IELTS Recent Actual Test

With Answers Volume 6

Reading Practice Test 5

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

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The Pearl
A The pearl has always had a special status in the rich and powerful all through the history. For
instance, women from ancient Rome went to bed with pearls on them, so that they could
remind themselves how wealthy they were after waking up. Pearls used to have more
commercial value than diamonds until jewellers learnt to cut gems. In the eastern countries like
Persia, ground pearl powders could be used as a medicine to cure anything including heart
diseases and epilepsy.

B Pearls can generally be divided into three categories: natural, cultured and imitation. When an
irritant (such as a grain of sand) gets. inside a certain type of oyster, mussel, or clam, the
mollusc will secrete a fluid as a means of defence to coat the irritant. Gradually, layers are
accumulated around the irritant until a lustrous natural pearl is formed.

C A cultured pearl undergoes the same process. There is only one difference between cultured
pearls and natural ones: in cultured pearls, the irritant is a head called ‘mother of pearl’ and is
placed in the oyster through surgical implantation. This results in much larger cores in cultivated
pearls than those in natural pearls. As long as there are enough layers of nacre (the secreted
fluid covering the irritant) to create a gorgeous, gem-quality pearl; the size of the nucleus
wouldn’t make a difference to beauty or durability.

D Pearls can come from both salt and freshwater sources. Typically, pearls from salt water
usually have high quality, although several freshwater pearls are considered high in quality, too.
In addition, freshwater pearls often have irregular shapes, with a puffed rice appearance.
Nevertheless, it is the individual merits that determine the pearl’s value more than the sources
of pearls. Saltwater pearl oysters are usually cultivated in protected lagoons or volcanic atolls,
while most freshwater cultured pearls sold today come from China. There are a number of
options for producing cultured pearls: use fresh water or sea water shells, transplant the graft
into the mantle or into the gonad, add a spherical bead or do it nonbeaded.

E No matter which method is used to get pearls, the process usually takes several years.
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Mussels must reach a mature age, which may take up almost three years, and then be
transplanted an irritant. When the irritant is put in place, it takes approximately another three
years for a pearl to reach its full size. Sometimes, the irritant may be rejected. As a result, the
pearl may be seriously deformed, or the oyster may directly die from such numerous
complications as diseases. At the end of a 5- to 10-year circle, only half of the oysters may
have made it through. Among the pearls that are actually produced in the end, only about 5%
of them will be high-quality enough for the jewellery makers.

F Imitation pearls are of another different story. The Island of Mallorca in Spain is renowned for
its imitation pearl industry. In most cases, a bead is dipped into a solution made from fish
scales. But this coating is quite thin and often wears off. One way to distinguish the imitation
pearls is to have a bite on it. Fake pearls glide through your teeth, while the layers of nacre on
the real pearls feel gritty.

G Several factors are taken into account to evaluate a pearl: size, shape, Colour, the quality of
surface and luster. Generally, the three types of pearls come in such order (with the value
decreasing): natural pearls, cultured pearls and imitation pearls (which basically are worthless).
For jewellers, one way to tell whether a pearl is natural or cultured is to send it to a gem lab
and perform an X-ray on it. High-quality natural pearls are extremely rare. Japan’s Akoya pearls
are one of the glossiest pearls out there, while the' south sea water of Australia is a cradle to
bigger pearls.

H Historically, the pearls with the highest quality around the globe are found in the Persian
Gulf, particularly around Bahrain. These pearls have to be hand-harvested by divers with no
advanced equipment. Unfortunately, when the large reserve of oil was discovered in the early
1930s, Persian Gulf’s natural pearl industry came to a sudden end because the contaminated
water destroyed the once pristine pearls. In the present days, India probably has the largest
stock of natural pearls. However, it is quite an irony that a large part of India’s slock of natural
pearls are originally from Bahrain.

Questions 1-4
Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs, A-H.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

1 ancient stories around pearls and its customers

2 difficulties in cultivating process

3 factors which decide the value of natural pearls

4 a growth mechanism that distinguishes cultured pearls from

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natural ones

Questions 5-10
Complete the summary below.

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

Write your answers in boxes 5-10 on your answer sheet.

