IELTS Academic Reading Short Answer Questions

IELTS academic reading short answer questions is one of the common 14 question types in the reading section. Here you will be answering the questions by choosing the one to three words from the reading passage. The answer must be within the word limit mentioned in the instructions. You will find answering this question type difficult as it demands you to read the passage in detail. We are making it easier for you through our tips and strategies given in this blog.

"IELTS academic reading short answer questions consist of open ended questions which will requires you to answer within 1 to 3 words based on the reading passage." The important point to remember here is that you cannot write answers on your own, rather you must pick up the words from the passage. This task requires skimming and scanning skills to perform well.

In this article, we are sharing all the necessary information required for clearing the IELTS Academic Reading Short Answer Questions as this is one of the crucial IELTS academic reading question types . Tips and Exercises given in this blog, can develop your skills and ability to answer the questions in an efficient way. Therefore, it also helps you to obtain a good overall score in the IELTS Academic reading section.

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Table of Contents

1. IELTS Academic Reading Short Answer Questions - Strategies & Tips to Solve
2. Challenges faced while answering Short Answer Questions
3. Skills required for answering Short Answer Questions
4. Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 1
5. Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 2
6. Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 3
7. Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 4
8. Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 5
9. Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 6
10. Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 7
11. Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 8
12. Answers For Practice Exercises
13. Conclusion

IELTS Academic Reading Short Answer Questions - Strategies & Tips to Solve

In this article, we offer you 12 IELTS Academic Reading Short Answer Questions tips and strategies, which are recommended by IELTS experts. These tips will remove your worries and complexities in answering the IELTS academic reading short answer questions.

• Read the instructions carefully. Your answer will be marked wrong if it exceeds the word/ number limit.
• Read the first question. Determine what type of information is asked. Focus on the Wh-words. These questions ask for What, Where, Which, and When or a number (How much or How many)
• Also, identify the keyword(s) and with their help locate the part in the passage where the information is present.
• Now, look for the specific detail which is asked in the question. For example, if the question starts with ‘What’, the answer is usually a noun, i.e. the name of a thing, place, process, phenomenon, etc. Similarly, ‘When’ will be answered by a word or number indicating time, and ‘Where’ by a place, destination.
• Repeat the procedure with other questions. The questions are in progressive order.
• The words must be chosen from the passage that they’ve given.
• Restrain your mind from formulating opinions for the given questions. Focus on choosing words from the passage to answer. 
• Employ the skimming technique. Skimming helps you to get the main ideas of the passage. This technique aids you to locate which portion of the passage relates to the given questions.
• Figure out the focus of the question. It steers you in the right direction.
• Be cautious on the spelling of the words, when you copy from the text. 
• Scan to locate the keywords in the passage. It makes the process easier and faster.
• Sometimes, questions contain the synonyms of the words in the passages. Hence, Being informed about synonyms is helpful for this task.

Thousands of students reported that these 12 IELTS academic reading short answer questions tips and strategies increased their confidence while answering short answer questions. 

Also read: IELTS academic reading tips

Challenges faced while answering Short Answer Questions 

• You may write your own words to answer instead of picking it up from the passage. 
• You might exceed the word limit while answering the questions. 
• Words can be misspelt while copying from the text. 

Skills required for answering Short Answer Questions

• Skimming to get the general idea of the passages.
• Scanning to look for specific information.
• Keywords identification
• Paraphrasing skill to understand the question statements.

Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 1

Answer questions 1-8 which are based on the reading passage below.

The Dingo - An Australian Pest Reading Passage

The origins of the dingo are obscure, and there is much controversy connected with this. It is not truly native to Australia but is thought to have arrived between 3,500 and 4,000 years ago. Whatever its origins, the dingo was a highly valued companion to the aborigines. They were hunting companions, guard dogs, and they kept them warm at night.

Some believe they were brought here on rafts or boats by the ancestral aborigines. It has also been suggested that they came with Indonesian or South-East Asian fishermen who visited the northern coast of Australia.

The dingo can be found in all areas of Australia - from harsh deserts to lush rainforest The highly adaptable dingo is found in every habitat and every state of Australia,except Tasmania. In deserts, access to drinking water determines where the animal can live. Purebred dingo numbers in the wild are declining as man encroaches deeper and deeper into wilderness areas, often accompanied by his domestic dog.

The dingo is different from the modern dog in several ways: it does not bark, it has a different gait, and its ears are always erect. Dingoes are naturally lean, and they are usually cream to reddish-yellow with white points, some are black with tan points. An adult dingo stands more than 60cm high and weighs about 15kg. It is slightly smaller than a German Shepherd.

In its natural state, the dingo lives either alone or in a small group, unlike many other wild dog species which may form packs. Dingoes have a clearly defined territory which they rarely leave and which they protect from other dingoes, but which may be shared with dingoes when they form a group to hunt larger prey. The size of the home territory varies according to the food supply. Dingoes hunt mainly at night. Groups are controlled by dominant male. Members of a group maintain contact by marking rocks and trees within the territory, and by howling, particularly in the breeding season.

The dingo's diet consists of native mammals, including kangaroos, although domestic animals and some farm stock are also on the menu. This makes the animal unpopular with farmers. The dingo is thought to have contributed to the mainland extinction of the thylacine through increased competition for food.

The dingo is an intelligent animal. It is no more dangerous to man than any other feral dog. The natural prey of the dingo is small mammals and ground-dwelling birds, but with the introduction of white settlement, they became such a menace to sheep, calves and poultry that measures had to be taken in an attempt to control them, such as dog-proof fences.

