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Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 With Answers

IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 With Answers Foot Pedal Irrigation, Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company, Auckland, Risk Management

IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 With Answers ( Passage 1 Foot Pedal Irrigation, Passage 2 Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company, Auckland, Passage 3 Risk Management ) we prefer you to work offline, download the test paper and blank answer sheet.

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For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 Answers

Reading Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 Reading Passage Foot Pedal Irrigation below.

Foot Pedal Irrigation

{A} Until now, governments and development agencies have tried to tackle the problem through large-scale projects: gigantic dams, sprawling irrigation canals, and vast new fields of high-yield crops introduced during the Green Revolution, the famous campaign to increase grain harvests in developing nations. Traditional irrigation, however, has degraded the soil in many areas, and the reservoirs behind dams can quickly fill up with silt, reducing their storage capacity and depriving downstream farmers of fertile sediments. Furthermore, although the Green Revolution has greatly expanded worldwide farm production since 1950, poverty stubbornly persists in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Continued improvements in the productivity of large farms may play the main role in boosting food supply, but local efforts to provide cheap, individual irrigation systems to small farms may offer a better way to lift people out of poverty.

{B} The Green Revolution was designed to increase the overall food supply, not to raise the incomes of the rural poor, so it should be no surprise that it did not eradicate poverty or hunger. India, for example, has been self-sufficient in food for 15 years, and its granaries are full, but more than 200 million Indians—one-fifth of the country’s population—are malnourished because they cannot afford the food they need and because the country’s safety nets are deficient. In 2000 189 nations committed to the Millennium Development Goals, which called for cutting world poverty in half by 2015. With business as usual, however, we have little hope of achieving most of the Millennium goals, no matter how much money rich countries contribute to poor ones.

{C} The supply-driven strategies of the Green Revolution, however, may not help subsistence farmers, who must play to their strengths to compete in the global marketplace. The average size of a family farm is less than four acres in India, 1.8 acres in Bangladesh, and about half an acre in China. Combines and other modern farming tools are too expensive to be used in such small areas. An Indian farmer selling surplus wheat grown on his one-acre plot could not possibly compete with the highly efficient and subsidized Canadian wheat farms that typically stretch over thousands of acres. Instead, subsistence farmers should exploit the fact that their labor costs are the lowest in the world, giving them a comparative advantage in growing and selling high-value, intensely farmed crops.

{D} Paul Polak saw firsthand the need for a small-scale strategy in 1981 when he met Abdul Rahman, a farmer in the Noakhali district of Bangladesh. From his three-quarter-acre plots of rain-fed rice fields, Abdul could grow only 700 kilograms of rice each year-300 kilograms less than what he needed to feed his family. During the three months before the October rice harvest came in, Abdul and his wife had to watch silently while their three children survived on one meal a day or less. As Polak walked with him through the scattered fields he had inherited from his father, Polak asked what he needed to move out of poverty. “Control of water for my crops,” he said, “at a price, I can afford.”

{E} Soon Polak learned about a simple device that could help Abdul achieve his goal: the treadle pump. Developed in the late 1970s by Norwegian engineer Gunnar Barnes, the pump is operated by a person walking in place on a pair of treadles and two handle arms made of bamboo. Properly adjusted and maintained, it can be operated several hours a day without tiring the users. Each treadle pump has two cylinders which are made of engineering plastic. The diameter of a cylinder is 100.5mm and the height is 280mm. The pump is capable of working up to a maximum depth of 7 meters. Operation beyond 7 meters is not recommended to preserve the integrity of the rubber components. The pump mechanism has piston and foot valve assemblies. The treadle action creates alternate strokes in the two pistons that lift the water in pulses.

{F} The human-powered pump can irrigate half an acre of vegetables and costs only $25 (including the expense of drilling a tube well down to the groundwater). Abdul heard about the treadle pump from a cousin and was one of the first farmers in Bangladesh to buy one. He borrowed the $25 from an uncle and easily repaid the loan four months later. During the five-month dry season, when Bangladeshis typically farm very little, Abdul used the treadle pump to grow a quarter-acre of chili peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, and eggplants. He also improved the yield of one of his rice plots by irrigating it. His family ate some of the vegetables and sold the rest at the village market, earning a net profit of $100. With his new income, Abdul was able to buy rice for his family to eat, keep his two sons in school until they were 16, and set aside a little money for his daughter’s dowry. When Polak visited him again in 1984, he had doubled the size of his vegetable plot and replaced the thatched roof on his house with corrugated tin. His family was raising a calf and some chickens. He told me that the treadle pump was a gift from God.

