Comprehensive guide covering essential IELTS preparation strategies and techniques to help you achieve your target band score.
Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-40 which are based on Reading Passage 20 below.
The Pursuit of Happiness
“New research uncovers some anti-intuitive insights into how many people are happy – and why.” _____________________________
Compared with misery, happiness is a relatively unexplored terrain for social scientists. Between 1967 and 1994, 46,380 articles indexed in Psychological Abstracts mentioned depression, 36,851 anxiety, and 5,099 anger. Only 2,389 spoke of happiness, 2,340 life satisfaction, and 405 joy. joy.
Recently we and other researchers have begun a systematic study of happiness. During the past two decades, dozens of investigators throughout the world have asked several hundred thousand Representative sampled people to reflect on their happiness and satisfaction with life or what psychologists call “subjective well-being”. In the US the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago has surveyed a representative sample of roughly 1,500 people a year since 1957; the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan has carried out similar studies on a less regular basis, as has the Gallup Organization. Government-funded efforts have also probed the moods of European countries.
We have uncovered some surprising findings. People are happier than one might expect, and happiness does not appear to depend significantly on external circumstances. Although viewing life as a tragedy has a long and honorable history, the responses of random samples of people around the world about their happiness paints a much rosier picture. In the University of Chicago surveys, three in 10 Americans say they are very happy, for example. Only one in 10 chooses the most negative description “not too happy”. The majority describe themselves as “pretty happy”, …
How can social scientists measure something as hard to pin down as happiness? Most researchers simply ask people to report their feelings of happiness or unhappiness and to assess how satisfying their lives are. Such self-reported well-being is moderately consistent over years of retesting. Furthermore, those who say they are happy and satisfied seem happy to their close friends and family members and to a psychologist-interviewer. Their daily mood ratings reveal more positive emotions, and they smile more than those who call themselves unhappy. Self-reported happiness also predicts other indicators of well-being. Compared with the depressed, happy people are less self-focused, less hostile and abusive, and less susceptible to disease.
We have found that the even distribution of happiness cuts across almost all demographic classifications of age, economic class, race and educational level. In addition, almost all strategies for assessing subjective well-being – including those that sample people’s experience by polling them at random times with beepers – turn up similar findings. Interviews with representative samples of people of all ages, for example, reveal that no time of life is notably happier or unhappier. Similarly, men and women are equally likely to declare themselves “very happy” and “satisfied” with life, according to a statistical digest of 146 studies by Marilyn J, Haring, William Stock and Morris A, Okun, all then at Arizona State University.
Wealth is also a poor predictor of happiness. People have not become happier over time as their cultures have become more affluent. Even though Americans earn twice as much in today’s dollars as they did in 1957, the proportion of those telling surveyors from the National Opinion Research Center that they are “very happy” has declined from 35 to 29 percent.
Even very rich people – those surveyed among Forbes magazine’s 100 wealthiest Americans – are only slightly happier than the average American. Those whose income has increased over a 10-year period are not happier than those whose income is stagnant. Indeed, in most nations the correlation between income and happiness is negligible – only in the poorest countries, such as Bangladesh and India, is income a good measure of emotional well-being.
Are people in rich countries happier, by and large, than people in not so rich countries? It appears in general that they are, but the margin may be slim. In Portugal, for example, only one in 10 people reports being very happy, whereas in the much more prosperous Netherlands the proportion of very happy is four in 10. Yet there are curious reversals in this correlation between national wealth and well-being -the Irish during the 1980s consistently reported greater life satisfaction than the wealthier West Germans. Furthermore, other factors, such as civil rights, literacy and duration of democratic government, all of which also promote reported life satisfaction, tend to go hand in hand with national wealth, As a result, it is impossible to tell whether the happiness of people in wealthier nations is based on money or is a by-product of other felicities.
Although happiness is not easy to predict from material circumstances, it seems consistent for those who have it, In one National Institute on Aging study of 5,000 adults, the happiest people in 1973 were still relatively happy a decade later, despite changes in work, residence and family status,
Questions 28-30 Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 23-30 on your answer sheet.