In history, pearls have had great importance within the men of wealth and power, which were
treated as gems for women in 5 . Also, pearls were even used as a medicine for
people in 6 . There are essentially three types of pearls: natural, cultured and
imitation. Most freshwater cultured pearls sold today come from China while 7
Island is famous for its imitation pearl industry. Good-quality natural pearls are exceedingly
unusual.

8 often manufactures some of the glitteriest pearls while 9

produces larger size ones due to the favourable environment along the coastline. In the past,
10 in Persian Gulf produced the world’s best pearls. Nowadays, the major
remaining suppliers of natural pearls belong to India.

Questions 11-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage
1?

In boxes 11-13 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

11
Generally speaking, the centre of cultured pearl is
significantly larger than that of a natural pearl.

12
Sometimes, fake pearls can be more expensive.

13
The size of the pearls produced in Japan is usually smaller
than those in Australia.

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READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27, which are based on Reading Passage
2 below.

The start of the automobile’s history went all the way back to 1769 when automobiles running
on the steam engine were invented as carriers for human transport. In 1806, the first batch of
cars powered by an internal combustion engine came into being, which pioneered the
introduction of the widespread modem petrol-fueled internal combustion engine in 1885.

It is generally acknowledged that the first practical automobiles equipped with petrol/gaso-
line-powered internal combustion engines were invented almost at the same time by different
German inventors who were Working on their own. Karl Benz first built the automobile in 1885
in Mannheim. Benz attained a patent for his invention on 29 January 1886, and in 1888, he
started to produce automobiles in a company that later became the renowned Mercedes-Benz.

As this century began, the automobile industry marched into the transportation market for the
wealth. Drivers at that time were an adventurous bunch; they would go out regardless of the
weather condition even if they weren’t even protected by an enclosed body or a convertible
top. Everybody in the community knew who owned what car, and cars immediately became a
symbol of identity and status. Later, cars became more popular among the public since it
allowed people to travel whenever and wherever they wanted. Thus, the price of automobiles in
Europe and North America kept dropping, and more people from the middle class could afford
them. This was especially attributed to Henry Ford who did two crucial things. First, he set the
price as reasonable as possible for his cars; second, he paid his employees enough salaries so
that they could afford the cars made by their very own hands.

The trend of interchangeable parts and mass production in an assembly line style had been led
by America, and from 1914, this concept was significantly reinforced by Henry Ford. This
large-scale, production-line manufacture of affordable automobiles was debuted. A Ford car
would come off all assembled from the line every 15 minutes, an interval shorter than any of
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the former methods. Not only did it raise productivity, but also cut down on the requirement for
manpower. Ford significantly lowered the chance of injury by carrying out complicated safety
procedures in production—particularly assigning workers to specific locations rather than
giving them the freedom to wander around. This mixture of high wages and high efficiency was
known as Fordism, which provided a valuable lesson for most major industries.

The first Jeep automobile that came out as the prototype Bantam BRC was the primary light 4-
wheel-drive automobile of the U.S. Army and Allies, and during World War II and the postwar
period, its sale skyrocketed. Since then, plenty of Jeep derivatives with similar military and
civilian functions have been created and kept upgraded in terms of overall performance in other
nations.

Through all the 1950s, engine power and automobile rates grew higher, designs evolved into a
more integrated and artful form, and cars were spreading globally. In the 1960s, the landscape
changed as Detroit was confronted with foreign competition. The European manufacturers,
used the latest technology, and Japan came into the picture as a dedicated car-making country.
General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford dabbled with radical tiny cars such as the GM A-bodies
with little success. As joint ventures such as the British Motor Corporation unified the market,
captive imports and badge imports swept all over the US and the UK. BMC first launched a
revolutionary space-friendly Mini in 1959, which turned out to harvest large global sales.
Previously remaining under the Austin and Morris names, Mini later became an individual
marque in 1969. The trend of corporate consolidation landed in Italy when niche makers such
as Maserati, Ferrari, and Lancia were bought by larger enterprises. By the end of the 20th
century, there had been a sharp fall in the number of automobile marques.

In the US, car performance dominated marketing, justified by the typical cases of pony cars and
muscle cars. However, in the 1970s, everything changed as the American automobile industry
suffered from the 1973 oil crisis, competition with Japanese and European imports, automobile
emission-control regulations* and moribund innovation. The irony in all this was that full-size
sedans such as Cadillac and Lincoln scored a huge comeback between the years of economic
crisis.

