About this set: compiled and lightly cleaned up from real test material that test-takers recalled. IELTS draws from a global question pool, so this material circulates worldwide. To give you a complete, sittable test, material reported around the same period is assembled together — so a set may combine content from several exam dates, not one single sitting. Any audio is a recreation for practice. Organized for study convenience. Based on test-taker recalls — not official IELTS material.
Reading Passage 1: Australian Popular Magazines
A. Magazines as a product of entertainment reading, enjoyment, and information, or as gentlemen of the time called "indoctrination", have their origins in England in the early 18th century when the innovator became Robinson author Daniel Defoe. The term Maga comes from the French Magazin, initially intended as a repository, and was apt because the first published magazine held an inventory of various writings on a wide range of subjects. Defoe titled his magazine "The Review", which he published five years after the first issue. It was published with the help of various now-famous magazines such as The Trailer and The Spectator. Each produced with the help of the same partner's authors Richard Steele and Joseph Addison.
B. As for Australian famous magazines, initially, for the founding days of the colonies, readers of the time trusted the sluggish cruising ships from England to deliver most of the different vital items, newspapers, and journals.
C. In 1855, Australia published its first popular magazine. It was a hugely successful Melbourne punch whose longevity stretched into the first quarter of the 20th century.
D. Popular illustrated magazines quickly became a significant factor for the educated Australians, shaping our national image, just as ballad singers and touring entertainers also made major contributions. Against this background, the now famous 'Old Bulletin' was created in 1880. From the outset, the Bulletin's policy has been to promote and encourage Australian writers and artists: it has succeeded in the names and reputation of Henry Lawson, 'Banjo' Paterson, Steele Rudd, and dozens of others. He created a new and unique school of black and white art that, for example, gave Phil May his big breakthrough and eventually worldwide recognition. Such was the influence of The Bulletin that this legendary '90s era is considered the source of our national culture. In this pre-federation era of Australia, not only were several fascinating periodicals founded but many were created and owned by respected writers of the time. These included writers Henry Kendall, Marcus Clarke, Rolf Boldrewood, Randolph Bedford, Edward Dyson, Norman Lindsay, and CJ Dennis, among others.
E. As they were developed, technological advances were quickly taken advantage of. Most notable was the development of photoengraving, which made it possible for the first time to reproduce "halftone" photographs. In this ingenious method, simply rephotographing through a dotted glass plate onto a metal plate, after an acid bath, the color tone is simulated by a pattern of small raised dots of varying sizes. After inking, the metal sheet is ready to reproduce a facsimile picture composed of tiny dots. Historically, artists painted scenes and events upside down on prepared blocks of wood. This was given to the sculptor, who used a variety of delicate cutting tools to scrape away areas of the drawing, leaving a raised surface, then inked and applying pressure to get the black and white impression of the image. And for the first time, photoengraving allowed artists to draw cartoons in any way and any style, and the printed result could be scaled up or down, drawn down to the smallest detail. will be as shown. Other less important technological developments included high-speed printing presses, simultaneous multi-color printing, and certain electronic "scanner" devices for producing color illustrations.
F. In general, Australian journals today do not differ much in content from those of the last century. There are some new addresses. For example, The Bulletin's highly political content reflects a recognition that Australia is increasingly drawn to the wider international community. While once popular and hugely successful magazines like Pix and Original People only survived in the 1980s after World War II, the famous Australasian Post survived for more than 120 years (it changed its name slightly in 1946). However, the magazine has long topped the list of the highest circulation magazines of its kind in Australia. Much of this success is due to a deliberate editorial policy with a focus on Australia. Penthouse Australia and other contemporary magazines such as Playboy, Creo, and Cosmopolitan have a policy of striving for international quality rather than national identity, and Penthouse is different.
G. Today, at a new high of public awareness, formerly minor courses of the past take on new significance as reassessments of records for a comprehensive look at our civilization. The changes in social behaviors, interests, attitudes, styles, and manners that they reflect are an important part of our personality.