28 What point are the writers making in the opening paragraph? A Happiness levels have risen since 1967. В Journals take a biased view on happiness. С Happiness is not a well-documented research area, D People tend to think about themselves negatively.
29 What do the writers say about their research findings? A They had predicted the results correctly. В They felt people had responded dishonestly. С They conflict with those of other researchers. D Happiness levels are higher than they had believed.
30 In the fourth paragraph, what does the reader learn about the research method used? A It is new. В It appears to be reliable. С It is better than using beepers. D It reveals additional information.
Questions 31-34 According to the passage, which of the findings below (31-34) is quoted by which Investigative Body (A-G)? Write your answers in boxes 31-34 on your answer sheet.
NB There are more Investigative Bodies than findings, so you do not have to use all of them.
31 Happiness is not gender related. 32 Over fifty percent of people consider themselves to be ‘happy’. 33 Happiness levels are marginally higher for those in the top income brackets. 34 ‘Happy’ people remain happy throughout their lives.
Investigative Bodies A The National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago B Arizona State University С The Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan D Forbes Magazine E The National Institute on Aging F The Gallup Organization G The Government
Questions 35-40 Complete the summary of Reading Passage 20 below. Choose your answers from the box at the bottom of the page and write them in boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet NB There are more words than spaces so you will not use them all. You may use any of the words more than once.
HOW HAPPY ARE WE?
Example : Answer Our happiness levels are … …… by relatively few factors. Affected
For example, incomes in the States have …….. (35)……. over the past forty years but happiness levels have …….. (36)…….. over the same period. In fact, people on average incomes are only slightly …….. (37)…….. happy than extremely rich people and a gradual increase in prosperity makes ……. (38)…….. difference to how happy we are. In terms of national wealth, populations of wealthy nations are …….. (39)…….. happier than those who live in poorer countries. Although in some cases this trend is …….. (40)…….. and it appears that other factors need to be considered.
List of Words
Stopped Slightly too great
Doubled Significant similar some
Stabilized Remarkably reversed dropped
No Less much affected
Crept up Slowed down more clearly
Answer:
28 С 29 D 30 В 31 В 32 A 33 D 34 E 35 doubled 36 dropped 37 less 38 no 39 slightly 40 reversed
Comprehensive guide covering essential IELTS preparation strategies and techniques to help you achieve your target band score.
Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–14 which are based on Reading Passage Sample 7 below:
Alarming Rate of Loss of Tropical Rainforests
Adults and children are frequently confronted with statements about the alarming rate of loss of tropical rainforests. For example, one graphic illustration to which children might readily relate is the estimate that rainforests are being destroyed at a rate equivalent to one thousand football fields every forty minutes – about the duration of a normal classroom period. In the face of the frequent and often vivid media coverage, it is likely that children will have formed ideas about rainforests – what and where they are, why they are important, what endangers them – independent of any formal tuition. It is also possible that some of these ideas will be mistaken.
Many studies have shown that children harbour misconceptions about ‘pure’, curriculum science. These misconceptions do not remain isolated but become incorporated into a multifaceted, but organised, conceptual framework, making it and the component ideas, some of which are erroneous, more robust but also accessible to modification. These ideas may be developed by children absorbing ideas through the popular media. Sometimes this information may be erroneous. It seems schools may not be providing an opportunity for children to re-express their ideas and so have them tested and refined by teachers and their peers.
Despite the extensive coverage in the popular media of the destruction of rainforests, little formal information is available about children’s ideas in this area. The aim of the present study is to start to provide such information, to help teachers design their educational strategies to build upon correct ideas and to displace misconceptions and to plan programmes in environmental studies in their schools.
The study surveys children’s scientific knowledge and attitudes to rainforests. Secondary school children were asked to complete a questionnaire containing five open-form questions. The most frequent responses to the first question were descriptions which are self-evident from the term ‘rainforest’. Some children described them as damp, wet or hot. The second question concerned the geographical location of rainforests. The commonest responses were continents or countries: Africa (given by 43% of children), South America (30%), Brazil (25%). Some children also gave more general locations, such as being near the Equator.
