IELTS test preparation online | IELTS General Reading Test 20

Reading

SECTION 1
Questions 1-7

Look at the information on the following page about swimming regulations at the Jubilee Swimming Club.
In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet write

TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage

Example
Twelve-year-olds are not allowed in the pool False

1. If you have wet clothes, they may be placed in the bin provided.
2. Bathers who wish to leave the pool can do so at any time before 6p.m.
3. Smoking at the pool is not permitted, unless authorized.
4. Guests may use the pool, but they must pay £10 to do so.
5. You may dive, but only diving is allowed from the diving board.
6. As a member, you are privileged and need not sign in before entering.
7. You may use the lockers, and there is no charge for the lockers.

Jubilee Swimming Club Regulations

• The Jubilee Swimming Club is maintained exclusively for the enjoyment of Bradford residents and any organised tournaments or activities need to be authorized by the Pool management.
• Members must show their registration cards at the registration desk. Persons without membership cards will not be able to use the pool. Guests must sign at the registration desk. Any guests entering the pool without having signed may be fined £10.
• Smoking is not allowed in the changing room. Clothes must be placed in the lockers provided. Keys are available at the registration desk. Used towels must be placed in the bins provided. All swimmers must shower before they enter the pool.
• Diving is only allowed from the diving board. Running and playing near the pool are not permitted. Children under twelve are not allowed to use the pool unless accompanied by an adult. All bathers must leave the pool by 6 p.m.
• Please respect the rights of all swimmers and at all times show the utmost courtesy to all swimmers. Repeated violations of conduct may result in eviction from the pool and its premises.

Questions 8 – 13
Read the article on “Airport Information” that informs visitors of the services London airports provide. Using from the passage answer the following questions. THE SAME ANSWER MAY BE USED TWICE IF NECESSARY.

Example
How much should I pay porters when they help? Free of Charge/ nothing

8. If you do not speak English at Heathrow and need some advice at the airport, you can get help as long as you arrive after 7:00 and before 22:00 at ………………………
9. ” I’ve heard that before you can enjoy the fine bars at Gatwick you have to ……………………..”
10. If you want to, you can shop outside the airport but you will find prices up to twice the amount in ……………..
11.1f you are looking for medical help quickly at Heathrow, you should head over to ………………….…….
12. If you need urgent medical help at either airport, you will find these people very helpful………………….
13. If you are at Heathrow, you should not go to this area if you need help with your child at a nursery……………

AIRPORT INFORMATION
There are two airports in London; Heathrow and Gatwick. These are the facilities which make passage through the airport easier and more enjoyable

At Heathrow, there are information desks at each terminal where you can get advice in several languages. Ring 759 7702 for Terminal 1, 759 7115 for Terminal 2 and 759 7107 for Terminal 3. Desks are open from 7: 00-22: 00 hrs. At Gatwick, the desk is open 24 hrs a day. Ring 28822 Ext e55 for general information and 31299 for flight times.

Parking
There are short-term car parks at all terminals at both airports. Long-term car parks are a better bet for most travelers. A free courtesy coach runs you from the car park to the terminals and back.

Shopping
At Heathrow, there are duty-free supermarkets at each terminal. At Gatwick, there’s a new supermarket in the International Departure Lounge after passport control. You’ll find that prices are up to 50% lower than in the High Street.

Medical
There are emergency medical/ nursing services at Heathrow and Gatwick. At Heathrow, they’re in the Queen’s Building. At Gatwick, they’re in the International Arrivals Hall. Both are staffed 24 hours a day by nursing sisters. There are nurseries at all terminals at both Heathrow and Gatwick where young children can be fed or changed in comfort. Trained children’s nurses are available to help if needed, except in Terminal 3 at Heathrow.

Help
You should ask your airline if you need special help. All terminals at Heathrow and Gatwick are fitted with lifts, ramps, and special toilets. An airport information desk will help you in an emergency. Porters will carry your bags free of charge on request. Or you can use one of the self-help trolleys distributed throughout the airports.

Food
There are coffee shops, buffets, grills, and restaurants at both airports. You can have anything from a snack to a la carte. The bars are open 24 hours a day and can be enjoyed after you’ve passed passport control.

SECTION 2
Questions 14 -24
Read the information on “Jackson Language School Summer/2001” on the next page and circle the correct answers to questions 14 —18.

14. The class sizes at the school are:
A no more than 10 students
B 16 or less
C more than 16
D 10 students or less

15. The English policy at the school requires that everyone must speak English at the school
A or have part of their fees deducted.
B or not be allowed to attend the school until the next day.
C or be sent back to their home country.
D or be asked to pay a fine for a day.

