Academic IELTS Reading Test 116

IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 116 With Answers ( Passage 1 Communicating in Colour, Passage 2 Father of modern management 2, Passage 3 The Persuaders ) we prefer you to work offline, download the test paper and blank answer sheet.

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For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 116 Answers

Reading Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 116 Reading Passage Communicating in Colour below.

Communicating in Colour

{A} There are more than 160 known species of chameleons. The main distribution is in Africa and Madagascar, and other tropical regions, although some species are also found in parts of southern Europe and Asia. There are introduced populations in Hawaii and probably in California and Florida too.

{B} New species are still discovered quite frequently. Dr Andrew Marshall, a conservationist from York University, was surveying monkeys in Tanzania, when he stumbled across a twig snake in the Magombera forest which, frightened, coughed up a chameleon and fled. Though a colleague persuaded him not to touch it because of the risk from the venom, Marshall suspected it might be a new species, and took a photograph to send to colleagues, who confirmed his suspicions. Kinyongia magomherae , literally “the chameleon from Magombera”, is the result, and the fact it was not easy to identify is precisely what made it unique. The most remarkable feature of chameleons is their ability to change colour, an ability rivalled only by cuttlefish and octopi in the animal kingdom. Because of this, colour is not the best thing for telling chameleons apart and different species are usually identified based on the patterning and shape of the head, and the arrangement of scales. In this case it was the bulge of scales on the chameleon’s nose.

{C} Chameleons are able to use colour for both communication and camouflage by switching from bright, showy colours to the exact colour of a twig within seconds. They show an extraordinary range of colours, from nearly black to bright blues, oranges, pinks and greens, even several at once. A popular misconception is that chameleons can match whatever background they are placed on, whether a chequered red and yellow shirt or a Smartie box. But each species has a characteristic set of cells containing pigment distributed over their bodies in a specific pattern, which determines the range of colours and patterns they can show. To the great disappointment of many children, placing a chameleon on a Smartie box generally results in a stressed, confused, dark grey or mottled chameleon.

{D} Chameleons are visual animals with excellent eyesight, and they communicate with colour. When two male dwarf chameleons encounter each other, each shows its brightest colours. They puff out their throats and present themselves side-on with their bodies flattened to appear as large as possible and to show off their colours. This enables them to assess each other from a distance. If one is clearly superior, the other quickly changes to submissive colouration, which is usually a dull combination of greys or browns.

{E} If the opponents are closely matched and both maintain their bright colours, the contest can escalate to physical fighting and jaw-locking, each trying to push each other along the branch in a contest of strength. Eventually, the loser will signal his defeat with submissive colouration.  Females also have aggressive displays used to repel male attempts at courtship. When courting a female, males display the same bright colours that they use during contests. Most of the time, females are unreceptive and aggressively reject males by displaying a contrasting light and dark colour pattern, with their mouths open and moving their bodies rapidly from side to side. If the male continues to court a female, she often chases and bites him until he retreats. The range of colour change during female displays, although impressive, is not as great as that shown by males.

{F} Many people assume that colour change evolved to enable chameleons to match a greater variety of backgrounds in their environment. If this was the case, then the ability of chameleons to change colour should be associated with the range of background colours in the chameleons habitat, but there is no evidence for such a pattern. For example, forest habitats might have a greater range of brown and green background colours than grasslands, so forest-dwelling species might be expected to have greater powers of colour change. Instead, the males whose display colours are the most eye-catching show the greatest colour change. Their displays are composed of colours that contrast highly with each other as well as with the background vegetation. This suggests that the species that evolved the most impressive capacities for colour change did so to enable them to intimidate rivals or attract mates rather than to facilitate camouflage.

{G} How do we know that chameleon display colours are eye-catching to another chameleon – or, for that matter, to a predatory bird? Getting a view from the perspective of chameleons or their bird predators requires information on the chameleons or birds visual system and an understanding of how their brains might process visual information. This is because the perceived colour of an object depends as much on the brain’s wiring as on the physical properties of the object itself. Luckily, recent scientific advances have made it possible to obtain such measurements in the field, and information on visual systems of a variety of animals is becoming increasingly available. 

