IELTS ACTUAL TESTS – READING & LISTENING ACADEMIC MODULE

TEST 6

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

The history of tea

The story of tea begins in China. According to legend, in 2737 BC, the Chinese emperor
Shen Nung was sitting beneath a tree while his servant boiled drinking water, when
some leaves from the tree blew into the water. Shen Nung, a renowned herbalist,
decided to try the infusion that his servant had accidentally created. The tree was a
Camellia sinensis, and the resulting drink was what we now call tea. It is impossible to
know whether there is any truth in this story. But tea drinking certainly became
established in China many centuries before it had even been heard of in the West.
Containers for tea have been found in tombs dating from the Han Dynasty (206 BC—
220 AD) but it was under the Tang Dynasty (618—906 AD), that tea became firmly
established as the national drink of China.

It became such a favourite that during the late eighth century a writer called Lu Yu
wrote the first book entirely about tea, the Ch’a Ching, or Tea Classic. It was shordy
after this that tea was first introduced to Japan, by Japanese Buddhist monks who had
travelled to China to study. Tea received almost instant imperial sponsorship and
spread rapidly from the royal court and monasteries to the other sections of Japanese
society.

So at this stage in the history of tea, Europe was rather lagging behind. In the latter
half of the sixteenth century there are the first brief mentions of tea as a drink among
Europeans. These are mosdy from Portuguese who were living in the East as traders
and missionaries. But although some of these individuals may have brought back
samples of tea to their native country, it was not the Portuguese who were the first to
ship back tea as a commercial import. This was done by the Dutch, who in the last
years of the sixteenth century began to encroach on Portuguese trading routes in the
East. By the turn of the century they had established a trading post on the island of
Java, and it was via Java that in 1606 the first consignment of tea was shipped from
China to Holland. Tea soon became a fashionable drink among the Dutch, and from

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there spread to other countries in continental western Europe, but because of its high
price it remained a drink for the wealthy.

Britain, always a little suspicious of continental trends, had yet to become the nation
of tea drinkers that it is today. Starting in 1600, the British East India Company had a
monopoly on importing goods from outside Europe, and it is likely that sailors on these
ships brought tea home as gifts. The first coffee house had been established in London
in 1652, and tea was still somewhat unfamiliar to most readers, so it is fair to assume
that the drink was still something of a curiosity. Gradually, it became a popular drink
in coffee houses, which were as much locations for the transaction of business as they
were for relaxation or pleasure. They were though the preserve of middle- and upper-
class men; women drank tea in their own homes, and as yet tea was still too expensive
to be widespread among the working classes. In part, its high price was due to a
punitive system of taxation.

One unforeseen consequence of the taxation of tea was the growth of methods to
avoid taxation—smuggling and adulteration. By the eighteenth century many Britons
wanted to drink tea but could not afford the high prices, and their enthusiasm for the
drink was matched by the enthusiasm of criminal gangs to smuggle it in. What began
as a small time illegal trade, selling a few pounds of tea to personal contacts,
developed by die late eighteenth century into an astonishing organised crime network,
perhaps importing as much as 7 million lbs annually, compared to a legal import of 5
million lbs! Worse for die drinkers was that taxation also encouraged the adulteration
of tea, particularly of smuggled tea which was not quality controlled through customs
and excise. Leaves from other plants, or leaves which had already been brewed and
then dried, were added to tea leaves. By 1784, the government realised that enough
was enough, and that heavy taxation was creating more problems than it was wordi.
The new Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, slashed the tax from 119 per cent
to 12.5 per cent. Suddenly legal tea was affordable, and smuggling stopped virtually
overnight.

Another great impetus to tea drinking resulted from the end of the East India
Company’s monopoly on trade with China, in 1834. Before that date, China was the
country of origin of the vast majority of the tea imported to Britain, but the end of its
monopoly stimulated the East India Company to consider growing tea outside China.
India had always been the centre of the Company’s operations, which led to the
increased cultivation of tea in India, beginning in Assam. There were a few false starts,

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including the destruction by cattle of one of the earliest tea nurseries, but by 1888
British tea imports from India were for the first time greater than those from China.