Dingoes start breeding when they reach the age of one or two but only the dominant members within an established group breed. They breed only once a year. Mating usually occurs in autumn/early winter, and after a gestation of nine weeks (same as domestic dogs), a litter averaging 4-5 pups is born, which are reared in a hollow log, a rock-shelter, or an old rabbit warren. Both parents take part in raising the pups. The pups are fully grown at seven months of age. A dingo may live for up to ten years.

Wild dingoes are wary of humans and do not attack unless provoked. They will approach camps in the bush looking for food or perhaps out of curiosity. Dingoes can be kept as pets but should be obtained at a very young age to enable them to bond with humans. Even when raised from pups they never seem to lose their instinct for killing poultry or small animals. Not all states in Australia allow dingoes to be kept as pets and a permit is required. The export of dingoes is illegal.

Dingoes and domestic dogs interbreed freely resulting in very few pure-bred, southern or eastern Australia. This threatens the dingo's ability to survive as a separate species. Public hostility is another threat to the dingo. Because it takes some livestock, the dingo is considered by many to be a pest.

Questions 1-8

Answer the questions below.

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

1. What factor decides where the dingo can live in a desert?
2. Which physical characteristic distinguishes a dingo from a domesticated dog?
3. What term refers to a group of wild dogs?
4. What determines the vastness of the area occupied by the dingoes? Which landscape features are used by the group to remain connected?
5. Which landscape features are used by the group to remain connected?
6. What animal might have been wiped out due to the dingo?
7. What has been made to protect the livestock from the dingoes?
8. What do many people regard the dingo as?

Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 2

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

The Halifax Explosion Reading Passage

Before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, the largest-ever non-naturl explosion had taken place in 1917 in the eastern Canadian port city of Halifax. With the outbreak of World War I, Halifax was effectively transformed into a boomtown. Convoys gathered weekly in Bedford Basin (the north-western end of Halifax Harbour) to traverse the Atlantic, and Halifax Harbour became heavy with vessels of one variety or another. This spike in boat traffic was not dealt with efficiently, and collisions became almost normal.

On December 1st, 1917, the French vessel Mont Blanc left New York to join a convoy in Halifax after being loaded with 226,797 kilograms of TNT (an explosive), 223,188 kilograms of benzol (a type of gasoline), 1,602,519 kilograms of wet picric acid (an explosive), and 544,311 kilograms of dry picric acid (another explosive). On December 6", the Mont Blanc was ushered into Halifax's harbour after the U-boat nets had been raised.

At the same time, the cargoless Norwegian ship, Imo, left Bedford Basin en route to New York in order to pick up relief items for transport to war-torn Belgium. Imo was behind schedule and attempting to remedy that. She passed a boat on  the wrong side before sending a tugboat retreating to port. By the time she reached the Narrows, she was in the wrong channel and going too fast. The Mont Blanc sounded her whistle, but the Imo sounded back twice, refusing to alter course. At the last moment, the Mont Blanc veered, and the Imo reversed, but it was too late. From the gash formed in the French boat's hull seeped a noxious spiral of oily, orange-dappled smoke. Mont Blanc's crew rowed to shore on the Dartmouth side, but no one could decipher their warnings. Their fiery vessel then casually drifted toward the Halifax side where it came to rest against one of the piers.

This spectacle drew thousands of onlookers. People crowded docks and windows filled with curious faces. As many as 1,600 died instantly when the boat exploded. Around 9,000 were injured, 6,000 seriously so. Approximately 12,000 buildings were severely damaged; virtually every building in town was damaged to some extent; 1,630 were rendered nonexistent. Around 6,000 people were made homeless, and 25,000 people (half the population) were left without suitable housing.

The Halifax Explosion, as it became known, was the largest manmade detonation to date, approximately one-fifth the ferocity of the bomb later dropped on Hiroshima. It sent up a column of smoke reckoned to be 7,000 metres in height. It was felt more than 480 kilometres away. It flung a ship gun barrel some 5.5 kilometres, and part of an anchor, which weighed 517 kilograms, around 3 kilometres. The blast absolutely flattened a district known as Richmond. It also caused a tsunami that saw a wave 18 metres above the highwater mark deposit the Imo onto the shore of the Dartmouth side. The pressure wave of air that was produced snapped trees, bent iron rails, and grounded ships. That evening, a blizzard commenced, and it would continue until the next day, leaving 40 centimetres of snow in its wake. Consequently, many of those trapped within collapsed structures died of exposure. Historians put the death toll of the Halifax Explosion at approximately 2,000.

(Adapted from a passage in: A Sort of Homecoming – In Search of Canada by Troy Parfitt)

Questions 1-7

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

1. What cargo, apart from explosives, was the Mont Blanc carrying?
2. What was the final intended destination of the Imo?
3. What part of the Mont Blanc was damaged due to the collision?
4. What was the number of immediate fatalities due to the explosion?
5. Where has the most massive human-made explosion taken place to date?
6. What place was entirely devastated by the explosion?
7. What threw the Imo off to the shore?

Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 3

Answer questions 1-6 which are based on the reading passage below.

Vancouver Reading Passage

Vancouver is quite different from virtually any other city in North America. Despite the fact it is a large modern cosmopolitan city, it seems to have a relaxed, small-town, close-to-nature feel about it. There is little comparison with other large Canadian cities such as Toronto or Montreal, which are more akin to the large eastern US centres like New York and Chicago. Vancouver, like all large North American cities, is a conglomerate of high-rise cubic office towers, although urban planners have kept the heights down. There are, however, some notable exceptions such as the Marine Building at the north foot of Burrard Street, once the tallest structure in the British Empire, the courthouse at Howe & Robson, and the library at Georgia & Hamilton.

