Academic IELTS Reading Test 120

IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 120 ( Passage 1 Ants Could Teach Ants, Passage 2 Can we call it“Art”? (2), Passage 3 The significant role of mother tongue language in education ) we prefer you to work offline, download the test paper and blank answer sheet.

For any query regarding the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 120, you can mail us at [email protected], or you can mention your query in the comments section. Or send your questions on our IELTSfever Facebook page. Best of luck with your exam

Question PDF IELTSFever-academic-reading-test-120.pdf

For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 120 Answers

Reading Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 120 Reading Passage Ants Could Teach Ants below.

Ants Could Teach Ants

{A} The ants are tiny and usually nest between rocks in the south coast of England. Transformed into research subjects at the University of Bristol, they raced along a tabletop foraging for food – and then, remarkably, returned to guide others. Time and again, followers trailed behind leaders, darting this way and that along the route, presumably to memorise landmarks. Once a follower got its bearings, it tapped the leader with its antennae, prompting the lesson to literally proceed to the next step. The ants were only looking for food, but the researchers said the careful way the leaders led followers — thereby turning them into leaders in their own right -marked the Temnothorax albipennis ant as the very first example of a non-human animal exhibiting teaching behaviour.

{B} “Tandem running is an example of teaching, to our knowledge the first in a non-human animal, that involves bidirectional feedback between teacher and pupil,” remarks Nigel Franks, professor of animal behaviour and ecology, whose paper on the ant educators was published last week in the journal Nature.

{C} No sooner was the paper published, of course, than another educator questioned it. Marc Hauser, a psychologist and biologist and one of the scientists who came up with the definition of teaching, said it was unclear whether the ants had learned a new skill or merely acquired new information.

{D} Later, Franks took a further study and found that there were even races between leaders. With the guidance of leaders, ants could find food faster. But the help comes at a cost for the leader, who normally would have reached the food about four times faster if not hampered by a follower. This means the hypothesis that the leaders deliberately slowed down in order to pass the skills on to the followers seems potentially valid. His ideas were advocated by the students who carried out the video project with him.

{E} Opposing views still arose, however. Hauser noted that mere communication of information is commonplace in the animal world. Consider a species, for example, that uses alarm calls to warn fellow members about the presence of a predator. Sounding the alarm can be costly, because the animal may draw the attention of the predator to itself. But it allows others flee to safety. “Would you call this teaching?”wrote Hauser. “The caller incurs a cost. The naive animals gain a benefit and new knowledge that better enables them to learn about the predator’s location than if the caller had not called. This happens throughout the animal kingdom, but we don’t call it teaching, even though it is clearly transfer of information.”

{F} Tim Caro, a zoologist, presented two cases of animal communication. He found that cheetah mothers that take their cubs along on hunts gradually allow their cubs to do more of the hunting, for example, from killing a gazelle and allowing young cubs to eat to merely tripping the gazelle and letting the cubs finish it off. At one level, such behaviour might be called teaching  except the mother was not really teaching the cubs to hunt but merely facilitating various stages of learning. In another instance, birds watching other birds using a stick to locate food such as insects and so on, are observed to do the same thing themselves while finding food later.

{G} Psychologists study animal behaviour in part to understand the evolutionary roots of human behaviour, Hauser said. The challenge in understanding whether other animals truly teach one another, he added, is that human teaching involves a “theory of mind” teachers are aware that students don’t know something. He questioned whether Frank’s leader ants really knew that the follower ants were ignorant. Could they simply have been following an instinctive rule to proceed when the followers tapped them on the legs or abdomen? And did leaders that led the way to food  only to find that it had been removed by the experimenter -incur the wrath of followers? That, Hauser said, would suggest that the follower actually knew the leader was more knowledgeable and not merely following an instinctive routine itself.

{H} The controversy went on, and for a good reason. The occurrence of teaching in ants, if proven to be true, indicates that teaching can evolve in animals with tiny brains. It is probably the value of information in social animals that determines when teaching will evolve, rather than the constraints of brain size.

