IELTS academic reading matching features

This IELTS academic reading matching features question type requires you to match pieces of information (opinions, findings, facts) with the correct person or feature or period. The questions are based on the passage that has been provided.

In this question type, you must match a list of possibilities with the appropriate set of statements. In most cases, these options are either features or names mentioned in the reading passage.

This is one of the important questions in IELTS academic reading question types. Here we provide the tips and exercises which supports you to solve IELTS academic reading matching features so that you can learn and score an 8+ band score in your IELTS academic reading section  

Table of Contents

1. IELTS academic reading matching features - Strategies & tips to solve
2. Common problems faced by students in matching features
3. Skills required to solve matching features
4. Matching features Practice exercise 1
5. Matching features Practice exercise 2
6. Matching features Practice exercise 3
7. Matching features Practice exercise 4
8. Matching features Practice exercise 5
9. Matching features Practice exercise 6
10. Matching features Practice exercise 7
11. Matching features Practice exercise 8
12. Matching features Practice exercise 9
13. Matching features Practice exercise 10
14. Answers for Practice exercises
15. Conclusion

IELTS academic reading matching features - Strategies & tips to solve

Below you’ll find IELTS academic reading matching features, tips and strategies given by IELTS experts. These 9 tips will help you to develop your confidence in answering this question type.

• This question type requires matching pieces of information (opinions, findings, facts) with the correct person or feature or period.
• The questions will obviously NOT be in progressive order, so don't search in that manner. They may be scattered across the entire passage.
• Names of people and places are written in capitals. These are easy to spot. Read the names on the list and begin locating them. After the first reference to a person with the full name, the surname or pronouns such as - he, she etc. are used.
• Look for quotes and reporting verbs such as, says, asserts, mentions, agrees, disagrees or expressions such as According to ...'. These words will quickly guide you to the required information.
• The statements in the question set are paraphrased from the text using synonyms or restructuring. Do not be misguided by words picked up from the text. These are meant to confuse you. Match the interpretation and not words in isolation. 
• Dont waste time in thinking about minor details that you know already
• Look over the passage line by line for keywords. You know what you’re looking for and why you’re looking for it, therefore you can find the answers in the paragraph.
• Primarily try underlining the keywords found in the passage to gain a better grasp of the overall meaning of the reading text.
• Don't expect the answers to be in progressive order. Thus you have to scan the entire passage to locate the answer.

These IELTS academic reading matching features, tips and strategies can help you to answer questions with a minimum effort.  Kindly take note of the fundamental ideas from the tips to solve matching features effectively.

Common problems faced by students in matching features 

• Due to a lack of understanding, students struggled to identify the meaning of the given phrases.
• As a basic rule, reading the entire paragraph word by word is not necessary and actually time-consuming, so employ the scanning approach.
• Being in a hurry while matching the features.
• Focusing on finding the exact words.

Skills required to solve matching features 

• Passage understanding
• Skimming
• Paraphrasing
• Strong vocabulary

Also read: IELTS academic reading tips

Matching features Practice exercise 1 

Answer questions 1-7 which are based on the reading passage below.

Objects From Different Civilizations Reading Passage

Objects from lost civilisations can tell us about the social relationships and the way of life of the people belonging to those societies. The Indus valley civilisation and the Chinese civilisation have been influential with their innovations and contributions to advanced technology. The Indus Valley civilization is also called the Harappan civilization. Developing along the mighty Indus River, it was at its peak around 2500 and 3500 BC. This Bronze Age civilisation is believed to be among the oldest world civilisations together with the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations. The famous figurine of the dancing girl from the Harappa region shows the advances made in art and metallurgy at the time. The statue describes details such as the hairstyle and ornaments prevalent then such as the more than 20 bangles in her left arm and four on her right arm, and the necklace. Although the bronze statuette is in standing position, it was named the dancing girl by assuming that it was her profession. 

The seals are other famous objects from the Bronze Age. Seals are beautifully carved out of stone and then fired for durability. Over 3,500 seals discovered are mostly square with different symbols at the top, an animal in the centre and a few more symbols at the bottom are, which are presumed to be the inscription of the Indus valley language. The inscription indicates that people of this age wrote the first line from right to left, the second line from left to right and so on. Some common animal inscriptions on these seals include elephants, unicorns, rhinoceros, and bulls. On the reverse face, most seals have projections with a hole to possibly carry it comfortably. The imprint on some of the seals suggests that they were used as clay tags for sacks of traded goods such as grain, which means that the Harappan people were involved in long-distance trading networks. Hunting tools show that the Indus people were fond of game. Many of the toys are carts and animals made from baked clay, and most were for children, which has led to the conclusion that the people had an active social life. 

Standardised measurement is another valuable contribution of the Indus valley people. The oldest ruler with markings was a copper alloy rod found by a German archaeologist and he claims that it was used as a standard measurement unit. He mentions that the measurements on the ruler are divided into units that correspond to 1.32 inches which are further divided into perfectly calculated decimal subdivisions. Measurements of the bricks found in excavations of the Mohenjo Daro and Harappan civilisations match with those on the ruler mentioned by the German archaeologist. 

China was the first nation to invent paper. In the older civilisations, words were written on natural materials such as grass stalks, earthen plates, wood and bamboo strips, tree leaves, and sheepskins. The first paper from the Chinese people was known as bo and was made of silk. However, it was expensive. In the 2nd century, a new kind of paper was produced from rags, bark, wheat stalks, and other materials, which was not only cheaper but was also durable and could be used for brush writing. Papermaking had spread to other parts of the world in the beginning of the third century. Ancient China also gets credit for the invention of gunpowder. In a collection of most important military techniques as described in Wujing Zongyao that was edited in 1044 by Zeng Gong Liang, three formulas of making gunpowder were discovered and have been described as the earliest formulas of such kinds. Another significant gift from China was the compass. It was developed after some miners got hold of a piece of a natural magnetite that attracted iron and pointed north. The compass that we use today is a result of a series of improvements to the earliest design. Before it was invented, navigators depended on the position of the moon, sun, and the polestar for their bearings. 

Questions 1-7

The reading passage mentions a number of objects/achievements related to Indus Valley and Chinese civilisations and their relevance.

Match each object/ achievement (Questions 1-7) in List A with its relevance (A-J) in List B.

Write the correct letter, A-J, as your answer.

List A

1 figurine of the dancing girl 

2 seals for marking goods

3 weapons for hunting

4 toys for children

5 copper alloy ruler

6 production of paper from plant material

7 invention of the compass

List B

A strength and affordability of a product

B the various uses of clay

C spread of commerce in a wide area

D advancements in metal craft

E recognition of dance as a profession

F social activity

G a consequence of the discovery of natural magnet

H  navigators depended on astronomical bodies

I use of standard measurements in construction

J the consumption of wild birds and animals as food

Matching features Practice exercise 2

Answer questions 1-5 which are based on the reading passage below.

Why can't we live forever? Reading Passage

The only certainties in life, said Benjamin Franklin, are death and taxes. Don't expect eithe to disappear anytime soon. The prospects for a longer life currently seem rosy, at least if yo, are a laboratory mouse. This year has seen headlines about mice, engineered to produce lots of antioxidants, who can live 20 percent longer than usual, and equally impressive gain for animals altered to produce high levels of a peptide hormone known as Klotho (after the minor Greek deity). Ultra-low-calorie diets, big doses of vitamin E, and even transferring ovaries from a younger mouse into elderly females also seem to extend lifespan. Shepherds may say that sheep are just looking for new ways to die, but mice seem to be susceptible to almost anything that can make them live a bit longer.

So what are the prospects for a rather larger mammal that normally lives 70-80 years, and very occasionally makes it to 120 before keeling over? Will, what works in mice, work in humans?