Responses to question three concerned the importance of rainforests. The dominant idea, raised by 64% of the pupils, was that rainforests provide animals with habitats. Fewer students responded that rainforests provide plant habitats, and even fewer mentioned the indigenous populations of rainforests. More girls (70%) than boys (60%) raised the idea of the rainforest as animal habitats.
Similarly, but at a lower level, more girls (13%) than boys (5%) said that rainforests provided human habitats. These observations are generally consistent with our previous studies of pupils’ views about the use and conservation of rainforests, in which girls were shown to be more sympathetic to animals and expressed views which seem to place an intrinsic value on non-human animal life.
The fourth question concerned the causes of the destruction of rainforests. Perhaps encouragingly, more than half of the pupils (59%) identified that it is human activities which are destroying rainforests, some personalising the responsibility by the use of terms such as ‘we are’. About 18% of the pupils referred specifically to logging activity.
One misconception, expressed by some 10% of the pupils, was that acid rain is responsible for rainforest destruction; a similar proportion said that pollution is destroying rainforests. Here, children are confusing rainforest destruction with damage to the forests of Western Europe by these factors. While two-fifths of the students provided the information that the rainforests provide oxygen, in some cases this response also embraced the misconception that rainforest destruction would reduce atmospheric oxygen, making the atmosphere incompatible with human life on Earth.
In answer to the final question about the importance of rainforest conservation, the majority of children simply said that we need rainforests to survive. Only a few of the pupils (6%) mentioned that rainforest destruction may contribute to global warming. This is surprising considering the high level of media coverage on this issue. Some children expressed the idea that the conservation of rainforests is not important.
The results of this study suggest that certain ideas predominate in the thinking of children about rainforests. Pupils’ responses indicate some misconceptions in the basic scientific knowledge of rainforests’ ecosystems such as their ideas about rainforests as habitats for animals, plants and humans and the relationship between climatic change and destruction of rainforests.
Pupils did not volunteer ideas that suggested that they appreciated the complexity of causes of rainforest destruction. In other words, they gave no indication of an appreciation of either the range of ways in which rainforests are important or the complex social, economic and political factors which drive the activities which are destroying the rainforests. One encouragement is that the results of similar studies about other environmental issues suggest that older children seem to acquire the ability to appreciate, value and evaluate conflicting views. Environmental education offers an arena in which these skills can be developed, which is essential for these children as future decision-makers.
Questions 1–8 Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
In boxes 1–8 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
1. The plight of the rainforests has largely been ignored by the media. 2. Children only accept opinions on rainforests that they encounter in their classrooms. 3. It has been suggested that children hold mistaken views about the ‘pure’ science that they study at school. 4. The fact that children’s ideas about science form part of a larger framework of ideas mean that it is easier to change them. 5. The study involved asking children a number of yes/no questions such as ‘Are there any rainforests in Africa?’ 6. Girls are more likely than boys to hold mistaken views about the rainforests’ destruction. 7. The study reported here follows on from a series of studies that have looked at children’s understanding of rainforests. 8. A second study has been planned to investigate primary school children’s ideas about rainforests.
Questions 9–13 The box below gives a list of responses A–P to the questionnaire discussed in the Reading Passage.
Answer the following questions by choosing the correct responses A–P. Write your answers in boxes 9–13 on your answer sheet.
9. What was the children’s most frequent response when asked where the rainforests were? 10. What was the most common response to the question about the importance of the rainforests? 11. What did most children give as the reason for the loss of the rainforests? 12. Why did most children think it important for the rainforests to be protected? 13. Which of the responses is cited as unexpectedly uncommon, given the amount of time spent on the issue by the newspapers and television?
A. There is a complicated combination of reasons for the loss of the rainforests. B. The rainforests are being destroyed by the same things that are destroying the forests of Western Europe. C. Rainforests are located near the Equator. D. Brazil is home to the rainforests. E. Without rainforests some animals would have nowhere to live. F. Rainforests are important habitats for a lot of plants. G. People are responsible for the loss of the rainforests. H. The rainforests are a source of oxygen. I. Rainforests are of consequence for a number of different reasons. J. As the rainforests are destroyed, the world gets warmer. K. Without rainforests there would not be enough oxygen in the air. L. There are people for whom the rainforests are home. M. Rainforests are found in Africa. N. Rainforests are not really important to human life. O. The destruction of the rainforests is the direct result of logging activity. P. Humans depend on the rainforests for their continuing existence.