{I} Bennett Galef Jr., a psychologist who studies animal behaviour and social learning at McMaster University in Canada, maintained that ants were unlikely to have a “theory of mind” — meaning that leaders and followers may well have been following instinctive routines that were not based on an understanding of what was happening in another ant’s brain. He warned that scientists may be barking up the wrong tree when they look not only for examples of humanlike behaviour among other animals but humanlike thinking that underlies such behaviour. Animals may behave in ways similar to humans without a similar cognitive system, he said, so the behaviour is not necessarily a good guide into how humans came to think the way they do.

Questions 1-5

Look at the following statements (Questions 1-5) and the list of people in the box below. 

Match each statement with the correct person, A, B C or D. 

Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet. 

NB You may use any letter more than once.

(1) Animals could use objects to locate food. 

(2) Ants show two-way, interactive teaching behaviours. 

(3) It is risky to say ants can teach other ants like human beings do. 

(4) Ant leadership makes finding food faster. 

(5) Communication between ants is not entirely teaching.

Questions 6-9

Choose FOUR letters, A-H. Write your answers in boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet.

Which FOUR of the following behaviors of animals are mentioned in the Academic IELTS Reading Test 120 passage?

(A) touch each other with antenna 

(B) alert others when there is danger 

(C) escape from predators 

(D) protect the young 

(E) hunt food for the young 

(F) fight with each other 

(G) use tools like twigs 

(H) feed on a variety of foods

Questions 10-13

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Academic IELTS Reading Test 120 Reading Passage 1? 

In boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet, write

(10) Ants’ tandem running involves only one-way communication. 

(11) Franks’s theory got many supporters immediately after publicity. 

(12) Ants’ teaching behaviour is the same as that of human. 

(13) Cheetah share hunting gains to younger ones.

Reading Passage 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 120 Reading Passage. Can we call it“Art”? (2) below.

Can we call it“Art”? (2)

Life-Casting and Art 

Julian Bames explores the questions posed by Life-Casts, an exhibition of plaster moulds of living people and objects which were originally used for scientific purposes

{A} Art changes over time and our idea of what art is changes too. For example, objects originally intended for devotional, ritualistic or recreational purposes may be recategorised as art by members of other later civilisations, such as our own, which no longer respond to these purposes.

{B} What also happens is that techniques and crafts which would have been judged inartistic at the time they were used are reassessed. Life-casting is an interesting example of this. It involved making a plaster mould of a living person or thing. This was complex, technical work, as Benjamin Robert Haydon discovered when he poured 250 litres of plaster over his human model and nearly killed him. At the time, the casts were used for medical research and, consequently, in the nineteenth century life-casting was considered inferior to sculpture in the same way that, more recently, photography was thought to be a lesser art than painting. Both were viewed as unacceptable shortcuts by the ‘senior l arts. Their virtues of speed and unwavering realism also implied their limitations; they left little or no room for the imagination.

{C} For many, life-casting was an insult to the sculptor’s creative genius. In an infamous lawsuit of 1834, a moulder whose mask of the dying French emperor Napoleon had been reproduced and sold without his permission was judged to have no rights to the image. In other words, he was specifically held not to be an artist. This judgement reflects the view of established members of the nineteenth-century art world such as Rodin, who commented that life-casting “happens fast but it doesn’t make Art’. Some even feared that ‘if too much nature was allowed in, it would lead Art away from its proper course of the Ideal.

{D} The painter Gauguin, at the end of the nineteenth century, worried about future developments in photography. If ever the process went into colour, what painter would labour away at a likeness with a brush made from squirrel-tail? But painting has proved robust. Photography has changed it, of course, just as the novel had to reassess narrative after the arrival of the cinema. But the gap between the senior and junior arts was always narrower than the traditionalists implied. Painters have always used technical back-up such as studio assistants to do the boring bits, while apparently lesser crafts involve great skill, thought, preparation and, depending on how we define it, imagination.

{E} Time changes our view in another way, too. Each new movement implies a reassessment of what has gone before. What is done now alters what was done before. In some cases this is merely self-serving, with the new art using the old to justify itself. It seems to be saying, look at how all of that points to this! Aren’t we clever to be the culmination of all that has gone before? But usually it is a matter of re-alerting the sensibility, reminding us not to take things for granted. Take, for example, the cast of the hand of a giant from a circus, made by an anonymous artist around 1889,an item that would now sit happily in any commercial or public gallery. The most significant impact of this piece is on the eye, in the contradiction between unexpected size and verisimilitude. Next, the human element kicks in. you note that the nails are dirt-encrusted, unless this is the caster’s decorative addition, and the fingertips extend far beyond them. Then you take in the element of choice, arrangement, art if you like, in the neat, pleated, buttoned sleeve-end that gives the item balance and variation of texture. This is just a moulded hand, yet the part stands utterly for the whole. It reminds us slyly, poignantly, of the full-size original. 