There are well-publicised optimists who think it will. The most often quoted is Aubrey de Grey of Cambridge, a proponent of a big expansion of research on what he has called Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence. He is also one of the leading lights of the Methuselah Mouse Prize, which is offered to the scientific team that develops the longest lived mouse.

But for all his energy and revolutionary zeal, Professor de Grey is not actually doing the research - his day job is as a computer expert in a genetics lab. And many researchers in biogerontology are sceptical about his predictions. That scepticism came through recently when Tom Kirkwood of the University of Newcastle's Institute for Ageing and Health asked in Nature: “Why must advocates of life extension make preposterous claims about imminent longevity gains if they are to gain public notice?"

Professor Kirkwood is the author of the influential 'disposable soma’ theory of ageing that states the body decays because there is little genetic interest in keeping it going beyond reproductive age. This means that he sees no programmed limit to lifespan, in mice or people. Ageing is a biological sin of omission, not commission. So perhaps we could block whatever is doing the damage. But, he stresses, “This does not imply that major increases in lifespan are imminent. As we grow older , the accumulated burden of molecular and cellular damage increases and the going gets harder."

Others in the field tend to agree. One reason is simply that ageing is very complex, and e do not know enough to make sensible predictions. Caleb Finch of the University of Southern California says: “I have a simple view: we don't know what we don't know about egeing processes. So, what can be said on future longevity?"

Linda Partridge of University College London's Centre for Research on Ageing, well known for work on fruit flies, backs Professor Kirkwood. In any case, she adds, "I think that we should be working to promote health during ageing rather than on increases in lifespan per et." Either way, she believes that “Progress will be gradual and based on existing promising areas of work, rather than based on unproven approaches”.

Her colleague David Gems, who works on nematode worms, is optimistic that the basic biology of ageing will be understood in the next decade or two. But he stresses that how easily this translates into treating or preventing ageing-related diseases depends on what ageing really turns out to be: "There's a huge margin of uncertainty." He suggests that cancer treatments are a better historical guide than, say, antibiotics - and most cancers femain incurable.

Martin Brand of the Medical Research Council's Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge also urges caution. "There have been spectacular increases in lifespan caused by simple treatments and mutations in model organisms," he concedes. But he is mindful that flies and mice in the laboratory tend to live shorter lives than wild strains. "I worry that these results can be explained as putting right bad husbandry of the model organisms rather than affecting ageing itself.”

Questions 1-5

Look at the following statements and the list of people below.

Match each statement with the correct person.

NB - You may use any answer more than once.

1. The condition of the body starts to decline when we can't have offspring. 

2.Only two things are predictable in life.

3. Living longer is less important than how healthy we are as we age.

4.People make ridiculous statements about how long we can live.

5. We can't predict the future because we don't know enough about the ageing proces

List of People 

А Aubrey de Grey 

B Caleb Finch 

C David Gems 

D Linda Partridge 

E Benjamin Franklin 

F Martin Brand 

G Tom Kirkwood

Matching features Practice exercise 3

Answer questions 1-5 which are based on the reading passage below.

Migraine Reading Passage

"One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small and the ones that mother gives you, dors do anything at all," words from 'Alice in Wonderland'. It is believed that Lewis Carroll, who made us experience this wonderful journey of 'Alice in Wonderland' also suffered from a Migraine.

Migraine is a complex disorder pertaining to the head, which involves the recurrence of severe and constant headaches. The intensity of headaches ranges from moderate to grievous. Associated symptoms can be hypersensitivity to light, sound or smell, nausea and vomiting. Migraine is assumed to be hereditary and highly influenced by environmental changes. Hormones play a crucial role, especially in the case of boys when they reach puberty, who are majorly affected by migraine as compared to girls of the same age. Contradicting the fact, the number of older female patients is twice or thrice that of males. However, the threat of migraine is less during pregnancy.

In 1988, The International Headache Society provided valuable input on the major classification of migraine - the International Classification of Headache Disorders system - which was later adopted by the World Health Organisation. The research team divided migraine into two prime categories: migraine without aura and migraine with aura. More than three-fourths of the migraine sufferers experience symptoms of migraine without aura: Partial and intense throbbing of the head which lasts for more than 2-3 days associated with nausea and occasional vomiting, blurred or smeared vision and developed sensitivity towards the light, sounds or peculiar smells. In certain cases, symptoms can also comprise stiffness of the neck and shoulders.

The migraine with aura refers to a range of neurological interventions prior to an initial headache Only 20% of migraine sufferers fall in this category. The general complications constitute flashy lights, scintillating scotoma - usually, some zigzag patterns targeting the centre of the vision and encompassing a larger area accompanied with distortions of shapes and figures, blind spots which generally pose threats in the normal working conditions of an individual. Migraine without headaches only comprises 1% of the sufferers. From a tender age Carl, one of the subjects in a study, had seen his father suffer from bouts of severe headaches followed by persistent vomiting leaving him sick in bed. At the age of 45, Carl says," I have been suffering from migraine from the age much younger than my father. It is the worst experience of my life." He further adds, "I mostly feel my genes are responsible for this painful condition. Though I visit the doctor quite often medicines provide limited help." m

The classification system also includes some rare types of migraines. A Hemiplegic Migraine where symptoms often start in childhood or teenage sometimes leads to reversible paralysis due to the excessive weakening of muscles. An Ophthalmologic migraine affects the muscles responsible for eye movement. A Vestibular Migraine or Migraine Associated Vertigo (MAV) interferes with the coordination of sensory nerves from the eyes and ears to the brain.

As per 2004 consensus, almost 80% of people suffer from some kind of severe pain in the head As per which results in high absenteeism in schools, offices and other institutions. How is a headache different from a migraine? A headache is generally an acute pain in the head extending to the neck. As per the researchers at the Mayo Clinic, headaches are discomfort or pain in the head or face. In technical terms, headache is called cephalgias. Headaches can be caused as a result of disturbances in the network of nerves over the scalp, throat, face, resulting in turbulent blood vessels . Tension headaches are the most common types of headaches, the symptoms being acute pain in the temples and back of the neck. Experts believe this could be possible due to changes in brain chemicals. Over-the-counter drugs can give some relief.

Another most frequent headache is a cluster headache. This is more common in men. It causes excruciating pain on one side of the head, accompanied by watery eyes and, at times, nasal congestion. The source and cause are unknown, but hereditary conditions are somewhere to be blamed. Though counter medications can curb the pain, no cure is available. A thin line can differentiate a migraine and headaches with the varying degree of pain, where headaches could be an outcome of stress, hangovers or emotional instability, migraine is actually a disease. In the case of Rosemary, a stock consultant who presumed that alcohol triggered her constant headache later through diagnosis by doctors that high level of estrogen in the birth control pills she consumed played the trick. She says. "It is important to know the triggers that cause and try to avoid them. Having a balanced diet is equally important."

Is migraine curable? More than 35 million people suffer from migraines, and no one knows why. Dodick, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic and president of the American Headache Society, how the thalamus the integral part of the brain which contains sensory information, is for transferring migraine pain directly to pain receptors in the different sections of the. He further states, "Scientists have evolved with a treatment wherein a minuscule battery wired to patient's spine which helps to transmit pulses of electricity to the thalamus. This treatment is called as neurostimulation." Despite this treatment, the antidote is a far-fetched reality. Neurologists from Gulf, Germany and Italy do collectively assert that neurostimulation reduces and controls pain but scientifically it is still an enigma.
 
To resolve this problem, we need to believe that every brain works differently, and so does its cure. Every treatment has to be unique because so is the brain. Comprehensive research is still awaited to cure this ailment. It is observed that each time science thinks it has pulled strings, many more mysteries emerge. Our brain works singularly; hence, the cure needs to be distinctive.

Questions 1-5

Look at the following categories (Questions 1-5) and the list of descriptions below 

Match each category with the correct description, A - G. 