Vancouver offers a wide range of attractions catering to all tastes but those with only a day to spare cannot be better advised than to take one of the many organised excursions recommended by the Vancouver Tourist Office.

Stanley Park, a 1,000-acre nature preserve, is Vancouver’s best-known landmark and a must for any visitor. It was established in 1887 and, in the opinion of many, is the most beautiful urban park in the world. Contrary to popular belief, this park was not established through the foresight of the city council of the day, but at the urging of a real estate developer called Oppenheimer. He is now considered the father of Stanley Park. All areas of the park are accessible to the public except for Dead Man’s Island, which has a small naval base.

The Eco Walk is a fun and informative way to see the park. The guide gives information on the trees, plants, birds and animals as well as on the rich aboriginal culture and legends of the park. The walking is medium paced, taking 3 hours to complete and covering 5 miles of relatively flat paved and gravelled trails over the selected seawall and forest paths. This walk is suitable for families, including active seniors.

There is also a world-class aquarium in the park and was the first to have killer whales in captivity and probably the first one to stop making them into a side-show. The aquarium feels the purpose of keeping the whales, namely re-educating the public and stopping the hunting of them, has been accomplished. In 2000, the last remaining killer whale at the aquarium was sold to Sealand in California, where it died shortly after arriving. The main threat to the park is the sheer volume of people who want to be in it. Efforts are being made to restrict the amount of automobile traffic passing through it. One of the ultimate goals is to eliminate the causeway leading to Lions Gate Bridge, but this will not likely occur until well into the 21st century.

Beaches are also a big attraction and temperatures are usually high enough to tempt most people to have a swim. However, one of the biggest days on these beaches is on New Year’s Day when the annual “Polar Bear Swim” attracts several hundred die-hard individuals out to prove that Vancouver is a year-round swimming destination.

Chinatown is North America’s third largest, in terms of area, after San Francisco and New York. It is steeped in history and is well worth walking around. It is most active on Sundays when people head to any of a wide selection of restaurants that offer dim sum. Chinatown also contains the world’s thinnest building at only 1.8 metres wide.

Questions 1-6

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

1. What makes Vancouver similar to the big cities of North America?
2. What famous building was once the highest in the British Empire?
3. What was the profession of the park’s founding father?
4. What is one of the final aims of the park?
5. What event tries to encourage people to swim?
6. What can you eat in Chinatown?

Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 4

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

Bovids Reading Answers

A
The family of mammals called bovids belongs to the Artiodactyl class, which also includes giraffes. Bovids are a highly diverse group consisting of 137 species, some of which are man’s most important domestic animals.
B
Bovids are well represented in most parts of Eurasia and Southeast Asian islands, but they are by far the most numerous and diverse in the latter. Some species of bovid are solitary, but others live in large groups with complex social structures. Although bovids have adapted to a wide range of habitats, from arctic tundra to deep tropical forest, the majority of species favor open grassland, scrub or desert. This diversity of habitat is also matched by great diversity in size and form: at one extreme is the royal antelope of West Africa, which stands a mere 25 cm at the shoulder; at the other, the massively built bison of North America and Europe, growing to a shoulder height of 2.2m.
C
Despite differences in size and appearance, bovids are united by the possession of certain common features. All species are ruminants, which means that they retain undigested food in their stomachs, and regurgitate it as necessary. Bovids are almost exclusively herbivorous: plant-eating “incisors: front teeth herbivorous”.

D
Typically their teeth are highly modified for browsing and grazing: grass or foliage is cropped with the upper lip and lower incisors** (the upper incisors are usually absent), and then ground down by the cheek teeth. As well as having cloven, or split, hooves, the males of ail bovid species and the females of most carry horns. Bovid horns have bony cores covered in a sheath of horny material that is constantly renewed from within; they are unbranched and never shed. They vary in shape and size: the relatively simple horns of a large Indian buffalo may measure around 4 m from tip to tip along the outer curve, while the various gazelles have horns with a variety of elegant curves.
E
Five groups, or sub-families, may be distinguished: Bovinae, Antelope, Caprinae, Cephalothin and Antilocapridae. The sub-family Bovinae comprises most of the larger bovids, including the African bongo, and nilgae, eland, bison and cattle. Unlike most other bovids they are all non-territorial. The ancestors of the various species of domestic cattle banteng, gaur, yak and water buffalo are generally rare and endangered in the wild, while the auroch (the ancestor of the domestic cattle of Europe) is extinct.
F
The term 'antelope' is not a very precise zoological name – it is used to loosely describe a number of bovids that have followed different lines of development. Antelopes are typically long-legged, fast-running species, often with long horns that may be laid along the back when the animal is in full flight. There are two main sub-groups of antelope: Hippotraginae, which includes the oryx and the addax, and Antilopinae, which generally contains slighter and more graceful animals such as gazelle and the springbok. Antelopes are mainly grassland species, but many have adapted to flooded grasslands: pukus, waterbucks and lechwes are all good at swimming, usually feeding in deep water, while the sitatunga has long, splayed hooves that enable it to walk freely on swampy ground.
G
The subfamily Caprinae includes the sheep and the goat, together with various relatives such as the goral and the tahr. Most are wooly or have long hair. Several species, such as wild goats, chamois and ibex, are agile cliff – and mountain-dwellers. Tolerance of extreme conditions is most marked in this group: Barbary and bighorn sheep have adapted to arid deserts, while Rocky Mountain sheep survive high up in mountains and musk oxen in arctic tundra.
H
The duiker of Africa belongs to the Cephalophinae sub-family. It is generally small and solitary, often living in thick forest. Although mainly feeding on grass and leaves, some duikers – unlike most other bovids – are believed to eat insects and feed on dead animal carcasses, and even to kill small animals.
I
The pronghorn is the sole survivor of a New World sub-family of herbivorous ruminants, the Antilocapridae in North America. It is similar in appearance and habits to the Old World antelope. Although greatly reduced in numbers since the arrival of Europeans, and the subsequent enclosure of grasslands, the pronghorn is still found in considerable numbers throughout North America, from Washington State to Mexico. When alarmed by the approach of wolves or other predators, hairs on the pronghorn’s rump stand erect, showing and emphasizing the white patch there. At this signal, the whole herd gallops off at a speed of over 60 km per hour.

