ielts reading choose the heading

7/24/2019 IELTS Reading Choose the Heading

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IELTS READING

IELTS Reading: choose the heading

A. Tip of Simon:

1. Do these questions last

'Paragraph headings' questions are difficult, especially because the answers will not be in order inthe text. For most other types of question, the answers will be in order in the text. So, do the other

questions first, then you will be familiar with the text when you return to the 'paragraph headings'

questions. You might even find that you are able to match some of the paragraphs really quicly

because you remember what they were about.

2. Start ith the shortest paragraphs

!nstead of starting with the first paragraph, why not start with the shortest paragraph" !f there is a

really short paragraph, it should be easier to match it to a heading. #hen you will have fewer

headings to choose from for the longer paragraphs.

!. Loo" for similar ords

$s with most types of !%S reading question, you should be able to find words in the paragraph

that are similar to words in the heading.

#. $o%e on if &ou are spending too much time

'Paragraph headings' questions often tae a long time. on't allow yourself to use more than ()

minutes for each reading passage. !f you haven't finished after () minutes, move on to the next

passage.

'. (ractice e)ercises

1. Read the folloing passage and choose the *est heading.

#he environmental challenges posed by agriculture are huge, and they*ll only become more

pressing as we try to meet the growing need for food worldwide. +e*ll liely have two billion

more mouths to feed by midcentury more than nine billion people. -ut sheer population

growth isn*t the only reason we*ll need more food. #he spread of prosperity across the world,

especially in !ndia and hina, is driving an increased demand for meat, eggs and dairy, boosting

pressure to grow more corn and soybeans to feed more cattle, pigs and chicens. !f these trends

continue, the double whammy of population growth and richer diets will require us to roughly

double the amount of crops we grow by ()/).

(Source: National Geographic, May 2014)

$0 #wo ey trends driving the demand for food worldwide.

-0 #he impact of agriculture on the natural world.

0 1rowing populations and their need for food.

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IELTS READING

2.Read the following passage, and choose the best title from the list.

5sing a laser scan of -ourges cathedral in France, a team led by 6ohn 7chsendorf of the

8assachusetts !nstitute of #echnology have 9printed thousands of brics and are building an

exact :4/) replica. #he researchers hope to use the mocup to devise a way to gauge the

stability, and thus safety, of historical buildings built of bric and stone.

-uilding the replica is painstaing wor, but 7chsendorf thins the process itself may be as

valuable as the mechanics uncovered. For students of architecture and structural engineering,

handson experience has largely given way to computer modelling. #echniques lie 9 printing

could be a way of reconnecting them with the craft behind the science, he says.

;2ew Scientist, :


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IELTS READING

rent for his patent the following year, and that the brothers $uguste and &ouis &umiEre bought

the licence.

$ more popular version of events is that &ouis &umiEre was the first to conceptualise the idea.

#he &umiEre brothers shared the patent, and they made their first film, Sortie de l'usine &umiEre

de &yon, in :=B


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IELTS READING

Choose the best headings for paragraphs A, B and C from this list:

:.$ slow process

(.$ new type of therapeutic approach

9.#he benefits and drawbacs of -#


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IELTS READING

short a period of timeC. #he boo became an international bestseller, selling over H million

copies, and has been widely translated.

#offler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an

industrial society to a Csuperindustrial societyC. #his change overwhelms people, he believed,

the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving people disconnected and sufferingfrom Cshattering stress and disorientationC future shoced. #offler stated that the maAority of

social problems are symptoms of future shoc. !n his discussion of the components of such shoc

he populariLed the term Cinformation overload.C

$0 $ shocing vision of the future.

-0 +hat is ?future shoc@"

0 #he career of the futurist $lvin #offler.

0 $ changing society.

9.Read the following passage about a chessplaying computer.