Write the correct letter, A - G, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

1    Migraine without aura 

2    Hemiplegic Migraine 

3    Migraine Associated Vertigo 

4    Cluster headache 

5    Tension headache

A     disturbs the transmission of messages between brain, eyes and ears

B     neurological factors are responsible for headaches head

C    causes tense muscles in the neck and both sides of the

D     causes discomfort in the eyes and nasal tract along with a severe headache on one side only

E     triggered by external stimuli such as typical odour or noise 

F     could paralyse the body temporarily 

Matching features Practice exercise 4

Answer questions 1-7 which are based on the reading passage below.

Art To The Aid Of Technology Reading Answers

A.  Our brains are incredibly agile machines, and it is hard to think of anything they do more efficiently than recognize faces. Just hours after birth, the eyes of newborns are drawn to facelike patterns. An adult brain knows it is seeing a face within 100 milliseconds, and it takes just over a second to realise that two different pictures of a face, even if they are lit or rotated in very different ways, belong to the same person.

B.  Perhaps the most vivid illustration of our gift for recognition is the magic of caricature-the fact that the sparest cartoon of a familiar face, even a single line dashed off in two seconds, can be identified by our brains in an instant. It is often said that a good caricature looks more like a person than the person themselves. As it happens, this notion, counterintuitive though it may sound, is actually supported by research. Located in field of vision science, there is even a term for this seeming paradox-the caricature effect-a phrase that hints at how our brains misperceive faces as much as perceive them.

C. Human faces are all built pretty much the same: two eyes above a nose that’s above a mouth, the features varying from person to person generally by mere millimetres. So what our brains look for, according to vision scientists, are the outlying features-those characteristics that deviate most from the ideal face we carry around in our heads, the running average of every "visage" we have ever seen. We code each new face we encounter not in absolute terms but Located in several ways it differs markedly from the mean. In other words, we accentuate what is most important for recognition and largely ignore what is not. Our perception fixates on the upturned nose, the sunken eyes or the fleshy cheeks, making them loom larger. To better identify and remember people, we turn them into caricatures.

D. Ten years ago, we all imagined that as soon as surveillance cameras had been equipped with the appropriate software, the face of a crime suspect would stand out in a crowd. Like a thumbprint, its unique features and configuration would offer a biometric key that could be immediately checked against any database of suspects. But now a decade has passed, and face-recognition systems still perform miserably in real-world conditions. Just recently,a couple who accidentally swapped passports at an airport in England sailed through 
electronic gates that were supposed to match their faces to file photos.

E. All this leads to an interesting question. What if, to secure our airports and national landmarks, we need to learn more about caricature? After all, it's the skill of the caricaturist-the uncanny ability to quickly distill faces down to their most salient features-that our computers most desperately need to acquire. Clearly, better cameras and faster computers simply aren't going to be enough.

F. At the University of Central Lancashire in England, Charlie Frowd, a senior lecturer in psychology, has used insights from caricature to develop a better police-composite generator. His system, called EvoFIT, produces animated caricatures, with each successive frame showing facial features that are more exaggerated than the last. Frowd's research supports the idea that we all store memories as caricatures, but with our own personal degree of amplification. So, as an animated composite depicts faces at varying stages of caricature, viewers respond to the stage that is most recognizable to them. In tests, Frowd's technique has increased positive identifications from as low as 3 percent to upwards of 30 percent.

G. To achieve similar results in computer face recognition, scientists would need to model the artist’s genius even more closely-a feat that might seem impossible if you listen to some of the artists describe their nearly mystical acquisition of skills. Jason Seiler recounts how he trained his mind for years, beginning in middle school, until he gained what he regards as nothing less than a second sight. ‘A lot of people think that caricature is about picking out someone’s worst feature and exaggerating it as far as you can,' Seiler says. 'That’s wrong. Caricature is basically finding the truth. And then you push the truth.' Capturing a likeness, it seems, has less to do with the depiction of individual features than with their placement in relationship to one another. 'It's how the human brain recognizes a face. When the ratios between the features are correct, you see that face instantly.’

H. Pawan Sinha. director of MIT's Sinha Laboratory for Vision Research, and one of the nation's most innovative computer-vision researchers, contends that these simple, exaggerated drawings can be objectively and systematically studied and that such work will lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of both human and machine-based vision. His lab at MIT is preparing to computationally analyze hundreds of caricatures this year, from dozens of different artists, with the hope of tapping their intuitive knowledge of what is and isn’t crucial for recognition. He has named this endeavor the Hirschfeld Project, after the famous New York Times caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

I. Quite simply, by analyzing sketches, Sinha lopes to pinpoint the recurring exaggerations Located in caricatures that most strongly correlate to particular ways that the original faces deviate from the norm. The results, he believes, will ultimately produce a rank-ordered list of the 20 or so facial attributes that are most important for recognition: 'It’s a recipe for how to encode the face,' he says. In preliminary tests, the lab has already isolated important areas-for example, the ratio of the height of the forehead to the distance between the top of the nose and the mouth. 

J. On a given face, four of 20 such Hirschfeld attributes, as Sinha plans to call them, will be several standard deviations greater than the mean; on another face, a different handful of attributes might exceed the norm. But in all cases, it's the exaggerated areas of the face that hold the key. As matters stand today, an automated system must compare its target faces against the millions of continually altering faces it encounters. But so far, the software doesn't know what to look for amid this onslaught of variables. Armed with the Hirschfeld attributes, Sinha hopes that computers can be trained to focus on the features most salient for recognition, tuning out the others. ’Then.’ Sinha says, ’the sky is the limit’.

Questions 7-10
Look at the following statements and the list of people, A-C, below.
Match each statement with the correct person.

7. A single caricature can be recognised straight away if the parts of the face are appropriately positioned.
8. An evaluation of the work of different caricaturists will provide new information about how we see faces.
9. People misunderstand what is involved Located in design of a caricature.
10.When given a choice, people will have different views regarding which caricature best represents a particular person’s face.

List of People

A Charlie Frowd
B Jason Seiler
C Pawan Sinha

Matching features Practice exercise 5

Answer questions 1-7 which are based on the reading passage below.

TRY IT AND SEE Reading Answers

In the social sciences, it is often supposed that there can be no such thing as a controlled experiment. Think again.

A.  In the scientific pecking order, social scientists are usually looked down on by their peers in the natural sciences. Natural scientists do experiments to test their theories or, if they cannot, they try to look for natural phenomena that can act in lieu of experiments. Social scientists, it is widely thought, do not subject their own hypotheses to any such rigorous treatment. Worse, they peddle their untested hypotheses to governments and try to get them turned into policies.

B. Governments require sellers of new medicines to demonstrate their safety and effectiveness. The accepted gold standard of evidence is a randomised control trial, in which a new drug is compared with the best existing therapy (or with a placebo, if no treatment is available). Patients are assigned to one arm or the other of such a study at random, ensuring that the only difference between the two groups is the new treatment. The best studies also ensure that neither patient nor physician knows which patient is allocated to which therapy. Drug trials must also include enough patients to make it unlikely that chance alone may determine the result.

C.  But few education programmes or social initiatives are evaluated in carefully conducted studies prior to their introduction. A case in point is the 'whole-language' approach to reading, which swept much of the English-speaking world in the 1970s and 1980s. The whole-language theory holds that children learn to read best by absorbing contextual clues from texts, not by breaking individual words into their component parts and reassembling them (a method known as phonics). Unfortunately, the educational theorists who pushed the whole-language notion so successfully did not wait for evidence from controlled randomised trials before advancing their claims. Had they done so, they might have concluded, as did an analysis of 52 randomised studies carried out by the US National Reading Panel in 2000, that effective reading instruction requires phonics.

