IELTS Reading Matching Headings
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Sample 1
Questions 15-21
The
text on the next page has seven sections, A–G.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i–x, in boxes 15–21 on
your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i.
How can reflection problems be avoided?
ii. How long should I work without a break?
iii What if I experience any problems?
iv. When is the best time to do filing chores?
v. What makes a good seat?
vi. What are the common health problems?
vii. What is the best kind of lighting to have?
viii. What are the roles of management and workers?
ix. Why does a VDU create eye fatigue?
x. Where should I place the documents?
15. Section A
16. Section B
17. Section C
18. Section D
19. Section E
20. Section F
21. Section G
Look at the information about the 'Beneficial work practices for
the keyboard operator' and answer questions 15-21.
BENEFICIAL WORK PRACTICES FOR THE
KEYBOARD OPERATOR
A. Sensible work practices are an important factor in the
prevention of muscular fatigue; discomfort or pain in the arms, neck, hands or
back; or eye strain which can be associated with constant or regular work at a
keyboard and visual display unit (VDU).
B. It is vital that the employer pays
attention to the physical setting such as workplace design, the office
environment, and placement of monitors as well as the organisation of the work
and individual work habits. Operators must be able to recognise work-related
health problems and be given the opportunity to participate in the management
of these. Operators should take note of and follow the preventive measures
outlined below.
C. The typist must be comfortably
accommodated in a chair that is adjustable for height with a backrest that is
also easily adjustable both for angle and height. The backrest and sitting
ledge (with a curved edge) should preferably be cloth-covered to avoid
excessive perspiration.
D. When the keyboard operator is
working from a paper file or manuscript, it should be at the same distance from
the eyes as the screen. The most convenient position can be found by using some
sort of holder. Individual arrangements will vary according to whether the
operator spends more time looking at the VDU or the paper – whichever the eyes
are focused on for the majority of time should be put directly in front of the
operator.
E. While keying, it is advisable to
have frequent but short pauses of around thirty to sixty seconds to proofread.
When doing this, relax your hands. After you have been keying for sixty
minutes, you should have a ten-minute change of activity. During this spell, it
is important that you do not remain seated but stand up or walk around. This
period could be profitably used to do filing or collect and deliver documents.
F. Generally, the best position for a VDU is at right
angles to the window. If this is not possible then glare from the window can be
controlled by blinds, curtains or movable screens. Keep the face of the VDU vertical
to avoid glare from overhead lighting.
G. Unsatisfactory work practices or working
conditions may result in aches or pain. Symptoms should be reported to your
supervisor early on so that the cause of the trouble can be corrected and the
operator should seek medical attention.
Sample 2
Questions 14-17
Read
the notice on below about Student Clubs and Societies. The notice has four
main paragraphs A-D.
Choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph from the list
of headings below.
Write
the appropriate numbers i-x in boxes 14-17 on
your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i. English Society
ii. Education Club
iii. Film Appreciation Society
iv. Drama Society
v. Music Club
vi. Games Society
vii. Women’s Club
viii. Debating Club
ix. United Nations Student Club
x. Technical Students’ Club
14. Paragraph A
15. Paragraph B
16. Paragraph C
17. Paragraph D
Questions 18 and 19:
Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS,
answer the following questions.
JOIN A CLUB OR SOCIETY AND HAVE FUN!
A
This club was first started by a group of friends who enjoyed
going to the cinema. When our trips became more frequent we realised that there
must be others who also shared our love of movies. This club is for those
people. Membership gives wide access to other activities like basketball and
football as well as barbeques and other social functions. We don’t just enjoy
movies.
B
The association has many opportunities to debate and we are a
non-political unbiased international organisation which aims to promote
international awareness on campus. We establish links and access to the
organisation’s agencies and other internationalist organisations and their
resources. Our plans this year include discussion groups, guest speakers and to
build a model of the UN General Assembly.
C
Whether for fun or debating experience, we discuss everything from
personal experience, future society or feminism. This year we plan an internal
competition, weekly debates and beginners’ lessons as well as chances to
compete nationally. Whether it be to improve your verbal or social skills the
society provides both!
D
Want to be a movie star? Then go somewhere else! On the other hand, want to
work really hard for great rewards? Then come and join the club where the
interesting theatre is created. We usually put on three productions each year.
So if you like to write, paint, act, direct or do anything in the theatre, come
and put your name down with us.
Matching Headings (List of
Headings)
Write the correct number i-x in
boxes 28-34 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i Bee behaviour is a mystery
ii Communicating direction when outside a hive
iii How bees carry food on their bodies
iv Von Frisch discovers that bees communicate
v How bees communicate direction when inside a hive
vi The special position of bee language
vii Expressing distance by means of dance
viii The purpose of the two simple dances
ix The discovery that bees have a special scent
x Von Frisch discovers three types of dance
28. Section A
29. Section B
30. Section C
31. Section D
32. Section E
33. Section F
34. Section G
Understanding
Bee Behaviour
A. A bee’s brain is the size of a
grass seed, yet in this tiny brain are encoded some of the most complex and
amazing behavioural patterns witnessed outside humankind. For bees
are arguably the only animals apart from humans which have their own language.