Questions 1-5

• Answer the questions below.
• Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
• Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

1. What is the smallest species of Bovid called?
   2. Which species of Bovine has now died out?
   3. What facilitates the movement of the sitatunga over wetland?
   4. What sort of terrain do barbary sheep live in?
   5. What is the only living member of the Antilocapridae sub-family?

Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 5

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

Free Market - Boon Or Bane

A A free-market economy is defined as the one where production and sale of goods or services can be promoted without any central government agency controlling or involving itself in the process. Pricing in a free market economy is dictated by supply and demand and not by the government.

B Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Benjamin Tucker are some of the early socialist advocates of the free market. There was a strong belief among these economists that free markets could not exist under capitalism where conditions were exploitative. Socialists also felt that free-market capitalism results in a vast disparity in the distribution of income, ultimately leading to social instability.

C Economies of a free market are very competitive, leading industries to use their resources astutely and efficiently to make their businesses more profitable. Production by industries will depend entirely on what the consumers want as they have the final say. Businesses, as such, will try to innovate and get ahead of their competitors. The government’s role, though limited, is to protect the intellectual property rights of a person. This acts as an incentive to produce better quality goods. There is a higher economic growth rate in a free market. Although there were times in the U.S. when the country was closer to a true free-market economy, today it’s a mixed economy.

D Reports from classical economists say that a free-market economy should arm market players with the knowledge that they are safe as far as monopolies and other market tactics are concerned, thus making their transition into a new enterprise easier. Laissez-faire or ‘let them be’ is a notion that advocates freedom for market players without fear of intervention from government bodies. Milton Friedman’s book ‘Capitalism and Freedom’ published in 1962, identifies with the laissez-faire sentiment. The essential argument that advocates free-market economy comes from Adam Smith’s use of the expression ‘invisible hand’. The argument behind the expression is that when markets have the capability to regulate themselves, external intervention is not necessary.

E The free market economy has numerous long-term consequences. These include negative external features such as income inequality which in turn sets the stage for mass unrest that can destabilise the nation. History has shown that when the balance of power, be it administrative or financial, tips in favour of a few rich people, it results in unrest leading to revolutions. Cases in point are the Russian and French revolutions. Working on the assumption that mankind has learnt a lesson from these disasters, most economies today are mixed and are subjected to societal and governmental regulation to varying degrees.

F Critics of the free market economy say that there are more chances of failure in an economy which has minimum government regulations. History has demonstrated the failure of new market systems initially. After the Great Depression and the crash of 2008, not only one country but also the whole world was affected. It was a disaster of major proportion when people lost not only their jobs but also their homes. While some were able to get back on their feet, others were not so lucky. Such ensuing periods of recession have needed government intervention to bring it under control. When the economy goes downhill, as was true in the case of the Great Depression of 1930 and the recession of 2008, the government had to step in to help the nation back on its feet. For it to function, the economy needs some government regulation for its smooth functioning. Consequences of market failure are severe.

G To suggest that a free-market economy, when compared with other forms, is at best a mediocre form of a market economy, would be impetuous. Several aspects of the policy are positive. Tremendous deliberation is necessary before deciding the type of economy that a nation should adopt. It would not pay to be hasty when making a judgement.

Questions 1-3 
Answer the questions. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage in each gap.

1. Who does NOT play a role in fixing costs in a free market economy?
2. What outcome of the free market economy did socialists anticipate?
3. What is the current nature of the American economy? 

Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 6

Answer questions 1-4 which are based on the reading passage below.

Children with Auditory Problems

A. Hearing impairment or other auditory function deficit in young children can have a major impact on their development of speech and communication, resulting in a detrimental effect on their ability to learn at school. This is likely to have major consequences for the individual and the population as a whole. The New Zealand Ministry of Health has found from research carried out over two decades that 6-10% of children in that country are affected by hearing loss.

B. A preliminary study in New Zealand has shown that classroom noise presents a major concern for teachers and pupils. Modern teaching practices, the organisation of desks in the classroom, poor classroom acoustics, and mechanical means of ventilation such as air-conditioning units all contribute to the number of children unable to comprehend the teacher's voice. Education researchers Nelson and Soli have also suggested that recent trends in learning often involve collaborative interaction of multiple minds and tools as much as individual possession of information. This all amounts to heightened activity and noise levels, which have the potential to be particularly serious for children experiencing auditory function deficit. Noise in classrooms can only exacerbate their difficulty in comprehending and processing verbal communication with other children and instructions from the teacher.

C. Children with auditory function deficit are potentially failing to learn to their maximum potential because of noise levels generated in classrooms. The effects of noise on the ability of children to learn effectively in typical classroom environments are now the subject of increasing concern. The International Institute of Noise Control Engineering (I-INCE), on the advice of the World Health Organization, has established an international working party, which includes New Zealand, to evaluate noise and reverberation control for school rooms.

