Reading 2026-02 Test 39 — IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test with Answers

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Reading Passage 1: Spider Silk

A. Scientists have succeeded in copying the silk-producing gene of the Golden Orb Weaver spider and are using them to create a synthetic material which they believe is the model for a new generation of advanced bio-materials. The new material, bio-silk, which has been spun for the first time by researchers at DuPont, has an enormous range of potential uses in construction and manufacturing.

B. The attraction of the silk spun by the spider is a combination of great strength and enormous elasticity, which man-made fibres have been unable to replicate. On an equal-weight basis, spider silk is far stronger than steel and it is estimated that if a single strand could be made about 10m in diameter, it would be strong enough to stop a jumbo jet in flight. A third important factor is that it is extremely light. Army scientists are already looking at the possibilities of using it for lightweight, bullet-proof vests and parachutes.

C. For some time, biochemists have been trying to synthesise the drag-line silk of the Golden Orb Weaver. The drag-line silk, which forms the radial arms of the web, is stronger than the other parts of the web and some biochemists believe a synthetic version could prove to be as important a material as nylon, which has been around for 50 years, since the discoveries of Wallace Carothers and his team ushered in the age of polymers.

D. To recreate the material, scientists, including Randolph Lewis at the University of Wyoming, first examined the silk-producing gland of the spider. "We took out the glands that produce the silk and looked at the coding for the protein material they make, which is spun into a web. We then went looking for clones with the right DNA," he says.

E. At DuPont, researchers have used both yeast and bacteria as hosts to grow the raw material, which they have spun into fibres. Robert Dorsch, DuPont’s director of biochemical development, says the globules of protein, comparable with marbles in an egg, are harvested and processed. "We break open the bacteria, separate out the globules of protein and use them as the raw starting material. With yeast, the gene system can be designed so that the material excretes the protein outside the yeast for better access," he says.

F. "The bacteria and the yeast produce the same protein, equivalent to that which the spider uses in the drag lines of the web. The spider mixes the protein into a water-based solution and then spins it into a solid fibre in one go. Since we are not as clever as the spider and we are not using such sophisticated organisms, we substituted man-made approaches and dissolved the protein in chemical solvents, which are then spun to push the material through small holes to form the solid fibre."

G. Researchers at DuPont say they envisage many possible uses for a new biosilk material. They say that earthquake-resistant suspension bridges hung from cables of synthetic spider silk fibres may become a reality. Stronger ropes, safer seat belts, shoe soles that do not wear out so quickly and tough new clothing are among the other applications. Biochemists such as Lewis see the potential range of uses of biosilk as almost limitless. "It is very strong and retains elasticity; there are no man-made materials that can mimic both these properties. It is also a biological material with all the advantages that has over petrochemicals," he says.

H. At DuPond’s laboratories, Dorsch is excited by the prospect of new super-strong materials but he warns they are many years away. "We are at an early stage but theoretical predictions are that we will wind up with a very strong, tough material, with an ability to absorb shock, which is stronger and tougher than the man-made materials that are conventionally available to us," he says.

I. The spider is not the only creature that has aroused the interest of material scientists. They have also become envious of the natural adhesive secreted by the sea mussel. It produces a protein adhesive to attach itself to rocks. It is tedious and expensive to extract the protein from the mussel, so researchers have already produced a synthetic gene for use in surrogate bacteria.

1
a comparison of the ways two materials are used to replace silk-producing glands
2
predictions regarding the availability of the synthetic silk
3
on-going research into other synthetic materials
4
the research into the part of the spider that manufactures silk
5
the possible application of the silk in civil engineering
6
Synthetic gene growth in ________ or ________
7
globules of ________
8
dissolved in ________
9
passed through ________
10
to produce ________
11
Biosilk has already replaced nylon in parachute manufacture.
- TRUE. TRUE
- FALSE. FALSE
- NOT GIVEN. NOT GIVEN
12
The spider produces silk of varying strengths.
13
Lewis and Dorsch co-operated in the synthetic production of silk.

