Paragraph/Headings Questions: Practice 1

The reading text on the following page is longer that usual and is used as the basis for all the questions and examples in this section. However, in the real IELTS test the 40 or 50 questions will be based on three texts not just one, and the questions will not test your understanding of a point in the text more than once, as they may do here.

Lessons from the Titanic
A From the comfort of our modern lives we tend to look back at the turn of the twentieth century as a dangerous time for sea travellers. With limited communication facilities, and shipping technology still in its infancy in the early nineteen hundreds, we consider ocean travel to have been a risky business. But to the people of the time it was one of the safest forms of transport. At the time of the Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912, there had only been four lives lost in the previous forty years on passenger ships on the North Atlantic crossing. And the Titanic was confidently proclaimed to be unsinkable. She represented the pinnacle of technological advance at the time. Her builders, crew and passengers had no doubt that she was the finest ship ever built. But still she did sink on April 14, 1912, taking 1,517 of her passengers and crew with her.

B The RMS Titanic left Southampton for New York on April 10, 1912. On board were some of the richest and most famous people of the time who had paid large sums of money to sail on the first voyage of the most luxurious ship in the world. Imagine her placed on her end: she was larger at 269 metres than many of the tallest buildings of the day. And with nine decks, she was as high as an eleven storey building. The Titanic carried 329 first class, 285 second class and 710 third class passengers with 899 crew members, under the care of the very experienced Captain Edward J. Smith. She also carried enough food to feed a small town, including 40,000 fresh eggs, 36,000 apples, 111,000 lbs of fresh meat and 2,200 lbs of coffee for the five day journey.

C RMS Titanic was believed to be unsinkable because the hull was divided into sixteen watertight compartments. Even if two of these compartments flooded, the ship could still float. The ship’s owners could not imagine that, in the case of an accident, the Titanic would not be able to float until she was rescued. It was largely as a result of this confidence in the ship and in the safety of ocean travel that the disaster could claim such a great loss of life.

D In the ten hours prior to the Titanic’s fatal collision with an iceberg at 11.40pm, six warnings of icebergs in her path were received by the Titanic's wireless operators. Only one of these messages was formally posted on the bridge; the others were in various locations across the ship. If the combined information in these messages of iceberg positions had been plotted, the ice field which lay across the Titanic’s path would have been apparent. Instead, the lack of formal procedures for dealing with information from a relatively new piece of technology, the wireless, meant that the danger was not known until too late. This was not the fault of the Titanic crew. Procedures for dealing with warnings received through the wireless had not been formalised across the shipping industry at the time. The fact that the wireless operators were not even Titanic crew, but rather contracted workers from a wireless company, made their role in the ship’s operation quite unclear.

E Captain Smith’s seemingly casual attitude in increasing the speed on this day to a dangerous 22 knots or 41 kilometres per hour, can then be partly explained by his ignorance of what lay ahead. But this only partly accounts for his actions, since the spring weather in Greenland was known to cause huge chunks of ice to break off from the glaciers. Captain Smith knew that these icebergs would float southward and had already acknowledged this danger by taking a more southerly route than at other times of the year. So why was the Titanic travelling at high speed when he knew, if not of the specific risk, at least of the general risk of icebergs in her path? As with the lack of coordination of the wireless messages, it was simply standard operating procedure at the time. Captain Smith was following the practices accepted on the North Atlantic, practices which had coincided with forty years of safe travel. He believed, wrongly as we now know, that the ship could turn or stop in time if an iceberg was sighted by the lookouts.

F There were around two and a half hours between the time the Titanic rammed into the iceberg and its final submersion. In this time 705 people were loaded into the twenty lifeboats. There were 473 empty seats available on lifeboats while over 1,500 people drowned. These figures raise two important issues. Firstly, why there were not enough lifeboats to seat every passenger and crew member on board. And secondly, why the lifeboats were not full.