{G} Bangladesh is particularly well suited for the treadle pump because a huge reservoir of groundwater lies just a few meters below the farmers’ feet. In the early 1980s, IDE initiated a campaign to market the pump, encouraging 75 small private-sector companies to manufacture the devices and several thousand village dealers and tube well drillers to sell and install them. Over the next 12 years, one and a half million farm families purchased treadle pumps, which increased the farmers’ net income by a total of $150 million a year. The cost of IDE’s market-creation activities was only $12 million, leveraged by the investment of $37.5 million from the farmers themselves. In contrast, the expense of building a conventional dam and canal system to irrigate an equivalent area of farmland would be in the range of $2,000 per acre, or $1.5 billion.

Questions 1-6 

Do the following statements agree with the information given in  IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 Reading Passage 1? 

In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement is True
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN If the information is not given in the passage

(1) It is more effective to resolve poverty or food problems on a large scale rather than on a small scale. 

(2) Construction of gigantic dams costs more time in developing countries. 

(3) Green revolution failed to increase global crop production from the mid 20th century. 

(4) Agricultural production in Bangladesh declined in the last decade. 

(5) Farmer Abdul Rahman knew how to increase production himself. 

(6) Small pumps spread into big projects in Bangladesh in the past decade.

Questions 7-10 

Filling the blanks in the diagram of the treadle pump’s each part. 

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Questions 11-13 

Answer the questions below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

(11) How large an area can a treadle pump irrigate the field at a low level of expense?

(12) What is Abdul’s new roof made of?

(13) How much did Bangladesh farmers invest in IDE’s stimulation?

Reading Passage 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 Reading Passage Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company below.

Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company

{A} The Carbolic Smoke Ball Company made a product called the “smoke ball”. It claimed to be a cure for influenza and a number of other diseases, in the context of the 1889-1890 flu pandemic (estimated to have killed 1 million people). The bottle was a patented design and the nozzle part was a mental one with the gauze inside which filters the air flux. The smoke ball was a rubber ball with a tube attached. It was filled with carbolic acid (or phenol). The tube would be inserted into a user’s nose and squeezed at the bottom to release medicine powder (the vapors) hold inside the rubber ball bottle. The nose would run, ostensibly flushing out viral infections flushing on

{B} The Company published advertisements in the Pall Mall Gazette and other newspapers on November 13, 1891, claiming that it would pay £100 to anyone who got sick with influenza after using its product according to the instructions set out in the advertisement. 

£100 reward will be paid by the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company to any person who contracts the increasing epidemic influenza colds, or any disease caused by taking cold, after having used the ball three times daily for two weeks, according to the printed directions supplied with each ball. £1000 is deposited with the Alliance Bank, Regent Street, showing our sincerity in the matter: During the last epidemic of influenza many thousand carbolic smoke balls were sold as preventives against this disease, and in no ascertained case was the disease contracted by those using the carbolic smoke ball. One carbolic smoke ball will last a family several months, making it the cheapest remedy in the world at the price, 10s, post-free. The ball can be refilled at a cost of 5s. Address: “Carbolic Smoke Ball Company, 27, Princes Street, Hanover Square, London.” 

{C} Mrs. Louisa Elizabeth Carlill saw the advertisement, bought one of the balls, and used it three times daily for nearly two months until she contracted the flu on 17 January 1892. She claimed £100 from the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company. They ignored two letters from her husband, a solicitor. On the third request for her reward, they replied with an anonymous letter that if it is used properly the company had complete confidence in the smoke ball’s efficacy, but “to protect themselves against all fraudulent claims” they would need her to come to their office to use the ball each day and be checked by the secretary, Mrs. Carlill brought a claim to court. The barristers representing her argued that the advertisement and her reliance on it was a contract between her and the company, and so they ought to pay. The company argued it was not a serious contract.

{D} The Carbolic Smoke Ball Company, despite being represented by HH Asquith, lost its argument at the Queen’s Bench. It appealed straight away. The Court of Appeal unanimously rejected the company’s arguments and held that there was a fully binding contract for £100 with Mrs. Carlill. Among the reasons given by the three judges were (1) that the advert was a unilateral offer to all the world (2) that satisfying conditions for using the smoke ball constitutes acceptance of the offer (3) that purchasing or merely using the smoke ball constitute good consideration, because it was a distinct detriment incurred at the behest of the company and, furthermore, more people buying smoke balls by relying on the advert was a clear benefit to Carbolic (4) that the company’s claim that £1000 was deposited at the Alliance Bank showed the serious intention to be legally bound.

