Reading 2026-03 Test 1 — IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test with Answers

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Reading Passage 1 — The history of the bar code

The first step toward today’s bar codes came in 1948, when Bernard Silver, a graduate student in the USA, overheard a conversation in the halls of Philadelphia’s Drexel Institute of Technology. The president of a food chain was pleading with a professor to undertake research on a method of capturing product information automatically at store checkouts. The professor turned down the request, but Bernard Silver mentioned the conversation to his friend Norman Woodland, a twenty-seven-year-old teacher at Drexel.

The problem fascinated the two friends, and they set about thinking of a solution. Their first idea was to use patterns printed with an ink that would glow under ultraviolet light, and they built a device to test the concept. It worked, but the printing costs were high and the patterns faded over time. Nonetheless, they were convinced they had a workable idea. After several months of work they came up with the linear bar code, using elements from two established technologies: Morse code, in which letters and numbers are coded into a system of dots and dashes, and the method used to record soundtracks in movies. Silver and Woodland patented the idea in 1952, describing their invention as ‘article classification… through the medium of identifying patterns’. But the cost, together with the fact that their scanning equipment was rather unreliable, made the idea a non-starter at that time.

Scanning systems made little progress until the 1970s, when lasers became affordable. Following this, various systems came into use around the world in stores, libraries, factories, and the like, each with its own proprietary code, but there was no standardization. A consortium of grocery manufacturers and retailers therefore set up a committee to look into bar codes, and to standardize what became known formally as the Universal Product Code (UPC). At the heart of the committee’s guidelines were a few basic principles. To make life easier for the cashier, bar codes would have to be readable from almost any angle and at a range of distances. Because they would be reproduced by the million, the labels would have to be cheap and easy to print. And to be affordable, automated checkout systems would have to pay for themselves in two and a half years.

The committee considered more than a dozen versions of bar codes, including one based on multi-colored dots and another using a circular bull’s-eye design with lines radiating from a central point. On April 1, 1973, they unanimously agreed on a standardized UPC, a combination of black and white lines and numbers, based on Woodland and Silver’s idea but developed by George Laurer at IBM. Alan Haberman, who headed the subcommittee as president of First National Stores, described the bar code as a kind of world language that worked for everyone. He recalls proudly, ‘We showed that it could be done on a massive scale, that cooperation… was possible for the common good, and that business didn’t need the government to shove them in the right direction.’

The investment involved in the bar-code revolution was huge. Each of the tens of thousands of grocery outlets in the US had to spend at least $200,000 on new scanning equipment. Chains had to install new data processing centers and retrain their employees. Printers had to develop the new types of ink, plates, and other technology to reproduce the code with the exact tolerances it requires, and manufacturers had to spend millions of dollars a year on the labels.

On June 26, 1974, all the tests were done, all the proposals were complete, all the standards were set, and at a supermarket in Ohio, a single pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum became the first retail product sold with the help of a bar code scanner. Decades of schemes and billions of dollars in investment now became a practical reality. The bar code on any product could be read and understood in every suitably equipped store.

The advantages of the system were not clear immediately, as wholesalers, retailers and customers remained suspicious. Some customers believed bar codes were a form of surveillance. During the early weeks, Business Week magazine ran the headline ‘The Supermarket Scanner That Failed’. However, the benefits eventually became apparent. ‘It turns out there were massive savings in labor and other areas,’ Haberman says. These included checking out items at twice the speed compared to using traditional equipment, which meant shorter lines. And it did not take supermarkets too long to see that, as well as vastly improving customer service, the bar code could hugely reduce the amount of time spent checking inventory.

Now, every day more than 5 billion bar codes are scanned in retail outlets throughout the world. Passengers’ luggage is tagged with bar codes by airlines. Staff attach them to babies to ensure the right babies go home from hospitals with the right mothers. Runners in major marathons set off with bar codes on their vests, and librarians rely on them. Tiny bar codes have even been mounted on bees by researchers to track their movements.

As for that original pack of Juicy Fruit, it is now, unchewed and unopened, in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History in Washington.

Questions 1–8: Note completion

Complete the notes below. Write ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

History of the bar code

1948–1952

Methods of recording information automatically were developed by Silver and Woodland.

