paragraph C

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17 Paragraph D

18 Paragraph E

19 Paragraph F

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 20-22 on your answer sheet.

A Jonathan Adrain
B John Alroy
C David Jablonsky
D Edward O. Wilson

20 Creating the Database would help scientist to identify connections of

all species

21 Believed in contribution of detailed statistics should cover beyond the

known species

22 Reached a contradictory finding to the tremendous species die-out

Choose the TWO correct letter following

Write your answers in boxes 10-11 on your answer sheet.

Please choose TWO CORRECT descriptions about the The

Paleobiology Database in this passage:

 A almost all the experts welcome this project

 B intrigues both positive and negative opinions from various
experts
 C all different creature in the database have unique name

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 D aims to embrace all fossil information globally

 E get more information from record rather than the field

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

Write your answers in boxes 25-26 on your answer sheet.

25

According to the passage, jellyfish belongs to which category of The

Paleobiology Database?

 A repetition breed
 B untraceable species
 C specifically detailed species
 D currently living creature

26

What is the author’s suggestion according to the end of passage?

 A continue to complete counting the number of species in the

Paleobiology Database
 B stop contributing The Paleobiology Database
 C try to create a database of living creature
 D study more in the field rather than in the book

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PASSAGE 3:
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based
on Reading Passage 3 below.

Why fairy tales are really scary tales

Some people think that fairy tales are just stories to amuse children, but
their universal and enduring appeal may be due to more serious reasons

People of every culture tell each other fairy tales but the same story often
takes a variety of forms in different parts of the world. In the story of
Little Red Riding Hood that European children are familiar with, a young
girl on the way to see her grandmother meets a wolf and tells him where
she is going. The wolf runs on ahead and disposes of the grandmother,
then gets into bed dressed in the grandmother’s clothes to wait for Little
Red Riding Hood. You may think you know the story – but which version?
In some versions, the wolf swallows up the grandmother, while in others it
locks her in a cupboard. In some stories Red Riding Hood gets the better of
the wolf on her own, while in others a hunter or a woodcutter hears her
cries and comes to her rescue.

The universal appeal of these tales is frequently attributed to the idea

that they contain cautionary messages: in the case of Little Red Riding
Hood, to listen to your mother, and avoid talking to strangers. ‘It might be
what we find interesting about this story is that it’s got this survival-
relevant information in it,’ says anthropologist Jamie Tehrani at Durham
University in the UK. But his research suggests otherwise. ‘We have this
huge gap in our knowledge about the history and prehistory of storytelling,
despite the fact that we know this genre is an incredibly ancient one,’ he
says. That hasn’t stopped anthropologists, folklorists* and other
academics devising theories to explain the importance of fairy tales in
human society. Now Tehrani has found a way to test these ideas,
borrowing a technique from evolutionary biologists.

To work out the evolutionary history, development and relationships

among groups of organisms, biologists compare the characteristics of
living species in a process called ‘phylogenetic analysis’. Tehrani has used
the same approach to compare related versions of fairy tales to discover
how they have evolved and which elements have survived longest.

Tehrani’s analysis focused on Little Red Riding Hood in its many forms,
which include another Western fairy tale known as The Wolf and the Kids.
Checking for variants of these two tales and similar stories from Africa,
East Asia and other regions, he ended up with 58 stories recorded from
oral traditions. Once his phylogenetic analysis had established that they

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were indeed related, he used the same methods to explore how they have
developed and altered over time.

First he tested some assumptions about which aspects of the story alter
least as it evolves, indicating their importance. Folklorists believe that
what happens in a story is more central to the story than the characters in
it – that visiting a relative, only to be met by a scary animal in disguise, is
more fundamental than whether the visitor is a little girl or three siblings,
or the animal is a tiger instead of a wolf.

However, Tehrani found no significant difference in the rate of evolution of

incidents compared with that of characters. ‘Certain episodes are very
stable because they are crucial to the story, but there are lots of other
details that can evolve quite freely,’ he says. Neither did his analysis
support the theory that the central section of a story is the most conserved
part. He found no significant difference in the flexibility of events there
compared with the beginning or the end.