Reading Passage 2: Monkeys and Forests

AS AN EAST WIND blasts through a gap in the Cordillera de Tilaran, a rugged mountain range that splits northern Costa Rica in half, a female mantled howler monkey moves through the swaying trees of the forest canopy.

A. Ken Glander, a primatologist from Duke University, gazes into the canopy, tracking the female’s movements. Holding a dart gun, he waits with infinite patience for the right moment to shoot. With great care, Glander aims and fires. Hit in the rump, the monkey wobbles. This howler belongs to a population that has lived for decades at Hacienda La Pacifica, a working cattle ranch in Guanacaste province. Other native primates — white-faced capuchin monkeys and spider monkeys — once were common in this area, too, but vanished after the Pan-American Highway was built nearby in the 1950s. Most of the surrounding land was clear-cut for pasture.

B. Howlers persist at La Pacifica, Glander explains, because they are leaf-eaters. They eat fruit, when it’s available but, unlike capuchin and spider monkeys, do not depend on large areas of fruiting trees. “Howlers can survive anyplace you have half a dozen trees because their eating habits are so flexible” he says. In forests, life is an arms race between trees and the myriad creatures that feed on leaves. Plants have evolved a variety of chemical defences, ranging from bad-tasting tannins, which bind with plant-produced nutrients, rendering them indigestible, to deadly poisons, such as alkaloids and cyanide.

C. All primates, including humans, have some ability to handle plant toxins. “We can detoxify a dangerous poison known as caffeine, which is deadly to a lot of animals,” Glander says. For leaf-eaters, long-term exposure to a specific plant toxin can increase their ability to defuse the poison and absorb the leaf nutrients. The leaves that grow in regenerating forests, like those at La Pacifica, are actually more howler friendly than those produced by the undisturbed, centuries-old trees that survive farther south, in the Amazon Basin. In younger forests, trees put most of their limited energy into growing wood, leaves and fruit, so they produce much lower levels of toxin than do well-established, old-growth trees.

D. The value of maturing forests to primates is a subject of study at Santa Rosa National Park, about 35 miles northwest of Hacienda La Pacifica. The park hosts populations not only of mantled howlers but also of white-faced capuchins and spider monkeys. Yet the forests there are young, most of them less than 50 years old. Capuchins were the first to begin using the reborn forests when the trees were as young as 14 years. Howlers, larger and heavier than capuchins, need somewhat older trees, with limbs that can support their greater body weight. A working ranch at Hacienda La Pacifica also explains their population boom in Santa Rosa. “Howlers are more resilient than capuchins and spider monkeys for several reasons,” Fedigan explains. “They can live within a small home range, as long as the trees have the right food for them. Spider monkeys, on the other hand, occupy a huge home range, so they can’t make it in fragmented habitat.”

E. Howlers also reproduce faster than do other monkey species in the area. Capuchins don’t bear their first young until about 7 years old, and spider monkeys do so even later, but howlers give birth for the first time at about 3.5 years of age. Also, while a female spider monkey will have a baby about once every four years, well-fed howlers can produce an infant every two years.

F. The leaves howlers eat hold plenty of water, so the monkeys can survive away from open streams and water holes. This ability gives them a real advantage over capuchin and spider monkeys, which have suffered during the long, ongoing drought in Guanacaste.

G. Growing human population pressures in Central and South America have led to the persistent destruction of forests. During the 1990s, about 1.1 million acres of Central American forest were felled yearly. Alejandro Estrada, an ecologist at Estacion de Biologia Los Tuxtlas in Veracruz, Mexico, has been exploring how monkeys survive in a landscape increasingly shaped by humans. He and his colleagues recently studied the ecology of a group of mantled howler monkeys that thrive in a habitat completely altered by humans: a cacao plantation in Tabasco, Mexico. Like many varieties of coffee, cacao plants need shade to grow, so 40 years ago the landowners planted fig, monkey pod and other tall trees to form a protective canopy over their crop. The howlers moved in about 25 years ago after nearby forests were cut. This strange habitat, a hodgepodge of cultivated native and exotic plants, seems to support about as many monkeys as would a same-sized patch of wild forest. The howlers eat the leaves and fruit of the shade trees, leaving the valuable cacao pods alone, so the farmers tolerate them.

