IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132

IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132 ( Passage 1 Otter, Passage 2 Griffith and American films, Passage 3 Serendipity: The Accidental Scientists ) we prefer you to work offline, download the test paper, and blank answer sheet.

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For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 132 Answers

Reading Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132 Reading Passage Otter below.

Otter

{A} Otters have long, thin bodies and short legs – ideal for pushing through dense undergrowth or hunting in tunnels. An adult male may be up to 4 feet long and 30lbs. Females are typically smaller. The Eurasian otter’s nose is about the smallest among the otter species and has a characteristic shape described as a shallow ‘W’. An otter’s tail (or rudder, or stern) is stout at the base and tapers towards the tip where it flattens. This forms part of the propulsion unit when swimming fast underwater. Otter fur consists of two types of hair: stout guard hairs which form a waterproof outer covering, and under-fur which is dense and fine, equivalent to an otter’s thermal underwear. The fur must be kept in good condition by grooming. Seawater reduces the waterproofing and insulating qualities of otter fur when saltwater in the fur. This is why freshwater pools are important to otters living on the coast. After swimming, they wash the salts off in the pools and then squirm on the ground to rub dry against vegetation.

{B} Scent is used for hunting on land, for communication and for detecting danger. Otterine sense of smell is likely to be similar in sensitivity to dogs. Otters have small eyes and are probably short-sighted on land. But they do have the ability to modify the shape of the lens in the eye to make it more spherical, and hence overcome the refraction of water. In clear water and good light, otters can hunt fish by sight. The otter’s eyes and nostrils are placed high on its head so that it can see and breathe even when the rest of the body is submerged. Underwater, the otter holds its legs against the body, except for steering, and the hind end of the body is flexed in a series of vertical undulations. River otters have webbing which extends for much of the length of each digit, though not to the very end. Giant otters and sea otters have even more prominent webs, while the Asian short-clawed otter has no webbing – they hunt for shrimps in ditches and paddy fields so they don’t need the swimming speed. Otter’s ears are tiny for streamlining, but they still have very sensitive hearing and are protected by valves that close them against water pressure.

{C} A number of constraints and preferences limit suitable habitats for otters. Water is a must and the rivers must be large enough to support a healthy population of fish. Being such shy and wary creatures, they will prefer territories where man’s activities do not impinge greatly. Of course, there must also be no other otter already in residence – this has only become significant again recently as populations start to recover. Coastal otters have a much more abundant food supply and range for males and females maybe just a few kilometres of coastline. Because male ranges are usually larger a male otter may find his range overlaps with two or three females – not bad! Otters will eat anything that they can get hold of – there are records of sparrows and snakes and slugs being gobbled. Apart from fish, the most common prey are crayfish, crabs and water birds. Small mammals are occasionally taken, most commonly rabbits but sometimes even moles.

{D} Eurasian otters will breed any time where food is readily available. In places where conditions are more severe, Sweden for example where the lakes are frozen for much of winter, cubs are born in spring. This ensures that they are well grown before severe weather returns. In the Shetlands, cubs are born in summer when fish is more abundant. Though otters can breed every year, some do not. Again, this depends on food availability. Other factors such as food range and quality of the female may have an effect. Gestation for Eurasian otter is 63 days, with the exception of Lutra canadensis whose embryos may undergo delayed implantation. Otters normally give birth in more secure dens to avoid disturbances. Nests are lined with bedding to keep the cubs warm while the mummy is away feeding.

{E} Litter Size varies between 1 and 5. For some unknown reason, coastal otters tend to produce smaller litters. At five weeks they open their eyes – a tiny cub of 700g. At seven weeks they’re weaned onto solid food. At ten weeks they leave the nest, blinking into daylight for the first time. After three months they finally meet the water and learn to swim. After eight months they are hunting, though the mother still provides a lot of food herself. Finally, after nine months she can chase them all away with a clear conscience, and relax – until the next fella shows up.

{F} The plight of the British otter was recognised in the early 60s, but it wasn’t until the late 70s that the chief cause was discovered. Pesticides such as dieldrin and aldrin were first used in 1955 in agriculture and other industries – these chemicals are very persistent and had already been recognised as the cause of huge declines in the population of peregrine falcons, sparrow hawks and other predators. The pesticides entered the river systems and the food chain – micro-organisms, fish and finally otters, with every step increasing the concentration of the chemicals. From 1962 the chemicals were phased out, but while some species recovered quickly, otter numbers did not – and continued to fall into the 80s. This was probably due mainly to habitat destruction and road deaths. Acting on populations fragmented by the sudden decimation in the 50s and 60s, the loss of just a handful of otters in one area can make an entire population unviable and spell the end.