Earlier this century Karl von Frisch, a professor of Zoology at Munich
University, spent decades of ‘the purest joy of discovery’ unravelling the mysteries
of bee behaviour. For his astonishing achievements he was awarded the Nobel
Prize and it is from his work that most of today’s knowledge of what bees say
to each other derives.
B. It started simply enough.
Von Frisch knew from experiments by an earlier researcher that if he put out a
bowl of sweet sugar syrup, bees might at first take some time to find it but,
once they had done so, within the hour, hundreds of other bees would be eagerly
taking the syrup. Von Frisch realised that, in some way, messages were being
passed on back at the hive1”, messages which
said, ‘Out there, at this spot, you’re going to find food.’
C. But how was it
happening? To watch the bees, von Frisch constructed a glass-sided hive. He
found that, once the scout bees arrived back at the hive, they would perform
one of three dance types. In the first type, a returning scout scampered in
circles, alternating to right and left, stopping occasionally to regurgitate
food samples to the excited bees chasing after her. In the second dance,
clearly an extended version of this round dance, she performed a sickle-shaped
figure-of-eight pattern instead. In the third, distinctly different dance, she
started by running a short distance in a straight line, waggling her body from
side to side, and returning in a semi-circle to the starting point before
repeating the process. She also stopped from time to time to give little bits
of food to begging bees. Soon the others would excitedly leave the hive in
search of food. Minutes later, many of them, marked by von Frisch, could be
seen eating at the bowls of sugar syrup.
D. Experimenting
further, von Frisch unravelled the mystery of the first two related types, the
round and the sickle dances. These dances, he concluded, told the bees simply
that, within quite short distances of the hive there was a food source worth
chasing. The longer and more excitedly the scout danced, the richer the promise
of the food source. The scent she carried in her samples and on her body was a
message to the other bees that this particular food was the one they were
looking for. The others would then troop out of the hive and fly in spiralling
circles ‘sniffing’ in the wind for the promised food.
E. At first, von Frisch thought
the bees were responding only to the scent of the food. But what did the third
dance mean? And if bees were responding only to the scent, how could they also
‘sniff down’ food hundreds of metres away from the hive, food which was
sometimes downwind? On a hunch, he started gradually moving the feeding dish
further and further away and noticed as he did so, that the dances of the
returning scout bees also started changing. If he placed the feeding dish over
nine metres away, the second type of dance, the sickle version, came into play.
But once he moved it past 36 metres, the scouts would then start dancing the
third, quite different, waggle dance.
The measurement of the actual
distance too, he concluded, was precise. For example, a feeding dish 300 metres
away was indicated by 15 complete runs through the pattern in 30 seconds. When
the dish was moved to 60 metres away, the number dropped to 11.
F. Von Frisch noted something
further. When the scout bees came home to tell their sisters about the food
source, sometimes they would dance outside on the horizontal entrance platform
of the hive, and sometimes on the vertical wall inside. And, depending on where
they danced, the straight portion of the waggle dance would point in different
directions. The outside dance was fairly easy to decode: the straight portion
of the dance pointed directly to the food source, so the bees would merely have
to decode the distance message and fly off in that direction to find their food.
G. But by studying the dance
on the inner wall of the hive, von Frisch discovered a remark-able method which
the dancer used to tell her sisters the direction of the food in relation to
the sun. When inside the hive, the dancer cannot use the sun, so she uses
gravity instead. The direction of the sun is represented by the top of the hive
wall. If she runs straight up, this means that the feeding place is in the same
direction as the sun. However, if, for example, the feeding place is 40° to the
left of the sun, then the dancer would run 40° to the left of the vertical
line. This was to be the first of von Frisch’s remarkable discoveries. Soon he
would also discover a number of other remarkable facts about how bees
communicate and, in doing so, revolutionise the study of animal behaviour
generally.
Sample 2
Questions 28-33
The text has six sections, A-F.
Choose the correct heading for
each section from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 28-33 on
your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i
The link between feathers and a wider international awareness
ii An unsuitable decoration for military purposes
iii A significant rise in the popularity of feathers
iv Growing disapproval of the trapping of birds for their feathers
v A new approach to researching the past
vi Feathers as protection and as a symbol of sophistication
vii An interesting relationship between the wearing of feathers and
gender
viii A reason for the continued use of feathers by soldiers
28. Section A
29. Section B
30. Section C
31. Section D
32. Section E
33. Section F
Feathers as decoration in European history
A. Today, we do not generally associate feathers
with the military in Europe, yet history shows that in fact feathers have
played an intriguing role in European military clothing. The Bersaglieri of the
Italian Army, for example, still wear a bunch of long black feathers in their
hats hanging down to one side, while British fusiliers have a clipped feather
plume whose colour varies according to their regiment. The Royalists in the
English Civil War adorned their headgear with ostrich feathers. ‘Historically,
feathers were an incredibly expressive accessory for men,1 observes Cambridge
historian, Professor Ulinka Rublack. ‘Nobody has really looked at why this was
the case. That’s a story that I want to tell.’