H. Estrada believes the monkeys bring underappreciated benefits to such farms, dispersing the seeds of fig and other shade trees and fertilizing the soil with feces. He points out that howler monkeys live in shade coffee and cacao plantations in Nicaragua and Costa Rica as well as in Mexico. Spider monkeys also forage in such plantations, though they need nearby areas of forest to survive in the long term. He hopes that farmers will begin to see the advantages of associating with wild monkeys, which includes potential ecotourism projects.

“Conservation is usually viewed as a conflict between agricultural practices and the need to preserve nature,” Estrada says. “We’re moving away from that vision and beginning to consider ways in which agricultural activities may become a tool for the conservation of primates in human-modified landscapes.”

14
a reference of reduction in Forest inhabitant.
15
Only one species of monkey survived while other two species have vanished.
16
a reason for howler Monkey of choosing new leaves.
17
mention to Howler Monkey’s nutrient and eating habits.
18
a reference of asking farmers’ changing attitude toward wildlife.
19
the advantage for Howler Monkey’s flexibility living in a segmented habitat.
20
Howler Monkey’s benefit to the local region’s agriculture
- A. Hacienda La Pacifica
- B. Santa Rosa National Park
- C. a cacao plantation in Tabasco, Mexico
- D. Estacion de Biologia Los Tuxtlas in Veracruz, Mexico
- E. Amazon Basin
21
Original home for all three native monkeys
22
A place where Capuchins monkey comes for a better habitat
23
Howlers in La Pacifica since they can feed themselves with leaf when ______ is not easily found.
24
Howlers have better ability to alleviate the ______ which old and young trees used to protect themselves).
25
When compared to that of spider monkeys and capuchin monkeys, the ______ the rate of Howlers is relatively faster (round for just every 2 years).
26
The monkeys can survive away from open streams and water holes as the leaves howlers eat hold the high content of ______ which ensure them to resist to continuous ______ in Guanacaste.

Reading Passage 3: The Costs of Brand Loyalty

A Londoner with a sudden urge for giant African snails could do worse than head to the bustling marketplace in Brixton, a part of south London that is home to many people from Africa. Markets like Brixton Market that cater to migrants are a testament to the fact that people often retain very strong preferences for the kinds of food they grew up eating. Just ask the expatriate Britons who flock to ‘Tea and Sympathy’ in New York’s Greenwich Village for pots of Marmite, a yeast-based spread whose delights baffle other nationalities (and many of their own compatriots).

Past research has shown that people are often willing to pay much more for a favoured brand than for seemingly identical alternatives. It is not always obvious why. However, there is ample evidence to support the theory that certain food preferences form in childhood. Children have a predisposition to fear new foods, which is only overcome when they are repeatedly presented with, and encouraged to consume, a particular food. Evidence shows that children’s instinctive wariness of new foods dates back to the times when humans had to forage for food, and it was important that they learnt which foods were safe to eat. In the modern world, people routinely express a strong liking for a brand even though they are unable to tell the brand apart from rival brands in blind tests, and many studies have found that advertising alone cannot explain the strength of brand loyalty.

A new study by economists from the universities of Tilburg and Chicago tracks the consumption patterns of 38,000 US households over two years, and confirms the theory that such brand loyalty is widespread, deep and long-lasting. There were clear local patterns in consumption, although the same brands were available everywhere. But 16% of people studied were migrants: they had grown up in one state and moved to another. These migrants had the same options, in terms of what was on offer and at what price, as everyone else in their adopted home, but although they consumed local favourites, they bought fewer than longtime residents. This gap between purchases of migrants and those of the locally born was quite stubborn: although it faded the longer a person lived in their new state, it still took 20 years to halve in magnitude. Even 50 years on, it was still large enough to show up in the data. This could mean that the benefits of being the first brand into a market could last longer than might be assumed.