D. While the detrimental effects of noise in classroom situations are not limited to children experiencing disability, those with a disability that affects their processing of speech and verbal communication could be extremely vulnerable. The auditory function deficits in question include hearing impairment, autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention deficit disorders (ADD/ADHD).

E. Autism is considered a neurological and genetic life-long disorder that causes discrepancies in the way information is processed. This disorder is characterised by interlinking problems with social imagination, social communication and social interaction. According to Janzen, this affects the ability to understand and relate in typical ways to people, understand events and objects in the environment, and understand or respond to sensory stimuli. Autism does not allow learning or thinking in the same ways as in children who are developing normally.

Autistic spectrum disorders often result in major difficulties in comprehending verbal information and speech processing. Those experiencing these disorders often find sounds such as crowd noise and the noise generated by machinery painful and distressing. This is difficult to scientifically quantify as such extra-sensory stimuli vary greatly from one autistic individual to another. But a child who finds any type of noise in their classroom or learning space intrusive is likely to be adversely affected in their ability to process information.

F. The attention deficit disorders are indicative of neurological and genetic disorders and are characterised by difficulties with sustaining attention, effort and persistence, organisation skills and disinhibition. Children experiencing these disorders find it difficult to screen out unimportant information, and focus on everything in the environment rather than attending to a single activity. Background noise in the classroom becomes a major distraction, which can affect their ability to concentrate.

G. Children experiencing an auditory function deficit can often find speech and communication very difficult to isolate and process when set against high levels of background noise.

These levels come from outside activities that penetrate the classroom structure, from teaching activities, and other noise generated inside, which can be exacerbated by room reverberation. Strategies are needed to obtain the optimum classroom construction and perhaps a change in classroom culture and methods of teaching. In particular, the effects of noisy classrooms and activities on those experiencing disabilities in the form of auditory function deficit need thorough investigation. It is probable that many undiagnosed children exist in the education system with 'invisible' disabilities. Their needs are less likely to be met than those of children with known disabilities.

H. The New Zealand Government has developed a New Zealand Disability Strategy and has embarked on a wide-ranging consultation process. The strategy recognises that people experiencing disability face significant barriers in achieving a full quality of life in areas such as attitude, education, employment and access to services. Objective 3 of the New Zealand Disability Strategy is to 'Provide the Best Education for Disabled People' by improving education so that all children, youth learners and adult learners will have equal opportunities to learn and develop within their already existing local school. For a successful education, the learning environment is vitally significant, so any effort to improve this is likely to be of great benefit to all children, but especially to those with auditory function disabilities.

I. A number of countries are already in the process of formulating their own standards for the control and reduction of classroom noise. New Zealand will probably follow their example. The literature to date on noise in school rooms appears to focus on the effects on schoolchildren in general, their teachers and the hearing impaired. Only limited attention appears to have been given to those students experiencing the other disabilities involving auditory function deficit. It is imperative that the needs of these children are taken into account in the setting of appropriate international standards to be promulgated in future.

Questions 1 - 4

Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.

1.  For what period of time has hearing loss in schoolchildren been studied in New Zealand?
2.  In addition to machinery noise, what other type of noise can upset children with autism?

3. What term is used to describe the hearing problems of schoolchildren which have not been diagnosed? 

4. What part of the New Zealand Disability Strategy aims to give schoolchildren equal opportunity?

Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 7

Answer questions 1-3 which are based on the reading passage below.

Foot Pedal Irrigation Reading Answers

1. Until now, governments and development agencies have tried to tackle the problem through large-scale projects: gigantic dams, sprawling, irrigation canals and vast new fields of high-yield crops introduced during the Green Revolution, the famous campaign to increase grain harvests in developing nations. Traditional irrigation, however, has degraded the soil in many areas, and the reservoirs behind dams can quickly fill up with silt, reducing their storage capacity and depriving downstream farmers of fertile sediments. Furthermore, although the Green Revolution has greatly expanded worldwide farm production since 1950, poverty stubbornly persists in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Continued improvements in the productivity of large farms may play the main role in boosting food supply, but local efforts to provide cheap, individual irrigation systems to small farms may offer a better way to lift people out of poverty.

2. The Green Revolution was designed to increase the overall food supply, not to raise the incomes of the rural poor, so it should be no surprise that it did not eradicate poverty or hunger. India, for example, has been self-sufficient in food for 15 years, and its granaries are full, but more than 200 million Indians – one-fifth of the country’s population – are malnourished because they cannot afford the food they need and because the country’s safety nets are deficient. In 2000, 189 nations committed to the Millennium Development Goals, which called for cutting world poverty in half by 2015. With business as usual, however, we have little hope of achieving most of the Millennium goals, no matter how much money rich countries contribute to poor ones.

3. The supply-driven strategies of the Green Revolution, however, may not help subsistence farmers, who must play to their strengths to compete in the global marketplace. The average size of a family farm is less than four acres in India, 1.8 acres in Bangladesh and about half an acre in China. Combines and other modern farming tools are too expensive to be used in such small areas. An Indian farmer selling surplus wheat grown on his one-acre plot could not possibly compete with the highly efficient and subsidized Canadian wheat farms that typically stretch over thousands of acres. Instead, subsistence farmers should exploit the fact that their labour costs are the lowest in the world, giving them a comparative advantage in growing and selling high-value, intensely farmed crops.

4. Paul Polak saw firsthand the need for a small-scale strategy in 1981 when he met Abdul Rahman, a farmer in the Noakhali district of Bangladesh. From his three-quarter-acre plots of rain-fed rice fields, Abdul could grow only 700 kilograms of rice each year – 300 kilograms less than what he needed to feed his family. During the three months before the October rice harvest came in, Abdul and his wife had to watch silently while their three children survived on one meal a day or less. As Polak walked with him through the scattered fields he had inherited from his father, Polak asked what he needed to move out of poverty. “Control of water for my crops,” he said, “at a price, I can afford.”