1st system:

1. • used ultraviolet light and a special type of _________

• problems: expensive and not permanent

2nd system:

2. • based on technology used in Morse code and also for the _________ of films

3. • problems: _________ and expensive

1970s

4. • Availability of cheaper _________ meant scanning technology spread more widely

5. • Problem: lack of _________ in code systems

• April 1973: committee agreed on one universal product code (UPC)

• June 1974: pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum sold with bar code scanner

• Advantages of bar code system:

• supermarkets needed to spend less on labour

6. • the _________ of checkouts increased

• doing inventories was much cheaper

Present day

Users of bar codes include:

• retail companies

• airlines

• staff in hospitals

7. • participants in _________

8. • scientists studying _________

Questions 9–13: True/False/Not Given

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? Write TRUE, FALSE, or NOT GIVEN.

9
Bernard Silver was invited to develop a system for capturing product information by the president of a food chain.
10
A committee set up in the 1970s said bar codes should be easy to use and not too expensive.
11
Alan Haberman disagreed with government policies on business matters.
12
Many grocery outlets were unable to afford the necessary scanning equipment.
13
The advantages of the new bar code scanner took some time to be accepted by users.

Reading Passage 2 — The History of Pencil

A The beginning of the story of pencils started with a lightning. Graphite, the main material for producing pencil, was discovered in 1564 in Borrowdale in England when a lightning struck a local tree during a thunder. Local people found out that the black substance spotted at the root of the unlucky tree was different from burning ash of wood. It was soft, thus left marks everywhere. Chemistry was barely out of its infancy at the time, so people mistook it for lead, equally black but much heavier. It was soon put to use by locals in marking their sheep for ownership and calculation.

B Britain turns out to be major country where mines of graphite can be detected and developed. Even so, the first pencil was invented elsewhere. As graphite is soft, it requires some form of encasement. In Italy, graphite sticks were initially wrapped in string or sheepskin for stability, becoming perhaps the very first pencil in the world. Then around 1560, an Italian couple made what are likely the first blueprints for the modern, wood-encased carpentry pencil. Their version was a flat, oval, more compact type of pencil. Their concept involved the hollowing out of a stick of juniper wood. Shortly thereafter in 1662, a superior technique was discovered by German people: two wooden halves were carved, a graphite stick inserted, and the halves then glued together—essentially the same method in use to this day. The news of the usefulness of these early pencils spread far and wide, attracting the attention of artists all over the known world.

C Although graphite core in pencils is still referred to as lead, modern pencils do not contain lead as the “lead” of the pencil is actually a mix of finely ground graphite and clay powders. This mixture is important because the amount of clay content added to the graphite depends on the intended pencil hardness, and the amount of time spent on grinding the mixture determines the quality of the lead. The more clay you put in, the higher hardness the core has. Many pencils across the world, and almost all in Europe, are graded on the European system. This system of naming used B for black and H for hard; a pencil’s grade was described by a sequence or successive Hs or Bs such as BB and BBB for successively softer leads, and HH and HHH for successively harder ones. Then the standard writing pencil is graded HB.

D In England, pencils continue to be made from whole sawn graphite. But with the mass production of pencils, they are getting drastically more popular in many countries with each passing decade. As demands rise, appetite for graphite soars. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), world production of natural graphite in 2012 was 1,100,000 tonnes, of which the following major exporters are: China, India, Brazil, North Korea and Canada. However, much in contrast with its intellectual application in producing pencils, graphite was also widely used in the military. During the reign of Elizabeth I, Borrowdale graphite was used as a refractory material to line moulds for cannonballs, resulting in rounder, smoother balls that could be fired farther, contributing to the strength of the English navy. This particular deposit of graphite was extremely pure and soft, and could easily be broken into sticks. Because of its military importance, this unique mine and its production were strictly controlled by the Crown.

E That the United States did not use pencils in the outer space till they spent $1000 to make a pencil to use in zero gravity conditions is in fact a fiction. It is widely known that astronauts in Russia used grease pencils, which don’t have breakage problem. But it is also a fact that their counterparts in the United States used pencils in the outer space before real zero gravity pencil was invented. They preferred mechanical pencils, which produced fine line, much clearer than the smudgy lines left by the grease pencils that Russians favored. But the lead tips of these mechanical pencils broke often. That bit of graphite floating around the space capsule could get into someone’s eye, or even find its way into machinery or electronics, causing an electrical short or other problems. But despite the fact that the Americans did invent zero gravity pencils later, they stuck to mechanical pencils for many years.

