Reading 2026-01 Test 2 — IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test with Answers

Rebuilt from test-taker recalls — not official IELTS material. Audio and passages are recreations for practice.

Reading Passage 1 — Sending Money Home The Economics of Migrant Remittances

Every year millions of migrants travel vast distances using borrowed money for their airfares and taking little or no cash with them. They seek a decent job to support themselves with money left over that they can send home to their families in developing countries. These remittances exceeded $400 billion last year. It is true that the actual rate per person is only about $200 per month but it all adds up to about triple the amount officially spent on development aid.

In some of the poorer, unstable or conflict-torn countries, these sums of money are a lifeline – the only salvation for those left behind. The decision to send money home is often inspired by altruism – an unselfish desire to help others. Then again, the cash might simply be an exchange for earlier services rendered by the recipients or it could be intended for investment by the recipients. Often it will be repayment of a loan used to finance the migrant’s travel and resettlement.

At the first sign of trouble, political or financial upheaval, these personal sources of support do not suddenly dry up like official investment monies. Actually, they increase in order to ease the hardship and suffering of the migrants’ families and, unlike development aid, which is channelled through government or other official agencies, remittances go straight to those in need. Thus, they serve an insurance role, responding in a countercyclical way to political and economic crises.

This flow of migrant money has a huge economic and social impact on the receiving countries. It provides cash for food, housing and necessities. It funds education and healthcare and contributes towards the upkeep of the elderly. Extra money is sent for special events such as weddings, funerals or urgent medical procedures and other emergencies. Occasionally it becomes the capital for starting up a small enterprise.

Unfortunately, recipients hardly ever receive the full value of the money sent back home because of exorbitant transfer fees. Many money transfer companies and banks operate on a fixed fee, which is unduly harsh for those sending small sums at a time. Others charge a percentage, which varies from around 8% to 20% or more dependent on the recipient country.

There are some countries where there is a low fixed charge per transaction; however, these cheaper fees are not applied internationally because of widespread concern over money laundering. Whether this is a genuine fear or just an excuse is hard to say. If the recipients live in a small village somewhere, usually the only option is to obtain their money through the local post office. Regrettably, many governments allow post offices to have an exclusive affiliation with one particular money transfer operator so there is no alternative but to pay the extortionate charge.

The sums of money being discussed here might seem negligible on an individual basis but they are substantial in totality. If the transfer cost could be reduced to no more than one per cent, that would release another $30 billion dollars annually – approximately the total aid budget of the USA, the largest donor worldwide – directly into the hands of the world’s poorest. If this is not practicable, governments could at least acknowledge that small remittances do not come from organised crime networks, and ease regulations accordingly. They should put an end to restrictive alliances between post offices and money transfer operators or at least open up the system to competition. Alternately, a non-government humanitarian organisation, which would have the expertise to navigate the elaborate red tape, could set up a non-profit remittance platform for migrants to send money home for little or no cost.

Whilst contemplating the best system for transmission of migrant earnings to the home country, one should consider the fact that migrants often manage to save reasonable amounts of money in their adopted country. More often than not, that money is in the form of bank deposits earning a tiny percentage of interest, none at all or even a negative rate of interest.

If a developing country or a large charitable society could sell bonds with a guaranteed return of three or four per cent on the premise that the invested money would be used to build infrastructure in that country, there would be a twofold benefit. Migrants would make a financial gain and see their savings put to work in the development of their country of origin. The ideal point of sale for these bonds would be the channel used for money transfers so that, when migrants show up to make their monthly remittance, they could buy bonds as well. Advancing the idea one step further, why not make this transmission hub the conduit for affluent migrants to donate to worthy causes in their homeland so they may share their prosperity with their compatriots on a larger scale?

Questions 1–7: Matching headings

Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs, A–G. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B–H from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i–x, in boxes 1–7 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i. Stability of Remittances in Difficult Times

ii. Effect of Cutback in Transaction Fees

iii. Targeted Investments and Contributions

iv. Remittances for Business Investment

v. How to Lower Transmission Fees

vi. Motivations Behind Remittances

vii. Losses Incurred During Transmission

viii. Remittances Worth More Than Official Aid

ix. How Recipients Utilise Remittances

x. Frequency and Size of Remittances

xi. Poor Returns on Migrant Savings

1
Paragraph A
2
Paragraph B
3
Paragraph C
4
Paragraph D
5
Paragraph E
6
Paragraph F
7
Paragraph H

Questions 8–13: Summary completion

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

8. Countries are unwilling to enforce lower transaction fees as they are worried about _________, and villagers lose out when post offices have a special relationship with one particular money transfer agency.