- 1
Section A
- i. Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe
- ii. Culture of Australia and the bulletin
- iii. Australia's magazines today
- iv. The country's first magazine
- v. The very first magazines
- vi. Australians rely on the news from England.
- vii. The historical significance of magazines
- viii. Printing technology advancements
- ix. Photographic printing
- x. Some periodicals have passed away.
- 2
Section B
- 3
Section D
- 4
Section E
- 5
Section F
- 6
Section G
- 7
a wooden block
- N. New method of printing illustrations
- O. Old method of printing illustrations
- B. Both methods of printing illustrations
- 8
a metal sheet
- 9
a glass screen
- 10
inking
- 11
image is reversed
- 12
Which magazine is no longer published?
- 13
Which magazine has changed its name?
- 14
Which magazine has a strong political focus?
Reading Passage 2: The Reconstruction of Community in Talbot Park, Auckland
The Talbot Park in Auckland, New Zealand was once described as a state housing ghetto, rife with crimes, vandalism and other social problems. But today it has undergone an urban renewal makeover.
A
The buildings in Talbot Park are eye-catching now and quite different from other state-built ones. “There is no reason why public housing should look cheap in view,” says Design Group architect Neil. The bricks and wood-built houses and apartments are tidy.
B
Talbot Park is a triangle of government-owned land bounded by Apirana Ave, Pilkington Ed and Point England Rd. In the early 1960s it was developed for state housing built around a linear park that ran through the middle. Initially, there was a strong sense of a family-friendly community. Former residents recall how the Talbot Park reserve played a big part in their childhoods—a place where the kids in the block came together to play softball, cricket, leapfrog and bulrush. “It was all just good fun”, says George Thompson. “We had respect for our neighbors and addressed them by the title Mr. and Mrs. so and so,” she recalls.
C
Quite what went wrong with Talbot Park is not clear. The community began to change in the late 1970s as more immigrants such as Pacific Islanders and Europeans moved in. The new arrivals didn’t integrate with the community, a “them and us” mentality developed, and residents interacted with their neighbors less. What was clear was that the buildings were deteriorating and shabbier. The rate of crime was on the rise and the reserve—focus of fond childhoods memories—had become a wasteland and was considered unsafe. But it wasn’t until 2002 that Housing New Zealand decided the properties needed upgrading.
D
Some controversial views arose when the program started and actually, the program made the density of the people greater. As the building in the park included free-standing houses, semi-detached or low-level apartments, the state took the mix and match strategy which involved different architects and prevented the buildings from being the same. And the interiors such as the kitchen and bathroom were made comfortable and not over the budget. The walls in the community were cancelled and showed the people with see-through openness.
E
The community is comprised of different races: Pacific islanders, Maoris, New Zealand Europeans. The tenants also include other races from Asia, Ukraine and Iran. The design of buildings should be accommodated to the ethic cultures.
F
People who lived in the park are in low socio-economic level. Of the 5000 households there, 55 percent are state houses, 28 percent privately owned (compared to about 65 percent nationally) and 17 percent are private rental. The area has a high concentration of an income in the $5000 to $15000 and very few with an income over $70000. That’s in sharp contrast to the more affluent suburbs like Kohumarama and St. John’s that surround the area.
G
There’s no doubt that good urban design and good architecture play a significant part in the scheme. But probably more important is a new standard of social control. Housing New Zealand calls it “intensive tenancy management.” Others view it as social engineering. “It is a model that we are looking at going forward,” according to Housing New Zealand’s central Auckland regional manager Graham Bodman. “The focus is on frequent inspections, helping tenants to get to know each other. That includes some strict rules—no loud parties after 10 pm, no dogs, no cats in the apartment, no washing hung over balcony rails and a requirement to mow lawns and keep the property tidy. Housing New Zealand has also been active in organizing morning teas and street barbecues for resident to meet their neighbors. “It’s all based in the intensification,” says Community Renewal project manager Stuart Bracey. “We acknowledge if you are going to put more people living closer together you have to actually help them to live together because it creates tension—especially for people that aren’t used to it.”