{F} But is it art? And, if so, why? These are old tediously repeated questions to which artists have often responded, ‘It is art because I am an artist and therefore what I do is art. However, what doesn’t work for literature works much better for art – works of art do float free of their creators’ intentions. Over time the “reader” does become more powerful. Few of us can look at a medieval altarpiece as its painter intended. We believe too little and aesthetically know too much, so we recreate and find new fields of pleasure in the work. Equally, the lack of artistic intention of Paul Richer and other forgotten craftsmen who brushed oil onto flesh, who moulded, cast and decorated in the nineteenth century is now irrelevant. What counts is the surviving object and our response to it. The tests are simple: does it interest the eye, excite the brain, move the mind to reflection and involve the heart. It may, to use the old dichotomy, be beautiful but it is rarely true to any significant depth. One of the constant pleasures of art is its ability to come at us from an unexpected angle and stop us short in wonder.

Questions 14-18

Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. 

Which paragraph contains the following information? 

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

(14) an example of a craftsman’s unsuccessful claim to ownership of his work 

(15) an example of how trends in art can change attitudes to an earlier work 

(16) the original function of a particular type of art 

(17) ways of assessing whether or not an object is art 

(18) how artists deal with the less interesting aspects of their work

Questions 19-24

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Academic IELTS Reading Test 120 Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 19-24 on your answer sheet, write

(19) Nineteenth-century sculptors admired the speed and realism of life-casting. 

(20) Rodin believed the quality of the life-casting would improve if a slower process were used. 

(21) The importance of painting has decreased with the development of colour photography. 

(22) Life-casting requires more skill than sculpture does. 

(23) New art encourages us to look at earlier work in a fresh way. 

(24) The intended meaning of a work of art can get lost over time.

Questions 25-26 Academic IELTS Reading Test 120

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 25 and 26 on your answer sheet.

Question 25 The most noticeable contrast in the cast of the gianfs hand is between the 

(A) dirt and decoration

(B) size and realism

(C) choice and arrangement 

(D) balance and texture

Question 26 According to the writer, the importance of any artistic object lies in

(A) the artist’s intentions 

(B) the artist’s beliefs 

(C) the relevance it has to modern life 

(D) the way we respond to it

Reading Passage 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 120 Reading PassageThe significant role of mother tongue language in education below.

The significant role of mother tongue language in education

{A} One consequence of population mobility is an increasing diversity within schools. To illustrate, in the city of Toronto in Canada, 58% of kindergarten pupils come from homes where English is not the language of communication. Schools in Europe and North America have experienced this diversity for years, but educational policies and practices vary widely between countries and even within countries. Some political parties and groups search for ways to solve the problem of diverse communities and their integration in schools and society. They see few positive consequences for the host society and worry that diversity threatens the identity of the host society. Consequently, they promote unfortunate educational policies that will make the “problem”disappear. If students retain their culture and language, they are viewed as less capable of identifying with the mainstream culture and learning the mainstream language of the society.

{B} The challenge for educators and policy-makers is to shape the evolution of national identity in such a way that the rights of all citizens (including school children) are respected, and the cultural, linguistic, and economic resources of the nation are maximized. To waste the resources of the nation by discouraging children from developing their mother tongues is quite simply unintelligent from the point of view of national self-interest. A first step in Providing an appropriate education for culturally and linguistically diverse children is to examine what the existing research says about the role of children’s mother tongues in their educational development. 

{C} In fact, the research is very clear. When children continue to develop their abilities in two or more languages throughout their primary school , they gain a deeper understanding of language and how to use it effectively. They have more practice in processing language, especially when they develop literacy in both. More than 150 research studies conducted during the past 35 years strongly support what Goethe, the famous eighteenth-century German philosopher, once said: that the person who knows only one language does not truly know that language. Research suggests that bilingual children may also develop more flexibility in their thinking as a result of processing information through two different languages. 

