Table of Contents
BEST IELTS General Reading Test 467
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST 467 – PASSAGE – 1
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST – 467
READING PASSAGE – 1
HOW EARLY AMERICAN PLAYS TURNED POCAHONTAS INTO FAKE NEWS
Philadelphia theater-goers met the character of Pocahontas on stage for the first time in 1808. Many knew her already from poems and romantic sketches of the famous young woman that circulated in newspapers. But theater had a different kind of power. The play, titled The Indian Princess, or La Belle Sauvage, brought the character to life with tone and movement, not to mention dazzling sets and costumes. Though some critics thought the play a bit over-dramatic, it moved the crowd to thunderous applause.
In the decades after the Revolutionary War, theater was a crucial medium for spreading ideas about what it meant to be American-especially for the 10 percent of men and 50 percent of women who couldn’t read. Playwrights like James Nelson Barker, who penned The Indian Princess, were eager to unite a country of fractious colonists around a shared ideology and often used their plays to construct narratives about national identity and destiny. At the heart of these stories were mythologized images of Indians as “noble savages,” either fighting their last battle or, like Pocahontas, embracing the inevitability of colonial conquest.
IELTS General Reading Test
The moment the play’s Pocahontas character forsook her people to save the blustering Englishman, Captain John Smith, she embodied that inevitability, granting symbolic permission for massive land theft and displacement of native peoples. Her story, largely divorced from historical reality, went on to become a touchstone of American culture, helping to shape “attitudes, judgments, beliefs and actions” for hundreds of years, according to Priscilla Sears, one of several historians who have traced the impact of mythical Indian figures throughout America’s history.
Myths need a receptive audience to get off the ground. Barker’s Indian Princess swept the East Coast in the early 1800s. Reviewers praised it as “one of the most chaste and elegant plays ever written in the United States.” Imitators soon followed, including Pocahontas, or The Settlers of Virginia (1830), Pocahontas (1838) by Utopian reformer Robert Dale Owen, The Forest Princess (1844) and Po-ca-hon-tas: Or, the Gentle Savage (1855). Success on stage inspired renewed literary efforts, such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha and the adventure tales of James Fenimore Cooper.
IELTS General Reading Test
The stock characters and themes stayed relatively constant: A noble Indian warrior mourned the inevitable demise of his people, while an Indian maiden fell in love with a white man, conveniently passing the baton to Europeans and overwriting tragedy with romance. The Indian maiden was sometimes sexy and “wanton,” and sometimes she embodied feminine virtues of Christian piety. Sometimes she did both, depending on the author’s agenda.
Questions 1-7
Choose the correct letter.
1. Before people saw Pocahontas on stage, what was their source of information about her?
A. Movies
B. Word of mouth
C. Newspapers
D. The London Opera
2. What is the name of the first play about Pocahontas to be staged in the US? (select two answers)
A. Pocahontas the Great
B. The Warrior Princess
C. The Indian Princess
D. The Forest Princess
E. La Belle Sauvage
IELTS General Reading Test
3. After the Revolutionary War, what percent of men in America could read?
A. 10%
B. 30%
C. 50%
D. 90%
4. Who is the author of The Indian Princess?
A. Captain John Smith
B. Shakespeare
C. James Nelson Barker
D. La Belle Sauvage
IELTS General Reading Test
5. How were Indians depicted in stories meant to promote national identity and destiny?
A. As Holy Seers
B. As evil marauders
C. As noble savages
D. As gentle renegades
6. Which of the following is an effect of Pocahontas actions towards Captain John Smith? (Select two options)
A. Large scale land thefts took place
B. The Indians won the war
C. The Indians were mercilessly killed
D. Change in the attitude of American public
E. Native people were displaced from their lands
IELTS General Reading Test
7. Which of the following was a play imitating The Indian Princess? (select three options)
A. The Noble Savage
B. The Forest Princess
C. The Raiders of Virginia
D. Pocahontas in Utopia
E. The Settlers of Virginia
F. The Warrior Princess
G. The Gentle Savage
Read the following text and answer questions 8-14.
Thomas Jefferson’s complicated Relationship with Thanksgiving
Since the United States became a nation, people have come together to count their blessings, feast on bountiful foods and give thanks with family and friends. These days, Thanksgiving celebrations usually involve turkey, pie and a food coma; in the past, they involved fasting, prayer gatherings and solemn religious ceremonies. However, there’s one president who refused to endorse the tradition: Thomas Jefferson.
IELTS General Reading Test
Ever since Jefferson first declined to mark the day in 1801, rumors have swirled that the third president despised the event. But it was more complicated than that. For Jefferson, supporting Thanksgiving meant supporting state-sponsored religion, and it was his aversion to mixing church and state that earned him a reputation as America’s only anti-Thanksgiving president.
In Jefferson’s time. Thanksgiving as a national holiday didn’t exist at all. The formal observance of Thanksgiving Day only began in 1863, when Lincoln proclaimed the holiday in response to the horrors of the Civil War. By then, the tradition of giving thanks as a nation had been in place since 1777, when Congress declared a national day of thanksgiving after America’s victory at the Battle of Saratoga. Afterward, presidents would proclaim periodic days of fasting, prayer and expressing gratitude.
IELTS General Reading Test
But not Jefferson. When he became president, he stopped declaring the holidays that George Washington and John Adams had so enthusiastically supported-and in 1802, he flirted with telling the nation why.
Shortly after his inauguration, a Baptist group in Connecticut wrote a letter to Jefferson congratulating him on his election and expressing concern about the state’s constitution, which didn’t specifically provide for religious liberty. Baptists had long been persecuted in the colonies due to their emotional religious ceremonies, their decision to baptize adults instead of children, and their belief in the separation of church and state. The Baptist Association of Danbury wanted to be sure that they’d be protected under Jefferson’s presidency.
IELTS General Reading Test
Jefferson saw this as an opportunity to explain his views on state-sponsored religion. At the time, Jefferson’s political enemies, the Federalists, loved to use his stance on the separation of church and state as a political cudgel, convincing Americans that he was an atheist who was making America less godly. Perhaps his response to the Baptists, which would be widely read, could make his views clearer and protect him against those slurs.
In an early draft of the letter, Jefferson faced the Federalist accusations head-on, explaining that he considered declaring fasts or days of thanksgiving to be expressions of religion and that he opposed them because they were remnants of Britain’s reign over the American colonies.
IELTS General Reading Test
But Levi Lincoln warned him that his words might be construed as a criticism of New England, where feast of thanksgiving had become a beloved tradition. After careful consideration, Jefferson decided to drop the reference from his letter. His public reply to the Danbury Baptists didn’t include a comment on public celebrations of thanksgiving, Rather, Jefferson told them he believed in “a wall of separation between Church and State.”
Questions 8-14
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text?
In boxes 8-14 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE – if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE – if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN – if there is no information on this
8. Thomas Jefferson was an atheist.
9. Thomas Jefferson did not want his government to appear as supporting any one religion.
10. The celebration of Thanksgiving as a national holiday began in 1777.
11. George Washington became the President after Thomas Jefferson.
12. Thomas Jefferson was scared of Baptist Groups.
13. The Federalists were Thomas Jefferson’s political rivals.
14. Jefferson’s public reply to the Danbury Baptists included a detailed explanation of why he did not support Thanksgiving.
IELTS General Reading Test
IELTS General Reading Test
ANSWERS
1. C
2. C & E
3. D
4. C
5. C
6. A & E
7. B, E, & G
8. NOT GIVEN
9. YES
10. NO
11. NO
12. NOT GIVEN
13. YES
14. NO
IELTS General Reading Test