Rublack is beginning to study the use of featherwork in early
modern fashion as part of a joint project between the Universities of
Cambridge, Basel and Bern. To the outsider, its preoccupations (her
co-researchers are studying gold, glass and veils) might seem surprising. Yet
such materials sustained significant economies and expertise.
B. Rublack has spotted that something unusual
started to happen with feathers during the 16th century. In 1500, they were
barely worn at all in Europe; 100 years later they had become an indispensable
accessory for the fashionable European man. In prosperous trading centres, the
citizens started wearing hats bedecked with feathers from cranes and swallows.
Headgear was specially manufactured so that feathers could be inserted more
easily. By 1573, Plantin’s Flemish-French dictionary was even obliged to offer
words to describe people who chose not to wear them, recommending such terms
as: ‘the featherless’ and ‘unfeathered’.
Featherworking became big business. From Prague and Nuremberg to
Paris and Madrid, people started to make a living from decorating feathers for
clothing. Impressive efforts went into dyeing them. A 1548 recipe recommends
using ashes, lead monoxide and river water to create a ‘very beautiful’ black,
for example.
C. Why this
happened will become clearer as Rublack’s project develops. One crucial driver,
however, was exploration – the discovery of new lands, especially in South
America. Compared with many of the other species that early European colonists
encountered, exotic birds could be captured, transported and kept with relative
ease. Europe experienced a sudden ‘bird-craze’, as exotic birds became a
relatively common sight in the continent’s largest markets.
Given the link with new territories and conquest, ruling elites
wore feathers partly to express their power and reach. But there were also more
complex reasons. In 1599, for example, Duke Frederick of Wurttemberg held a
display at his court at which he personally appeared wearing a costume covered
in exotic feathers and representing the Americas. This was not just a symbol of
power, but of cultural connectedness, Rublack suggests: The message seems to be
that he was embracing the global in a duchy that was quite insular and
territorial.’
D. Nor were feathers worn by the powerful alone.
In 1530, a legislative assembly at Augsburg imposed restrictions on peasants
and traders adopting what it clearly felt should be an elite fashion. The
measure did not last, perhaps because health manuals of the era recommended
feathers could keep the wearer safe from ‘bad’ air – cold, miasma, damp or excessive
heat – all of which were regarded as hazardous. During the 1550s, Eleanor of
Toledo had hats made from peacock feathers to keep her dry in the rain.
Gradually, feathers came to indicate that the wearer was healthy and civilised.
Artists and musicians took to wearing them as a mark of subtlety and style.
E. As with most fads, this enthusiasm eventually
wore off. By the mid-17th century, feathers were out of style, with one
striking exception. Within the armies of Europe feathers remained an essential part
of military costume. Rublack thinks that there may have been several reasons
for this strange contradiction. ‘It’s associated with the notion of graceful
warfaring,’ she says. This was a period when there were no standing armies and
it was hard to draft soldiers. One solution was to aestheticise the military,
to make it seem graceful and powerful.’ Feathers became associated with the
idea of an art of warfare.
They were also already a part of military garb among many native
American peoples and in the Ottoman empire. Rublack believes that just as some
of these cultures considered the feathers of certain birds to be highly
significant, and sometimes sacred, European soldiers saw the feathers as
imparting noble passions, bravery and courage.
F. In time, her research may therefore reveal a
tension about the ongoing use of feathers in this unlikely context. But, as she
also notes, she is perhaps the first historian to have spotted the curious
emotional resonance of feathers in military fashion at all. All this shows a
sea-change in methodologies: historians now chart the ways in which our
identities are shaped through deep connections with ‘stuff’ – the material
objects that are parts of our lives.
Sample 3
Read the text below and answer Questions 28-40.
Questions 28-34
The text has seven paragraphs, A- G.
Choose the correct heading for
each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i- viii, in boxes 28 - 34 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i
A time when opportunities were limited
ii The reasons why Ferrando’s product is needed
iii A no-risk solution
iv Two inventions and some physical details
v The contrasting views of different generations
vi A disturbing experience
vii The problems with replacing a consumer item
viii Looking back at why water was bottled
28. Paragraph A
29. Paragraph B
30. Paragraph C
31. Paragraph D
32. Paragraph E
33. Paragraph F
34. Paragraph G
Plastic is no longer fantastic
A. In 2017, Carlos Ferrando, a Spanish
engineer-turned-entrepreneur, saw a piece of art in a museum that profoundly
affected him. ‘What Lies Under’, a photographic composition by Indonesian
digital artist Ferdi Rizkiyanto, shows a child crouching by the edge of the
ocean and ‘lifting up’ a wave, to reveal a cluster of assorted plastic waste,
from polyethylene bags to water bottles. The artwork, designed to raise public
awareness, left Ferrando angry – and fuelled with entrepreneurial ideas.
B. Ferrando runs a Spanish-based design company, Closca,
that produces an ingenious foldable bicycle helmet. But he has now also
designed a stylish glass water bottle with a stretchy silicone strap and
magnetic closure mechanism that means it can be attached to almost anything,
from a bike to a bag to a pushchair handle. The product comes with an app that
tells people where they can fill their bottles with water for free.