{D} The level of development of children’s mother tongue is a strong predictor of their second language development. Children who come to school with a solid foundation in their mother tongue develop stronger literacy abilities in the school language. When parents and other caregivers (e.g. grandparents) are able to spend time with their children and tell stories or discuss issues with them in a way that develops their mother tongue, children come to school well-prepared to learn the school language and succeed educationally. Children’s knowledge and skills transfer across languages from the mother tongue to the school language. Transfer across languages can be two-way: both languages nurture each other when the educational environment permits children access to both languages.

{E} Some educators and parents are suspicious of mother tongue-based teaching programs because they worry that they take time away from the majority language. For example, in a bilingual program where 50% of the time is spent teaching through children’s home language and 50% through the majority language, surely children won’t progress as far in the letter? One of the most strongly established findings of educational research, however, is that well-implemented bilingual programs can promote literacy and subject matter knowledge in a minority language without any negative effects on children’s development in the majority language. Within Europe, the Foyer program in Belgium, which develops children’s speaking and literacy abilities in three languages (their mother tongue, Dutch and French), most clearly illustrates the benefits of bilingual and trilingual education (see Cummins, 2000). 

{F} It is easy to understand how this happens. When children are learning through a minority language, they are learning concepts and intellectual skills too. Pupils who know how to tell the time in their mother tongue understand the concept of telling time. In order to tell time in the majority language they do not need to re-learn the concept. Similarly, at more advanced stages, there is transfer across languages in other skills such as knowing how to distinguish the main idea from the supporting details of a written passage or story, and distinguishing fact from opinion, Studies of secondary school pupils are providing interesting findings in this area, and it would be worth extending this research. 

{G} Many people marvel at how quickly bilingual children seem to “pick up” conversational skills in the majority language at school (although it takes much longer for them to catch up to native speakers in academic language skills). However, educators are often much less aware of how quickly children can lose their ability to use their mother tongue, even in the home context. The extent and rapidity of language loss will vary according to the concentration of families from a particular linguistic group in the neighborhood. Where the mother tongue is used extensively in the community, then language loss among young children will be less. However, where language communities are not concentrated in particular neighborhoods, children can lose their ability to communicate in their mother tongue within 2-3 years of starting school. They may retain receptive skills in the language but they will use the majority language in speaking with their peers and siblings and in responding to their parents. By the time children become adolescents, the linguistic division between parents and children has become an emotional chasm. Pupils frequently become alienated from the cultures of both home and school with predictable results.

Questions 27-30 Academic IELTS Reading Test 120

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

Question 27. What point the writer making in the second paragraph? 

(A) Some present studies on children’s mother tongues are misleading 

(B) A culturally rich education programme benefits some children more than others. 

(C) bilingual children can make a valuable contribution to the wealth of a country 

(D) The law on mother tongue use at school should be strengthened.

Question 28 Why does the writer refer to something that Goethe said? 

(A) to lend weight his argument 

(B) to contradict some research 

(C) to introduce a new concept 

(D) to update current thinking

Question 29 The writer believes that when young children have a firm grasp of their mother tongue 

(A) they can teach older family members what they learn at school 

(B) they go on to do much better throughout their time at school 

(C) they can read stories about their cultural background 

(D) they develop stronger relationships with their family than with their peers.

Question 30 Why are some people suspicious about mother tongue-based teaching programmes? 

(A) They worry that children will be slow to learn to read in either language 

(B) They think that children will confuse words in the two languages. 

(C) They believe that the programmes will make children less interested in their lessons 

(D) They fear that the programmes will use up valuable time in the school day,

Questions 31-35

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 31-35 on your answer sheet.

Questions 36-40

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading passage 3? In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write

(36) Less than half the children who attend kindergarten in Toronto have English as their Mother tongue. 

(37) Research proves that learning the host country’s language at school can have an adverse effect on a child’s mother tongue. 

(38) the foyer Program is to be accepted by the French education system. 

(39) Bilingual children are taught to tell the time earlier than monolingual children. 

(40) Bilingual children can eventually apply reading comprehension strategies acquired in one language when reading in the other.

For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 120 Answers