Academic IELTS Reading Test 98 With Answers

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For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 98 Answers

Reading Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 98 Reading Passage Noise Pollution below.

Noise pollution 

Section {A} A decibel Hell: 

It’s not difficult for a person to encounter sound at levels that can cause adverse health effects. During a single day, people living in a typical urban environment can experience a wide range of sounds in many locations, even once-quiet locales that have become polluted with noise. In fact, it’s difficult today to escape sound completely. In its 1999 Guidelines for Community Noise, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared, “Worldwide, noise-induced hearing impairment is the most prevalent irreversible occupational hazard, and it is estimated that 120 million people worldwide have disabling hearing difficulties.” Growing evidence also points to many other health effects of too much volume.

Mark Stephenson, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based senior research audiologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), says his agency’s definition of hazardous noise is sound that exceeds the time-weighted average of 85 dBA, meaning the average noise exposure measured over a typical eight-hour workday. Other measures and definitions are used for other purposes.

Section {B} Growing Volume 

In the United States, about 30 million workers are exposed to hazardous sound levels on the job, according to NIOSH. Industries having a high number of workers exposed to loud sounds include construction, agriculture, mining, manufacturing, utilities, transportation, and the military.

Noise in U.S. industry is an extremely difficult problem to monitor, acknowledges Craig Moulton, a senior industrial hygienist for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). “Still,” he says, “OSHA does require that any employer with workers overexposed to noise provide protection for those employees against the harmful effects of noise. Additionally, employers must implement a continuing, effective hearing conservation program as outlined in OSHA’s Noise Standard”

Section [C} Scary Sound Effects

Numerous scientific studies over the years have confirmed that exposure to certain levels of sound can damage hearing. Prolonged exposure can actually change the structure of the hair cells in the inner ear, resulting in hearing loss. It can also cause tinnitus, a ringing, roaring, buzzing, or clicking in the ears.

NIOSH studies from the mid to late 1990s show that 90% of coal miners have hearing impairment by age 52-compared to 9% of the general population and 70% of male metal/nonmetal miners will experience hearing impairment by age 60 (Stephenson notes that from adolescence onward, females tend to have better hearing than males). Neitzel says nearly half of all construction workers have some degree of hearing loss. “NIOSH research also reveals that by age twenty-five, the average carpenter’s hearing is equivalent to an otherwise healthy fifty-year-old male who hasn’t been exposed to noise,” he says.

William Luxford, medical director of the House Ear Clinic of St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles, points out one piece of good news: “It’s true that continuous noise exposure will lead to the continuation of hearing loss, but as soon as the exposure is stopped, the hearing loss stops. So a change in environment can improve a person’s hearing health.”

Research is catching up with this anecdotal evidence. In the July 2001 issue of Pediatrics, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that, based on audiometric testing of 5,249 children as part of the Third National Health and Nutrition, Examination Survey, an estimated 12.5% of American children have noise-induced hearing threshold shifts — or dulled hearing – in one or both ears. Most children with noise-induced hearing threshold shifts have only limited hearing damage, but continued exposure to excessive noise can lead to difficulties with high-frequency sound discrimination. The report listed stereos, music concerts, toys (such as toy telephones and certain rattles), lawnmowers, and fireworks as producing potentially harmful sounds. 

Section {D} Beyond the Ears

The effects of sound don’t stop with the ears. Nonauditory effects of noise exposure are those effects that don’t cause hearing loss but still can be measured, such as elevated blood pressure, loss of sleep, increased heart rate, cardiovascular constriction, labored breathing, and changes in brain chemistry.

The nonauditory effects of noise were noted as early as 1930 in a study published by E.L. Smith and D.L. Laird in volume 2 of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The results showed that exposure to noise caused stomach contractions in healthy human beings. Reports on noise’s nonauditory effects published since that pioneering study have been both contradictory and controversial in some areas.

Bronzaft and the school principal persuaded the school board to have acoustical tile installed in the classrooms adjacent to the tracks. The Transit Authority also treated the tracks near the school to make them less noisy. A follow-up study published in the September 1981 issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that children’s reading scores improved after these interventions were put in place.

Section {E} Fighting for Quiet 

Anti-noise activists say that Europe and several countries in Asia are more advanced than the United States in terms of combating noise. “Population pressure has prompted Europe to move more quickly on the noise issue than the United States has,” Hume says. In the European Union, countries with cities of at least 250,000 people are creating noise maps of those cities to help leaders determine noise pollution policies. Paris has already prepared its first noise maps. The map data, which must be finished by 2007, will be fed into computer models that will help test the sound impact of street designs or new buildings before construction begins.

