Reading 2026-03 Test 23 — IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test with Answers

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Reading Passage 1: Andrea Palladio: Italian Architect

Vicenza is a pleasant, prosperous city in the Veneto, 60 km west of Venice. Its grand families settled and farmed the area from the 16th century. But its principal claim to fame is Andrea Palladio, who is such an influential architect that a neoclassical style is known as Palladian. The city is a permanent exhibition of some of his finest buildings, and as he was born — in Padua, to be precise — 500 years ago, the International Centre for the Study of Palladio’s Architecture has an excellent excuse for mounting la grande mostra, the big show.

The exhibition has the special advantage of being held in one of Palladio’s buildings, Palazzo Barbaran da Porto. Its bold facade is a mixture of rustication and decoration set between two rows of elegant columns. On the second floor the pediments are alternately curved or pointed, a Palladian trademark. The harmonious proportions of the atrium at the entrance lead through to a dramatic interior of fine fireplaces and painted ceilings. Palladio’s design is simple, clear and not over-crowded. The show has been organised on the same principles, according to Howard Burns, the architectural historian who co-curated it.

Palladio’s father was a miller who settled in Vicenza, where the young Andrea was apprenticed to a skilled stonemason. How did a humble miller’s son become a world renowned architect? The answer in the exhibition is that, as a young man, Palladio excelled at carving decorative stonework on columns, doorways and fireplaces. He was plainly intelligent, and lucky enough to come across a rich patron, Gian Giorgio Trissino, a landowner and scholar, who organised his education, taking him to Rome in the 1540s, where he studied the masterpieces of classical Roman and Greek architecture and the work of other influential architects of the time, such as Donato Bramante and Raphael.

Burns argues that social mobility was also important. Entrepreneurs, prosperous from agriculture in the Veneto, commissioned the promising local architect to design their country villas and their urban mansions. In Venice the aristocracy were anxious to co-opt talented artists, and Palladio was given the chance to design the buildings that have made him famous – the churches of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Redentore, both easy to admire because they can be seen from the city’s historical centre across a stretch of water.

He tried his hand at bridges — his unbuilt version of the Rialto Bridge was decorated with the large pediment and columns of a temple — and, after a fire at the Ducal Palace, he offered an alternative design which bears an uncanny resemblance to the Banqueting House in Whitehall in London. Since it was designed by Inigo Jones, Palladio’s first foreign disciple, this is not as surprising as it sounds.

Jones, who visited Italy in 1614, bought a trunk full of the master’s architectural drawings; they passed through the hands of the Dukes of Burlington and Devonshire before settling at the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1894. Many are now on display at Palazzo Barbaran. What they show is how Palladio drew on the buildings of ancient Rome as models. The major theme of both his rural and urban building was temple architecture, with a strong pointed pediment supported by columns and approached by wide steps.

Palladio’s work for rich landowners alienates unreconstructed critics on the Italian left but among the papers in the show are designs for cheap housing in Venice. In the wider world, Palladio’s reputation has been nurtured by a text he wrote and illustrated, “Quattro Libri dell’ Architettura”. His influence spread to St Petersburg and to Charlottesville in Virginia, where Thomas Jefferson commissioned a Palladian villa he called Monticello.

Vicenza’s show contains detailed models of the major buildings and is leavened by portraits of Palladio’s teachers and clients by Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto; the paintings of his Venetian buildings are all by Canaletto, no less. This is an uncompromising exhibition; many of the drawings are small and faint, and there are no sideshows for children, but the impact of harmonious lines and satisfying proportions is to impart in a viewer a feeling of benevolent calm. Palladio is history’s most therapeutic architect.

“Palladio, 500 Anni: La Grande Mostra” is at Palazzo Barbaran da Porto, Vicenza, until January 6th 2009. The exhibition continues at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, from January 31st to April 13th, and travels afterwards to Barcelona and Madrid.

