READING: LESSON 4

DẠNG 6: MATCHING FEATURES:

Exercise 1:

The man who tried to destroy Paris

Le Corbusier was one of the most influential architects of the 20th century. But many may
wish he had never built anything
Born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in Switzerland in 1887, the architect Le Corbusier used his
grandfather's name when he went to Paris at the age of 29. As Jeanneret, he had been a fairly
successful small-town architect; as Le Corbusier, he had bigger ideas. He disliked the
architectural styles that were popular at the time, and considered them to be out of date in an
industrial age. He believed that the 20th century deserved a brand-new style of architecture.
"We must start again from zero," he said.
The new style of architecture was called the International Style, and it attracted many
followers in the architectural world. However, nobody was as enthusiastic about it as Le
Corbusier at the beginning. He worked hard to promote his ideas at exhibitions, at talks, in
books and in his own magazine. He loved machines, and believed that, like a machine, a
building should have a function. He is famous for saying: "A house is a machine for living
in."
The machines he admired the most were ships, and his early buildings tried to capture the
spirit of the sea with their white walls, exposed rooms, shining glass and flat roofs. He called
this style of architecture 'purism'. The first building to embrace this style was the Villa
Savoye in France. Le Corbusier believed that it was one of the best, most functional houses
ever built. Unfortunately, this turned out to be an exaggeration. The flat roof was a
particular problem, as water poured in every time it rained, and it needed constant repairs.
Nevertheless, its design was revolutionary, and it should be considered a significant piece of
early 20th-century architecture.
In 1935, Le Corbusier visited New York City. He loved the city, and especially its tall
buildings. He had only one reservation, which he explained to a journalist for the Herald
Tribune newspaper. American skyscrapers were the biggest, tallest buildings in the world at
that time, but Le Corbusier was a man who always thought big, and as far as he was
concerned, they were "just too small". Le Corbusier had always admired tall buildings. Now,
inspired by his visit, he abandoned purism. It is doubtful that he could have created anything
as grand as the skyscrapers he had seen in the city, but from now on Le Corbusier started
designing buildings that sent out a more powerful message.
He first started using bright colours, and then experimented with concrete. Le Corbusier
loved the look and flexibility of concrete, and found it hard to hide it behind brick or paint,
preferring to leave it on full view. At a time when concrete was seen as modern and exciting,
his designs made him world famous, and he was asked to design several important buildings
around the world. Altogether, he designed about 60 major buildings worldwide, in a style that
became known as 'modernism'.
However, while many admired and copied his new style of architecture, many more hated it.
They turned against him, and tried to block his plans. Buildings should inspire people and
make them feel good, they said, and Le Corbusier's ugly, depressing buildings often had the
opposite effect. In this respect, the people of Paris had a lucky escape. Early in his career, Le
Corbusier had wanted to knock down the centre of Paris and replace the old buildings with
huge towers. Fortunately, his plan was rejected. Justifiably, in view of his plans to transform
one of the world's most beautiful cities into a hideous concrete jungle, Le Corbusier is still
known as 'the man who tried to destroy Paris'.
Despite the criticism, he had an enormous effect on the world of architecture, and attracted
a large number of followers. As a result, many places were subjected to his style. In the Paris
suburbs of Bobigny, for example, huge towers were built to house some of the city's poorer
inhabitants. Other European cities such as London, Berlin and Dublin also felt his influence.
Apart from the buildings that were directly influenced by Le Corbusier, something else
happened that the architect never planned: there was a return to older styles of architecture.
Today, many people live in modern houses that look like they are much older. This look may
represent a return to traditional tastes and values. More likely, however, it represents a
reaction against modernist architecture.
Source: IELTS Complete Band 4-5

Questions 5-8: Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F below
5. Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye A. copied the style that he had invented
6. The concrete in Le Corbusier’s later B. is a classic example of modernist
buildings architecture
7. Le Corbusier’s style of architecture C. made him friends and enemies
8. Le Corbusier had a large following which D. was not as good as he claimed
E. was covered in bright colours
F. was left exposed so that people could see
it

Exercise 2:

Fashion and Design

An astonishingly intricate project is being undertaken to restore a legendary theatrical dress,
Angela Wintle explains.
On December 28th, 1888, the curtain rose on a daring new stage revival of
Shakespeare's Macbeth at the Lyceum Theatre in London. Topping the bill, playing
Lady Macbeth, a main character in the play, was Ellen Terry. She was the greatest
and most adored English actress of the age. But she didn't achieve this devotion
through her acting ability alone. She knew the power of presentation and carefully
cultivated her image. That first night was no exception. When she walked on stage for
the famous banqueting scene, her appearance drew a collective gasp from the
audience. She was dressed in the most extraordinary clothes ever to have graced a
British stage: a long, emerald and sea-green gown with tapering sleeves, surmounted
by a velvet cloak, which glistened and sparkled eerily in the limelight. Yet this was no
mere stage trickery. The effect had been achieved using hundreds of wings from
beetles. The gown - later named the 'Beetlewing dress' - became one of the most
iconic and celebrated costumes of the age. Terry was every bit as remarkable as her
costumes. At 31, she became a leading lady at the Lyceum Theatre and for two
decades, she set about bringing culture to the masses. The productions she worked on
were extravagant and daring. Shakespeare's plays were staged alongside
blood-and-thunder melodramas and their texts were ruthlessly cut. Some people were
critical, but they missed the point. The innovations sold tickets and brought new
audiences to see masterpieces that they would never otherwise have seen. However, it
was a painter who immortalised her. John Singer Sargent had been so struck by
Terry's appearance at that first performance that he asked her to model for him, and
his famous portrait of 1889, now at the Tate Gallery in London, showed her with a
glint in her eye, holding a crown over her flame-red hair. But while the painting
remains almost as fresh as the day it was painted, the years have not been so kind to
the dress. Its delicate structure, combined with the cumulative effects of time, has
meant it is now in an extremely fragile @ UnitS condition. Thus, two years ago, a
fundraising project was launched by Britain's National Trust 1 to pay for its
conservation. It turned to textile conservator Zenzie Tinker to do the job. Zenzie loves
historical dress because of the link with the past. 'Working on costumes like the
Beetlewing dress gives you a real sense of the people who wore them; you can see the sweat
stains and wear marks. But it's quite unusual to know who actually wore a garment.
That's the thing that makes the Beetlewing project so special.' Before any of Zenzie's
conservation work can begin, she and her team will conduct a thorough investigation to help
determine what changes have been made to the dress and when. This will involve close
examination of the dress for signs of damage and wear, and will be aided by comparing it
with John Singer Sargent's painting and contemporary photographs. Then Zenzie and the
National Trust will decide how far back to take the reconstruction, as some members feel that
even the most recent changes are now part of the history of the dress. The first stages in the
actual restoration will involve delicate surface cleaning, using a small vacuum suction
device. Once the level of reconstruction has been determined, the original crocheted z
overdress will be stitched onto a dyed net support before repairs begin. 'It's going to be
extraordinarily difficult, because the original cloth is quite stretchy, so we've deliberately
chosen net because that has a certain amount of flexibility in it too,' says Zenzie. When the
dress is displayed, none of our work will be noticeable, but we'll retain all the evidence on
the reverse so that future experts will be able to see exactly what we've done - and I'll
produce a detailed report.' Zenzie has estimated that the project, costing about £30,000, will
require more than 700 hours' work. 'It will be a huge undertaking and I don't think the Trust
has ever spent quite as much on a costume before,' she says. 'But this dress is unique. It's
very unusual to see this level of workmanship on a theatrical costume, and it must have
looked spectacular on stage.' If Terry was alive today, there's no doubt she would be
delighted. Unlike many other actresses, she valued her costumes because she kept and
reused them time and time again. 'I'd like to think she'd see our contribution as part of the
ongoing history of the dress,' says Zenzie.
1. A conservation organisation whose work includes the funding of projects designed to
protect and preserve Britain's cultural heritage
2. Produced using wool and a special needle with a hook at the end
adapted from Sussex Life magazine
Source: IELTS Complete Band 5.5-6.5

Questions 1-4: Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.
1. Pictures will be used A. to show how the team did the repairs on the dress.
2. A special machine will be used B. to reduce the time taken to repair the dress.
3. A net material has been selected C. to remove the dirt from the top layer of the dress.
4. Work will be visible on one side D. to demonstrate the quality of the team's work on the dress.
E. to match a quality of the original fabric used in the dress.
F. to help show where the dress needs repair work.