Question 14
Choose the correct letter A, B, C, D or E. Write your answer in box 14 on your answer sheet.
Which of the following is the most suitable title for the Reading Passage?
A. The development of a programme in environmental studies within a science curriculum B. Children’s ideas about the rainforests and the implications for course design C. The extent to which children have been misled by the media concerning the rainforests D. How to collect, collate and describe the ideas of secondary school children E. The importance of the rainforests and the reasons for their destruction.
Essential strategies and practice techniques for this IELTS Reading question type. Learn how to manage time and improve accuracy.
Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27, which are based on the Reading Passage below.
What’s so funny?
John McCrone reviews recent research on humour
The joke comes over the headphones: ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left.’ No, not funny. Try again. ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The outside.’ Hah! The punchline is silly yet fitting, tempting a smile, even a laugh. Laughter has always struck people as deeply mysterious, perhaps pointless. The writer Arthur Koestler dubbed it the luxury reflex: ‘unique in that it serves no apparent biological purpose’.
Theories about humour have an ancient pedigree. Plato expressed the idea that humour is simply a delighted feeling of superiority over others. Kant and Freud felt that joke-telling relies on building up a psychic tension which is safely punctured by the ludicrousness of the punchline. But most modern humour theorists have settled on some version of Aristotle’s belief that jokes are based on a reaction to or resolution of incongruity, when the punchline is either a nonsense or, though appearing silly, has a clever second meaning.
Graeme Ritchie, a computational linguist in Edinburgh, studies the linguistic structure of jokes in order to understand not only humour but language understanding and reasoning in machines. He says that while there is no single format for jokes, many revolve around a sudden and surprising conceptual shift. A comedian will present a situation followed by an unexpected interpretation that is also apt.
So even if a punchline sounds silly, the listener can see there is a clever semantic fit and that sudden mental ‘Aha!’ is the buzz that makes us laugh. Viewed from this angle, humour is just a form of creative insight, a sudden leap to a new perspective.
However, there is another type of laughter, the laughter of social appeasement and it is important to understand this too. Play is a crucial part of development in most young mammals. Rats produce ultrasonic squeaks to prevent their scuffles turning nasty. Chimpanzees have a ‘play-face’ – a gaping expression accompanied by a panting ‘ah, ah’ noise. In humans, these signals have mutated into smiles and laughs. Researchers believe social situations, rather than cognitive events such as jokes, trigger these instinctual markers of play or appeasement. People laugh on fairground rides or when tickled to flag a play situation, whether they feel amused or not.
Both social and cognitive types of laughter tap into the same expressive machinery in our brains, the emotion and motor circuits that produce smiles and excited vocalisations. However, if cognitive laughter is the product of more general thought processes, it should result from more expansive brain activity.
Psychologist Vinod Goel investigated humour using the new technique of ‘single event’ functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRl). An MRI scanner uses magnetic fields and radio waves to track the changes in oxygenated blood that accompany mental activity. Until recently, MRI scanners needed several minutes of activity and so could not be used to track rapid thought processes such as comprehending a joke. New developments now allow half-second ‘snapshots’ of all sorts of reasoning and problem-solving activities.
Although Goel felt being inside a brain scanner was hardly the ideal place for appreciating a joke, he found evidence that understanding a joke involves a widespread mental shift. His scans showed that at the beginning of a joke the listener’$ prefrontal cortex lit up, particularly the right prefrontal believed to be critical for problem solving. But there was also activity in the temporal lobes at the side of the head (consistent with attempts to rouse stored knowledge) and in many other brain areas. Then when the punchline arrived, a new area sprang to life -the orbital prefrontal cortex. This patch of brain tucked behind the orbits of the eyes is associated with evaluating information.
