IELTS Reading Recent Actual Test 19

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Morse Code

Morse code is being replaced by a new satellite-based system for sending distress calls at sea. Its dots and dashes have had a good run for their money.

A

“Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence.” Surprisingly this message, which flashed over the airwaves in the dots and dashes of Morse code on January 31st 1997, was not a desperate transmission by a radio operator on a sinking ship. Rather, it was a message signal-ling the end of the use of Morse code for distress calls in French waters. Since 1992 countries around the world have been decommissioning their Morse equipment with similar (if less poetic) sign-offs, as the world’s shipping switches over to a new satellite-based arrangement, the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. The final deadline for the switch-over to GMDSS is February 1st, a date that is widely seen as the end of art era.

B

The code has, however, had a good history. Appropriately for a technology commonly associated with radio operators on sinking ships, the idea of Morse code is said to have occurred to Samuel Morse while he was on board a ship crossing the Atlantic, At the time Morse Was a painter and occasional inventor, but when another of the ship’s passengers informed him of recent advances in electrical theory, Morse was suddenly taken with the idea of building an electric telegraph to send messages in codes. Other inventors had been trying to do just that for the best part of a century. Morse succeeded and is now remembered as “the father of the telegraph” partly thanks to his single-mindedness—it was 12 years, for example, before he secured money from Congress to build his first telegraph line—but also for technical reasons.

C

Compared with rival electric telegraph designs, such as the needle telegraph developed by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in Britain, Morse’s design was very simple: it required little more than a “key” (essentially, a spring-loaded switch) to send messages, a clicking “sounder” to receive them, and a wire to link the two. But although Morse’s hardware was simple, there was a catch: in order to use his equipment, operators had to learn the special code of dots and dashes that still bears his name. Originally, Morse had not intended to use combinations of dots and dashes to represent individual letters. His first code, sketched in his notebook during that transatlantic voyage, used dots and dashes to represent the digits 0 to 9. Morse’s idea was that messages would consist of strings of numbers corresponding to words and phrases in a special numbered dictionary. But Morse later abandoned this scheme and, with the help of an associate, Alfred Vail, devised the Morse alphabet, which could be used to spell out messages a letter at a time in dots and dashes.

D

At first, the need to learn this complicated-looking code made Morse’s telegraph seem impossibly tricky compared with other, more user-friendly designs, Cooke’s and Wheatstone’s telegraph, for example, used five needles to pick out letters on a diamond-shaped grid. But although this meant that anyone could use it, it also required five wires between telegraph stations. Morse’s telegraph needed only one. And some people, it soon transpired, had a natural facility for Morse code.

E

As electric telegraphy took off in the early 1850s, the Morse telegraph quickly became dominant. It was adopted as the European standard in 1851, allowing direct connections between the telegraph networks of different countries. (Britain chose not to participate, sticking with needle telegraphs for a few more years.) By this time Morse code had been revised to allow for accents and other foreign characters, resulting in a split between American and International Morse that continues to this day.

F

On international submarine cables, left and right swings of a light-beam reflected from a tiny rotating mirror were used to represent dots and dashes. Meanwhile a distinct telegraphic subculture was emerging, with its own customs and vocabulary, and a hierarchy based on the speed at which operators could send and receive Morse code. First-class operators, who could send and receive at speeds of up to 45 words a minute, handled press traffic, securing the best-paid jobs in big cities. At the bottom of the pile were slow, inexperienced rural operators, many of whom worked the wires as part-timers. As their Morse code improved, however, rural operators found that their new-found skill was a passport to better pay in a city job. Telegraphers soon swelled the ranks of the emerging middle classes. Telegraphy was also deemed suitable work for women. By 1870, a third of the operators in the Western Union office in New York, the largest telegraph office in America, were female.

G

In a dramatic ceremony in 1871, Morse himself said goodbye to the global community of telegraphers he had brought into being. After a lavish banquet and many adulatory speeches, Morse sat down behind an operators table and, placing his finger on a key connected to every telegraph wire in America, tapped out his final farewell to a standing ovation. By the time of his death in 1872, the world was well and truly wired: more than 650,000 miles of telegraph line and 30,000 miles of submarine cable were throbbing with Morse code; and 20,000 towns and villages were connected to the global network. Just as the Internet is today often called an “information superhighway”, the telegraph was described in its day as an “instantaneous highway of thought”,

H

But by the 1890s the Morse telegraph’s heyday as a cutting-edge technology was coming to an end, with the invention of the telephone and the rise of automatic telegraphs, precursors of the teleprinter, neither of which required specialist skills to operate. Morse code, however, was about to be given a new lease of life thanks to another new technology: wireless. Following the invention of radiotelegraphy by Guglielmo Marconi in 1896, its potential for use at sea quickly became apparent. For the first time, ships could communicate with each other, and with the shore, whatever the weather and even when out of visual range. In 1897 Marconi successfully sent Morse code messages between a shore station and an Italian warship 19km (12 miles) away. By 1910, Morse radio equipment was commonplace on ships.