Questions 1-2 

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.  Write your answers in boxes 1-2 on your answer sheet. 

Question 1 which situation can be inferred from the passage that a chameleons will display the most eye-catching colour

(A) when a chameleon hides in a bush after beating by another competitor 

(B) when a male dwarf rejected by a female chameleon 

(C) when a rival shows his contrast colour to the background 

(D) when a chameleon moving into a forest habitat from grassland

Question 2 which one purpose is NOT mentioned as the case that a chameleons will change its colour

(A) when a defeated chameleon changes into a submissive coloration 

(B) when a lurking chameleon want to hide its coloration in background avoid being attacked by a bird 

(C) when a female chameleon want to discourage having sex with a male 

(D) the chameleons in competition with an exaggerated size

Questions 3-5

Answer the questions below. 

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. 

Write your answers in boxes 3-5 on your answer sheet

(3) What kind of climate do most chameleons live in?

(4) What was the new species named after?

(5) Which part of the body is unique to the species Kinyongia magomberae?

Questions 6-13 

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 6-13 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the writer
NO if the statement does not agree with the writer
NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage

(6) Few creatures can change colour as effectively as cuttlefish.

(7) Chameleons can imitate a pattern provided there are more than two colours.

(8) Chameleons appear to enjoy trying out new colours.

(9) Size matters more than colour when male chameleons compete.

(10) After a fight, the defeated male hides among branches of a tree.

(11) The popular explanation of why chameleons change colour has been proved wrong

(12) There are more predators of chameleons in grassland habitats than in others.

(13) Measuring animals’ visual systems necessitate removing them from their habitat.

Reading Passage 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 116 Reading Passage Father of modern management 2 below.

Father of modern management 2

{A} Peter Drucker was one of the most important management thinkers of the past hundred years. He wrote about 40 books and thousands of articles and he never rested in his mission to persuade the world that management matters.” Management is the organ of institutions…the organ that converts a mob into an organisation, and human efforts into performance.” Did he succeed? The range of his influence was extraordinary. Wherever people grapple with tricky management problems, from big organizations to small ones, from the public sector to the private, and increasingly in the voluntary sector, you can find Drucker’s fingerprints.

{B} His first two books—The End of Economic Man (1939) and The Future of Industrial Man (1942) had their admirers, including Winston Churchill, but they annoyed academic critics by ranging so widely over so many different subjects. Still, the second of these books attracted attention with its passionate insistence that companies had a social dimension as well as an economic purpose. His third book, The Concept of the Corporation, became an instant bestseller and has remained in print ever since.

{C} The two most interesting arguments in The Concept of the Corporation actually had little to do with the decentralization fad. They were to dominate his work. The first had to do with “empowering” workers. Drucker believed in treating workers as resources rather than just as costs. He was a harsh critic of the assembly-line system of production that then dominated the manufacturing sector—partly because assembly lines moved at the speed of the slowest and partly because they failed to engage the creativity of individual workers. The second argument had to do with the rise of knowledge workers. Drucker argued that the world is moving from an “economy of goods” to an economy of “knowledge”—and from a society dominated by an industrial proletariat to one dominated by brain workers. He insisted that this had profound implications for both managers and politicians. Managers had to stop treating workers like cogs in a huge inhuman machine and start treating them as brain workers. In turn, politicians had to realise that knowledge, and hence education, was the single most important resource for any advanced society. Yet Drucker also thought that this economy had implications for knowledge workers themselves. They had to come to terms with the fact that they were neither “bosses” nor “workers”, but something in between: entrepreneurs who had responsibility for developing their most important resource, brainpower, and who also needed to take more control of their own careers, including their pension plans.

{D} However, there was also a hard side to his work. Drucker was responsible for inventing one of the rational school of management’s most successful products—”management by objectives”. In one of his most substantial works, The Practice of Management (1954), he emphasised the importance of managers and corporations setting clear long-term objectives and then translating those long-term objectives into more immediate goals. He argued that firms should have an elite corps of general managers, who set these long-term objectives, and then a group of more specialised managers. For his critics, this was a retreat from his earlier emphasis on the soft side of management. For Drucker it was all perfectly consistent: if you rely too much on empowerment you risk anarchy, whereas if you rely too much on command-and-control you sacrifice creativity. The trick is for managers to set long-term goals, but then allow their employees to work out ways of achieving those goals. If Drucker helped make management a global industry, he also helped push it beyond its business base. He was emphatically a management thinker, not just a business one. He believed that management is the defining organ of all modern institutions”, not just corporations.