Exercise 3:
Scientific Management in the workplace

The car and computer manufacturing plants, the work environments we go to every day;
the hospitals we are treated in, and even some of the restaurants we might at in all function
more efficiently due to the application of methods that come from Scientific Management.
In fact, these methods of working seem so commonplace and so logical to a citizen of the
modem world that it is almost impossible to accept that they were revolutionary only 100
years ago. Scientific Management was developed in the first quarter of the 20th century;
its father is commonly accepted to be F.W. Taylor. Taylor recognized labor productivity
was largely inefficient due to a workforce that functioned by "rules of thumb." Taylor
carried out studies to ensure that factual scientific knowledge would replace these
traditional "rules of thumb." The backbone of this activity was his "time-and-motion
study." This involved analyzing all the operations and the motions performed in a factory,
and timing them with a stopwatch. By knowing how long it took to perform each of the
elements of each job, he believed it would be possible to determine a fair day's work.
Work, he contended, was more efficient when broken down into its constituent parts, and
the management, planning, and decision-making functions had been developed elsewhere.
As this implies, Taylor viewed the majority of workers as ill-educated and unfit to make
important decisions about their work. Taylor's system ensured the most efficient way
would be used by all workers, therefore making the work process standard. Intariably,
managers found that maximal efficiency was achieved by a subdivision of labor. This
subdivision entailed breaking the workers' tasks into smaller and smaller parts. In short,
he specified not only what was to be done, but also how it was to be done and the exact time
allowed for doing it. One theory based on the Scientific Management model is Fordism.
This theory refers to the application of Henry Ford's faith in mass production- in his case,
of cars- and combined the idea of the moving assembly line with Taylor's systems of
division of labor and piece-rate payment. With Fordism, jobs are automated or broken
down into unskilled or semi-skilled tasks. The pace of the continuous-flow assembly line
dictated work. But Ford's theory retained the faults of Taylor's. Autocratic management
ensured a high division of labor in order to effectively run mass production; this led to
little workplace democracy, and alienation. Equally, with emphasis on the continuous flow
of the assembly line, machinery was given more importance than workers. The benefits of
Scientific Management lie within its ability provide a company with the focus to organize
its structure in order to meet the objectives of both the employer and employee. Taylor found
that the firms that introduced Scientific Management became the world's most
carefully organized corporations. Scientific Management, however, has been criticized for
"deskilling" labor. As jobs are broken down into their constituent elements, humans
become little more than "machines" in the chain. Their cognitive input is not required: it
is best if they do not have to think about their tasks. Yet the average intelligence of
employees has risen sharply; people have been made aware of their value as human
beings. They are no longer content to receive only financial reward for their tasks. It has
been recognized that productivity and success are not just obtained by controlling all
factors in the workplace, but by contributing to the social well-being and development of
the individual employee.
Higher levels of access to technology and information, as well as increased competition,
present another difficulty to theory of Scientific Management in the 21st century. Modem
organizations process huge amounts of input, and employees no longer work in isolated
units cut off from the organization at large. Managers recognize they are unable to control
all aspects of employees' functions, as the number layers of information factored into
everyday decisions is so high that it is imperative employees use their own initiative. High
competition between organizations also means that companies must react fast to maintain
market positions. All this forces modem companies to maintain high levels of flexibility. In
the era during which Scientific Management was developed, each worker had a specific
task that he or she had to perform, with little or no real explanation of why, or what part it
played in the organization as a whole. In this day and age, it is virtually impossible to find
an employee in the developed world who is not aware of nhat his or her organization
stands for, what their business strategy is, how well the company is performing, and what
their job means to the company as a whole. Organizations actively encourage employees,
know about their company and to work across departments, ensuring that communication
at all levels is mixed and informal.
Another weakness in Scientific Management theory is that it can lead to workers becoming
too highly specialized, therefore hindering their adaptability to new situations. Nowadays,
employers not only want workers to be efficient, they must also exhibit flexibility. In
conclusion, it can be seen that Scientific Management is still very much part of
organizations today. Its strengths in creating a divide between management functions and
work functions have been employed widely at all levels and in all industries. In addition,
its strengths in making organizations efficient through replacement of "rules of thumb"
with scientific fact ensured its widespread application.
Another weakness in Scientific Management theory is that it can lead to workers becoming
too highly specialized, therefore hindering their adaptability to new situations. Nowadays,
employers not only want workers to be efficient, they must also exhibit flexibility. In
conclusion, it can be seen that Scientific Management is still very much part of
organizations today. Its strengths in creating a divide between management functions and
work functions have been employed widely at all levels and in all industries. In addition,
its strengths in making organizations efficient through replacement of "rules of thumb"
with scientific fact ensured its widespread application.
adapted [ram www.articlecity.com]
Source: IELTS Advantage – Reading Skills

Questions 1-6:
Complete each sentence with the correct ending A- H.
According to the article:
1. Productivity A. meant a job was reduced to a number of basic elements.
2. Time-and-motion analysis B. was considered undesirable in the role of the workers.
3. Decision-making C. became specialized in certain unchanging work routines.
4. Subdivision of labour D. measured the exact time it took to do each part of a job.
5. Fordism E. carefully calculated what was required for the
6. A worker success of a business.
F. was an application of a theory to mass production.
G. took a critical view of the style of management.
H. suffered as a result of established inefficient practices.

Exercise 4:

The new way to be a fifth grader

I peer over his shoulder at his laptop screen to see the math problem the fifth-grader is
pondering. It's a trigonometry problem. Carpenter, a serious-feced ten-year-old, pauses
for a second, fidgets, then clicks on ”0 degrees." The computer tells him that he's correct.
"It took a while for me to work it out," he admits sheepishly. The software then generates
another problem, followed by another, until eventually he's done ten in a row.
Last November, his teacher, Kami Thordarson, began using Khan Academy in her class. It
is an educational website on which students can watch some 2,400 videos. The videos are
anything but sophisticated. At seven to 14 minutes long, they consist of a voiceover by the
site's founder, Salman Khan, chattily describing a mathematical concept or explaining
how to solve a problem, while his hand-scribbled formulas and diagrams appear
on-screen. As a student, you can review a video as many times as you want, scrolling back
several times over puzzling parts and fast-forwarding through the boring bits you already
know. Once you've mastered a video, you can move on to the next one.
Initially, Thordarson thought Khan Academy would merely be a helpful supplement to her
normal instruction. But it quickly became far more than that. She is now on her way to
"flipping" the way her class works. This involves replacing some of her lectures with
Khan's videos, which students can watch at home. Then in class, they focus on working on
the problem areas together. The idea is to invert the normal rhythms of school, so that
lectures are viewed in the children's own time and homework is done at school. It sounds
weird, Thordarson admits, but this reversal makes sense when you think about it. It is when
they are doing homework that students are really grappling with a subject and are most
likely to want someone to talk to. And Khan Academy provides teachers with a dashboard
application that lets them see the instant a student gets stuck.
For years, teachers like Thordarson have complained about the frustrations of teaching to
the "middle" of the class. They stand at the whiteboard trying to get 25 or more students to
learn at the same pace. Advanced students get bored and tune out, lagging ones get lost
and tune out, and pretty soon half the class is not paying attention. Since the rise of
personal computers in the 1980s, educators have hoped that technology could save the day
by offering lessons tailored to each child. Schools have spent millions of dollars on
sophisticated classroom technology, but the effort has been in vain. The one-to-one instruction
it requires is, after all, prohibitively expensive. What country can afford such a
luxury?
Khan never intended to overhaul the school curricula and he doesn't have a consistent,
comprehensive plan for doing so. Nevertheless, some of his fans believe that he has
stumbled onto the solution to education's middle-of-the-class mediocrity. Most notable
among them is Bill Gates, whose foundation has invested $1.5 million in Khan's site.
Students have pointed out that Khan is particularly good at explaining all the hidden,
small steps in math problems—steps that teachers often gloss over. He has an uncanny
ability to inhabit the mind of someone who doesn't already understand something.
However, not all educators are enamoured with Khan and his site. Gary Stager, a
long-time educational consultant and advocate of laptops in classrooms,, thinks Khan
Academy is not innovative at all. The videos and software modules, he contends, are just a
high-tech version of the outdated teaching techniques—lecturing and drilling. Schools
have become "joyless test-prep factories," he says, and Khan Academy caters to this
dismal trend.
As Sylvia Martinez, president of an organization focusing on technology in the classroom,
puts it, "The things they're doing are really just rote." Flipping the classroom isn't an
entirely new idea, Martinez says, and she doubts that it would work for the majority of
pupils: "I'm sorry, but if they can't understand the lecture in a classroom, they're not
going to grasp it better when it's done through a video at home."
Another limitation of Khan's site is that the drilling software can only handle questions
where the answers are unambiguously right or wrong, like math or chemistry; Khan has
relatively few videos on messier, grey-area subjects like history. Khan and Gates admit
there is no easy way to automate the teaching of writing—even though it is just as critical
as math.
Even if Khan is truly liberating students to advance at their own pace, it is not clear that
schools will be able to cope. The very concept of grade levels implies groups of students
moving along together at an even pace. So what happens when, using Khan Academy, you
wind up with a ten-year- old who has already mastered high-school physics? Khan's
programmer, Ben Kamens, has heard from teachers who have seen Khan Academy
presentations and loved the idea but wondered whether they could modify it "to stop
students from becoming this advanced."
Khan's success has injected him into the heated wars over school reform. Reformers today,
by and large, believe student success should be carefully tested, with teachers and
principals receiving better pay if their students advance more quickly. In essence, Khan
doesn't want to change the way institutions teach; he wants to change how people learn,
whether they're in a private school or a public school—or for that matter, whether they're
a student or an adult trying to self-educate in Ohio, Brazil, Russia, or India. One member
of Khan's staff is spearheading a drive to translate the videos into ten major languages.
It's classic start-up logic: do something novel, do it with speed, and the people who love it
will find you.
Adapted from Wired Magazine
Source: IELTS Complete Band 6.5-7.5

Questions 1-4:
1. Bill Gates thinks Khan A. is only suited to subjects where questions have exact
Academy answers.
2. According to Gary B. can teach both the strongest and the weakest pupils in
Stager. Khan Academy a class.
3. Sylvia Martinez regrets C. means the teaching of other school subjects will have
that Khan Academy to be changed.
4. Ben Kamens has been D. only prepares students to pass exams.
told that Khan Academy E. could cause student achievement to improve too
quickly.
F. requires all students to own the necessary
technology.
G. is unlikely to have a successful outcome for most
students.