Activists in other countries say they too want the United States to play a more leading role on the noise issue. But as in other areas of environmental health, merely having a more powerful government agency in place that can set more regulations is not the ultimate answer, according to other experts. Bronzaft stresses that governments worldwide need to increase funding for noise research and do a better job coordinating their noise pollution efforts so they can establish health and environmental policies based on solid scientific research. “Governments have a responsibility to protect their citizens by curbing noise pollution,” she says.

Questions 1-5

Complete the summary below. 

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 98 Reading passage for each answer. 

Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

Questions 6-10

Look at the following researchers and the list of findings below. Match each researcher with the correct finding. 

Write the correct letter in boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet. 

(6) People can change the environment to improve hearing health.

(7) Government should continue the research on anti-noise researches with fund

(8) companies should be required to protect the employees to avoid noise

(9) Noise has posed effect on American children’s hearing ability

(10) noise has seriously affected human being where they live worldwide

Questions 11 -13

Question 11 The board of schools built close to the tracks are convinced to

(A) moved the classrooms away from the noisy track 

(B) regulated the track usage to a less extent 

(C) utilized a special material into classroom buildings lessening the effect of outside noise

(D) organized a team for a follow-up study

Question 12 In the European countries, the big cities’ research on noise focuses on

(A) How to record pollution details of the city on maps 

(B) the impact of noise on population shift in the European cities 

(C) how wide can a city be to avoid noise pollution 

(D) helping the authorities better make a decision on management of the city

Question 13 What is the best title of paragraph 1 ?

(A) How people cope with noise pollutions 

(B) the fight against the noise with the powerful technology 

(C) The Effects of Living in a Noisy World 

(D) The Effects of noise on children’s learning

Reading Passage 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 98 Reading Passage Sounds Good? below.

Sounds Good?

{A} THE versificator, a machine described in George Orwell’s novel “1984”, automatically generated music for the hapless masses. The idea of removing humans from the creative process of making music, an art form so able to stir the soul, made for a good joke when the book was published in 1949. But today, computer programmers working in a new field called “music intelligence” are developing software capable of predicting which songs will become hits. This surprisingly accurate technology could profoundly change the way pop music is created.

{B} The software uses a process called “spectral deconvolution” to isolate and analyze around 30 parameters that define a piece of music, including such things as sonic brilliance, octave, cadence, frequency range, the fullness of sound, chord progression, timbre, and “bend” (variations in pitch at the beginning and end of the same note). “Songs conform to a limited number of mathematical equations,” says Mike McCready of Platinum Blue, a music-intelligence company based in New York, that he founded last December. Platinum Blue has compiled a database of more than 3m successful musical arrangements, including data on their popularity in different markets. To the human ear, music has changed a lot over the years. Music-intelligence software, however, can reveal striking similarities in the underlying parameters of two songs from different eras that, even to a trained ear, seem unrelated. According to Platinum Blue’s software, called Music Science, for example, a number of hit songs by U2 have a close kinship to some of Beethoven’s compositions. If a song written today has parameters similar to those of a number of past hits, it could well be a hit too.

[C} Carlos Quintero, a producer and remixer at Orixá Producciones in Madrid, recently tried out another music-intelligence system, called Hit Song Science (HSS). “It practically left me in shock, it’s stunning,” he says. Mr. Quintero’s production company now has the most promising demo songs it receives from aspiring musicians evaluated by Polyphonic HMI, the Barcelona-based developer of HSS and Platinum Blue’s only serious competitor. (Both companies perform analyses in-house, rather than selling software.) The results consisting of a graph, numerical scores, computer-generated comments, and suggested changes-help Orixas managers decide which songs to produce. Then, during the recording and post-production phases, Orixa uses HSS to reanalyze successive versions of each track for fine-tuning.

{D} Belief in music intelligence is spreading, as Polyphonic HMI and Platinum Blue rack up bull’s-eye predictions of success, including “Candy Shop” by 50 Cent, “Be the Girl” by Aslyn, “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield, “She Says” by Howie Day, and “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt. Still, labels that use music intelligence generally prefer to keep quiet about it, so non-disclosure agreements are common. “No one wants people to think their decisions are coming from a box,” says Ric Wake, an American producer of two Grammy-winning acts who routinely employ Music Science. Even so, the names of many customers have leaked out. They include Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, EMland Casablanca Records. Labels sometimes don’t even tell their established artists when they use music intelligence to help decide which singles to promote.

{E} Revenues at Polyphonic HMI will exceed Sim this year, twice last year’s take. In March the company began serving India’s music industry, after compiling a database of that country’s pop music. Platinum Blue refuses to release figures. But one of its managers, Tracie Reed (who, like several people at Platinum Blue, used to work at Polyphonic HMI), says customers now come a knocking-a reversal of the state of affairs not long ago, when people’s eyes glazed over and they asked things like, ‘Are you joking?” The service is relatively inexpensive: a year’s subscription for unlimited analyses typically costs a large record company around $100,000. And the service reduces the need for expensive “call-out” research, in which labels call consumers, play part of a song over the telephone, and compile their reactions.