Questions 1-8

Reading passage 1 has eight paragraphs, A-H.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-H from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i-xi, in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i      The advantage of Morse’s invention

ii     A suitable job for women

iii    Morse’s invention was developed

iv    Sea rescue after the invention of radiotelegraphy

v     The emergence of many job opportunities

vi    Standard and variations

vii   Application of Morse code in a new technology

viii The discovery of electricity

ix    International expansion of Morse Code

x     The beginning of an end

xi    The move of using code to convey information

1   Paragraph A

2   Paragraph B

3   Paragraph C

4   Paragraph D

5   Paragraph E

6   Paragraph F

7   Paragraph G

8   Paragraph H

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE               if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE              if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN    if there is no information on this

9   Morse had already been famous as an inventor before his invention of Morse code.

10   Morse waited a long time before receiving support from the Congress.

11   Morse code is difficult to learn compared with other designs.

12   Companies and firms prefer to employ telegraphy operators from rural areas.

13   Morse died from overwork.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. 

The study of laughter

Humans don’t have a monopoly on laughter, says Silvia Cardoso. A behavioral biologist at the State University of Campinas, Brazil, she says it’s a primitive reflex common to most animal; even rats laugh. She believes that too little laughter could have serious consequences for our mental, physical and social well-being.

Laughter is a universal phenomenon, and one of the most common things we do. We laugh many times a day, for many different reasons, but rarely think about it, and seldom consciously control it. We know so little about the different kinds and functions of laughter, and our interest really starts there. Why do we do it? What can laughter teach us about our positive emotions and social behavior? There’s so much we don’t know about how the brain contributes to emotion and many scientists think we can get at understanding this by studying laughter.

Only 10 or 20 percent of laughing is a response to humor. Most of the time, it’s a message we send to other people, communicating joyful disposition, a willingness to bond and so on. It occupies a special place in social interaction and is a fascinating feature of our biology, with motor, emotional and cognitive components. Scientists study all kinds of emotions and behavior, but few focuses in this most basic ingredient. Laughter gives us a clue that we have powerful systems in our brain which respond to pleasure, happiness and joy. It’s also involved in events such as release of fear.

Many professionals have always focused on emotional behavior. Researchers spent many years investigating the neural basis of fear in rats, and came to laughter via that route. It is noticed that when they were alone, in an exposed environment, they were scared and quite uncomfortable. Back in a cage with others, they seemed much happier. It looked as if they played with one another real rough and tumble, and researchers wondered whether they were also laughing. The neurobiologist Jaak Panksepp had shown that juvenile rats make short vocalizations, pitched too high for humans to hear, during rough-and-tumble play. He thinks these are similar to laughter. This made us wonder about the roots of laughter.

We only have to look at the primate closest to humans to see that laughter is clearly not unique to us. This is not too surprising, because humans are only one among many social species and there’s no reason why we should have a monopoly on laughter as a social tool. The great apes, such as chimpanzees, do something similar to humans. They open their mouths wide, expose their teeth, retract the corners of their lips, and make loud and repetitive vocalizations in situations that tend to evoke human laughter, like when playing with one another or with humans, or when tickled. Laughter may even have evolved long before primates. We know that dogs at play have strange patterns of exhalation that differ from other sounds made during passive or aggressive confrontation.

But we need to be careful about over-interpreting panting behavior in animals at play. It’s nice to think of it as homologous to human laughter, but it could just be something similar but with entirely different purposes and evolutionary advantages. Everything humans do has a function, and laughing is no exception. Its function is surely communication. We need to build social structures in order to live well in our society and evolution has selected laughter as a useful device for promoting social communication. In other words, it must have a survival advantage for the species.

The brain scans are usually done while people are responding to humorous material. Brainwave activity spread from the sensory processing area of the occipital lobe, the bit at the back of the brain that processes visual signals, to the brain’s frontal lobe. It seems that the frontal lobe is involved in recognizing things as funny. The left side of the frontal lobe analyses the words and structure of jokes while the right side does the intellectual analyses required to “get” jokes. Finally, activity spreads to the motor areas of the brain controlling the physical task of laughing. Researchers also found out that these complex pathways involved in laughter from neurological illness and injury. Sometimes after brain damage, tumors, stroke or brain disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, people get “stonefaced” syndrome and can’t laugh.

We are sure that laughter should differ between the sexes, particularly the uses to which the sexes put laughter as a social tool. For instance, women smile more than laugh, and are particularly adept at smiling and laughing with men as a kind of “social lubricant”. It might even be possible that this has a biological origin, because women don’t or can’t use their physical size as a threat, which men do, even if unconsciously.