Exercise 5:
Mind readers

It may one day be possible to eavesdrop on another person’s inner voice.

As you begin to read this article and your eyes follow the words across the page, you may
be aware of a voice in your head silently muttering along. The very same thing happens
when we write: a private, internal narrative shapes the words before we commit them to
text.

What if it were possible to tap into this inner voice? Thinking of words does, after all.
create characteristic electrical signals in our brains, and decoding them could make it
possible to piece together someone’s thoughts. Such an ability would have phenomenal
prospects, not least for people unable to communicate as a result of brain damage. But it
would also carry profoundly worrisome implications for the future of privacy.
The first scribbled records of electrical activity in the human brain were made in 1924 by
a German doctor called Hans Berger using his new invention - the electroencephalogram
(EEG). This uses electrodes placed on the skull to read the output of the brain's billions of
nerve cells or neurons. By the mid-1990s, the ability to translate the brain's activity into
readable signals had advanced so far that people could move computer cursors using only
the electrical fields created by their thoughts.
The electrical impulses such innovations tap into are produced in a part of the brain called
the motor cortex, which is responsible for muscle movement. To move a cursor on a screen,
you do not think 'move left’ in natural language. Instead, you imagine a specific motion
like hitting a ball with a tennis racket. Training the machine to realise which electrical
signals correspond to your imagined movements, however, is time consuming and difficult.
And while this method works well for directing objects on a screen, its drawbacks become
apparent when you try using it to communicate. At best, you can use the cursor to select
letters displayed on an on-screen keyboard. Even a practised mind would be lucky to write
15 words per minute with that approach. Speaking, we can manage 150.
Matching the speed at which we can think and talk would lead to devices that could
instantly translate the electrical signals of someone’s inner voice into sound produced by
a speech synthesiser. To do this, it is necessary to focus only on the signals coming from
the brain areas that govern speech. However, real mind reading requires some way to
intercept those signals before they hit the motor cortex.
The translation of thoughts to language in the brain is an incredibly complex and largely
mysterious process, but this much is known: before they end up in the motor cortex,
thoughts destined to become spoken words pass through two ‘staging areas’ associated
with the perception and expression of speech.
The first is called Wernicke’s area, which deals with semantics - in this case, ideas based
in meaning, which can include images, smells or emotional memories. Damage to
Wernicke’s area can result in the loss of semantic associations: words can’t make sense
when they are decoupled from their meaning. Suffer a stroke in that region, for example,
and you will have trouble understanding not just what others are telling you, but what you
yourself are thinking.
The second is called Broca’s area, agreed to be the brain’s speech-processing centre.
Here, semantics are translated into phonetics and. ultimately, word components. From
here, the assembled sentences take a quick trip to the motor cortex, which activates the
muscles that will turn the desired words into speech.
Injure Broca’s area, and though you might know what you want to say. you just can’t send
those impulses.
When you listen to your inner voice, two things are happening. You ‘hear’ yourself
producing language in Wernicke’s area as you construct it in Broca’s area. The key to
mind reading seems to lie in these two areas.
The work of Bradley Greger in 2010 broke new ground by marking the first-ever excursion
beyond the motor cortex into the brain’s language centres. His team used electrodes
placed inside the skull to detect the electrical signatures of whole words, such as 'yes’,
’no’, ’hot’, ‘cold’, 'thirsty', ‘hungry’, etc. Promising as it is. this approach requires a new
signal to be learned for each new word. English contains a quarter of a million distinct
words. And though this was the first instance of monitoring Wernicke’s area, it still relied
largely on the facial motor cortex.
Greger decided there might be another way. The building blocks of language are called
phonemes, and the English language has about 40 of them - the ‘kuh’ sound in ‘school’, for
example the ’$h' in ‘shy’. Every English word contains some subset of these components.
Decode the brain signals that correspond to the phonemes, and you would have a system
to unlock any word at the moment someone thinks it.
In 2011, Eric Leuthardt and his colleague Gerwin Schalk positioned electrodes over the
language regions of four fully conscious people and were able to detect the phonemes ’oo’,
‘ah’, ‘eh’ and ‘ee’. What they also discovered was that spoken phonemes activated both the
language areas and the motor cortex, while imagined speech - that inner voice - boosted
the activity of neurons in Wernike’s area. Leuthardt had effectively read his subjects'
minds. ‘I would call it brain reading,’ he says. To arrive at whole words. Leuthardt’s next
step is to expand his library of sounds and to find out how the production of phonemes
translates across different languages.
For now. the research is primarily aimed at improving the lives of people with locked-in
syndrome, but the ability to explore the brain’s language centres could revolutionise other
fields. The consequences of these findings could ripple out to more general audiences who
might like to use extreme hands-free mobile communication technologies that can be
manipulated by inner voice alone. For linguists, it could provide previously unobtainable
insight into the neural origins and structures of language. Knowing what someone is
thinking without needing words at all would be functionally indistinguishable from
telepathy.
Source: IELTS Complete Band 6.5-7.5

Questions 1-4: Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G.
1. In Wernicke’s area, our thoughts
A. receive impulses from the motor cortex.
2. It is only in Broca’s area that ideas we
B. pass directly to the motor cortex.
wish to express C. are processed into language.
3. The muscles that articulate our sentences
D. require a listener.
4. The words and sentences that we speak
E. consist of decoded phonemes.
F. are largely non-verbal.
G match the sounds that they make.
DẠNG 7: SHORT ANSWERED QUESTIONS:
Exercise 1:

Sylvia Earle, underwater hero

She has spent her working life studying the world's oceans

Sylvia Earle is an underwater explorer and marine biologist who was born in the USA in
1935. She became interested in the world’s oceans from an early age. As a child, she liked to
stand on the beach for hours and - look at the sea, wondering what it must be like under the
surface.
When she was 16, she finally got a chance to make her first dive. It was this dive that inspired
her to become an underwater explorer. Since then, she has spent more than 6,500 hours
under water, and hạs led more than seventy expeditions worldwide. She has also made the -
deepest dive ever, reaching a record-breaking depth of 381 metres.
In 1970, she became famous around the world when she became the captain of the first
all-female team to live under water. The team spent two weeks in an underwater house. The
research they carried out showed the damage that pollution was causing to marine, life, and
especially to coral reefs. Her team also studied the problem of overfishing. Fishing methods
meant that people were catching too many fish, Earle warned, and many species were in
danger of becoming extinct.
Since then she has written several books and magazine - articles in which she suggests ways
of reducing the damage that is being done to the world's oceans. One way, she believes, is to
rely on fish farms for seafood, and reduce the amount of fishing that is done out at sea.
Although she no longer eats seafood herself, she realises the importance it plays in our diets.
It would be wrong to tell people they should stop eating fish from the sea, she says. However,
they need to reduce the impact they are having on the ocean's supplies.
Source: Complete IELTS Band 4-5

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER FROM THE

PASSAGE for each answer.
1. What career did Sylvia decide to follow after her first dive?
2. How far underwater did she go in order to break a world record?
3. What was causing harm to everything living in the sea?
4. Where does Sylvia think we should get our fish from?
Exercise 2: Read this passage, then answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE
THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Not just a lot of hot air