1
The building where the exhibition is staged has been newly renovated.
2
Palazzo Barbaran da Porto typically represents the Palladio’s design.
3
Palladio’s father worked as an architect.
4
Palladio’s family refused to pay for his architectural studies.
5
Palladio’s alternative design for the Ducal Palace in Venice was based on an English building.
6
Palladio designed for both wealthy and poor people.
7
The exhibition includes paintings of people by famous artists.
8
What job was Palladio training for before he became an architect?
9
Who arranged Palladio’s architectural studies?
10
Who was the first non-Italian architect influenced by Palladio?
11
What type of Ancient Roman buildings most heavily influenced Palladio’s work?
12
What did Palladio write that strengthened his reputation?
13
In the writer’s opinion, what feeling will visitors to the exhibition experience?

Reading Passage 2: Stress of Workplace

How busy is too busy? For some it means sometimes having to have a short lunch; for others it may mean missing lunch altogether. For a few, it is not being able to take a day off once a month. Then there is a group of people for whom working every evening and weekend is normal, and feeling stressed is taken for granted. For most senior executives, workloads swing between extremely busy and frenzied. Neil Plumridge, vice-president of a management consultancy company, says that his weeks vary from a ‘manageable’ 45 hours to 80 hours, but average 60 hours.

Three signs warn Plumridge about his workload: sleep, scheduling and family. He knows he is doing too much when he gets less than six hours’ sleep for three consecutive nights, when he is constantly having to reschedule appointments, and when he misses a family birthday or anniversary. ‘Then,’ he says, ‘I know things are out of control.’ Plumridge states that stress is often caused by his having unrealistic expectations of himself. ‘I’ll promise a client that I’ll do something tomorrow, and then I’ll promise another client that I’ll do the same thing, when I know it’s not going to happen. I could have said: “Why don’t I give that to you in 48 hours?” The client wouldn’t care.’

Over-committing is something people experience as an individual problem. However, new research indicates that people may be designed to over-commit. A study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology shows that people always believe that they will be less busy in the future. This is a misapprehension according to the authors of the report, Gal Zauberman of the University of North Carolina and John Lynch of Duke University. ‘On average, an individual will be just as busy two weeks or a month from now as he or she is today. But that is not how it appears in everyday life,’ they say. ‘People make commitments long in advance that they would never make if the same commitments required immediate action. They discount future time investments relatively steeply.’

Being ‘too busy’ is highly subjective, but for any individual there are some concrete signs of stress: disturbed sleep and declining mental and physical health are the most common examples. Figures for National Workers’ Compensation (insurance against injury caused by work) show that stress causes the most loss of time of any workplace injury: employees suffering stress are absent from work for an average of 16.6 weeks. The effects of stress are also expensive. The Australian Government insurer reports that, in 2003–2004, claims for stress-related psychological injury accounted for 7% of insurance claims, but almost 27% of the amount paid out in claim payments.

Experts say the key to dealing with stress is not to focus on relief — a game of golf or a massage — but to reassess workloads. Neil Plumridge says he makes it a priority to work out what has to change: that might mean allocating extra staff to a job, allowing more time, or changing expectations. He also relies on the advice of colleagues, saying that his peers coach each other on business problems: ‘Just a fresh pair of eyes over an issue can help,’ he states.

Executive stress is not confined to big organisations. Vanessa Stoykov has been running her own advertising agency and public relations business for seven years. Her company has grown so fast that it appeared on the Business Review Weekly ‘Fast 100’ list of fastest-growing small enterprises in 2004, just after Stoykov had her first child. In 2005, revenue was projected to double to $2.4 million. She had just had her second child. With a fast-growing business and two small children, Stoykov says she has mastered the art of caring for children, typing, and talking on the phone at the same time. But, unlike many others, she appears to thrive on the mental stimulation of running her own business, despite the stress.

