Kiểm tra IELTS 3h

(21) Why does the student want to study Tourism?

A. good future

B. good pay

C. parents’ will

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(22) What kind of skill will the student gain in the course?

A. time-management

B. financial planning

C. note taking

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(23) The student has the ability of

A. independence

B. communication

C. coping well with statistics

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(24) The teacher believes that the industry of tourism is

A. shrinking

B. seeing a bright future

C. growing popular

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(25) How does the student compare the university course with polytechnics?

A. He let Paul do most of the work.

B. His plans were too ambitious.

C. He was very supportive of Paul.

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Questions 26-30

What feature do the speakers identify for each of the following courses?

Features

A. limited value

B. useful

C. relevant to career

D. flexible admission

E. intensive

F. improving leadership

G. self-control and time management

Courses

(26) Travel and Business

(27) Japanese

(28) Medical Care

(29) Computer

(30) Public Relations

Section 4

Questions 31-40

Complete the notes below with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.

Company Outsourcing

Case study - TCP Technologies:

• Manager: Manjeet Khanna
• Main target: to create a environment

Grading for staff:

• Every month grades are published on an
• The cultural openness increased the quantity of incoming contracted opportunities.
• The cultural openness improved the level of of the company.
• The increased rate of staff satisfaction has led to growth of 32% in the

Recent interview:

• A company is not one entity comprised of components, but a living organism composed of cells
• Manjeet’s motto is

Benefits of management style:

• The rate of staff turnover has been reduced
• A can be from any other company.
• Grades are not used for

Features of managing style:

• The manager personally writes emails to respond to the complaints
• The complaint form, known as a , can be accessed by all employees online.
• The manager can receive any complaints concerning air conditioning, food quality and entitlement.
• A on the anonymous complaint was introduced in the new system.

INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE TESTING SYSTEM

ACADEMIC READING

TIME: 1 HOUR

Instructions to Candidates

Do not open this booklet until you are told to do so.

Write your name and candidate number in the space at the top of this page. Start at the beginning of the test and work through it.

You should answer all questions.

If you cannot do a particular question, leave it and go on to the next. You can return to it later.

All answers must be written on the Answer Sheet.

Do not remove the booklet from the examination room.

Information for Candidates

There are 40 questions on this question paper. The test is divided as follows:

Reading Passage 1	Questions 1-13
Reading Passage 2	Questions 14-26
Reading Passage 3	Questions 27-40

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-10, which is based on the following reading passage.

The end of email?

More than 107 trillion emails are sent every year but its grip on your lives is loosening...

A. For several years, students of the Internet have noticed that young people are abandoning email in favour of alternative electronic ways of staying in touch. A leading US Internet research firm, ComScore, recently reported a 59% decline in the use of internet-based email services by 12 to 17 year-olds, an 18% decline among 25 to 35 year-olds, and an 8% fall among 35 to 44 year-olds. There are even signs that email is beginning to lose favour in the workplace too

B. Europe's largest IT company, Atos Origin, intends to scrap internal emails altogether. Its staff will still use email to correspond with clients and other businesses but to talk among themselves they will adopt a variety of newer services such as instant messaging services and older methods — namely talking face to face. The company's chairman prompted headlines around the world when he mentioned he had not sent an email in more than three years. But in fact a number of companies have been quietly moving away from using email as the primary way of communicating within the company. Intel, for example, has been experimenting with 'no-email Fridays' encouraging its engineers to solve problems by phone or face to face instead.

C. The move, in part, reflects the preferences of its workers, many of whom are under the age of 30. However, it is also happening because the volume of emails is becoming unsustainable. Employees who usually get 200 emails a day, spend between five and 20 hours a week just clearing their inboxes. The distraction and time-wasting of email have been a regular part of office life for more than a decade. More than 107 trillion are now sent each year, of which half are spam. The rest are a mix of round robins, personal messages and badly written memos that pile up in archives and do little to boost productivity. Research shows that it takes 64 seconds to regain concentration after reading an email and when you consider that US office workers have been measured checking their emails and swapping windows on their computer screens an average of 37 times an hour, that adds up to a major distraction.