There is a revolution going on in Africa; not a political one, but an economic one. The
driving force behind this revolution is the humble mobile phone. Once the preserve of
the elite (which was also the case in Europe and America not so long ago), the mobile
phone is now ubiquitous, as there are over 600 million African subscribers, from
Morocco and Tunisia in the north to south Africa, with 93 million in Nigeria alone,
putting it at the top of the list. However, others, like Egypt, are not far behind, and
changes in sales taxes in Kenya, for example, resulted in a 200% increase of sales in
one year. Even this figure does not truly reflect the number of users, as in rural areas
it is common for many people to share a single phone, which explains why researchers
claim that around 80% of Africans use mobile phones regularly. Although many
associate the continent principally with areas of business such as farming and mining,
both of which do have a long and successful history there, we should not make the
mistake of assuming that there is less business innovation in Africa than in the
industrialized nations. The banking industry has been quick to see the potential of
increased phone use, and many Africans, notably in Kenya with 8.5 million users, now
do their banking via a mobile phone.
Source: IELTS Advantage – Reading skills

Question 1 – 5:
1. What is the cause of the great change that is taking place throughout Africa?
2. Which social class has lost its monopoly of mobile phone use?
3. Where do most African mobile-phone users live?
4. Where are phones most likely to be co-owned?
5. Which area of business has taken most advantage of mobile phone usage?
Exercise 3:

Whale communication
It is only comparatively recently that we have become aware of the hauntingly beautiful
sounds made by humpback whales. The hydrophone, a microphone that can be used in
water, was developed by the British scientist Ernest Rutherford, and is particularly good
at detecting the presence of submarines underwater. During the Cold War, a Bermudian,
Frank Watlington was working for the US government, and it was his job to use
hydrophones to listen out for Russian submarines. While he was doing this, Watlington
noticed that humpback whales appeared to 'sing'. Later, Watlington's work was taken up
by two other researchers, Roger Payne and Scott McVay, who studied the nature of these
humpback whale 'songs'. They found that the various sounds produced by the whale
formed a song which lasts for about 30 minutes and is then repeated by the whale for hours
or even days.
Scientists believe there are two main reasons for whales to make sounds: echolocation, so
that the whales know what objects (and perhaps food) are around them; and
communication. Whales are capable of communicating to other whales over huge
distances. Sound waves travel faster through water (around 1.5 kilometre per second) than
through air, and the sound of a whale can travel thousands of kilometres through the oceans.
Many different species of whale are capable of making noises and some of them (as well as
dolphins and porpoises) are believed to use echolocation. Some whales look for food, such
as squid, down to a depth of 1.5 kilometres, and at that depth there is virtually no light at
all. Without being able to locate their food, the whales are going to go hungry. The whales
send out series of clicks and listen out for the echo of the sound. From this, the whale is
able to work out what is around it and can respond accordingly. The system whales use is
highly complex, but it is similar to the way that you can tell direction of sound. You have
two ears and when a sound is made, the sound reaches one ear a fraction of a second
before the other. From this information, your brain can work out the direction of the sound.
In addition to echolocation, some whales, most notably the humpback whale, are capable
of producing a range of notes which appear to be a form of communication. Humpback
whales in one school (as groups of whales are known) tend to sing virtually the same song.
Perhaps like football supporters they are demonstrating group identity, showing that they
belong to the same school. Other schools, particularly those found in other oceans, sing
songs which are quite different. It is also quite likely that the songs play a role in courtship.
It is generally the males that sing, so perhaps they are also trying to attract females.
For millions of years, whales have swum in the great oceans of the world and only recently
have they had to contend with a predator: man. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many
countries had fleets of ships which set out to bring back whales. The 20th century saw the
development of factory ships which were capable of killing and processing thousands of
whales. In the 1930s, over 50,000 whales were killed annually. It wasn't until 1986 that a
moratorium was agreed to stop whale hunting, and scientists hope that the number of
whales will recover. So can the whales of the world now cruise about without a care in the
world? Sadly not. The growth of trade in the world has meant that there are now more
ships, particularly large container ships, than ever before. In fact, the Worldwide Fund for
Nature (WWF) says that large numbers of northern right whales are killed in collision with
ships. But it is not only the physical danger that ships present. The loud noises of ships'
engines are very likely to disturb the whales, and the WWF have called for shipping
restrictions in certain areas.
In recent years, there have been many cases of whales dying on beaches. Could the reason
for these tragedies have something to do with the noise pollution that these majestic
creatures have to live with? There is no definite answer to the question, but it has attracted
considerable research, and findings seem to point to man's industrial activities in the
ocean. With an ever-growing need for oil, more and more drilling takes place offshore. To
assess the likelihood of the presence of oil, seismologists use sonar to work out the
underlying geology. The sounds used in such tests are believed by some people to have a
highly damaging effect on whales, either simply disrupting their method of
communication, or, some scientists believe, actually killing them. With an ever-increasing
human population and dwindling resources, whales face an uncertain future. While it is
unlikely that we will ever know exactly why whales producing their whale songs, the world
will be a much poorer place without them.
Source: IELTS Advantage – Reading Skills

Questions 1- 6: Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each
answer.
1. What is the length of an individual whale song?
2. How far does a whale song carry?
3. What sound do whales emit in an effort to locate food?
4. What are whales in the same school believed to display through song?
5. What innovation enabled whales to be hunted in dramatically larger numbers?
6. What measures have been suggested to protect whales?
Exercise 4:

Domestic robots
Machines that look after your home are getting cleverer, but they still need care and
attention if they are to perform as intended
Floor-cleaning machines capable of responding to their environment were among the first
commercially available domestic products worthy of being called robots. The best known
is the Roomba, made by iRobot, an American company which has sold more than three
million of the disc-shaped, frisbee-sized vacuuming robots. The latest model, the fifth
version of the Roomba, has more sensors and cleverer software than its predecessors.
Press the 'Clean' button and the robot glides out of its docking station and sets off across
the floor. Domestic robots are supposed to free up time so that you can do other things, but
watching how the Roomba deals with obstacles is strangely compelling. It is capable of
sensing its surroundings, and does not simply try to adhere to a pre-planned route, so it is
not upset if furniture is moved, or if it is picked up and taken to clean another room. Its
infra-red sensors enable it to slow down before reaching an obstacle - such as a dozy cat-
changing direction and setting off again.
It steadily works its way around the room, figuring out how to get out from under the
television stand or untangle itself from a stray Game Boy recharging lead. Watch it for
long enough, and you can sometimes predict its next move. The machine has a 'dirt sensor'
and flashes a blue light when it finds things to clean up. Only when it detects no more dirt
does it stop going over the same area and, eventually, conclude that the whole room is
clean. It then trundles back to dock at its recharging station.
So the first observation of life with a domestic robot is that you will keep watching it before
you trust it completely. Perhaps that is not surprising: after all, when automatic washing
machines first appeared, people used to draw up a chair and sit and watch them complete
their wash, rinse and spin cycles. Now they just load them, switch them on and leave them
to it. The second observation is that, despite their current level of intelligence, certain
allowances must be made to get the best out of a domestic robot. The Roomba can be set
up to clean at particular times, and to clean more than one room (small infra-red
'lighthouses' can be positioned in doorways, creating an invisible barrier between one
room and the next that is only removed when the first room has been cleaned). A 'drop-off'
sensor underneath the robot prevents it from falling down stairs. All very clever, but what
the Roomba will not do is pick up toys, shoes and other items left lying around. Rooms cared
for by robots must be kept tidy. To start with, children will happily put things away
in order to watch the robot set off, but unfortunately the novelty soon wears off.
Similar allowances must be made for other domestic robots. Sweden's Husqvarna recently
launched a new version of its Automower lawn mowing robot. Before it can be used, a wire
must be placed around the perimeter of the lawn to define the part to be cut. If toys and
other obstacles are not cleared from the lawn before it starts work, the robot will steer
around them, leaving uncut areas. However, the latest version can top up its batteries with
solar power, or send its owner a text message if it gets into trouble trying to climb a mole-hill.
But there is still only a limited range of domestic robots. Machines that mop the floor,
clean a swimming pool and clear muck from guttering are made by iRobot Several
surveillance robots are also on offer. The Rovio, made by WowWee of Hong Kong, is a
wi-fi-enabled webcam, mounted on an extending arm, which rides along smoothly on a
nimble set of three wheels. Its movement can be remotely operated over the Internet via a
laptop or mobile phone. The idea is that Rovio can patrol the home when its owner is away,
either automatically or under manual control: in the latter case, two-way communication
allows the operator to see and talk via the machine. So you could, for instance, shout at the
cat if it is sleeping on your best sofa.
Some machines are called robots even though they cannot move around. There is an
ironing robot, for instance, that resembles an inflatable dummy: put a damp shirt on it, and
it puffs up to remove the creases. Similarly, there are elaborate trouser presses that aspire
to be robots. But do these devices really count as robots. If so, then surely dishwashers and
washing machines do, too.
Yet whatever shape or size robots come in, many will be adored. Another important
observation from living with a robot is that it tends to become part of the family. 'People
give them names, and if they have to be sent back for repair, they carefully add a mark to
them to ensure they get the same machine back,' says Nancy Dussault Smith of iRobot.
Source: IELTS Complete Band 5.5-6.5