C. The intention is to persuade people to
stop buying water in plastic bottles, thus saving consumers money and reducing
the plastic waste piling up in our oceans. ‘Bottled water is now a $100 billion
business, and 81 per cent of the bottles are not recycled . It’s a complete
waste – water is only 1.5 per cent of the price of the bottle!’ Ferrando cries.
Indeed, environmentalists estimate that by 2050 there will be more plastic in
our oceans than fish and that’s mainly down to such bottles. ‘We are trying to
create a sense that being environmentally sophisticated is a status symbol,’ he
adds. ‘We want people to clip their bottles onto what they are wearing, to show
that they are recycling – and to look cool.’
D. Ferrando’s story is fascinating because it
seems like an indicator of something unexpected. Three decades ago, conspicuous
consumption – the purchase of luxuries, such as handbags, shoes, cars, etc. on
a lavish scale – heightened people’s social status. Indeed, the closing decades
of the 20th century were a time when it seemed that anything could be turned
into a commodity. Hence the fact that water became a consumer item, sold in
plastic bottles, instead of just emerging, for free, from a tap.
E. Today, though, conspicuous extravagance no longer seems
desirable among consumers. Now, recycling is fashionable – as is cycling rather
than driving. Plastic water bottles have become so common that they do not
command status; instead, what many millennials – young people born in the late
20th century – prefer to post on social media are ‘real’ (refillable) bottles
or even the once widespread Thermos bottles. Some teenagers currently think
that these stainless-steel vacuum-insulated water bottles that are coming back
onto the market are ultra ‘cool’; never mind the fact that they feel oddly
out-of-date to anyone over the age of 40 or that teenagers in the 1970s would
have avoided ever being seen with one.
F. It is uncertain whether Clesca will succeed in its
goal. Although its foldable bike helmet is available in some outlets in New
York, includ ing the Museum of Modern Art, it can be very hard for any design
entrepreneur to really take off in the global mass market, though not as hard
as it might have been in the past. If an entrepreneur had wanted to fund a
smart invention a few decades ago, he or she would have had to either raise a
bank loan, borrow money from a family member or use a credit card. Things have
moved on slightly since then.
G. Entrepreneurs are still using the last two options,
but some are also tapping into the ever-growing pot of money that is becoming
available in the management world for ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR)
investments. And then there are other options for those who wish to raise money
straight away. Ferrando posted details about his water-bottle venture on a
large , recognised platform for funding creative projects. He appealed for
people to donate $30,000 of seed money – the money he needed to get his project
going – and promised to give a bottle to anyone who provided more than $39 in
‘donations’. If he received the funds, he stated that the company would produce
bottles in grey and white; if $60,000 was raised, a multicoloured one would be
made. Using this approach, none of the donors has a stake in his idea, nor does
he have any debt. Instead, it is almost a pre-sale of the product, in a manner
that tests demand in advance and creates a potential crowd of enthusiasts. This
old-fashioned community funding with a digital twist is supporting a growing
array of projects ranging from films to card games, videos, watches and so on.
And, at last count, Closca had raised some $52,838 from 803 backers. Maybe, 20
years from now, it will be the plastic bottle that seems peculiarly
old-fashioned.
Sample 3
Questions 28-33
The following text has six sections, A-F.
Choose the correct heading for
each section from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 28-33 on
your answer sheet.
List of headings
i The need for population reduction
ii
The problem with being a fussy eater
iii
Reproductive patterns
iv
The need for further research
v
A possible solution to falling numbers
vi
The fastest runners
vii
A rather lonely beginning
viii
A comparison between past and present survival rates
ix
Useful physical features
28. Paragraph A
29. Paragraph B
30. Paragraph C
31. Paragraph D
32. Paragraph E
33. Paragraph F
Understanding hares
With its wild stare, swift speed and secretive nature, the UK’s
brown hare is the rabbit’s mysterious cousin. Even in these days of
agricultural intensification, the hare is still to be seen in open countryside,
but its numbers are falling.
A. Like many herbivores, brown hares spend a relatively large
amount of their time feeding. They prefer to do this in the dark, but when
nights are short, their activities do spill into daylight hours. Wherever they
live, hares appear to have a fondness for fields with a variety of vegetation,
for example, short as well as longer clumps of grasses. Studies have
demonstrated that they benefit from uncultivated land and other unploughed
areas on farms, such as field margins. Therefore, if farmers provided patches
of woodland in areas of pasture as well as assorted crops in arable areas,
there would be year-round shelter and food, and this could be the key to
turning round the current decline in hare populations.
B. Brown
hares have a number of physical adaptations that enable them to survive in open
countryside. They have exceptionally large ears that move independently, so
that a range of sounds can be pinpointed accurately. Positioned high up on
their heads, the hares’ large golden eyes give them 360° vision, making it hard
to take a hare by surprise. Compared to mammals of a similar size, hares have a
greatly enlarged heart and a higher volume of blood in their bodies, and this
allows for superior speed and stamina. In addition, their legs are longer than
those of a rabbit, enabling hares to run more like a dog and reach speeds of up
to 70 kph.