In terms of technology, the most mentionable developments that postwar era had seen were
the widespread use of independent suspensions, broader application of fuel injection, and a
growing emphasis on safety in automobile design. Mazda achieved many triumphs with its
engine firstly installed in the fore-wheel, though it gained itself a reputation as a gas-guzzler.

The modem era also has witnessed a sharp elevation of fuel power in the modem engine
management system with the. help of the computer. Nowadays, most automobiles in use are
powered by an internal combustion engine, fueled by gasoline or diesel. Toxic gas from both
fuels is known to pollute the air and is responsible for climate change as well as global
warming.

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Questions 14-19
Look at the following descriptions (Questions 14-19) and the list of automobile
brands below.

Match each description with the correct automobile brand, A-G.

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of Automobile Brands

A Ford

B the BMC Mini

C Cadillac and Lincoln

D Mercedes Benz

E Mazda

F Jeep

G Maserati, Ferrari, and Lancia

14
began producing the first automobiles

15
produced the industrialised cars that common consumers
could afford

16
improved the utilisation rate of automobile space

17
upgraded the overall performance of the car continuously

18
maintained leading growth even during an economic recession

19
installed its engine on the front wheel for the first time

Questions 20-26
Answer the questions below.

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

Write your answers in boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet.

What is the important feature owned by the modem engine since the 19th century?

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20

What did a car symbolise to the rich at the very beginning of this century?

21

How long did Ford assembly line take to produce a car?

22

What is the major historical event that led American cars to suffer when competing
with Japanese imported cars?

23

What do people call the Mazda car which was designed under the front-
wheel engine?

24

What has greatly increased with the computerised engine management systems in
modem society?

25

What factor is blamed for contributing to pollution, climate change and

global warming?

26

Question 27
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in box 27 on your answer sheet.

27 What is the main idea of the passage?

A The influence of the cars on the environment

B The historical development and innovation in car designs

C The beginning of the modem designed gasoline engines

D The history of human and the Auto industry

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READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-40, which are based, on Reading
Passage 3 below.

Elephant Communication
O’ Connell-Rodwell, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, has travelled to Namibia’s
rst-ever wildlife reserve to explore the mystical and complicated realm of elephant
communication. She, along with her colleagues, is part of a scienti c revolution that started
almost 20 years ago. This revolution has made a stunning revelation: elephants are capable of
communicating with each other over long distances with low-frequency sounds, also known as
infrasounds, which are too deep for humans to hear.

As might be expected, African elephants able to detect seismic sound may have something to
do with their ears. The hammer bone in an elephant’s inner ear is proportionally huge for a
mammal, but it is rather normal for animals that use vibrational signals. Thus, it may be a sign
that suggests elephants can use seismic sounds to communicate.

Other aspects of elephant anatomy also support that ability. First, their massive bodies, which
enable them to give out low-frequency sounds almost as powerful as the sound a jet makes
during takeoff, serve as ideal frames for receiving ground vibrations and transmitting them to
the inner ear. Second, the elephant’s toe bones are set on a fatty pad, which might be of help
when focusing vibrations from the ground into the bone. Finally, the elephant has an enormous
brain that sits in the cranial cavity behind the eyes in line with the auditory canal. The front of
the skull is riddled with sinus cavities, which might function as resonating chambers for ground
vibrations.

It remains unclear how the elephants detect such vibrations, but O’ Connell-Rodwell raises a
point that the pachyderms are ‘listening’ with their trunks and feet instead of their ears. The
elephant trunk may just be the most versatile appendage in nature. Its utilization encompasses
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drinking, bathing, smelling, feeding and scratching. Both trunk and feet contain two types of
nerve endings that are sensitive to pressure – one detects infrasonic vibration, and another
responds to vibrations higher in frequencies. As O’ Connell-Rodwell sees, this research has a
boundless and unpredictable future. ‘Our work is really interfaced of geophysics,
neurophysiology and ecology,’ she says. ‘We’re raising questions that have never even been
considered before.’