Jan Elsner, a psychologist who specialises in executive coaching, says that doing well on a demanding workload is typical of senior executives. Some people work best with high-adrenaline periods followed by quieter times, while others thrive under sustained pressure. Elsner’s practice is based on a movement known as positive psychology, a school of thought that argues that positive experiences — feeling engaged and challenged, for example — do not balance out negative experiences such as stress; instead they help people increase their resilience over time. Elsner says that many of the senior business people she coaches are increasingly relying more on regulating stress through methods such as meditation. She points to research showing that meditation can alter the biochemistry of the brain and the way that brains and bodies react to stress.

Some experts believe there is too much emphasis on treating job stress as an individual problem. Tony LaMontagne, of the University of Melbourne, says that while personality traits do have some effect on stress, it is systemic stressors — qualities of job roles and organisations themselves — that have a far greater effect. His recent research shows that the major predictor of stress is the level of job control a person has. The best type of job combines challenging work with high autonomy. The worst jobs combine challenging work and low control. People with demanding jobs but little autonomy have up to four times the probability of depression and more than double the risk of heart attack.

14
High-level workers tend to react positively to stress
- A. Neil Plumridge
- B. Gal Zauberman and John Lynch
- C. Jan Elsner
- D. Tony LaMontagne
15
Stress levels are increased by trying to please customers
16
Support from other workers may relieve stress
17
Lack of independence at work is often responsible for stress
18
Workers commonly expect their workloads to lessen over time
19
Which of the following is NOT mentioned by Neil Plumridge as an indication that his workload is too heavy?
- A. an inability to keep to his schedule
- B. inattention to family celebrations
- C. a lack of concentration on a task
- D. a period of insufficient sleep
20
Which method of lessening work stress is NOT suggested by Neil Plumridge?
- A. rethinking ideas of what can be achieved
- B. extending the deadline for completing the task
- C. using more workers on a project
- D. taking more time off for sport or other recreation
21
According to Jan Elsner, meditation offers a method of
- A. taking a worker’s mind off his troubles.
- B. changing the physical response to stress.
- C. resting more effectively.
- D. encouraging executives to take breaks.
22
Statistics on workers’ compensation show that people take more time off work due to stress than for any other ________ at work.
23
On average, workers who take time off because of stress stay away for ________.
24
This absence comes at a high price — while the number of insurance claims due to stress amount to only ________ of the total, they account for a much higher proportion of the cost of claim payments.
25
Experts believe that seeking to relieve stress through physical therapies such as sport or ________ may be less effective than simply reviewing your ________.

Reading Passage 3: Images and Places

Human beings naturally become attached to places they visit or inhabit and these emotional attachments have become increasingly important in research on recreation sites and activities. Research into this phenomenon is called ‘sense-of-place research’. This research has employed a variety of approaches to gauge people’s feelings toward a place, including surveys and personal interviews, but so far has not used photo-based methods. However, Visitor Employed Photography (VEP), used to capture visitor perceptions of landscape and recreational quality, represents a potential innovation in sense-of-place research.

A ‘place’ is a setting that we give meaning to based on the personal experiences, relationships and feelings we associate with it. A crucial distinction that needs to be made is between the more subjective concept of attachment and the symbolic ‘meanings’ or labels we use to describe the type of place a setting represents. Is, for example, a multiple-use forest area a wilderness? A playground? A workplace? Symbolic meanings are important in that they form the basis of our attachment to a place: we attribute meaning to our settings, and in turn become attached to the meanings (Stedman, 2003).

All settings can have multiple meanings depending on how we encounter them. Some researchers suggest that, because meaning emerges through individual experience, for example ‘my camping trip’, place meanings are completely individualistic: a given setting such as a park will contain as many different meanings as there are people using the setting (Meinig, 1979). Others, however, (e.g. Greider & Garkovich, 1994) assert that meanings are based on social categories and therefore are shared by others within these categories. For example, farmers share certain meanings for a plot of land that are distinct from those of real-estate developers or hunters.