16. if you attend more than 80% of your classes,
A you may be reported to the OSS.
B you may not be eligible for a certificate.
C you will be eligible for a certificate.
D you will not get a visa extension.

17.The language lab
A is available to full- and part-time students.
B is closed on Sundays.
C has tapes that you may borrow for a week.
D Can be used by anyone with a password.

18. At Jackson School
A you must use a homestay program if you want to study.
B you cannot move out of a homestay if you give less than a month’s notice.
C you choose the homestay family. The school gives you the choice of which family you prefer.
D you may live with a British family during your studies if you want to.

Jackson Language School Summer/ 2001

Opening and Closing Times
The Jackson Language School is open each day except Sunday. There is an English Comer also available from 6:00pm — 9:00pm at the Bellevue Hall across from the school.

Class Size
Classes have a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 16 in one class. Classes are equipped with earphones and an electronically controlled listening.

Withdrawals
Students may withdraw and be refunded if they inform the ofﬁce within 24 hours after the 1st class.

Teachers
Teachers are all experienced and have a minimum of 2 years experience and at least a certiﬁcate in teaching English as a Second Language. They are all available for tutoring if you need it.

Location
The school is located 15 minutes from central London at 34 lnverleith Row, next to the Marks and Spencer shopping Centre. It is near a bus stop and only a 5 minutes walk from the Tube.

Language Laboratory
The language laboratory is open Monday to Friday from 2:00pm to 6:00 pm for all full time students. Computer software and CD ROMS are available as well as the Jackson’s own language learning website which is available by password. One can also borrow listening comprehension cassettes designed to help you with your TOEFL test and they can be borrowed for up to 2 days.

Extracurricular Activities
There are a variety of activities organised for the students so that he or she is able to enjoy the entertaining side of London. Excursions, outings, theatre visits, ﬁlms, parties and sports events are all part of the program. Pick up a time table at the Administration ofﬁce (room 301).

Attendance
Students on student visas are expected to attend regularly. Students who are absent more than 60% of the time will be reported to the OSS. Moreover, if students attend less than 80%, they will not be eligible for a certiﬁcate from Jackson School. It is also required by OSS for visa extension.

Homestay
You are able to stay with a British family if you request so. Jackson has a homestay program that matches students and families according to their own requirements and needs. While generally no problems occur, students may withdraw or move from a homestay household if he or she gives a 2-week written notice to the homestay family or school.

Language Policy
As the course is an immersion program, students are expected to speak English the entire time they are at the school. If they speak any language other than English at the school, they may be asked to leave the school for a day.

Questions 19 – 24
Look at the following information about Boarding at Stanford. Match the headings below with the paragraphs in the article on “BOARDING at Stanford College with paragraphs A – G. There are more headings than required. The first heading has been completed for you as an example.

I. Recreational Facilities
II. Welfare services
III. Spacious layout
IV. Career Counselling
V. Additional support services
VI. Secure and disciplined environment
VII. Adaption Strategies
VIII. Boarding Options
IX. A Wise and Economical Choice
X. Diverse and Cosmopolitan Environment
XI. A Good Location

Example
Paragraph F I

19. Paragraph A
20. Paragraph B
21. Paragraph C
22. Paragraph D
23. Paragraph E
24. Paragraph G

BOARDING at Stanford College

A Many students opt to live at Stanford’s boarding residences, as they are usually more convenient. In fact, twenty-five percent of the college students are residents. Students need to devote less time to issues related to living independently. The fee may seem expensive at first, but not when you add up the expenses involved in living outside. Most students come out ahead financially compared with those who rent accommodation outside the college.

B Those who live at Stanford are not all from one segment of society. In fact, about 40% are overseas students. Even the British students are from various parts of the country. Thus, much emphasis is placed on helping students to adapt to a new environment.

C Students live in four similar houses on campus, each designed to hold between 75 and 85 students. Each house has three storeys. The ground floor consists of public rooms, while the first and second floors are made up of large airy dormitories accommodating either four or eight students.

D Senior students (Years 6 and 7) and Juniors (Years 1 and 2) live in mixed accommodation, boys and girls occupying different floors, while the Middle School students (Years 3, 4 and 5) occupy separate houses. Each house is supervised by a team of six members of staff; a resident housemaster, an assistant, three non-resident assistants and a matron.

E There are two types of boarding-Full Boarding and Self Cooking. Boarding fees pay for all amenities; a daily choice of three menus (European, Chinese and Muslim), adequate laundry provision, the services of a group of doctors, sanatorium facilities and all furniture and bed linen. Self-cooking means that you do your own cooking in a communal kitchen.