Questions 1-4:
Answer the questions below.
Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
1. What is used to mark out the mowing area for the Automower?
2. What form of renewable energy can some Automowers use?
3. What does the ironing robot look like?
4. What do people often put on a robot when it is going to be repaired?
Exercise 5:

Wide Web from its origin

'Information Management: A Proposal'. That was the bland title of a document written in
March 1989 by a then little known computer scientist called Tim Berners-Lee, who was
working at CERN, Europe's particle physics laboratory, near Geneva. His proposal,
modestly called the World Wide Web, has achieved far more than anyone expected at the
time. In fact, the Web was invented to deal with a specific problem. In the late 1980s,
CERN was planning one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever, the Large Hadron
Collider•, or LHC. As the first few lines of the original proposal put it, 'Many of the
discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC end with the question "Yes, but how will we
ever keep track of such a large project?" This proposal provides an answer to such
questions.' The Web, as everyone now knows, has many more uses than the original idea
of linking electronic documents about particle physics in laboratories around the world.
But among all the changes it has brought about, from personal social networks to political
campaigning, it has also transformed the business of doing science itself, as the man who
invented it hoped it would. It allows journals to be published online and links to be made
from one paper to another. It also permits professional scientists to recruit thousands of
amateurs to give them a hand.
One project of this type, called Galaxy Zoo, used these unpaid workers to classify one
million images of galaxies into various types (spiral, elliptical and irregular). This project,
which was intended to help astronomers understand how galaxies evolve, was so
successful that a successor has now been launched, to classify the brightest quarter of a
million of them in finer detail. People working for a more modest project called
Herbaria@home examine scanned images of handwritten notes about old plants stored in
British museums. This will allow them to track the changes in the distribution of species in
response to climate change. Another new scientific application of the Web is to use it as an
experimental laboratory. It is allowing social scientists, in particular, to do things that
were previously impossible. In one project, scientists made observations about the sizes of
human social networks using data from Facebook.
A second investigation of these networks, produced by Bernardo Huberman of HP Labs,
Hewlett-Packard's research arm in Palo Alto, California, looked at Twitter, a social
networking website that allows people to post short messages to long lists of friends. At first
glance, the networks seemed enormous- the 300,000 Twitterers sampled had 80
friends each, on average (those on Facebook had 120), but some listed up to 1,000. Closer
statistical inspection, however, revealed that the majority of the messages were directed at
a few specific friends. This showed that an individual's active social network is far smaller
than his 'clan'. Dr Huberman has also helped uncover several laws of web surfing,
including the number of times an average person will go from web page to web page on a
given site before giving up, and the details of the 'winner takes all' phenomenon, whereby
a few sites on a given subject attract most of the attention, and the rest get very little.
Scientists have been good at using the Web to carry out research. However, they have not
been so effective at employing the latest web-based social-networking tools to open up
scientific discussion and encourage more effective collaboration. Journalists are now used
to having their articles commented on by dozens of readers. Indeed, many bloggers
develop and refine their essays as a result of these comments.
Yet although people have tried to have scientific research reviewed in the same way, most
researchers only accept reviews from a few anonymous experts. When Nature, one of the
world's most respected scientific journals, experimented with open peer review in 2006,
the results were disappointing. Only 5% of the authors it spoke to agreed to have their
article posted for review on the Web - and their instinct turned out to be right, because
almost half of the papers attracted no comments. Michael Nielsen, an expert on quantum
computers, belongs to a new wave of scientist bloggers who want to change this. He thinks
the reason for the lack of comments is that potential reviewers lack incentive.
adapted from The Economist
*The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest particle accelerator and collides
particle beams. It provides information on fundamental questions of physics.
Source: Complete IELTS Band 5.5-6.5

Questions 1-3: Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS
from the passage for each answer.
1. Whose writing improves as a result of feedback received from readers?
2. What type of writing is not reviewed extensively on the Web?
3. Which publication invited authors to publish their articles on the World Wide
Web?
Exercise 6:

The Mit factor: celebrating 150 years of maverick

genius
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has led the world into the future for 150 years with
scientific innovations.
The musician Yo-Yo Ma’s cello may not be the obvious starting point for a journey
into one of the world’s great universities. But, as you quickly realise when you step
inside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there’s precious little going on that
you would normally see on a university campus. The cello, resting in a corner of MIT’s
celebrated media laboratory — a hub of creativity — looks like any other electric
classical instrument. But it is much more. Machover, the composer, teacher and
inventor responsible for its creation, calls it a ‘hyperinstrument’, a sort of thinking
machine that allows Ma and his cello to interact with one another and make music
together. ‘The aim is to build an instrument worthy of a great musician like Yo-Yo Ma
that can understand what he is trying to do and respond to it,’ Machover says. The
cello has numerous sensors across its body and by measuring the pressure, speed and
angle of the virtuoso’s performance it can interpret his mood and engage with it,
producing extraordinary new sounds. The virtuoso cellist frequently performs on the
instrument as he tours around the world.
Machover’s passion for pushing at the boundaries of the existing world to extend and
unleash human potential is not a bad description of MIT as a whole. This unusual
community brings highly gifted, highly motivated individuals together from a vast
range of disciplines, united by a common desire: to leap into the dark and reach for
the unknown.
The result of that single unifying ambition is visible all around. For the past 150 years,
MIT has been leading the world into the future. The discoveries of its teachers and
students have become the common everyday objects that we now all take for granted.
The telephone, electromagnets, radars, high-speed photography, office photocopiers,
cancer treatments, pocket calculators, computers, the Internet, the decoding of the
human genome, lasers, space travel ... the list of innovations that involved essential
contributions from MIT and its faculty goes on and on.
From the moment MIT was founded by William Barton Rogers in 1861, it was clear what it
was not. While Harvard stuck to the English model of a classical education, with its emphasis
on Latin and Greek, MIT looked to the German system of learning based on research and
hands-on experimentation. Knowledge was at a premium, but it had to be useful.
This down-to-earth quality is enshrined in the school motto, Mens et manus - Mind and hand
- as well as its logo, which shows a gowned scholar standing beside an ironmonger bearing
a hammer and anvil. That symbiosis of intellect and craftsmanship still suffuses the institute’s
classrooms, where students are not so much taught as engaged and inspired.
Take Christopher Merrill, 21, a third-year undergraduate in computer science. He is
spending most of his time on a competition set in his robotics class. The contest is to see
which student can most effectively program a robot to build a house out of blocks in under
ten minutes. Merrill says he could have gone for the easiest route - designing a simple robot
that would build the house quickly. But he wanted to try to master an area of robotics that
remains unconquered — adaptability, the ability of the robot to rethink its plans as the
environment around it changes, as would a human.
‘I like to take on things that have never been done before rather than to work in an iterative
way just making small steps forward,’ he explains.
Merrill is already planning the start-up he wants to set up when he graduates in a year’s
time. He has an idea for an original version of a contact lens that would augment reality by
allowing consumers to see additional visual information. He is fearful that he might be just
too late in taking his concept to market, as he has heard that a Silicon Valley firm is already
developing something similar. As such, he might become one of many MIT graduates who
go on to form companies that fail. Alternatively, he might become one of those who go on to
succeed in spectacular fashion. And there are many of them. A survey of living MIT alumni*
found that they have formed 25,800 companies, employing more than three million people,
including about a quarter of the workforce of Silicon Valley. What MIT delights in is taking
brilliant minds from around the world in vastly diverse disciplines and putting them
together. You can see that in its sparkling new David Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer
Research, which brings scientists, engineers and clinicians under one roof.
Or in its Energy Initiative, which acts as a bridge for MIT’s combined work across all its five
schools, channelling huge resources into the search for a solution to global warming. It works
to improve the efficiency of existing energy sources, including nuclear power. It is also
forging ahead with alternative energies from solar to wind and geothermal, and has recently
developed the use of viruses to synthesise batteries that could prove crucial in the
advancement of electric cars.
In the words of Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented the World Wide Web, ‘It’s not just
another university. Even though I spend my time with my head buried in the details of web
technology, the nice thing is that when I do walk the corridors, I bump into people who are
working in other fields with their students that are fascinating, and that keeps me
intellectually alive.’
adapted from the Guardian
* people who have left a university or college after completing their studies there
Source: Complete IELTS Band 6.5-7.5

Questions 1–4:
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
1. What proportion of workers at Silicon Valley are employed in companies set up by MIT
graduates?
2. What problem does MIT’s Energy Initiative aim to solve?
3. Which ‘green’ innovation might MIT’s work with viruses help improve?
4. In which part of the university does Tim Berners-L?
DẠNG 8: MATCHING INFORMATION TO PARAGRAPH:
Exercise 1:

