Academic IELTS Reading Test 92 With Answers

IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 92 With Answers ( Passage 1 Man or Machine, Passage 2 Exploring British Village 2, Passage 3 THE GAP of INGENUITY 2 ) we prefer you to work offline, download the test paper and blank answer sheet.

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For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 92 Answers

Reading Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 92  Reading Passage 1  Man or Machine below.

Man or Machine

{A} During July 2003, the Museum of Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts exhibited what Honda calls ‘the world’s most advanced humanoid robot’, ASIMO (the Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility). Honda’s brainchild is on tour in North America and delighting audiences wherever it goes. After 17 years in the making, ASIMO stands at four feet tall, weighs around 115 pounds, and looks like a child in an astronaut’s suit. Though it is difficult to see ASIMO’s face at a distance, on closer inspection it has a smile and two large ‘eyes’ that conceal cameras. The robot cannot work autonomously – its actions are ‘remote-controlled by scientists through the computer in its backpack

Yet watching ASMIO perform at a show in Massachusetts it seemed uncannily human. The audience cheered as ASIMO walked forwards and backward, side to side and up, and downstairs. After the show, a number of people told me that they would like robots to play more of a role in daily life – one even said that the robot would be like ‘another person.

{B} While the Japanese have made huge strides in solving some of the engineering problems of human kinetics and bipedal movements, for the past 10 years scientists at MIT’s former Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab (recently renamed the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, CSAIL) have been making robots that can behave like humans and interact with humans. One of MIT’s robots, Kismet, is an anthropomorphic

head and has two eyes (complete with eyelids), ears, a mouth, and eyebrows. It has several facial expressions, including happy, sad, frightened, and disgusted. Human interlocutors are able to read some of the robot’s facial expressions, and often change their behavior towards the machine as a result – for example, playing with it when it appears ‘sad’. Kismet is now in MIT’s museum, but the ideas developed here continue to be explored in new robots.

{C} Cog (short for Cognition) is another pioneering project from MIT’s former Al lab. Cog has a head, eyes, two arms, hands, and a torso – and its proportions were originally measured from the body of a researcher in the lab. The work on Cog has been used to test theories of embodiment and developmental robotics, particularly getting a robot to develop intelligence by responding to its environment via sensors, and to learn through these types of interactions.

{D} MIT is getting furthest down the road to creating human-like and interactive robots. Some scientists argue that ASIMO is a great engineering feat but not an intelligent machine – because it is unable to interact autonomously with unpredictabilities in its environment in meaningful ways, and learn from experience. Robots like Cog and Kismet and new robots at MIT’s CSAIL and media lab, however, are beginning to do this.

{E} These are exciting developments. Creating a machine that can walk, make gestures, and learn from its environment is an amazing achievement. And watch this space: these achievements are likely rapidly to be improved upon. Humanoid robots could have a plethora of uses in society, helping to free people from everyday tasks. In Japan, for example, there is an aim to create robots that can do the tasks similar to an average human and also act in more sophisticated situations as firefighters, astronauts, or medical assistants to the elderly in the workplace and in homes – partly in order to counterbalance the effects of an aging population. 

{F} Such robots say much about the way in which we view humanity, and they bring out the best and worst of us. On one hand, these developments express human creativity – our ability to invent, experiment, and extend our control over the world. On the other hand, the aim to create a robot like a human being is spurred on by dehumanized ideas – by the sense that human companionship can be substituted by machines; that humans lose their humanity when they interact with technology; or that we are little more than surface and ritual behaviors, that can be simulated with metal and electrical circuits.

Questions 1-6

Reading passage 1 has six paragraphs, A-F. 

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

NB you may use any letter more than once

{1} different ways of using robots 

{2} a robot whose body has the same proportion as that of an adult 

{3} the fact that human can be copied and replaced by robots 

{4} a comparison between ASIMO from Honda and other robots 

{5} the pros and cons of creating robots 

{6} a robot that has eyebrows

Questions 7-13

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage 1, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.

In 2003, Massachusetts displayed a robot named ASIMO which was invented by Honda, after a period of 7……. ……. in the making. The operating information is stored in the computer in its 8…………..so that scientists can control ASIMO’s movement. While Japan is making great progress, MIT is developing robots that are human-like and can 9…………..humans. What is special about Kismet is that it has different 10…………..which can be read by human interlocutors. 11…. ……….is another robot from MIT, whose body’s proportion is the same as an adult. By responding to the surroundings through 12………….., it could develop its 13………….

