Table of Contents
BEST IELTS General Reading Test 495
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST 495 – PASSAGE – 1
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST – 495
READING PASSAGE – 1
USE OF WEBSITES FOR PROJECTS
The internet is full of useful information as well as a lot of information that’s incorrect or biased. Sometimes telling the difference is harder than you might think. When conducting research, it’s important to check whether your sources are credible and accurate. That’s especially true for online sources, because the web makes it easy for anyone to publish just about anything. Remember that you should always have more than one source for any fact you use. Here are some questions to help you determine whether your online source is trustworthy.
What is the site’s purpose?
Does the site exist solely to inform or teach or is it selling a product or advocating for a particular cause? Is there evidence that the site is biased or prejudiced in favor of a certain outcome? (For example, a website that’s dedicated to attacking or supporting a specific political candidate will not be objective.)
IELTS General Reading Test
Who created the website?
The site’s URL (web address) can help you figure this out. Sites that end in .gov, for example, were created by the federal government. Typically, .edu means the site is affiliated with a college or university, and .org means that an organization, such as a nonprofit, is behind the site.
What are their credentials?
What qualifies this organization or individual to provide information on this topic? If a person runs the site, consider his or her occupation, years of experience and education. If an organization runs the site, consider how long that group has been around and if it exists only locally or has a national or worldwide presence.
IELTS General Reading Test
Is the site current and functional?
Try to find the date when the web page or site was last updated. (If it’s old, the data may no longer be accurate.) Are the links working properly? Broken links, spelling mistakes and other errors are signs that a website may not be trustworthy.
Questions 1-7
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS/OR A NUMBER from the above text.
1. While conducting research, it’s important to check whether your sources are?
2. Which types of sources make the web available for anyone to publish just about anything?
3. What is imperative to collect to know if the site is biased or prejudiced in favor of a certain outcome?
4. What does the broken links, spelling errors and other mistakes tell about a website?
5. What qualifies a person to provide information about trustworthy online source?
6. Who is the creator of the sites end in .gov?
7. Try to find the date when the web page or site was ……………… .
IELTS General Reading Test
Read the text below and answer questions 8-13.
INSECTS
A. Almost everywhere you look, you’ll find dozens of insects. A wildly diverse bunch, the class Insecta includes ants, bees, flies, beetles and much more. These creatures possess a body composed of three segments, head, thorax and abdomen, encased in a hard exoskeleton. All insects also sport a pair of antenna, compound eyes and three pairs of jointed legs. From that basic body plan, emerges all sorts of amazing behaviors and abilities.
B. To date, scientists have catalogued about 1.5 million species of organisms on the planet, with insects making up about two-thirds of this bounty, which has been found reported by the researchers of the National Academy of Sciences. But scientists have only yet begun to scratch the surface. Studies estimate the total number of species on Earth is probably closer to 9 million. Reasons for insects’ success include their tiny size, which both makes hiding easier and reduces overall energy requirements, wide diet of both natural and artificial foods, tough, protective exoskeletons, frequent possession of wings, which help them reach for safety, grub and mates and prodigious ability to reproduce.
IELTS General Reading Test
C. Beetles, of the insect order Coleoptera, are the most biodiverse group of creatures known, with more than 380,000 species described to date, making up 40 percent of all insect species on the books. A recent proceeding of the Royal Society B study suggests the secret to beetle diversity and likely to that of other insects groups, is their lifestyle versatility. This ensures that their species do not go extinct as readily as, say, mammal or amphibian species.
D. If so, when you look down you’ll probably spy an ant or two or 10 scurrying along. (It’s not uncommon to see ants when indoors, either.) The renowned biologists Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson estimated in their Pulitzer Prize-winning 1990 book, “The Ants” (Belknap Press), that on the order of 10 quadrillion ants live on the planet at any given moment. That’s about 1.4 million ants per human, based on a world population of 7.3 billion people.
IELTS General Reading Test
E. Although insects can be found by the buckets just about anywhere on Earth, there’s one continent where they barely have a foothold-Antarctica. In fact, only one true species of insect, a wingless midge called Belgica antarctica, calls the southernmost continent its home. This tiny fly is only about 0.08 to 0.23 inches long, but it’s still the Antarctic’s largest terrestrial animal. Amongst this insect’s many ingenious adaptations to Antarctic harshness to withstand the freezing of its bodily fluids and sports a rich, purple-black complexion to soak up as much visible sunlight as it can for warmth.
F. Seeing as you still can’t escape insects even in Antarctica, there is yet one place where you can still go to be virtually free of the six-legged creatures. That place is the 70 percent of the Earth’s surface covered by the ocean. Why have insects failed to set up shop in the biggest biosphere on the planet? No one really knows why, but suggested explanations are that the oceans lack the plants for food and sheltering habitat that are found on land. Another possible explanation is that cousins of insects, the crustaceans, have largely made the ocean their home, potentially muscling out their jointed-leg competitors.
IELTS General Reading Test
Questions 8-13
Read the text below and answer questions 8-13. The text has five sections, A-E.
Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, I-VI, in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.
LIST OF HEADINGS
I. Meet the beetles
II. Six-legged critters
III. Landlubbers.
IV. On every continent.
V. The most successful creatures
VI. Planet of the ants.
IELTS General Reading Test
8. Section A
9. Section B
10. Section C
11. Section D
12. Section E
13. Section F
IELTS General Reading Test
IELTS General Reading Test
ANSWERS
1. CREDIBLE AND ACCURATE
2. ONLINE
3. EVIDENCE
4. NOT TRUSTWORTHY
5. OCCUPATION, EXPERIENCE, EDUCATION
6. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
7. LAST UPDATED
8. II
9. IV
10. I
11. VI
12. V
13. III
IELTS General Reading Test