5. Soon Polak learned about a simple device that could help Abdul achieve his goal: the treadle pump. Developed in the late 1970s by Norwegian engineer Gunnar Barnes, the pump is operated by a person walking in place on a pair of treadles and two handle arms made of bamboo. Properly adjusted and maintained, it can be operated several hours a day without tiring the users. Each treadle pump has two cylinders which are made of engineering plastic. The diameter of a cylinder is 100.5mm and the height is 280mm. The pump is capable of working up to a maximum depth of 7 meters. Operation beyond 7 meters is not recommended to preserve the integrity of the rubber components. The pump mechanism has piston and foot valve assemblies. The treadle action creates alternate strokes in the two pistons that lift the water in pulses.

   The human-powered pump can irrigate half an acre of vegetables and costs only $25 (including the expense of drilling a tube well down to the groundwater). Abdul heard about the treadle pump from a cousin and was one of the first farmers in Bangladesh to buy one. He borrowed the $25 from an uncle and easily repaid the loan four months later. During the five-month dry season, when Bangladeshis typically farm very little, Abdul used the treadle pump to grow a quarter-acre of chilli peppers, tomatoes, cabbage and eggplants. He also improved the yield of one of his rice plots by irrigating it. His family ate some of the vegetables and sold the rest at the village market, earning a net profit of $100. With his new income, Abdul was able to buy rice for his family to eat, keep his two sons in school until they were 16 and set aside a little money for his daughter’s dowry. When Polak visited him again in 1984, he had doubled the size of his vegetable plot and replaced the thatched roof on his house with corrugated tin. His family was raising a calf and some chickens. He told me that the treadle pump was a gift from God.

6. Bangladesh is particularly well suited for the treadle pump because a huge reservoir of groundwater lies just a few meters below the farmers’ feet. In the early 1980s, IDE initiated a campaign to market the pump, encouraging 75 small private-sector companies to manufacture the devices and several thousand village dealers and tube-well drillers to sell and install them. Over the next 12 years, one and a half million farm families purchased treadle pumps, which increased the farmers’ net income by a total of $150 million a year. The cost of IDE’s market-creation activities was only $12 million, leveraged by the investment of $37.5 million from the farmers themselves. In contrast, the expense of building a conventional dam and canal system to irrigate an equivalent area of farmland would be in the range of $2,000 per acre, or $1.5 billion.

Questions 1 – 3 

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

1. How large area can a treadle pump irrigate the field at a low level of expense?

2. What is Abdul’s new roof made of ?

3. How much did Bangladesh farmers invest by IDE’s stimulation?

Short Answer Questions Practice Exercise 8

Answer questions 1-3 which are based on the reading passage below.

Twist in the Tale Reading Answers

Fears that television and computers would kill children’s desire to read couldn’t have been more wrong. With sales roaring, a new generation of authors are publishing’s newest and unlikeliest literary stars

1. Less than three years ago, doom merchants were predicting that the growth in video games and the rise of the Internet would sound the death knell for children’s literature. But contrary to popular myth, children are reading more books than ever. A recent survey by Books Marketing found that children up to the age of 11 read on average for four hours a week, particularly girls.
   
   
2. Moreover, the children’s book market, which traditionally was seen as a poor cousin to the more lucrative and successful adult market, has come into its own. Publishing houses are now making considerable profits on the back of new children’s books and children’s authors can now command significant advances. ‘Children’s books are going through an incredibly fertile period,’ says Wendy Cooling, a children’s literature consultant. ‘There’s a real buzz around them. Book clubs are happening, sales are good, and people are much more willing to listen to children’s authors.’
   
   
3. The main growth area has been the market for eight to fourteen-year-olds, and there is little doubt that the boom has been fuelled by the bespectacled apprentice, Harry Potter. So influential has J. K. Rowling’s series of books been that they have helped to make reading fashionable for pre-teens. ‘Harry made it OK to be seen on a bus reading a book,’ says Cooling. ‘To a child, that is important.’ The current buzz around the publication of the fourth Harry Potter beats anything in the world of adult literature.
   
   
4. ‘People still tell me, “Children don’t read nowadays”,’ says David Almond, the award-winning author of children’s books such as Skellig. The truth is that they are skilled, creative readers. When 1 do classroom visits, they ask me very sophisticated questions about use of language, story structure, chapters and dialogue.’ No one is denying that books are competing with other forms of entertainment for children’s attention but it seems as though children find a special kind of mental nourishment within the printed page.
   
   
5. ‘A few years ago, publishers lost confidence and wanted to make books more like television, the medium that frightened them most,’ says children’s book critic Julia Eccleshare. ‘But books aren’t TV, and you will find that children always say that the good thing about books is that you can see them in your head. Children are demanding readers,’ she says. ‘If they don’t get it in two pages, they’ll drop it.’
   
   
6. No more are children’s authors considered mere sentimentalists or failed adult writers. 'Some feted adult writers would kill for the sales,’ says Almond, who sold 42,392 copies of Skellig in 1999 alone. And advances seem to be growing too: UK publishing outfit Orion recently negotiated a six-figure sum from US company Scholastic for The Seeing Stone, a children's novel by Kevin Crossley-Holland, the majority of which will go to the author.
   