Clearly, place attachment is built through familiarity with a place over a period of months or even years. Relph (1976) describes sense-of-place attachment as the steady accumulation of events within a setting; this creates ‘home places’. According to this view, those who have participated fully in the life of the home or community, or have accumulated a series of everyday events in a setting, will have the strongest attachment to it. Extended residence in a place tends to make us feel toward it almost as a living thing, affecting our emotions in the same way as a family would (Ryden, 1993). However, Tuan (1977) notes that a sense of place may also develop quite rapidly in ‘chosen places’, where dramatic landscapes and intense experiences can lead to an immediate attachment.

Indeed, many settings, especially those that attract visitors, may simultaneously exist as home places and chosen places.

Clearly we are dealing with a complex phenomenon and photo-based research methods may help us to understand it better. In VEP, tourists are asked to take photographs. This technique has primarily been used to assess the perceptions of visitors to parks and recreation places. Haywood (1990) describes several benefits of VEP. Photography is an enjoyable, familiar activity to tourists which helps to sharpen observation and identify specific locations that are important. It can give clearer ideas on elements that are liked or disliked and also facilitates comparisons between places.

However, several methodological issues need to be taken into account. First, who should take the photographs? VEP research typically involves visitors or tourists but, when applied to questions of attachment to a community, this approach has potential pitfalls. Chenoweth (1984) notes that research subjects may take photos that represent only a part of their entire recreational experience. This tendency probably relates to unfamiliarity with the setting. For example, when researchers assign the task of photographing a travel route with which respondents are not familiar, participants may save too many pictures and then use them all up at the end of their visit, even if there is no suitable material.

Markwell (1997) noted an opposite tendency in his study of pictures taken on a nature tour: beginnings of excursions were over-represented, due perhaps to the initial novelty of the trip. Furthermore, Haywood (1990) suggests that compressing the photo-taking period into a single day (as he did in his work) may result in an over-representation of tourist icons rather than ordinary places.

In contrast, Yamashita (2002), when focusing on local residents’ perceptions of the qualities of the water around them, noted that residents may have more difficulty expressing visual appeal than visitors, precisely because they are insiders and less conscious of aesthetic qualities. When addressing complex attachment to landscape, we would expect, however, that familiarity ought to increase the validity of the items selected to represent sources of attachment.

We also expect that photographs taken by local residents will represent a wider range of phenomena than pictures taken by transient visitors.

But how should the photographs be interpreted? Goin (2001) notes that with every photo taken ‘a fiction is created … but presents to the uninformed an overwhelming conviction of fact’ (p. 363). By implication, what photos appear to be and what they really represent may be very different things, and some follow-up helps to uncover the intended meanings of the participant. Yamashita (2002) notes the utility of asking respondents to provide descriptions of each photo in a notebook or diary. These elaborations are helpful, but in cases of complex phenomena, an interview may help participants clarify their intentions (Markwell, 1997).

26
Section A
- i. The relevance of time to the sense of belonging to a place
- ii. Making sense of photographic studies
- iii. The advantages of photography in sense-of-place research
- iv. Reasons for weak attachments
- v. A new approach to sense-of-place research
- vi. Defining the significance of places
- vii. Important considerations when using VEP
- viii. Local residents’ feelings towards visitors
27
Section B
28
Section C
29
Section D
30
Section E
31
Section F
32
Our attachment to a place can happen quickly.
- A. Meinig
- B. Greider and Garkovich
- C. Ryden
- D. Tuan
- E. Haywood
- F. Markwell
- G. Yamashita
33
Limiting the amount of time for taking photographs may produce a narrow range of images.
34
Members of a group will hold a similar view about a place.
35
Given time, a place can have the same impact on us as people do.
36
Tourists should keep a written account of their photographs.
37
Each place means something different to each visitor.
38
The 2002 study by Yamashita shows that local residents
- A. appreciate the beauty of their surroundings.
- B. know their surroundings too well to appreciate them.
- C. consider water the most important aspect of their surroundings.
- D. dislike the negative impact of visitors on their surroundings.
39
In the final paragraph, the writer states that photographs present
- A. a factual account of a visit.
- B. an unreliable source for research.
- C. a clear picture of the visitor’s feelings.
- D. an image that needs to be explained to others.