Graphic novels
People who think graphic novels are just comics with a different name should think again
A. Graphic novels, as the name suggests, are books written and illustrated in the style of
a comic book. The term graphic novel was first used in 1978 by author and artist Will
Eisner to distinguish a comic novel he had written and illustrated from newspaper comic
trips. He described graphic novel as consisting of "sequential art" – a series of
illustrations which, when viewed in order, tell a story.
B. Although today's graphic novels are a recent phenomenon, this basic way of telling
stories has been used in various forms for centuries. Early cave drawings, hieroglyphics
and medieval tapestries are examples of this. The term graphic novel is now generally used
to describe any book in a comic format that resembles a novel in length and narrative
development.
C. Many adults feel that graphic novels are not the type of reading material that will help
young people become good readers. They believe that graphic novels are somehow a bad
influence that prevent "real" reading. In other words, they think that they are not "real" books.
D. However, many quality graphic novels are now being seen as a method of storytelling
on the same level as novels, films or audio books. From originally appealing to small
following of enthusiasts, they are now being accepted by librarians and teacher as proper
literature for children and young adults. The main advantages are that they promote
literacy, and attract and motivate young people to read.
E. How do we know this? In the past few years, teachers and school libraries have
reported outstanding success getting children to read with graphics novels. Many have
mentioned the motivational factor of the graphic novel. This has been especially true with
children who are usually reluctant to read, especially boys. The colourful pictures attract
them, and then encourage them to find out what story is about. Providing young people of all
abilities with a wide range of reading materials, including graphic novels, can help them
become lifelong readers.
F. Furthermore, one of the main benefits of graphic novel is that it can help students who
are learning a foreign language, and who are having problems improving their reading
skills. This is because the pictures provide clues to the meaning of the words. Language
learners are therefore more motivated by graphic novels, and will acquire new vocabulary
more quickly.
G. Many teachers have reported great success when they have used graphic novels with
their students, especially in the areas of English, social study and arts. They have
discovered that, just like traditional forms of literature, they can be useful tools for helping
students examine aspects of history, science, literature and art.
H. The idea that graphic novels are too simple to be regarded as serious reading is no
longer valid. The excellent graphic novels available today demand many of the same skills
that are needed to understand traditional works of fiction. Often they actually contain
more sophisticated vocabulary than traditional books. Reading them can help students
develop the skills that are necessary to read more challenging works.
Source: Complete IELTS band 4-5

Question 1 - 7:
The reading passage has eight paragraphs, A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-H
NB You may use any letter more than once
1. people with negative attitudes towards graphic novels
2. a variety of school subjects where graphic novels can play an important role
3. why a graphic novel’s visual element speeds up learning
4. a modern definition of graphic novels
5. graphic novels are as good as any other method of telling a story
6. graphic novels sometimes use advanced words
7. the historical use of pictures as a method of storytelling
Question 8-13:
Complete the table below
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer

The advantages of graphic novels

Advantages Who benefits? How it works
They provide Reluctant readers They are attracted by 8....................This
motivation to read. encourages them to find out what happens in
the 9....................
They help improve a 11.................... The pictures act as visual 12....................
student’s 10............... learners The student develops a larger 13....................

Exercise 2: Diagram completion

Out of Africa: solar energy from the Sahara
Vivienne Walt reports on how the Sahara Desert could offer a
truly green solution to Europe's energy problems

A. For years, the Sahara has been regarded by many Europeans as a terra incognita of
little economic value or importance. But this idea may soon change completely. Politicians
and scientists on both sides of the Mediterranean are beginning to focus on the Sahara's
potential to provide power for Europe in the future. They believe the desert's true value
comes from the fact that it is dry and empty. Some areas of the Sahara reach 45 degrees
centigrade on many afternoons. It is, in other words, a gigantic natural storehouse of solar
energy.
B. A few years ago, scientists began to calculate just how much energy the Sahara holds.
They were astonished at the answer. In theory, a 90,600 square kilometre chunk of the
Sahara- smaller than Portugal and a little over 1% of its total area- could yield the same
amount of electricity as all the world's power plants combined. A smaller square of 15,500
square kilometres - about the size of Connecticut could provide electricity for Europe's
500 million people.
'I admit I was sceptical until I did the calculations myself,' says Michael Pawlyn, director
of Exploration Architecture, one of three British environmental companies comprising the
Sahara Forest Project, which is testing solar plants in Oman and the United Arab
Emirates. Pawlyn calls the Sahara's potential 'staggering'.
C. At the moment, no one is proposing the creation of a solar power station the size of a
small country. But a relatively well-developed technology exists, which proponents say
could turn the Sahara's heat and sunlight into a major source of electricity- Concentrating
Solar Power [CSP]. Unlike solar panels, which convert sunlight directly into electricity,
CSP utilises mirrors which focus light on water pipes or boilers to produce very hot steam
to operate the turbines of generators. Small CSP plants have produced power in
California's Mojave Desert since the 1980s. The Sahara Forest Project proposes building
CSP plants in areas below sea level [the Sahara has several such depressions) so that sea
water can flow into them. This water would then be purified and used for powering
turbines and washing dust off the mirrors. Waste water would then supply irrigation to
areas around the stations, creating lush oases - hence the 'forest' in the group's name.
D. But producing significant quantities of electricity means building huge arrays of
mirrors and pipes across hundreds of miles of remote desert, which is expensive. Gerry
Wolff, an engineer who heads DESERTEC, an international consortium of solar-power
scientists, says they have estimated it will cost about $59 billion to begin transmitting
power from the Sahara by 2020.
E. Building plants is just part of the challenge. One of the drawbacks to CSP technology is
that it works at maximum efficiency only in sunny, hot climates - and deserts tend to be
distant from population centres. To supply Europe with 20% of its electricity needs, more
than 19,300 kilometres of cables would need to be laid under the Mediterranean, says
Gunnar Asplund, head of HVDC research at ABB Power Technologies in Ludvika,
Sweden. Indeed, to use renewable sources of power, including solar, wind and tidal,
Europe will need to build completely new electrical grids. That's because existing
infrastructures, built largely for the coal fired plants that supply 80% of Europe's power,
would not be suitable for carrying the amount of electricity generated by the Sahara.
Germany's government-run Aerospace Centre, which researches energy, estimates that
replacing those lines could raise the cost of building solar plants in the Sahara and
sending significant amounts of power to Europe to about $465 billion over the next 40
years. Generous government subsidies will be needed. 'Of course it costs a lot of money,'
says Asplund. 'It's a lot cheaper to burn coal than to make solar power in the Sahara.'
F. Meanwhile, some companies are getting started. Seville engineering company Abengoa
is building one solar thermal plant in Algeria and another in Morocco, while a third is
being built in Egypt by a Spanish-Japanese joint venture. The next step will be to get cables
in place. Although the European Parliament has passed a law that aids investors who help
the continent reach its goal of getting 20% of it~ power from renewable energy by 2020, it
could take years to create the necessary infrastructure. G Nicholas Dunlop,
secretary-general of the London-based NGO e-Parliament, thinks companies should begin
transmitting small amounts of solar power as soon as the North African plants begin
operating, by linking a few cable lines under the Med. 'I call it the Lego method,' he says.
'Build it piece by piece.' If it can be shown that power from the Sahara can be produced
profitably, he says, companies and governments will soon jump in. If they do, perhaps
airplane passengers flying across the Sahara will one day count the mirrors and patches
of green instead of staring at sand.
*terra incognita - Latin, meaning ‘an unknown land’
Source: Complete IELTS Band 5.5-6.5

Question 1-5:
The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following
information? Write the correct letter, A-G. NB You may use any letter more than once.
1. a mention of systems which could not be used
2. estimates of the quantity of power the Sahara could produce
3. a suggestion for how to convince organisations about the Sahara's potential
4. a short description of the Sahara at present
5. a comparison of the costs of two different energy sources
Question 6-9:
Look at the following statements (Questions 6-9) and the list of organisations below.
Match each statement with the correct organisation, A-G.
List of Organisations
6. They have set a time for achieving an objective. A. Exploration Architecture
7. They believe that successful small-scale projects will B. DESERTEC
demonstrate that larger projects are possible. C. ABB Power Technologies
8. They have a number of renewable energy projects under D. Aerospace Centre
construction. E. Abengoa
9. They are already experimenting with solar- energy F. The European Parliament
installations in other parts of the world. G. e-Parliament

Question 10-13:
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)

Unlike solar panels, CSP concentrates the sun's rays on boilers by using 10. ____________The
resulting heat produces high-temperature 11_______________,which in turn moves the
turbines which generate electricity. CSP plants will be situated in 12________________to
allow sea water to run in. This, when purified, can be used to wash the equipment. The
resulting dirty water will be used for 13__________________ around the power plant, and in
this way oases will be formed.
Exercise 3:

Deforestation in the 21st century

When it comes to cutting down trees, satellite
data reveals a shift from the patterns of the past