A,7n February :), :BBH, eep -lue became the first machine to win a chess game against a

reigning world champion ;1arry Jasparov0 under regular time controls. owever, Jasparov won

three and drew two of the following five games, beating eep -lue by a score of , winning the sixgame

rematch 9MK(M. eep -lue won the deciding game six, becoming the first computer system to

defeat a reigning world champion in a match under standard chess tournament time controls.

',$fter the loss, Jasparov said that he sometimes saw deep intelligence and creativity in the

machine's moves, suggesting that during the second game, human chess players had intervened

on behalf of the machine, which would be a violation of the rules. !-8 denied that it cheated,

saying the only human intervention occurred between games. #he rules provided for thedevelopers to modify the program between games, an opportunity they said they used to shore up

weanesses in the computer's play that were revealed during the course of the match. #his

allowed the computer to avoid a trap in the final game that it had fallen for twice before.

Jasparov demanded a rematch, but !-8 refused and dismantled eep -lue.

Choose the best heading for paragraphs A and B from the list below.

:.#he first chessplaying computer

(.evelopers* intervention is questioned

9.hess champion accepts defeat


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IELTS READING

#homas %dison was an $merican inventor and businessman. e developed many devices

that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion

picture camera, and a longlasting, practical electric light bulb. e was one of the first

inventors to apply the principles of mass production and largescale teamwor to the

process of invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first

industrial research laboratory. %dison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history,holding :,)B9 5S patents in his name, as well as many patents in the 5nited Jingdom,

France, and 1ermany. e is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass

communication and, in particular, telecommunications.

Choose the best heading for the paragraph from the list below.

$0 #he creator of the first industrial research laboratory.

-0 $ pioneering and prolific inventor.

0 %dison*s contribution to mass communication.

11.%atch the correct headings with the paragraphs below.

:. #he causes of stress among employers and employees

(. #he increase in worrelated stress

9. #he increase in visits to physicians


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IELTS READING

the different types of institution and the distinctive roles they play. !n particular we must

recognise that attempting to extend human understanding, which is at the heart of disciplined

intellectual enquiry, can never be wholly harnessed to immediate social purposes particularly in

the case of the humanities, which both attract and puLLle many people and are therefore the most

difficult subAects to Austify.

$t a time when the future of higher education lies in the balance, +hat $re 5niversities For"

offers all of us a better, deeper and more enlightened understanding of why universities matter, to

everyone.

&hich statement best summarises the boo'(s message)

$0 +e do not necessarily need universities nowadays

-0 5niversities should be harnessed for social purposes

0 5niversities must Austify the money they are given

0 +e need to change our understanding of the role of universities

1!.Choose the correct heading for the paragraph from the list below.

$0 #he environmental impact of estuaries

-0 #he human impact on certain coastal areas

0 +hy estuaries will disappear

$n estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing

into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. %stuaries are amongst the most heavily

populated areas throughout the world, with about H)O of the world*s population living along

estuaries and the coast. $s a result, estuaries are suffering degradation by many factors, includingovergraLing and other poor farming practicesG overfishingG drainage and filling of wetlandsG

pollutants from sewage inputsG and diing or damming for flood control or water diversion.

1#.Read the following paragraph and choose the best heading.

Phonics* refers to a method for teaching speaers of %nglish to read and write that language.

Young learners are taught to associate the sounds of spoen %nglish with letters or groups of

letters. For example, they might be taught that the sound QQ can be represented by the spellings

c, , c, ch, or q. 5sing phonics, the teacher shows the learners how to blend the sounds of letters

together to produce approximate pronunciations of unnown words. Phonics is a widely used

method of teaching children to read and decode words. hildren begin learning to read using

phonics usually around the age of / or H.

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IELTS READING

$0 $ new method for language learning

-0 ow phonics benefits children in the 5J

0 hildren learn to lin sounds with spellings

0 hildren learn the rules of spelling

1+. $atch to of the folloing headings ith the paragraphs *elo.

:.3apid sales of printing presses.

(.#he revolutionary impact of the printing press.

9.2ew information and ideas.


