BEST IELTS General Reading Test 486

BEST IELTS General Reading Test 486

IELTS General Reading Test

Mao Zedong

A. Mao Zedong was born on December 26 and was known as Chairman Mao. He was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founding father of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which he ruled as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. Ideologically a Marxist-Leninist, his theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism. Mao was the son of a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan. He had a Chinese nationalist and an anti-imperialist outlook early in his life and was particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919.

B. He later adopted Marxism-Leninism while working at Peking University and became a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927. During the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the CCP, Mao helped to find the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, led the Jiangxi Soviet’s radical land policies, and ultimately became head of the CCP during the Long March. Although the CCP temporarily allied with the KMT under the United Front during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), China’s civil war resumed after Japan’s surrender and in 1949 Mao’s forces defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to Taiwan.

IELTS General Reading Test

C. On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation of the PRC, a Marxist- Leninist single-party state controlled by the CCP. In the following years he solidified his control through campaigns against landlords, suppression of “counter-revolutionaries”, “Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns” and through a psychological victory in the Korean War, which altogether resulted in the deaths of several million Chinese. From 1953 to 1958, Mao played an important role in enforcing planned economy in China, constructing the first Constitution of the PRC, launching the industrialisation program, and initiating the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” project.

D. In 1955-1957, Mao launched the Sufan movement and the Anti-Rightist Campaign, with at least 550,000 people persecuted in the latter, most of whom were intellectuals and dissidents. In 1958, he launched the Great Leap Forward that aimed to rapidly transform China’s economy from agrarian to industrial, which led to the deadliest famine in history and the deaths of 15-55 million people between 1958 and 1962.

IELTS General Reading Test

E. In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement, and in 1966 he initiated the Cultural Revolution, a program to remove “counter-revolutionary” elements in Chinese society which lasted 10 years and was marked by violent class struggle, widespread destruction of cultural artifacts, and an unprecedented elevation of Mao’s cult of personality. Tens of millions of people were persecuted during the Revolution, while the estimated number of deaths ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions, including Liu Shaoqi, the 2nd Chairman of the PRC. After years of ill health, Mao suffered a series of heart attacks in 1976 and expired at the age of 82.

F. During Mao’s era, China’s inhabitants grew from around 550 million to over 900 million while the government did not strictly enforce its family planning policy. A controversial figure, Mao is regarded as one of the most important individuals in the twentieth century. He is also known as a political intellect, theorist, military strategist, and poet. During Mao’s era, China was involved in the Korean War, the Sino-Soviet split, the Vietnam War, and the rise of Khmer Rouge.

IELTS General Reading Test

G. He ruled China as an autocratic and totalitarian regime responsible for mass repression, as well as destruction of religious and cultural artifacts and sites. Some say that he was additionally responsible for vast numbers of deaths with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims through starvation, persecution, prison labour and mass executions. Supporters of Mao have credited him with transforming China from a semi- colony to a powerful sovereign state, with increased literacy and life expectancy.

Choose the correct heading for the given sections from the list of headings below. Write the correct number in the answer sheet.

IELTS General Reading Test

List of Headings

i. Two opposing views about Mao.

ii. Mao becoming an establishing affiliate of a political party which associated with another party during a war.

iii. Reason behind Mao’s demise.

iv. A period of shifting from cultivation to manufacturing economy that led to a fatal starvation.

v. Surge in populace of China due to less stringent guidelines regarding domestic planning.

vi. Japan’s war with Taiwan that resulted in Mao’s defeat.

vii. A name given to the philosophies of Mao.

viii. Mao’s integral part in setting up the structure and mechanism of PRC.

ix. Mao is known to be the least Autocratic leader of his times.

IELTS General Reading Test

1. Paragraph A

2. Paragraph B

3. Paragraph C

4. Paragraph D

5. Paragraph E

6. Paragraph F

7. Paragraph G

IELTS General Reading Test

Marie Curie

Marie Salomea Skłodowska Curie was born on 7th November 1867. She was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. As the first of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes, she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice. She was the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris in 1906. She was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw’s clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw.

In 1891, aged 24, she followed her elder sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. In 1895 she married the French physicist Pierre Curie, and she shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with him and with the physicist Henri Becquerel for their pioneering work developing the theory of “radioactivity”, a term she coined. In 1906 Pierre Curie died in a Paris Street accident. Marie won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the element’s polonium and radium, using techniques she invented for isolating radioactive isotopes.

IELTS General Reading Test

Under her direction, the world’s first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms by the use of radioactive isotopes. In 1920 she founded the Curie Institute in Paris, and in 1932 the Curie Institute in Warsaw; both remain major centres of medical research. During World War I she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals. While a French citizen, Marie Skłodowska Curie, who used both surnames, never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland. She named the first chemical element she discovered polonium, after her native country.

Marie Curie died in 1934, aged 66, at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy (Haute-Savoie), France, of aplastic anaemia from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research and in the course of her radiological work at field hospitals during World War I. In addition to her Nobel Prizes, she has received numerous other honours and tributes; in 1995 she became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in Paris’ Panthéon, and Poland declared 2011 as the Year of Marie Curie during the International Year of Chemistry. She is the subject of numerous biographical works, where she is also known as Madame Curie.

IELTS General Reading Test

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?

YES – If the statement agrees with the claims of the writer.

NO – If the statement contradicts the claims of the writer.

NOT GIVEN – If it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.

8. Marie curie was the first person in the entire world to win solo noble prize.

9. Marie curie tailed her sister and studied advanced degrees in Paris.

10. Marie curie won two noble prizes for her scientific work in the field of Physics.

11. Marie curie was eternally committed towards her Polish individuality.

12. Marie curie’s inventions are still helpful in combats.

13. Marie curie deceased due to continuous revelation to radiation during her scientific research.

IELTS General Reading Test

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BEST IELTS General Reading Test 486

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IELTS General Reading Test

1. VII

2. II

3. VIII

4. IV

5. III

6. V

7. I

8. NOT GIVEN

9. YES

10. NO

11. YES

12. NOT GIVEN

13. YES

IELTS General Reading Test

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