Reading 2026-07 Test 23 — IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test with Answers

基于考生回忆投稿及材料收集整理 — 非官方 IELTS 资料。

Reading Passage 1: The Baobab Tree

The baobab tree is an icon of the African continent. It can live for over a thousand years and is a vital source of food, water and shelter for indigenous peoples and wildlife alike. Given the tree's many practical uses, it is not surprising that the baobab features so prominently in traditional African folklore.

The baobab is a prehistoric species which predates both mankind and the splitting of the continents over 200 million years ago. It belongs to the genus Adansonia, which contains nine species. These are found in the drier parts of Africa, Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka and Australia. Of the nine species, six are native to Madagascar, two to mainland Africa and one to Australia. The African and Australian baobabs look very similar, even though they are not the same species. Baobabs grow in 32 African countries. In West Africa, the baobab's presence is often an indication of a human settlement nearby. The tree is most frequently found in dry, hot savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa, where the climate is extremely arid and rainfall is low.

The baobab is a deciduous tree, which means that it loses its leaves during the dry season. It is a succulent, which means that during the rainy season it absorbs and stores water in its vast trunk. This water enables it to produce a nutrient-dense fruit in the dry season when all around is dry and arid. The trunk has a diameter of 10-14 metres and the tree has a height of 18-25 metres. The baobab tree is a strange looking tree that grows in low-lying areas in Africa. Its trunk is very wide and it has large white flowers that bloom at night. Its leaves are finger-like in shape. The baobab is a very versatile tree. Its leaves, bark, fruit and trunk are all useful to humans and animals.

The baobab's fruit is large and oval-shaped and it contains a mass of seeds. It is a rich source of vitamin C and its pulp can be used to make a refreshing drink. The pulp can also be used to treat fever, diarrhoea and malaria. The pulp can be stored until it is needed. The seeds of the fruit can be used to produce oil. This oil is used to protect the skin and it is also used in the cosmetic industry. The leaves of the baobab are also useful. They can be eaten fresh or they can be dried and stored. They are rich in iron and can be used as a medicine. The leaves can be used to treat asthma, insect bites and several other ailments. The leaves can also be used as a sauce for food. The bark of the baobab is also useful. It can be used to make cloth and rope. The bark can also be used to make musical instruments, waterproof hats and fishing lines. The bark has also been used to protect young plants from animals. The bark of the baobab is also used to treat fever. The trunk of the baobab is very wide and it can be used as a shelter. It is also used for storage and it can also be used as a source of water in dry periods. The baobab can also be used to make a variety of things such as musical instruments, handcrafts, pots to grow plants in, and many other useful items. The tree also provides shade for animals and humans. The tree is also a source of fuel and is used as a firebreak as well.

The baobab is also known as the 'tree of life' because it can provide shelter, clothing, food, and water for the animal and human inhabitants of the African savannah regions. The tree is also an important source of food for many different creatures such as insects and animals. The flowers provide food for fruit bats, which play an important role in pollinating the flowers. The seeds are eaten by various mammals such as baboons, monkeys and warthogs. Elephants and eland eat the bark of the baobab tree. The flowers provide food for birds, bees and other insects. The baobab tree is home to snakes and tree frogs. The tree is also home to bush babies, which feed on the flowers. The tree is also home to birds such as the mottled spinetail, the grey-headed parrot and the mottled swift. The tree is also host to the African honey bee.

The baobab tree is under threat because of the increasing human population. The trees are being cut down for their bark, which is used to make rope, mats and baskets. The trees are also being cut down to make way for farmland. The baobab is also under threat from climate change.

1
The baobab tree has been a part of African folklore because of its symbolic representation in ancient times.
2
Baobab trees are only found on the African continent.
3
In West Africa, the presence of a baobab tree often indicates nearby human settlements.
4
Baobab trees are commonly found in humid tropical rainforests.
5
The baobab stores water in its trunk during the rainy season to survive dry periods.
6
The leaves of the baobab tree can be used to make a medicinal sauce.
7
Baobab trees are pollinated exclusively by fruit bats.
8
Leaves can be used to make a ______
9
Bark can be used to protect ______ from animals
10
Trunk can provide ______ and water
11
Trunk can be used to make ______
12
General: provides ______ for animals and humans
13
General: can be used to make ______ to burn

Reading Passage 2: The Lost City

The low granite mountain, known as Kerkenes Dag, juts from the northern edge of the Cappadocian plain in Turkey. Sprawled over the mountainside are the ruins of an enormous city, contained by crumbling defensive walls seven kilometers long. Many respected archaeologists believe these are the remains of the fabled city of Pteria, the sixth-century BC stronghold of the Medes that the Greek historian Herodotus described in his famous work The Histories. The short-lived city came under Median control and only fifty years later was sacked, burned and its strong stone walls destroyed.

