IELTS Academic Reading practice test 5

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1 to 13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Listening to the young: one town's experiment in youth democracy

When Harwick, a mid-sized town in the English Midlands, announced that it would cut five of its bus routes to save money, few people expected the decision to bring hundreds of teenagers onto the streets. Yet within a fortnight, secondary school and college students had organised a series of peaceful daytime marches from the railway station to the town hall, carrying hand-painted banners and chanting the numbers of the routes they were about to lose. For many of them, the buses were the only way to reach evening classes, part-time jobs and sports clubs on the far side of the river. What followed was less peaceful. On several evenings after the marches, groups gathered in the town centre, shop windows were smashed and a number of people were arrested. Local newspapers were quick to connect the damage with the protests, and some residents called for future marches to be banned. The picture, however, turned out to be more complicated. Harwick police later said that most of those arrested had no link to the students who had organised the daytime marches. Several were adults from outside the town, and officers suggested that the crowds had simply offered cover for people who were looking for trouble. The council leader, Margaret Ellison, faced a choice. A ban would have been popular with some voters, but she worried that it would confirm what many young people already believed: that nobody in authority was interested in what they had to say. Instead, she announced that the council would create a Youth Assembly, a body of young residents who would advise councillors on decisions affecting their lives. 'If they are angry about decisions made without them,' she told a public meeting, 'the obvious answer is to stop making decisions without them.' The question of who should sit on the assembly proved surprisingly difficult. The task of designing it was given to Daniel Okafor, a youth worker who had spent fifteen years running clubs on the town's housing estates. Okafor feared that an election would simply reward the confident pupils who already sat on school councils; a lottery, he argued, would reach teenagers who would never put themselves forward. The method was borrowed from the way adults are chosen for jury service. Just as a jury is meant to reflect the community rather than its most outspoken members, the assembly would be drawn by chance, with places balanced across schools, neighbourhoods and age groups. Invitations were posted to students drawn at random from the town's school rolls, and youth workers followed up by phoning or visiting families who did not reply. Okafor admits that some parents were suspicious at first, assuming the letters were a marketing trick or a request for money. Members are paid a small allowance for each meeting they attend, and their bus fares are covered. Each member serves a single year and cannot be drawn again, and the assembly meets once a month in the town hall. The rule against a second term is deliberate: it prevents a small group from becoming permanent spokespeople and means that, over time, a growing number of young residents will have taken part. The way meetings are run is just as carefully planned. Meetings are chaired not by a councillor but by an independent facilitator. Okafor's view was that teenagers would hesitate to argue with a councillor in the chair, however friendly. Council officers who present a problem may bring slides, but they must explain it without jargon. Members are encouraged to interrupt whenever a term is unclear, and officers who have attended say the experience has changed how they write reports for adult councillors too. The assembly has real but limited power. The council is under no obligation to accept the assembly's advice, but it must send a written reply to each recommendation within two months. Where a recommendation is rejected, the reply must give reasons, and it is read aloud at the next meeting. Its first recommendation, unsurprisingly, concerned the buses that had started the whole affair. What surprised many observers was its modesty. After two sessions examining the council's transport budget, members concluded that the money for a full service simply did not exist. Rather than demanding that every route be reinstated, members accepted the daytime cuts and asked only for the evening service to Harwick College to return. They backed the proposal with a survey that they had designed and carried out themselves among students at the college, and with a revised timetable for the evening route. The timetable removed two late journeys that the survey showed were rarely used, which reduced the cost considerably. The evening bus was reinstated on a trial basis for six months. If passenger numbers stay at the level the survey predicted, it will become permanent. The experiment has attracted attention well beyond the town. Officials from several neighbouring councils have travelled to Harwick to sit in on meetings. Not everyone is convinced, though. Sceptics point out that, while the assembly is paid for out of the youth services budget, its real influence rests on the goodwill of Margaret Ellison. A future leader, they argue, could reply politely to every recommendation and act on none of them. Okafor accepts that the risk is real, but he believes the young people themselves are the best protection against it. 'A year ago, most of them had never been inside the town hall,' he says. 'Now they know how the place works. That is not something a new leader can take away.'