D. To avoid the widespread adoption of misguided ideas, the sensible thing is to experiment first and make policy later. This is the idea behind a trial of restorative justice which is taking place in the English courts. The experiment will include criminals who plead guilty to robbery. Those who agree to participate will be assigned randomly either to sentencing as normal or to participation in a conference in which the offender comes face-to-face with his victim and discusses how he may make emotional and material restitution. The purpose of the trial is to assess whether such restorative justice limits re-offending. If it does, it might be adopted 
more widely.

E. The idea of experimental evidence is not quite as new to the social sciences as sneering natural scientists might believe. In fact, randomised trials and systematic reviews of evidence were introduced into the social sciences long before they became common in medicine. An apparent example of random allocation is a study carried out in 1927 of how to persuade people to vote in elections. And randomised trials in social work were begun in the 1930s and 1940s. But enthusiasm later waned. This loss of interest can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that early experiments produced little evidence of positive outcomes. Others suggest that much of the opposition to experimental evaluation stems from a common philosophical malaise among social scientists, who doubt the validity of the natural sciences and therefore reject the potential of knowledge derived from controlled experiments. A more pragmatic factor limiting the growth of evidence-based education and social services may be limitations on the funds available for research.

F. Nevertheless, some 11,000 experimental studies are known in the social sciences {compared with over 250,000 in the medical literature). Randomised trials have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of driver-education programmes, job training schemes, classroom size, psychological counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder and increased investment in public housing. And where they are carried out, they seem to have a healthy dampening effect on otherwise rosy interpretations of the observations.

G. The problem for policymakers is often not too few data, but what to make of multiple and conflicting studies. This is where a body called the Campbell Collaboration comes into its own. This independent non-profit organisation is designed to evaluate existing studies, in a process known as a systematic review. This means attempting to identify every relevant trial of a given question (including studies that have never been published), choosing the best ones using clearly defined criteria for quality, and combining the results in a statistically valid way. An equivalent body, the Cochrane Collaboration, has produced more than 1,004 such reviews in medical fields. The hope is that rigorous review standards will allow Campbell, like Cochrane, to become a trusted and authoritative source of information.

Questions 27-32

Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-G from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number i-x in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings:

i. Why did some early social science methods lost popularity?
ii. The cost implications of research
iii. Looking ahead to an unbiased assessment of research
iv. A range of social issues that have been usefully studied
v. An example of a poor decision that was made too quickly
vi.What happens when the figures are wrong?
vii. One area of research that is rigorously carried out
viii. The changing nature of medical trials
ix. An investigative study that may lead to a new system
x.Why some scientists' theories are considered second-r

27. Paragraph B
28. Paragraph C
29. Paragraph D
30. Paragraph E
31. Paragraph F
32. Paragraph G

Matching features Practice exercise 6

Answer questions 1-7 which are based on the reading passage below.

Going Nowhere Fast Reading Answers

A. This is ludicrous! We can talk to people anywhere in the world or fly to meet them in a few hours. We can even send probes to other planets. But when it comes to getting around our cities, we depend on systems that have scarcely changed since the days of Gottlieb Daimler

B. In recent years, the pollution belched out by millions of vehicles has dominated the debate about transport. The problem has even persuaded California, home of car culture, to curb traffic growth. But no matter how green they become, cars are unlikely to get us around crowded cities any faster. And persuading people to use trains and buses will always be an uphill struggle. Cars, after all, are popular for very good reasons, as anyone with small children or heavy shopping knows.

C. A professor of mechanical engineering sits typing at a computer keyboard, conjuring up a scene on his monitor that looks something like the classic computer game PacMan.White dots stream in from the right of the screen, switch to red, and merge with green boxes, which swiftly change color to yellow and then red while moving through a bewildering maze. But this is not a video game.J.Edward Anderson of Boston University is testing an urban transit system that he believes could revolutionize public transport worldwide.

D. For the past quarter of a century, Anderson has been promoting his version of personal rapid transit(PRT). Other versions came and went in the 1970s, From Europe, Japan, and elsewhere in the Us, but he was so convinced of the idea’s potential that he stuck with it and, in 1983, founded the Taxi 2000 Corporation to ‘commercialize the initiative. Although the University of Minnesota, Anderson’s employer until 1986, holds the patents to the technology, he is licensed to develop it and to sub-license other developers. So politicians should be trying to lure people out of their cars, not forcing them out. There’s certainly no shortage of alternatives. Perhaps the most attractive is the concept known as personal rapid transit(PRT), independently invented in the US and Europe in the 1950s.

E. The idea is to go to one of many stations and hop into a computer-controlled car that can whisk you to your destination along with a network of guideways. You wouldn’t have to share your space with strangers, and with no traffic lights, pedestrians, or parked cars to slow things down, PRT guideways can carry far more traffic, nonstop, than any inner-city road. It’s a wonderful vision, but the odds are stacked against PRT for a number of reasons. The first cars ran on existing roads, and it was only after they became popular-and after governments started earning revenue from them- that a road network designed specifically for motor vehicles was built. With PRT, the fracture would have to come first-and that would cost megabucks.

F. What’s more, any transport system that threatened the car’s dominance would be up against all those with a stake in maintaining the status quo, from private car owners to manufacturers and oil multinationals. Even if PRTs were spectacularly successful in trials, it might not make much difference. Superior technology doesn’t always triumph, as the VHS versus Betamax and windows versus Apple Mac battles showed.

G. But “dual-mode” systems might just succeed where PRT seems doomed to fail. The Danish RUF system envisaged by Palle Jensen, for example, resembles PRT but with one key difference: vehicles have wheels as well as a slot allowing them to travel on a monorail, so they can drive off the rail onto a normal road. Once on a road, the occupant would take over from the computer, and the Ruf vehicle-the term comes from a Danish saying meaning to “go fast”-would become an electric car.

H. Build a fast network of guideways in a busy city center and people would have a strong incentive not just to use public Ruf vehicles, but also to buy their own dual-mode vehicle. Commuters could drive onto the guideway, sit back, and read as they are chauffeured into the city. At work they would jump out, leaving their vehicles to park themselves. Unlike PRT, such a system could grow organically, as each network would serve a large area around it and people nearby could buy into it. And a dual-mode system might even win the support of car manufacturers, who could easily switch to producing dual-mode vehicles.

I. The RUF system can reduce energy consumption from individual traffic. The main factor is the reduction of air resistance due to the close coupling of vehicles. The energy consumption per Ruf can is reduced to less than 1/3 at 100 km/h. Since RUF is an electric system, renewable sources can be used without problems. A combination of windmills and a RUF rail could be used over water. Solar cells can also be integrated into the system and ensure completely sustainable transportation.

J. Of Course, creating a new transport system will not be cheap or easy. But unlike adding a dedicated bus lane here or extending the underground railway there, an innovative system such as Jensen’s could transform cities. The vehicles in a RUF system rides” very safely on top of a triangular monorail. This means that derailments are impossible and that the users will feel safe because it is easy to understand that when the rail is actually inside the vehicle it is absolutely stable. The special rail brake ensures that braking power is always available even during bad weather. The brake can squeeze as hard against the rail as required in order to bring the vehicle to a safe stop. If a vehicle has to be evacuated, a walkway between the two rails can be used.

K. And it’s not just a matter of saving a few minutes a day. According to the Red Cross, more than 30 million people have died in road accidents in the past century-three times the number killed in the First World War-and the annual death toll is rising. and what’s more the Red Cross believes road accidents will become the third biggest cause of death and disability by 2020, ahead of diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis. Surely we can find a better way to get around.

Questions 5-11

Use the information in the passage to match the category (listed A-C) with the description below. Write the appropriate letters A-C in boxes 5-11 on your answer sheet.

