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IELTS READING PRACTICE

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32 views

IELTS READING PRACTICE

Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 13

IELTS / READING PRACTICE

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Aphantasia: A life without mental images

Close your eyes and imagine walking along a sandy beach and then
gazing over the horizon as the Sun rises. How clear is the image that
springs to mind?

Most people can readily conjure images inside their head - known as their
mind's eye. But this year scientists have described a condition, aphantasia,
in which some people are unable to visualize mental images.

Niel Kenmuir, from Lancaster, has always had a blind mind's eye. He knew
he was different even in childhood. "My stepfather, when I couldn't sleep,
told me to count sheep, and he explained what he meant, I tried to do it and
I couldn't," he says. "I couldn't see any sheep jumping over fences, there
was nothing to count."

Our memories are often tied up in images, think back to a wedding or first
day at school. As a result, Niel admits, some aspects of his memory are
"terrible", but he is very good at remembering facts. And, like others with
aphantasia, he struggles to recognize faces. Yet he does not see
aphantasia as a disability, but simply a different way of experiencing life.

Mind's eye blind

Ironically, Niel now works in a bookshop, although he largely sticks to the


non-fiction aisles. His condition begs the question what is going on inside
his picture-less mind. I asked him what happens when he tries to picture
his fiancée. "This is the hardest thing to describe, what happens in my
head when I think about things," he says. "When I think about my fiancée
there is no image, but I am definitely thinking about her, I know today she
has her hair up at the back, she's brunette. But I'm not describing an image
I am looking at, I'm remembering features about her, that's the strangest
thing and maybe that is a source of some regret."

The response from his mates is a very sympathetic: "You're weird." But
while Niel is very relaxed about his inability to picture things, it is often a
cause of distress for others. One person who took part in a study into
aphantasia said he had started to feel "isolated" and "alone" after
discovering that other people could see images in their heads. Being

pg. 1
unable to reminisce about his mother years after her death led to him being
"extremely distraught".

The super-visualizer

At the other end of the spectrum is children's book illustrator, Lauren


Beard, whose work on the Fairytale Hairdresser series will be familiar to
many six-year-olds. Her career relies on the vivid images that leap into her
mind's eye when she reads text from her author. When I met her in her
box-room studio in Manchester, she was working on a dramatic scene in
the next book. The text describes a baby perilously climbing onto a
chandelier.

"Straightaway I can visualize this grand glass chandelier in some sort of


French kind of ballroom, and the little baby just swinging off it and really
heavy thick curtains," she says. "I think I have a strong imagination, so I
can create the world and then keep adding to it so it gets sort of bigger and
bigger in my mind and the characters too they sort of evolve. I couldn't
really imagine what it's like to not imagine, I think it must be a bit of a
shame really."

Not many people have mental imagery as vibrant as Lauren or as blank as


Niel. They are the two extremes of visualization. Adam Zeman, a professor
of cognitive and behavioural neurology, wants to compare the lives and
experiences of people with aphantasia and its polar-opposite
hyperphantasia. His team, based at the University of Exeter, coined the
term aphantasia this year in a study in the journal Cortex.

Prof Zeman tells the BBC: "People who have contacted us say they are
really delighted that this has been recognized and has been given a name,
because they have been trying to explain to people for years that there is
this oddity that they find hard to convey to others." How we imagine is
clearly very subjective - one person's vivid scene could be another's grainy
picture. But Prof Zeman is certain that aphantasia is real. People often
report being able to dream in pictures, and there have been reported cases
of people losing the ability to think in images after a brain injury.

He is adamant that aphantasia is "not a disorder" and says it may affect up


to one in 50 people. But he adds: "I think it makes quite an important
difference to their experience of life because many of us spend our lives
with imagery hovering somewhere in the mind's eye which we inspect from
time to time, it's a variability of human experience."

pg. 2
Questions 1–5

Do the following statements agree with the information in the IELTS reading text?