1. Most of the people arrested after the evening disturbances in Harwick had helped to organise the student protests.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

2. Members were chosen by lottery partly so that the assembly would include young people who would not normally volunteer.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

3. The majority of the students who received an invitation agreed to join the assembly.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

4. The council must respond in writing to every recommendation the assembly makes.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

5. In its first recommendation, the assembly asked for all of the cancelled bus routes to be restored.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

6. Several other councils have since set up youth assemblies based on the Harwick model.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

7. • the lottery method was borrowed from the way people are selected for {{7}} service

8. • each member sits on the assembly for one {{8}} only

9. • sessions are chaired by an independent {{9}}

10. • council officers must explain issues without using {{10}}

11. • members supported their case with a {{11}} of college students

12. • the evening service was brought back on a {{12}} basis

13. • the assembly's influence may depend on the {{13}} of the council leader

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14 to 26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Keeping the mind sharp in later life

A Ageing leaves visible marks on the brain. Scans of older adults commonly reveal a modest loss of volume, and some of the pathways that carry signals between regions become slower. Yet such images are a poor guide to how a person actually thinks and remembers from day to day. Two people whose brains show much the same age-related changes may live very different mental lives. One explanation that researchers have proposed is what they call cognitive reserve. The term describes a store of spare capacity that allows the brain to cope with damage or ageing by using other routes: when one network begins to falter, a well-stocked brain can call on alternative networks to complete the same task. Reserve appears to be built up over a lifetime, particularly through the number of years a person spends in education and through work that calls for complex thinking. It does not prevent the physical changes of age, but it may delay the point at which they start to interfere with everyday life. B Over the past two decades, brain-training games and apps have found an eager audience among older adults, and many people are willing to pay a monthly subscription in the hope of protecting their memory. The research on these products, however, points to a narrower benefit than their advertising might suggest. Typically, players become noticeably better at the particular games they practise, yet these gains rarely carry over to the mental tasks of ordinary life, such as remembering an appointment or following a conversation in a busy room. Improvement, in other words, tends to stay attached to the exercise that produced it, rather than producing a general sharpening that shows up elsewhere. Age itself does not seem to be the obstacle. In several trials, older players improved roughly as much as younger players on the games they had practised. Such results sound encouraging for later life. However, many trials compared players with a group that did nothing at all, rather than with people doing another absorbing activity, so some of the apparent benefit may simply come from being kept busy. C If puzzles practised alone have such limited reach, what might work better? The more promising activities seem to be those that make physical, social and mental demands at the same time. Group dancing is a good illustration. To begin with, movement increases the flow of blood to the brain, and an evening on the dance floor involves a good deal of it. Dancing with a partner or in a class also brings regular contact with other people, often the same faces week after week, which gives participants a reason to turn up and to talk. Then there is the mental challenge: learning and recalling sequences of steps demands intense concentration, particularly when the music changes and dancers must adjust their timing without warning. A crossword completed alone at the kitchen table exercises only one of these three demands. Similar combinations can be found elsewhere. Singing in a choir means standing, breathing deeply, memorising words and blending with other voices, and many people take up a new language in retirement in a class where conversation is the whole point. There is a catch, however. The benefits appear to fade once a routine becomes easy and can be performed without thought, so the advice is to keep adding variety: a new dance style, a harder piece of music or an unfamiliar set of words. D Some of the most important influences on mental sharpness are also among the easiest to ignore: how well we hear and how well we sleep. Hearing loss develops slowly, and because many people accept it as a normal part of growing older, it often goes untreated for years. Its consequences reach further than missed words. When listening becomes hard work, the effort of making out the words leaves less capacity for storing what has been said, so a conversation may be followed at the time and yet forgotten soon afterwards. Over time, people who struggle to hear also change their behaviour: many gradually withdraw from conversations and social gatherings rather than keep asking others to repeat themselves, and this reduces the very social contact that keeps the mind active. Sleep matters for a different reason. During deep sleep the brain appears to sort and settle the experiences of the day, and when sleep is short or broken, it becomes harder to fix new memories so that they can be recalled later. Neither problem attracts the interest given to puzzles and apps, yet both can often be addressed with fairly simple help, from a hearing test to changes in evening habits. Keeping the mind sharp, it seems, depends as much on these ordinary foundations as on any special training.