C. Brown
hares have unusual lifestyles for their large size, breeding from a young age
and producing many leverets (babies). There are about three litters of up to
four leverets every year. Both males and females are able to breed at about
seven months old, but they have to be quick because they seldom live for more
than two years. The breeding season runs from January to October, and by late
February most females are pregnant or giving birth to their first litter of the
year. So it seems strange, therefore, that it is in March, when the breeding
season is already underway, that hares seemingly go mad: boxing, dancing,
running and fighting. This has given rise to the age-old reference to ‘mad
March hares’. In fact, boxing occurs throughout the breeding season, but people
tend to see this behaviour more often in March. This is because in the
succeeding months, dusk – the time when hares are most active – is later, when
fewer people are about. Crops and vegetation are also taller, hiding the hares
from view. Though it is often thought that they are males fighting over
females, boxing hares are usually females fighting off males. Hares are mostly
solitary, but a female fights off a series of males until she is ready to mate.
This occurs several times through the breeding season because, as soon as the
female has given birth, she will be ready to mate again.
D. But
how can females manage to do this while simultaneously feeding themselves and
rearing their young? The reason is that hares have evolved such self-sufficient
young. Unlike baby rabbits, leverets are born furry and mobile. They weigh
about 100 g at birth and are immediately left to their own devices by their
mothers. A few days later, the members of the litter creep away to create their
own individual resting places, known as ‘forms’. Incredibly, their mother
visits them only once every 24 hours and, even then, she only suckles them for
a maximum of five minutes each. This lack of family contact may seem harsh to
us, but it is a strategy that draws less attention from predators. At the
tender age of two weeks, leverets start to feed themselves, while still
drinking their mother’s milk. They grow swiftly and are fully weaned at four weeks,
reaching adult weight at about six months.
E. Research
has shown that hares’ milk is extremely rich and fatty, so a little goes a long
way. In order to produce such nutritious milk, females need a high-quality,
high-calorie diet. Hares are selective feeders at the best of times: unlike
many herbivores, they can’t sit around waiting to digest low-quality food –
they need high- energy herbs and other leaves in order to sprint. This causes
them problems when faced with the smallest alterations in food availability and
abundance. So, as well as reductions in the diversity of farmland habitat, the
decline in the range of food plants is injurious to hares.
F. The rapid turnaround in the breeding cycle
suggests that hares should, in principle, be able to increase their populations
quickly to exploit new habitats. They certainly used to: studies show that
hares evolved on the open plains and spread rapidly westward from the Black Sea
after the last ice age (though they were probably introduced to Britain as a
species to be hunted for the pot by the Romans). But today’s hares are thwarted
by the lack of rich farmland habitat. When the delicate herbs and other plants
they rely on are ploughed up or poisoned by herbicides, these wonderful, agile
runners disappear too, taking with them some of the wildness from our lives.
Sample
4
Read the text below and answer Questions 28-36.
Questions 28-36
The text has nine paragraphs, A-I.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 28-36 on
your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i.
Various sources of supplies
ii. The effects of going outside
iii. Oymyakon past and present
iv. A contrast in the landscape
v. Animals that can survive the cold
vi. How Oymyakon is affected by its location
vii. Keeping out the cold
viii. Not the only challenging time of the year
ix. Better than its reputation
x. Very few facilities in buildings
xi. More snow than anywhere else in the world
28.
Paragraph A
29. Paragraph B
30. Paragraph C
31. Paragraph D
32. Paragraph E
33. Paragraph F
34. Paragraph G
35. Paragraph H
36. Paragraph I
A visit to Oymyakon, the world’s coldest town
A. You don’t need a sat nav to drive to Oymyakon.
From Yakutsk, you cross the Lena River and simply follow the M56 almost all of
the way before taking a left at Tomtor for the final few kilometres. The
journey takes two days of hard driving; two days of glistening landscapes,
frozen rivers and untouched snow; two days of endless forest and breathtaking
beauty; two days to penetrate the heart of Siberia and reach the coldest
inhabited place on Earth. The beauty surprised me. Siberia isn’t known for its
pleasant appearance. It’s always billed as a place of hardship. But for hour
after hour, the wintry wonderland was bathed in a crisp, clean sunshine,
presenting a continuous panorama of conifer trees wreathed in silence and snow.
B. As we left the flat plain, the road began to twist and
turn, leading us into untouched hills and on towards the Verkhoyansk Mountains.
Beneath their snow-clad peaks, the slopes became steeper and the valleys
deeper. Down in a valley, we stopped to look at a hot spring beside the road.
It was immediately obvious against the snow – a spot shrouded in heavy mist.
Trees emerged from the strange haze as ghostly silhouettes.
C. Despite the magical ambience of the Siberian wilderness,
its reputation for hardship hit me every time I climbed out of the vehicle.
Within less than a minute, the skin all over my face began to feel as if it
were burning. If I wasn’t wearing my two sets of gloves, I rapidly lost the
feeling in my fingertips. I learned very quickly not to draw too deep a breath
because the shock of the cold air in my lungs invariably set me off on an
extended bout of coughing. Siberia in winter is a world barely fit for human
habitation. This is a place of such searing cold that it bites through multiple
layers of clothing as if they aren’t there.