The end of the East India Company’s monopoly on trade with China also had another
result, which was more dramatic though less important in the long term: it ushered in
the era of the tea clippers. While the Company had had the monopoly on trade, there
was no rush to bring the tea from China to Britain, but after 1834 the tea trade became
a virtual free for all. Individual merchants and sea captains with their own ships raced
to bring home the tea and make the most money, using fast new clippers which had
sleek lines, tall masts and huge sails. In particular there was competition between
British and American merchants, leading to the famous clipper races of the 1860s. But
these races soon came to an end with the opening of the Suez canal, which made the
trade routes to China viable for steamships for the first time.

Questions 1 - 7
Complete the sentences below with words taken from Reading Passage L Use ONE
WORD for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

1 Researchers believed the tea containers detected in .................... from the Han
Dynasty was the first evidence of the use of tea.
2 Lu Yu wrote a....................about tea before anyone else in the eighth century.
3 It was....................from Japan who brought tea to their native country from
China.
4 Tea was carried from China to Europe actually by the.....................
5 The British government had to cut down the taxation on tea due to the serious
crime of.....................
6 Tea was planted in....................besides China in the 19th century.
7 In order to compete in shipping speed, traders used....................for the race.

Questions 8 - 13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage ?
In boxes 8—13 on your answer sheet, write

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TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

8 Tea was popular in Britain in the 16th century.

9 Tea was more fashionable than coffee in Europe in the late 16th century.
10 Tea was enjoyed by all classes in Britain in the seventeenth century.
11 The adulteration of tea also prompted William Pitt the Younger to reduce the
tax.
12 Initial problems occurred when tea was planted outside China by the East India
Company.
13 The fastest vessels were owned by America during the 19th century clipper
races.

READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14—26, which are based on
Reading Passage 2 below:

How do we find our way?

A. Most modern navigation, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), relies
primarily on positions determined electronically by receivers collecting information
from satellites. Yet if the satellite service’s digital maps become even slightly outdated,
we can become lost. Then we have to rely on the ancient human skill of navigating in
three-dimensional space. Luckily, our biological finder has an important advantage
over GPS: we can ask questions of people on the sidewalk, or follow a street that looks
familiar, or rely on a navigational rubric. The human positioning system is flexible and
capable of learning. Anyone who knows the way from point A to point B—and from A
to C—can probably figure out how to get from B to C, too.

B. But how does this complex cognitive system really work? Researchers are looking
at several strategies people use to orient themselves in space: guidance, path
integration and route following. We may use all three or combinations thereof, and as
experts learn more about these navigational skills, they are making the case that our

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abilities may underlie our powers of memory and logical thinking. For example, you
come to New York City for the first time and you get off the train at Grand Central
Terminal in midtown Manhattan. You have a few hours to see popular spots you have
been told about: Rockefeller Center, Central Park, and the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. You meander in and out of shops along the way. Suddenly, it is time to get back
to the station. But how?

C. If you ask passersby for help, most likely you will receive information in many
different forms. A person who orients herself by a prominent landmark would gesture
southward: “Look down there. See the tall, broad MetLife Building? Head for that—
the station is right below it.” Neurologists call this navigational approach “guidance”,
meaning that a landmark visible from a distance serves as the marker for one’s
destination.

D. Another city dweller might say: “What places do you remember passing? ... Okay.
Go toward the end of Central Park, then walk down to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A few
more blocks, and Grand Central will be off to your left.” In this case, you are pointed
toward the most recent place you recall, and you aim for it. Once there you head for
the next notable place and so on, retracing your path. Your brain is adding together
the individual legs of your trek into a cumulative progress report. Researchers call this
strategy “path integration.” Many animals rely primarily on path integration to get
around, including insects, spiders, crabs and rodents. The desert ants of the genus
Cataglyphis employ this method to return from foraging as far as 100 yards away. They
note the general direction they came from and retrace their steps, using the
polarization of sunlight to orient themselves even under overcast skies. On their way
back they are faithful to this inner homing vector. Even when a scientist picks up an
ant and puts it in a totally different spot, the insect stubbornly proceeds in the
originally determined direction until it has gone “back” all of the distance it wandered
from its nest. Only then does the ant realize it has not succeeded, and it begins to walk
in successively larger loops to find its way home.