14. Section A

i) How ageing alters the structure of the brain

Combining several kinds of challenge

Why the results of puzzle practice rarely spread

The commercial growth of the brain-training industry

v) A possible explanation for unequal outcomes

Everyday health issues that are easily overlooked

Problems in measuring memory accurately

15. Section B

i) How ageing alters the structure of the brain

Combining several kinds of challenge

Why the results of puzzle practice rarely spread

The commercial growth of the brain-training industry

v) A possible explanation for unequal outcomes

Everyday health issues that are easily overlooked

Problems in measuring memory accurately

16. Section C

i) How ageing alters the structure of the brain

Combining several kinds of challenge

Why the results of puzzle practice rarely spread

The commercial growth of the brain-training industry

v) A possible explanation for unequal outcomes

Everyday health issues that are easily overlooked

Problems in measuring memory accurately

17. Section D

i) How ageing alters the structure of the brain

Combining several kinds of challenge

Why the results of puzzle practice rarely spread

The commercial growth of the brain-training industry

v) A possible explanation for unequal outcomes

Everyday health issues that are easily overlooked

Problems in measuring memory accurately

18. Which TWO factors does the writer link to the development of cognitive reserve?

A) many years of formal education

B) a mentally demanding job

C) daily practice with word puzzles

D) learning a new language in retirement

E) a high level of fitness in early adulthood

19. Which TWO factors does the writer link to the development of cognitive reserve?

A) many years of formal education

B) a mentally demanding job

C) daily practice with word puzzles

D) learning a new language in retirement

E) a high level of fitness in early adulthood

20. Which TWO points does the writer make about research into brain-training games?

A) Older participants made similar progress to younger ones on the practised games

B) Players have often been compared with people who did no activity at all

C) Most of the research has been paid for by companies that sell the games

D) Improvements on the games usually disappear within a few weeks

E) Participants have mostly been people with existing memory problems

21. Which TWO points does the writer make about research into brain-training games?

A) Older participants made similar progress to younger ones on the practised games

B) Players have often been compared with people who did no activity at all

C) Most of the research has been paid for by companies that sell the games

D) Improvements on the games usually disappear within a few weeks

E) Participants have mostly been people with existing memory problems

22. According to the writer, which TWO effects can untreated hearing loss have?

A) It makes people more likely to avoid social situations

B) It directly damages the parts of the brain used for memory

C) It disturbs the quality of a person's sleep

D) It leaves less mental effort available for remembering

E) It discourages people from taking physical exercise

23. According to the writer, which TWO effects can untreated hearing loss have?

A) It makes people more likely to avoid social situations

B) It directly damages the parts of the brain used for memory

C) It disturbs the quality of a person's sleep

D) It leaves less mental effort available for remembering

E) It discourages people from taking physical exercise

24. Activities such as group dancing may benefit the ageing brain more than solitary puzzles do. Physical movement improves the supply of {{24}} to the brain, and dancing with others provides regular social contact.

25. Learning and recalling sequences of steps also requires a high level of {{25}}, especially when the music changes.

26. However, once a routine becomes easy, the benefits appear to decline, so people are advised to keep introducing {{26}} into what they do.

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27 to 40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Grieving a parent in early adulthood

