IELTS Reading Summary Completion

 

IELTS Reading Summary Completion

The Academic passage ‘The Siberian Tiger‘ is a reading passage that appeared in an IELTS Test.

Sample 1

The Siberian Tiger

The Siberian tiger can be found in what was the USSR and seems to live mainly on the lower slopes of mountains. It likes to eat wild boar, wapiti and moose and will travel long distances in search of food. The male tiger weighs more than the female and is bigger than any other species of tiger. Genetically it is closely linked to the now extinct Caspian tiger. Although brown bears are capable of killing tigers, they make up approximately 8% of their diet. Russian conservatives are trying to protect Siberian tigers because they keep the wolf population under control.

Questions 1 – 3

Complete the summary below.

Choose No More Than Two Words from the passage for each answer.

The main habitat of the Siberian tiger is in low mountainous areas of the former1_______. It is similar genetically to the 2______. Russian conservatives want to 3_______ the number of wolves and protect the Siberian tiger.

 

Sample 2

The instructions accompanying do-it-yourself products are regularly cited as a source of unnecessary expense or frustration.Few companies seem to test their instructions by having them followed by a first-time user. Often, essential information is omitted, steps in the construction process are taken for granted, and some degree of special knowledge is assumed. This is especially worrying in any fields where failure to follow correct procedures can be dangerous.

Objections to material in plain English have come mainly from the legal profession. Lawyers point to the risk of ambiguity inherent in the use of everyday language for legal or official documents, and draw attention to the need for confidence in legal formulations, which can come only from using language that has been tested in court over the course of centuries. 

Choose No More Than Two Words from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

Consumers often complain that they experience a feeling of 1………… when trying to put together do-it-yourself products which have not been tested by companies on a 2………… . Institutions where not keeping to the correct procedures could affect safety issues, it is especially important that 3………… information is not left out and no assumptions are made about a stage being self-evident or the consumer having a certain amount of 4………… .Lawyers, however, have raised objections to the use of plain English. They feel that it would result in ambiguity in documents and cause people to lose faith in 5………… ,as it would mean departing from language that has been used in the courts for a very long time.

 

Sample 3

Tyes and Greens

Hayles Tye seems to have got its name from a certain John Hayle who Is documented in the 1380s, although there are records pointing to the occupation of the site at a much earlier date. The name was still in use in 1500 and crops up again throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, usually in relation to the payment of taxes or tithes. At some point during the 18th century, the name is changed to Filo’a Green, though no trace of an owner called File has been found. Also in the 18th century, the original dwellings on the site disappeared. Much of this region was economically depressed during this period and the land and its dwellings may simply have been abandoned. Several farms were abandoned in the neighbouring village of Alphamstone, and the population dwindled so much that there was no money to support the fabric of the village church, which became very dilapidated. However, another possibility is that the buildings at File’s Green burnt down, fires being not infrequent at this time.

Question 1-11

Complete the text below. Use No More Than Three Words from the passage to fill each blank space.

Write your answers in the blank spaces next to 1-5 on your answer sheet

1380s- John Hayle, who is 1__________, apparently gave his name to Hayles Tye. In 1500s- the name of Hayles Tye was still 2_______, 3_____again in the following two centuries in relation to taxes. In the 18th century- Hayles Tye was renamed__________4______ the original dwellings may either have dissappeared, or were _____5_________Charles Townsend.

 

Sample 4

Caveat Scriptor

A. People think that writing as a profession is glamorous; that it is just about sitting down and churning out words on a page, or more likely these days on a computer screen. If only it were! So what exactly does writing a book entail? Being a writer is about managing a galaxy of contradictory feelings. Of course, it also involves carrying out detailed research: first to establish whether there is a market for the planned publication, and second into the content of the book.  Once the publication has been embarked upon, there is a long period of turmoil as the text takes shape. A first draft is rarely the final text of the book. While some people might think that with new technology the checking and editing process is speeded up, the experienced writer would hardly agree.