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IELTS READING

$ recent 5J survey also found that dining together as a family is a ey ingredient in ensuring a

child's happiness. hildren in the survey reported higher levels of happiness when they dined

together with their families at least three times a wee. Contrary to the popular belief that

children only want to spend time playing video games or watching #I,C said researcher r.

8aris !acovou of the 5niversity of %ssex, Cwe found that they were most happy when interacting

with their parents or siblings.C

$0 hildren's happiness

-0 +hy teenagers use alcohol, cigarettes and drugs

0 +hat teenagers really want

0 +hy families should dine together

;article adapted from #he !ndependent0

1/.Read the following paragraphs, ta'en from #he *uardian newspaper.

A,#he hunt for intelligent species outside %arth may be a staple of literature and film K but it is

happening in real life, too. 2asa probes are on the looout for planets outside our solar system,

and astronomers are carefully listening for any messages being beamed through space. ow awe

inspiring it would be to get confirmation that we are not alone in the universe, to finally spea to

an alien race. +ouldn't it"

',+ell no, according to the eminent physicist Stephen awing. C!f aliens visit us, the outcome

would be much as when olumbus landed in $merica, which didn't turn out well for the 2ative

$mericans,C awing has said in a forthcoming documentary made for the iscovery hannel.

e argues that, instead of trying to find and communicate with life in the cosmos, humans would

be better off doing everything they can to avoid contact.-,awing believes that, based on the sheer number of planets that scientists now must exist,

we are not the only lifeform in the universe. #here are, after all, billions and billions of stars in

our galaxy alone, with, it is reasonable to expect, an even greater number of planets orbiting

them. $nd it is not unreasonable to expect some of that alien life to be intelligent, and capable of

interstellar communication.

%atch each paragraph with one of the headings below.

:.$ pessimistic prediction.

(.#he probability of life existing on other planets.

9.$stronomers send messages through space.


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IELTS READING

10.+aragraph:

For the first time, dictionary publishers are incorporating real, spoen %nglish into their data. !t

gives lexicographers ;people who write dictionaries0 access to a more vibrant, uptodate

vernacular language which has never really been studied before. !n one proAect, :/) volunteers

each agreed to discreetly tie a +alman recorder to their waist and leave it running for anything

up to two wees. %very conversation they had was recorded. +hen the data was collected, thelength of tapes was 9/ times the depth of the $tlantic 7cean. #eams of audio typists transcribed

the tapes to produce a computerised database of ten million words.

&hich paragraph heading would you chose, and why)

:.2ew method of research

(.#he first study of spoen language

Feel free to discuss this question in the CcommentsC area below this lesson. !'ll give you my

answer and explanation tomorrow.

1.+aragraph:

!t was once assumed that improvements in telecommunications would lead to more dispersal in

the population as people were no longer forced into cities. owever, the !S#P team's research

demonstrates that the population and Aob density of cities rose or remained constant in the :B=)s

after decades of decline. #he explanation for this seems to be that it is valuable to place people

woring in related fields together. '#he new world will largely depend on human creativity, and

creativity flourishes where people come together facetoface.'

&hich paragraph heading would you choose and why)

:.#he impact of telecommunications on population distribution

(.#he benefits of woring together in cities

Feel free to discuss this question in the CcommentsC area below this lesson. +hy is your answer

correct, and why is the other answer wrong"

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IELTS READING

-.-orrect ansers from Simon:

E)14

$

#he two trends are population growth and the spread of prosperity.

E)2:

$ the cathedral is the historic structure that they are maing into a 9printed model.

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IELTS READING

- is too general the text isn't really about the benefits of 9 printing it's about a specific

example of 9 printing.

E)!:

9. #% 3%$!21 3%I7&5#!72

3eading underwent serious changes... #he text then explains these changes.

E)#:

.

CC is only mentioned in the first sentence. #he main topic of the whole text is CC.

E)+:

$ R

ielts reading choose the heading

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