G The Titanic had sixteen lifeboats and four collapsible boats which could carry just over half the number of people on board her maiden voyage and only a third of the Titanic’s total capacity. Regulations for the number of lifeboats required were based on outdated British Board of Trade regulations written in 1894 for ships a quarter of the Titanic’s size, and had never been revised. Under these requirements, the Titanic was only obliged to carry enough lifeboats to seat 962 people. At design meetings in 1910, the shipyard’s managing director, Alexander Carlisle, had proposed that forty eight lifeboats be installed on the Titanic, but the idea had been quickly rejected as too expensive. Discussion then turned to the ship’s décor, and as Carlisle later described the incident … ’we spent two hours discussing carpet for the first class cabins and fifteen minutes discussing lifeboats’.

H The belief that the Titanic was unsinkable was so strong that passengers and crew alike clung to the belief even as she was actually sinking. This attitude was not helped by Captain Smith, who had not acquainted his senior officers with the full situation. For the first hour after the collision, the majority of people aboard the Titanic, including senior crew, were not aware that she would sink, that there were insufficient lifeboats or that the nearest ship responding to the Titanic’s distress calls would arrive two hours after she was on the bottom of the ocean. As a result, the officers in charge of loading the boats received a very halfhearted response to their early calls for women and children to board the lifeboats. People felt that they would be safer, and certainly warmer, aboard the Titanic than perched in a little boat in the North Atlantic Ocean. Not realising the magnitude of the impending disaster themselves, the officers allowed several boats to be lowered only half full.

I Procedures again were at fault, as an additional reason for the officers’ reluctance to lower the lifeboats at full capacity was that they feared the lifeboats would buckle under the weight of 65 people. They had not been informed that the lifeboats had been fully tested prior to departure. Such procedures as assigning passengers and crew to lifeboats and lifeboat loading drills were simply not part of the standard operation of ships nor were they included in crew training at this time.

J As the Titanic sank, another ship, believed to have been the Californian, was seen motionless less than twenty miles away. The ship failed to respond to the Titanic’s eight distress rockets. Although the officers of the Californian tried to signal the Titanic with their flashing Morse lamp, they did not wake up their radio operator to listen for a distress call. At this time, communication at sea through wireless was new and the benefits not well appreciated, so the wireless on ships was often not operated around the clock. In the case of the Californian, the wireless operator slept unaware while 1,500 Titanic passengers and crew drowned only a few miles away.

K After the Titanic sank, investigations were held in both Washington and London. In the end, both inquiries decided that no one could be blamed for the sinking. However, they did address the fundamental safety issues which had contributed to the enormous loss of life. As a result, international agreements were drawn up to improve safety procedures at sea. The new regulations covered 24 hour wireless operation, crew training, proper lifeboat drills, lifeboat capacity for all on board and the creation of an international ice patrol.

List of Headings

i Ignorance of the impending disaster
ii Captain’s orders ignored
iii Captain’s over-confidence
iv Rough sea conditions
v Faulty design
vi Iceberg locations not plotted
vii Low priority placed on safety
viii Number of lifeboats adequate
ix Inadequate training
x Ice warnings ignored


1) Paragraph D

2) Paragraph E

3) Paragraph G

4) Paragraph H

5) Paragraph I  

Paragraphs/headings Questions

Paragraphs/headings  Questions

• The task is to match between 5 and 7 headings to paragraphs in the text.
• There are always more headings than paragraphs
• You may need to read the whole text or only a part of it

The reading skill – skimming and general meaning

The main skill tested here is your ability to read quickly and get the main meaning of a paragraph. This means that:

• If you find a word you don’t understand: ignore it – you are looking for meanings of paragraphs not words
• Don’t simply match a word in the question with a word in the text – read the sentence/paragraph to see how it is being used
• Concentrate on the openings and closings of paragraphs – that is where the writer normally makes the main point

Some problems and their solutions

This can be one of the easier types of question but it is also easy to get them all wrong! Here are one or two difficulties.

A large part of the text – too much to read

You may need to read the whole text or a large part of it anyway. Make this problem into a virtue.

One idea is that you do this task first – even if it is not the first set of questions. This allows you to understand what the text is about.

Just matching words

Sometimes you can find the answer by matching words in the heading with words in the text. Often though it is not as simple as matching words.The word in the heading may be environmental and the word in the paragraph may be green.