[A] ONLY PRT  
[B] ONLY RUF
[C] BOTH OF THEM

5. Totally apply computer system
6. Opposition to a system from companies
7. Reach destination fast
8. Not necessary to share with the public
9. Work on the existing road
10. Individuals can buy cars after all
11. Controlled both by computer and manual

Matching features Practice exercise 7

Answer questions 1-7 which are based on the reading passage below.

Fueling the future

Passage

We’ve provided the reading passage of How consumers decide. Read the passage and carefully complete the questions.

A. The world’s 750 million motor vehicles emit well over 900 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. Traffic-related air pollution has been responsible for 6% of deaths per year and is associated with certain forms of leukemia, inflammatory lung diseases, increased cardio-vascular disease, low birth-weight babies and male infertility. It stands to reason that tackling traffic- related air pollution should be high on any government’s list of priorities. Thus, in an attempt to minimize this situation many governments around the world have been looking at ways to implement alternative fuel sources. The most widely accepted way of doing this is to replace the crude oil that our vehicles currently run on with renewable, ‘environmentally friendly’ One serious contender put forward as a solution to the pollution problem is ethanol.

B. Ethanol is a type of alcohol made by fermenting plant material. Water and organic matter from the plants including com, sorghum, sugar cane and wood are mixed together and fermented to make ethanol. After fermentation there are three layers remaining. The first is water and small particles of grain and alcohol. It takes on a syrup consistency. The second layer is the remaining grain, which is 17 percent dry matter. The third layer is the actual ethanol – a colorless, volatile, flammable liquid. It is the only layer sold and accounts for exactly one-third of the total dry matter used for its production. There are three primary ways that it is used as a fuel for transportation: as a blend of 10 percent ethanol with 90% unleaded fuel (E10); as a component of reformulated gasoline and; as a primary fuel with 85 parts of ethanol blended with 15 parts of unleaded fuel (E-85). In the 1800s in the USA, It was first used as lamp fuel. Later on, due to skyrocketing oil prices in the 1970s, E10 was produced as a type of ‘fuel-extender’ for vehicles with E-85 being produced in the 1990s. Brazil has also used ethanol-blended fuels. Like America, the high prices in the 1970s prompted a government mandate to produce vehicles which could be fuelled by pure ethanol Today there are more than 4,2 million ethanol- powered vehicles in Brazil (40 percent passenger carrying) which consume 4 billion gallons of ethanol annually. Today, Brazil is the largest transportation ethanol fuel market in the world.

C.Given that Ethanol is made from a variety of plant substances when it is used in fuel production, it increases the monetary value of feed grains grown by farmers. In fact, in the USA, the largest ethanol consuming nation in the world, ethanol production adds £4.5 billion to the farm economy every year. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, ethanol production adds 30 cents to the value of a bushel of corn. Another of its benefits, according to Brian Keating, deputy chief of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is that a 10% ethanol blend (E10) would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2 to 5% over the full lifecycle of ethanol production and consumption. Said Keating, “The precise benefits depend on specific factors in the production cycle. An important component of which is the energy source used by the ethanol factory. If it’s being powered by coal or oil, there are obviously associated greenhouse gas emissions.” In America, The Clean Air Act of 1990 and the National Energy Policy Act of 1992 have both created new market opportunities for cleaner, more efficient fuels with many state governments in America’s Midwest purchasing fleet vehicles capable of running on E-85 fuels.

D. Although it makes good fuel, some drawbacks have been documented. The economics of ethanol production are improving as the technology improves but ethanol has two problems: It does not explode like gasoline, and it can absorb water, which can cause oxidation, rust and corrosion. The claims of possible damage to vehicles from the use of ethanol blends above 10% has therefore attracted considerable negative publicity. Compared to diesel – the standard fuel in the heavy moving industry – ethanol is known to have a lower energy content so ethanol trucks require larger fuel tanks to achieve the same range as a diesel-powered vehicle. In Australia, a government review’ into the impacts of a 20% ethanol blend on vehicles found the information to be insufficient or conflicting, but did identify a number of problems such as the possible perishing and swelling of elastomeric and plastic materials in fuel systems. Stakeholders in the motor vehicle industry have slated that warranties on motor vehicles and pump dispensing equipment could be at risk with the use of blends above 10% ethanol. Principle economist for the Australian Bureau of Agriculture Andrew Dickson points out that the money sugarcane growers get for their cane is not determined by the domestic consumption or domestic demand for ethanol, it is entirely determined by the world sugar market and the world trade in molasses He believes that the only way the sugar industry’ can benefit from the existence of an ethanol industry is if they invest in the ethanol industry. “The sugar producer does not get any more money for their molasses so what incentive do they have to produce any more?.” The cost of production also represents some challenges. In Australia, fuel ethanol costs around 70 cents per litre compared with around 35 cents per litre for unleaded petrol. In America, one report revealed that even with government assistance, ethanol is dose to 35 per cent more than the price of diesel. Consequently, production of ethanol requires government assistance to be competitive. A recent study by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economies found that without assistance, large-scale production of ethanol would not be commercially viable in Australia.

E. Regardless of whether the Australian sugar industry will benefit from a mandated 10% ethanol mix, the expansion of ethanol production would certainly lead to increased economic activity in farming areas. It is inevitable that some expansion would be at the expense of existing industry. If ethanol becomes more popular, there will soon be more plants producing it. This means there will be a need for workers for the plants. The American National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition (NBVC) projects that employment will be boosted by 200,000 jobs and the balance of trade will be improved by over $2 The future of ethanol looks promising, for better or worse ethanol looks to be a serious contender for
tomorrow’s fuel.

Questions 10-14

Classify the following statements according to which country they apply to.

Write the appropriate letters A-D in boxes 10-14 on your answer sheet.

A. Australia only
B. America only
C. both Australia and America
D. neither Australia nor America

10...................... makes ethanol out of sugar cane

11...................... uses more ethanol than any other country in the world

12...................... receives government assistance for ethanol production

13...................... proved ethanol production is costly

14...................... their government bought ethanol-friendly cars

Matching features Practice exercise 8

Answer questions 1-7 which are based on the reading passage below.

Money as the unit of account Reading Answers

A The most difficult aspect of money to understand is its function as a unit of account. In linear measurement we find the definition of a yard, or a metre, easy to accept. In former times these lengths were defined in terms of fine lines etched onto brass rods maintained in standard laboratories at constant temperatures. Money, however, is much more difficult to define because the value of anything is ultimately in the mind of the observer, and such values will change with time and circumstance. Sir Isaac Newton, as Master of the Royal Mint, defined the pound sterling (£) in 1717 as 113 grains of pure gold. This took Britain off silver and onto gold as defining the unit of account. The pound was 113 grains of pure gold, the shilling was 1/20 of that, and the penny 1/240 of it. By the end of the 19th century the gold standard had spread around most of the trading world, with the result that there was a single world money. It was called by different names in different countries, but all these supposedly different currencies were rigidly interconnected through their particular definition in terms of a quantity of gold.

B In economic life the prices of different commodities and services are always changing with respect to each other. If the potato crop, for example, is ruined by frost or flood, then the price of potatoes will go up. The consequences of that particular price increase will be complex and unpredictable. Because of the high price of potatoes, prices of other things will decline, as demand for them declines. Similarly, the argument that the Middle East crisis following the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait would, because of increased oil prices, have led to sustained general inflation is, although widely accepted, entirely without foundation. With sound money (money whose purchasing power does not decline over time) a sudden price shock in any one commodity will not lead to a general price increase, but to changes in relative prices throughout the economy. As oil increases, other goods and services will drop in price, and oil substitutes will rise in price, as the consequences of the oil price increase work their unpredictable and complex way through the economy. The use of gold as the unit of account during the days of the gold standard meant that the price of all other commodities and services would swing up and down with reference to the price of gold, which was fixed. If gold supplies diminished, as they did when the 1850s gold rushes in California and Australia were finishing, then deflation (a general price level decrease] would set in. When new gold rushes followed in South Africa and again in Australia, in the 1880s and 1890s, the general price level increased, gently, around the world, as there was more money in circulation.