A. Globally, roughly 13 million hectares of forest are destroyed each year. Such
deforestation has long been driven by farmers desperate to earn a living or by loggers
building new roads into pristine forest. But now new data appears to show that big, block
clearings that reflect industrial deforestation have come to dominate, rather than these
smaller-scale efforts that leave behind long, narrow swaths of cleared land. Geographer
Ruth DeFries of Columbia University and her colleagues used satellite images to analyse
tree-clearing in countries ringing the tropics, representing 98 per cent of all remaining
tropical forest. Instead of the usual ‘fish bone' signature of deforestation from small-scale
operations, large, chunky blocks of cleared land reveal a new motive for cutting down woods.
B. In fact, a statistical analysis of 41 countries showed that forest loss rates were most
closely linked with urban population growth and agricultural exports in the early part of
the 21st century - even overall population growth was not as strong an influence. ‘In
previous decades, deforestation was associated with planned colonisation, resettlement
schemes in local areas and farmers clearing land to grow food for subsistence,' DeFries
says. ‘What we’re seeing now is a shift from small-scale farmers driving deforestation to
distant demands from urban growth, agricultural trade and exports being more important
drivers.’
C. In other words, the increasing urbanisation of the developing world, as populations
leave rural areas to concentrate in booming cities, is driving deforestation, rather than
containing it. Coupled with this there is an ongoing increase in consumption in the
developed world of products that have an impact on forests, whether furniture, shoe
leather or chicken feed. ‘One of the really striking characteristics of this century is
urbanisation and rapid urban growth in the developing world,’ DeFries says, ‘People in
cities need to eat.’ ‘There’s no surprise there,’ observes Scott Poynton, executive director
of the Tropical Forest Trust, a Switzerland-based organisation that helps businesses
implement and manage sustainable forestry in countries such as Brazil, Congo and
Indonesia. ‘It’s not about people chopping down trees. It's all the people in New York,
Europe and elsewhere who want cheap products, primarily food.’
D. Dearies argues that in order to help sustain this increasing urban and global demand,
agricultural productivity will need to be increased on lands that have already been
cleared. This means that better crop varieties or better management techniques will need
to be used on the many degraded and abandoned lands in the tropics. And the Tropical
Forest Trust is building management systems to keep illegally harvested wood from ending
up in, for example, deck chairs, as well as expanding its efforts to look at how to reduce the
‘forest footprint’ of agricultural products such as palm oil. Poynton says, ‘The point is to
give forests value as forests, to keep them as forests and give them a use as forests. They’re
not going to be locked away as national parks. That’s not going to happen.’
E. But it is not all bad news. Halts in tropical deforestation have resulted in forest
regrowth in some areas where tropical lands were previously cleared. And forest clearing
in the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical forest, dropped from roughly 1.9 million
hectares a year in the 1990s to 1.6 million hectares a year over the last decade, according
to the Brazilian government. 'We know that deforestation has slowed down in at least the
Brazilian Amazon,’ DeFries says. ‘Every place is different. Every country has its own
particular situation, circumstances and driving forces.’
F. Regardless of this, deforestation continues, and cutting down forests is one of the
largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity - a double blow that both
eliminates a biological system to suck up C02 and creates a new source of greenhouse
gases in the form of decaying plants. The United Nations Environment Programme
estimates that slowing such deforestation could reduce some 50 billion metric tons of C02,
or more than a year of global emissions. Indeed, international climate negotiations
continue to attempt to set up a system to encourage this, known as the UN Development
Programme’s fund for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in
developing countries (REDD). If policies [like REDD] are to be effective, we need to
understand what the driving forces are behind deforestation, DeFries argues. This is
particularly important in the light of new pressures that are on the horizon: the need to
reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and find alternative power sources, particularly for
private cars, is forcing governments to make products such as biofuels more readily
accessible. This will only exacerbate the pressures on tropical forests.
G. But millions of hectares of pristine forest remain to protect, according to this new
analysis from Columbia University. Approximately 60 percent of the remaining tropical
forests are in countries or areas that currently have little agricultural trade or urban
growth. The amount of forest area in places like central Africa, Guyana and Suriname,
DeFries notes, is huge. ‘There’s a lot of forest that has not yet faced these pressures.’
Source: Complete IELTS Band 5.5-6.5
Question 1-6:
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
You may use any letter more than once.
1. two ways that farming activity might be improved i n the future
2. reference to a fall in the rate of deforestation in one area
3. the amount of forest cut down annually
4. how future transport requirements may increase deforestation levels
5. a reference to the typical shape of early deforested areas
6. key reasons why forests in some areas have not been cut down
Questions 7-8:
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Which TWO of these reasons do experts give for current patterns of deforestation?
A. to provide jobs
B. to create transport routes
C. to feed city dwellers
D. to manufacture low-budget consumer items
E. to meet government targets
Questions 9-10:
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
The list below gives some of the impacts of tropical deforestation.
Which TWO of these results are mentioned by the writer of the text?
A. local food supplies fall
B. soil becomes less fertile
C. some areas have new forest growth
D. some regions become uninhabitable
E. local economies suffer

Questions 11-13: Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO
WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
11. The expression ‘a____’ is used to assess the amount of wood used in certain types of
production.
12. Greenhouse gases result from the____ that remain after trees have been cut down.
13. About _____ of the world’s tropical forests have not experienced deforestation yet.

Exercise 4:

Last man standing

Some 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens beat other hominids to become the only
surviving species. Kate Ravilious reveals how we did it.

A Today, there are over seven billion people living on Earth. No other species has
exerted as much influence over the planet as us. But turn the clock back 80,000 years
and we were one of a number of species roaming the Earth. Our own species. Homo
sapiens (Latin for ’wise man'), was most successful in Africa. In western Eurasia, the
Neanderthals dominated, while Homo erectus may have lived in Indonesia .
Meanwhile, an unusual finger bone and tooth, discovered in Denisova cave in Siberia
in 2008, have led scientists to believe that yet another human population - the
Denisovans - may also have been widespread across Asia. Somewhere along the line,
these other human species died out, leaving Homo sapiens as the sole survivor. So
what made us the winners in the battle for survival?
B. Some 74.000 years ago, the Toba ‘supervolcano' on the Indonesian island of
Sumatra erupted. The scale of the event was so great that ash from the eruption was
flung as far as eastern India, more than 2,000 kilometres away. Oxford archaeologist
Mike Petraglia and his team have uncovered thousands of stone tools buried
underneath the Toba ash. The mix of hand axes and spear tips have led Petraglia to
speculate that Homo sapiens and Homo erectus were both living in eastern India prior
to the Toba eruption. Based on careful examination of the tools and dating of the
sediment layers where they were found. Petraglia and his team suggest that Homo
sapiens arrived in eastern India around 78.000 years ago. migrating out of Africa and
across Arabia during a favourable climate period. After their arrival, the simple tools
belonging to Homo erectus seemed to lessen in number and eventually disappear
completely. 'We think that Homo sapiens had a more efficient hunting technology,
which could have given them the edge.' says Petraglia. 'Whether the eruption of Toba
also played a role in the extinction of the Homo erectus-like species is unclear to us.'
C. Some 45.000 years later, another fight for survival took place. This time, the
location was Europe and the protagonists were another species, the Neanderthals.
They were a highly successful species that dominated the European landscape for
300.000 years. Yet within just a few thousand years of the arrival of Homo sapiens, their
numbers plummeted. They eventually disappeared from the landscape around
30.000 years ago with their last known refuge being southern Iberia, including
Gibraltar. Initially. Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lived alongside each other and
had no reason to compete. But then Europe’s climate swung into a cold, inhospitable,
dry phase. ‘Neanderthal and Homo sapiens populations had to retreat to refugia
(pockets of habitable land). This heightened competition between the two groups,’
explains Chris Stringer, anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
D. Both species were strong and stockier than the average human today, but
Neanderthals were particularly robust. ‘Their skeletons show that they had broad
shoulders and thick necks,' says Stringer. ‘Homo sapiens, on the other hand, had
longer forearms, which undoubtedly enabled them to throw a spear from some
distance, with less danger and using relatively little energy,’ explains Stringer. This
long-range ability may have given Homo sapiens an advantage in hunting. When it
came to keeping warm. Homo sapiens had another skill: weaving and sewing.
Archaeologists have uncovered simple needles fashioned from ivory and bone
alongside Homo sapiens, dating as far back as 35,000 years ago. ‘Using this
technology, we could use animal skins to make ourselves tents, warm clothes and fur
boots,’ says Stringer. In contrast. Neanderthals never seemed to master sewing skills,
instead relying on pinning skins together with thorns.
E. A thirst for exploration provided Homo sapiens with another significant advantage
over Neanderthals. Objects such as shell beads and flint tools, discovered many miles
from their source, show that our ancestors travelled over large distances, in order to
barter and exchange useful materials, and share ideas and knowledge. By contrast.
Neanderthals tended to keep themselves to themselves, living in small groups. They
misdirected their energies by only gathering resources from their immediate
surroundings and perhaps failing to discover new technologies outside their territory.
F. Some of these differences in behaviour may have emerged because the two species
thought in different ways. By comparing skull shapes, archaeologists have shown that
Homo sapiens had a more developed temporal lobe - the regions at the side of the
brain, associated with listening, language and long-term memory. 'We think that
Homo sapiens had a significantly more complex language than Neanderthals and
were able to comprehend and discuss concepts such as the distant past and future.' says
Stringer. Penny Spikins, an archaeologist at the University of York, has recently
suggested that Homo sapiens may also have had a greater diversity of brain types than
Neanderthals. ‘Our research indicates that high-precision tools, new hunting technologies and
the development of symbolic communication may all have come about because they were
willing to include people with "different" minds and specialised roles in their society,’ she
explains. 'We see similar kinds of injuries on male and female Neanderthal skeletons, implying
there was no such division of labour,' says Spikins.
G. Thus by around 30,000 years ago. many talents and traits were well established
in Homo sapiens societies but still absent from Neanderthal communities. Stringer
thinks that the Neanderthals were just living in the wrong place at the wrong time.
'They had to compete with Homo sapiens during a phase of very unstable climate
across Europe. During each rapid climate fluctuation, they may have suffered greater
losses of people than Homo sapiens, and thus were slowly worn down,’ he says. ‘If the
climate had remained stable throughout, they might still be here.’
Source: Complete IELTS Band 6.5-7.5