{E} There are three persistent criticisms of Drucker’s work. The first is that he focused on big organisations rather than small ones. The Concept of the Corporation was in many ways a fanfare to big organisations. As Drucker said, “We know today that in modern industrial production, particularly in modern mass production, the small unit is not only inefficient, it cannot produce at all.” The book helped to launch the “big organisation boom” that dominated business thinking for the next 20 years. The second criticism is that Drucker’s enthusiasm for management by objectives helped to lead business down a dead end. They prefer to allow ideas, including ideas for long-term strategies, to bubble up from the bottom and middle of the organizations rather than being imposed from on high. Thirdly, Drucker is criticized for being a maverick who has increasingly been left behind by the increasing rigor of his chosen field. There is no single area of academic management theory that he made his own.

{F} There is some truth in the first two arguments. Drucker never wrote anything as good as The Concept of the Corporation on entrepreneurial start-ups. Drucker’s work on management by objectives sits uneasily with his earlier and later writings on the importance of knowledge workers and self-directed teams. But the third argument is short-sighted and unfair because it ignores Drucker’s pioneering role in creating the modern profession of management. He produced one of the first systematic studies of a big company. He pioneered the idea that ideas can help galvanize companies. The biggest problem with evaluating Drucker’s influence is that so many of his ideas have passed into conventional wisdom. In other words, he is the victim of his own success. His writings on the importance of knowledge workers and empowerment may sound a little banal today. But they certainly weren’t banal when he first dreamed them up in the 1940s, or when they were first put into practice in the Anglo-Saxon world in the 1980s. Moreover, Drucker continued to produce new ideas up until his 90s. His work on the management of voluntary organizations remained at the cutting edge.

Questions14-19

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F 

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list below. 

Write the correct number, i-ix, in box 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings 

(i) The popularity and impact of Drucker’s work 

(ii) Finding fault with Drucker 

(iii) The impact of economic globalisation 

(iv) Government regulation of business 

(v) Early publications of Drucker’s 

(vi) Drucker’s view of balanced management

(vii) Drucker’s rejection of big business 

(viii) An appreciations of the pros and cons of Drucker’s work 

(ix) The changing role of the employee 

(14) Paragraph A 

(15) Paragraph B 

(16) Paragraph C 

(17) Paragraph D 

(18) Paragraph E 

(19) Paragraph F

Questions 20-23

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 20-23 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the writer
NO if the statement does not agree with the writer
NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage

(20) Drucker believed the employees should enjoy the same status as the employers in a company

(21) Drucker argued the managers and politicians will dominate the economy during a social transition 

(22) Drucker support that workers are not simply put themselves just in the employment relationship and should develop their resources of intelligence voluntarily

(23) Drucker’s work on management is out of date in moderns days

Questions 24-25

Choose TWO letters from A-E. 

Write your answers in boxes 24 and 25 on your answer sheet.  Which TWO of the following are true of Drucker’s views?

(A) High-rank executives and workers should be put in balanced positions in management practice 

(B) Young executives should be given chances to start from low-level jobs 

(C) More emphasis should be laid on fostering the development of the union. 

(D) Management should facilitate workers with tools of self-appraisal instead of controlling them from the outside force 

(E) Leaders should go beyond the scope of management details and strategically establish goals

Questions 26-27

Choose TWO letters from A-E. 

Write your answers in boxes 26 and 27 on your answer sheet. 

Which TWO of the following are mentioned in the passage as criticisms of Drucker and his views?

(A) His lectures focus too much on big organizations and ignore the small ones. 

(B) His lectures are too broad and lack being precise and accurate about the facts. 

(C) He put the source of objectives more on corporate executives but not on average workers. 

(D) He acted much like a maverick and did not set up his own management groups 

(E) He was overstating the case for knowledge workers when warning businesses to get prepared.