F Against the backcloth of a digitalized world, the prospect of pencils seems bleak. In reality, it does not. The application of pencils has by now become so widespread that they can be seen everywhere, such as classrooms, meeting rooms and art rooms, etc. A spectrum of users are likely to continue to use it into the future: students to do math works, artists to draw on sketch pads, waiters or waitresses to mark on order boards, make-up professionals to apply to faces, and architects to produce blue prints. The possibilities seem limitless.

Questions 14–20: Sentence completion

Complete the sentences below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

14
Graphite was found under a _________ in Borrowdale, it was dirty to use because it was 15 _________.
15
Graphite was found under a 14 _________ in Borrowdale, it was dirty to use because it was _________.
16
Ancient people used graphite to sign _________.
17
People found graphite _________ in Britain.
18
The first pencil was graphite wrapped in _________ or animal skin.
19
Since graphite was too smooth, _________ was added to make it harder.
20
Russian astronauts preferred _________ pencils to write in the outer space.

Questions 21–26: True/False/Not Given

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? Write TRUE, FALSE, or NOT GIVEN.

21
Italy is probably the first country of the whole world to make pencils.
22
Germany used various kinds of wood to make pencils.
23
Graphite makes a pencil harder and sharper.
24
In Britain, pencils are not produced any more.
25
American astronauts did not use pencil in outer space.
26
Pencils are unlikely to be used in the future.

Reading Passage 3 — 200 Years of Australian Landscapes at the Royal Academy in London

This exhibition promises to chart the evolution of a nation through its art, but not everyone agrees with the reasons behind the choice of artwork.

For the casual viewer, the exhibition of landscapes, Australia, selected by the Royal Academy of Art, will be a spectacular guide through Australian art history. Included in the exhibition are a range of artists and styles, dating from the earliest days of colonial art and progressing through expressionism and modernism to the greats of the 20th century, culminating with the current generation of Australian artists. It is hardly surprising, then, that this results in a flexible, wide-ranging notion of landscape.

But this landmark exhibition gives rise to some questions, and perhaps problems, regarding Britain's relationship with its former colony. By choosing a style of painting at which British artists excel, the Academy could be seen as inviting criticism that hints at a telling attitude towards Australian art by comparison. But it is the very theme of landscape that provides the strongest connection to Australian art from Britain. To consider it condescending is perhaps too strong, but for Joanna Mendelssohn, an Australian critic and Associate Professor at the University of NSW's College of Fine Arts (COFA), there is a suggestion that British artistic values have directed this exhibition, rather than allowing Australia the freedom to demonstrate its maturity.

What Mendelssohn found surprising about this exhibition was that the underlying rules for the selection of works seemed to have been so conservative. Since the landscape is a very strong British artistic theme, it appeared to her that when the British looked to the art of a former colony, there was a tendency for them to think that those colonies would continue to be like the British themselves. In reviewing Australia, the British insisted on looking at the genre of landscape painting.

Because of colonial ties, it was inevitable during Australian art's formative years that it would reflect Britain's devotion to the beloved landscape before its own character and idiosyncrasies took shape. And while Mendelssohn's concern over the exhibition's conventional selection is valid, the Academy is nevertheless embracing the peculiarities of Australian art from the mid-19th century onward, albeit within the boundaries of landscape.

Australia is curated by Kathleen Soriano, director of exhibitions at the Royal Academy. "Certainly the influence of English, French, or German art is much more evident in the early periods, in the early 1800s to mid-1800s," she says. "What I wanted to show was how Australian art develops a real distinctiveness, associated with the landscape and the light.

The fusion of tradition of the European kind with something more specifically Australian, and often personal, is crucial to the exhibition, and extends particularly to some of the more contemporary artists involved. Sydney-born video artist Shaun Gladwell is a good example of this. Gladwell's most famous piece, which is featured in the exhibition, is Storm Sequence (2000), a video of Gladwell skateboarding on the Bondi seafront as one of Sydney's signature brutal storms lingers offshore. It is his acknowledgment of landscape (or seascape) tradition, colored by Gladwell's own individualism. "To exhibit my work in this show might make some sense because I was interested in Turner and the idea of atmosphere affecting vision, something I was really interested in around the time of Storm Sequence. I was thinking about this tradition of Romantic landscape, but I wanted to make it personal," says Gladwell. But he didn't want to just embark on borrowing imagery from elsewhere. He wanted to bring it to his experience and his world through skateboarding and beach culture.