{G} Otter numbers are recovering all around Britain – populations are growing again in the few areas where they had remained and have expanded from those areas into the rest of the country. This is almost entirely due to legislation, conservation efforts, slowing down and reversing the destruction of suitable otter habitat and reintroductions from captive breeding programs. Releasing captive-bred otters is seen by many as a last resort. The argument runs that where there is no suitable habitat for them they will not survive after release and where there is suitable habitat, natural populations should be able to expand into the area. However, reintroducing animals into a fragmented and fragile population may add just enough impetus for it to stabilize and expand, rather than die out. This is what the Otter Trust accomplished in Norfolk, where the otter population may have been as low as twenty animals at the beginning of the 1980s. The Otter Trust has now finished its captive breeding program entirely, great news because it means it is no longer needed. 

Questions 1-8 IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132

The IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132 Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G. 

Which paragraph contains the following information? 

Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

(1) social characteristic and restraint on the territory of otter

(2) The fitness-purpose of otter’s body

(3) Conservation and law can really make a difference

(4) The maturation stages of baby otters’ development

(5) The mention of a degenerated sense from underwater to on land

(6) Breeding habit chose as a strategy for combating cold

(7) controversy arises to argument and example for a conservation resort

(8) failure in the recovering project due to agricultural practice around the habitat

Questions 9-13 IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132

Answer the questions below.

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

(9) Waterproof designed fur is to protect otters from corrosion of what? 

(10) Which sense is the weakest of otters? 

(11) What special ability does Asian short-clawed otter NOT need much during prey? 

(12) Which species of otters occupy the small areas to take activities? 

(13) What kind of mammals do otters sometimes eat (as a supplement) ?

Reading Passage 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132 Reading Passage Griffith and American films below.

Griffith and American films

Movies are key cultural artifacts that offer a window into American cultural and social history. A mixture of art, business, and popular entertainment, the movies provide a host of insights into Americans’ shifting ideals, fantasies, and preoccupations

{A} Many films of the early silent era dealt with gender relations. Before 1905, as Kathy Peiss has argued, movie screens were filled with salacious sexual imagery and risque humour, drawn from burlesque halls and vaudeville theatres. Early films offered many glimpses of women disrobing or of passionate kisses. As the movies’ female audience grew, sexual titillation and voyeurism persisted. But an ever-increasing number of films dealt with the changing work and sexual roles of women in a more sophisticated manner. While D.W. Griffith’s films presented an idealized picture of the frail Victorian child-woman and showed an almost obsessive preoccupation with female honour and chastity, other silent movies presented quite different images of femininity. These ranged from the exotic, sexually aggressive vamp to the athletic, energetic “serial queen”; the street smart urban working gal, who repels the sexual advances of her lascivious boss; and cigarette-smoking, alcohol drinking chorus girls or burlesque queens.

{B} In early 1910, director D.W. Griffith was sent by the Biograph Company to the west coast with his acting troupe, consisting of actors Blanche Sweet, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and others. While there, the company decided to explore new territories, traveling several miles north to Hollywood, a little village that was friendly and enjoyed the movie company filming there. By focusing the camera on particular actors and actresses, Griffith inadvertently encouraged the development of the star system. As early as 1910, newspapers were deluged with requests for actors’ names. But most studios refused to divulge their identities, fearing the salary demands of popular performers. As one industry observer put it, “In the ‘star’ your producer gets not only a ‘production’ value…but a ‘trademark’ value, and an ‘insurance’ value which are…very potent in guaranteeing the sale of this product.” As the star system emerged, salaries soared. In the course of just two years, the salary of actress Mary Pickford rose from less than $400 a week in 1914 to $10,000 a week in 1916. This action made Griffith believe in the big potential in the movie industry. Thus many competitors completely copy the same system as Griffith used, for the considerable profits. Additionally, they also study the theory and methods which Griffith suggested.

{C} From the moment America entered the war, Hollywood feared that the industry would be subject to heavy-handed government censorship. But the government itself wanted no repeat of World War I, when the Committee on Public Information had whipped up anti-German hysteria and oversold the war as “a Crusade not merely to re-win the tomb of Christ, but to bring back to earth the rule of right, the peace, goodwill to men and gentleness he taught.”

{D} The formation of the movie trust ushered in a period of rationalization within the film industry. Camera and projecting equipment was standardized; film rental fees were fixed; theaters were upgraded; which improved the quality of movies by removing damaged prints from circulation. This was also a period of intense artistic and technical innovation, as pioneering directors like David Wark Griffith and others created a new language of film and revolutionized screen narrative.

