IELTS Reading Test 1
Reading Passage 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14, which are based on Reading Passage 1
below.
London wins Olympics official screamed. According to his own account,
2012 event will be secure, pledges capital's the prime minister punched the air, did a jig and
mayor embraced his startled chief of staff, Jonathan
Powell.
By Paul Kelso
Mr Blair, who had helped to lay the groundwork
When he arrived in Singapore to give his speech for victory during three days of intense one-to-
for London's bid to host the 2012 Olympic one lobbying of IOC members, said hard work
Games last week Sebastian Coe brought with had paid off: "We had the right message that we
him a secret weapon: 30 children. Where rival wanted, a strong message for the Olympic
bids filled their 100 allotted seats in the Raffles mood." Where Madrid, Moscow, New York and
hotel auditorium with suits, London presented Paris had sought to reassure and flatter the IOC
the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with with presidential promises and high-budget
a grinning multiracial example of the city's tourism videos, Lord Coe set out a challenge to a
potential. movement sometimes more concerned with its
internal politics than its mission. "Some might
It was to prove inspired, although Lord Coe and say your decision today is between five similar
his team had to wait six hours before they knew bids. That would be to undervalue the
it. London's victory was announced only after a opportunity before you," he said. "In the past
presentation ceremony that scaled new heights of you have made bold decisions. This is a decision
kitsch. Two Singaporean sopranos and a tenor about which city will help us show a new
subjected the Olympic anthem, a tune whose generation why sport matters. On behalf of the
primary virtue is to be heard only once every youth of today, the athletes of tomorrow and the
four years, to a fearful mauling. Olympians of the future, we humbly submit the
bid of London 2012." London's mayor Ken
Eventually the IOC president, Jacques Rogge, Livingstone and the Metropolitan Police
recovered his composure and requested the commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, insisted that the
envelope bearing the name of the winning city. London 2012 Olympics would be secure despite
It was brought to him on a silk pillow by a 15- last week's terrorist attacks. "We have reassured
year-old sailor cadet in the Singaporean navy. the IOC that we have the security to handle the
An excruciating preamble ensued, followed by games," said Mr Livingstone, adding that the
one sweet word: "London". Coe and Co had Metropolitan Police had been involved in the
secured 54 votes to 50 for the favourite, Paris, in advisory group for the Athens games. "The IOC
the final run-off. know, through the experience of the 1972
Munich Olympics, that there is nowhere that can
At the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Tony Blair ever be completely safe but there is nowhere that
found the build-up unbearable. He was will be safer than London," he said.
attempting to calm his nerves with a walk in the
hotel grounds when the announcement was First published in The Guardian Weekly 15/7/2005,
made. Downing Street broke the news to him on page 13
his mobile. "We have won! We have won!" the
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2005
Taken from the Exams section in www.onestopenglish.com
Questions 1-3
Complete the following sentences with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from Reading
Passage 1. Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.
1 The 30 children were Coe’s ___________.
2 The seats of London’s competitors were filled with ___________.
3 The IOC was shown an example of London’s __________.
Questions 4-7
Do the following statements agree with the writer’s opinion in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 4-7 on your answer sheet write:
YES if the statement agrees with the writer’s opinion
NO if the statement contradicts the writer’s opinion
NOT GIVEN if there is no information about the writer’s opinion in the
Passage
4 London’s presentation turned out brilliantly.
5 The Olympic anthem was performed well.
6 More members of the IOC should have voted for London in the final vote.
7 Tony Blair over-reacted to the announcement of London’s successful bid.
Questions 8-14
Complete the summary below. Choose One Word Only from the text. Write your answers in
boxes 8-14 on your answer sheet.
According to Mr Blair, London had a persuasive 8 __________, which was in keeping with the
Olympic mood. While the respective presidents for Madrid, Moscow, New York and Paris made
9 __________ to the IOC and used expensive videos to make them confident about their bids
and also to 10 __________ them, Coe aimed to challenge the Committee. The IOC is at times
more 11 __________ with its own politics rather than with what it is supposed to do. Mr Coe told
the Committee that their 12 __________ was about which city would help show young people
why 13 __________ is important. He then presented the 14 __________ on behalf of the youth of
today, the athletes of tomorrow and the Olympians of the future.