Reading Passage 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-40, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 116 Reading Passage The Persuaders below.

The Persuaders

{A} We have long lived in an age where powerful images, catchy soundbites and too-good-to-miss offers bombard us from every quarter. All around us the persuaders are at work. Occasionally their methods are unsubtle—the planting kiss on a baby’s head by a wannabe political leader, or a liquidation sale in a shop that has been “closing down” for well over a year, but generally the persuaders know what they are about and are highly capable. Be they politicians, supermarket chains, salespeople or advertisers, they know exactly what to do to sell us their images, ideas or produce. When it comes to persuasion, these giants rule supreme. They employ the most skilled image-makers and use the best psychological tricks to guarantee that even the most cautious among us are open to manipulation.

{B} We spend more time in them than we mean to, we buy 75 percent of our food from them and end up with products that we did not realize we wanted. Right from the start, supermarkets have been ahead of the game. For example, when Sainsbury introduced shopping baskets into its 1950s stores, it was a stroke of marketing genius. Now shoppers could browse and pick up items they previously would have ignored. Soon after came trolleys, and just as new roads attract more traffic, the same applied to trolley space. Pro Merlin Stone, IBM Professor of Relationship Marketing at Bristol Business School, says aisles are laid out to maximize profits. Stores pander to our money-rich, time-poor lifestyle. Low turnover products —clothes and electrical goods—-are stocked at the back while high—turnover items command position at the front.

{C} Stone believes supermarkets work hard to “stall” us because the more time we spend in them, the more we buy. Thus, great efforts are made to make the environment pleasant. Stores play music to relax us and some even pipe air from the in-store bakery around the shop. In the USA, fake aromas are sometimes used. Smell is both the most evocative and subliminal sense. In experiments, pleasant smells are effective in increasing our spending. A casino that fragranced only half its premise saw profit soar in the aroma—filled areas. The other success story from the supermarkets’ perspective is the loyalty card. Punters may assume that they are being rewarded for their fidelity, but all the while they are trading information about their shopping habits. Loyal shoppers could be paying 30% more by sticking to their favourite shops for essential cosmetics

{D} Research has shown that 75 percent of profit comes from just 30 percent of customers. Ultimately, reward cards could be used to identify and better accommodate these “elite” shoppers. It could also be used to make adverts more relevant to individual consumers—rather like Spielberg’s futuristic thriller Minority Report, in which Tom Cruise’s character is bombarded with interactive personalized ads. If this sounds far-fetched, the data gathering revolution has already seen the introduction of radio frequency identification-away to electronically tag products to see who is buying what, FRID means they can follow the product into people’s homes.

{E} No matter how savvy we think we are to their ploys, the ad industry still wins. Adverts focus on what products do or on how they make us feel. Researcher Laurette Dube, in the Journal of Advertising Research, says when attitudes are based on “cognitive foundations” (logical reasoning), advertisers use informative appeals. This works for products with little emotional draw but high functionality, such as bleach. Where attitudes are based on effect (i.e, emotions), ad teams try to tap into our feelings. Researchers at the University of Florida recently concluded that our emotional responses to adverts dominate over “cognition”.

{F} Advertisers play on our need to be safe (commercials for insurance), to belong (make customers feel they are in the group in fashion ads) and for self-esteem (aspirational adverts). With time and space at a premium, celebrities are often used as a quick way of meeting these needs—either because the celeb epitomizes success or because they seem familiar and so make the product seem “safe”. A survey of 4,000 campaigns found ads with celebs were 10 percent more effective than without. Humor also stimulates a rapid emotional response. Hwiman Chung, writing in the International Journal of Advertising, found that funny ads were remembered for longer than straight ones. Combine humor with sexual imagery—as in Wonderbra’s “Hello Boys’ ‘ ads—and you are on to a winner.

{G} Slice-of-life ads are another tried and tested method —they paint a picture of life as you would like it, but still one that feels familiar. Abhilasha Mehta, in the Journal of Advertising Research, noted that the more one’s self-image tallies with the brand being advertised, the stronger the commercial. Ad makers also use behaviorist theories, recognizing that the more sensation we receive from an object, the better we know it. If an advert for a chocolate bar fails to cause salivation, it has probably failed. No wonder advertisements have been dubbed the “nervous system of the business world”. 