- 15
Paragraph A
- i. Some problems arose about the community
- ii. Where the residents have lived when the buildings were under makeover
- iii. Financial hardship of the residents in the park
- iv. Unexpected high standards of the design of the buildings
- v. A makeup of various ethnic origins should be considered
- vi. Experiences of a family living in the park nowadays
- vii. How to coordinate and assist the tenants who lived in the community
- viii. The need to raise money to fund the makeover
- ix. Close relationship among neighbors in the original site
- x. The details of the style of the buildings in the park
- 16
Paragraph B
- 17
Paragraph C
- 18
Paragraph D
- 19
Paragraph E
- 20
Paragraph F
- 21
Paragraph G
- 22
James Lundy
- A. Tenant management involves supervision and regulation
- B. Building the houses should be within minimal budget
- C. Social activities are organized to help people close to each other
- D. Buildings should be adaptive and responsive to racial cultures
- E. Complains about the high standards of the building design
- F. Opponents hold that regulation may cause resentment of the tenants
- 23
Graham Bodman
- 24
Stuart Bracey
- 25
Some critics hold that the ______ of the population may cause the area to return to its old situation.
- 26
To prevent this, a variety of ______ are gathered to avoid the case that the buildings are uniform.
- 27
In addition, the interiors make the houses comfortable within the ______.
Reading Passage 3: Language Diversity
A The concept of universal grammar is one of the most influential in the study of languages. (UG). It is widely interpreted as meaning that all languages are fundamentally the same and that the human brain is born language-ready, with an in-built program capable of interpreting the common rules underlying any mother tongue. It was proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s. This notion persisted for five decades, influencing work in linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science. It implied that in order to understand language, you must ignore the vast diversity of languages and focus on their common human core.
B Linguists have discovered numerous universal language rules since the UG theory was proposed. There are, however, almost always exceptions. It was once thought that if a language had syllables that started with a vowel and ended with a consonant (VC), it would also have syllables that started with a consonant and ended with a vowel. (CV). This universal lasted until 1999 when linguists discovered that Arrernte, a language spoken by Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory around Alice Springs, has VC syllables but no CV syllables.
C Other non-universal universals describe the fundamental rules of word formation. Consider the rule that every language has four fundamental word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Several languages lack an open adverb class, which means that new adverbs cannot be easily formed, unlike in English, where you can turn any adjective into an adverb, for example, 'soft' into 'softly'. Others, like Lao, which is spoken in Laos, have no adjectives at all. More controversially, some linguists argue that a few languages, such as Straits Salish, spoken by indigenous peoples in North America's northwestern regions, lack distinct nouns and verbs. Instead, they have a single-word class that includes events, objects, and qualities.
D Even seemingly indisputable universals have been discovered to be deficient. This includes recursion, or the ability to infinitely place one grammatical unit inside a similar unit, such as 'Jack thinks that Mary thinks that ... the bus will be on time'. It is widely regarded as the most important feature of human language, distinguishing it from the communications of all other animals. However, Dan Everett of Illinois State University recently published controversial research demonstrating that Amazonian Piraha lacks this quality.
E But what if language diversity is the key to understanding human communication? Linguists Nicholas Evans of the Australian National University in Canberra and Stephen Levinson of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, believe that languages do not follow the same set of rules. Instead, they argue that the sheer variety of human communication is a distinguishing feature not found in other animals. While there is no doubt that human thinking influences the shape of language, Evans and Levinson argue that language shapes our brains. This suggests that humans are more diverse than we previously thought, with differences in our brains depending on the language environment in which we grew up. And this leads to a disturbing conclusion: when a language dies, humanity loses an important piece of its diversity.
F How are languages created if they do not follow a single set of shared rules? 'Instead of universals, you get standard engineering solutions that languages adopt repeatedly, and then you get outliers,' Evans says. He and Levinson contend that this is due to the fact that any given language is a complex system shaped by a variety of factors such as culture, genetics, and history. They claim that there are no absolutely universal language traits, only tendencies. And the 'bio-cultural' mix that we call language is characterized by a mix of strong and weak tendencies.