Making a rapid emotional assessment of the events of the moment is an extremely demanding job for the brain, animal or human. Energy and arousal levels may need, to be retuned in the blink of an eye. These abrupt changes will produce either positive or negative feelings. The orbital cortex, the region that becomes active in Goel’s experiment, seems the best candidate for the site that feeds such feelings into higher-level thought processes, with its close connections to the brain’s sub-cortical arousal apparatus and centres of metabolic control.
All warm-blooded animals make constant tiny adjustments in arousal in response to external events, but humans, who have developed a much more complicated internal life as a result of language, respond emotionally not only to their surroundings, but to their own thoughts. Whenever a sought-for answer snaps into place, there is a shudder of pleased recognition. Creative discovery being pleasurable, humans have learned to find ways of milking this natural response. The fact that jokes tap into our general evaluative machinery explains why the line between funny and disgusting, or funny and frightening, can be so fine. Whether a joke gives pleasure or pain depends on a person’s outlook.
Humour may be a luxury, but the mechanism behind it is no evolutionary accident. As Peter Derks, a psychologist at William and Mary College in Virginia, says: ‘I like to think of humour as the distorted mirror of the mind. It’s creative, perceptual, analytical and lingual. If we can figure out how the mind processes humour, then we’ll have a pretty good handle on how it works in general.
Questions 14-20 Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
In boxes 14-20 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
14. Arthur Koestler considered laughter biologically important in several ways. 15. Plato believed humour to be a sign of above-average intelligence. 16. Kant believed that a successful joke involves the controlled release of nervous energy. 17. Current thinking on humour has largely ignored Aristotle’s view on the subject. 18. Graeme Ritchie’s work links jokes to artificial intelligence. 19. Most comedians use personal situations as a source of humour. 20. Chimpanzees make particular noises when they are playing.
Questions 21-23 The diagram below shows the areas of the brain activated by jokes. Label the diagram.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 11-23 on your answer sheet.
Questions 24-27 Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-G below. Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 24-27 on your answer sheet.
24. One of the brain’s most difficult tasks is to 25. Because of the language they have developed, humans 26. Individual responses to humour 27. Peter Derks believes that humour
A react to their own thoughts. B helped create language in humans. C respond instantly to whatever is happening. D may provide valuable information about the operation of the brain. E cope with difficult situations. F relate to a person’s subjective views. G led our ancestors to smile and then laugh.
Answer:
14. FALSE 15. NOT GIVEN 16. TRUE 17. FALSE 18. TRUE 19. NOT GIVEN 20. TRUE 21. problem-solving 22. temporal lobes 23. evaluating information 24. C 25. A 26. F 27. D
Comprehensive guide covering essential IELTS preparation strategies and techniques to help you achieve your target band score.
Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on the reading passage below.
The Dover Bronze-Age Boat
A beautifully preserved boat, made around 3,000 years ago and discovered by chance in a muddy hole, has had a profound impact on archaeological research.
It was 1992. In England, workmen were building a new road through the heart of Dover, to connect the ancient port and the Channel Tunnel, which, when it opened just two years later, was to be the first land link between Britain and Europe for over 10,000 years. A small team from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust (CAT) worked alongside the workmen, recording new discoveries bought to light by the machines.
At the base of the deep shaft six meters below the modern streets, a wooden structure was revealed. Cleaning away the waterlogged site overlying the timbers, archaeologists realized its true nature. They had found a prehistoric boat, preserved by the type of sediment in which it was buried. It was then named by Dover Bronze- Age Boat.
About nine meters of the boat’s length was recovered; one end lay beyond the excavation and had to be left. What survived consisted essentially of four intricately carved oak planks: two on the bottom, joined along a central seam by a complicated system of wedges and stitched to the others. The seams had been made watertight by pads of moss, fixed by wedges and yew stitches.
The timbers that closed the recovered end of the boat had been removed in antiquity when it was abandoned, but much about its original shape could be deduced. There was also evidence for missing upper side planks. The boat was not a wreck, but had been deliberately discarded, dismantled and broken. Perhaps it had been “ritually killed” at the end of its life, like other Bronze-Age objects.