Each remittance might be small but the total cost of remittance fees is huge. Governments should 9 _________ on small amounts and end the current post office system or make it more competitive. Another idea would be for a large non-profit association, capable of handling complicated 10 _________ to take charge of migrant remittances.

Migrants who send money home are able to save money, too, but it receives little or no interest from 11 _________. If a country or organisation sold bonds that earned a reasonable rate of interest for the investor, that money could fund the development of homeland 12 _________. The bonds could be sold at the remittance centre, which could also take donations from 13 _________ to fund charitable projects in their home country.

Reading Passage 2 — We have Star performers!

The difference between companies is people. With capital and technology in plentiful supply, the critical resource for companies in the knowledge era will be human talent. Companies full of achievers will, by definition, outperform organizations of plodders. Ergo, compete ferociously for the best people. Poach and pamper stars; ruthlessly weed out second-raters. This in essence has been the recruitment strategy of the ambitious company of the past decade. The “talent mindset” was given definitive form in two reports by the consultancy McKinsey famously entitled The War for Talent. Although the intensity of the warfare subsequently subsided along with the air in the internet bubble, it has been warming up again as the economy tightens: labour shortages, for example, are the reason the government has laid out the welcome mat for immigrants from the new Europe.

Yet while the diagnosis - people are important - is evident to the point of platitude, the apparently logical prescription - hire the best - like so much in management is not only not obvious: it is in fact profoundly wrong. The first suspicions dawned with the crash to earth of the dotcom meteors, which showed that dumb is dumb whatever the IQ of those who perpetrate it. The point was illuminated in brilliant relief by Enron, whose leaders, as a New Yorker article called “The Talent Myth” entertainingly related, were so convinced of their own cleverness that they never twigged that collective intelligence is not the sum of a lot of individual intelligences. In fact in a profound sense the two are opposites. Enron believed in stars, noted author Malcolm Gladwell, because they didn’t believe in systems. But companies don’t just create: “they execute and compete and co-ordinate the efforts of many people, and the organizations that are most successful at that task are the ones where the system is the star”. The truth is that you can’t win the talent wars by hiring stars - only lose it. New light on why this should be so is thrown by an analysis of star behaviour in this month’s Harvard Business Review. In a study of the careers of 1,000 star-stock analysts in the 1990s, the researchers found that when a company recruited a star performer, three things happened.

First, stardom doesn’t easily transfer from one organisation to another. In many cases, performance dropped sharply when high performers switched employers and in some instances never recovered. More of success than commonly supposed is due to the working environment - systems, processes, leadership, accumulated embedded learning that are absent in and can’t be transported to the new firm. Moreover, precisely because of their past stellar performance, stars were unwilling to learn new tricks and antagonised those (on whom they now unwittingly depended) who could teach them. So they moved, upping their salary as they did - 36 per cent moved on within three years, fast even for Wall Street. Second, group performance suffered as result of tensions and resentment by rivals within the team. One respondent likened hiring a star to an organ transplant. The new organ can damage others by hogging the blood supply, other organs can start aching or threaten to stop working or the body can reject the transplant altogether, he said. “You should think about it very carefully before you do a transplant to a healthy body.” Third, investors punished the offender by selling its stock. This is ironic, since the motive for importing stars was often a suffering share price in the first place. Shareholders evidently believe that the company is overpaying, the hire is cashing in on a glorious past rather than preparing for a glowing present, and a spending spree is in the offing.

The result of mass star hirings as well as individual ones seem to confirm such doubts. Look at County NatWest and Barclays de Zoete Wedd, both of which hired teams of stars with loud fanfare to do great things in investment banking in the 1990s. Both failed dismally. Everyone accepts the cliche that people make the organisation - but much more does the organisation make the people. When researchers studied the performance of fund managers in the 1990s, they discovered that just 30 per cent of variation in fund performance was due to the individual, compared to 70 per cent to the company-specific setting.

That will be no surprise to those familiar with systems thinking. W. Edwards Deming used to say that there was no point in beating up on people when 90 per cent of performance variation was down to the system within which they worked. Consistent improvement, he said, is a matter not of raising the level of individual intelligence, but of the learning of the organisation as a whole. The star system is glamorous - for the new. But it rarely benefits the company that thinks it is working it. And the knock-on consequences indirectly affect everyone else too. As one internet response to Gladwell’s New Yorker article put it: after Enron, “the rest of corporate America is stuck with overpaid, arrogant, underachieving, and relatively useless talent.”

