Category: IELTS Reading

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History Of Sugar # Reading Section

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

SUGAR

THE HISTORY

[A]It is thought that cane sugar was first used by man in Polynesia from where it spread to India. In 510 BC the Emperor Darius of what was then Persia invaded India where he found “the reed which gives honey without bees”. The secret of cane sugar, as with many other of man’s discoveries, was kept a closely guarded secret whilst the finished product was exported for a rich profit.

[B]It was the major expansion of the Arab peoples in the seventh century AD that led to a breaking of the secret. When they invaded Persia in 642 AD they found sugar cane being grown and learnt how sugar was made. As their expansion continued they established sugar production in other lands that they conquered including North Africa and Spain.

[C]Sugar was only discovered by western Europeans as a result of the Crusades in the 11th Century AD. Crusaders returning home talked of this “new spice” and how pleasant it was. The first sugar was recorded in England in 1099. The subsequent centuries saw a major expansion of western European trade with the East, including the importation of sugar. It is recorded, for instance, that sugar was available in London at “two shillings a pound” in 1319 AD. This equates to about US$100 per kilo at today’s prices so it was very much a luxury.

[D]In the 15th century AD, European sugar was refined in Venice, confirmation that even then when quantities were small, it was difficult to transport sugar as a food grade product. In the same century, Columbus sailed to the Americas, the “New World”. It is recorded that in 1493 he took sugar cane plants to grow in the Caribbean. The climate there was so advantageous for the growth of the cane that an industry was quickly established.

[E]By 1750 there were 120 sugar refineries operating in Britain. Their combined output was only 30,000 tons per annum. At this stage sugar was still a luxury and vast profits were made to the extent that sugar was called “white gold”. Governments recognized the vast profits to be made from sugar and taxed it highly. In Britain for instance, sugar tax in 1781 totaled £326,000, a figure that had grown by 1815 to £3,000,000. This situation was to stay until 1874 when the British government, under Prime Minister Gladstone, abolished the tax and brought sugar prices within the means of the ordinary citizen.

[F]Sugar beet was first identified as a source of sugar in 1747. No doubt the vested interests in the cane sugar plantations made sure that it stayed as no more than a curiosity, a situation that prevailed until the Napoleonic wars at the start of the 19th century when Britain blockaded sugar imports to continental Europe. By 1880 sugar beet had replaced sugar cane as the main source of sugar on continental Europe. Those same vested interests probably delayed the introduction of beet sugar to England until the First World War when Britain’s sugar imports were threatened.

[G]Today’s modern sugar industry is still beset with government interference at many levels and throughout the world. The overall pattern can be seen by investigating the mid 1990s’ position in the interactive map on the Introduction page. Annual consumption is now running at about 120 million tons and is expanding at a rate of about 2 million tons per annum. The European Union, Brazil and India are the top three producers and together account for some 40% of the annual production. However most sugar is consumed within the country of production and only approximately 25% is traded internationally.

[H]One of the most important examples of governmental actions is within the European Union where sugar prices are so heavily subsidised that over 5 million tons of white beet sugar have to be exported annually and yet a million tons of raw cane sugar are imported from former colonies. This latter activity is a form of overseas aid which is also practised by the USA. The EU’s over-production and subsequent dumping has now been subjected to GATT requirements which should see a substantial cut-back in production over the next few years.

How Sugar is Made

[I]There are a bewildering number of sugars and syrups available in the shops while other types are available for the industrial user. Some of the basic differences are discussed below.

White sugar is essentially pure sucrose and there is no difference between that derived from cane and that from beet. Different manufacturers produce crystals of different sizes however and this leads to some apparent differences. Smaller crystals dissolve more readily and might therefore appear to be sweeter because none is left at the bottom of the cup and they seem sweeter on the tongue if eaten alone. Similarly smaller crystals have more surfaces per spoonful and appear whiter than larger crystals. [Having said that, some white sugars are less white than others: it depends on how much processing the manufacturer applies.