Question 1-5:
The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
1. a comparison of a range of physical features of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens
2. reference to items that were once used for trade
3. mention of evidence for the existence of a previously unknown human species
4. mention of the part played by i.l fortune in the downfall of Neanderthal society
5. reference to the final geographical location of Nediidei tlials

Question 6-9:
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

6. Analysis of stone tools and ________________ has enabled Petraglia’s team to put forward
an arrival date for Homo sapiens in eastern India.
7. Homo sapiens used both ________________ to make sewing implements.
8. The territorial nature of Neanderthals may have limited their ability to acquire resources and
________________
9. Archaeologists examined ________________ in order to get an insight into Neanderthal and
Homo sapiens' capacity for language and thought.

Question 10-13:
Look at the following statements and the list of researchers, A-C, below.
Match each statement with the correct researcher.
10. No evidence can be found to suggest that Neanderthal List of Researchers
communities allocated tasks to different members. A. Mike Petraglia
11. Homo sapiens may have been able to plan ahead. B. Chris Stringer
12. Scientists cannot be sure whether a sudden natural disaster C. Penny Spikins
contributed to the loss of a human species.
 13. Environmental conditions restricted the areas where Homo
sapiens and Neanderthals could live.

Exercise 5:

Art to the aid of technology

What caricatures can teach us about facial recognition

A. Our brains are incredibly agile machines, and it is hard to think of anything they do
more efficiently than recognize faces. Just hours after birth, the eyes of newborns are
drawn to face like patterns. An adult brain knows it is seeing a face within 100
milliseconds, and it takes just over a second to realize that two different pictures of a face,
even if they are lit or rotated in very different ways, belong to the same person.
B. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of our gift for recognition is the magic of
caricature-the fact that the sparest cartoon of a familiar face, even a single line dashed off
in two seconds, can be identified by our brains in an instant. It is often said that a good
caricature looks more like a person than the person themselves. As it happens, this notion,
counterintuitive though it may sound, is actually supported by research. In the field of
vision science, there is even a term for this seeming paradox-the caricature effect-a phrase
that hints at how our brains misperceive faces as much as perceive them.
C. Human faces are all built pretty much the same: two eyes above a nose that’s above a
mouth, the features varying from person to person generally by mere millimetres. So what
our brains look for, according to vision scientists, are the outlying features-those
characteristics that deviate most from the ideal face we carry around in our heads, the
running average of every "visage" we have ever seen. We code each new face we encounter
not in absolute terms but in the several ways it differs markedly from the mean. In other
words, we accentuate what is most important for recognition and largely ignore what is
not. Our perception fixates on the upturned nose, the sunken eyes or the fleshy cheeks,
making them loom larger. To better identify and remember people, we turn them into
caricatures.
D. Ten years ago, we all imagined that as soon as surveillance cameras had been
equipped with the appropriate software, the face of a crime suspect would stand out in a
crowd. Like a thumbprint, its unique features and configuration would offer a biometric
key that could be immediately checked against any database of suspects. But now a decade
has passed, and face-recognition systems still perform miserably in real-world conditions.
Just recently,a couple who accidentally swapped passports at an airport in England sailed
through electronic gates that were supposed to match their faces to file photos.
E. All this leads to an interesting question. What if, to secure our airports and national
landmarks, we need to learn more about caricature? After all, it's the skill of the
caricaturist-the uncanny ability to quickly distill faces down to their most salient
features-that our computers most desperately need to acquire. Clearly, better cameras and
faster computers simply aren't going to be enough.
F. At the University of Central Lancashire in England, Charlie Frowd, a senior lecturer in
psychology, has used insights from caricature to develop a better police-composite
generator. His system, called EvoFIT, produces animated caricatures, with each
successive frame showing facial features that are more exaggerated than the last. Frowd's
research supports the idea that we all store memories as caricatures, but with our own
personal degree of amplification. So, as an animated composite depicts faces at varying
stages of caricature, viewers respond to the stage that is most recognizable to them. In
tests, Frowd's technique has increased positive identifications from as low as 3 percent to
upwards of 30 percent.
G. To achieve similar results in computer face recognition, scientists would need to
model the artist’s genius even more closely-a feat that might seem impossible if you listen
to some of the artists describe their nearly mystical acquisition of skills. Jason Seiler
recounts how he trained his mind for years, beginning in middle school, until he gained
what he regards as nothing less than a second sight. ‘A lot of people think that caricature
is about picking out someone’s worst feature and exaggerating it as far as you can,' Seiler
says. 'That’s wrong. Caricature is basically finding the truth. And then you push the truth.'
Capturing a likeness, it seems, has less to do with the depiction of individual features than
with their placement in relationship to one another. 'It's how the human brain recognizes
a face. When the ratios between the features are correct, you see that face instantly.’
H. Pawan Sinha. director of MIT's Sinha Laboratory for Vision Research, and one of the
nation's most innovative computer-vision researchers, contends that these simple,
exaggerated drawings can be objectively and systematically studied and that such work
will lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of both human and machine-based vision.
His lab at MIT is preparing to computationally analyze hundreds of caricatures this year,
from dozens of different artists, with the hope of tapping their intuitive knowledge of what
is and isn’t crucial for recognition. He has named this endeavor the Hirschfeld Project,
after the famous New York Times caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.
I. Quite simply, by analyzing sketches, Sinha lopes to pinpoint the recurring exaggerations
in the caricatures that most strongly correlate to particular ways that the original faces
deviate from the norm. The results, he believes, will ultimately produce a rank-ordered list
of the 20 or so facial attributes that are most important for recognition: 'It’s a recipe for
how to encode the face,' he says. In preliminary tests, the lab has already isolated
important areas-for example, the ratio of the height of the forehead to the distance between
the top of the nose and the mouth.
J. On a given face, four of 20 such Hirschfeld attributes, as Sinha plans to call them, will
be several standard deviations greater than the mean; on another face, a different handful
of attributes might exceed the norm. But in all cases, it's the exaggerated areas of the face
that hold the key. As matters stand today, an automated system must compare its target
faces against the millions of continually altering faces it encounters. But so far, the
software doesn't know what to look for amid this onslaught of variables. Armed with the
Hirschfeld attributes, Sinha hopes that computers can be trained to focus on the features
most salient for recognition, tuning out the others. ’Then.’ Sinha says, ’the sky is the limit’.
Question 1-6:
Reading Passage has ten paragraphs, A-J.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
You may use any letter more than once.
1. why we have mental images of faces that are essentially caricatures
2. mention of the length of time it can take to become a good caricaturist
3. an example of how unreliable current security systems can be
4. reference to the fact that we can match even a hastily drawn caricature to the person it
represents
5. a summary of how the use of multiple caricatures has improved recognition rates in a
particular field
6. a comparison between facial recognition and another well-established form of identification
Question 7-10:
Look at the following statements and the list of people, A-C, below.
Match each statement with the correct person.
List of People
7. A single caricature can be recognised straight away if the parts of A. Charlie Frowd
the face are appropriately positioned. B. Jason Seiler
8. An evaluation of the work of different caricaturists will provide new C. Pawan Sinha
information about how we see faces.
9. People misunderstand what is involved in the design of a caricature.
10. When given a choice, people will have different views regarding
which caricature best represents a particular person’s face.

Question 11-13:
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Sinha’s Project
Sinha's aim in the project is to come up with a specific number of what he terms
11____________ that are key to identification purposes. He hopes these can be used to enable
an 12 ___________ to identify faces more quickly and more accurately. In order to do this, his
team must examine the most frequently 13 __________ features in a large number of cartoon
faces.
Source: Complete IELTS Band 6.5-7.5