D. Employees will be expected to use collaboration and social media tools instead of email to communicate with co-workers. In English, that means newer types of electronic messaging services. One such service is instant messaging. Devised in the 1990s by people playing games on the net, instant messaging, or IM, is much simpler and more responsive than email. IM users can see when colleagues are online and then communicate in small, continuous trails of dialogues on their screens, much more like a phone call. These messages tend to be deleted as they go, thus avoiding clogged up email inboxes and archives. Less formal than email, they are also a far more efficient way of, for example, trying to arrange a meeting. IM or 'chat' facilities often form part of larger social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.

E. The immediacy of these synchronous messaging systems enable people to stay in touch and broadcast information to each other — their location, activities, plans and daily schedules —without the need for constant emailing. ‘Status updates' in which users post a simple message that can be read by all their contacts, enable people to see and share information that might not be worth an email but can be useful nonetheless. All such 'easy chat' services were born of an engagement with the internet that just didn't exist when email overtook the world of communication in the early 1990s.

F. Until about a decade ago, most neuroscientists thought the brain stopped developing after childhood. But the constant distraction and torrent of information that we subject ourselves to — via email, surfing the web, TV, and multi-tasking — is now thought to alter the way we think. The new technology is, in effect, rewiring our brains. Scientists have drawn parallels between the use of electronic communication and addiction to food stimulants that release small amounts of dopamine in the brain. We feel a buzz of excitement when a message arrives, which then fades, leaving us feeling flat and bored until the next one comes. But whether this makes us less productive is open to question. Research has found that people work better in bursts of concentration interrupted by breaks — even for pointless emails — than long sustained spells.

G. There are still an estimated three billion email accounts in the world, a figure that dwarfs any other form of communication. Email also retains several distinguishing qualities. Unlike the galaxy of social networks and IM services on the internet - all requiring different accounts and often their own software - email systems are all fundamentally compatible. It doesn't matter which programme you send it from. And even its annoyances contain advantages: email archives have proved to be hugely valuable, and because it is an asynchronous medium (the recipients choose when to open their messages) this means we can try and preserve some control over our time. This is not the end of email- it will remain a bedrock of businesses for some time to come. It's simply the end of its monopoly.

Questions 1 - 6

The reading passage has seven paragraphs labelled A-G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

Information	Paragraph
[1] reasons for the appeal of social networking tools over email
[2] a description of alternatives to email as a form of communication in the workplace
[3] a reference to why one business plans to reduce its flow of internal email
[4] a brief conclusion of findings on the effects technology has on our attention span
[5] evidence of a decline in the popularity of email
[6] a reference to some positive features of email as a form of communication

Questions 7-10. Write your answers in boxes 7-10 of your answer sheet.

List FOUR examples of information that can be communicated using the medium of Instant Messaging.

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

Questions 11-13

Complete the sentences below with words taken from the reading passage.

Use NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 11-13 of your answer sheet.

[11] Young people use social networking tools that provide the level of they want.

[12] The advantage of social networking is that it puts people in control of the they see.

[13] Email is an , so you don’t know if someone has read your message.

Is it time to halt the rising tide of plastic packaging?

A        Close up, plastic packaging can be a marvellous thing. Those who make a living from it call it a forgotten infrastructure that allows modern urban life to exist. Plastics have helped society defy natural limits such as the seasons, the rotting of food and the distance most of us live from where our food is produced. And yet we do not like it. We do not like waste, but plastic waste, with its hydrocarbon roots and industrial manufacture, is especially galling. In 2008, the UK, for example, produced around two million tonnes of plastic waste, twice as much as in the early 1990s. The very qualities of plastic – its cheapness, its indestructible aura – make it a reproachful symbol of an unsustainable way of life. The facts, however, do not justify our unease. All plastics are, at least theoretically, recyclable. Plastic packaging makes up just 6 to 7 per cent of the contents of British dustbins by weight and less than 3 percent of landfill. Supermarkets and brands, which are under pressure to reduce the quantity of packaging of all types that they use, are finding good environmental reasons to turn to plastic: it is lighter, so requires less energy for transportation than glass, for example; it requires relatively little energy to produce; and it is often re-usable. An Austrian study found that if plastic packaging was removed from the supply chain, other packaging would have to increase fourfold to make up for it.