B. After the trauma of self-editing and looking for howlers, it is time to show the text to other people, friends perhaps, for appraisal. It also helps, at this stage, to offer a synopsis of the book, if it is a novel, or an outline if it is a textbook. The lucky few are taken on by publishers or agents, then have their books subjected to a number of readers, whose job it is to vet a book: deciding whether it is worth publishing and whether the text as it stands is acceptable or not. After a book has finally been accepted by a publisher, one of the greatest difficulties for the writer lies in taking on board the publisher’s alterations to the text. A book’s creation period is complex and unnerving, but the publisher’s reworkings and text amputations can also be a tortuous process. Abandon writing? Nonsense. Once smitten, it is not easy to escape the compulsion to create and write, despite the roller-coaster ride of contradictory emotions.

Questions 1-8

Complete the text below, which is a summary of the passage. Choose your answers from the Word List below and write them in the blank spaces next to 1-8 on your answer sheet.

People often associate writing with 1_________________. But being a writer Involves managing conflicting emotions as well as 2___________________ or instinct. Advanced technology, contrary to what might be thought, does not make the 3___________________ faster. When a writer has a draft of the text ready, It is a good idea to have a 4___________________ _______for friends, etc. to look at. If an author Is accepted by a publisher, the draft of the book is given to 5 __________for vetting.

Wordlist

Editing process	beware	readers
First draft	glamour	A literary agent
alterations	profession	publisher
challenges	writing	dictating
research	publishing	summary
Ups and downs	roller-coaster

 

Sample 5

Mammoth Kill 2

Although it’s hard to imagine in this age of urban sprawl and automobiles, North America once belonged to mammoths, camels, ground sloths as large as cows, bear-sized beavers and other formidable beasts. Some 11,000 years ago, however, these large-bodied mammals and others – about 70 species in all – disappeared. Yet despite decades of scientific investigation, the exact cause remains a mystery. Now new findings offer support to one of these controversial hypotheses: that human hunting drove this megafaunal menagerie to extinction.  The overkill model emerged in the 1960s when it was put forth by Paul S. Martin of the University of Arizona.  A more specific criticism comes from mammalogist Ross D. E. MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, who points out that the relevant archaeological record contains barely a dozen examples of stone points embedded in mammoth bones (and none, it should be noted, are known from other megafaunal remains) – hardly what one might expect if hunting drove these animals to extinction. Furthermore, some of these species had huge ranges – the giant Jefferson’s ground sloth, for example, lived as far north as the Yukon and as far south as Mexico – which would have made slaughtering them in numbers sufficient to cause their extinction rather implausible, he says. 

Rather he suggests that people may have introduced hyper lethal disease, perhaps through their dogs or hitchhiking vermin, which then spread widely among the immunologically naive species of the New World. Repeated outbreaks of a hyper disease could thus quickly drive them to the point of no return. So far MacPhee does not have empirical evidence for the hyper disease hypothesis, and it won’t be easy to come by hyper lethal disease that would kill far too quickly to leave its signature on the bones themselves.  The third explanation blames the loss on the weather. The Pleistocene epoch witnessed considerable climatic instability, explains palaeontology Russell W. Graham of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. As a result, certain habitats disappeared, and species that had once formed communities split apart. For much of the megafauna, however, the increasingly homogeneous environment left them with shrinking geographical ranges – a death sentence for large animals, which need large ranges. Although these creatures managed to maintain viable populations through most of the Pleistocene, the final major fluctuation – the so-called Younger Dryas event – pushed them over the edge, Graham says. 

Questions 1-5

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using No More Than Three Words from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in the blank spaces from 1-5 on your answer sheet.

The reason why big-sized mammals became extinct 11,000 years ago is under hot debate.   First the explanation is that 1…………………… of humans made it happen. This so-called 2…………………… began from the 1960s suggested by an expert, who however received criticism of lack of further information. Another assumption promoted by MacPhee is that deadly 3…………………… from humans causes their demises. However, his hypothesis required more 4…………………… to testify its validity. Graham proposed a third hypothesis that 5…………………… in Pleistocene epoch drove some species to disappear. 

