IELTS reading

Cambridge 14 · Academic Reading Test 2

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Section 1

Reading Passage 1

Alexander Henderson (1831-1913)

Born in Scotland, Henderson emigrated to Canada in 1855 and become a well-known landscape photographer Alexander Henderson was born in Scotland in 1831 and was the son of a successful merchant. His grandfather, also called Alexander, had founded the family business, and later became the first chairman of the National Bank of Scotland. The family had extensive landholding in Scotland. Besides its residence in Edinburgh, it owned Press Estate, 650 acres of farmland about 35 miles southeast of the city. The family often stayed at Press Castle, the large mansion on the northern edge of the property, and Alexander spent much of his childhood in the area, playing on the beach near Eyemouth or fishing in the streams nearby. Even after he went to school at Murcheston Academy on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Henderson returned to Press at weekends. In 1849 he began a three-year apprenticeship to become an accountant. Although he never liked the prospect of a business career, he stayed with it to please his family. In October 1855, however, he emigrated to Canada with his wife Agnes Elder Robertson and they settled in Montreal. Henderson learned photography in Montreal around the year 1857 and quickly took it up as a serious amateur. He became a personal friend and colleague of the Scottish – Canadian photographer William Notman. The two men made a photographic excursion to Niagara Falls in 1860 and they cooperated on experiments with magnesium flares as a source of artificial light in 1865. They belonged to the same societies and were among the founding members of the Art…

Questions 1–8

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?

1.Henderson rarely visited the area around Press estate when he was younger.

2.Henderson pursued a business career because it was what his family wanted.

Section 2

Reading Passage 2

Back To The Future Of Skyscraper Design

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Answers to the problem of excessive electricity use by skyscrapers and large public buildings can be found in ingenious but forgotten architectural designs of the 19th and early-20th centuries The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture by Professor Alan Short is the culmination of 30 years of research and award-winning green building design by Short and colleagues in Architecture, Engineering, Applied Maths and Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge. ‘The crisis in building design is already here,’ said Short. ‘Policy makers think you can solve energy and building problems with gadgets. You can’t. As global temperatures continue to rise, we are going to continue to squander more and more energy on keeping our buildings mechanically cool until we have run out of capacity.’ Short is calling for a sweeping reinvention of how skyscrapers and major public buildings are designed – to end the reliance on sealed buildings which exist solely via the ‘life support’ system of vast air conditioning units. Instead, he shows it is entirely possible to accommodate natural ventilation and cooling in large buildings by looking into the past, before the widespread introduction of air conditioning systems, which were ‘relentlessly and aggressively marketed’ by their inventors. Short points out that to make most contemporary buildings habitable, they have to be sealed and air conditioned. The energy use and carbon emissions this generates is spectacular and largely unnecessary. Buildings in the West account for 40-50% of electricity usage, generating substantial carbon…

Questions 14–18

The Reading Passage has nine section, A-I

14.why some people avoided hospitals in the 19th century

Section 3

Reading Passage 3

Why Companies Should Welcome Disorder

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Organisation is big business. Whether it is of our lives – all those inboxes and calendars – or how companies are structured, a multi-billion dollar industry helps to meet this need. We have more strategies for time management, project management and self-organisation than at any other time in human history. We are told that we ought to organize our company, our home life, our week, our day and even our sleep, all as a means to becoming more productive. Every week, countless seminars and workshops take place around the world to tell a paying public that they ought to structure their lives in order to achieve this. This rhetoric has also crept into the thinking of business leaders and entrepreneurs, much to the delight of self-proclaimed perfectionists with the need to get everything right. The number of business schools and graduates has massively increased over the past 50 years, essentially teaching people how to organise well. Ironically, however, the number of business that fail has also steadily increased. Work-related stress has increased. A large proportion of workers from all demographics claim to be dissatisfied with the way their work is structured and the way they are managed. This begs the question: what has gone wrong? Why is it that on paper the drive for organisation seems a sure shot for increasing productivity, but in reality falls well short of what is expected? This has been a problem for a while now. Frederick Taylor was one of the forefathers of scientific management. Writing in the first half of the 20th century, he designed a number of principles…

Questions 27–34

The Reading Passage has eight sections, A-H

27.Section A

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Answers & explanations

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40 answers3 explanations open

1
FALSE
The answer is correct because the passage does not mention anything about Henderson's visitation frequency to the Press estate, so we cannot confirm that he rarely visited it. Therefore, the answer 'FALSE' is correct as it does not agree with the information given in the passage.
2
TRUE
The correct answer is TRUE because the passage clearly states that Henderson stayed in a business career even though he didn't like it, solely to please his family. This aligns with the idea that his family's wishes influenced his decision to pursue that career path.
3
NOT GIVEN
The correct answer 'NOT GIVEN' is accurate because the passage does not mention whether Henderson and Notman were surprised by the results of their 1865 experiment. The information is not provided in the given excerpt, making it impossible to determine whether they were surprised or not.
4
FALSE
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5
NOT GIVEN
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6
TRUE
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7
FALSE
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8
TRUE
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9
merchant
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10
equipment
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11
gifts
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12
canoe
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13
mountains
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14
F
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15
C
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16
E
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17
D
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18
B
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19
design / designs
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20
pathogens
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21
tuberculosis
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22
wards
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23
communal
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24
public
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25
miasmas
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26
cholera
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27
vi
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28
i
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29
iii
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30
ii
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31
ix
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32
vii
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33
iv
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34
viii
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35
productive
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36
perfectionists
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37
dissatisfied
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38
TRUE
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39
FALSE
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40
NOT GIVEN
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