But the really big surprise came when he looked at the cautionary
elements of the story. ‘Studies on hunter-gatherer folk tales suggest that
these narratives include really important information about the
environment and the possible dangers that may be faced there – stuff
that’s relevant to survival,’ he says. Yet in his analysis such elements were
just as flexible as seemingly trivial details. What, then, is important
enough to be reproduced from generation to generation?

The answer, it would appear, is fear – blood-thirsty and gruesome aspects

of the story, such as the eating of the grandmother by the wolf, turned out
to be the best preserved of all. Why are these details retained by
generations of storytellers, when other features are not? Tehrani has an
idea: ‘In an oral context, a story won’t survive because of one great teller.
It also needs to be interesting when it’s told by someone who’s not
necessarily a great storyteller.’ Maybe being swallowed whole by a wolf,
then cut out of its stomach alive is so gripping that it helps the story
remain popular, no matter how badly it’s told.

Jack Zipes at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, is unconvinced by

Tehrani’s views on fairy tales. ‘Even if they’re gruesome, they won’t stick
unless they matter,’ he says. He believes the perennial theme of women as
victims in stories like Little Red Riding Hood explains why they continue
to feel relevant. But Tehrani points out that although this is often the case
in Western versions, it is not always true elsewhere. In Chinese and
Japanese versions, often known as The Tiger Grandmother, the villain is a
woman, and in both Iran and Nigeria, the victim is a boy.

Mathias Clasen at Aarhus University in Denmark isn’t surprised by

Tehrani’s findings. ‘Habits and morals change, but the things that scare

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us, and the fact that we seek out entertainment that’s designed to scare us
– those are constant,’ he says. Clasen believes that scary stories teach us
what it feels like to be afraid without having to experience real danger,
and so build up resistance to negative emotions.

____________

*Folklorists: those who study traditional stories

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.

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

A may be provided through methods used in biological research.

B are the reason for their survival.

C show considerable global variation.

D contain animals which transform to become humans.

E were originally spoken rather than written.

F have been developed without factual basis.

27
In fairy tales, details of the plot.........................................................................

28
Tehrani rejects the idea that the useful lessons for life in fairy tales.............

29
Various theories about the social significance of fairy tales............................

30
Insights into the development of fairy tales.....................................................

31
All the fairy tales analysed by Tehrani.............................................................

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Complete the summary using the list of words, A-I, below.

Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet.

Phylogenetic analysis of Little Red Riding Hood

Tehrani used techniques from evolutionary biology to find out

if 32………………….. existed among 58 stories from around the world. He
also wanted to know which aspects of the stories had
fewest 33…………………., as he believed these aspects would be the most
important ones. Contrary to other beliefs, he found that
some 34……………………. that were included in a story tended to change
over time, and that the middle of a story seemed no more important than
the other parts. He was also surprised that parts of a story which seemed
to provide some sort of 35…………………. were unimportant. The aspect
that he found most important in a story’s survival was 36…………………

A ending B events C warning

D links E records F variations

G horror H people I plot

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

37
What method did Jamie Tehrani use to test his ideas about fairy tales?
A. He compared oral and written forms of the same stories.
B. He looked at many different forms of the same basic story.
C. He looked at unrelated stories from many different countries.
D. He contrasted the development of fairy tales with that of living
creatures.
38
When discussing Tehrani’s views, Jack Zipes suggests that
A. Tehrani ignores key changes in the role of women.
B. stories which are too horrific are not always taken seriously.
C. Tehrani overemphasises the importance of violence in stories.
D. features of stories only survive if they have a deeper significance.

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39
Why does Tehrani refer to Chinese and Japanese fairy tales?
A. to indicate that Jack Zipes’ theory is incorrect
B. to suggest that crime is a global problem
C. to imply that all fairy tales have a similar meaning
D. to add more evidence for Jack Zipes’ ideas
40
What does Mathias Clasen believe about fairy tales?
A. They are a safe way of learning to deal with fear.
B. They are a type of entertainment that some people avoid.
C. They reflect the changing values of our society.
D. They reduce our ability to deal with real-world problems.

THIS IS THE END OF THE TEST,

TRY YOUR BEST, THEN NEVER REGRET. ^^

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