With hindsight, it was significant that the boat was found and studied by mainstream archaeologists who naturally focused on its cultural context. At the time, ancient boats were often considered only from a narrower technological perspective, but news about the Dover boat reached a broad audience. In 2002, on the tenth anniversary of the discovery, the Dover Bronze-Age Boat Trust hosted a conference, where this meeting of different traditions became apparent. Alongside technical papers about the boat, other speakers explored its social and economic contexts, and the religious perceptions of boats in Bronze- Age societies. Many speakers came from overseas, and debate about cultural connections was renewed.
Within seven years of excavation, the Dover boat had been conserved and displayed, but it was apparent that there were issues that could not be resolved simply by studying the old wood. Experimental archaeology seemed to be the solution: a boat reconstruction, half-scale or full-sized, would permit assessment of the different hypotheses regarding its build and the missing end. The possibility of returning to Dover to search for a boat’s unexcavated northern end was explored, but practical and financial difficulties were insurmountable- and there was no guarantee that the timbers had survived the previous decade in the changed environment.
Detailed proposals to reconstruct the boat were drawn up in 2004. Archaeological evidence was beginning to suggest a Bronze- Age community straddling the Channel, brought together by the sea, rather than separated by it. In a region today divided by languages and borders, archaeologists had a duty to inform the general public about their common cultural heritage.
The boat project began in England but it was conceived from the start as a European collaboration. Reconstruction was only part of a scheme that would include a major exhibition and an extensive educational and outreach programme. Discussions began early in 2005 with archaeological bodies, universities and heritage organizations either side of the Channel. There was much enthusiasm and support, and an official launch of the project was held at an international seminar in France in 2007. Financial support was confirmed in 2008 and the project then named BOAT 1550BC got under way in June 2011.
A small team began to make the boat at the start of 2012 on the Roman Lawn outside Dover museum. A full- scale reconstruction of a mid-section had been made in 1996, primarily to see how Bronze- Age replica tools performed. In 2012, however, the hull shape was at the centre of the work, so modern power tools were used to carve the oak planks, before turning to prehistoric tools for finishing. It was decided to make the replica haft-scale for reasons of cost and time, any synthetic materials were used for the stitching, owing to doubts about the scaling and tight timetable.
Meanwhile, the exhibition was being prepared ready for opening in July 2012 at the Castle Museum in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Entitled ‘Beyond the Horizon: Societies of the Channel & North Sea 3,500 years ago’ it brought together for the first time a remarkable collection of Bronze- Age objects, including many new discoveries for commercial archaeology and some of the great treasure of the past. The reconstructed boat, as a symbol of the maritime connections that bound together the communities either side of the Channel, was the centrepiece.
Questions 1-5
Complete the chart below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
Key events
1992- the boat was discovered during the construction of a 1……………
2002-an international 2…………… was held to gather information
2004- 3……………. for the reconstruction were produced
2007- the 4…………… Of BOAT 1550BC took place
2012- the Bronze-Age 5…………… featured the boat and other objects
Questions 6-9
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text?
In boxes 6-9 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
6. Archaeologists realized that the boat had been damaged on purpose. 7. Initially, only the technological aspects of the boat were examined. 8. Archaeologists went back to the site to try and find the missing northern. 9. Evidence found in 2004 suggested that the Bronze-Age Boat had been used for trade.
Questions 10-13
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the text for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
10. How far under the ground was the boat found? 11. What natural material had been secured to the boat to prevent water entering? 12. What aspect of the boat was the focus of the 2012 reconstruction? 13. Which two factors influenced the decision not to make a full-scale reconstruction of the boat?
Click the button to Show/ Hide Answers.
Answer: 1. road 2. conference 3. proposals 4. launch 5. exhibition 6. TRUE 7. FALSE 8. FALSE 9. NOT GIVEN 10. 6/six meters/meters/m 11. (pads of) moss 12. (the) hull (shape) 13. cost and time
Comprehensive guide covering essential IELTS preparation strategies and techniques to help you achieve your target band score.
Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1- 13, which are based on Passage 31 below.