Reading Passage 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 92 Reading Passage 2  Exploring British VIllage 2 below.

Exploring British Village 2

{A} The Neolithic longhouse was a long, narrow timber dwelling built by the first farmers in Europe beginning at least as early as the period 5000 to 6000 BC. The origin of the name blackhouse is of some debate. It could be less than 150 years old and may have been synonymous with inferior. On Lewis, in particular, it seems to have been used to distinguish the older blackhouses from some of the newer white-houses (Scottish Gaelic: taigh-geal, Irish: tí geal, tí bán), with their mortared stone walls. There may also be some confusion arising from the phonetic similarity between the ‘dubh’ , meaning black and taghadh meaning thatch. The houses in Scotland were built high rather than wide; however, some were built small and wide.

{B} The buildings were generally built with double-wall dry-stone walls packed with earth and wooden rafters covered with a thatch of turf with cereal straw or reed. The floor was generally flagstones or packed earth and there was a central hearth for the fire. There was no chimney for the smoke to escape though. Instead the smoke made its way through the roof.The black house was used to accommodate livestock as well as people. People lived at one end and the animals lived at the other with a partition between them. 

{C} It is estimated that there are over ten thousand villages in Britain, yet defining the term ‘village’ isn’t as simple as it may at first sound. When does a hamlet become a village? And when does a village become a town?

{D} Strictly speaking the term ‘village’ comes from the Latin ‘villaticus’, which roughly translates as ‘a group of houses outside a villa farmstead’. Today a village is understood as a collection of buildings (usually at least 20) that is larger than a hamlet, yet smaller than a town, and which contains at least one communal or public building. This is most commonly the parish church, though it can be a chapel, school, public house, shop, post-office, smithy or mill. Villagers will share communal resources such as access roads, a water supply, and usually a place of worship

{E} A hamlet is a smaller grouping of buildings that doesn’t necessarily have any public or service buildings to support it. A significant difference is that it won’t have a parish church like a village does, and most hamlets contain only between three and twenty buildings.

{F} The point at which a village becomes a town is difficult to determine, and is probably best defined by those who live there. However, since the Middle Ages the term ‘town’ has been a legal term that refers to the fact that the community has a borough charter. The situation is confused by the fact that there are many town-like suburban communities calling themselves villages (for example, Oxton Village in Birkenhead), as well as designed suburban ‘villages’ such as those built under the Garden Village Movement.

{G} The 2001 census shows us that approx 80% of people in England live in an urban environment, with under 7% living in rural villages (the remainder live in rural towns or outside concentrated settlements). This is the exact opposite of the situation two centuries ago, when under 20% of the population lived in the town, and the majority lived in rural villages. As late as 1851 agriculture remained the largest single source of employment in Britain, yet today under 3% of us work on the land.

{H} It is essential to remember that villages were created and have evolved because of particular combinations of geographical, commercial, economic and social factors. They expand, decline, move and fluctuate with the times. This article introduces some of the common forms of village to be found in Britain.

The Medieval Village

{I} When we think of a British village we probably imagine a settlement of traditional cottages around a village green with a church and ancient manor house as backdrop. This common form of village has its roots in the medieval period when many villages started out as a cluster of agricultural dwellings

{J} Today farmsteads tend to be scattered about the landscape, but back in the medieval period those working on the land tended to live in small nucleated settlements (villages) and worked ‘open-field’ agriculture where land wasn’t enclosed. In fact, over much of Britain in the period up to 1800 it would have been unusual to have seen a farm or cottage outside of a settlement boundary. 

{K} By the time that the Domesday Book was written in 1086 most of the good agricultural land in Britain was already under cultivation, and England was a densely populated country. Two centuries later nucleated settlements were to be found over much of Britain, typically consisting of well-organised village settlements sitting within open fields.

{L} Over lowland Britain on good soil you would typically find a settlement every couple of miles, and the communities would use the open agricultural land around where they lived. The average village would have its church, manor house, and cottage tenements all clustered together, and the open land around would usually be divided into thin strips. In some villages you can still see the remnants of medieval strip field systems around the periphery of the settlement. There would often be meadows, pasture and woodland held ‘in common’, and only the lord of the manor would have his own, private land or ‘demesne’. In the medieval village virtually everyone would have earned their living on the territory , hence the community had to be relatively self sufficient.