Think meaning, not words. When you look at the headings remember that the paragraphs may not contain those exact same words.

Similar headings

Some of the headings seem quite similar and contain similar words.

Make sure you spend time reading them all and try every heading with every paragraph. This may take time but you will avoid a lot of mistakes.

Avoid concentrating on words that are common to all or many of  the headings. Look for words that are special to that heading.

Only looking at first lines – trying to go too quickly

You want to work efficiently, so often you avoid reading the whole paragraph. Often you can guess the meaning from the first few lines of the paragraph. This is because the writer uses a topic sentence at the start to say what the paragraph is going to be about. The problem is that this only works sometimes. The meaning you need may be in the last few lines of the paragraph, or sometimes from the whole paragraph itself.

Look to see if the final sentence of the paragraph gives a summary of what the paragraph is about.

Don’t stop reading too quickly and skim the whole paragraph. Some paragraphs are a combination of ideas and to get their general meaning you need tom ski the whole paragraph for general meaning.

Wasting time on one paragraph

Often you waste time because the first paragraph is the hardest to match. You may spend a long time concentrating on that one because it is one of the harder matches and you have lots of options.

Easy. Write in 2/3 headings it could be and move on. When you come back after doing the other questions, it may seem obvious. Don’t guess immediately. Do the task twice and using a code. The code I suggest is that you mark in capital letters (CD etc) if you are certain and small letters (cd etc) if you are unsure.

A suggested procedure

1. Look at the headings first. Don’t spend too much time on this, as at least some of them will be wrong. Try and identify what the more important words are. By looking at the headings first, you get a good idea of the general meaning of the text. That will help your reading.
2. Look at the first paragraph. Try to ignore the detail and look for the main point – these are normally found in the first few lines – that may be the topic of the paragraph. Does it match any of the headings? Don’t forget to check final sentences too - that may be a summary of the paragraph.
3. Try all the headings for each paragraph. Lots of mistakes happen because you try and work too quickly.
4. If you are unsure and it could be heading a) or b) – write down a) or b). Don’t guess yet. Come back at the end.
5. Make sure you underline/circle the words in the text that best match the heading. If you do this, you can easily check your answer, if you want to use the same heading for another paragraph later on.
6. Move onto the next paragraph and repeat the process. Don’t expect to complete all the paragraphs first time around.
7. Go back at the end and make a decision about the paragraphs you didn’t do first time. Try and be as careful as possible. Don’t rush.
8. If you are uncertain, it sometimes makes sense to use the same heading for 2 paragraphs. You will get one wrong and one right. If you guess, you may get two wrong (or two right!)

Multiple Choice- Practice 3

All these activities may have damaging environmental impacts. For example, land clearing for agriculture is the largest single cause of deforestation; chemical fertilisers and pesticides may contaminate water supplies; more intensive farming and the abandonment of fallow periods tend to exacerbate soil erosion; and the spread of monoculture and use of high-yielding varieties of crops have been accompanied by the disappearance of old varieties of food plants which might have provided some insurance against pests or diseases in future. Soil erosion threatens the productivity of land in both rich and poor countries. The United States, where the most careful measurements have been done, discovered in 1982 that about one-fifth of its farmland was losing topsoil at a rate likely to diminish the soil's productivity. The country subsequently embarked upon a program to convert 11 per cent of its cropped land to meadow or forest. Topsoil in India and China is vanishing much faster than in America.
Government policies have frequently compounded the environmental damage that farming can cause. In the rich countries, subsidies for growing crops and price supports for farm output drive up the price of land. The annual value of these subsidies is immense: about $250 billion, or more than all World Bank lending in the 1980s. To increase the output of crops per acre, a farmer's easiest option is to use more of the most readily available inputs: fertilisers and pesticides. Fertiliser use doubled in Denmark in the period 1960-1985 and increased in The Netherlands by 150 per cent. The quantity of pesticides applied has risen too: by 69 per cent in 1975-1984 in Denmark, for example, with a rise of 115 per cent in the frequency of application in the three years from 1981.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s some efforts were made to reduce farm subsidies. The most dramatic example was that of New Zealand, which scrapped most farm support in 1984. A study of the environmental effects, conducted in 1993, found that the end of fertiliser subsidies had been followed by a fall in fertiliser use (a fall compounded by the decline in world commodity prices, which cut farm incomes). The removal of subsidies also stopped land-clearing and over-stocking, which in the past had been the principal causes of erosion. Farms began to diversify. The one kind of subsidy whose removal appeared to have been bad for the environment was the subsidy to manage soil erosion.
In less enlightened countries, and in the European Union, the trend has been to reduce rather than eliminate subsidies, and to introduce new payments to encourage farmers to treat their land in environmentally friendlier ways, or to leave it fallow. It may sound strange but such payments need to be higher than the existing incentives for farmers to grow food crops. Farmers, however, dislike being paid to do nothing. In several countries they have become interested in the possibility of using fuel produced from crop residues either as a replacement for petrol (as ethanol) or as fuel for power stations (as biomass). Such fuels produce far less carbon dioxide than coal or oil, and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. They are therefore less likely to contribute to the greenhouse effect. But they are rarely competitive with fossil fuels unless subsidised - and growing them does no less environmental harm than other crops.