 

Sample 6

Learning By Examples

1. Learning theory is rooted in the work of Ivan Pavlov, the famous scientist who discovered and documented the principles governing how animals (humans included) learn in the 1900s.  Years of learning research have led to the creation of a highly precise learning theory that can be used to understand and predict how and under what circumstances most any animal will learn, including human beings, and eventually help people figure out how to change their behaviours. A paper in 1996 Animal Behavior by Bednekoff and Balda provides a different view of the adaptiveness of social learning. It concerns the seed caching behaviour of Clark’s nutcracker (Nucifraga Columbiana) and the Mexican jay (Aphelocoma ultramarina). The former is a specialist, catching 30,000 or so seeds in scattered locations that it will recover over the months of winter, the Mexican jay will also cache food but is much less dependent upon this than the nutcracker. The two species also differ in their social structure, the nutcracker being rather solitary while the jay forages in social groups. 
2. The experiment is to discover not just whether a bird can remember where it hid a seed but also if it can remember where it saw another bird hide a seed. The design is slightly comical with a cacher bird wandering about a room with lots of holes in the floor hiding food in some of the holes, while watched by an observer bird perched in a cage. Two days later cachers and observers are tested for their discovery rate against an estimated random performance. In the role of cacher, not only nutcrackers but also the less specialized jay performed above chance; more surprisingly, however, jay observers were as successful as jay cachers whereas nutcracker observers did no better than chance. It seems that, whereas the nutcracker is highly adapted at remembering where it hid its own seeds, the social living Mexican jay is more adept at remembering, and so exploiting, the caches of others.

Questions 1 – 5

Complete the summary below using words from the box.

Write your answers in the blank spaces next to 1– 5 on your answer sheet.

While the Nutcracker is more able to cache see, the Jay relies 1…………………… upon caching food and is thus less specialized in this ability, but more 2……………………. To study their behaviour of caching and finding their caches, an experiment was designed and carried out to test these two birds for their ability to remember where they hid the seeds. In the experiment, the cacher bird hid seeds in the ground while the other 3……………………. As a result, the Nutcracker and the Mexican Jay showed different performance in the role of 4…………………… at finding the seeds—the observing 5…………………… didn’t do as well as its counterpart.

less	more	solitary
social	cacher	observer
remembered	watched	jay
nutcracker

 

Sample 7

Roller Coaster

600 years ago, roller coaster pioneers never would have imagined the advancements that have been made to create the roller coasters of today. The tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world is the Kingda Ka, a coaster in New Jersey that launches its passengers from zero to 128 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds (most sports cars take over four seconds to get to just 60 miles per hour). It then heaves its riders skyward at a 90-degree angle (straight up) until it reaches a height of 456 feet, over one and a half football fields, above the ground, before dropping another 418 feet (Coaster Grotto “Kingda Ka”). Roller coasters have evolved drastically over the years, from their primitive beginnings as Russian ice slides, to the metal monsters of today. Their combination of creativity and structural elements make them one of the purest forms of architecture. 

In comparison to the world’s first roller coaster, there is perhaps an even greater debate over what was America’s first true coaster. Many will say that it is Pennsylvania’s own Maunch Chunk-Summit Hill and Switch  Back  Railroad.  The  Maunch   Chunk-Summit  Hill and  Switch  Back  Railroad was originally America’s second railroad and considered by many to be the greatest coaster of all time. Located in the Lehigh Valley, it was originally used to transport coal from the top of Mount Pisgah to the bottom of Mount Jefferson, until Josiah White, a mining entrepreneur, had the idea of turning it into a part-time thrill ride. Because of its immediate popularity, it soon became strictly a passenger train. A steam engine would haul passengers to the top of the mountain, before letting them coast back down, with speeds rumoured to reach 100 miles per hour! The reason that it was called a switchback railroad, a switch backtrack was located at the top – where the steam engine would let the riders coast back down.

Questions 1-4

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using No More Than Two Words from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in the blank spaces from 1 – 4 on your answer sheet.

The tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world is …………The first roller coaster was perhaps originated from Russia which is wrapped up by……., which was introduced into France. In America, the first roller coaster was said to appear in……… Josiah White turned it into a thrill ride, it was also called switch backtrack and a ……… there allowed riders to slide down back again.

Steam engine	Roller coaster	pioneer
New jersey	riders	Football fields
Russia	Architecture	Pennsylvania
america	Ice	Switch back railroad
Kingda Ka

 

Sample 8

“Freebie” Marketing

Not all forms of freebie marketing are legal. One notable example of this is the use of freebie marketing to “push” habit-forming goods in areas where there is otherwise no market. For illegal substances, this is already restricted on the basis of the product’s illegality, but the use of freebie marketing to promote legal goods such as tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals is also outlawed because the short-term gain to a small number of commercial outlets is not deemed worth the social cost of widespread substance abuse.

Another practice that is prohibited under antitrust laws is a form of freebie marketing known as “tying”. This is when a seller makes the sale of one good conditional on the acquisition of a second good. In these instances, the first good is typically important and highly desirable, while the second is inferior and undesirable. A music distributor who has the rights to an album that is in high demand, for example, might only allow stores to purchase copies of this album if they also buy an unpopular stock that does not sell very easily. Because this typically relies on the manipulation of a natural monopoly on the part of the distributor, such practices are widely understood to constitute anti-competitive behaviour.

Questions 1-4

Complete the summary below. 

Choose No More Than Two Words from the text for each answer.

Write your answers in blank spaces next to 1-4 on your answer sheet.

Freebie marketing is not permitted by law for either illegal or legal 1………………… products. This type of promotion of goods such as tobacco and alcohol is not considered worth the 2…………….. and has consequently been outlawed. “Tying” is also prohibited. This is when the sale of an attractive product is 3…………………. on the purchase of another. It tends to occur when the seller takes advantage of a natural monopoly and is generally considered to be 4………………..

habit-forming	Freebie marketing	Illegal substances
Natural monopoly	Anti-competitive behaviour	Social cost
Pharameucitcal	Antitrust laws	Music distribution
Conditional

 

Sample 9

Biometrics

Until the late 1800s, identification largely relied upon ‘photographic memory.’ In the 1890s, an anthropologist and police desk clerk in Paris named Alphonse Bertillon sought to fix the problem of identifying convicted criminals and turned biometrics into a distinct field of study.  He developed a method of multiple body measurements which was named after him – Bertillonage. Bertillon based his system on the claim that the measurement of adult bones does not change after the age of 20. His system was used by police authorities throughout the world, until 1903, when two identical measurements were obtained for two different persons at Fort Leavenworth prison. The prison switched to fingerprinting the following day and the rest of the world soon followed, abandoning Bertillonage forever.  After the failure of Bertillonage, the police started using fingerprinting, which was developed by Richard Edward Henry of Scotland Yard, essentially reverting to the same methods used by the Chinese for years.

For security reasons, often two, or all three, of these systems are combined but as times progress, we are in constant need for more secure and accurate measures. Authentication by biometric verification is becoming increasingly common in corporate and public security systems, consumer electronics and point-of-sale applications. In addition to security, the driving force behind biometric verification has been convenience. Already, many European countries are introducing a biometric passport which will carry a paper-thin computer chip to store the facial image and at least one additional biometric identifier. This will help to counter fraudulent efforts to obtain duplicate passports and will verify the identity of the holder against the document.

Questions 1-4

Compute the summary from the list of words A – L below.

Write the correct letter A-L in blank spaces next to 1-4 below.

As long ago as the 14th century, the Chinese made use of biometrics in order to tell young children apart, but it was only in the 1890s when it was first used by the authorities as a means of 1………………………… in criminal cases. The system developed by the Frenchman Bertillon – that of measuring adult bones – was flawed, however, and so police adopted  2………………………… as a more reliable way of identifying suspects. Apart from security, another important 3………………..behind biometric verification has been 4…………………………. 

identification	security	convenience	scanning
fingerprinting	identity	violation	measuring
justification	approval	factor	apprehension