Laughter is believed to be one of the best medicines. For one thing, it’s exercise. It activates the cardiovascular system, so heart rate and blood pressure increase, then the arteries dilate, causing blood pressure to fall again. Repeated short, strong contractions of the chest muscles, diaphragm and abdomen increase blood flow into our internal organs, and forced respiration –the ha! ha! –making sure that this blood is well oxygenated. Muscle tension decreases, and indeed we may temporarily lose control of our limbs, as in the expression “weak with laughter”. It may also release brain endorphins, reducing sensitivity to pain and boosting endurance and pleasurable sensations. Some studies suggest that laughter affects the immune system by reducing the production of hormones associated with stress, and what when you laugh the immune system produces more T-cells. But no rigorously controlled studies have confirmed these effects. Laughter’s social role is definitely important.

Today’s children may be heading for a whole lot of social ills because their play and leisure time is so isolated and they lose out on lots of chances for laughter. When children stare at computer screens, rather than laughing with each other, this is at odds with what’s natural for them. Natural social behavior in children is playful behavior, and in such situations laughter indicates that make-believe aggression is just fun, not for real, and this is an important way in which children from positive emotional bonds, gain new social skills and generally start to move from childhood to adulthood. Parents need to be very careful to ensure that their children play in groups, with both peers and adult, and laugh more.

Questions 14-15

Which of the following claims and arguments are presented in the passage above?

Choose TWO letters from A-E

A   All animals share the phenomenon of laughter.

B   Laughter can influence both adult and child health.

C   Laughter is not unique to humans.

D   Human mental, physical and social well-being are closely related.

E   Laughter teaches us how to behave.

Questions 16-20

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2?

On your answer sheet please write

YES                  if the statement agrees with the writer

NO                   if the statement contradicts with the writer

NOT GIVEN    if there is no information about this in the passage.

16   Laughter is one of the most common expressions shared by all humans.

17   There are complicated systems in the human brain that take the responsibility of our emotions as happiness and fear.

18   Communication is the only purpose of laughter.

19   Reduced blood pressure would lead to a stimulated cardiovascular system.

20   With the mass production of T-cells from the laughter, stress hormones would be deducted from the immune system.

Questions 21-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Emotional behavior takes academic concerns. For years scientists have been examining the origin of 21 _________ and laughter that comes from the same route as rats. Within an open environment, they have been noticed to be 22 _________ when they are alone, and happier when they are back with others. Jaak Panksepp even found that rats make 23 _________ when they are in a chaotic state. It is well understand that humans are not the only living species that laughs and laughter may have developed long before 24 _________. Despite such facts, we need to pay attention when we explain various animal behavior, as they may express with differed 25 _________ and 26 _________.Advertisements

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

What is a dinosaur?

A

Although the name dinosaur is derived from the Greek for “terrible lizard”, dinosaurs were not, in fact, lizards at all. Like lizards, dinosaurs are included in the class Reptilia, or reptiles, one of the five main classes of Vertebrata, animals with backbones. However, at the next level of classification, within reptiles, significant differences in the skeletal anatomy of lizards and dinosaurs have led scientists to place these groups of animals into two different superorders: Lepidosauria or lepidosaurs, and Archosauria, or archosaurs.

B

Classified as lepidosaurs are lizards and snakes and their prehistoric ancestors. Included among the archosaurs, or “ruling reptiles”, are prehistoric and modern crocodiles, and the now extinct thecodonts, pterosaurs and dinosaurs. Palaeontologists believe that both dinosaurs and crocodiles evolved, in the later years of the Triassic Period (c. 248-208 million years ago), from creatures called pseudosuchian thecodonts. Lizards, snakes and different types of thecodont are believed to have evolved earlier in the Triassic Period from reptiles known as eosuchians.

C

The most important skeletal differences between dinosaurs and other archosaurs are in the bones of the skull, pelvis and limbs. Dinosaur skulls are found in a great range of shapes and sizes, reflecting the different eating habits and lifestyles of a large and varied group of animals that dominated life on Earth for an extraordinary 165 million years. However, unlike the skulls of any other known animals, the skulls of dinosaurs had two long bones known as vomers. These bones extended on either side of the head, from the front of the snout to the level of the holes on the skull known as the antorbital fenestra, situated in front of the dinosaur’s orbits or eye sockets.