Research completed in 1982 found that in the United States soil erosion
A reduced the productivity of farmland by 20 per cent.
B was almost as severe as in India and China.
C was causing significant damage to 20 per cent of farmland.
D could be reduced by converting cultivated land to meadow or forest.

By the mid-1980s, farmers in Denmark
A used 50 per cent less fertiliser than Dutch farmers.
B used twice as much fertiliser as they had in 1960.
C applied fertiliser much more frequently than in 1960.
D more than doubled the amount of pesticide they used in just 3 years.

Which one of the following increased in New Zealand after 1984?
A farm incomes
B use of fertiliser
C over-stocking
D farm diversification

Multiple Choice - Practice 2

GOING DIGITAL

All over the world, libraries have begun the
Herculean task of making faithful digital
copies of the books, images and
recordings that preserve the intellectual effort of
humankind. For armchair scholars, the work
promises to bring such a wealth of information to
the desktop that the present Internet may seem
amateurish in retrospect. ...
Librarians see three clear benefits to going digital.
First, it helps them preserve rare and fragile
objects without denying access to those who wish
to study them. The British Library, for example,
holds the only medieval manuscript of Beowulf in
London. Only qualified scholars were allowed to
see it until Kevin S. Kiernan of the University of
Kentucky scanned the manuscript with three
different light sources (revealing details not
normally apparent to the naked eye) and put the
images up on the Internet for anyone to peruse.
Tokyo's National Diet Library is similarly creating
highly detailed digital photographs of 1,236
woodblock prints, scrolls and other materials it
considers national treasures so mat researchers can
scrutinise them without handling the originals.
A second benefit is convenience. Once books are
converted to digital form, patrons can retrieve
them in seconds rather than minutes. Several
people can simultaneously read the same book or
view the same picture. Clerks are spared the chore
of reshelving. And libraries could conceivably use
the Internet to lend their virtual collections to
those who are unable to visit in person.
The third advantage of electronic copies is that
they occupy millimeters of space on a magnetic
disk rather man meters on a shelf. Expanding
library buildings is increasingly costly. The
University of California at Berkeley recently spent
$46 million on an underground addition to house
1.5 million books - an average cost of $30 per
volume. The price of disk storage, in contrast, has
fallen to about $2 per 300-page publication and
continues to drop.

Which THREE of the following are mentioned in the text as benefits of going digital?

A More people can see precious documents.

В Old manuscripts can be moved more easily.

С Material can be examined without being touched.

D Fewer staff will be required in libraries.

E Borrowers need not go to the library building.

F Libraries will be able to move underground.