F During weekdays, the house programmes provide compulsory study periods as well as free activity times. Recreation facilities available to the residents include a swimming pool, tennis courts, a gymnasium and games fields. Individual houses provide their own indoor games.

G Within the boarding house, nurses are there for general medical advice and the treatment of illnesses or injuries. There are also advisors on hand for students who suffer from stress or emotional problems while away from home.

MARS: Are We Close To Finding Life?

A No planet has teased the imagination as much as Mars. In ancient Greece and Rome, the planets fiery red hue made skywatchers think of their god of war. In the 19th century, astronomer Percival Lowell thought he saw canals on Mars; his observations triggered a flood of novels and science fiction stories about strange and wonderful beings thought to inhabit the Red Planet. Mars, the fourth planet from the sun, has often been called a sister planet to our own Earth. A “day” on Mars lasts 24-and-a-half hours, just 30 minutes longer than here on Earth. The planet is tilted on its axis by 25 degrees, just two degrees more than the Earth’s tilt. Because of its greater distance from the sun, however, Mars takes substantially longer to complete each orbit, a “year” on Mars lasts 668 earth days, nearly twice as long as a year here on Earth. Mars has two small, irregularly shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos, each less than 30 km across. Because of its small size, the pull of gravity on the planet’s surface is just 38 per cent as strong as on Earth (a 200 pound man would weigh just 76 lbs. On Mars). And because of its weak gravity, Mars has retained only a thin atmosphere -about 100 times thinner than Earth’s. Its main component (95 per cent) is carbon dioxide. It can be windy, though with giant dust storms sometimes engulfing the entire planet. Because of its thin atmosphere and its distance from the sun, Mars is a very cold world. Although midsummer temperatures can reach 26, it can also drop to a numbering -111.

B Besides its vast, rocky deserts, Mars also has enormous canyons such as the 5000 -kilometre Valles Marineris, as well as giant extinct volcanoes like 27-km-high Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system. The planet also has intriguing channels that look as though they were carved by flowing water–suggesting that Mars may once have been both wetter and warmer than it is today. Two distinct polar ice caps can be seen even through small telescopes. The north cap–the larger of the two–is mainly normal ice (frozen water), while the southern cap seems to be mostly frozen carbon dioxide. Why the two caps are so different is a mystery.

C The question of life on Mars–either past or present–remains a great motivator in the exploration of the Red Planet. True, no signs of life have been discovered on Mars, but scientists can’t rule out the possibility that microbial life did, at one time, evolve there. With its giant volcanoes, gaping canyons, and vast deserts, Mars remains as intriguing as ever, but the lack of water makes many scientists pessimistic including Dr.Jane Renfrew, although she believes that it’s still possible that microbial life has survived below the surface. A number of scientists, including Sam Watson from MIT, have also raised the intriguing possibility that life on Earth may have originated on Mars. Material from Mars has reached Earth in the form of meteorites; if there were microbes embedded in those rocks, it’s possible that they could have eventually “taken root” on Earth. Of course, one could argue that it evolved on Earth first, and arrived on Mars via a wayward meteorite, as Dr Bill Verten another MIT scientist has proposed.

D There’s evidence suggesting that water once flowed across the Red Planet. An ocean may have once covered the planet’s northern hemisphere; as well, images from Surveyor and other spacecraft show channels that may well have been carved by flowing water billions of years ago. Why would the ocean be in the north? Maps of Mars highlight the contrast between the planet’s hemispheres: The north is very low and smooth, while the south is rough, mountainous, and heavily cratered. The northern hemisphere, on average, is five kilometres lower than the southern hemisphere. That difference in elevation would have affected the flow of water, thought to have been present on the Martian surface billions of years ago. Any water that was present, Paige says, would have tended to flow northward–perhaps creating a vast ocean in the planet’s northern hemisphere. He cautions that there is no direct evidence for this, but says “we can’t rule out the possibility of a large amount of water there.”

E So where did all the water go? Scientists have come up with a number of models, but none of them is quite satisfactory. Because of the planet’s cold temperature and thin atmosphere, liquid water is not stable on the Martian surface. Any water would either evaporate into the atmosphere, or freeze and be absorbed into the soil. It’s possible that most of the water evaporated, and then the water molecules –continuously bombarded by solar radiation –may have broken down into their components, hydrogen and oxygen. These gases may then have been lost into space. But current models suggest that this should have taken many billions of years — in other words, there hasn’t been enough time to lose so much water. The water mystery is one of the most puzzling that scientists hope the current crop of Mars missions will solve those rocks, it’s possible that they could have eventually “taken root” on Earth. Of course, one could argue that it evolved on Earth first, and arrived on Mars via a wayward meteorite, as Dr Bill Verten another MIT scientist has proposed.