So while it may seem narrow for Britain to reduce Australian art to the genre of landscape, there can be little denying that British landscape painting is still relevant to a current generation of Australian practitioners, however indirectly.

Visitors to the exhibition encounter Australian Aboriginal art first, the idea being that these works warrant a prominent position because they were 'first'. Over the last couple of decades, London has hosted many successful exhibitions of Aboriginal art in smaller spaces, but for Soriano, Australia represents an opportunity to place such art in a broader context, with new relationships to the art of the settlers and white Australia. 'One of the reasons landscape makes sense as being the right theme was because Aboriginal art started in and on the landscape,' she says. '[The exhibition] is a beautiful meshing of the two different kinds of art, that allowed me to bring them together comfortably and honestly within this theme. It was important for me to present Indigenous art to audiences, and I felt it was most authentic that it was seen as part of Australian art history, rather than a separate area with a world of its own.'

Meanwhile, Australian critic Mendelssohn also points out that London is increasingly less important to today's generation of artists, and this somewhat weakens the ceremony surrounding the exhibition in London. 'China is the most important art market in the world,' she says. 'If you've made it in Shanghai, you've made it. The world has changed. My students in Australia, who come from all over the world, really want to see Venice Biennale and Art Basel, but they're less interested in going to London. When I was growing up, London was the destination, and then when I was at university all the smart young things wanted to go to New York,' she added. 'Now they want to go everywhere. There's no such thing as the centre and the periphery like there used to be. It's much more complicated.'

Questions 27–31: True/False/Not Given

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? Write TRUE, FALSE, or NOT GIVEN.

27
As expected, the artworks chosen for the exhibition reflect a narrow interpretation of landscape.
28
The Academy rejected Australian suggestions for the subject of the exhibition.
29
The colonial relationship meant that early Australian landscape painting followed the traditions of English landscape painting.
30
The exhibition reflects the fact that Australian art developed its own particular qualities.
31
Contemporary Australian artists have generally rejected British landscape traditions.

Questions 32–36: Multiple choice

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C, or D.

32
What is the writer's main point in the second paragraph?
- A. Australian landscape painting derives from the British tradition.
- B. Australian landscape painting is more highly regarded than British.
- C. Britain is still imposing its principles on Australian art.
- D. British art cannot be compared to Australian art.
33
What does Joanna Mendelssohn find surprising?
- A. Modern Australian landscape painting has great variety.
- B. The guidelines for the choice of work were very traditional.
- C. Landscape painting remains a popular subject for British artists.
- D. The British find the Australian landscape unsuitable as a subject.
34
Shaun Gladwell's work is included in the exhibition because
- A. it adopts a subjective approach to depicting the landscape.
- B. skateboarding is an inspiration to many Australian artists.
- C. storms are a significant feature in the Australian landscape.
- D. Bondi is an iconic Australian location.
35
What was the reason for Soriano including Aboriginal art in the exhibition?
- A. It is not well known in London art circles.
- B. Aboriginal landscape painting influenced Australian settlers.
- C. It is part of the Australian art tradition and not independent of it.
- D. Modern Aboriginal painting deals with changes to the landscape.
36
By referring to China, Mendelssohn is making the point that
- A. having an exhibition in London is not as important as it used to be.
- B. young artists in Britain are not interested in Australian art.
- C. art from Shanghai is more important than Australian art.
- D. New York is still a preferred destination for young artists.

Questions 37–40: Matching endings

Write the correct letter, A–F.

List of Endings

A reflects the mood created by the natural environment.

B demonstrates that the dominant art form in Australia is landscape painting.

C demonstrates an understanding of the historical importance of the land.

D showcases a very small number of artists.

E demonstrates a strong European flavour.

F shows an acceptance of the unique qualities of Australian art.