{M} ‘Green Villages’ were a common village form, where houses clustered around a central green of common land. They are often the remnants of planned settlements introduced after the Norman Conquest in the 19th century. It is suggested that this arrangement allowed for easier defense, especially compared to the village form most common before the Normans, which was simple clusters of farms. However there is also evidence of ‘village’ greens in Anglo-Saxon settlements, and even at Romano-British sites.

{N} The village green was soon adopted as the main social space within a village, as well as its focal point alongside the church or chapel. Village greens often take a triangular form, usually reflecting the fact that the village was at the meeting of three roads. The continuing importance of the village green to modern day communities is reflected in the fact that this is usually where the war memorial is seen, as well as village notice boards, where local cricket matches are played, and where public benches are placed. The Open Spaces Society states that in 2005 there were about 3,650 registered greens in England and about 220 in Wales. 

Questions 14-19

Reading passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G 

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A and C-G from the list below. 

Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of heading 

(i). Questions arise to be answered. 

(ii). Contrast data between present and past. 

(iii). Initial response of association on village. 

(iv). Origin of a certain ancient building. 

(v). Inner structure of building. 

(vi). Layout of village to persist in micro-environment. 

(vii). Terms of village explained. 

(viii). Definition of village type. 

(ix). Difference between village and town. 

(X). Elements need to be considered in terms of village.

(14) paragraph A 

(15) paragraph B

(16) paragraph C 

(17) paragraph D 

(18) paragraph E 

(19) paragraph F 

(20) paragraph G

Questions 21-26

Summary

Village Green layout and

Extending

Impression of British Village usually takes forms of old-styled ____21___with church and manor house. However, records in ____22___ indicated that England was already a cultivated and populated country in the 11th century. During medieval times, farmers literally could support themselves and the community, therefore, needed to ___23___ in general. 

Green village was usually _____24_____ _of dwellings after the invasion from Norman, and it was gathered mainly for the purpose of ______25______ Village Green’s _______26___shape had a connection with its location among the roads, and nowadays it still can be seen in some public venues such as memorial and sports sites.

Reading Passage 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based onIELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 92  Reading Passage 3 The Gap of Ingenuity 2 below.

THE GAP of INGENUITY 2

{A} Ingenuity, as I define it here, consists not only of ideas for new technologies like computers or drought-resistant crops but, more fundamentally, of ideas for better institutions and social arrangements, like efficient markets and competent governments.

(B} How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society requires depends on a range of factors, including the society’s goals and the circumstances within which it must achieve those goals – – whether it has a young population or an aging one, an abundance of natural resources or a scarcity of them, an easy climate or a punishing one, whatever the case may be.

C How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society supplies also depends on many factors, such as the nature of human inventiveness and understanding, the rewards an economy gives to the producers of useful knowledge, and the strength of political opposition to social and institutional reforms.

{D} A good supply of the right kind of ingenuity is essential, but it isn’t, of course, enough by itself. We know that the creation of wealth, for example, depends not only on an adequate supply of useful ideas but also on the availability of other, more conventional factors of production, like capital and labor. Similarly, prosperity, stability and justice usually depend on the resolution, or at least the containment, of major political struggles over wealth and power. Yet within our economies ingenuity often supplants labor, and growth in the stock of physical plant is usually accompanied by growth in the stock of ingenuity. And in our political systems, we need great ingenuity to set up institutions that successfully manage struggles over wealth and power. Clearly, our economic and -political processes are intimately entangled with the production and use of ingenuity.

{E} The past century’s countless incremental changes in our societies around the planet, in our technologies and our interactions with our surrounding natural environments have accumulated to create a qualitatively new world. Because these changes have accumulated slowly, it’s often hard for us to recognize how profound and sweeping they’ve been. They include far larger and denser populations; much higher per capita consumption of natural resources; and far better and more widely available technologies for the movement of people, materials, and especially information.

{F} In combination, these changes have sharply increased the density, intensity, and pace of our interactions with each other; they have greatly increased the burden we place on our natural environment; and they have helped shift power from national and international institutions to individuals and subgroups, such as political special interests and ethnic factions.

{G} As a result, people in all walks of life, from our political and business leaders to all of us in our day-to-day- – must cope with much more complex, urgent, and often unpredictable circumstances. The management of our relationship with this new world requires immense and ever-increasing amounts of social and technical ingenuity. As we strive to maintain or increase our prosperity and improve the quality of our lives, we must make far more sophisticated decisions, and in less time, than ever before.