Multiple Choice - Practice 1

In most areas of the world, certainly in Europe, both
the physical landscape and the maps of it are
relatively stable. Map revision is usually concerned
with manmade features, such as buildings and roads.
This is not true of Antarctica. The Antarctic ice sheet
is a dynamic entity and cartographers have to
contend with big and rapid changes in the physical
geography of the continent. For example, earlier this
year they faced the dramatic break-up of the Larsen
and Prince Gustav ice shelves in the Antarctic
Peninsula region, which is where the British Antarctic
Survey (BAS) concentrates its mapping activity.
Topographic maps are probably changing faster in
Antarctica than anywhere else in the world.

What do the break-up of the Larsen and Prince Gustav ice shelves illustrate?

1. The errors that occur on maps of the Antarctic.
2. The difficulties in reaching areas in the Antarctic.
3. The sort of changes that can occur in the Antarctic.
4. The regularity with which map-makers visit the Antarctic.

Multiple choice - Strategies

This is one of my series of tutorials on how to approach the different types of reading questions in IELTS. The multiple choice question should be familiar to most candidates. That doesn’t make it easy though. In many ways the skills needed for this question are the same as for the True/False/Not Given type – only here you get 4 options and not 3. So, in a sense, it’s harder.

The primary reading skill

As with the True/False question type, multiple choice questions require very close reading of one or two paragraphs of the text. Very frequently the difficult part is reading the question carefully too. At least 3 of the 4 possible answers may look ok until you read them closely.

The two types of question – fact and opinion

It’s very important to recognise that there are 2 types of question here those that:

1. ask you for the writer’s opinion
2. ask you to find factual information

Let me explain why this distinction matters with this easy example:

"Different people read for different reasons. For example, the attraction of reading detective fiction can be in the intellectual challenge of finding out who did it, in an autobiography we can eavesdrop on the conversations of the great and good or we can laugh at folly in the celebrity magazine. For many children it is a magic gateway to some other world. Sadly, that is one of the greatest mistakes they can make."

"According to the author, the attraction of reading for young people is:

1. they find out about other countries
2. different from other generations
3. escaping into another world
4. foolish

Without the words highlighted in red, the answer must be 3., with those words it becomes 4.

Tip: don’t stop reading too soon. An answer may seem right but if the next word is something like “but” the meaning changes completely


The traps and how to avoid them

It helps to know how the examiners try and trap you. The way they do this is fairly predictable. Let’s look at another example:

What were the findings of the research in Scotland:

1. anti-smoking legislation was more effective in the USA
2. advertising of tobacco products had less effect on old than on young people
3. the legislation was unpopular with the print media
4. almost a third of young people stopped smoking after the legislation

These conclusions are the result of extensive research carried out over the past 20 years around various countries into the effect of banning tobacco advertising. In Scotland it was found that the incidence of smoking fell by 30% in the 18-24 age group after legislation prohibiting the advertising of tobacco products in all print media was introduced. A separate piece of research in the United States of America found that when tobacco advertising was banned in 34 states, this reduced the level of smoking by 50%.

1. Factually true and in the text but doesn’t answer the question

Answer 1 above is wrong because it doesn’t answer the question. This was not the findings of the research in Scotland It’s easy to fall for this trap as the information is correct.

Tip: always go back and re-read the question before you answer

2. Probably true but you’re guessing information

Answer 2 is wrong because we don’t have the information in the text. We might be able to guess that this is true, but if it doesn’t say so in the text the answer is not correct.

Tip: always make sure you look at all answers, don’t guess too soon. You may find a better answer later

3. You’re word matching – read the context

This one contains most words from the text so there is an obvious temptation to say “yes”. There is in fact no evidence for this in the text at all. A very typical mistake is to match words in the question and text. You need to read the context for meaning to avoid this mistake.

Tip:always refocus on the exact wording of the question before giving the answer. Be suspicious of answers that contain almost the same language as the text

Suggested procedure

1. Look at the questions first to see what topics you need to look for – be aware you may need to look for synonyms
2. Skim the text to identify the correct paragraphs to read: the questions will go in order so question 5 will come between 4 and 6
3. Read the paragraph carefully and then re-read the question
4. Ask yourself if you are looking for fact or opinion
5. Delete the answers you know to be incorrect
6. underline the words in the text that give you the answer

Adjectives & Prepositions

Adjectives & Prepositions

Good Examples to follow for your IELTS Speaking.