37
In spite of its conservatism, the Royal Academy exhibition
- A. reflects the mood created by the natural environment.
- B. demonstrates that the dominant art form in Australia is landscape painting.
- C. demonstrates an understanding of the historical importance of the land.
- D. showcases a very small number of artists.
- E. demonstrates a strong European flavour.
- F. shows an acceptance of the unique qualities of Australian art.
38
Australian art of the early to mid-1800s
39
The modern work by Gladwell chosen for the exhibition
40
Including Aboriginal art in the exhibition

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Hiện đáp án

1. ink
The passage says their first idea was to use patterns printed with an ink that would glow under ultraviolet light.
2. soundtracks
The passage explains the linear bar code used elements from Morse code and the method used to record soundtracks in movies.
3. unreliable
It says their scanning equipment was rather unreliable and the printing costs were high, making the idea a non-starter.
4. lasers
The passage states that scanning systems made little progress until the 1970s, when lasers became affordable.
5. standardization
It mentions that various systems came into use, but there was no standardization.
6. speed
The passage says checking out items was at twice the speed compared to traditional equipment.
7. marathons
It says runners in major marathons set off with bar codes on their vests.
8. bees
The passage mentions tiny bar codes have even been mounted on bees by researchers to track their movements.
9. FALSE
This is FALSE because the president of a food chain asked a professor, not Bernard Silver, to develop the system.
10. TRUE
This is TRUE because the committee said bar codes should be readable from almost any angle, easy to print, and affordable.
11. NOT GIVEN
NOT GIVEN because the passage does not mention Alan Haberman's views on government policies.
12. NOT GIVEN
NOT GIVEN because the passage only says grocery outlets had to spend money, but does not say many could not afford it.
13. TRUE
TRUE because the passage says the advantages were not clear immediately and people remained suspicious at first.
14. tree
The passage says graphite was discovered in Borrowdale in England when a lightning struck a local tree.
15. soft
It says the black substance was soft, thus left marks everywhere, making it dirty to use.
16. sheep
Locals used graphite in marking their sheep for ownership and calculation.
17. mines
The passage says Britain turns out to be a major country where mines of graphite can be detected and developed.
18. string
In Italy, graphite sticks were initially wrapped in string or sheepskin for stability.
19. clay
The passage explains the 'lead' of the pencil is actually a mix of graphite and clay, and the more clay you put in, the higher hardness the core has.
20. grease
It says astronauts in Russia used grease pencils, which don't have breakage problem.
21. TRUE
TRUE because the passage says the first pencil was invented in Italy.
22. NOT GIVEN
NOT GIVEN because the passage does not mention Germany using various kinds of wood.
23. FALSE
FALSE because the passage says the more clay you put in, the higher hardness the core has, not graphite.
24. FALSE
FALSE because the passage says in England, pencils continue to be made from whole sawn graphite.
25. FALSE
FALSE because the passage says American astronauts used pencils in outer space before the zero gravity pencil was invented.
26. FALSE
FALSE because the passage says pencils are still widely used and the possibilities seem limitless.
27. NO
NO because the passage says the exhibition includes a range of artists and styles, resulting in a flexible, wide-ranging notion of landscape.
28. NOT GIVEN
NOT GIVEN because the passage does not mention if the Academy rejected Australian suggestions.
29. YES
YES because the passage says it was inevitable during Australian art's formative years that it would reflect Britain's devotion to landscape.
30. YES
YES because the passage says the Academy is embracing the peculiarities of Australian art from the mid-19th century onward.
31. NO
NO because the passage says British landscape painting is still relevant to a current generation of Australian practitioners, however indirectly.
32. C
C is correct because the main point is that Britain is still imposing its principles on Australian art, as shown by the selection of landscape as the theme.
33. B
B is correct because Mendelssohn was surprised that the underlying rules for the selection of works seemed to have been so conservative.
34. A
A is correct because Gladwell wanted to make the tradition of landscape personal, showing a subjective approach.
35. C
C is correct because Soriano says it was most authentic that Indigenous art was seen as part of Australian art history, not a separate area.
36. A
A is correct because Mendelssohn says London is less important now and the world has changed.
37. F
F is correct because the exhibition shows an acceptance of the unique qualities of Australian art.
38. E
E is correct because the passage says the influence of English, French, or German art is much more evident in the early periods.
39. A
A is correct because Gladwell's work reflects the mood created by the natural environment, as shown in his video of skateboarding during a storm.
40. C
C is correct because including Aboriginal art demonstrates an understanding of the historical importance of the land.

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