{E} With just six months of film experience, Griffith, a former stage actor, was hired as a director by the Biograph Company and promised $50 a week and one-twentieth of a cent for every foot of film sold to a rental exchange. Each week, Griffith turned out two or three one-reelers. While earlier directors had used such cinematic devices as close ups, slow motion, fade-ins and fade-outs, lighting effects, and editing before, Griffith’s great contribution to the movie industry was to show how these techniques could be used to create a wholly new style of storytelling, distinct from the theater. Griffith’s approach to movie storytelling has been aptly called “photographic realism. “This is not to say that he merely wished to record a story accurately; rather he sought to convey the illusion of realism. He demanded that his performers act less in a more lifelike manner, avoiding the broad, exaggerated gestures and pantomiming of emotions that characterized the nineteenth century stage. He wanted his performers to take on a role rather than directly addressing the camera. Above all, he used close-ups, lighting, editing, and other cinematic techniques to convey suspense and other emotions and to focus the audience’s attention on individual performers.

{F} During the 1920s and 1930s, a small group of film companies consolidated their control. Known as the “Big Five” – Paramount, Warner Brothers, RKO, 20th Century-Fox, and Lowe’s (MGM) and the “Little Three” – Universal, Columbia, and United Artists, they formed fully integrated companies. The old film company’s opposition was shocked by new tycoons. The confusion of tongues in the foreign version of American films deepened when American directors themselves embarked on the shooting of the new version. They did not usually speak Spanish (or the given target language) and, at that time, there were only few translators at the studio’s disposal. For this reason, it was more general to contract Spanish directors, actors, and screenwriters to produce American films in Spanish for Latin American audiences and for the public in the Iberian Peninsula. Hollywood had depended on overseas markets for as much as 40 percent of its revenue. But in an effort to nurture their own film industries and prevent an excessive outflow of dollars, Britain, France, and Italy imposed stiff import tariffs and restrictive quotas on imported American movies.

{G} A basic problem facing today’s Hollywood is the rapidly rising cost of making and marketing a movie: an average of $40 million today. The immense cost of producing movies has led the studios to seek guaranteed hits: blockbuster loaded with high-tech special effects, sequels, and remakes of earlier movies, foreign films, and even old TV shows. Hollywood has also sought to cope with rising costs by focusing ever more intently on its core audiences. Since the mid-1980s, the movie going audience has continued to decrease in size. Ticket sales fell from 1.2 billion in 1983 to 950 million in 1992, with the biggest drop occurring among adults. And since over half of Hollywood’s profits are earned overseas, the target market has to be changed due to the increasing costs and salary of making a film. The industry has concentrated much of its energy on crude action films easily understood by an international audience, featuring stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. 

Questions 14-19 IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132

Reading passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. 

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

(14) Paragraph A

(15) Paragraph B

(16) Paragraph C

(17) Paragraph D

(18) Paragraph E

(19) Paragraph F

Questions 20-23

Use the information in the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132 passage to match the companies (listed A-C) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A, B, C or D in boxes 20-23 on your answer sheet.

(20) Griffith’s successful in 1910s, led his rivals 

(21) The growing costs and salary in Hollywood which shows it has 

(22) The increasing new movie industries have a big impact on 

(23) In 1992, ticket sales declined dramatically, due to

Questions 24-26

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

Write your answer in boxes 36-38 on your answer sheet.

Question 24 Why does Griffith believe in the potential in making movies?

(A) The gender development in American films 

(B) He used the star system successfully 

(C) He prefer the advanced movie techniques 

(D) He earns lots of money

Question 25 What are other competitors’ reactions to Griffith?

(A) Adopt Griffith’s theory and methods in making films 

(B) Completely copy his theory and methods 

(C) Try to catch up their innovations 

(D) Find a new system to against Griffith

Question 26 What was the great change in film industries during the 1920s and 1930s?

(A) Try to seek the high-tech special efforts 

(B) Dismiss the needs of overseas audiences 

(C) Changed its goal market 

(D) Improved the foreign version of American movies

Reading Passage 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132 Reading Passage Serendipity: The Accidental Scientists below.

Serendipity: The Accidental Scientists

{A} A paradox lies close to the heart of scientific discovery. If you know just what you are looking for, finding it can hardly count as a discovery, since it was fully anticipated. But if, on the other hand, you have no notion of what you are looking for, you cannot know when you have found it, and discovery, as such, is out of the question. In the philosophy of science, these extremes map onto the purest forms of deductivism and inductivism : In the former, the outcome is supposed to be logically contained in the premises you start with; in the latter, you are recommended to start with no expectations whatsoever and see what turns up.