B        So are we just wrong about plastic packaging? Is it time to stop worrying and learn to love the disposable plastic wrapping around sandwiches? Certainly there are bigger targets for environmental savings such as improving household insulation and energy emissions. Naturally, the plastics industry is keen to point them out. What’s more, concern over plastic packaging has produced a squall of conflicting initiatives from retailers, manufacturers and local authorities. It’s a squall that dies down and then blows harder from one month to the next. ‘It is being left to the individual conscience and supermarkets playing the market,’ says Tim Lang, a professor specializing in food policy’. ‘It’s a mess.’

C        Dick Scarle of the Packaging Federation points out that societies without sophisticated packaging lose half their food before it reaches consumers and that in the UK, waste in supply chains is about 3 per cent. In India, it is more than 50 per cent. The difference comes later: the British throw out 30 percent of the food they buy – an environmental cost in terms of emissions equivalent to a fifth of the cars on their roads. Packagers agree that cardboard, metals and glass all have their good points, but there’s nothing quite like plastic. With more than 20 families of polymers to choose from and then sometimes blends, packaging designers and manufacturers have a limitless variety of qualities to play with.

D        But if there is one law of plastic that, in environmental terms at least, prevails over all others, it is this: a little goes a long way. This means, first, that plastic is relatively cheap to use – it represents just over one-third of the UK packaging market by value but it wraps more than half of the total number of items bought. Second, it means that even though plastic encases about 53 percent of products bought, it only makes up 20 percent by weight of the packaging consumed. And in the packaging equation, weight is the main issue because the heavier something is, the more energy you expend moving it around. In view of this, righteous indignation against plastic can look foolish.

E        One store commissioned a study to find precise data on which had less environmental impact: selling apples loose or ready-wrapped. Helene Roberts, head of packaging, explains that in fact they found apples in fours on a tray covered by plastic film needed 27 per cent less packaging in transportation than those sold loose. Sieve Kelsey, a packaging designer, finds the debate frustrating. He argues that the hunger to do something quickly is diverting effort away from more complicated questions about how you truly alter supply chains. Rather than further reducing the weight of a plastic bottle, more thought should be given to how packaging can be recycled. Helene Roberts explains that their greatest packaging reduction came when the company switched to reusable plastic crates and stopped consuming 62,000 tonnes of cardboard boxes every year. Plastic packaging is important, and it might provide a way of thinking about broader questions of sustainability. To target plastic on its own is to evade the complexity of the issues. There seems to be a universal eagerness to condemn plastic. Is this due to an inability to make the general changes in society that are really required? ‘Plastic as a lightweight food wrapper is now built in as the logical thing,’ Lang says. ‘Does that make it an environmentally sound system of packaging? It only makes sense if you have a structure such as exists now. An environmentally driven packaging system would look completely different. Dick Scarle put the challenge another way, “The amount of packaging used today is a reflection of modern life.”

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph, A-E from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-viii in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.

14. Paragraph A

15. Paragraph B

16. Paragraph C

17. Paragraph D

18. Paragraph E

Questions 19-23

Look at the following statements (Questions 19-23 ) and the list of people below.
Match each statement to the correct person A-D.
Write the correct letter, A-D in boxes 19-23 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

19. Comparison of two approaches to packaging revealed an interesting result.

20. People are expected to do the right thing.

21. Most food reaches UK shops in good condition.

22. Complex issues are ignored in the search for speedy solutions.

23. It is merely because of the way societies operate that using plastic seems valid.

People
Tim Lang	A
Dick Seatle	B
Helene Roberts	C
Steve Kelsey	D

Questions 24-26

Complete the summary below. Write NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the text for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

A revolutionary material

Plastic packaging has changed the way we consume food. However, we instinctively dislike it partly because it is the product of processes, but also because it seems to be . so we feel it is wasteful. Nevertheless, it is thanks to plastic that for many people their choice of food is no longer restricted by the . in which it is available or the location of its source.