Some more tips to solve Yes No and Notgiven questions

Some practical tips

1. Read the whole question. Do NOT focus on key words. Think about the meaning of the question.
2. Be especially careful with words such as “often” and “some”. They can change the meaning of the question dramatically.
3. Be careful with questions beginning “The writer says”: here you need to think about the writer’s opinions and not about facts.
4. The questions will follow the order of the text: if you can’t find answer 12, you know it must be somewhere between 11 and 13.
5. Do not spend too long on any one question. If the answer is “Not Given”, there may be nothing for you to find.
6. One possibility is to mark all the “True” answers and all the “False” answers and then guess “Not Given” for the others.

Is YES NO and NOT GIVEN a pain?

True False Not given 

Perhaps the question type that gives most pain to most IELTS candidates is the True/False/Not given question type. Here are some pointers to help you improve your IELTS band score with a link to some specific practice on this type of question.

The question types

In fact there are two question types here:

True/False/Not given: fact based
Yes/No/Not given: opinion based
In each case you need to decide if the information in the text agrees with the information in the question. You should note that in the “Yes/No/Not given” questions, you are normally asked to look for the writer’s opinions rather than facts.

Note the key skill

The key skill here is to understand that you are interpreting the text and the question. This means that you need to read very closely and pay attention to what the writer means. Don’t think of it as a skimming question, rather a question where you need to read the text and the question closely and decide what the writer means.

How to get the answers right

True/Yes

There is information in the text that agrees exactly with the statement in the question. Note that you will almost certainly need to look for synonyms here and match meaning and not words.

False/No

There is information in the text that is directly opposite to or contradicts the statement in the question. Again note that you will also need to think about meaning here. You should pay careful attention to “little” words that qualify or change meaning such as: some , all, often, occasionally

Not Given

This is the one that normally causes the most problems. Something is not given if there is no information about it in the text. Do not spend ages looking for Not Given answers because you will waste time.

Guessing intelligently

This is probably the hardest question type. Don’t despair though you have a good chance of guessing correctly. In fact the questions are hard because you have a one in three chance of guessing! Here is my suggestion

if you find information in the text about the statement in the question: guess True or False  but remember to read the whole question and not just match words in it
if you find no information in the text about the statement guess Not Given - don’t waste time. Typically, answer are Not Given when they match just one or two words in the question
if you have no idea, then guess Not Given. You have a one in three chance of being right and you may have no idea because it isn’t there!

Academic Reading - True False Notgiven

Please answer the questions after reading the following text:

The majority of professional players on the ATP and the WTA tours now use polyester strings made by Luxilon, a company that specialised in the past in manufacturing fibres for female undergarments. The trend was started by the then little-known Brazilian player Gustavo Kuerten who more or less by chance discovered that this string was almost completely “dead” – meaning that the players are able to swing much harder at the ball and impart much more spin on it without it flying off uncontrollably as it would do with a traditional gut string. Kuerten of course went on to achieve much success and, in the clay court game at least, is regarded as one of the modern greats. His most lasting legacy though may not be his titles, rather it may be that his use of a material primarily made for women’s bras allowed him and successive champions to change how the tennis ball flew. Players were able to find completely new angles on the court because, in the hands of a master, a shot hit with a luxilon string that might look as if it were heading way out of court would suddenly drop like a stone, describing an almost perfect parabola. This technological innovation has revolutionised the way in which the game is now played. For example, Roger Federer, a man who many regard as the greatest player of all time, may have begun his career as an attacking all-court player, but in latter years he has been forced become a much more defensively orientated player who chooses his time to attack more carefully. Indeed, he is on record as saying that new string technology has changed the face of the game and that he has had to adapt his game to counter players who stand behind the baseline and produce winning shots from almost nowhere.

Questions:

1.Roger Federer uses luxilon to string his tennis racket.
a.True  b.False  c.Not given

2.The use of luxilon allowed players to hit new types of shots.
a.True  b.False  c.Not given

3.Roger Federer has always played an attacking game of tennis.
a.True  b.False  c.Not given