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2005
Taken from the Exams section in www.onestopenglish.com
Reading Passage 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-28, which are based on Reading Passage 2
below.
Trick and cheat the world around us because they have to
By Alok Jha deceive us in terms of controlling attention,
exploiting the assumptions we make when we do
There's no denying the effects of a good magic and don't notice a change in our environment,"
trick. From the great escapes of Houdini and the says Wiseman. "There is an enormous amount of
surreal mental trickery of Derren Brown to the really detailed instruction on how to perform
conjurors at children's parties, the appeal is magic."
universal.
A card trick that lasts four or five minutes, for
"Magic's been around for a very long time and it example, might have 20 pages of detailed text to
improves over time," says Richard Wiseman, a describe exactly where to look, what to say, what
professor of psychology at Hertfordshire to do and so on. And a lot of the understanding
University. "What you're looking at when you of a trick has to be from the perspective of the
see a finished piece of magic is a great deal of audience.
expertise, and I think psychologists have a lot to
learn from that." While the magician's dexterity is important, the
audience is also a vital participant in the
But, not content with just enjoying the tricks, deception. After all, it is in their minds that the
psychologists are now using their effects on the illusion is created. "Magicians seem to be able to
mind to work out how we handle the floods of carry out secret actions in front of their audience
sensory information coming into our brains and without being spotted. I'm interested in why
process it into a mental picture of the world people don't perceive those actions," says Gustav
around us. Magic is a deception, a disruption of Kuhn, a psychologist at Durham University.
that orderly mental picture where things seem to
float in mid-air or coins and cards vanish in front A simple example of misdirection is used in the
of our eyes. Scientists now believe that, by coin drop trick. "What you're doing there is
mapping out how our brains are deceived, they pretending to take the coin from one hand to the
could even help to unlock some of the mysteries other but, in fact, leaving it in the original hand,"
of consciousness itself. says Wiseman. "What's important is that you're
looking where you want the audience to look. In
"Over the last five years, there's been a terms of movement, you're moving the hand that
reawakening as we look at things like change doesn't contain the coin to attract people's
blindness [a failure to see large changes in a attention over to that hand."
visual scene] and at the fact that consciousness is
a construction and may even be an illusion," says Psychologists can use such tricks to catch a
Wiseman, himself an accomplished magician glimpse into how our minds interpret the world
and member of the Magic Circle. "Now there's a around us. "Magicians are manipulating your
recognition that magicians are doing something consciousness. They are showing you something
very special." impossible," says Wiseman. "They're getting you
to construct a narrative which simply isn't true.
Magic is all about convincing others that the So that means they know how to make you
impossible has just happened. And that aware of certain things and blind to other things.
deception is achieved with a high degree of skill What I'm hoping is that magic, this
and showmanship. entertainment vehicle that has been around for a
long time, will give us a real insight into the
"We're starting to realise that magicians have a deep mysteries of consciousness."
lot of implicit knowledge about how we perceive
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2005
Taken from the Exams section in www.onestopenglish.com
Our brains filter out a huge amount of the mass "What it shows is just how much of the picture
of sensory input flooding in. Kuhn explains that in our head of our surroundings is a massive
we see what we expect to see and what our construction, based on expectations, what we
brains are interested in. "Our visual think is important, what we normally encounter
representation of the world is much more and so on," says Wiseman. "And that's what
impoverished than we would assume. People can magicians are very good at exploiting."
be looking at something without being aware of
it. Perception doesn't just involve looking at an Of course, magic is more than just surprise, so
object but attending to it." the researchers will be looking for something
more. "When you're watching magic, there is
In Kuhn's recent work, he performed a trick just a split second when you're in disbelief and
where a cigarette seems to disappear. It involved that's what we're looking for, that exact
no sleight of hand or secret. It was a simple case moment," according to Ben Parris at Exeter
of dropping the cigarette into his lap. "It happens University's Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience.