D

All dinosaurs, whether large or small, quadrupedal or bipedal, Peet-footed or slow-moving, shared a common body plan. Identification of this plan makes it possible to differentiate dinosaurs from any other types of animal, even other archosaurs. Most significantly, in dinosaurs, the pelvis and femur had evolved so that the hind limbs were held vertically beneath the body, rather than sprawling out to the sides like the limbs of a lizard. The femur of a dinosaur had a sharply in-turned neck and a ball-shaped head, which slotted into a fully open acetabulum or hip socket. A supra-acetabular crest helped prevent dislocation of the femur. The position of the knee joint, aligned below the acetabulum, made it possible for the whole hind limb to swing backwards and forwards. This unique combination of features gave dinosaurs what is known as a “fully improved gait”. Evolution of this highly efficient method of walking also developed in mammals, but among reptiles it occurred only in dinosaurs.

E

For the purpose of further classification, dinosaurs are divided into two orders: Saurischia or saurischian dinosaurs, and Ornithischia, or ornithischian dinosaurs. This division is made on the basis of their pelvic anatomy. All dinosaurs had a pelvic girdle with each side comprised of three bones: the pubis, ilium and ischium. However, the orientation of these bones follows one of two patterns. In saurischian dinosaurs, also known as lizard-hipped dinosaurs, the pubis points forwards, as is usual in most types of reptile. By contrast, in ornithischian, or bird-hipped, dinosaurs, the pubis points back-wards towards the rear of the animal, which is also true of birds.

F

Of the two orders of dinosaurs, the Saurischia was the larger and the first to evolve. It is divided into two suborders: Therapoda, or therapods, and Sauropodomorpha or sauropodomorphs. The therapods, or “beast feet”, were bipedal, predatory carnivores. They ranged in size from the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, 12m long, 5.6m tall and weighing an estimated 6.4 tonnes, to the smallest known dinosaur, Compsognathus, a mere 1.4m long and estimated 3kg in weight when fully grown. The sauropodomorphs, or “lizard feet forms”, included both bipedal and quadrupedal dinosaurs. Some sauropodomorphs were carnivorous or omnivorous but later species were typically herbivorous. They included some of the largest and best-known of all dinosaurs, such as Diplodocus, a huge quadruped with an elephant-like body, a long, thin tail and neck that gave it a total length of 27m, and a tiny head.

G

Ornithischian dinosaurs were bipedal or quadrupedal herbivores. They are now usually divided into three suborders: Ornithopoda, Thyreophora and Marginocephalia. The ornithopods, or “bird feet”, both large and small, could walk or run on their long hind legs, balancing their body by holding their tails stiffly off the ground behind them. An example is Iguanodon, up to 9m long, 5m tall and weighing 4.5 tonnes. The thyreophorans, or “shield bearers”, also known as armoured dinosaurs, were quadrupeds with rows of protective bony spikes, studs, or plates along their backs and tails. They included Stegosaurus, 9m long and weighing 2 tonnes.

H

The marginocephalians or “margined heads”, were bipedal or quadrupedal ornithischians with a deep bony frill or narrow shelf at the back of the skull. An example is Triceratops, a rhinoceros-like dinosaur, 9m long, weighing 5.4 tonnes and bearing a prominent neck frill and three large horns.

Questions 27-33

Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs A-H.

Choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

Write the appropriate numbers i-xiii in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.

List of headings

i        165 million years

ii       The body plan of archosaurs

iii      Dinosaurs – terrible lizards

iv      Classification according to pelvic anatomy

v       The suborders of Saurischia

vi      Lizards and dinosaurs – two distinct superorders

vii     Unique body plan helps identify dinosaurs from other animals

viii    Herbivore dinosaurs

ix      Lepidosaurs

x       Frills and shelves

xi      The origins of dinosaurs and lizards

xii     Bird-hipped dinosaurs

xiii    Skull bones distinguish dinosaurs from other archosaurs

27   Paragraph A

28   Paragraph B

29   Paragraph C

30   Paragraph D

31   Paragraph E

32   Paragraph F

33   Paragraph G

Example:             Answer:

Paragraph H        x 

Questions 34-36

Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 34-36 on your answer sheet.

34   Lizards and dinosaurs are classified into two different superorders because of the difference in their _________.

35   In the Triassic Period, _________ evolved into thecodonts, for example, lizards and snakes.

36   Dinosaur skulls differed from those of any other known animals because of the presence of vomers: _________.

Questions 37-40

Choose one phrase A-H from the list of features to match with the dinosaurs listed below.

Write the appropriate letters A-H in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

NB   You may use each phrase once only.

Dinosaurs

37   Dinosaurs differed from lizards, because …

38   Saurischian and ornithischian dinosaurs …

39   Unlike therapods, sauropodomorphs …

40   Some dinosaurs used their tails to balance, others …

List of features

A   are both divided into two orders.

B   the former had a “fully improved gait”

C   were not usually very heavy

D   could walk or run on their back legs

E   their hind limbs sprawled out to the side

F   walked or ran on four legs rather than two

G   both had a pelvic girdle comprising six bones

H   did not always eat meat