{F} It is not just recorded companies that are interested in music intelligence, however. The market is expanding as radio playlist-programmers adopt the technology, often to put mathematically similar songs together to create a better “flow”. Mobile operators such as Vodafone and Orange use the technology to develop mobile ringtones. Disney’s Hollywood Records uses music intelligence to design soundtracks. Mr McCready of Platinum Blue says television advertising agencies have expressed interest in using it to select jingles, which, while structurally similar to those in a successful previous campaign, sound fresh to consumers. Lawyers are also interested in using the technology. Hillel Parness, a specialist in music copyright violation at Brown Raysman, a law firm in New York, contacted Platinum Blue to discuss the legal applications of the software. He would like to use the software in plagiarism suits as an objective way to alert judges, who often have little background in music, to suspicious similarities between two pieces of music. Music-intelligence software could also rustle up additional and lucrative) copyright suits. Using a function known as “melody detection”, record labels will soon be able to use the software to find songs that may have plagiarised songs in the label’s catalogue.

{G} Is there not a danger, however, that giving software a say in music selection will promote uniformity and hamper creativity? The opposite is more likely. High music-intelligence scores can help convince notoriously risk-averse and “it’s-who-you-know” record labels to take a chance on new talent. Take the case of Frederic Monneron, a publisher of equestrian books in Mesnil-Simon, a village of 150 people in Lower Normandy, France. After a setback in his love life, the 43-year-old self-taught guitarist and pianist set up a makeshift home studio, where he wrote and recorded 12 syrupy, and somewhat improbable, romantic-political ballads. For fun, he paid Polyphonic HMIto analyse his songs. The results indicated that the tunes had what it takes. In September a French label will begin distributing 200,000 copies of Monneron’s CD, “Fred’s Pentagone”, in Europe and North America. Two music videos and a tour will follow. “What happened is a fairy tale,” says Mr Monneron.

Questions 14-19 

The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G. 

Which paragraph contains the following information? 

Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet. 

(14) Small amount of money cost for record company 

(15) Working principle of music intelligence 

(16) Technology Contrasted between past and present 

(17) Another version of software depicted 

(18) More singers believe music intelligence 

(19) Offer opportunities for new talent

Questions 20-25

Summary

Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 98  Reading Passage, using no more than two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet.

Questions 26 

Which one is the CORRECT statement according to paragraphs F and G?

(A) Music intelligence is not a promising industry 

(B) Music intelligence help judge make the right decision 

(C) Music industry dominates music intelligence application 

(D) Music intelligence has a wide range of application

Reading Passage 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 98 Reading Passage Global Warming in New Zealand below.

Global Warming in New Zealand 

{A} For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting warmer. As the nearest country to the South Polar Region, New Zealand has maintained an upward trend in its average temperature in the past few years. However, the temperature in New Zealand will go up 4°C in the next century while the polar region will go up more than 6C. The different pictures of temperature stem from its surrounding ocean which acts as the air conditioner. Thus New Zealand is comparatively fortunate.

{B} Scientifically speaking, this temperature phenomenon in New Zealand originated from what researchers call “SAM (Southern Annular Mode), which refers to the wind belt that circles the Southern Oceans including New Zealand and Antarctica. Yet recent work has revealed that changes in SAM in New Zealand have resulted in a weakening of moisture during the summer, and more rainfall in other seasons. A bigger problem may turn out to be heavier droughts for agricultural activities because of more water loss from soil, resulting in the poorer harvest before winter when the rainfall arrives too late to rescue.

{C} Among all the calamities posed by drought, moisture deficit ranks first. Moisture deficit is the gap between the water plants need during the growing season and the water the earth can offer. Measures of moisture deficit were at their highest since the 1970s in New Zealand. Meanwhile, ecological analyses clearly show moisture deficit is imposed at the different growth stages of crops. If moisture deficit occurs around a crucial growth stage, it will cause about 22% reduction in grain yield as opposed to moisture deficit at the vegetative phase.

{D} Global warming is not only affecting agriculture production. When scientists say the country’s snowpack and glaciers are melting at an alarming rate due to global warming, the climate is putting another strain on the local places. For example, when the development of global warming is accompanied by the falling snow line, the local skiing industry comes into a crisis. The snow line may move up as the temperature goes up, and then the snow at the bottom will melt earlier. Fortunately, it is going to be favorable for the local skiing industry to tide over tough periods since the quantities of snowfall in some areas are more likely to increase.

{E} What is the reaction of the glacier region? The climate change can be reflected in the glacier region in southern New Zealand or land covered by ice and snow. The reaction of a glacier to a climatic change involves a complex chain of processes. Over time periods of years to several decades, cumulative changes in mass balance cause volume and thickness changes, which will affect the flow of ice via altered internal deformation and basal sliding. This dynamic reaction finally leads to glacier length changes, the advance or retreat of glacier tongues. Undoubtedly, glacier mass balance is a more direct signal of annual atmospheric conditions.

