IELTS reading

Cambridge 15 · Academic Reading Test 4

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Section 1

Reading Passage 1

The Return Of The Huarango

The arid valleys of southern Peru are welcoming the return of a native plant The south coast of Peru is a narrow, 2,000-kilometre-long strip of desert squeezed between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean. It is also one of the most fragile ecosystems on Earth. It hardly ever rains there, and the only year-round source of water is located tens of metres below the surface. This is why the huarango tree is so suited to life there: it has the longest roots of any tree in the world. They stretch down 50-80 metres and, as well as sucking up water for the tree, they bring it into the higher subsoil, creating a water source for other plant life. Dr David Beresford-Jones, archaeobotanist at Cambridge University, has been studying the role of the huarango tree in landscape change in the Lower Ica Valley in southern Peru. He believes the huarango was key to the ancient people’s diet and, because it could reach deep water sources, it allowed local people to withstand years of drought when their other crops failed. But over the centuries huarango trees were gradually replaced with crops. Cutting down native woodland leads to erosion, as there is nothing to keep the soil in place. So when the huarangos go, the land turns into a desert. Nothing grows at all in the Lower Ica Valley now. For centuries the huarango tree was vital to the people of the neighbouring Middle Ica Valley too. They grew vegetables under it and ate products made from its seed pods. Its leaves and bark were used for herbal remedies, while its branches were used for charcoal for cooking and heating, and its trunk was…

Questions 1–5

Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

ONE WORD ONLY

1.can access ___ deep below the surface

2.was a crucial part of local inhabitants’ ___ a long time ago

Section 2

Reading Passage 2

Silbo Gomero – The Whistle ‘language’ Of The Canary Islands

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La Gomera is one of the Canary Islands situated in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of Africa. This small volcanic island is mountainous, with steep rocky slopes and deep, wooded ravines, rising to 1,487 metres at its highest peak. It is also home to the best known of the world’s whistle ‘languages’, a means of transmitting information over long distances which is perfectly adapted to the extreme terrain of the island. This ‘language’, known as ‘Silbo’ or ‘Silbo Gomero’ – from the Spanish word for ‘whistle’ – is now shedding light on the language-processing abilities of the human brain, according to scientists. Researchers say that Silbo activates parts of the brain normally associated with spoken language, suggesting that the brain is remarkably flexible in its ability to interpret sounds as language. ‘Science has developed the idea of brain areas that are dedicated to language, and we are starting to understand the scope of signals that can be recognised as language,’ says David Corina, co-author of a recent study and associate professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Silbo is a substitute for Spanish, with individual words recoded into whistles which have high- and low-frequency tones. A whistler – or silbador – puts a finger in his or her mouth to increase the whistle’s pitch, while the other hand can be cupped to adjust the direction of the sound. ‘There is much more ambiguity in the whistled signal than in the spoken signal,’ explains lead researcher Manuel Carreiras, psychology professor at the University of La Laguna on the…

Questions 14–19

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

14.La Gomera is the most mountainous of all the Canary Islands.

Section 3

Reading Passage 3

Environmental Practices Of Big Businesses

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The environmental practices of big businesses are shaped by a fundamental fact that for many of us offend our sense of justice. Depending on the circumstances, a business may maximize the amount of money it makes, at least in the short term, by damaging the environment and hurting people. That is still the case today for fishermen in an unmanaged fishery without quotas, and for international logging companies with short-term leases on tropical rainforest land in places with corrupt officials and unsophisticated landowners. When government regulation is effective, and when the public is environmentally aware, environmentally clean big businesses may out-compete dirty ones, but the reverse is likely to be true if government regulation is ineffective and if the public doesn’t care. It is easy for the rest of us to blame a business for helping itself by hurting other people. But blaming alone is unlikely to produce change. It ignores the fact that businesses are not charities but profit-making companies, and that publicly owned companies with shareholders are under obligation to those shareholders to maximize profits, provided that they do so by legal means. US laws make a company’s directors legally liable for something termed ‘breach of fiduciary responsibility’ if they knowingly manage a company in a way that reduces profits. The car manufacturer Henry Ford was in fact successfully sued by shareholders in 1919 for raising the minimum wage of his workers to $5 per day: the courts declared that, while Ford’s humanitarian sentiments about his employees were nice, his business…

Questions 27–31

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-I, below. Many big businesses today are prepared to harm people and the environment in order to make money, and they appear to have no {27}. Lack of {28} by governments and lack of public {29} can lead to environmental problems such as {30} or the destruction of {31}.

27.

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Answers & explanations

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40 answers3 explanations open

1
water
The correct answer is 'water' because the excerpt explicitly states that the roots of the huarango tree suck up water from deep below the surface to help the tree thrive.
2
diet
The correct answer matches perfectly with the information in the passage that highlights the huarango tree's significance in the ancient people's diet, making it the right choice for this blank.
3
drought
The correct answer is 'drought' because the passage specifically mentions that the huarango tree helped people survive during years of drought, emphasizing the importance of the tree during such dry periods when other crops failed.
4
erosion
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5
desert
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6
branches / its branches / huarango branches / the branches
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7
bark / its bark / huarango bark / the bark
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8
trunk / its trunk / huarango trunk / the trunk
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9
NOT GIVEN
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10
FALSE
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11
TRUE
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12
FALSE
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13
NOT GIVEN
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14
NOT GIVEN
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15
FALSE
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16
TRUE
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17
FALSE
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18
FALSE
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19
TRUE
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20
words
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21
finger
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22
direction
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23
commands
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24
fires
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25
technology
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26
award
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27
D
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28
E
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29
F
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30
H
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31
B
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32
C
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33
D
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34
B
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35
YES
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36
NOT GIVEN
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37
NO
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38
YES
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39
NOT GIVEN
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40
D
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