{E} Lord Justice Lindley gave the first judgment, after running through the facts again. He makes short shrift of the insurance and wagering contract arguments that were dealt with in the Queen’s Bench. He believed that the advert was intended to be issued to the public and to be read by the public. How would an ordinary person reading this document construe it? It was intended unquestionably to have some effect. He followed on with essentially five points. First, the advert was not “mere puff” as had been alleged by the company, because the deposit of £1000 in the bank evidenced seriousness. Second, the advertisement was an offer to the world. Third, communication of acceptance is not necessary for a contract when people’s conduct manifests an intention to contract. Fourth, that the vagueness of the advert’s terms was no insurmountable obstacle. And fifth, the nature of Mrs. Carlill’s consideration (what she gave in return for the offer) was good because there is both an advantage in additional sales in reaction to the advertisement and a “distinct inconvenience” that people go to use a smoke ball.

{F} Lord Justice Bowen LJ’s opinion was more tightly structured in style and is frequently cited. Five main steps in his reasoning can be identified. First, he says that the contract was not too vague to be enforced, because it could be interpreted according to what ordinary people would understand by it. He differed slightly from Lindley LJ on what time period one could contract flu and still have a claim (Lindley LJ said a “reasonable time” after use, while Bowen LJ said “while the smoke ball is used”) but this was not a crucial point because the fact was the Mrs. Carlill got flu while using the smoke ball. Second, like Lindley LJ, Bowen LJ says that the advert was not mere puff because £1000 was deposited in the bank to pay rewards. Third, he said that although there was an offer to the whole world, there was not a contract with the whole world. Therefore, it was not an absurd basis for a contract, because only the people that used it would bind the company. Fourth, he says that communication is not necessary to accept the terms of an offer; conduct is and should be sufficient. Fifth, there was clearly good consideration given by Mrs. Carlill because she went to the “inconvenience” of using it, and the company got the benefit of extra sales.

{G} Carlill is frequently cited as a leading case in the common law of contract, particularly where unilateral contracts are concerned. This is perhaps due to the ingenuity of Counsel for the Defendant in running just about every available defense, requiring the court to deal with these points in turn in the judgment. It provides an excellent study of the basic principles of contract and how they relate to everyday life till the modern world. The case remains good law. It still binds the lower courts of England and Wales and is cited by judges with approval. However, in addition to the contractual remedy afforded to users, the same facts would give rise to a number of additional statutory remedies and punishments where an individual to place an advert in the same terms today.

Questions 14-17

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 Reading Passage? in boxes 14-17 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

(14) Influenza epidemic was more rampant in London city than in rural areas.

(15) A letter has replied to Ms. Carlill bearing no signed name to claim the company’s innocence.

(16) The Carbolic Smoke Ball Company lost its lawsuit then the company accepted the sentence straight away.

(17) The new patented carbolic acid product can be poisonous and viral infectious.

Questions 18-21

 Look at the diagram and fill in the blank with no more than one word

18 The part of the ……… 20 the bottle was made of ……….
19 a filtering………embedded inside 21 the ……… form medicine inside the bottle

Questions 22-25 

Look at the following statements (Questions 22-25) and the list of people in the box below: 

Match each statement with the correct person A-E 

Write the appropriate letter A-E in boxes 22-25 on your answer sheet.

(A) Lord Justice Lindley 

(B) Lord Justice Bowen 

(C) Mrs. Carlill 

(D) Mr. Carlill (the husband)

(22) The person who initiated a lawsuit against the company.

(23) The contract effectiveness can be established because the advert was to be issued to the public including ordinary persons rather than professionals

(24) The person who wrote complaints to the company and got no response again.

(25) Vagueness of the advert’s terms was no obstacle for people to enforce them.

Questions 26

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

Write your answers in boxes 26 on your answer sheet.

Question 26 Why Carlill is frequently cited as a leading case in the common law of contract

(A) It was the first and one of the most famous unilateral contract cases to be concerned. 

(B) It helped companies to develop a number of the contractual remedies afforded to users, 

(C) The case remains an excellent example that the basic principles and validity of the unilateral contract can be established 

(D) An individual to place an advert in similar terms today can be free of the punishment

Reading Passage  3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 Reading Passage Risk Management below.

Risk Management

{A} As a title for a supposedly unprejudiced debate on scientific progress, “Panic attack: interrogating our obsession with risk” did not bode well. Held last week at the Royal Institution in London, the event brought together scientists from across the world to ask why society is so obsessed with risk and to call for a “more rational” approach. “We seem to be organizing society around the grandmotherly maxim of ‘better safe than sorry,” exclaimed Spiked, the online publication that organized the event. “What are the consequences of this overbearing concern with risks?”

{B} The debate was preceded by a survey of 40 scientists who were invited to describe how awful our lives would be if the “precautionary principle” had been allowed to prevail in the past. Their response was: no heart surgery or antibiotics, and hardly any drugs at all; no airplanes, bicycles or high-voltage power grids; no pasteurization, pesticides, or biotechnology; no quantum mechanics; no wheel; no “discovery” of America. In short, their message was: no risk, no gain.