In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write.

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information.

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information.

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.

Aphantasia is a condition, which describes people, for whom it is hard to visualise


mental images.

2. Niel Kenmuir was unable to count sheep in his


head.

3. People with aphantasia struggle to remember personal traits and clothes of different
people.

4. Niel regrets that he cannot portray an image of his fiancee in his


mind.

5. Inability to picture things in someone's head is often a cause of distress for a


person.

6. All people with aphantasia start to feel 'isolated' or 'alone' at some point of their
lives.

7. Lauren Beard's career depends on her imagination.

8. The author met Lauren Beard when she was working on a comedy scene in her next
book.

Questions 9–13

Complete the sentences below.

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

Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

pg. 3
9. Only a small fraction of people has imagination as as Lauren does.

10. Hyperphantasia is to aphantasia.

11.There are a lot of subjectivity in comparing people's imagination - somebody's vivid


scene could be another person's .

12. Prof Zeman is that aphantasia is not an illness.

13. Many people spend their lives with somewhere in the mind's eye.

pg. 4
READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14–26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.

Life lessons from villains, crooks and gangsters

(A) A notorious Mexican drug baron’s audacious escape from prison in July
doesn’t, at first, appear to have much to teach corporate boards. But some
in the business world suggest otherwise. Beyond the morally reprehensible
side of criminals' work, some business gurus say organised crime
syndicates, computer hackers, pirates and others operating outside the law
could teach legitimate corporations a thing or two about how to hustle and
respond to rapid change.

(B) Far from encouraging illegality, these gurus argue that – in the same
way big corporations sometimes emulate start-ups – business leaders
could learn from the underworld about flexibility, innovation and the ability
to pivot quickly. “There is a nimbleness to criminal organisations that legacy
corporations [with large, complex layers of management] don’t have,” said
Marc Goodman, head of the Future Crimes Institute and global cyber-crime
advisor. While traditional businesses focus on rules they have to follow,
criminals look to circumvent them. “For criminals, the sky is the limit and
that creates the opportunity to think much, much bigger.”

(C) Joaquin Guzman, the head of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, for
instance, slipped out of his prison cell through a tiny hole in his shower that
led to a mile-long tunnel fitted with lights and ventilation. Making a break for
it required creative thinking, long-term planning and perseverance –
essential skills similar to those needed to achieve success in big business.

(D) While Devin Liddell, who heads brand strategy for Seattle-based design
consultancy, Teague, condemns the violence and other illegal activities he
became curious as to how criminal groups endure. Some cartels stay in
business despite multiple efforts by law enforcement on both sides of the
US border and millions of dollars from international agencies to shut them
down. Liddell genuinely believes there’s a lesson in longevity here. One

pg. 5
strategy he underlined was how the bad guys respond to change. In order
to bypass the border between Mexico and the US, for example, the Sinaloa
cartel went to great lengths. It built a vast underground tunnel, hired family
members as border agents and even used a catapult to circumvent a high-
tech fence.

(E) By contrast, many legitimate businesses fail because they hesitate to


adapt quickly to changing market winds. One high-profile example is movie
and game rental company Blockbuster, which didn’t keep up with the
market and lost business to mail order video rentals and streaming
technologies. The brand has all but faded from view. Liddell argues the
difference between the two groups is that criminal organisations often have
improvisation encoded into their daily behaviour, while larger companies
think of innovation as a set process. “This is a leadership challenge,” said
Liddell. “How well companies innovate and organise is a reflection of
leadership.”

Left-field thinking

(F) Cash-strapped start-ups also use unorthodox strategies to problem


solve and build their businesses up from scratch. This creativity and
innovation is often borne out of necessity, such as tight budgets. Both
criminals and start-up founders “question authority, act outside the system
and see new and clever ways of doing things,” said Goodman. “Either they
become Elon Musk or El Chapo.” And, some entrepreneurs aren’t even
afraid to operate in legal grey areas in their effort to disrupt the
marketplace. The co-founders of music streaming service Napster, for
example, knowingly broke music copyright rules with their first online file
sharing service, but their technology paved the way for legal innovation as
regulators caught up.