{B} As in so many things, the ideal position is widely supposed to reside somewhere in between these two impossible-to-realize extremes. You want to have a good enough idea of what you are looking for to be surprised when you find something else of value, and you want to be ignorant enough of your end point that you can entertain alternative outcomes. Scientific discovery should, therefore, have an accidental aspect, but not too much of one. Serendipity is a word that expresses a position something like that. It’s a fascinating word, and the late Robert King Merton—the father of the sociology of science’—liked it well enough to compose its biography, assisted by the French cultural historian Elinor Barber.

{C} Serendipity means a “happy accident’ or ‘pleasant surprise’; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it. The first noted use of serendipity in the English language was by Horace Walpole (1717-1792). In a letter to Horace Mann (dated 28 January 1754) he said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’. The name stems from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka.

{D} Besides antiquarians, the other community that came to dwell on serendipity to say something important about their practice was that of scientists. Many scientists, including the Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon and, later, the British immunologist Peter Medawar, liked to emphasize how much of scientific discovery was unplanned and even accidental. One of Cannon’s favorite examples of such serendipity is Luigi Galvani’s observation of the twitching of dissected frogs’ legs, hanging from a copper wire, when they accidentally touched an iron railing, leading to the discovery of ‘galvanismo; another is Hans Christian Orsted’s discovery of electromagnetism when he unintentionally brought a current-carrying wire parallel to a magnetic needle. The context in which scientific serendipity was most contested and had its greatest resonance was that connected with the idea of planned science. The serendipitists were not all inhabitants of academic ivory towers. Two of the great early-20th-century American pioneers of industrial research-Willis Whitney and Irving Langmuir, both of General Electric—made much play of serendipity, in the course of arguing against overly rigid research planning.

{E} Yet what Cannon and Medawar took as a benign method, other scientists found incendiary To say that science had a significant serendipitous aspect was taken by some as dangerous denigration. If scientific discovery were really accidental, then what was the special basis of expert authority?

{F} In this connection, the aphorism of choice came from no less an authority on scientific discovery than Louis Pasteur: “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Accidents may happen, and things may turn up unplanned and unforeseen, as one is looking for something else, but the ability to notice such events, to see their potential bearing and meaning, to exploit their occurrence and make constructive use of them—these are the results of systematic mental preparation. What seems like an accident is just another form of expertise. On closer inspection, it is insisted, accident dissolves into sagacity

{G} In 1936, as a very young man, Merton wrote a seminal essay on “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action.” It is, he argued, the nature of social action that what one intends is rarely what one gets: Intending to provide resources for buttressing Christian religion, the natural philosophers of the Scientific Revolution laid the groundwork for secularism  people wanting to be alone with nature in Yosemite Valley wind up crowding one another. We just don’t know enough—and we can never know enough—to ensure that the past is an adequate guide to the future: Uncertainty about outcomes, even of our best-laid plans, is endemic. All social action, including that undertaken with the best evidence and formulated according to the most rational criteria, is uncertain in its consequences.

Questions 28-33 IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132

IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132 Reading passage 3 has seven paragraphs, A-G 

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-F from the list of headings below. 

Write the correct number, i-x, in boxes 28-33 on your answer sheet.

(28) Paragraph A 

(29) Paragraph B 

(30) Paragraph C 

(31) Paragraph D

(32) Paragraph E

(33) Paragraph F

Questions 34-36

Complete the summary below, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the IELTSFever Academic IELTS Reading Test 132 Reading Passage for each answer. 

Write your answers in boxes 34-36 on your answer sheet.

Questions 37-40 

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

Question 37 What does ‘inductivism’ mean in paragraph A?

(A) observation without anticipation at the beginning 

(B) Looking for what you want in the premise 

(C) The expected discovery 

(D) The map we pursued

Question 38 Scientific discovery should

(A) be much of accidental aspect 

(B) be full of value 

(C) be between the two extremes 

(D) be skeptical

Question 39 The writer mentions Luigi Galvani’s observation to illustrate 

(A) the cruelty of frog’s dissection 

(B) the happy accident in scientific discovery 

(C) the practice of scientists 

(D) the rigid research planning

Question 40 Why does the writer mention the example in Yosemite Valley in paragraph G?

(A) To illustrate the importance of a systematic plan 

(B) To illustrate there is an unpredictable reality towards expectation 

(C) To illustrate the original anticipation 

(D) To illustrate that intention of social action is totally meaningless

For Answers Academic IELTS Reading Test 132 Answers