READING PASSAGE 3

Travel Books

There are many reasons why individuals have travelled beyond their own societies. Some travellers may have simply desired to satisfy curiosity about the larger world. Until recent times, however, travellers did start their journey for reasons other than mere curiosity. While the travellers’ accounts give much valuable information on these foreign lands and provide a window for the understanding of the local cultures and histories, they are also a mirror for the travellers themselves, for these accounts help them to have a better understanding of themselves.

Records of foreign travel appeared soon after the invention of writing, and fragmentary travel accounts appeared in both Mesopotamia and Egypt in ancient times. After the formation of large, imperial states in the classical world, travel accounts emerged as a prominent literary genre in many lands, and they held especially strong appeal for rulers desiring useful knowledge about their realms. The Greek historian Herodotus reported on his travels in Egypt and Anatolia in researching the history of the Persian wars. The Chinese envoy Zhang Qian described much of central Asia as far west as Bactria (modern- day Afghanistan) on the basis of travels undertaken in the first century BCE while searching for allies for the Han dynasty. Hellenistic and Roman geographers such as Ptolemy, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder relied on their own travels through much of the Mediterranean world as well as reports of other travellers to compile vast compendia of geographical knowledge.

During the post-classical era (about 500 to 1500 CE), trade and pilgrimage emerged as major incentives for travel to foreign lands. Muslim merchants sought trading opportunities throughout much of the eastern hemisphere. They described lands, peoples, and commercial products of the Indian Ocean basin from East Africa to Indonesia, and they supplied the first written accounts of societies in sub-Saharan West Africa. While merchants set out in search of trade and profit, devout Muslims travelled as pilgrims to Mecca to make their Hajj and visit the holy sites of Islam. Since the prophet Muhammad’s original pilgrimage to Mecca, untold millions of Muslims have followed his example, and thousands of Hajj accounts have related their experiences. East Asian travellers were not quite so prominent as Muslims during the post-classical era, but they too followed many of the highways and sea lanes of the eastern hemisphere. Chinese merchants frequently visited South-East Asia and India, occasionally venturing even to East Africa, and devout East Asian Buddhists undertook distant pilgrimages. Between the 5th and 9th centuries CE, hundreds and possibly even thousands of Chinese Buddhists travelled to India to study with Buddhist teachers, collect sacred texts, and visit holy sites. Written accounts recorded the experiences of many pilgrims, such as Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing. Though not so numerous as the Chinese pilgrims, Buddhists from Japan, Korea, and other lands also ventured abroad in the interests of spiritual enlightenment.

Medieval Europeans did not hit the roads in such large numbers as their Muslim and East Asian counterparts during the early part of the post-classical era, although gradually increasing crowds of Christian pilgrims flowed to Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela (in northern Spain), and other sites. After the 12th century, however, merchants, pilgrims, and missionaries from medieval Europe travelled widely and left numerous travel accounts, of which Marco Polo’s description of his travels and sojourn in China is the best known. As they became familiar with the larger world of the eastern hemisphere - and the profitable commercial opportunities that it offered - European peoples worked to find new and more direct routes to Asian and African markets. Their efforts took them not only to all parts of the eastern hemisphere, but eventually to the Americas and Oceania as well.

If Muslim and Chinese peoples dominated travel and travel writing in post- classical times, European explorers, conquerors, merchants, and missionaries took centre stage during the early modern era (about 1500 to 1800 CE). By no means did Muslim and Chinese travel come to a halt in early modern times. But European peoples ventured to the distant corners of the globe, and European printing presses churned out thousands of travel accounts that described foreign lands and peoples for a reading public with an apparently insatiable appetite for news about the larger world. The volume of travel literature was so great that several editors, including Giambattista Ramusio, Richard Hakluyt, Theodore de Biy, and Samuel Purchas, assembled numerous travel accounts and made them available in enormous published collections.

During the 19th century, European travellers made their way to the interior regions of Africa and the Americas, generating a fresh round of travel writing as they did so. Meanwhile, European colonial administrators devoted numerous writings to the societies of their colonial subjects, particularly in Asian and African colonies they established. By the mid-century, attention was flowing also in the other direction. Painfully aware of the military and technological prowess of European and Euro-American societies, Asian travellers in particular visited Europe and the United States in hopes of discovering principles useful for the organisation of their own societies. Among the most prominent of these travellers who made extensive use of their overseas observations and experiences in their own writings were the Japanese reformer Fukuzawa Yu-kichi and the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen.