Going Bananas
The world’s favourite fruit could disappear forever in 10 years’ time
The banana is among the world’s oldest crops. Agricultural scientists believe that the first edible banana was discovered around ten thousand years ago. It has been at an evolutionary standstill ever since it was first propagated in the jungles of South-East Asia at the end of the last ice age. Normally the wild banana, a giant jungle herb called Musa acuminata, contains a mass of hard seeds that make the fruit virtually inedible. But now and then, hunter- gatherers must have discovered rare mutant plants that produced seedless, edible fruits. Geneticists now know that the vast majority of these soft-fruited I plants resulted from genetic accidents that gave their cells three copies of each chromosome instead of the usual two. This imbalance prevents seeds and pollen from developing normally, rendering the mutant plants sterile. And that is why some scientists believe the world’s most popular fruit could be doomed. It lacks the genetic diversity to fight off pests and diseases that are invading the banana plantations of Central America and the smallholdings of Africa and Asia alike.
In some ways, the banana today resembles the potato before blight brought famine to Ireland a century and a half ago. But “it holds a lesson for other crops, too,” says Emile Frison, top banana at the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain in Montpellier, France. “The state of the banana,” Frison warns, “can teach a broader lesson: the increasing standardisation of food crops round the world is threatening their ability to adapt and survive.”
The first Stone Age plant breeders cultivated these sterile freaks by replanting cuttings from their stems. And the descendants of those original cuttings are the bananas we still eat today. Each is a virtual clone, almost devoid of genetic diversity. And that uniformity makes it ripe for diseases like no other crop on Earth. Traditional varieties of sexually reproducing crops have always had a much broader genetic base, and the genes will recombine in new arrangements in each generation. This gives them much greater flexibility in evolving responses to disease – and far more genetic resources to draw on in the face of an attack. But that advantage is fading fast, as growers increasingly plant the same few, high-yielding varieties. Plant breeders work feverishly to maintain resistance in these standardised crops. Should these efforts falter, yields of even the most productive crop could swiftly crash. “When some pest or disease comes along, severe epidemics can occur,” says Geoff Hawtin, director of the Rome-based International Plant Genetic Resources Institute.
The banana is an excellent case in point. Until the 1950s, one variety, the Gros Michel, dominated the world’s commercial banana business. Found by French botanists in Asia in the 1820s, the Gros Michel was by all accounts a fine banana, richer and sweeter than today’s standard banana and without the latter’s bitter aftertaste when green. But it was vulnerable to a soil fungus that produced a wilt known as Panama disease. “Once the fungus gets into the soil, it remains there for many years. There is nothing farmers can do. Even chemical spraying won’t get rid of it,” says Rodomiro Ortiz, director of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria. So plantation owners played a running game, abandoning infested fields and moving to “clean” land – until they ran out of clean land in the 1950s and had to abandon the Gros Michel. Its successor, and still the reigning commercial king, is the Cavendish banana, a 19th-century British discovery from southern China. The Cavendish is resistant to Panama disease and, as a result, it literally saved the international banana industry. During the 1960s, it replaced the Gros Michel on supermarket shelves. If you buy a banana today, it is almost certainly a Cavendish. But even so, it is a minority in the world’s banana crop.
Half a billion people in Asia and Africa depend on bananas. Bananas provide the largest source of calories and are eaten daily. Its name is synonymous with food. But the day of reckoning may be coming for the Cavendish and its indigenous kin. Another fungal disease, black Sigatoka, has become a global epidemic since its first appearance in Fiji in 1963. Left to itself, black Sigatoka – which causes brown wounds on leaves and premature fruit ripening – cuts fruit yields by 50 to 70 per cent and reduces the productive lifetime of banana plants from 30 years to as little as 2 or 3. Commercial growers keep black Sigatoka at bay by a massive chemical assault. Forty sprayings of fungicide a year is typical. But despite the fungicides, diseases such as black Sigatoka are getting more and more difficult to control. “As soon as you bring in a new fungicide, they develop resistance,” says Frison. “One thing we can be sure of is that black Sigatoka won’t lose in this battle.” Poor farmers, who cannot afford chemicals, have it even worse. They can do little more than watching their plants die. “Most of the banana fields in Amazonia have already been destroyed by the disease,” says Luadir Gasparotto, Brazil’s leading banana pathologist with the government research agency EMBRAPA. Production is likely to fall by 70 per cent as the disease spreads, he predicts. The only option will be to find a new variety.