Football is another illustration of the stars vs systems strategic choice. As with investment banks and stockbrokers, it seems obvious that success should ultimately be down to money. Great players are scarce and expensive. So the club that can afford more of them than anyone else will win. But the performance of Arsenal and Manchester United on one hand and Chelsea and Real Madrid on the other proves that it’s not as easy as that. While Chelsea and Real Madrid have the funds to be compulsive star collectors - as with Juan Sebastian Veron - they are less successful than Arsenal and United which, like Liverpool before them, have put much more emphasis on developing a setting within which stars-in-the-making can flourish. Significantly, Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires are much bigger stars than when Arsenal bought them, their value (in all sense) enhanced by the Arsenal system. At Chelsea, by contrast, the only context is the stars themselves - managers with different outlooks come and go every couple of seasons. There is no settled system for the stars to blend into. The Chelsea context has not only no added value, it has subtracted it. The side is less than the sum of its exorbitantly expensive parts. Even Real Madrid’s galacticos, the most extravagantly gifted on the planet, are being outperformed by less talented but better-integrated Spanish sides. In football, too, stars are trumped by systems.

So if not by hiring stars, how do you compete in the war for talent? You grow your own. This worked for investment analysts, where some companies were not only better at creating stars but also at retaining them. Because they had a much more sophisticated view of the interdependent relationship between star and system, they kept them longer without resorting to the exorbitant salaries that were so destructive to rivals.

Questions 14–17: Paragraph information matching

The Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information. Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

14
One example from non-commerce/business settings that better system wins bigger stars
15
One failed company that believes stars rather than system
16
One suggestion that author made to acquire employees to win the competition nowadays
17
One metaphor to human medical anatomy that illustrates the problems of hiring stars

Questions 18–21: True/False/Not Given

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet, write TRUE if the statement agrees with the information, FALSE if the statement contradicts the information, NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage.

18
McKinsey who wrote The War for Talent had not expected the huge influence made by this book.
19
Economic condition becomes one of the factors which decide whether or not a country would prefer to hire foreign employees.
20
The collapse of Enron is caused totally by an unfortunate incident instead of company’s management mistake.
21
Football clubs that focus on making stars in the setting are better than those simply collecting stars.

Questions 22–26: Summary completion

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

An investigation carried out on 1000 22 _________ participants of a survey by Harvard Business Review found a company hiring a 23 _________ has negative effects. For instance, they behave considerably worse in a new team than in the 24 _________ that they used to be. They move faster than Wall Street and increase their 25 _________. Secondly, they faced rejections or refusal from those 26 _________ within the team. Lastly, the one who made mistakes had been punished by selling his/her stock share.

Reading Passage 3 — The Secret of Yawn

When a scientist began to study yawning in the 1980s, it was difficult to convince some of his research students of the merits of “yawning science”. Although it may appear quirky, his decision to study yawning as a logical extension to human beings of my research in developmental neuroscience, reported in such papers as “Wing-flapping during Development and Evolution”. As a neurobehavioral problem, there is not much difference between the wing-flapping of birds and the face-and body-flapping of human yawners.

Yawning is an ancient, primitive act. Humans do it even before they are born, opening wide in the womb. Some snakes unhinge their jaws to do it. One species of penguins yawns as part of mating. Only now are researchers beginning to understand why we yawn, when we yawn and why we yawn back. A professor of cognitive neuroscience at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Steven Platek, studies the act of contagious yawning, something done only by people and other primates.

In his first experiment, he used a psychological test to rank people on their empathic feelings. He found that participants who did not score high on compassion did not yawn back. We literally had people saying, “Why am I looking at people yawning?” Professor Platek said. “It just had no effect.”

For his second experiment, he put 10 students in a magnetic resonance imaging machine as they watched video tapes of people yawning. When the students watched the videos, the part of the brain which reacted was the part scientists believe controls empathy - the posterior cingulate, in the brain’s middle rear. I don’t know if it’s necessarily that nice people yawn more, but I think it’s a good indicator of a state of mind,” said Professor Platek. “It’s also a good indicator if you’re empathizing with me and paying attention.”