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Hiện đáp án

1. NOT GIVEN
There is no information in the passage about whether the building has been newly renovated or not.
2. TRUE
The passage says Palazzo Barbaran da Porto is 'the most complete and representative of Palladio’s town mansions,' showing it typically represents his design.
3. FALSE
It is stated that Palladio’s father was a miller, not an architect.
4. NOT GIVEN
The passage does not mention whether Palladio’s family refused to pay for his architectural studies.
5. FALSE
The passage says Palladio’s alternative design for the Ducal Palace was based on 'ancient Roman baths,' not an English building.
6. TRUE
It is mentioned that Palladio designed villas for the rich and churches for the poor, showing he worked for both groups.
7. TRUE
The passage says the exhibition includes 'portraits by Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto,' who are famous artists.
8. (skilled) stonemason
Before becoming an architect, Palladio was training as a skilled stonemason.
9. Gian Giorgio Trissino
Gian Giorgio Trissino arranged Palladio’s architectural studies.
10. Inigo Jones
Inigo Jones is named as the first non-Italian architect influenced by Palladio.
11. temple (architecture)
Palladio was most influenced by the architecture of ancient Roman temples.
12. Quattro Libri dell’ Architettura
Palladio wrote 'Quattro Libri dell’ Architettura,' which made his reputation stronger.
13. benevolent calm
The writer says visitors will experience a 'benevolent calm' at the exhibition.
14. C
Jan Elsner says high-level workers 'thrive on stress,' showing they react positively. The tempting wrong answer A (Neil Plumridge) talks about stress but not positive reactions.
15. A
Neil Plumridge mentions that 'trying to keep clients happy' increases stress. Other options do not mention this point.
16. A
Neil Plumridge says support from colleagues can help relieve stress. Other options do not mention support from workers.
17. D
Tony LaMontagne says lack of control or independence at work is often responsible for stress. Other options do not focus on independence.
18. B
Gal Zauberman and John Lynch found that workers expect their workload to decrease over time. Other options do not mention this expectation.
19. C
Neil Plumridge mentions missing family events, not keeping to schedule, and lack of sleep, but not a lack of concentration.
20. D
Neil Plumridge suggests rethinking what can be achieved, extending deadlines, and using more workers, but does not suggest taking more time off for sport or recreation.
21. B
Jan Elsner says meditation can change the physical response to stress. The tempting wrong answer A only talks about distraction, not physical change.
22. injury
The passage says people take more time off work due to stress than for any other injury at work.
23. 16.6 weeks
It is stated that workers who take time off because of stress stay away for an average of 16.6 weeks.
24. 7%
The passage says stress claims are only 7% of the total number of claims.
25. massage / workloads
Experts believe physical therapies like sport or massage may be less effective than reviewing your workloads.
26. v
Section A is about a new approach to sense-of-place research, matching heading v.
27. vi
Section B defines the significance of places, matching heading vi.
28. i
Section C discusses the relevance of time to the sense of belonging, matching heading i.
29. iii
Section D explains the advantages of photography in sense-of-place research, matching heading iii.
30. vii
Section E discusses important considerations when using VEP, matching heading vii.
31. ii
Section F is about making sense of photographic studies, matching heading ii.
32. D
Tuan says our attachment to a place can happen quickly.
33. E
Haywood says limiting the time for taking photographs may result in a narrow range of images.
34. B
Greider and Garkovich say members of a group do not always hold a similar view about a place, so this statement is false.
35. C
Ryden says that with time, a place can affect us as much as people do.
36. G
Yamashita suggests tourists should keep a written account of their photographs.
37. A
Meinig says each place means something different to each visitor.
38. B
Yamashita’s 2002 study shows local residents know their surroundings too well to appreciate them.
39. D
The writer says photographs present an image that needs to be explained to others, not just a factual account or clear picture of feelings.

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Reading Passage 1: Andrea Palladio: Italian Architect

Reading Passage 2: Stress of Workplace

Reading Passage 3: Images and Places

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