But how? Almost all edible varieties are susceptible to the diseases, so growers cannot simply change to a different banana. With most crops, such a threat would unleash an army of breeders, scouring the world for resistant relatives whose traits they can breed into commercial varieties. Not so with the banana. Because all edible varieties are sterile, bringing in new genetic traits to help cope with pests and diseases is nearly impossible. Nearly, but not totally. Very rarely, a sterile banana will experience a genetic accident that allows an almost normal seed to develop, giving breeders a tiny window for improvement. Breeders at the Honduran Foundation of Agricultural Research have tried to exploit this to create disease-resistant varieties. Further back-crossing with wild bananas yielded a new seedless banana resistant to both black Sigatoka and Panama disease.
Neither Western supermarket consumers nor peasant growers like the new hybrid. Some accuse it of tasting more like an apple than a banana. Not surprisingly, the majority of plant breeders have till now turned their backs on the banana and got to work on easier plants. And commercial banana companies are now washing their hands of the whole breeding effort, preferring to fund a search for new fungicides instead. “We supported a breeding programme for 40 years, but it wasn’t able to develop an alternative to the Cavendish. It was very expensive and we got nothing back,” says Ronald Romero, head of research at Chiquita, one of the Big Three companies that dominate the international banana trade.
Last year, a global consortium of scientists led by Frison announced plans to sequence the banana genome within five years. It would be the first edible fruit to be sequenced. Well, almost edible. The group will actually be sequencing inedible wild bananas from East Asia because many of these are resistant to black Sigatoka. If they can pinpoint the genes that help these wild varieties to resist black Sigatoka, the protective genes could be introduced into laboratory tissue cultures of cells from edible varieties. These could then be propagated into new disease-resistant plants and passed on to farmers.
It sounds promising, but the big banana companies have, until now, refused to get involved in GM research for fear of alienating their customers. “Biotechnology is extremely expensive and there are serious questions about consumer acceptance,” says David McLaughlin, Chiquita’s senior director for environ- mental affairs. With scant funding from the companies, the banana genome researchers are focusing on the other end of the spectrum. Even if they can identify the crucial genes, they will be a long way from developing new varieties that smallholders will find suitable and affordable. But whatever biotechnology’s academic interest, it is the only hope for the banana. Without it, banana production worldwide will head into a tailspin. We may even see the extinction of the banana as both a lifesaver for hungry and impoverished Africans and the most popular product on the world’s supermarket shelves.
Questions 1-3
Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.
1. Banana was first eaten as a fruit by humans almost ……………………… years ago. 2. Banana was first planted in ……………………… 3. Wild banana’s taste is adversely affected by its ………………………
Questions 4-10
Look at the statements (Questions 4-10) and the list of people. Match each statement with the correct person A-F.
Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 4-10 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
4. A pest invasion may seriously damage banana industry. 5. The effect of fungal infection in soil is often long-lasting. 6. A commercial manufacturer gave up on breeding bananas for disease-resistant 7. Banana disease may develop resistance to chemical sprays. 8. A banana disease has destroyed a large number of banana plantations. 9. Consumers would not accept genetically altered crops. 10. Lessons can be learned from bananas for other crops.
List of People
A. Rodomiro Ortiz B. David McLaughlin C. Emile Frison D. Ronald Romero E. Luadir Gasparotto F. Geoff Hawtin
Questions 11-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 31? In boxes 11-13 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
11. Banana is the oldest known fruit. 12. Gros Michel is still being used as a commercial product. 13. Banana is the main food in some countries.
Answer: 1. ten thousand 2. South-East Asia 3. hard seeds 4. F 5. A 6. D 7. C 8. E 9. B 10. C 11. NOT GIVEN 12. FALSE 13. TRUE
