BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 518

Table of Contents

IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 518 – PASSAGE – 3

IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 518

READING PASSAGE – 3

HOW THE SHOCKING USE OF GAS IN WORLD WAR LED NATIONS TO BAN IT

A. At the dawn of the 20th century, the world’s military powers worried that future wars would be decided by chemistry as much as artillery, so they signed a pact at the Hague Convention of 1899 to ban the use of poison-laden projectiles “the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.”

Yet from the very start of World War I, both the Allies and Central Powers deployed noxious gases to incapacitate the enemy or at least strike fear into their hearts. After early failed efforts by the French and German armies to use tear gas and other irritants in battle, the first successful gas attack was launched by the Germans against the British at the Second Battle of Ypres on April 22, 1915.

IELTS Academic Reading Test

As the battle began, the Germans released 170 metric tons of chlorine gas from more than 5,700 cylinders buried in a four-mile line across the front. None of the British soldiers at Ypres had gas masks, resulting in 7,000 injuries and more than 1,100 deaths from chlorine gas asphyxiation. Many of the deaths occurred when panicked victims rushed to drink water for relief from the burning gas, which only made the chemical reaction worse, flooding their throats and lungs with hydrochloric acid.

B. Sir John French, commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force, decried the attack as evidence of German barbarity: ‘All the scientific resources of Germany have apparently been brought into play to produce a gas of so virulent and poisonous a nature that any human being brought into contact with it is first paralysed and then meets with a lingering and agonising death.’

IELTS Academic Reading Test

Before British troops received proper gas masks with rubber seals called box respirators, they were equipped with stop-gap solutions, like thick gauze pads that were strapped tightly over the mouth. It wasn’t long before British military officers like French changed stance on chemical warfare. If the Germans were going to sink as low as to use gas, then why should the Allies take the high ground?

Soon after French made his public statement about the barbarity of German gas attacks, he wrote a private cable to Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War: ‘We are taking every precaution we can think of but the most effective would be to turn their own weapon against them and stick at nothing.’

C. Kitchener wasted no time in developing Britain’s own chemical arsenal. He founded Porton Down, a research facility in the English countryside dedicated to defending Allied troops against gas attacks and stockpiling their own gas weaponry for use against the Germans. ‘The British policy was to respond in kind to German gas attacks but never to escalate the war,’ says Dorsey. In late September 1915, the British tried to give the Germans a dose of their own medicine at the Battle of Loos, with little success.

IELTS Academic Reading Test

The Royal Engineers released chlorine gas an hour before the infantry was scheduled to attack, but the winds shifted, sending clouds of chlorine back toward the British line and forming a toxic fog in no man’s land. ‘The gas hung in a thick pall over everything, and it was impossible to see more than ten yards,’ wrote one British officer at Loos. ‘In vain I looked for my landmarks in the German line, to guide me to the right spot, but I could not see through the gas.’

D. While chlorine gas could kill in concentrated amounts, it was more or less neutralised with the widespread deployment of gas masks by 1917. By that point, however, both sides had discovered far more fatal and crueller chemicals: phosgene and mustard gas. Phosgene is an irritant that’s six times more deadly than chlorine. Instead of announcing its presence in a yellow-green cloud, phosgene is colourless and takes its time to kill. Victims don’t know they’ve been exposed until days after inhaling it, at which point their lungs fill with fluid and they suffocate. The Germans were the first to use phosgene in battle, but the Allies made it their primary chemical weapon later in the war.

IELTS Academic Reading Test

E. Mustard gas was an entirely new kind of killer chemical. It’s not an irritant, but a ‘vesicant,’ a chemical that blisters and burns the skin on contact. Even if soldiers wore gas masks to protect their lungs, mustard gas would seep into their woollen uniforms and even burn through the soles of their boots, says Dorsey. By June 1918, the Allies were employing mustard gas as a last-ditch effort to break the stalemate at Ypres.

A young Adolf Hitler was among the German troops injured and temporarily blinded by those attacks. By war’s end, an estimated 6,000 British troops had been killed by gas, a fraction of the 90,000 total World War I deaths from chemical weapons, more than half of which were suffered by the Russians, who had limited access to gas masks.

IELTS Academic Reading Test

F. In the immediate aftermath of World War I, as nations mourned the deaths of tens of millions of soldiers and civilians, most military leaders accepted that chemical weapons would continue to be part of the new barbarity of warfare. But that sentiment was countered by a growing antiwar movement that pushed for arms control treaties and greater diplomacy.
In 1925, the League of Nations adopted the Geneva Protocol, which prohibited the use of chemical and biological agents in war, but did not stop nations from continuing to develop and stockpile such weapons. The current ban on chemical weapons was signed into international law by two conventions in 1972 and 1993.

Questions 28 – 33

The Reading Passage has six paragraphs. Choose the most suitable headings (i-ix) for the paragraphs and move the answers into the gaps.

28. Paragraph A

29. Paragraph B

30. Paragraph C

31. Paragraph D

32. Paragraph E

33. Paragraph F

IELTS Academic Reading Test

i. A plan that backfired

ii. British military compelled to change its war strategy

iii. An agreement that remained only in the books

iv. Regulatory measures and development

v. The heightened state of war

vi. A different chemical that made no exceptions

vii. Development of even more deadly gases

viii. The importance of gas masks in warfare

ix. How Britain got a taste of their own medicine

IELTS Academic Reading Test

Questions 34 – 37

Choose the correct answer.

34 What precautionary measures were taken till British soldiers received box respirators?

A. Enemy’s own weapon was turned against them.

B. Temporary substitutes were used for protection.

C. Soldiers were told to wrap themselves completely with gauze pads.

D. They were told to remain on high grounds to avoid gas.

35 What happened in late September 1915?

A. Enemy’s own weapon was turned against them.

B. Temporary substitutes were used for protection.

C. Soldiers were told to wrap themselves completely with gauze pads.

D. They were told to remain on high grounds to avoid gas.

IELTS Academic Reading Test

36 What does the writer say about the Phosgene gas?

A. Enemy’s own weapon was turned against them.

B. Temporary substitutes were used for protection.

C. Soldiers were told to wrap themselves completely with gauze pads.

D. They were told to remain on high grounds to avoid gas.

37 The Allies used mustard gas because

A. Enemy’s own weapon was turned against them.

B. Temporary substitutes were used for protection.

C. Soldiers were told to wrap themselves completely with gauze pads.

D. They were told to remain on high grounds to avoid gas.

IELTS Academic Reading Test

Questions 38 – 40

Write ONE WORD ONLY for each gap.

When the Germans continued to launch chlorine gas attacks, the British changed their stance and started developing their (38)…………. of chemical weapons.

A research centre was set up which was used for defending their troops against gas attacks and for stockpiling the gas weapons to be used against the Germans. Their first attempt at using the chemical weapons against the Germans met with little (39)…………. . The effect of chlorine gas could be (40)…………. with the use of gas masks, which came to be used on a large scale by 1917. By this time far deadlier gases came to be discovered.

IELTS Academic Reading Test

SEE MORE POSTS>>