IELTS Matching Headings in Reading Module

 IELTS Matching Headings in Reading Module

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.

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.