His third experiment is studying yawning in those with brain disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, in which victims have difficulty connecting emotionally with others. A psychology professor at the University of Maryland, Robert Provine, is one of the few other researchers into yawning. He found the basic yawn lasts about six seconds and they come in bouts with an interval of about 68 seconds. Men and women yawn or half-yawn equally often, but men are significantly less likely to cover their mouths which may indicate complex distinction in genders. “A watched yawner never yawns.” Professor Provine said. However, the physical root of yawning remains a mystery. Some researchers say it’s coordinated within the hypothalamus of the brain, the area that also controls breathing.

Yawning and stretching also share properties and may be performed together as parts of a global motor complex. But they do not always occur–people usually yawn when they stretch, but we don’t always stretch when we yawn, especially before bedtime. Studies by J. I. P, G. H. A. Visser and H. F. Prechtl in the early 1980s, charting movement in the developing fetus using ultrasound, observed not just yawning but a link between yawning and stretching as early as the end of the first prenatal trimester.

The most extraordinary demonstration of the yawn-stretch linkage occurs in many people paralyzed on one side of their body because of brain damage caused by a stroke. The prominent British neurologist Sir Francis Walshe noted in 1923 that when these hemiplegics yawn, they are startled and mystified to observe that their otherwise paralyzed arm rises and flexes automatically in what neurologists term an “associated response”. Yawning apparently activates undamaged, unconsciously controlled connections between the brain and the cord motor system innervating the paralyzed limb. It is not known whether the associated response is a positive prognosis for recovery, nor whether yawning is therapeutic for reinnervation or prevention of muscular atrophy.

Clinical neurology offers other surprises. Some patients with “locked-in” syndrome, who are almost totally deprived of the ability to move voluntarily, can yawn normally. The neural circuits for spontaneous yawning must exist in the brain stem near other respiratory and vasomotor centers, because yawning is performed by anencephalia who possess only the medulla oblongata. The multiplicity of stimuli of contagious yawning, by contrast, implicates many higher brain regions.

Questions 27–32: Summary completion

Complete the summary paragraph described below. In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet, write the correct answer with NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS.

A psychology professor 27 _________ after observation that it takes about six seconds to complete an average yawning which needs 28 _________ before a following yawning comes. It is almost at the same frequency that male and female yawn or half, yet behavior accompanied with yawning showing a 29 _________ in genders. Some parts within the brain may affect the movement which also have something to do with 30 _________. Another finding also finds there is a link between yawn and 31 _________ before a baby was born, which two can be automatically co-operating even among people whose 32 _________ is damaged.

Questions 33–37: Paragraph information matching

Reading paragraph A-H, Which paragraph contains the following information? NB You may use any letter more than once

33
The rate for yawning shows some regular pattern.
34
Yawning is an inherent ability that appears in both animals and humans.
35
Stretching and yawning are not always going together.
36
Yawning may suggest people are having positive notice or response in communicating.
37
Some superior areas in brain may deal with the infectious feature of yawning.

Questions 38–40: True/False/Not Given

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet, write TRUE if the statement is true, FALSE if the statement is false, NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage.

38
Several students in Platek's experiment did not comprehend why their tutor ask them to yawn back.
39
Some result from certain experiment indicate the link between yawning and compassion.
40
Yawning can show an affirmative impact on the recovery from brain damage brought by a stroke.