   
7. It helps that once smitten, children are loyal and even fanatical consumers. Author Jacqueline Wilson says that children spread news of her books like a bushfire. 'My average reader is a girl of ten,’ she explains. ‘They’re sociable and acquisitive. They collect. They have parties - where books are a good present. If they like something, they have to pass it on.’ After Rowling, Wilson is currently the best-selling children’s writer, and her sales have boomed over the past three years. She has sold more than three million books, but remains virtually invisible to adults, although most ten- year-old girls know about her.
   
   
8. Children’s books are surprisingly relevant to contemporary life. Provided they are handled with care, few topics are considered off-limits for children. One senses that children’s writers relish the chance to discuss the whole area of topics and language. But Anne Fine, author of many award winning children’s books is concerned that the British literati still ignore children’s culture. ‘It’s considered worthy but boring,’ she says.
   
   
9. T think there’s still a way to go,’ says Almond, who wishes that children’s books were taken more seriously as literature. Nonetheless, he derives great satisfaction from his child readers. ‘They have a powerful literary culture,’ he says. ‘It feels as if you’re able to step into the store of mythology and ancient stories that run through all societies and encounter the great themes: love and loss and death and redemption.’
   
   
10. At the moment, the race is on to find the next Harry Potter. The bidding for new books at Bologna this year - the children’s equivalent of the Frankfurt Book Fair - was as fierce as anything anyone has ever seen. All of which bodes well for the long-term future of the market - and for children’s authors, who have traditionally suffered the lowest profile in literature, despite the responsibility of their role.

Questions 1-3

Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS taken from the reading passage, answer the following questions.

Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

1. For which age group have sales of books risen the most? 
2. Which company has just invested heavily in an unpublished children’s book? 
3. Who is currently the best-selling children’s writer? 

Answers For Practice Exercises

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

The Dingo - An Australian Pest 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 the regular font explains the answer in detail.)

1. Drinking water (or) access to water

Explanation: Paragraph 3 - In deserts, access to drinking water determines where the animal can live.

The answer is ‘drinking water’ or ‘access to water’ and not ‘access to drinking water’ as the word limit is of three words.

2. (always) (erect) ears 

Explanation: Paragraph 4 - The dingo is different from the modern dog in several ways: it does not bark, it has a different gait, and its ears are always erect.

3. Packs

Explanation: Paragraph 5 - In its natural state, the dingo lives either alone or in a small group, unlike many other wild dog species which may form packs.

4. (the) food supply 

Explanation: Paragraph 5 - The size of the home territory varies according to the food supply.

5. Trees (and) rocks

Explanation: Paragraph 5 - Members of a group maintain contact by marking rocks and trees within their territory,...

6. Thylacine 

Explanation: Paragraph 6 - The dingo is thought to have contributed to the mainland extinction of the thylacine through increased competition for food.

7. Dog-proof fences

Explanation: Paragraph 7. ... they became such a menace to sheep, calves and poultry that measures had to be taken in an attempt to control them, such as dog-proof fences.

8. a) pest

Explanation: Paragraph 10 - Because it takes some livestock, the dingo is considered many to be a pest.

The Halifax Explosion 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 the regular font explains the answer in detail.)

1. Gasoline (or) benzol 

Explanation: Paragraph 2 - ...the French vessel Mont Blanc left New York in order a convoy in Halifax after being loaded with 226,797 kilograms of TNT (an expl 223,188 kilograms of benzol (a type of gasoline), 1,602,519 kilograms of wet picric a ), and 544,311 kilograms of dry picric acid (another explosive).

2. Belgium

Explanation: Paragraph 3 - At the same time, the cargoless Norwegian ship, Imo, left Basin en route to New York to pick up relief items for transport to war-torn Belgium.

New York is not the answer because it was a halt on the way to Belgium.

3. Hull

Explanation: Paragraph 3- At the last moment, the Mont Blanc veered, and the Imo reversed, but it was too late. From the gash formed in the French boat's hull seeped a noxious spiral of oily, orange-dappled smoke.

4. 1600

Explanation: Paragraph 4 - As many as 1,600 died instantly when the boat exploded.

5. Hiroshima

Explanation: Paragraph 5 - The Halifax Explosion, as it became known, was the largest manmade detonation to date, approximately one fifth the ferocity of the bomb later dropped on Hiroshima.

In this question, 'Halifax" may seem to be the answer instantly. Although Halifax is mentioned as what ".......was the largest manmade detonation to date.”, it is compared to the bomb dropped later on Hiroshima. The intensity of the Hiroshima explosion was five times that of Halifax and so the biggest explosion “to date”. "To date” in the question is in reference to the present time.

6. Richmond

Explanation: Paragraph 5 - The blast absolutely flattened a district known as Richmond.

7. (a) wave (or) (a) tsunami

Explanation: Paragraph 5 - It also caused a tsunami that saw a wave 18 metres high-water mark deposit the Imo onto the shore of the Dartmouth side.

Vancouver 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 the regular font explains the answer in detail.)

1. cubic office towers

Explanation: Paragraph 1 – Vancouver, like all large North American cities, is a conglomerate of high-rise cubic office towers

2. Marine Building

Explanation: Paragraph 1 – …the Marine Building at the north foot of Burrard Street, once the tallest structure in the British Empire, the courthouse at Howe & Robson,…

3. Real estate developer

Explanation: Paragraph 3 – … at the urging of a real estate developer called Oppenheimer. He is now considered the father of Stanley Park.

4. eliminate the causeway

Explanation: Paragraph 5 – One of the ultimate goals is to eliminate the causeway leading to Lions Gate Bridge, but this will not likely occur until well into the 21st century.