right in front of the spectator's eyes but I "The magic spot."
misdirect their attention away from the
cigarette," says Kuhn. But while psychologists slowly get to grips with
the way magicians manage to trick our brains, is
While his spectators watched, they wore eye there not a risk that the magic will lose its
trackers. It is known that we only receive high- power? That it will cease to be amazing?
quality information from the area we are fixated Wiseman thinks not. "What we get is a more
on, right in the centre of our field of view. If you informed audience," he says. "It's a little bit like
stretch out your arm, it is about two thumbs' juggling – you appreciate the juggler more once
width at the centre of your vision – everything you've tried to juggle three balls and then you
else is pretty much blurred. The way we suddenly realise how hard it is to juggle seven."
compensate for this is to move our eyes around
to fill in the gaps and create a better picture of The research will have benefits for the
the world around us. practitioners of magic, too. "What they will
realise is that the human mind is a lot more
Kuhn's results, to be published in the journal fallible than we magicians expect," says Kuhn.
Perception, showed that simply staring at the "Maybe magicians are too careful in the way
location of the deception was not enough for they conceal their secrets in front of an audience.
people to discover how the trick happened. They can probably get away with quite a bit
more."
"People could be looking very close to where the
cigarette was being dropped without even seeing First published in The Guardian Weekly, 5/8/2005,
it," he says. "Other people were looking quite far page 21
away but they did actually spot the cigarette.
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2005
Taken from the Exams section in www.onestopenglish.com
Questions 15-19
The box below gives a list of answers a-i to the Questions 15-19. Answer the questions by
choosing the correct answers a-i. Write your answers in boxes 15-19 on your answer sheet.
15 What did Wiseman say that a magic act contains?
16 What are psychologists employing the effects of magic to do?
17 What does Wiseman say that consciousness is?
18 How are people deceived by magic?
19 What are psychologists beginning to understand about magicians and their acts?
a) The magic act has little skill but lots of know-how.
b) Magicians have a lot of knowledge about how people see what is around
them.
c) They are taken in with a high degree of skill and showmanship.
d) Consciousness is purely an illusion.
e) Psychologists are now figuring out how people create a mental image of the
masses of information the brain receives.
f) Psychologists have a lot of knowledge about how people see what is around
them.
g) Consciousness is something which people construct and is possibly even an
illusion.
h) A finished piece of magic has a lot of skill or know-how.
i) Magicians have difficulty understanding how people create a mental image
of all the information the brain receives.
Questions 20-27
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 20-27 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
20 The performance of a card trick might require pages of instruction.
21 The audience’s perception of a trick is more important than the magician’s ability to
perform it.
22 Psychologists can make use of the tricks that magicians employ.
23 The human brain limits information coming into it.
24 The picture people have in their heads of what they see is a construction of their
expectations and so on.
25 Magic does not just rely on the element of surprise.
26 Research into magic will benefit neither the magicians nor psychologists.
27 Magic will benefit psychologists and their patients considerably.
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2005
Taken from the Exams section in www.onestopenglish.com
Question 28
Choose the correct letter A, B, C, D or E. Write your answer in box 28 on your answer sheet.
Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 2?
A How easily a psychologist can fool a patient
B How easily a magician can fool an audience
C Cheating patients
D The way magicians perceive the world
E The slowness of the human brain
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2005
Taken from the Exams section in www.onestopenglish.com
Reading Passage 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3
below.
Warming hits 'tipping point'
Climate change alarm as Siberian permafrost melts for first time since ice age
By Ian Sample
a) A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could
dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warned last week.
Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost
spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started
to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. The
area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest
frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of
methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
b) It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate
thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the
environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures. The discovery,
made by Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand
at Oxford University, was reported in New Scientist last week.
The researchers found that what was until recently a barren expanse of frozen peat is turning
into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometre across.
Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation was an "ecological landslide that is probably
irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He added that the thaw had
probably begun in the past three or four years.
c) Climate scientists reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that predictions of future
global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.