{F} The latest research result of National Institute of Water and Atmospheric (NIWA) Research shows that the glacier line keeps moving up because of the impacts of global warming. Further losses of ice can be reflected in Mt. Cook Region. By 1996, a 14 km long sector of the glacier had melted down forming a melt lake (Hooker Lake) with a volume. Melting of the glacier front at a rate of 40 m/yr will cause the glacier to retreat at a rather uniform rate. Therefore, the lake will continue to grow until it reaches the glacier bed.

{G} A direct result of the melting glaciers is the change of high tides that serves the main factor for sea level rise. The trend of sea level rise will bring a threat to the groundwater system for its hyper-saline groundwater and then pose a possibility to decrease the agricultural production. Many experts believe that the best way to counter this trend is to give a longer-term view of sea level change in New Zealand. Indeed, the coastal boundaries need to be upgraded and redefined.

{H} There is no doubt that global warming has affected New Zealand in many aspects. The emphasis on global warming should be based on the joint efforts of local people and experts who conquer the tough period. For instance, farmers are taking a long term, multi-generational approach to adjust the breeds and species according to the temperature. Agriculturists also find ways to tackle the problems that may bring to the soil. In broad terms, going forward, the systemic resilience that’s been going on a long time in the ecosystem will continue.

{I} How about animals’ reaction? Experts have surprisingly realised that animals have unconventional adaptation to global warming. A study has looked at sea turtles on a few northern beaches in New Zealand and it is very interesting to find that sea turtles can become male or female according to the temperature. Further researches will try to find out how rising temperatures would affect the ratio of sex reversal in their growth. Clearly, the temperature of the nest plays a vital role in the sexes of the baby turtles.

{J} Tackling the problems of global warming is never easy in New Zealand, because records show the slow process of global warming may have a different impact on various regions. For New Zealand, the emission of carbon dioxide only accounts for 0.5% of the world’s total, which has met the governmental standard. However, New Zealand’s effort counts only a tip of the iceberg. So far, global warming has been a world issue that still hangs in an ambiguous future.

Questions 27-32 

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

Question 27 What is the main idea of the first paragraph? 

(A) The temperature in the polar region will increase less than that in New Zealand in the next century. 

(B) The weather and climate of New Zealand is very important to its people because of its close location to the polar region. 

(C) The air condition in New Zealand will maintain a high quality because of the ocean. 

(D) The temperature of New Zealand will increase less than that of other regions in the next 100 years because it is surrounded by sea.

Question 28 What is one effect of the wind belt that circles the Southern Oceans? 

(A) New Zealand will have more moisture in winds in summer. 

(B) New Zealand needs to face droughts more often in hotter months in a year. 

(C) Soil water will increase as a result of weakening moisture in the winds. 

(D) Agricultural production will be reduced as a result of more rainfall in other seasons.

Question 29 What does “moisture deficit”mean to the grain and crops? 

(A) The growing condition will be very tough for crops. 

(B) The growing season of some plants can hardly be determined. 

(C) There will be a huge gap between the water plants needed and the water the earth can offer. 

(D) The soil of grain and crops in New Zealand reached its lowest production since the 1970s.

Question 30 What changes will happen to the skiing industry due to the global warming phenomenon? 

(A) The skiing station may lower the altitude of skiing. 

(B) Part of the skiing station needs to move to the north. 

(C) The snowfall may increase in part of the skiing station. 

(D) The local skiing station may likely make a profit because of the snowfall increase.

Question 31 Cumulative changes over a long period of time in mass balance will lead to 

(A) alteration in the volume and thickness of glaciers. 

(B) faster changes in internal deformation and basal sliding. 

(C) bigger length of glaciers. 

(D) retreat of glacier tongues as a result of change in annual atmospheric conditions.

Question 32 Why does the writer mention NIWA in the sixth paragraph? 

(A) To use a particular example to explain the effects brought by glacier melting. 

(B) To emphasize the severance of the further loss of ice in Mt. Cook Region.

(C) To alarm the reader of the melting speed of glaciers at a uniform rate. 

(D) To note the lake in the region will disappear when it reaches the glacier bed.

Questions 33-35

Complete the summary below: 

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 98 passage for each answer 

Write your answers in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet.

Questions 36-40 

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 98 Reading Passage

In boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet, write

(36) Farmers are less responsive to climate change than agriculturists. 

(37) Agricultural sector is too conservative and deals with climate change. 

(38) Turtles are vulnerable to climate change. 

(39) The global warming is going slowly, and it may have different effects on different areas in New Zealand. 

(40) New Zealand must cut carbon dioxide emission if they want to solve the problem of global warming

For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 98 Answers