5. Polar Bear Swim

Explanation: Paragraph 6 – However, one of the biggest days on these beaches is on New Year’s Day when the annual “Polar Bear Swim” attracts several hundred die-hard individuals out to prove that Vancouver is a year-round swimming destination.

6. dim sum

Explanation: Paragraph 7 – Chinatown is North America’s third largest, in terms of area, … It is most active on Sundays when people head to any of a wide selection of restaurants that offer dim sum.

Bovids with explanation

(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 the regular font explains the answer in detail.)

9. Answer: (the) royal antelope

Explanation: This diversity of habitat is also matched by great diversity in size and form: at one extreme is the royal antelope of West Africa, which stands a mere 25 cm at the shoulder; at the other, the massively built bison of North America and Europe, growing to a shoulder height of 2.2m. From these lines it is clear that smaller species of bovid are royal antelope, which are about 25 cm in length and smallest compared to bison, growing to height of 2.2m. Hence the given answer is located in the last 4 lines of paragraph B.

10. Answer:  (the) auroch

Explanation: Ancestors of the various species of domestic cattle banteng, gaur, yak and water buffalo are generally rare and endangered in the wild. From this line it is evident that auroch speech of bovids are extinct. Hence the given answer is located in the  last 3 lines of paragraph E.

11. Answer: long, splayed hooves

Explanation: Antelopes are mainly grassland species, but many have adapted to flooded grasslands: pukus, waterbucks and lechwes are all good at swimming, usually feeding in deep water, while the sitatunga has long, splayed hooves that enable it to walk freely on swampy ground. In this line it is mentioned that long, splayed hooves would improve the movements of sitatunga in wetland. Hence the given answer is located in the  last 4 lines of paragraph F.

12. Answer: arid deserts

Explanation: Barbary and bighorn sheep have adapted to arid deserts, while Rocky Mountain sheep survive high up in mountains and musk oxen in arctic tundra. From this line it is clear that Barbary sheeps have adapted in arid desert conditions. Hence the given answer is located in the last 2 lines of paragraph G.

13. Answer: (the) pronghorn

Explanation: The pronghorn is the sole survivor of a New World sub-family of herbivorous ruminants, the Antilocapridae in North America. From this line it is evident Antilocapridae sub-family of bovids are almost extinct except pronghorn. Hence that The given answer is located in the first 2 lines of paragraph I.

Free Market - Boon Or Bane 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 the regular font explains the answer in detail.)

38.Answer: government

Explanation: The government’s role, though limited, is to protect the intellectual property rights of a person. In paragraph C, it is stated that since customers have the last say, industry production will be fully based on what they want. As a result, businesses strive to innovate and outperform rivals. The government's duty, while restricted, is to defend an individual's intellectual property rights. Therefore, the cost factor is not decided by the government.

39.Answer: social instability

Explanation: Free-market capitalism results in a vast disparity in the distribution of income, ultimately leading to social instability. As per paragraph B, socialists also believed that free-market capitalism causes a significant disparity in how income is distributed. Ultimately resulting in social instability.

40.Answer: mixed (or) mixed economy (or) a mixed economy

Explanation: There were times in the U.S. when the country was closer to a true free-market economy, today it’s a mixed economy. The greater rate of economic growth in a free market is mentioned in paragraph C. There have been periods when the United States has been closer to a real free-market economy. In contrast, the economy today is mixed.

Children with auditory problems 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 the regular font explains the answer in detail.)

7. Answer: Two decades

Explanation: Located in paragraph A, 5th line - over two decades that 6-10% of children in that country are affected by hearing loss.

8. Answer: Crowd (noise)

Explanation: Located in paragraph E, 8th line - Those experiencing these disorders often find sounds such as crowd noise and the noise generated by machinery painful and distressing.

9. Answer:  Invisible (disabilities/disability)

Explanation: Located in paragraph 8th line - It is probable that many undiagnosed children exist in the education system with 'invisible' disabilities.

10. Answer: Objective 3

Explanation: Located in paragraph H, 4th line - Objective 3 of the New Zealand Disability Strategy is to 'Provide the Best Education for Disabled People' by improving education so that all children, youth learners and adult learners will have equal opportunities to learn and develop within their already existing local school.

Foot Pedal Irrigation 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 the regular font explains the answer in detail.)

1.  Half an acre

Explanation: In Paragraph F, the writer mentioned that, “The human-powered pump costs under $25, which includes the expense of drilling a tube well down to the groundwater, and it also can irrigate half an acre of plants.”

2.  Corrugated tin

Explanation: In Paragraph F, it indicates that, “When Polak saw him in 1984, he had quadrupled the area of his vegetable allotment and replaced the thatched roof on his home with corrugated tin.”

3. $37.5 million

Explanation: In Paragraph G, the writer mentioned that, “The cost of IDE's market-creation initiatives was just $12 million, facilitated by the farmers' $37.5 million investment.” 

Twist in the Tale 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 the regular font explains the answer in detail.)

1. J.K. Rowling

Explanation: To a large extent due to the popularity of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, reading is now seen as cool among pre-teens.

2. Orion

Explanation: It appears that advances are increasing: the United Kingdom's Orion Publishing Group recently negotiated a six-figure fee with the American publishing house.

3. 8-14 years/yrs/ (year-olds)

Explanation: There's little doubt that the market for kids from eight to fourteen has exploded thanks to the spectacled apprentice Harry Potter.

Also check IELTS academic reading notes completion

Conclusion

We believe you have understood the tips, and strategies and practice the exercises to ace the IELTS Academic Reading Short Answer Questions and to enhance your skill Building. These will increase your chances of achieving an 8+ band score along with mock test .