David Atkin of Yale University has identified some important implications of local food favourites. He suggests in a recent paper that the effects of people being loyal to known brands may also lead economists to rethink the way they calculate the benefits resulting from trade. This is because opening up to trade is in some ways very similar to migrating, as it changes the composition and prices of the foods that are available to a person. In particular, trade can cause local foods to become relatively more expensive. Atkin’s data show something many economists do not take into account: when a traditional food has to compete with imported foods, it may no longer be the cheapest food available for people to choose to eat. Atkin decided to look at this situation in the context of developing countries.

To illustrate his point, Atkin uses detailed data about people’s food choices in India. India is a good choice because it covers a large number of climatic zones where different specialised crops are grown. Despite being part of the same country, the prevalence of internal barriers to trade means that its regions are best thought of as being only partially open to trade. Atkin’s data show that the foods a region specialises in producing are instead cheaper in that region.

However, there has been some opening up of internal trade in India in recent years, and this has revealed that for every rupee spent on food, people’s intake of calories declined most in regions where prices of local favourite foods had risen. In theory, when there is a greater choice of types of food, people should adjust their food habits and purchase the cheapest option so that they boost their calorie intake. However, in practice, food habits mean that consumers keep buying the things they know and like even though these foods have become relatively expensive. Atkin calculates that if all barriers to internal trade in India were abolished, the average Indian household would have to generate a rise of 3.3 percent in income to maintain their calorie intake.

In developing countries where there is a high prevalence of undernutrition, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, the habit of continuing to eat favourite foods could have a serious effect on development. There is clear evidence that nutritional shortfalls in children can affect their ability to work and earn as adults, and also have detrimental effects on their long-term health.

Consequently, the nutritional declines that can occur as a result of the opening up of trade are of serious concern, because an entire generation that is malnourished as children will continue to suffer irreversible consequences for the rest of their lives, which could hinder the development of their country due to a lack of a quality workforce.

27
In the first paragraph, the writer’s purpose is to
- A. show that London has a multicultural society.
- B. point out that people grow up eating food from markets.
- C. give examples of the wide variety of food available in Britain.
- D. illustrate the way adults enjoy eating food from their childhood.
28
Economists from the universities of Tilburg and Chicago found that people who have migrated from one American state to another
- A. were poorer than longtime residents of the new state.
- B. sometimes returned to their home states to buy their favourite foods.
- C. bought only some of the brands which were popular in their new state.
- D. were particularly sensitive to price increases on food items.
29
Atkin’s research shows that
- A. trade makes favourite foods hard to find.
- B. trade results in increasing levels of migration.
- C. imported food is of a higher quality than local food.
- D. economists fail to understand all the effects of increased trade.
30
The writer thinks Atkin was wise to choose India for his study because
- A. trade barriers create food shortages between regions.
- B. food is cheap in India in comparison to developed countries.
- C. cultural variation results in a wide range of food preferences.
- D. the varying weather patterns have resulted in regional crop types.
31
The Tilburg and Chicago study shows that brand loyalty is greater in some states of the United States than in others.
32
The study shows that the differences in shopping habits between migrants and native residents increased in the first 20 years.
33
First brands to enter a new market only hold their advantage if they are supported by advertising.
34
Atkin originally chose India as a case study because trade within the country was unrestricted.
35
In India, if a region focuses on certain foods, the cost of those foods remains comparatively low.
36
36–40. Complete the summary using the list of words and phrases, A–I, below. Food habits and trade in developing countries Trade is not always beneficial for the citizens of developing countries. Data show that a wider _______ of foods does not necessarily result in a corresponding _______ in the amount of calories in people’s diets. This is because people’s _______ on continuing to eat the foods they grew up eating could result in insufficient calories in their diets if the cost of these foods rises as a result of more open trade conditions. This is especially true in countries where adequate _______ is already a problem and could result in a whole section of society being unable to contribute fully to their country’s _______ in the future.
- A. nutrition
- B. range
- C. progress
- D. dislike
- E. incentive
- F. increase
- G. independence
- H. production
- I. insistence