D. Oymyakon is a quiet little town – the world’s coldest – of
about 550 inhabitants, with its own power station, a school, two shops and a
small hospital. It probably originated as a seasonal settlement where reindeer
herders spent the summer on the banks of the Indigirka River.
E. The temperature when I arrived was -45°C – not particularly
cold, I was informed. A number of factors combine to explain Oymyakon’s record
low temperatures. It is far from the ocean, with its moderating effect on air
temperature. In addition, the town sits in a valley, below the general level of
the Oymyakon Plateau, which, in turn, is enclosed on all sides by mountains up
to 2,000 metres in height. As the cold air sinks, it accumulates in the valley,
with little wind to disturb it. Oymyakon’s average temperature in January is
-50°C. Lower temperatures have been recorded in Antarctica, but there are no
permanent inhabitants there.
F. Day-to-day life in Oymyakon presents certain challenges
during the long winters. There are hardly any modern household conveniences.
Water is hacked out of the nearby river as great chunks of ice and dragged home
on a sledge. The giant ice cubes are stacked outdoors and carried into the
house one at a time to melt when needed. The lack of running water also means
no showers or baths, or indeed flushing toilets. Since 2008, the town’s school
has enjoyed the luxury of indoor toilets, however. It’s one of the small number
of civic buildings in the centre of town that are linked to the power station.
G. The power station provides winter heating in the form of
hot water, but many houses lie outside its range and rely on their own
wood-burning stove. Fuel is plentiful enough in the surrounding forest, but
someone still has to venture out to cut the wood. Everybody in Oymyakon owns
good boots, a hat made of animal fur and fur-lined mittens. The boots are
usually made from reindeer hide, which is light but keeps your feet very warm –
the individual hairs are hollow, like a thin tube with air inside. Since air is
a poor conductor of heat, the skin makes excellent winter footwear, and felt
soles give added insulation. Hats come in a variety of furs, including fox,
raccoon, sable and mink.
H. Oymyakon’s two shops keep a decent stock of basic foods in
tins and packets, but locals also have do-it-yourself options, including
hunting, trapping, ice-fishing, reindeer-breeding and horse-breeding. Indeed,
being self-sufficient runs in the blood in Siberia. The Oymyakon diet relies
heavily on meat for its protein, a primary source of energy in the prolonged
winter. Unsurprisingly, given the weather, everyone eats heartily in Oymyakon.
A typical meal I was offered consisted of a thick horse soup and huge piles of
horse meatballs, all washed down with cloudberry cordial.
I. Spring is the best season here, I’m told. The snow melts,
the river flows once more and the forest is full of wildflowers. But it’s
short. In the summer Oymyakon can be uncomfortably hot. Much of the forest
becomes boggy, so mosquitoes are a constant presence. Oymyakon’s climate
certainly wouldn’t suit me, but residents I spoke to said they wouldn’t live
anywhere else.
Sample 5
Read the text below and answer Questions 28-40.
Questions 28-34
The
text below has seven sections, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of
headings below.
Write the correct number i-x, in boxes 28-34 on
your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i.
Sightings in Britain
ii. Origins of the name.
iii. Eating Habits
iv. Dwelling places
v. Sightings in the world
vi. Favourite places
viii. Amount of species
ix. Food storage facilities
x. Appearance and temperament
28.
Section A
29. Section B
30. Section C
31. Section D
32. Section E
33. Section F
34. Section G
NUTHATCH BIRDS
A. The name nuthatch is derived from nut hacker,
reflecting the bird's method of opening up nuts by jamming them into a crevice
then hammering at them. Old country names include mud dabbler and mud stopper,
both of which note the bird's curious habit of plastering mud around the
entrance hole to its nest.
B. Unlike the treecreeper, which only moves up the trunk of a
tree, nuthatches will move both up and down. Once a bird restricted largely to
south-eastern England, the 20th century witnessed a spread to the north, with
breeding in Scotland first confirmed in 1989. Studies have shown that large
gardens with oak trees provide the optimum habitat for this species. One of the
reasons for the expansion seems to be the nuthatch's increasing use of bird
feeders and bird tables.
C. As anyone who has nuthatches visiting their feeders will
know, they are bold and aggressive, able to stand their ground when larger
birds such as starlings attempt to intimidate them. They will take food from
the bird table to store elsewhere: this can lead to sunflowers sprouting in
expected places. Pairs are strongly territorial throughout the year. The fact
that food is stored within the territory strengthens the need to defend it.
D. Though they will readily adopt nest boxes, they cannot
resist plastering mud around the entrance hole, even if the latter is already
the right size. The most favoured natural site for a nuthatch is the old nest
hole of a great spotted woodpecker. Nuthatches are one of the nosiest woodland
birds in the early spring but are relatively silent when breeding.
E. There are 24 different species of nuthatches in the world:
our bird has much the widest distribution, as it breeds continually from
Portugal to Korea and Japan. The nuthatch has never been recorded in Ireland.
Most nuthatches are highly sedentary, seldom moving far from where they
hatched. The average distance travelled by a ringed adult nuthatch is less than
a kilometre.
F. No British-ringed individuals have ever been recovered
abroad, while similarly no birds ringed on the Continent have been found here.
