IELTS reading

Reading Test 12

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Section 1

Reading Passage 1

Survivor from the Sky

In a remarkable documentary, Wings of Hope, German director Werner Herzog re-counts the true story of an eighteen-year-old girl, the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Amazon jungle in 1971. Twenty-nine years later, Herzog returns to the jungle with Juliane Koepke, now a 46-year-old biologist, and she tells her amazing story on film. Juliane had just graduated from high school in Lima, Peru and, with her mother, was flying out to spend Christmas at her father’s research station in the jungle. A half hour into the flight they encountered a horrific storm. In the midst of wild turbulence, the plane was struck by lightning and fell into a nosedive. Passengers screamed as baggage flew around the compartment. Then the plane broke into pieces and suddenly Juliane found herself outside free-falling 30,000 feet. ‘I was suspended in mid-air, still in my scat. It wasn’t so much that I had left the plane but that the plane had left me. It simply wasn’t there any more. I was all alone with my row of seats,’ says Juliane. ‘I sailed on through the air, then I tumbled into a fall. The seatbelt squeezed my stomach and I couldn’t breathe any more.’ Before she lost consciousness, Juliane saw the dense jungle below, ‘a deep green, like broccoli’, with no clearings for hundreds of miles. Somehow, miraculously, Juliane survived that fall from the sky. In the film, she speculates on a number of factors which may have combined to save her. First, the storm had produced a strong updraft from the thunder clouds. Secondly, being strapped into a row of seats, she was aware of falling in a…

Questions 1–3

Answer the questions below. Write NO MORE THAN ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

1.How old was Juliane at the time of the crash?

2.What is her occupation now?

Section 2

Reading Passage 2

The Race to Make Spider Silk

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The strength, toughness, and elasticity of silk continue to fascinate scientists, who wonder what gives this natural material its unusual qualities. Finer than human hair, lighter than cotton, and ounce for ounce stronger than steel, silk is of special interest to materials researchers. They are trying to duplicate its properties and synthesise it for large-scale production. Silk holds the promise of wear-resistant shoes and clothes; stronger ropes, nets, seatbelts and parachutes; rustfree panels and bumpers for automobiles; improved sutures and bandages; artificial tendons and ligaments; supports for weakened blood vessels as well as bulletproof vests. Many insects secrete silks of varying quality. Best known is the moth bombyx mori, whose caterpillar is commonly known as the silkworm. It spins its cocoon from a single thread between 300 and 900 metres long and has been used for centuries to make fine garments. But the focus of scientific attention today is on spider silk: tougher, stretchier, and more waterproof than silkworm strands. Spiders make as many as seven different types of silk, but one spider and two types of silk are at the centre of intense interest. The spider is the golden orb-weaving spider, nephila clavipes. Its two silks under investigation go by the evocative names ‘dragline’ and ‘capture’. Dragline is the silk which forms the frame for the wheel-shaped webs and enables the dangling spider to drop down and grab its prey. This silk exhibits a combination of strength and toughness unmatched by high-performance synthetic fibre. Capture silk is the…

Questions 15–19

Classify the following characteristics as typical of: A (bombyx mori silk), B (nephila clavipes dragline silk), or C (nephila clavipes capture silk).

15.Forms the framework of a web

Section 3

Reading Passage 3

Map Wars

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A map of the world expresses a point of view. A correct model of the earth is a sphere - or an ellipsoid to be precise. Photographs of the earth from space provide comforting reassurance on that point. If you wish to know the relative positions of the continents and the oceans you should go out and buy yourself a globe and spin it around. But a globe cannot be pinned to a wall or printed in a book. For that you need a two-dimensional representation. This is where the problems start since you cannot project three-dimensional information onto a flat plane without making certain assumptions. The arguments between cartographers mostly concern what those assumptions should be. The simplest two-dimensional representation is a ‘cylindrical’ projection - what you get by wrapping a sheet of paper around a globe and simply transferring the information across. This means it indicates true north and south. So, Newfoundland is directly north of Venezuela and it appears that way on the map. East and west similarly are also indicated correctly. Such a map demonstrates what is called ‘fidelity of axis’. One of the longest-lived cylindrical projections was based on the needs of sixteenth century navigators. Gerhard Kremer, a Flemish mathematician, produced his view of the world in 1569. ‘Kremer’ translates to ‘merchant’ in English and ‘mercator’ in Latin. And the Mercator projection survives to this day in many books and maps. Mercator’s projection of the world also shows intermediate compass directions like north-west more or less accurately. So, it is possible to conclude from his map…

Questions 28–31

Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage for each answer. For four centuries, map makers have been trying to convert three-dimensional information as accurately as possible onto a two-dimensional plane. However, each method of {28} involves a compromise. Thus, a cylindrical projection indicates true north and south, known as fidelity of {29}, but misrepresents the relative size of countries. To avoid this distortion, other cartographers rounded the lines of latitude and longitude. Dr. Peters felt that such maps presented a first-world {30}. His map, with equal area projection, enables us to {31} the size of one country with another.

28.

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Answers & explanations

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40 answers3 explanations open

1
18
The keyword in Q1 is How old as we look for the information in the passage. From the question, we can assume that the answer is a number. After skimming, we can notice that paragraph 1 mentions the keyword. Considering every details in the question and in the passage, we can conclude that eighteen is confirmed in Q1. Therefore, the answer for Q1 is 18 (years old)
2
biologist
The blank should be filled with a noun. The answer should be the name of job. The keywords here is her occupation now. The parallel expressions of keywords can be found in paragraph 1. Considering every details in the question and in the passage, we can conclude that biologist is confirmed in Q2. For that reason, the answer is biologist.
3
storm
The blank should be filled with a noun. The keywords here is the cause. The parallel expressions of keywords can be found in paragraph 2. Considering every details in the question and in the passage, we can conclude that storm/lightning is confirmed in Q3. For that reason, the answer is storm/lightning.
4
A
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5
D
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6
C
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7
A
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8
B
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9
C
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10
D
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11
NO
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12
NO
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13
YES
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14
NOT GIVEN
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15
B
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16
C
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17
B
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18
A
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19
B
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20
NOT GIVEN
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21
NO
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22
NO
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23
NOT GIVEN
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24
NO
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25
pollution
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26
wrinkling
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27
60
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28
projection
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29
axis
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30
perspective
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31
compare
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32
M
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33
M
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34
P
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35
M
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36
A
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37
B
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38
C
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39
A
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40
C
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Understand why, not only what.

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