With the development of inexpensive and reliable means of mass transport, the 20th century witnessed explosions both in the frequency of long-distance travel and in the volume of travel writing. While a great deal of travel took place for reasons of business, administration, diplomacy, pilgrimage, and missionary work, as in ages past, increasingly effective modes of mass transport made it possible for new kinds of travel to flourish. The most distinctive of them was mass tourism, which emerged as a major form of consumption for individuals living in the world’s wealthy societies. Tourism enabled consumers to get away from home to see the sights in Rome, take a cruise through the Caribbean, walk the Great Wall of China, visit some wineries in Bordeaux, or go on safari in Kenya. A peculiar variant of the travel account arose to meet the needs of these tourists: the guidebook, which offered advice on food, lodging, shopping, local customs, and all the sights that visitors should not miss seeing. Tourism has had a massive economic impact throughout the world, but other new forms of travel have also had considerable influence in contemporary times.

Questions 27-28

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D

Write your answers in boxes 27-28 on your answer sheet.

27 What were most people travelling for in the early days?

A. Studying their own cultures

B. Business

C. Knowing other people and places better

D. Writing travel books

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28Why did the author say writing travel books are also “a mirror” for travellers themselves?

A. Because travellers record their own experiences.

B. Because travellers reflect upon their own society and life.

C. Because it increases knowledge of foreign cultures.

D. Because it is related to the development of human society.

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Questions 29-36

Complete the table on the next page.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from Reading Passage 3 for each answer.

TIME	TRAVELLER	DESTINATION	PURPOSE OF TRAVEL
Classical Greece	Herodotus	Egypt and Anatolia	To gather information for the study of (29)
Han Dynasty	Zhang Qian	Central Asia	To seek (30)
Roman Empire	Ptolemy, Strabo, Pliny the Elder	The Mediterranean	To acquire (32)
Post-classical era (about 500 to 1500 CE)	Muslims	From East Africa to Indonesia, Mecca	For trading and (32)
5th - 9th Centuries CE	Chinese Buddhists	(33)	To collect Buddhist texts and for spiritual enlightenment
Early modern era (about 1500 to 1800 CE)	European explorers	The New World	To satisfy public curiosity for the New World
During 19th century	Colonial administrators	Asia, Africa	To provide information for the (34)
By mid-century of the 1800s	Sun Yat-sen, Fukuzawa Yukichi	Europe and the United States	To study the (35) of their societies
20th century	People from(36) countries	Mass tourism	For entertainment and pleasure

Questions 37-40

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.

Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

37 Why were the imperial rulers especially interested in these travel stories?

A. Reading travel stories was a popular pastime.

B. The accounts are often truthful rather than fictional.

C. Travel books played an important role in literature.

D. They desired knowledge of their empire.

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38 Who were the largest group to record their spiritual trips during the post-classical era?

A. Muslim traders

B. Muslim pilgrims

C. Chinese Buddhists

D. Indian Buddhist teachers

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39 During the early modern era, a large number of travel books were published to

A. meet the public’s interest

B. explore new business opportunities.

C. encourage trips to the new world

D. record the larger world.

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40 What’s the main theme of the passage?

A. The production of travel books

B. The literary status of travel books

C. The historical significance of travel books

D. The development of travel books

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IELTS PLACEMENT TEST 1

INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE TESTING SYSTEM

ACADEMIC WRITING

TIME 1 HOUR

Instructions to Candidates

Do not open this booklet until you are told to do so.

Write your name and candidate number in the space at the top of this page.

All answers must be written on the separate answer booklet provided

Do not remove the booklet from the examination room

Information for Candidates

There are 2 tasks on this question paper. You must do both tasks.

Under-length answers will be penalized.

WRITING TASK 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on this task. Write at least 150 words.

The graph below shows the percentage of urban/suburban and rural households in a European country that had Internet access between 1999 and 2004.

Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

WRITING TASK 2

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

The widespread use of the Internet has brought many problems.

What do you think are the main problems associated with the use of the web? What solutions can you suggest?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.