C The end of the gold standard began with the introduction of the Bretton-Woods Agreement in 1946. This fixed the value of all world currencies relative to the US dollar, which in turn was fixed to a specific value of gold (US$0.35/oz). However, in 1971 the US government finally refused to exchange US dollars for gold, and other countries soon followed. Governments printed as much paper money or coinage as they wanted, and the more that was printed, the less each unit of currency was worth. The key problem with these government ‘fiat’ currencies is that their value is not defined; such value is subject to how much money a government cares to print. Their future value is unpredictable, depending as it does on political chance. In past economic calculations of the Australian Institute for Public Policy, incomes and expenditures were automatically converted to dollars of a particular year, using CPI deflators, which are stored in the Institute’s computers. When the Institute performs economic calculations into the future, it guesses at inflation rates and includes these guesses in its figures. The guesses are entirely based on past experience. In Australia most current calculations assume a three to four per cent inflation rate.

D The great advantage of the 19th century gold standard was not just that it defined the unit of account, but that it operated throughout almost the entire world. Anthony Trollope tells us in his diaries about his Australian travels in 1872 that a pound of meat, selling in Australia for twopence, would have cost ten pence or even a shilling in the UK. It was this price difference which drove investment and effort into the development of shipboard refrigeration, and opening up of major new markets for Australian meat, at great benefit to the British public. Today we can determine price differences between countries by considering the exchange rate of the day. In twelve months’ time, even a month’s time, however, a totally different situation may prevail, and investments of time and money made on the basis of an opportunity at an exchange rate of the day, may actually perform poorly because of subsequent exchange rate movements. The great advantage of having a single stable world currency is that such currency would have very high information content. It tells people where to invest their time, energy and capital, all around the world, with much greater accuracy and predictability than would otherwise be possible.

Questions 18-21

• Using information from the text, match the following causes with a result.
• Write the appropriate letters in boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet.

A  Oil substitutes become more expensive
B  Oil substitutes drop in price
C  People developed techniques of transporting it to other places
D  More people went to live in Australia
E  The price of other things goes down, because fewer people could afford to buy them
F   People used gold instead of silver as money
G  All prices went up slightly, everywhere
H  There is no observable effect
I   All prices went down, everywhere

18. The price of Potatoes goes up…
19. The amount of gold available went up………….
20. The amount of gold available went down………….
21. Meat in Australia was cheaper than elsewhere …………….

Matching features Practice exercise 9

Answer questions 1-7 which are based on the reading passage below.

Children’s Thinking Reading Answers

One of the most eminent of psychologists, Clark Hull, claimed that the essence of reasoning lies in the putting together of two 'behaviour segments' in some novel way, never actually performed before, so as to reach a goal.

Two followers of Clark Hull, Howard and Tracey Kendler, devised a test for children that was explicitly based on Clark Hull's principles. The children were given the task of learning to operate a machine so as to get a toy. In order to succeed they had to go through a two-stage sequence. The children were trained on each stage separately. The stages consisted merely of pressing the correct one of two buttons to get a marble; and of inserting the marble into a small hole to release the toy.

The Kendlers found that the children could learn the separate bits readily enough. Given the task of getting a marble by pressing the button they could get the marble; given the task of getting a toy when a marble was handed to them, they could use the marble. (All they had to do was put it in a hole.) But they did not for the most part 'integrate', to use the Kendlers' terminology. They did not press the button to get the marble and then proceed without further help to use the marble to get the toy. So the Kendlers concluded that they were incapable of deductive reasoning.

The mystery at first appears to deepen when we learn, from another psychologist, Michael Cole, and his colleagues, that adults in an African culture apparently cannot do the ' task either. But it lessens, on the other hand, when we learn that a task was devised which was strictly analogous to the Kendlers' one but much easier for the African males to handle.

Instead of the button-pressing machine, Cole used a locked box and two differently coloured match-boxes, one of which contained a key that would open the box. Notice that there are still two behaviour segments — 'open the right match-box to get the key' and 'use the key to open the box' - so the task seems formally to be the same. But psychologically it is quite different. Now the subject is dealing not with a strange machine but with familiar meaningful objects; and it is clear to him what he is meant to do. It then turns out that the difficulty of 'integration' is greatly reduced.

Recent work by Simon Hewson is of great interest here for it shows that, for young children, too, the difficulty lies not in the inferential processes which the task demands, but in certain perplexing features of the apparatus and the procedure. When these are changed in ways which do not at all affect the inferential nature of the problem, then five-year-old children solve the problem as well as college students did in the ' own experiments.

Hewson made two crucial changes. First, he replaced the button-pressing mechanism in the side panels by drawers in these panels which the child could open and shut. This took away the mystery from the first stage of training. Then he helped the child to understand that there was no 'magic' about the specific marble which, during the second stage of training, the experimenter handed to him so that he could pop it in the hole and get the reward.

A child understands nothing, after all, about how a marble put into a hole can open a little door. How is he to know that any other marble of similar size will do just as well? Yet he must assume that if he is to solve the problem. Hewson made the functional equivalence of different marbles clear by playing a 'swapping game' with the children. The two modifications together produced a jump in success rates from 30 per cent to 90 per cent for five-year-olds and from 35 per cent to 72.5 per cent for four-year-olds. For three-year- olds, for reasons that are still in need of clarification, no improvement—rather a slight drop in performance - resulted from the change.

We may conclude, then, that children experience very real difficulty when faced with the Kendler apparatus; but this difficulty cannot be taken as proof that they are incapable of deductive reasoning.

Questions

Questions 28-35

Classify the following descriptions as a referring 
Clark Hull                               CH 
Howard and Tracy Kendler    HTK
Micheal Cole and colleagues MC
Simon Hewson                       SH

Write the appropriate letters in boxes 28-35 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any answer more than once.

28 is cited as famous in the field of psychology.
29 demonstrated that the two-stage experiment involving button-pressing and inserting a marble into a hole poses problems for certain adults as well as children.
30 devised an experiment that investigated deductive reasoning without the use of any marbles.
31 appears to have proved that a change in the apparatus dramatically improves the performance of children of certain ages.
32 used a machine to measure inductive reasoning that replaced button-pressing with drawer-opening.
33 experimented with things that the subjects might have been expected to encounter in everyday life, rather than with a machine.
34 compared the performance of five-year-olds with college students, using the same apparatus with both sets of subjects.
35 is cited as having demonstrated that earlier experiments into children's ability to reason deductively may have led to the wrong conclusions.

Matching features Practice exercise 10

Answer questions 1-7 which are based on the reading passage below.

Orientation of birds Reading Answers

A. For many of US, the way birds are able to orientate is both astounding and difficult to appreciate fully. For instance, the annual migration of tire golden plover of the Pacific takes it from Alaska to Hawaii on a flight of well over 3000 kilometres, and if it were to deviate by only one degree, it would miss the island on which it nests.

B. The first systematic studies on orientation in birds were made possible by the ‘homing instinct’ exhibited by so many species. Birds are caught at a time when they show an attachment to their territory, especially during the nesting season. They are taken to some spot, released, and the percentage of returns is recorded. The distance can be varied, and the direction, as well as the method of transporting them, and then the influence of climatic and other factors on their ability to find their way home can be studied. These experiments have shown a wide variation in ability to home, and three types of homing behaviour have been identified.

