IELTS reading

Cambridge 15 · Academic Reading Test 3

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Section 1

Reading Passage 1

Henry Moore (1898-1986)

The British sculptor Henry Moore was a leading figure in the 20th-century art world Henry Moore was born in Castleford, a small town near Leeds in the north of England. He was the seventh child of Raymond Moore and his wife Mary Baker. He studied at Castleford Grammar School from 1909 to 1915, where his early interest in art was encouraged by his teacher Alice Gostick. After leaving school, Moore hoped to become a sculptor, but instead he complied with his father’s wish that he train as a schoolteacher. He had to abandon his training in 1917 when he was sent to France to fight in the First World War. After the war, Moore enrolled at the Leeds School of Art, where he studied for two years. In his first year, he spent most of his time drawing. Although he wanted to study sculpture, no teacher was appointed until his second year. At the end of that year, he passed the sculpture examination and was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London. In September 1921, he moved to London and began three years of advanced study in sculpture. Alongside the instruction he received at the Royal College, Moore visited many of the London museums, particularly the British Museum, which had a wide-ranging collection of ancient sculpture. During these visits, he discovered the power and beauty of ancient Egyptian and African sculpture. As he became increasingly interested in these ‘primitive’ forms of art, he turned away from European sculptural traditions. After graduating, Moore spent the first six months of 1925 travelling in France. When he visited the Trocadero Museum…

Questions 1–7

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the Reading Passage?

1.On leaving school, Moore did what his father wanted him to do.

2.Moore began studying sculpture in his first term at the Leeds School of Art.

Section 2

Reading Passage 2

The Desolenator: Producing Clean Water

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Travelling around Thailand in the 1990s, William Janssen was impressed with the basic rooftop solar heating systems that were on many homes, where energy from the sun was absorbed by a plate and then used to heat water for domestic use. Two decades later Janssen developed that basic idea he saw in Southeast Asia into a portable device that uses the power from the sun to purify water. The Desolenator operates as a mobile desalination unit that can take water from different places, such as the sea, rivers, boreholes and rain, and purify it for human consumption. It is particularly valuable in regions where natural groundwater reserves have been polluted, or where seawater is the only water source available. Janssen saw that there was a need for a sustainable way to clean water is both the developing and the developed countries when he moved to the United Arab Emirates and saw large-scale water processing. ‘I was confronted with the enormous carbon footprint that the Gulf nations have because of all of the desalination that they do,’ he says. The Desolenator can produce 15 litres of drinking water per day, enough to sustain a family for cooking and drinking. Its main selling point is that unlike standard desalination techniques, it doesn’t require a generated power supply: just sunlight. It measures 120 cm by 90 cm, and it easy to transport, thanks to its two wheels. Water enters through a pipe, and flows as a thin film between a sheet of double glazing and the surface of a solar panel, where it is heated by the sun. The warm water flows into a small boiler (heated by a…

Questions 14–20

The Reading Passage has eight paragraphs, A-H

14.Section A

Section 3

Reading Passage 3

Why Fairy Tales Are Really Scary Tales

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Some people think that fairy tales are just stories to amuse children, but their universal and enduring appeal may be due to more serious reasons People of every culture tell each other fairy tales but the same story often takes a variety of forms in different parts of the world. In the story of Little Red Riding Hood that European children are familiar with, a young girl on the way to see her grandmother meets a wolf and tells him where she is going. The wolf runs on ahead and disposes of the grandmother, then gets into bed dressed in the grandmother’s clothes to wait for Little Red Riding Hood. You may think you know the story – but which version? In some versions, the wolf swallows up the grandmother, while in others it locks her in a cupboard. In some stories Red Riding Hood gets the better of the wolf on her own, while in others a hunter or a woodcutter hears her cries and comes to her rescue. The universal appeal of these tales is frequently attributed to the idea that they contain cautionary messages: in the case of Little Red Riding Hood, to listen to your mother, and avoid talking to strangers. ‘It might be what we find interesting about this story is that it’s got this survival-relevant information in it,’ says anthropologist Jamie Tehrani at Durham University in the UK. But his research suggests otherwise. ‘We have this huge gap in our knowledge about the history and prehistory of storytelling, despite the fact that we know this genre is an incredibly ancient one,’ he says. That hasn’t stopped anthropologists, folklorists* and other academics devising theories…

Questions 27–31

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.

27.In fairy tales, details of the plot

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Answers & explanations

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40 answers3 explanations open

1
TRUE
The correct answer is TRUE because it aligns with the information provided in the excerpt. Moore did comply with his father's wish to become a schoolteacher after leaving school, as mentioned in the passage.
2
FALSE
The correct answer is FALSE because the passage clearly states that Moore spent more time drawing in his first year at the Leeds School of Art, suggesting that he did not begin studying sculpture right away.
3
NOT GIVEN
The correct answer 'NOT GIVEN' is accurate because the passage does not explicitly state whether the Royal College of Art had an excellent reputation for teaching sculpture when Moore began studying there. Since there is no information given in the text about the reputation of the college for teaching sculpture at that time, the answer 'NOT GIVEN' is the appropriate choice.
4
TRUE
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5
NOT GIVEN
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6
FALSE
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7
TRUE
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8
resignation
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9
materials
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10
miners
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11
family
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12
collectors
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13
income
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14
iii
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15
vi
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16
v
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17
x
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18
iv
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19
viii
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20
i
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21
wheels
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22
film
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23
filter
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24
waste
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25
performance
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26
servicing
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27
C
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28
B
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29
F
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30
A
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31
E
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32
D
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33
F
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34
B
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35
C
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36
G
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37
B
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38
D
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39
A
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40
A
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