F Launched in January 1999, the lander was the latest in a series of low-budget NASA space missions, designed to “do more with less.” The price tag for the Mars Polar Lander was about $330 million US–a tiny fraction of the cost of the billion-dollar Viking probes of the 1970s. Still, an independent inquiry headed by Erich Svenson blamed the trouble on inadequate software systems testing, a result of under funding. On December 3, 1999, the Mars Polar Lander, which failed in its mission, was supposed to have touched down at the edge of the planet’s south polar ice cap. Why such a southerly location? Scientists believe the layers of dust and ice close to the poles contain a kind of layered record of the planet’s climate history (just as a tree’s rings tell the story of the plant’s growth history); for the first time, they would be able to study those layers. “We’re landing on a completely different part of the planet than we’ve explored in the past, and we know very little about the terrain,” says David Paige of UCLA, one of the project scientists with the Mars Polar Lander. “It has a real exploratory flavour to it.”

G It may be several decades before the first humans set foot on Mars, but some scientists believe they’ve got the next best thing –and the perfect rehearsal space–here in Canada. A group called The Mars Society is planning a US $1.2-million simulated Mars station on Devon Island, high in the Canadian Arctic. The island is extremely cold and dry; the landscape is covered with rocky ridges, valleys, and meteorite-impact craters. And, scientists believe, it likely witnessed the same kinds of geological processes that shaped the surface of Mars. The Mars Arctic Research Station may be complete by the summer of 2000. The Mars Society is trying to raise money for the station’ through private and corporate donations; it has also been negotiating with NASA in the hope of sharing resources. The facility will let scientists and engineers test everything from water-recycling methods to land rovers and drilling equipment–the sort of machinery that will be crucial if a manned mission to Mars is given the go-ahead. And, perhaps most importantly, it will simulate the kind of self-contained, isolated environment that anyone living on Mars will have to get used to.

H Scientists hope to send a sample-return mission to the Red Planet in the early years of the next decade (possibly as early as 2005), and there’s speculation that a manned mission –almost certainly an international collaboration –could be underway within about 20 years. Many scientists, including Dr. Zuber at MIT, see a manned mission as inevitable. Now that we’ve explored the moon, the Red Planet seems to be the next logical step in our species’ exploration of the solar system. “It’s going to require the political will for it to happen,” she says, “but when that occurs, there will be plenty of people lined up willing to help.”

SECTION 3
Questions 25 — 29
The passage has 8 paragraphs labeled A-H. Match the paragraphs that contain the following information and write your answer in boxes 25 —28 on the answer sheet.

Example
Future Missions to Mars H
25. Theories about the disappearance of water on Mars
26. Landscape features on Mars
27. A place to practice a Mars landing
28. An area of Mars which is needed to research to unlock its secrets
29. The reasons that people believe that a large body of water once existed on Mars

Questions 30 — 35
Are the following statements consistent with the information in the passage? In boxes 30 — 35 on your answer sheet write

YES if the statement is supported in the passage
NO if the statement is contradicted in the passage
NOT GIVEN if the statement is neither supported nor contradicted

Example
The southern pole of Mars has secrets that may reveal the planets age. Yes

30. The reason the two polar caps are so different is due to the atmosphere.
31. Mars has channels but no canals.
32. You would weigh less on Mars.
33. The main reason that scientists doubt that life exists on Mars is the extreme weather conditions there.
34. Future astronauts to Mars will probably first practice in the Canadian Arctic.
35. Mars is rich in resources that may prove useful to Earth one day.

Questions 36 – 40
Complete each of the following statements WITH THE SURNAME of a person mentioned in the reading passage.
Write your answers in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet. The first answer has been done for you in bold letters.

Mars has always been fascinating, and once a scientist by the name of …Lowell… believed he had discovered a sophisticated set of canals. Similar to those of (36)………………………… believes that there was a huge ocean in the northern part of Mars. Not all scientists are convinced that there is life, and some, like (37)….………………………………. need more proof. Even if microbial life is found, there is always the possibility that it originated on Earth, as (38)……………………..……..believes may be possible. To get answers to these questions and more, the government must commit more resources, to exploration. However, currently NASA seems unwilling to commit much money, which scientists like (39)……………………………….…… believe caused the last failure of the Mars Polar Lander. Still, scientists such as (40)………………………………….………. believe a manned mission will occur once the political will is there.