British archaeologist Dr Geoffrey Summers has spent ten years studying the site. Excavating the ruins is a challenge because of the vast area they cover. The 7 km perimeter walls run around a site covering 271 hectares. Dr Summers quickly realised it would take far too long to excavate the site using traditional techniques alone. So he decided to use modern technology as well to map the entire site, both above and beneath the surface, to locate the most interesting areas and priorities to start digging.

In 1993, Dr Summers hired a special hand-held balloon with a remote-controlled camera attached. He walked over the entire site holding the balloon and taking photos. Then one afternoon, he rented a hot-air balloon and floated over the site, taking yet more pictures. By the end of the 1994 season, Dr Summers and his team had a jigsaw of aerial photographs of the whole site. The next stage was to use remote sensing, which would let them work out what lay below the intriguing outlines and ruined walls. “Archaeology is a discipline that lends itself very well to remote sensing because it revolves around space,” says Scott Branting, an associated director of the project. He started working with Dr Summers in 1995.

The project used two main remote-sensing techniques. The first is magnetometry, which works on the principle that magnetic fields at the surface of the Earth are influenced by what is buried beneath. It measures localised variations in the direction and intensity of this magnetic field. “The Earth's magnetic field can vary from place to place, depending on what happened there in the past,” says Branting. “If something containing iron oxide was heavily burnt, by natural or human actions, the iron particles in it can be permanently reoriented, like a compass needle, to align with the Earth's magnetic field present at that point in time and space.” The magnetometer detects differences in the orientations and intensities of these iron particles from the present-day magnetic field and uses them to produce an image of what lies below ground.

Kerkenes Dag lends itself particularly well to magnetometry because it was all burnt once in a savage fire. In places the heat was sufficient to turn sandstone to glass and to melt granite. The fire was so hot that there were strong magnetic signatures set to the Earth's magnetic field from the time — around 547 BC — resulting in extremely clear pictures. Furthermore, the city was never rebuilt. “If you have multiple layers, it can confuse pictures, because you have different walls from different periods giving signatures that all go in different directions,” says Branting. “We only have one going down about 1.5 meters, so we can get a good picture of this fairly short-lived city.”

The other main sub-surface mapping technique, which is still being used at the site, is resistivity. This technique measures the way electrical pulses are conducted through sub-surface soil. It’s done by shooting pulses into the ground through a thin metal probe. Different materials have different electrical conductivity. For example, stone and mudbrick are poor conductors, but looser, damp soil conducts very well. By walking around the site and taking about four readings per metre, it is possible to get a detailed idea of what is where beneath the surface. The teams then build up pictures of walls, hearths and other remains. “It helps a lot if it has rained, because the electrical pulse can get through more easily,” says Branting. “Then if something is more resistant, it really shows up.” This is one of the reasons that the project has a spring season, when most of the resistivity work is done. Unfortunately, testing resistivity is a lot slower than magnetometry. “If we did resistivity over the whole site it would take about 100 years,” says Branting. Consequently, the team is concentrating on areas where they want to clarify pictures from the magnetometry.

Remote sensing does not reveal everything about Kerkenes Dag, but it shows the most interesting sub-surface areas of the site. The archaeologists can then excavate these using traditional techniques. One surprise came when they dug out one of the gates in the defensive walls. “Our observations in early seasons led us to assume that we were looking at a stone base from a mudbrick city wall, such as would be found at most other cities in the Ancient Near East,” says Dr Summers. “When we started to excavate we were staggered to discover that the walls were made entirely from stone and that the gate would have stood at least ten metres high. After ten years of study, Pteria is gradually giving up its secrets.”

14
The reason for the deployment of a variety of investigative methods
15
An example of an unexpected find
16
How the surface of the site was surveyed from above
17
The reason why experts are interested in the site
18
Archaeologists began working ten years ago. They started by taking photographs of the site from the ground and then from a distance in a ________.
19
They focused on what lay below the surface using a magnetometer, which identifies variations in the magnetic field. These variations occur when the ________ in buried structures have changed direction as a result of great heat.
20
They line up with the surrounding magnetic field just as a ________ would do.
21
The other remote-sensing technique employed was resistivity. This uses a ________ to fire electrical pulses into the earth.
22
The principle is that building materials like ________ and stone do not conduct electricity well.
23
While ________ does this much more effectively.
24
This technique is mainly employed during the ________ when conditions are more favourable.
25
Resistivity is mainly being used to ________ some images generated by the magnetometer.
26
How do modern remote-sensing techniques help at the Pteria site?
- A. They detect minute buried objects for the archaeologists to dig up.
- B. They pinpoint key areas which would be worth investigating closely.
- C. They remove the need for archaeologists to excavate any part of the site.
- D. They extend the research period as they can be used at any time of year.