{H} When we enhance the performance of any system, from our cars to the planet’s network of financial institutions, we tend to make it more complex. Many of the natural systems critical to our well-being, like the global climate and the oceans, are extraordinarily complex to begin with. We often can’t predict or manage the behaviour of complex systems with much precision, because they are often very sensitive to the smallest of changes and perturbations, and their behaviour can flip from one mode to another suddenly and dramatically. In general, as the human-made and natural systems, we depend upon becoming more complex, and as our demands on them increase, the institutions and technologies we use to manage them must become more complex too, which further boosts our need for ingenuity.

{I} The good news, though, is that the last century’s stunning changes in our societies and technologies have not just increased our need for ingenuity; they have also produced a huge increase in its supply. The growth and urbanization of human populations have combined with astonishing new communication and transportation technologies to expand interactions among people and produce larger, more integrated, and more efficient markets. These changes have, in turn, vastly accelerated the generation and delivery of useful ideas.

{J} But- and this is the critical “but” – – we should not jump to the conclusion that the supply of ingenuity always increases in lockstep with our ingenuity requirement: while it’s true that necessity is often the mother of invention, we can’t always rely on the right kind of ingenuity appearing when and where we need it. In many cases, the complexity and speed of operation of today’s vital economic, social, arid ecological systems exceed the human brain s grasp. Very few of us have more than a rudimentary understanding of how these systems work. They remain fraught with countless “unknown unknowns,” which makes it hard to supply the ingenuity we need to solve problems associated with these systems.

{K}. In this book, explore a wide range of other factors that will limit our ability to supply the ingenuity required in the coming century. For example, many people believe that new communication technologies strengthen democracy and will make it easier to find solutions to our societies’ collective problems, but the story is less clear than it seems. The crush of information in our everyday lives is shortening our attention span, limiting the time we have to reflect on critical matters of public policy, and making policy arguments more superficial.

{L} Modern markets and science are an important part of the story of how we supply ingenuity. Markets are critically important because they give entrepreneurs an incentive to produce knowledge. As for science, although it seems to face no theoretical limits, at least in the foreseeable future, practical constraints often slow its progress. The cost of scientific research tends to increase as it delves deeper into nature. And science’s rate of advance depends on the characteristic of the natural phenomena it investigates, simply because some phenomena are intrinsically harder to understand than others, so the production of useful new knowledge in these areas can be very slow. Consequently, there is often a critical time lag between the recognition between a problem and the delivery of sufficient ingenuity, in the form of technologies, to solve that problem. Progress in the social sciences is especially slow, for reasons we don’t yet understand; but we desperately need better social scientific knowledge to build the sophisticated institutions today’s world demands.

Questions 27-30

Complete each sentence with the appropriate answer, A, B, C, or D.

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

(27) The definition of ingenuity 

(28) The requirement for ingenuity 

(29) The creation of social wealth 

(30) The stability of society

(A) depends on many factors including climate. 

(B) depends on the management and solution of disputes.

(C) is not only of technological advance but more of institutional renovation. 

(D) also depends on the availability of some traditional resources.

Questions 31-33

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 31-33 on your answer sheet.

Question 31 What does the author say about the incremental change of the last 100 years?

(A) It has become a hot scholastic discussion among environmentalists. 

(B) Its significance is often not noticed. 

(C) It has reshaped the natural environments we live in.

(D) It benefited a much larger population than ever.

Question 32 The combination of changes has made life:

(A) easier 

(B) faster 

(C) Slower

(D) less sophisticated

Question 33 What does the author say about the natural systems?

(A) New technologies are being developed to predict change with precision. 

(B) Natural systems are often more sophisticated than other systems. 

(C) Minor alterations may cause natural systems to change dramatically. 

(D) Technological developments have rendered human beings more independent of natural systems.

Questions 34-40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 34-40 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

(34) The demand for ingenuity has been growing during the past 100 years.

(35) The ingenuity we have maybe inappropriate for solving the problems at hand.

(36) There are very few who can understand the complex systems of the present world.

(37) More information will help us to make better decisions.

(38) The next generation will blame the current government for their conduct.

(39) Science tends to develop faster in certain areas than others.

(40) Social science develops especially slowly because it is not as important as natural science.

For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 92 Answers

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