(G) Goodman and others believe thinking hard about problem solving
before worrying about restrictions could prevent established companies
falling victim to rivals less constrained by tradition. In their book The Misfit
Economy, Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips examine how individuals can
apply that mindset to become more innovative and entrepreneurial within
corporate structures. They studied not just violent criminals like Somali
pirates, but others who break the rules in order to find creative solutions to
their business problems, such as people living in the slums of Mumbai or
computer hackers. They picked out five common traits among this group:
the ability to hustle, pivot, provoke, hack and copycat.

pg. 6
(H) Clay gives a Saudi entrepreneur named Walid Abdul-Wahab as a prime
example. Abdul-Wahab worked with Amish farmers to bring camel milk to
American consumers even before US regulators approved it. Through
perseverance, he eventually found a network of Amish camel milk farmers
and started selling the product via social media. Now his company, Desert
Farms, sells to giant mainstream retailers like Whole Foods Market. Those
on the fringe don’t always have the option of traditional, corporate jobs and
that forces them to think more creatively about how to make a living, Clay
said. They must develop grit and resilience in order to last outside the
cushy confines of cubicle life. “In many cases scarcity is the mother of
invention,” Clay said.

Questions 14-21

Reading Passage 2 has eight paragraphs A-H. Match the headings below with the
paragraphs. Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 14-21 on your answer sheet.

14. Jailbreak with creative thinking

15. Five common traits among rule-breakers

16. Comparison between criminals and traditional businessmen

17. Can drug baron's espace teach legitimate corporations?

18. Great entrepreneur

19. How criminal groups deceive the law

20. The difference between legal and illegal organisations

21. Similarity between criminals and start-up founders

pg. 7
Questions 22–25

Complete the sentences below.

Write ONLY ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 22–25 on your answer sheet.

22. To escape from a prison, Joaquin Guzman had to use such traits as creative
thinking, long-term planning and .

23. The Sinaloa cartel built a grand underground tunnel and even used a to
avoid the fence.

24. The main difference between two groups is that criminals, unlike large corporations,
often have encoded into their daily life.

25. Due to being persuasive, Walid Abdul-Wahab found a of Amish camel


milk farmers.

Question 26

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

26. The main goal of this article is to:

A Show different ways of illegal activity

B Give an overview of various criminals and their gangs

C Draw a comparison between legal and illegal business, providing examples

D Justify criminals with creative thinking

pg. 8
READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.

Britain needs strong TV industry


Comedy writer Armando Iannucci has called for an industry-wide defence
of the BBC and British programme-makers. "The Thick of It" creator made
his remarks in the annual MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV
Festival.

"It's more important than ever that we have more strong, popular
channels... that act as beacons, drawing audiences to the best content," he
said. Speaking earlier, Culture Secretary John Whittingdale rejected
suggestions that he wanted to dismantle the BBC.

'Champion supporters'

Iannucci co-wrote "I'm Alan Partridge", wrote the movie "In the Loop" and
created and wrote the hit "HBO" and "Sky Atlantic show Veep". He
delivered the 40th annual MacTaggart Lecture, which has previously been
given by Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, former BBC director general Greg
Dyke, Jeremy Paxman and Rupert Murdoch. Iannucci said: "Faced with a
global audience, British television needs its champion supporters."

He continued his praise for British programming by saying the global


success of American TV shows had come about because they were
emulating British television. "The best US shows are modelling themselves
on what used to make British TV so world-beating," he said. "US prime-
time schedules are now littered with those quirky formats from the UK -
the "Who Do You Think You Are"'s and the variants on "Strictly Come
Dancing" - as well as the single-camera non-audience sitcom, which we
brought into the mainstream first. We have changed international viewing
for the better."