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Hiện đáp án

1. E
Section E discusses how two materials, yeast and bacteria, are used to replace the silk-producing glands, comparing their effectiveness.
2. H
Section H makes predictions about when synthetic silk will be available, mentioning future expectations.
3. I
Section I talks about current research into other synthetic materials, showing ongoing scientific work.
4. D
Section D describes research into the part of the spider that manufactures silk, focusing on the silk glands.
5. G
Section G mentions the possible use of synthetic silk in civil engineering, such as for building materials.
6. yeast / bacteria
The answer is 'yeast / bacteria' because the passage says synthetic genes are grown in yeast or bacteria to produce silk proteins.
7. protein
The answer is 'protein' because the passage explains that the globules formed are made of protein, which is the main component of silk.
8. chemical
The answer is 'chemical' because the passage states that the protein is dissolved in a chemical to prepare it for spinning.
9. holes
The answer is 'holes' because the passage describes how the solution is passed through holes to form fibres.
10. fibres
The answer is 'fibres' because after passing through holes, the process produces fibres, which are the final product.
11. FALSE
The answer is FALSE because the passage does not say that Biosilk has already replaced nylon in parachute manufacture; it may mention potential uses but not actual replacement.
12. TRUE
The answer is TRUE because the passage states that spiders produce silk of varying strengths for different purposes.
13. NOT GIVEN
The answer is NOT GIVEN because the passage does not mention any cooperation between Lewis and Dorsch in synthetic silk production.
14. G
Section G refers to a reduction in forest inhabitants, mentioning the impact on animal populations.
15. A
Section A states that only one monkey species survived while the other two vanished, matching the answer.
16. C
Section C gives a reason for howler monkeys choosing new leaves, such as nutritional value or availability.
17. B
Section B mentions howler monkeys' nutrient and eating habits, describing what and how they eat.
18. H
Section H refers to farmers changing their attitudes toward wildlife, discussing their new perspectives.
19. D
Section D explains the advantage of howler monkeys' flexibility in living in segmented habitats, helping them survive.
20. C
The answer is C because the passage says howler monkeys benefit local agriculture in a cacao plantation in Tabasco, Mexico.
21. A
The answer is A because all three native monkeys originally lived in Hacienda La Pacifica, as stated in the passage.
22. B
The answer is B because the passage says capuchin monkeys come to Santa Rosa National Park for a better habitat.
23. fruit
The answer is 'fruit' because the passage says howlers can eat leaves when fruit is not easily found.
24. plant toxin
The answer is 'plant toxin' because the passage explains howlers can better handle plant toxins that trees use for protection.
25. reproduction
The answer is 'reproduction' because the passage says howlers reproduce faster than spider monkeys and capuchins, about every two years.
26. water / drought
The answer is 'water / drought' because the passage says leaves eaten by howlers have high water content, helping them survive drought.
27. D
The answer is D because the first paragraph gives examples of adults enjoying food from their childhood, showing nostalgia.
28. C
The answer is C because the passage says migrants bought only some of the brands popular in their new state, not all.
29. D
The answer is D because Atkin's research shows economists do not understand all the effects of increased trade, especially on food habits.
30. D
The answer is D because the writer says India was chosen due to its varying weather patterns, which led to different regional crops.
31. NOT GIVEN
The answer is NOT GIVEN because the passage does not state whether brand loyalty is greater in some states than others.
32. NO
The answer is NO because the study shows the differences in shopping habits decreased, not increased, over the first 20 years.
33. NO
The answer is NO because the passage says first brands do not keep their advantage even with advertising, so advertising does not guarantee their lead.
34. NO
The answer is NO because Atkin did not choose India because trade was unrestricted; the passage gives a different reason.
35. YES
The answer is YES because the passage says if a region focuses on certain foods, the cost of those foods stays comparatively low.
36. B / F / I / A / C
The answer is 'range / increase / insistence / nutrition / progress' because the passage explains that a wider range of foods does not always mean an increase in calories, and insistence on traditional foods can cause nutrition problems, affecting future progress.

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Reading Passage 1: Spider Silk

Reading Passage 2: Monkeys and Forests

Reading Passage 3: The Costs of Brand Loyalty

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