Reading Passage 3: Images and Places

A 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.

B 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.

C 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.

D 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.

E 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.

F 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).

27
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
28
Section B
29
Section C
30
Section D
31
Section E
32
Section F
33
Our attachment to a place can happen quickly.
34
Limiting the amount of time for taking photographs may produce a narrow range of images.
35
Members of a group will hold a similar view about a place.
36
Given time, a place can have the same impact on us as people do.
37
Tourists should keep a written account of their photographs.
38
Each place means something different to each visitor.
39
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.
40
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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显示答案

1. FALSE
The passage does not say the baobab tree was part of African folklore because of its symbolic meaning in ancient times, so this statement is false.
2. FALSE
The passage explains that baobab trees are found not only in Africa but also in places like Madagascar and Australia, so they are not only found on the African continent.
3. TRUE
It is stated that in West Africa, baobab trees are often found near human settlements, which makes this statement true.
4. FALSE
The passage says baobab trees are found in dry areas, not in humid tropical rainforests, so this statement is false.
5. TRUE
The baobab stores water in its trunk during the rainy season to survive dry periods, as clearly mentioned in the passage.
6. TRUE
The passage states that baobab leaves can be used to make a medicinal sauce, so this is true.
7. FALSE
The passage says baobab trees are pollinated by fruit bats and other animals, so they are not pollinated exclusively by fruit bats.
8. sauce
The passage says the leaves can be used to make a sauce.
9. plants
The bark can be used to protect plants from animals, as mentioned in the passage.
10. shelter
The trunk can provide shelter and water, according to the passage.
11. pots
The trunk can be used to make pots, as stated in the passage.
12. shade
The baobab provides shade for animals and humans, as described in the passage.
13. fuel
The passage says the baobab can be used to make fuel to burn.
14. B
Option B is correct because the passage explains that a variety of investigative methods were used to get a complete understanding of the site. Option A is tempting but does not explain the reason for using different methods.
15. G
Option G is correct because it gives an example of an unexpected find at the site.
16. C
Option C is correct because it describes how the surface was surveyed from above, such as using a hot-air balloon.
17. A
Option A is correct because it explains why experts are interested in the site.
18. hot-air balloon
The answer is 'hot-air balloon' because the passage says photographs were taken from the ground and then from a distance in a hot-air balloon.
19. iron particles
The answer is 'iron particles' because the passage says variations in the magnetic field occur when the iron particles in buried structures have changed direction due to heat.
20. compass / compass needle
The answer is 'compass' or 'compass needle' because the passage compares the alignment of iron particles to how a compass lines up with the magnetic field.
21. thin metal probe
The answer is 'thin metal probe' because the passage says resistivity uses a thin metal probe to send electrical pulses into the earth.
22. mudbrick
The answer is 'mudbrick' because the passage says building materials like mudbrick and stone do not conduct electricity well.
23. looser damp soil
The answer is 'looser damp soil' because the passage says this type of soil conducts electricity much more effectively.
24. spring season
The answer is 'spring season' because the passage says this technique is mainly used during the spring when conditions are better.
25. clarify
The answer is 'clarify' because the passage says resistivity is mainly used to clarify some images from the magnetometer.
26. B
Option B is correct because the passage says modern remote-sensing techniques help pinpoint key areas to investigate. Option A is tempting but the techniques do not detect minute objects directly.
27. v
Option v is correct because Section A introduces a new approach to sense-of-place research.
28. vi
Option vi is correct because Section B is about defining the significance of places.
29. i
Option i is correct because Section C discusses the relevance of time to the sense of belonging to a place.
30. iii
Option iii is correct because Section D talks about the advantages of photography in sense-of-place research.
31. vii
Option vii is correct because Section E discusses important considerations when using VEP.
32. ii
Option ii is correct because Section F is about making sense of photographic studies.
33. D
The answer is D because it says our attachment to a place can happen quickly.
34. E
The answer is E because it states that limiting the time for taking photos may result in a narrow range of images.
35. B
The answer is B because the passage says members of a group will hold a similar view about a place.
36. C
The answer is C because the passage says that given time, a place can affect us as much as people do.
37. G
The answer is G because the passage suggests tourists should keep a written account of their photographs.
38. A
The answer is A because the passage says each place means something different to each visitor.
39. B
Option B is correct because the 2002 study by Yamashita shows local residents know their surroundings too well to appreciate them. Option A is tempting but the study focuses on familiarity, not appreciation.
40. D
Option D is correct because the writer states that photographs present an image that needs to be explained to others, not just a factual account or a clear picture of feelings.

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