C. In the first type, birds methodically explore the area in which they are released until they pick up some familiar feature, and then they quickly find their way back to the nest. Such birds possess a highly developed visual memory, as experiments with pigeons have shown. Domestic pigeons have been trained to peck at a certain point on an aerial photograph, with a system of rewards, and four years later the birds were still able to respond to this training when placed on the aerial photograph. Birds’ eyes have a power of resolution two to three times greater than ours, enabling them to pick up very fine details. If a bird uses only this type of homing behaviour, however, it can only succeed if the point of release is not too far away. If the birds are transported 800 kilometres from their nest, it is only by good fortune that they find their way back as a result of long exploratory flights. Usually, the area known to a bird is its feeding territory. Released within this area, the birds soon make their return; release them outside it and far fewer return. However, if a bird is released for a second time in the same place, its visual memory comes into play, and the bird, no longer requiring tedious exploratory flights, will return much more quickly.

D. The second type of homing behaviour is shown by birds that are capable of choosing their flight direction and holding to it for the rest of their journey. How do they decide what direction to take? They appear to choose their normal migration direction even if they are released in a different place from their usual stalling point. If, for example, birds which normally fly to the north-east to reach latitude 45 degrees north are released at that latitude, they will immediately start flying north-east anyway. So if they’re released further to the west, they’ll maintain the correct direction, but fly west of their destination, and so fail to arrive.

E. The third type of homing behaviour shows the highest degree of orientation. Released at one point, the birds immediately take stock of it, compare its position with that of the nest, decide on the direction and fly off. This happens even if the birds are in a country right off their migration routes, where they have never been before. In one example, a laysan albatross returned to its nesting area on Midway Island in the middle of the Pacific, having flown over 5000 kilometres from the west coastal of the USA in just over ten days. This is a perfect example of the third type of homing, for the albatross clearly couldn’t rely on any landmarks over the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

F. The percentage of successful birds varies greatly, being highest in those species with a strong migratory behaviour. Thus the lesser black-backed gull is more migratory than the herring gull and more often reaches ‘home’. Great migrants such as the swift have the highest percentage of returns. In one case, seven out of nine alpine swifts were recaptured at their nests after being displaced some 1400 kilometres; one made the journey in three days.

G. What part does heredity play in all this? Two research studies suggest that instinctive, i.e. genetically inherited, behaviour patterns play a part in navigation. The first was carried out by Ernst Schuz and it is highly significant. Schuz caught first year European storks and released them later, after the departure of the adult storks at a time when they normally make their south-west autumn migration to Africa. The recaptures showed that, in spite of the fact that there were no adults to guide them, the birds unanimously headed south-west. This was a most striking finding, for it showed that the birds had an innate and unlearned attraction for the African wintering area that they have occupied for thousands of years.

H. The case of starlings is a little different. These birds have a great aptitude for homing, but this behaviour differs in the different age groups. Birds that were shifted to the south-east of their normal migration route split into two lots. The adults, in full possession of their gift for orientation, found their wintering area by modifying their direction by 90 degrees, whereas the juveniles sought their winter quarters to the south-east of their real position.

Questions 10-13

Look at the following types of birds (Questions 10-13) and the list of points which the author wishes to illustrate below.

Match each bird with the point which it illustrates, A-G.
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.

10  _______ domestic pigeon
11  _______ alpine swift
12  _______ European stork
13  _______ starling

List of points which the author wishes to illustrate

A an ability to orientate without previous training
B the speed at which birds can fly
C the ability to remember things seen previously
D the effect of age on homing ability
E the strength required to fly a great distance
F a high success rate in finding nests
G the importance of seasonal cues for migrating birds

Answers for Practice exercises 

Here you will find the answers for practice exercises 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10.

Objects From Different Civilizations Reading Answers

 

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer in detail.)

1.D

Explanation: Paragraph 2 - This famous figurine of the dancing girl from the Harappa region shows the advances made in art and metallurgy at the time.

2.C

Explanation: Paragraph 3 - The imprint on some of the seals suggests that they were used as clay tags for sacks of traded goods such as grain, which indicates that the Harappan people were involved in long-distance trading networks.

3.J

Explanation: Paragraph 3 - Hunting tools indicate that the Indus people were fond of game.
‘Game’- wild animals and birds that are hunted for food or sport are also called game

4.F

Explanation: Paragraph 3 - Many of the toys are carts and animals made from baked clay, and most were for children, which has led to the conclusion that the people had an active social life. 

5.I

Explanation: Paragraph 4 - The oldest ruler with markings was a copper alloy rod, found by a German archaeologist and he claims that it was used as a standard measurement unit ... Measurements of the bricks found in excavations of the Mohenjo Daro and Harappan civilisations match with those on the ruler mentioned by the German archaeologist. 

6.A

Explanation: Paragraph 6 - In the 2nd century, a new kind of paper was produced from rags, bark, wheat stalks, and other materials, which was not only cheaper but was also durable ...

7.G

Explanation: Paragraph 6 - Another significant gift from China was the compass. It was developed after some miners got hold of a piece of a natural magnetite that attracted iron and pointed north.

Why can't we live forever? Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer in detail.)

1.G

Explanation: Paragraph 5 - Professor Kirkwood is the author of the influential 'disposable soma' theory of ageing that states the body decays because there is little genetic interest in keeping it going beyond reproductive age.

2.E

Explanation: Paragraph 1 - The only certainties in life, said Benjamin Franklin, are death and taxes.

3.D

Explanation: Paragraph 7 - Linda Partridge of University ... she adds, “I think that we should be working to promote health during ageing rather than on increases in lifespan per se.

4.G

Explanation: Paragraph 4 - Tom Kirkwood of the University of Newcastle's Institute for Ageing and Health asked in Nature: "Why must advocates of life extension make preposterous claims about imminent longevity gains if they are to gain public notice?"

5.B

Explanation: Paragraph 6 - Caleb Finch of the University of Southern California says: “I have a simple view: we don't know what we don't know about ageing processes. So, what can be said on future longevity?"

Migraine Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer in detail.)

1.E

Explanation: Paragraph 2 - More than three-fourths of the migraine sufferers experience symptoms of migraine without aura: Partial and intense throbbing of the head which lasts for more than 2-3 days associated with nausea and occasional vomiting, blurred or smeared vision and developed sensitivity towards the light, sounds or peculiar smells

2.F

Explanation: Paragraph 4 - A Hemiplegic Migraine where symptoms often start in childhood or teenage sometimes leads to reversible paralysis due to the excessive weakening of muscles

3.A

Explanation: Paragraph 4 - A Vestibular Migraine or Migraine Associated Vertigo (MAV) interferes with the coordination of sensory inputs from the eyes and ears to the brain 

4.D

Explanation: Paragraph 6 - Another most frequent headache is a cluster headache ... It causes excruciating pain on one side of the head, accompanied by watery eyes and, at times, nasal congestion

5.C

Explanation: Paragraph 5 - Tension headaches are the most common types of headaches, the symptoms being acute pain in the temples and back of the neck

Art To The Aid Of Technology Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer in detail.)

7. Answer: B

Explanation: Located in last line of paragraph G, “When the ratios between the features are correct, you see that face instantly”.

8. Answer: C

Explanation: Located in the second last line of paragraph H, “from dozens of different artists, with the hope of tapping their intuitive knowledge of what is and isn’t crucial for recognition”.

9. Answer: B

Explanation: Located in fourth line of paragraph G, “A lot of people think that caricature is about picking out someone’s worst feature and exaggerating it as far as you can”.

10. Answer: A

Explanation: Located in the fourth line of paragra[h F, “with our own personal degree of amplification. So, as an animated composite depicts faces at varying stages of caricature, viewers respond to the stage that is most recognizable to them”.

Try It And See Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer in detail.)

27. Answer: vii

Explanation: In the last line of paragraph B, “Drug trials must also include enough patients to make it unlikely that chance alone may determine the result”.

28. Answer: v

Explanation: In the fifth and sixth lines of paragraph C, “Unfortunately, the educational theorists who pushed the whole-language notion so successfully did not wait for evidence from controlled randomised trials before advancing their claims”.