{C} They have absolutely missed the point. The precautionary principle is a subtle idea. It has various forms, but all of them generally include some notion of cost-effectiveness. Thus the point is not simply to ban things that are not known to be absolutely safe. Rather, it says: “Of course you can make no progress without risk. But if there is no obvious gain from taking the risk, then don’t take it.”

{D} Clearly, all the technologies listed by the 40 well-chosen savants were innately risky at their inception, as all technologies are. But all of them would have received the green light under the precautionary principle because they all had the potential to offer tremendous benefits – the solutions to very big problems – if only the snags could be overcome.

{E} If the precautionary principle had been in place, the scientists tell us, we would not have antibiotics. But of course, we would – if the version of the principle that sensible people now understand had been applied. When penicillin was discovered in the 1920s, infective bacteria were laying waste to the world. Children died from diphtheria and whooping cough, every open-drain brought the threat of typhoid, and any wound could lead to septicemia and even gangrene.

{F} Penicillin was turned into a practical drug during the Second World War when the many pestilences that resulted from war threatened to kill more people than the bombs. Of course, antibiotics were a priority. Of course, the risks, such as they could be perceived, were worth taking.

{G}  And so with the other items on the scientists’ list: electric light bulbs, blood transfusions, CAT scans, knives, the measles vaccine –the precautionary principle would have prevented all of them, they tell us. But this is just plain wrong. If the precautionary principle had been applied properly, all these creations would have passed muster, because all offered incomparable advantages compared to the risks perceived at the time.

{H} Another issue is at stake here. Statistics are not the only concept people use when weighing up risk. Human beings, subtle and evolved creatures that we are, do not survive to three-score years and ten simply by thinking like pocket calculators. A crucial issue is the consumer’s choice. In deciding whether to pursue the development of new technology, the consumer’s right to choose should be considered alongside considerations of risk and benefit. Clearly, skiing is more dangerous than genetically modified tomatoes. But people who ski choose to do so; they do not have skiing thrust upon them by portentous experts of the kind who now feel they have the right to reconstruct our crops. Even with skiing, there is the matter of cost-effectiveness to consider: skiing, I am told, is exhilarating. Where is the exhilaration in GM soya?

{I} Indeed, in contrast to all the other items on the Spiked list, GM crops stand out as an example of a technology whose benefits are far from clear. Some of the risks can at least be defined. But in the present economic climate, the benefits that might accrue from them seem dubious. Promoters of GM crops believe that the future population of the world cannot be fed without them. That is untrue. The crops that really matter are wheat and rice, and there is no GM research in the pipeline that will seriously affect the yield of either. GM is used to make production cheaper and hence more profitable, which is an extremely questionable ambition.

{J} The precautionary principle provides the world with a very important safeguard. If it had been in place in the past it might, for example, have prevented insouciant miners from polluting major rivers with mercury. We have come to a sorry pass when scientists, who should above all be dispassionate scholars, feel they should misrepresent such a principle for the purposes of commercial and political propaganda. People at large continue to mistrust science and the high technologies it produces partly because they doubt the wisdom of scientists. On such evidence as this, these doubts are fully justified.

Questions 27-32 

Do the following statements agree with the information given in IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 Reading Passage 3? In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement is True
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN If the information is not given in the passage

(27) The title of the debate is not unbiased.

(28) All the scientists invited to the debate were from the field of medicine.

(29) The message those scientists who conducted the survey were sending was people shouldn’t take risks.

(30) All the 40 listed technologies are riskier than other technologies.

(31) It was worth taking the risks to invent antibiotics.

(32) All the other inventions on the list were also judged by the precautionary principle.

Questions 33-39

Summary

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 Reading Passage, 

using no more than three words from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 33-39 on your answer sheet.

When applying precautionary principles to decide whether to invent a new technology, people should also consider the……….33………, along with the usual consideration of ……...34………. For example, though risky and dangerous enough, people still enjoy ……….35………for the excitement it provides. On the other hand, experts believe that the future population desperately needs ……….36………in spite of their undefined risks. However, the researches conducted so far have not been directed towards increasing the yield of ……….37………, but to reduce the cost of ……….38………and to bring more profit out of it. In the end, such selfish use of precautionary principle for business and political gain has often led people to ……….39……..science for they believe scientists are not to be trusted.

Questions 40

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

Write your answers in box 40 on your answer sheet.

Question 40 What is the main theme of the passage?

(A) people have the right to doubt science and technologies

(B) the precautionary principle could have prevented the development of science and technology

(C) there are not enough people who truly understand the precautionary principle

(D) the precautionary principle bids us take risks at all costs

For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 97 Answers

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