Answer sheet

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Show answer key

1. x
Paragraph A is not matched with any heading (x) because it serves as an introduction, giving background information about migrant remittances without focusing on a specific aspect.
2. vi
Heading vi fits Paragraph B because it discusses the different reasons migrants send money home, such as altruism, repayment, or investment, matching 'Motivations for sending money home.'
3. i
Heading i is correct for Paragraph C because it explains how remittances increase during crises and act as insurance, which matches 'Remittances as a form of insurance.'
4. ix
Heading ix fits Paragraph D as it describes the wide range of uses for remittances, including food, healthcare, and emergencies, matching 'How remittances are used.'
5. vii
Heading vii is correct for Paragraph E because it focuses on the high transfer fees and lack of competition, matching 'The high cost of sending money home.'
6. v
Heading v fits Paragraph F as it discusses possible solutions to reduce transfer costs and improve the system, matching 'Possible improvements to the remittance system.'
7. iii
Heading iii is correct for Paragraph H because it talks about using migrants' savings to fund infrastructure through bonds, matching 'Using remittances for development.'
8. MONEY LAUNDERING
The answer is 'money laundering' because the passage says, 'these cheaper fees are not applied internationally because of widespread concern over money laundering.'
9. EASE REGULATIONS
'Ease regulations' is correct because the passage suggests governments could 'acknowledge that small remittances do not come from organised crime networks, and ease regulations accordingly.'
10. RED TAPE
'Red tape' is correct because the passage mentions a non-profit organisation could 'navigate the elaborate red tape' to help migrants send money home.
11. BANK DEPOSITS / THE BANK / A BANK
'Bank deposits' is correct because the passage says migrants' savings are 'in the form of bank deposits earning a tiny percentage of interest, none at all or even a negative rate of interest.'
12. INFRASTRUCTURE
'Infrastructure' is correct because the passage suggests bonds could be sold to fund 'infrastructure in that country.'
13. AFFLUENT MIGRANTS
'Affluent migrants' is correct because the passage says the remittance centre could be a 'conduit for affluent migrants to donate to worthy causes in their homeland.'
14. F
Paragraph F in Passage 2 gives the football example, showing that clubs focusing on systems (like Arsenal and Manchester United) outperform those just collecting stars (like Chelsea and Real Madrid).
15. B
Paragraph B in Passage 2 discusses Enron, a failed company that believed in hiring stars rather than building a strong system.
16. G
Paragraph G in Passage 2 suggests companies should 'grow your own' talent instead of hiring stars, as a way to win the competition for employees.
17. C
Paragraph C in Passage 2 uses the metaphor of an organ transplant to describe the problems of hiring stars, saying it can damage the team like a new organ can harm a healthy body.
18. NOT GIVEN
'Not Given' is correct because the passage does not mention whether McKinsey expected the influence of their book The War for Talent.
19. YES
'Yes' is correct because Paragraph A in Passage 2 mentions that labour shortages (an economic condition) are why the government welcomes immigrants.
20. NO
'No' is correct because the passage says Enron's collapse was linked to management mistakes, not just an unfortunate incident.
21. YES
'Yes' is correct because Paragraph F in Passage 2 explains that clubs focusing on developing stars within a system are more successful than those just collecting stars.
22. analysts / star-stock analysts
'Analysts' or 'star-stock analysts' is correct because the passage says the Harvard Business Review study looked at 'the careers of 1,000 star-stock analysts.'
23. performance star / star / star performer
'Star performer' is correct because the passage discusses the negative effects when a company hires a star performer.
24. working environment / settings
'Working environment' or 'settings' is correct because the passage says much of a star's success is due to the 'working environment... that are absent in and can’t be transported to the new firm.'
25. salary
'Salary' is correct because the passage says stars 'upped their salary as they did' when moving to new companies.
26. rivals
'Rivals' is correct because the passage says hiring stars caused 'tensions and resentment by rivals within the team.'
27. Robert Provine
'Drew a conclusion' is correct because the passage says Professor Provine 'found the basic yawn lasts about six seconds,' meaning he concluded this after observation.
28. 68 seconds
'68 seconds' is correct because the passage says yawns 'come in bouts with an interval of about 68 seconds.'
29. (complex) distinction
'Distinction' is correct because the passage says men are less likely to cover their mouths when yawning, which 'may indicate complex distinction in genders.'
30. breathing
'Breathing' is correct because the passage says the hypothalamus, which may coordinate yawning, 'also controls breathing.'
31. stretch / stretching
'Stretch' or 'stretching' is correct because the passage says studies observed 'a link between yawning and stretching as early as the end of the first prenatal trimester.'
32. brain
'Brain' is correct because the passage describes people with brain damage (from stroke) who still show automatic cooperation between yawning and movement.
33. E
Paragraph E is correct because it discusses the regular pattern of yawning, such as the interval between yawns.
34. B
Paragraph B is correct because it says yawning is 'an ancient, primitive act' seen in humans before birth and in animals.
35. F
Paragraph F is correct because it says 'people usually yawn when they stretch, but we don’t always stretch when we yawn.'
36. D
Paragraph D is correct because it links contagious yawning to empathy and positive attention in communication.
37. H
Paragraph H is correct because it says 'the multiplicity of stimuli of contagious yawning... implicates many higher brain regions.'
38. NOT GIVEN
'Not Given' is correct because the passage does not say whether students understood why their tutor asked them to yawn back.
39. YES
'Yes' is correct because the passage says people who scored high on compassion were more likely to yawn back, showing a link between yawning and compassion.
40. NOT GIVEN
'Not Given' is correct because the passage says it is not known whether yawning helps recovery from brain damage.

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