When Leah Marsh's mother died of cancer last spring, Leah had just turned twenty-eight. She describes the months that followed as the hardest period of her life, and not only because of the loss itself. 'My friends were kind,' she says, 'but they were planning holidays and talking about promotions. I felt as if I had been moved into a different generation overnight.' Her experience is far from unusual. At twenty-eight, few people have lost a mother or father, and the bereaved person often finds that no one in their circle of friends has been through anything similar. Sympathy is offered, but the understanding that comes from shared experience is usually missing. Part of the difficulty lies in timing. The twenties are a decade of unfinished decisions about careers, homes and partners, and for many people a parent is still the first person they ring before making one. An older adult who loses a parent has usually settled many of these questions already; a younger one must face them without a familiar guide. There is a practical burden too. It might be expected that older relatives would take charge of the formalities. Yet it is often the adult children, however young, who are left to register the death, organise the funeral and sort out the parent's finances and property. Some do this while also supporting a surviving parent who is struggling to cope, a reversal of roles that few feel ready for. Dr Miriam Okafor, a psychotherapist with the online counselling service Harbour Line, says that many of the clients who contact her after a parent's death are in their twenties or early thirties. A large number arrive worried that they are grieving in the wrong way. 'They tell me they should be over it by now, or that they ought to feel angrier or sadder than they do,' she says. The familiar idea that grief moves through a fixed sequence of stages can, she admits, give people words for what they are feeling, but it becomes misleading when it is treated as a timetable that the bereaved are failing to keep. In her experience, grief comes in waves rather than steps: overwhelming one morning, almost absent the next, then returning without warning weeks later. The calmer periods can themselves cause guilt. Some clients feel that if they laughed at a friend's joke or enjoyed a meal, they cannot have loved their parent enough. She sees it differently. Spending an afternoon absorbed in work or a film, Okafor stresses, is not denial; moving back and forth between the loss and ordinary life is part of how grief is normally carried. The mind, she suggests, needs rest from sorrow much as the body needs rest after physical effort. Her view of the longer term also departs from older advice. Earlier generations were often told to 'let go' of the dead and 'move on', putting photographs away and avoiding painful subjects. Rather than urging clients to 'let go', Okafor encourages them to keep the relationship alive in some form: cooking a parent's recipes, writing them occasional letters or visiting places they loved together. Leah has taken up her mother's habit of walking a stretch of coast near the family home on Sunday mornings. 'It isn't sad, exactly,' she says. 'It's more like spending time with her.' Returning to work is often where these ideas are tested. Many employers grant only a few days of compassionate leave after the death of a close relative. A few days off is rarely enough, Okafor argues, because the full weight of a loss often arrives only weeks later, once the funeral is over and other people have returned to their routines. She recommends a phased return, in which the employee works shorter days at first and builds up to a normal week. A brief, honest conversation with a manager about what to expect, such as poor concentration or the occasional need to step away from a desk, can prevent misunderstandings on both sides. Outside work, Okafor often directs younger clients towards peer groups for young bereaved adults, some meeting in person and others online. Their value lies less in advice than in recognition. Nobody in the room has to justify why a song heard in a supermarket brought them to tears. Leah, who joined such a group four months after her mother died, says it was the first place where she did not feel like the odd one out. Members also help one another prepare for moments that many do not anticipate. Anniversaries are expected to be difficult, but grief often returns just as strongly at family milestones such as a wedding, a graduation or the birth of a first child. These occasions expose what counsellors call secondary losses: the grandparent who will never meet a grandchild, the advice that can no longer be asked for. Most people, Okafor emphasises, come through grief with the support of family, friends and time, and never need clinical treatment. For a minority, however, the pain does not ease. If, many months after the death, grief still makes it hard to function from day to day, Okafor suggests looking for further help. In such cases she advises seeing a family doctor, who can arrange a proper assessment, since prolonged grief is now formally recognised in international diagnostic manuals. Leah, now more than a year on, says the waves still come, though further apart. 'I used to think getting better meant thinking about her less,' she says. 'Now I think it means being able to think about her without falling apart.'

27. The death of a parent is more common among people in their twenties today than it was in the past.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

28. Losing a parent in early adulthood can remove a source of advice at a time when important life decisions are still being made.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

29. The practical tasks that follow a parent's death are usually dealt with by older relatives rather than by the young adult children.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

30. The online counselling service where Miriam Okafor works was set up specifically for people under the age of thirty-five.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

31. Okafor believes that the familiar model of grief as a series of stages is of no value to bereaved people.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

32. Concentrating on everyday activities for a period is not necessarily a sign that a grieving person is avoiding their loss.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

33. Okafor encourages clients to find ways of maintaining a connection with the parent who has died.

TRUE) TRUE

FALSE) FALSE

NOT GIVEN) NOT GIVEN

34. Many employers allow only a few days off, although the full {{34}} of a loss is often felt only weeks later.

35. Okafor recommends a {{35}}, with shorter working days during the first few weeks.

36. In groups for young bereaved adults, members do not need to {{36}} their reactions to other people.

37. Grief may return strongly at later {{37}}, such as a wedding or the birth of a child.

38. These occasions can reveal {{38}}, such as a grandparent who will never meet a grandchild.

39. Okafor suggests further help if, many months after the death, grief still makes it hard to {{39}} in everyday life.

40. In such cases, she advises people to consult their {{40}}, who can arrange a proper assessment.