E. Whether it is trying to get back to the anthill or the train station, any animal using
path integration must keep track of its own movements so it knows, while returning,
which segments it has already completed. As you move, your brain gathers data from
your environment—sights, sounds, smells, lighting, muscle contractions, a sense of
time passing—to determine which way your body has gone. The church spire, the

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sizzling sausages on that vendor’s grill, the open courtyard, and the train station—all
represent snapshots of memorable junctures during your journey.

F. In addition to guidance and path integration, we use a third method for finding our
way. An office worker you approach for help on a Manhattan street comer might say:
“Walk straight down Fifth, turn left on 47th, turn right on Park, go through the walkway
under the Helmsley Building, then cross the street to the MetLife Building into Grand
Central.” This strategy, called route following, uses landmarks such as buildings and
street names, plus directions—straight, turn, go through—for reaching intermediate
points. Route following is more precise than guidance or path integration, but if you
forget the details and take a wrong turn, the only way to recover is to backtrack until
you reach a familiar spot, because you do not know the general direction or have a
reference landmark for your goal. The route-following navigation strategy truly
challenges the brain. We have to keep all the landmarks and intermediate directions
in our head. It is the most detailed and therefore most reliable method, but it can be
undone by routine memory lapses. With path integration, our cognitive memory is less
burdened; it has to deal with only a few general instructions and the homing vector.
Path integration works because it relies most fundamentally on our knowledge of our
body’s general direction of movement, and we always have access to these inputs.
Nevertheless, people often choose to give route-following directions, in part because
saying “Go straight that way!” just does not work in our complex, man-made
surroundings.

G. Road Map or Metaphor? On your next visit to Manhattan you will rely on your
memory to get present geographic information for convenient visual obviously
seductive: maps around. Most likely you will use guidance, path integration and route
following in various combinations. But how exactly do these constructs deliver
concrete directions? Do we humans have, as an image of the real world, a kind of road
map in our heads? Neurobiologists and cognitive psychologists do call the portion of
our memory that controls navigation a “cognitive map”. The map metaphor is are the
easiest way to inspection. Yet the notion of a literal map in our heads may be
misleading; a growing body of research implies that the cognitive map is mostly a
metaphor. It may be more like a hierarchical structure of relationships.

Questions 14 - 18

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Use the information in the passage to match the category of each navigation method
(listed A—C) with correct statement.
Write the appropriate letters A-C in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

A. guidance method B. path integration method C. route following method

14 Split the route up into several smaller parts.

15 When mistakes are made, a person needs to go back.
16 Find a building that can be seen from far away.
17 Recall all the details along the way.
18 Memorize the buildings that you have passed by.

Questions 19 - 21
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 19—21 on your answer sheet.

19 According to the passage, how does the Cataglyphis ant respond if it is taken to
a different location?

A. changes its orientation sensors to adapt

B. releases biological scent for help from others
C. continues to move according to the original orientation
D. gets completely lost once disturbed

20 What did the author say about the route following method?

A. dependent on directions to move on

B. dependent on memory and reasoning
C. dependent on man-made settings
D. dependent on the homing vector

21 Which of the following is true about the “cognitive map” in this passage?

A. There is no obvious difference between it and a real map.

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B. It exists in our heads and is always correct.

C. It only exists in some cultures.
D. It is managed by a portion of our memory.

Questions 22 - 26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 22-26 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

22 Biological navigation is flexible.

23 Insects have many ways to navigate that are in common with many other
animals.
24 When someone follows a route, he or she collects comprehensive perceptual
information in the mind along the way.
25 The path integration method has a higher requirement of memory compared
with the route following method.
26 When people find their way, they have an exact map in their mind.

READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions , which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.

What is meaning?
Why do we respond to words and symbols in the ways we do?

Semantics, in general, is the subdivision of linguistics concerned with meaning.

Semantics attempts the systematic study of the assignment of meanings to minimal
meaning-bearing elements and the combination of these in the production of more
complex meaningful expressions. Elementary word groups may be combined in a

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relationship of content, forming thematic groups and semantic and lexical “fields”. For
example, all the means of expressing the concept of joy in a given language constitute
the lexical-semantic field “joy”. Because of the trained patterns of response, people
listen more respectfully to the health advice of someone who has “MD” after his name
than to that of someone who hasn’t. A “pattern of reactions”, then, is the sum of the
ways we act in response to events, to words, and to symbols.

Words and word meanings are one of the most important information cues used in
speaking and understanding, as well as in reading. Indeed, a person’s life experience
and cultural experience (even reading comic strips) are most relevant to the
development of linguistic “meaning making” in any language, which is very important
in the communication process. Words from a person’s native language and culture
perspective can carry special associations. For instance, the Spanish words for
hammock, tobacco, and potato are derived from Tamo words for these items.
Therefore, when people’s semantic habits are reasonably similar to those of most
people around them, they are regarded as “normal” or perhaps “dull”. If their
semantic habits are noticeably different from those of others, they are regarded as
“individualistic” or “original”, or, if the differences are disapproved of or viewed with
alarm, as “crazy”.

A definition states the meaning of a word using other words. It is clear that to define
a word, as a dictionary does, is simply to explain the word with more words.
However,defining words with more words usually gets people (especially children) at
once into what mathematicians call an “infinite regress”, an infinite series of
occurrences or concepts. For example, it can lead people into the kind of run-around
that people sometimes encounter when they look up “impertinence” and find it
defined as “impudence”, so they look up “impudence” and find it defined as
“impertinence”. Yet—and here we come to another common reaction pattern—
people often act as if words can be explained fully with more words. To a person who
asked for a definition of jazz, Louis Armstrong is said to have replied, “If you have to
ask what jazz is, you’ll never know”, proving himself to be an intuitive semanticist as
well as a great trumpet player.

Semantics, then, seeks the “operational” definition instead of the dictionary

Bridgman, the 1946 Nobel Prize winner and physicist, once wrote, “The true meaning
of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not by what he says
about it.” He made an enormous contribution to science by showing that the meaning

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of a scientific term lies in the operations, the things done, that establish its validity,
rather than in verbal definitions. An example of operational definition of the term
“weight” of an object, operationalized to a degree, would be the following: “weight is
the numbers that appear when that object is placed on a weighing scale”. According
to it, when one starts reading the numbers on the scale, it would more fully make an
operational definition. But if people say—and revolutionists have started uprisings
with just this statement “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains!”—what
operations could we perform to demonstrate its accuracy or inaccuracy?

Next, if this suggestion of “operationalism” is pulled outside the physical sciences

where Bridgman applied it, what “operations” are people expected to perform as the
result of both the language they use and the language other people use in
communicating to them? Here is a personnel manager studying an application form.
He comes to the words “Education: Harvard University”, and drops the application
form in the wastebasket (that’s the “operation”) because, as he would say if you asked
him, “I don’t like Harvard men”. This is an instance of “meaning” at work—but it is not
a meaning that can be found in dictionaries.

So far as we know, human beings are the only creatures that have, over and above
that biological equipment which we have in common with other creatures, the
additional capacity for manufacturing symbols and systems of symbols. When we react
to a flag, we are not reacting simply to a piece of cloth, but to the meaning with which
it has been symbolically endowed. When we react to a word, we are not reacting to a
set of sounds, but to the meaning with which that set of sounds has been symbolically
endowed. As a matter of fact, how sound symbolism is processed in our brains has not
yet been fully explained in the field.