G The strong tendencies, according to the two linguists, explain why many languages exhibit common patterns. A variety of factors, such as brain structure, speech biology, and communication efficiencies, tend to push language in a similar direction. Widely shared linguistic elements may also be based on a uniquely human type of reasoning. For example, most languages use these grammatical categories because we perceive the world before we learn to speak as a place full of things causing actions (agents) and things having actions done to them (patients).
H Weak tendencies, on the other hand, are explained by language idiosyncrasies. Evans and Levinson argue that many aspects of a population's natural history can influence its language. For example, Andy Butcher of Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, has discovered that indigenous Australian children have by far the highest incidence of chronic middle-ear infection of any population on the planet and that most indigenous Australian languages lack many sounds that are common in other languages but are difficult to hear when one has a middle-ear infection. According to Evans, it is unknown whether this condition shaped the sound systems of these languages, but it is important to consider the idea.
I Levinson and Evans are not the first to question the theory of universal grammar, but no one has summarized and spread these ideas as effectively. As a result, their arguments have sparked widespread interest, particularly among linguists tired of trying to fit their findings into the straitjacket of "absolute universals." According to some, this is the final nail in UG's coffin. Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has long argued that all languages follow the same set of rules. 'Universal grammar is extinct,' he claims.
- 28
The search for brand-new, universal language norms is essentially over.
- 29
The human race may be affected if one or more languages disappear.
- 30
If Evans and Levinson are correct, then language does not affect how a person develops.
- 31
In the latter half of the 20th century, a single theory of language acquisition predominated.
- 32
Linguists disagree on a particular point of Straits Salish grammar.
- 33
Most of the UG guidelines put forth by linguists do hold true for all human languages.
- 34
What is the author's opinion of Evans and Levinson's theory of language acquisition?
- A. Other linguists have largely rejected it.
- B. It is not backed up by facts.
- C. It had not been thought of before.
- D. It is presented in an effective manner.
- 35
What purpose does the mention of a middle ear infection serve in the eighth paragraph?
- A. the potential origin of something.
- B. the most likely outcome of something.
- C. an explanation of something.
- D. an opposition to something.
- 36
Evans and Levinson suggest that apparent similarities between languages could be caused by
- A. similar ways of perceiving.
- B. narrow systems of description.
- C. close interpersonal ties.
- D. error in analysis.
- 37
Which of the following language-related beliefs do Evans and Levinson share?
- A. There are only a few universal aspects of language.
- B. The traits of other languages have an impact on each language.
- C. The development of every language occurs independently.
- D. Languages differ from one another more often than they are similar.
- 38
Which of the following best sums up the author's motivation?
- A. to determine the shared features of specific languages.
- B. to describe different points of view on language's nature.
- C. to outline the development of cognitive science.
- D. to support a long-held theory about language acquisition.
- 39
Recently, it has been asserted that Amazonian Piraha lacks
- A. The most fundamental feature is language.
- B. sentences that go beyond the limit.
- C. words that can be used in multiple contexts.
- D. words that fit a specific grammar pattern.
- E. a series of noises that UG predicted.
- 40
There are deficiencies in the Lao language
- 41
The Arrernte language deviates from a "rule" regarding
Answer sheet
Fill in as you go — checking is instant and local, and every miss lands in your mistake log with the lesson that fixes it.
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
- 28.
- 29.
- 30.
- 31.
- 32.
- 33.
- 34.
- 35.
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
- 39.
- 40.
- 41.
Saved on this device — no account needed. Sign in on your progress page if you want it synced elsewhere.
Show answer key
Answer key
1. v
2. vi
3. ii
4. vii
5. iii
6. vii
7. O
8. N
9. N
10. B
11. O
12. melbourne punch / pix / people
13. australasian post
14. the bulletin
15. x
16. ix
17. i
18. iv
19. iii
20. v
21. vii
22. D
23. A
24. C
25. density
26. architects
27. budget
28. NOT GIVEN
29. YES
30. NO
31. YES
32. YES
33. NO
34. D
35. A
36. A
37. C
38. B
39. A
40. D
41. E