It has been well-known to scientists that seismic communication is widely observed among
small animals, such as spiders, scorpions, insects and quite a lot of vertebrate species like
white-lipped frogs, blind mole rats, kangaroo rats and golden moles. Nevertheless, O’Connell-
Rodwell rst argued that a giant land animal is also sending and receiving seismic signals. ‘I
used to lay a male planthopper on a stem and replay the calling sound of a female, and then the
male one would exhibit the same kind of behaviour that happens in elephants—he would
freeze, then press down on his legs, move forward a little, then stay still again. I nd it so
fascinating, and it got me thinking that perhaps auditory communication is not the only thing
that is going on.’

Scientists have con rmed that an elephant’s capacity to communicate over long distance is
essential for survival, especially in places like Etosha, where more than 2,400 savanna
elephants range over a land bigger than New Jersey. It is already dif cult for an elephant to nd
a mate in such a vast wild land, and the elephant reproductive biology only complicates it.
Breeding herds also adopt low-frequency sounds to send alerts regarding predators. Even
though grown-up elephants have no enemies else than human beings, baby elephants are
vulnerable and are susceptible to lions and hyenas attack. At the sight of a predator, older ones
in the herd will clump together to form protection before running away.

We now know that elephants can respond to warning calls in the air, but can they detect
signals transmitted solely through the ground? To look into that matter, the research team
designed an experiment in 2002, which used electronic devices that enabled them to give out
signals through the ground at Mushara. ‘The outcomes of our 2002 study revealed that
elephants could indeed sense warning signals through the ground,’ O’Connell-Rodwell
observes.

Last year, an experiment was set up in the hope of solving that problem. It used three different
recordings—the 1994 warning call from Mushara, an anti-predator call recorded by scientist
Joyce Poole in Kenya and a made-up warble tone. ‘The data I’ve observed to this point implies
that the elephants were responding the way I always expected. However, the fascinating
nding is that the anti-predator call from Kenya, which is unfamiliar to them, caused them to
gather around, tense up and rumble aggressively as well—but they didn’t always ee. I didn’t
expect the results to be that clear-cut.’

Questions 28-31
Label the diagram below.
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Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 28-31 on your answer sheet.

28

29

30

31

Questions 32-38
Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 32-38 on your answer sheet.

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How the elephants sense these sound vibrations is still unknown, but O’Connell-Rodwell, a
postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, proposes that elephants are ‘listening’ with
their 32 by two kinds of nerve endings that respond to vibrations with both
33 frequency and slightly higher frequencies. O’Connell-Rodwell's work is at the
combination of geophysics, neurophysiology and 34 . It was known that seismic
communication existed extensively within small animals, but O’Connell-Rodwell was the first
person to indicate that a large land animal would send and receive 35 too. Also,
he noticed the freezing behaviour by putting a male planthopper on a stem and play back a
female call, which might prove the existence of other communicative approaches besides
36 . Scientists have determined that an elephant’s ability to communicate
over long distances is essential, especially, when elephant herds are finding a 37 ,
or are warning of predators. Finally, the results of our 2002 study showed us that elephants
could detect warning calls through the 38

Questions 39-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D

Write the correct letter in boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet.

39 According to the passage, it is determined that an elephant needs to

communicate over long distances for its survival

A when a threatening predator appears.

B when young elephants meet humans.

C when older members of the herd want to flee from the group.

D when a male elephant is in estrus.

40 What is the author’s attitude toward the experiment by using three

different recordings in the last paragraph?

A The outcome is definitely out of the original expectation.

B The data cannot be very clearly obtained.

C The result can be somewhat undecided or inaccurate.

D The result can be unfamiliar to the public.

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 Solution:

1 A 2 E

3 G 4 C

5 ancient Rome 6 Persia

7 Mallorca 8 Japan

9 Australia 10 Bahrain

11 TRUE 12 NOT GIVEN

13 TRUE 14 D

15 A 16 B

17 F 18 C

19 E 20 petrol-fueled internal combustion

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 21 identity and status 22 15 minutes

23 1973 oil crisis 24 (a) gas-guzzler

25 fuel power 26 toxic gas

27 B 28 hammer

29 massive 30 pad

31 sinus cavities 32 trunks and feet

33 infrasonic/low 34 ecology

35 seismic signals 36 auditory communication

37 mate 38 ground

39 A 40 C

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