Simply put, the key point of semantics lies in, not the words definition, but our own
semantic reactions, which occur when we respond to things the way they “should” be,
rather than to the way they are. If a person was to tell a shockingly obscene story in
Arabic or Hindustani or Swahili before an audience that understood only English, no
one would blush or be angry; the story would be neither shocking nor obscene—
indeed, it would not even be a story. Likewise, the value of a dollar bill is not in the bill,
but in our social agreement to accept it as a symbol of value. If that agreement were
to break down through the collapse of our government, the dollar bill would become
only a scrap of paper. We do not understand a dollar bill by staring at it long and hard.
We understand it by observing how people act with respect to it. We understand it by

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understanding the social mechanisms and the loyalties that keep it meaningful.
Therefore, semantics belongs to social studies and potentially underpins the integrity
of the social sciences.

Questions 27 - 31
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 27—31 on your answer sheet.

27 What point is made in the first paragraph?

A. The aim of education is to teach people to read.

B. Semantics focuses on the definition of words.
C. Printed words only carry meaning to those who have received appropriate ways to
respond.
D. Writers should ensure their works satisfy a variety of readers.

28 According to the second paragraph, people are judged by

A. their level of education.

B. the closely-related people around them.
C. how conventional their responses are.
D. complex situations.

29 What point is made in the third paragraph?

A. Standard ways are incapable of defining words precisely.

B. A dictionary often provides clear definitions of words.
C. Infinite regress is a common occurrence in a dictionary.
D. Mathematicians could define words accurately.

30 What does the writer suggest about Louis Armstrong?

A. He is a language expert.
B. He demonstrated there are similarities between music and language.
C. He provided insights into how words are defined.
D. His good skill in music helped him do research in other fields.

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31 What does the writer intend to show with the example of the “personnel
manager”?

A. The manager hates applicants from Harvard University.

B. Meaning can be unique to one person.
C. The manager has a bad memory of Harvard University.
D. People’s behaviour usually doesn’t agree with their words.

Questions 32-35
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage In
boxes 32-35 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say that the writer thinks about this

32 Some statements are incapable of being proved or disproved.

33 Meaning that is unique to an individual is less worthy of study than shared
meanings.
34 Flags and words are both elicited responses.
35 A story can be entertaining without being understood.

Questions 36 - 40
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, below.
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

36 A comic strip
37 A dictionary
38 Bridgman
39 A story in a language the audience cannot understand
40 A dollar bill without public acceptance

A. is meaningless.
B. can have a lasting effect on human behaviour.
C. is a symbol that has lost its meaning.

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D. can be understood only in its social context.

E. can provide only an inadequate definition of meaning.
F. reflects the variability of human behaviours.
G. emphasizes the importance of analyzing how words were used .
H. suggests that certain types of behaviour carry more meaning than others.

TEST 7
READING PASSAGE 1
Tea and Industrial Revolution
A. Alan Macfarlane thinks he could rewrite history. The professor of
anthropological science at King's College, Cambridge has, like other historians,
spent decades trying to understand the enigma of the Industrial Revolution. Why
did this particular important event - the world-changing birth of industry -
happen in Britain? And why did it happen at the end of the 18th century?

B. Macfarlane compares the question to a puzzle. He claims that there were

about 20 different factors and all of them
needed to be present before the revolution
could happen. The chief conditions are to be
found in history textbooks. For industry to
'take off', there needed to be the technology
and power to drive factories, large urban
populations to provide cheap labour easy
transport to move goods around, an affluent
middle-class willing to buy mass-produced objects, a market-driven
economy, and a political system that allowed this to happen. While this was the
case for England, other nations, such as Japan, Holland and France also met
some of these criteria. All these factors must have been necessary but not
sufficient to cause the revolution. Holland had everything except coal, while
China also had many of these factors.

C. Most historians, however, are convinced that one or two missing factors are
needed to solve the puzzle. The missing factors, he proposes, are to be found in
every kitchen cupboard. Tea and beer, two of the nation's favorite drinks, drove
the revolution. Tannin, the active ingredient in tea, and hops, used in making

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