IELTS reading

Cambridge 16 · Academic Reading Test 4

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Section 1

Reading Passage 1

Roman Tunnels

The Romans, who once controlled areas of Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor, adopted the construction techniques of other civilizations to build tunnels in their territories The Persians, who lived in present-day Iran, were one of the first civilizations to build tunnels that provided a reliable supply of water to human settlements in dry areas. In the early first millennium BCE, they introduced the qanat method of tunnel construction, which consisted of placing posts over a hill in a straight line, to ensure that the tunnel kept to its route, and then digging vertical shafts down into the ground at regular intervals. Underground, workers removed the earth from between the ends of the shafts, creating a tunnel. The excavated soil was taken up to the surface using the shafts, which also provided ventilation during the work. Once the tunnel was completed, it allowed water to flow from the top of a hillside down towards a canal, which supplied water for human use. Remarkably, some qanats built by the Persians 2,700 years ago are still in use today. They later passed on their knowledge to the Romans, who also used the qanat method to construct water-supply tunnels for agriculture. Roman qanat tunnels were constructed with vertical shafts dug at intervals of between 30 and 60 meters. The shafts were equipped with handholds and footholds to help those climbing in and out of them and were covered with a wooden or stone lid. To ensure that the shafts were vertical, Romans hung a plumb line from a rod placed across the top of each shaft and made sure that the weight at the end of…

Questions 1–6

Label the diagrams below.

ONE WORD ONLY

1.Markers placed over hill to guide tunnel route

2.Waterway receiving flow from tunnel outlet

Section 2

Reading Passage 2

Changes In Reading Habits

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What are the implications of the way we read today? Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones; older kids don’t read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other passengers read on tablets or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Unbeknown to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing and this has implications for everyone from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult. As work in neurosciences indicates, the acquisition of literacy necessitated a new circuit in our species’ brain more than 6,000 years ago. That circuit evolved from a very simple mechanism for decoding basic information, like the number of goats in one’s herd, to the present, highly elaborated reading brain. My research depicts how the present reading brain enables the development of some of our most important intellectual and affective processes: internalized knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference; perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of insight. Research surfacing in many parts of the world now cautions that each of these essential ‘deep reading’ processes may be under threat as we move into digital- based modes of reading. This is not a simple, binary issue of print versus digital reading and technological innovation. As MIT scholar Sherry Turkle has written, we do not err as a society when we innovate but when…

Questions 14–17

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

14.What is the writer’s main point in the first paragraph?

Section 3

Reading Passage 3

Attitudes Towards Artificial Intelligence

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A.Artificial intelligence (AI) can already predict the future. Police forces are using it to map when and where crime is likely to occur. Doctors can use it to predict when a patient is most likely to have a heart attack or stroke. Researchers are even trying to give AI imagination so it can plan for unexpected consequences. Many decisions in our lives require a good forecast, and AI is almost always better at forecasting than we are. Yet for all these technological advances, we still seem to deeply lack confidence in Al predictions. Recent cases show that people don’t like relying on AI and prefer to trust human experts, even if these experts are wrong. If we want AI to really benefit people, we need to find a way to get people to trust it. To do that, we need to understand why people are so reluctant to trust AI in the first place. B.Take the case of Watson for Oncology, one of technology giant IBM’s supercomputer programs. Their attempt to promote this program to cancer doctors was a PR disaster. The AI promised to deliver top-quality recommendations on the treatment of 12 cancers that accounted for 80% of the world’s eases. But when doctors first interacted with Watson, they found themselves in a rather difficult situation. On the one hand, if Watson provided guidance about a treatment that coincided with their own opinions, physicians did not see much point in Watson’s recommendations. The supercomputer was simply telling them what they already knew, and these recommendations did not change the actual treatment. On the other hand, if Watson generated a…

Questions 27–32

The Reading Passage has six sections, A-F.

27.Section A

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Answers & explanations

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40 answers3 explanations open

1
posts
The correct answer is 'posts' because it directly matches the specific term mentioned in the excerpt in the context of tunnel construction using the qanat method.
2
canal
The correct answer 'canal' is accurate because it matches the description in the excerpt where water flows from the tunnel towards a canal that provides water for human use, aligning with the purpose and characteristics of a canal as a waterway channel.
3
ventilation
The correct answer 'ventilation' is supported by the fact that shafts in the passage not only transported soil but also provided ventilation, which means the flow of fresh air underground while working.
4
lid
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5
weight
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6
climbing
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7
FALSE
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8
NOT GIVEN
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9
FALSE
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10
TRUE
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11
gold
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12
architect / architect’s / architect’s name / architect name / the architect / the architect’s / the architect’s name / the architect name
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13
harbour / harbor / the harbour / the harbor
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14
A
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15
B
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16
D
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17
B
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18
D
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19
H
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20
F
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21
B
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22
C
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23
YES
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24
NO
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25
NOT GIVEN
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26
YES
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27
iii
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28
vi
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29
ii
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30
i
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31
vii
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32
v
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33
C
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34
B
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35
A
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36
NO
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37
NOT GIVEN
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38
YES
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39
NO
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40
YES
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Understand why, not only what.

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