"When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations
where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said David Viner, a senior
scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
"This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect
is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing."
In its last major report in 2001, the intergovernmental panel on climate change predicted a
rise in global temperatures of 1.4C-5.8C between 1990 and 2100, but the estimate only takes
account of global warming driven by known greenhouse gas emissions.
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2005
Taken from the Exams section in www.onestopenglish.com
"These positive feedbacks with landmasses weren't known about then. They had no idea how
much they would add to global warming," said Dr Viner.
d) Western Siberia is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world, having experienced a
rise of some 3C in the past 40 years. Scientists are particularly concerned about the
permafrost, because as it thaws, it reveals bare ground that warms up more quickly than ice
and snow, and so accelerates the rate at which the permafrost thaws. Siberia's peat bogs have
been producing methane since they formed at the end of the last ice age, but most of the gas
had been trapped in the permafrost. According to Larry Smith, a hydrologist at the University
of California, Los Angeles, the west Siberian peat bog could hold some 70bn tonnes of
methane, a quarter of all of the methane stored in the ground around the world.
The permafrost is likely to take many decades to thaw, so the methane locked within it will
not be released into the atmosphere in one burst, said Stephen Sitch, a climate scientist at the
British Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter.
But calculations by Dr Sitch and his colleagues show that even if methane seeped from the
permafrost over the next 100 years, it would add around 700m tonnes of carbon into the
atmosphere each year, roughly the same amount that is released annually from the world's
wetlands and agriculture.
It would effectively double atmospheric levels of the gas, leading to a 10% to a 25% increase
in global warming, he said. Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said the finding
was a stark message to politicians to take concerted action on climate change. "We knew at
some point we'd get these feedbacks happening that exacerbate global warming, but this
could lead to a massive injection of greenhouse gases.”
e) "If we don't take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming that will be
beyond our control and it will lead to social, economic and environmental devastation
worldwide," he said. "There's still time to take action, but not much."
Last May another group of researchers reported signs that global warming was damaging the
permafrost. Katey Walter of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, told a meeting of the Arctic
Research Consortium of the US that her team had found methane hotspots in eastern Siberia.
Last month some of the world's worst air polluters, including the US and Australia,
announced a partnership to cut greenhouse gas emissions through the use of new
technologies.
First published in The Guardian Weekly, 21/8/2005
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2005
Taken from the Exams section in www.onestopenglish.com
Questions 29-33
Reading Passage 3 has five sections labelled a-e. Which paragraph contains the information
below? Write the correct letter in boxes 29-33 on your answer sheet.
29 The irreversible melting of the permafrost, caused by global warming, is an example of a
tipping point.
30 Methane escaping from the Siberian permafrost will increase global warming.
31 Action can and needs to be taken to halt the emission of greenhouse gasses.
32 A vast area of permafrost is thawing.
33 The projected increase in temperatures caused by global warming will have to be increased.
Questions 34-39
Look at the statements (Questions 34-39) and the list of people in the box below. Match each
statement with the correct person A-F. Write the correct letter in boxes 34-39 on your answer
sheet. (NB: You may use any letter more than once.)
34 There is a possibility that the west Siberian peat bog holds billions of tons of methane.
35 Methane hotspots had been found in eastern Siberia.
36 It is unlikely that the changes in western Siberia can be reversed.
37 The melting of the Siberian permafrost was a warning to politicians.
38 The changes in the Siberian permafrost will increase temperatures more than gas emissions
from humans.
39 The melting of the Siberian permafrost will probably take many years.
A Sergei Kirpotin
B Tony Juniper
C Stephen Stitch
D Larry Smith
E David Viner
F Katey Walter
Question 40
Choose the correct letter A, B, C, D or E. Write your answer in box 40 on your answer sheet.
Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage 3?
A Researchers in Siberia
B The point of no return
C The Siberian permafrost
D Warming hits ‘tipping point’
E Methane hotspots
© Macmillan Publishers Ltd 2005
Taken from the Exams section in www.onestopenglish.com