{H} Probably all of us could make a sale if the product was something we truly believed in, but professional salespeople are in a different league—the best of them can always sell different items to suitable customers in a best time .They do this by using very basic psychological techniques. Stripped to its simplest level, selling works by heightening the buyer’s perception of how much they need a product or service. Buyers normally have certain requirements by which they will judge the suitability of a product. The seller therefore attempts to tease out what these conditions are and then explains how their products’ benefit can meet these requirements.

{I} Richard Hession, author of Be a Great Salesperson says it is human nature to prefer to speak rather than listen, and good salespeople pander to this. They ask punters about their needs and offer to work with them to achieve their objectives. As a result, the buyer feels they are receiving a “consultation” rather than a sales pitch. All the while, the salesperson presents with a demeanour that takes it for granted that the sale will be made. Never will the words “if you buy” be used, but rather “when you buy”.

{J} Dr Rob Yeung, a senior consultant at business psychologists Kiddy and Partner, says most salespeople will build up a level of rapport by asking questions about hobbies, family and lifestyle. This has the double benefit of making the salesperson likeable while furnishing him or her with more information about the client’s wants. Yeung says effective salespeople try as far as possible to match their style of presenting themselves to how the buyer comes across. If the buyer cracks jokes, the salespeople will respond in kind. If the buyer wants detail, the seller provides it, if they are more interested in the feel of the product, the seller will focus on this. At its most extreme, appearing empathetic can even include the salesperson attempting to “mirror” the hobby language of the buyer.

{K} Whatever the method used, all salespeople work towards one aim: “closing the deal”. In fact, they will be looking for “closing signals” through their dealings with potential clients. Once again the process works by assuming success. The buyer is not asked “are you interested?” as this can invite a negative response. Instead the seller takes it for granted that the deal is effectively done: when the salesman asks you for a convenient delivery date or asks what color you want, you will probably respond accordingly. Only afterwards might you wonder why you proved such a pushover. 

Questions 28-31 

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

 In boxes 28-31 on your answer sheet, write

YES if the statement agrees with the writer
NO if the statement does not agree with the writer
NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the passage

(28) Even we are careful with sleek tricks of sales, we still buy things from skilled persuaders. 

(29) Laugh is the most important way for salesman to attract customers. 

(30) Fewer shoppers contribute profits for merchants. 

(31) Good salesman know that people like to listen instead of speak.

Questions 32-35 

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

Write your answers in boxes 32-35 on your answer sheet.

Question 32 What is the supermarket’s purpose of using “basket” in paragraph B?

(A) Create a convenient atmosphere of supermarket 

(B) Make customers spend more time on shopping 

(C) Relieve pressure on supermarket’s traffic 

(D) More than half items bought need carried

Question 33 What approach does ads employ when it comes to the product’s effect?

(A) Advertisers often lay their effort on cognitive reasoning 

(B) They emphasize on functions instead of appearance 

(C) Advertisers use emotions to touch customers 

(D) They spend a lot of money on one specific item

Question 34 What’s the quality of a best salesman possessed according to this passage?

(A) Show great interpersonal skills 

(B) Clearly state the instruction of a product 

(C) Show professional background of one product 

(D) Sell the right product to right person. 

Question 35 What is the final goal that salesman pursue at the end of this article?

(A) They try to consult customer’s preference 

(B) They try to finish conversation as quickly as possible 

(C) They try to terminate a deal 

(D) They try to ask if customers are interested

Question 36-40

Summary Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no more than two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

After the invention of the basket in supermarkets, ______36______ are also born due to increasing traffic. Different goods are laid differently along ______37______ in order to generate the most profits. Except the effort of creating a comfortable surroundings,______38______is another card that supermarkets play to reward their regular customers. For example, loyal customers spend 30% more in their loved shops for everyday necessary ______39______ . Advertisers also produce a sense of safety and belonging to costumers, for instance, they make those who want to buy clothes feel like that they are in the ______40______

For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 116 Answers

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