29. Answer: ix

Explanation: In the last two lines of paragraph D, “The purpose of the trial is to assess whether such restorative justice limits re-offending. If it does, it might be adopted more widely.”

30. Answer: i

Explanation: In the entire paragraph E, “The idea of experimental evidence is not quite as new to the social sciences as sneering natural scientists might believe. In fact, randomised trials and systematic reviews of evidence were introduced into the social sciences long before they became common in medicine. An apparent example of random allocation is a study carried out in 1927 of how to persuade people to vote in elections. And randomised trials in social work were begun in the 1930s and 1940s. But enthusiasm later waned. This loss of interest can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that early experiments produced little evidence of positive outcomes. Others suggest that much of the opposition to experimental evaluation stems from a common philosophical malaise among social scientists, who doubt the validity of the natural sciences and therefore reject the potential of knowledge derived from controlled experiments. A more pragmatic factor limiting the growth of evidence-based education and social services may be limitations on the funds available for research”.

31. Answer: iv

Explanation: In the first four lines of paragraph F, “ Nevertheless, some 11,000 experimental studies are known in the social sciences {compared with over 250,000 in the medical literature). Randomised trials have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of driver-education programmes, job training schemes, classroom size, psychological counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder and increased investment in public housing”.

32. Answer: iii

Explanation: In the last two lines of paragraph D, “ The hope is that rigorous review standards will allow Campbell, like Cochrane, to become a trusted and authoritative source of information”.

Going Nowhere Fast Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer in detail.)

5. Answer: A

6. Answer: A

7. Answer: C

8. Answer: C

9. Answer: B

10. Answer: B

11. Answer: B

 Fueling the Future Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer in detail.)

10. Answer: A

Explanation: According to the text, Australia is the only country that produces ethanol from sugarcane. 

11. Answer: B

Explanation:  Located in paragraph C 2nd line - “In fact, in the USA, the largest ethanol consuming nation in the world”. Hence, it is clear the answer would be B.

12. Answer: B

Explanation:  Located in paragraph D 20th line - “In America, one report revealed that even with government assistance”. As per the passage, The United States is the sole country receiving official support. 

 13. Answer: C

Explanation: Located in paragraph D 19th line - According to the paragraph, ethanol is costly in both Australia and America. 

14. Answer: B

Explanation:  Located in paragraph C 12th line - “more efficient fuels with many state governments in America’s Mid-west purchasing fleet vehicles capable of running on E-85 fuels”. According to the text, USA is the only nation who invented ethanol friendly-vehicles. 

Money As The Unit of Account Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer in detail.)

18. Answer: E

Explanation: Because of the high price of potatoes, prices of other things will decline, as demand for them declines. The given answer is located in the 4-5 lines of paragraph B. 

19. Answer: G

Explanation: When new gold rushes followed in South Africa and again in Australia, in the 1880s and 1890s, the general price level increased, gently, around the world, as there was more money in circulation. The given answer is located in the last 3 lines of paragraph B. 

20. Answer: I

Explanation:  If gold supplies diminished, as they did when the 1850s gold rushes in California and Australia were finishing, then deflation (a general price level decrease] would set in. The given answer is located in the 15-17 lines of paragraph B. 

21. Answer: C

Explanation: a pound of meat, selling in Australia for twopence, would have cost ten pence or even a shilling in the UK. It was this price difference which drove investment and effort into the development of shipboard refrigeration, and opening up of major new markets for Australian meat, at great benefit to the British public.  The given answer is located in the 3-7 lines of paragraph D.

Children’s Thinking Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer in detail.)

28. Answer: CH

Explanation: In paragraph 1, One of the most eminent of psychologists, Clark Hull, claimed that the essence of reasoning lies in the putting together of two 'behaviour segments' in some novel way, never actually performed before, so as to reach a goal. From the words eminent of psychologists, Clark Hull it is evident that CH is famous in the field of psychology. Hence the answer.

29. Answer: MC

Explanation: This answer can be inferred from both paragraphs 3 & 4. The mystery at first appears to deepen when we learn, from another psychologist, Michael Cole, and his colleagues, that adults in an African culture apparently cannot do the Kendlers' task either. In the 3rd paragraph the task of getting marble by pressing button is explained. And in paragraph 4, it is explained that some adults in an African culture cannot accomplish this task. Hence this answer.

30. Answer: MC

Explanation: Instead of the button-pressing machine, Cole used a locked box and two differently coloured match-boxes, one of which contained a key that would open the box. Notice that there are still two behaviour segments — 'open the right match-box to get the key' and 'use the key to open the box' - so the task seems formally to be the same. These lines in paragraph 5, explains that MC devised another experiment without marbles. Hence the answer.

31. Answer: SH

Explanation: In para 6 “Recent work by Simon Hewson is of great interest here for it shows that, for young children, too, the difficulty lies not in the inferential processes which the task demands, but in certain perplexing features of the apparatus and the procedure.” In para 8 “Hewson made the functional equivalence of different marbles clear by playing a 'swapping game' with the children. The two modifications together produced a jump in success rates from 30 per cent to 90 per cent for five-year-olds and from 35 per cent to 72.5 per cent for four-year-olds. For three-year- olds, for reasons that are still in need of clarification, no improvement—rather a slight drop in performance - resulted from the change. The answer can be confirmed with the lines in paragraph 6 & 8 that Simon Hewson proved that the task depends on the apparatus and procedure. And in para 8 about the success rate. 

32. Answer: SH

Explanation: First, he replaced the button-pressing mechanism in the side panels by drawers in these panels which the child could open and shut. This took away the mystery from the first stage of training. From para 7, it is clear that SH has replaced button-pressing to drawers.

33. Answer: MC

Explanation: But psychologically it is quite different. Now the subject is dealing not with a strange machine but with familiar meaningful objects; and it is clear to him what he is meant to do. It then turns out that the difficulty of 'integration' is greatly reduced. From these lines in para 5, it is clear that MC replaced machines with meaningful objects. Hence the answer.

34. Answer: SH

Explanation:  When these are changed in ways which do not at all affect the inferential nature of the problem, then five-year-old children solve the problem as well as college students did in the ' own experiments. In this paragraph it is clear that SH compared the performance of 5 year old with college students.

35. Answer: SH

Explanation: In the last paragraph, “We may conclude, then, that children experience very real difficulty when faced with the Kendler apparatus; but this difficulty cannot be taken as proof that they are incapable of deductive reasoning.” it can be concluded that with this difficulty

Endangered Languages Reading Answers

(Note: The text in italics is from the reading passage and shows the location from where the answer is taken or inferred. The text in regular font explains the answer in detail.)

10. Answer: C

Explanation: Located in the 3rd line of paragraph C, “Domestic pigeons have been trained to peck at a certain point on an aerial photograph, with a system of rewards, and four years later the birds were still able to respond to this training when placed on the aerial photograph”.

11. Answer: F

Explanation: Located in the last line of paragraph F, “In one case, seven out of nine alpine swifts were recaptured at their nests after being displaced some 1400 kilometres; one made the journey in three days”.

12. Answer: A

Explanation: Located in the 3rd line of paragraph C, ”Schuz caught first-year European storks and released them later, after the departure of the adult storks at a time when they normally make their south-west autumn migration to Africa”.

13. Answer: D

Explanation: Located in the first 2 lines of paragraph H, “The case of starlings is a little different. These birds have a great aptitude for homing, but this behaviour differs in the different age groups”.

Also, check IELTS academic reading sentence completion

Conclusion

Following these tips, strategies, and exercises explained in this article will enrich your skill Building in answering the IELTS academic reading matching features test. We believe that this article will be more useful to learn , practice and prepare well for the IELTS academic reading task along with mock test.