Individuals breeding in Sweden and Norway have distinctive white underparts,
unlike the peachy buff of our birds. Remarkably, a red-breasted nuthatch from
North America spent nearly seven months at Holkham in Norfolk from October 1989
to May 1990.
G. Perhaps surprisingly, the nuthatch has received little in
the way of study in Britain, and most of our knowledge comes from work carried
out in Sweden and Belgium. Numbers are known to fluctuate quite widely from
year to year, probably reflecting the availability of seed during the winter.
Sample
3
Questions 27-32
The following Reading Passage has seven paragraphs (A-G). Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs A-B and D-G from the list of headings below.
Write
the appropriate numbers (i-ix) in boxes 27-32 on
your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use
all of them.
List of Headings
i Robots working together
ii Preparing LGVs for take-over
iii Looking ahead
iv The LGVs' main functions
v Split location for newspaper production
vi Newspapers superseded by technology
vii Getting the newspaper to the printing centre
viii Controlling the robots
ix Beware of robots!
Example
Answer
Paragraph C
ix
27. Paragraph A
28. Paragraph B
29. Paragraph D
30. Paragraph E
31. Paragraph F
32. Paragraph G
ROBOTS AT WORK
A
The newspaper production process has come a long way from the old days when the
paper was written, edited, typeset and ultimately printed in one building with
the journalists working on the upper floors and the printing presses going on
the ground floor. These days the editor, subeditors and journalists who put the
paper together are likely to find themselves in a totally different building or
maybe even in a different city. This is the situation which now prevails in
Sydney. The daily paper is compiled at the editorial headquarters, known as the
prepress centre, in the heart of the city, but printed far away in the suburbs
at the printing centre. Here human beings are in the minority as much of the
work is done by automated machines controlled by computers.
B
Once the finished newspaper has been created for the next morning’s edition,
all the pages are transmitted electronically from the prepress centre to the
printing centre. The system of transmission is an update on the sophisticated
page facsimile system already in use in many other newspapers. An imagesetter
at the printing centre delivers the pages as films. Each page takes less than a
minute to produce, although for colour pages four versions, once each for
black, cyan, magenta and yellow are sent. The pages are then processed
into photographic negatives and the film is used to produce aluminium printing plates
ready for the presses.
C
A procession of automated vehicles is busy at the new printing centre where the
Sydney Morning Herald is printed each day. With lights flashing and warning
horns honking, the robots (to give them their correct name, the LGVs or laser
guided vehicles) look for all the world like enthusiastic machines from a
science fiction movie, as they follow their own random paths around the plant
busily getting on with their jobs. Automation of this kind is now standard in
all modern newspaper plants. The robots can detect unauthorised personnel and
alert security staff immediately if they find an “intruder”; not surprisingly,
tall tales are already being told about the machines starting to take on
personalities of their own.
D
The robots’ principal job, however, is to shift the newsprint (the printing
paper) that arrives at the plant in huge reels and emerges at the other end
sometime later as newspapers. Once the size of the day’s paper and the
publishing order are determined at head office, the information is punched into
the computer and the LGVs are programmed to go about their work. The LGVs
collect the appropriate size paper reels and take them where they have to go.
When the press needs another reel its computer alerts the LGV system. The Sydney
LGVs move busily around the press room fulfilling their two key functions to
collect reels of newsprint either from the reel stripping stations or from the
racked supplies in the newsprint storage area. At the stripping station, the
tough wrapping that helps to protect a reel of paper from rough handling is
removed. Any damaged paper is peeled off and the reel is then weighed.
E
Then one of the four paster-robots moves in. Specifically designed for the job,
it trims the paper neatly and prepares the reel for the press. If required the
reel can be loaded directly onto the press; if not needed immediately, an LGV
takes it to the storage area. When the press computer calls for a reel, an LGV
takes it to the reel loading area of the presses. It lifts the reel into the
loading position and places it in the correct spot with complete accuracy. As
each reel is used up, the press drops the heavy cardboard core into a waste
bin. When the bin is full, another LGV collects it and deposits the cores into
a shredder for recycling.
F
The LGVs move at walking speed. Should anyone step in front of one or get too
close, sensors stop the vehicle until the path is clear. The company has chosen
a laser guide function system for the vehicles because, as the project development
manager says “The beauty of it is that if you want to change the routes, you
can work out a new route on your computer and lay it down for them to follow”.
When an LGV’s batteries run low, it will take itself offline and go to the
nearest battery maintenance point for replacement batteries. And all this is
achieved with absolute minimum human input and a much reduced risk of injury to
people working in the printing centres.
G
The question newspaper workers must now ask, however, is, “how long will it be
before the robots are writing the newspapers as well as running the printing
centre, churning out the latest edition every morning?”
Sample 4
Choose the correct heading for sections C-H from
the list of headings below. Section A and
Section B have been done for you.
Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 28-33 on
your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i.