With the renewal of the BBC's royal charter approaching, Iannucci also
praised the corporation. He said: "If public service broadcasting - one of the
best things we've ever done creatively as a country - if it was a car industry,
our ministers would be out championing it overseas, trying to win contracts,
boasting of the British jobs that would bring." In July, the government
issued a green paper setting out issues that will be explored during

pg. 9
negotiations over the future of the BBC, including the broadcaster's size, its
funding and governance.

Primarily Mr Whittingdale wanted to appoint a panel of five people, but


finally he invited two more people to advise on the channer renewal,
namely former Channel 4 boss Dawn Airey and journalism professor
Stewart Purvis, a former editor-in-chief of ITN. Iannucci bemoaned the lack
of "creatives" involved in the discussions.

"When the media, communications and information industries make up


nearly 8% our GDP, larger than the car and oil and gas industries put
together, we need to be heard, as those industries are heard. But when I
see the panel of experts who've been asked by the culture secretary to
take a root and branch look at the BBC, I don't see anyone who is a part of
that cast and crew list. I see executives, media owners, industry gurus, all
talented people - but not a single person who's made a classic and
enduring television show."

'Don't be modest'

Iannucci suggested one way of easing the strain on the licence fee was "by
pushing ourselves more commercially abroad".

"Use the BBC's name, one of the most recognised brands in the world," he
said. "And use the reputation of British television across all networks, to
capitalise financially oversees. Be more aggressive in selling our shows,
through advertising, through proper international subscription channels,
freeing up BBC Worldwide to be fully commercial, whatever it takes.

"Frankly, don't be icky and modest about making money, let's monetise the
bezeesus Mary and Joseph out of our programmes abroad so that money
can come back, take some pressure off the licence fee at home and be
invested in even more ambitious quality shows, that can only add to our
value."

Mr Whittingdale, who was interviewed by ITV News' Alastair Stewart at the


festival, said he wanted an open debate about whether the corporation
should do everything it has done in the past. He said he had a slight sense
that people who rushed to defend the BBC were "trying to have an
argument that's never been started".

"Whatever my view is, I don't determine what programmes the BBC should
show," he added. "That's the job of the BBC." Mr Whittingdale said any
speculation that the Conservative Party had always wanted to change the
BBC due to issues such as its editorial line was "absolute nonsense".

pg. 10
Questions 27-31

Do the following statements agree with the information in the IELTS reading text?

In boxes 27–31 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

27. Armando Iannucci expressed a need of having more popular


channels.

28. John Whittingdale wanted to dismantle the


BBC.

29. Iannucci delivered the 30th annual MacTaggart


Lecture.

30. Ianucci believes that British television has contributed to the success of American
TV-shows.

31. There have been negotiations over the future of the BBC in
July.

Questions 32–35

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 32-35 on your answer sheet.

32. Ianucci praised everything EXCEPT

A US shows

B British shows

C Corporation

D British programming

pg. 11
33. To advise on the charter renewal Mr Whittingdale appointed a panel of

A five people

B two people

C seven people

D four people

34. Who of these people was NOT invited to the discussion concerning BBC renewal?

A Armando Iannucci

B Dawn Airey

C John Whittingdale

D Stewart Purvis

35. There panel of experts lacks:

A media owners

B people who make enduring TV-shows

C gurus of Television industry

D top executives

Questions 36–40

Complete the summary below.

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

Write your answers in boxes 37–40 on your answer sheet.

pg. 12
Easing the strain on the licence fees

Iannucci recommended increasing BBC's profit by pushing ourselves


more 36. . He suggests being more aggressive in selling British shows,
through advertising and proper international 37. . Also, he invokes producers
to stop being 38. and modest about making money and invest into
even 39. quality shows. However, Mr Whittingdale denied
any 40. that the Conservative Party had always wanted to change the BBC
because of its editorial line.

pg. 13

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