Where to buy the best Echinacea
ii. What 'snake oil' contained
iii. Growing Echinacea
iv. How to use the Echinacea plant
v. Earlier applications of Echinacea
vi. The origins of the term 'snake oil'
vii. Early research into the effectiveness of Echinacea
viii. How 'snake oil' was first invented
ix. The use of Echinacea in new locations
x. Modern evidence of the effectiveness of Echinacea
xi. Early kinds of 'snake oil'
Examples Answers
Section
A vi
Section
B xi
28. Section C
29. Section D
30. Section E
31. Section F
32. Section G
33. Section H
Snake
Oil
A. Back in the
days of America's Wild West, when cowboys roamed the range and people were
getting themselves caught up in gunfights, a new phrase - 'snake oil' – entered
the language. It was a dismissive term for the patent medicines, often useless,
sold by travelling traders who always claimed miraculous cures for everything
from baldness to snakebite.
Selling 'snake oil' was almost as risky a business as cattle stealing; you
might be run out of town if your particular medicine, as you realised it would,
failed to live up to its claims. Consequently, the smarter - 'snake oil'
sellers left town before their customers had much chance to evaluate the 'cure'
they had just bought.
B.
The remarkable thing about many of the medicines dismissed then as 'snake oil'
is not so much that they failed to live up to the outrageous claims made for
them - those that weren't harmless coloured water could be positively
dangerous. What's remarkable is that so many of the claims made for some of
these remedies, or at least their ingredients, most of them, plant based, have
since been found to have at least some basis in fact.
One, Echinacea, eventually turned out to be far more potent than even its
original promoter claimed. Echinacea first appeared in 'Meyer's Blood
Purifier', promoted as a cure-all by a Dr H.C.F. Meyer - a lay doctor with no
medical qualifications. 'Meyer's Blood Purifier' claimed not only to cure
snakebite, but also to eliminate a host of other ailments.
C. Native to North America, the roots
of Echinacea, or purple coneflower, had been used by the Plains Indians for all
kinds of ailments long before Meyer came along. They applied poultices of it to
wounds and stings, used it for teeth and gum disease and made a tea from it to
treat everything from colds and measles to arthritis. They even used it for
snakebite.
D.
Settlers quickly picked up on the plant's usefulness but until Meyer sent
samples of his 'blood purifier' to John Lloyd, a pharmacist, it remained a
folk remedy. Initially dismissing Meyer's claims as nonsense, Lloyd was
eventually converted after a colleague, John King, tested the herb and
successfully used it to treat bee stings and nasal congestion.
In fact, he went much further in his claims than Meyer ever did and by the
1890s a bottle of tincture(1) of Echinacea could be found in
almost every American home, incidentally making a fortune for Lloyd's company,
Lloyd Brothers Pharmacy.
E. As modern antibiotics became
available, the use of Echinacea products declined and from the 1940s to the
1970s it was pretty much forgotten in the USA. It was a different story in
Europe, where both French and German herbalists and homeopaths continued to make
extensive use of it.
It had been introduced there by Gerhard Madaus, who travelled from Germany to
America in 1937, returning with seed to establish commercial plots of
Echinacea. His firm conducted extensive research on echinacin, a concentrate
they made from the juice of flowering tops of the plants he had brought back.
It was put into ointments, liquids for internal and external use, and into
products for injections.
F. There is no evidence that
Echinacea is effective against snakebite, but Dr Meyer – who genuinely believed
in Echinacea - would probably be quite amused if he could come back and
see the uses to which modern science has put 'his' herb. He might not be
surprised that science has confirmed Echinacea's role as a treatment for wounds,
or that it has been found to be helpful in relieving arthritis, both claims
Meyer made for the herb.
He might though be surprised to learn how Echinacea is proving to be an
effective weapon against all sorts of disease, particularly infections. German
researchers had used it successfully to treat a range of infections and found
it to be effective against bacteria and protozoa (2).
There are many other intriguing medical possibilities for extracts from the
herb, but its apparent ability to help with our more common ailments has seen
thousands of people become enthusiastic converts. Dozens of packaged products
containing extracts of Echinacea can now be found amongst the many herbal
remedies and supplements on the shelves of health stores and pharmacies. Many of
those might be the modern equivalents of 'snake oil', but Echinacea at least
does seem to have some practical value.
G. Echinacea is a dry prairie plant,
drought-resistant and pretty tolerant of most soils, although it does best in
good soil with plenty of sun. Plants are usually grown from seed but they are
sometimes available from nurseries. Echinacea is a distinctive perennial with
erect, hairy, spotted stems up to a meter tall. Flower heads look like daisies,
with purple rayed florets and a dark brown central cone. The leaves are hairy;
the lower leaves are oval to lance-shaped and coarsely and irregularly toothed.
H. There
are nine species of Echinacea in all but only three are generally grown for
medicinal use. All have similar medicinal properties. Most European studies
have used liquid concentrates extracted from the tops of plants, whereas
extraction in the USA has usually been from the roots. Today most
manufacturers blend both, sometimes adding flowers and seeds to improve the
quality.
For the home grower,
the roots of all species seem equally effective. Dig them up in autumn after
the tops have died back after the first frost. Wash and dry them carefully and
store them in glass containers. You can harvest the tops throughout the summer and
even eat small amounts of leaf straight from the plant.
Even if you don't make
your fortune from this herb, there are few sights more attractive than a field
of purple coneflowers in all their glory. And with a few Echinacea plants
nearby, you'll never go short of a cure.
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