[J]There are several speciality white sugars:

  • caster sugar is just a very small crystal size white sugar
  • icing sugar is ground up white sugar, essentially sugar dust
  • sugar cubes are lumps of sugar crystals “glued” together with a sugar syrup
  • preserving sugar is a special large crystal

[K]Brown sugars come in many different styles but are essentially one of two types: sticky browns and free-flowing browns. The sticky browns were originally the sort of mixture that comes out of a cane sugar crystallising pan. The extreme of this, still made in India today, is “juggeri” or “gur” which is essentially such a mixture boiled until dry.

Questions1-5

Do the following statements agree with the information given in reading passage 1?

In boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE             if the statement agrees with the information.

FALSE           if the statement contradicts with the information.

NOT GIVEN  if there is no information on this.

  1. Indian People were the first one to use sugar.
  2. The entire process of finding and producing sugar was made available to public from the beginning.
  3. Persia was invaded by Arab People in 642 BC.
  4. Sugar in early times was considered a luxury, by the people of London.
  5. The sugar industry in America flourished because of climatic support.
  6. Sugar is often termed as white gold.
  7. Sugar beet replaced sugar cane as the source of producing sugar in continental Europe.
  8. The top producers of sugar in the world are India and Brazil.

Complete the sentences below.

Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

  1. Pure sucrose is also called (9)______________
  2. Smaller crystals of white sugar are more sweet because nothing is left at the (10)____________
  • White sugar comes with its own specialties (11)_____________ is the one often termed as the sugar dust.
  1. The two kinds of brown sugars are (12)__________ and (13)____________.

ANSWERS

  1. False
  2. False
  3. False
  4. True
  5. True
  6. True
  7. False
  8. Not Given
  9. White sugar
  10. Bottom of cup
  11. Icing sugar
  12. Sticky browns
  13. Free-flowing browns

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Fitness Magazine # Reading Section

Look at the contents page from a magazine on the following page.

Answer questions 1-3 by matching the heading given in the advertisement with the content provided.

Write your answers in the boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

 

image

fitness magazine

 

1. This exercise help in strengthening the spine and the lower back.

2. It helps in opening the energy centers of the upper body.

3. This exercise helps in improving the circulation in body.

Question 4-10 Complete the notes below in NO MORE THAN THREE words.

When performing weeping willow, one begins in a standing position, the (4)_____ are kept together, the legs are straight with the (5)________ facing inwards. It has to be made sure that a (6)____________ is maintained throughout. The abdominals are then contracted and one slowly lowers the (7)______ until a stretch in the hamstring is felt. The arms are wrapped around the calves and interlocking of (8)________ is done. The forehead is pressed to the knees and the (9)_____ are contracted again. The torso is raised back and the process is repeated after switching the (10)_________ at the bottom of the move.

 

ANSWERS

  1. cross your heart
  2. wall flower
  3. gliding swan
  4. feet
  5. palm
  6. flat back position
  7. torso
  8. hands
  9. abs
  10. hand grip

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Better Ways To Pay For College # Reading Section

SECTION THREE                                        QUESTIONS 28-40

The reading passage below describes some of the better ways to pay for the college. From the information given, answer the questions 28-40.

[A]HARD as it may be to believe with Donald Trump hogging the headlines, America’s presidential primary campaigns are proposing serious ideas for how to deal with real economic problems. High among them is how to fix the country’s broken system of university finance. Hillary Clinton has come up with intriguing plans, but the ideas of Marco Rubio are the more radical. And radicalism is what the system badly needs.
America is home to the world’s best universities. But taken as a whole, its higher-education system is marred by soaring costs, stratospheric student debt and patchy performance. Tuition fees have doubled in real terms in the past 20 years. Student debt has trebled in the past decade, to $1.2 trillion. A recent study of academic achievement at college found that 45% of America’s students made no discernible academic progress in their first two years. Sorting out this mess demands three things: reforms that bear down on costs, that encourage students to make more informed choices about their future and that match repayments to borrowers’ ability to pay.
[B] Mrs Clinton’s plan meets the third of those aims, and nods at the first. She proposes capping the repayment of college loans at a maximum of 10% of income over 20 years. If a loan is not paid off by then the government will pick up the tab. The estimated bill for her scheme, which would push America further towards a model used in Britain and Australia, comes to $350 billion over ten years. Income-based loan repayments make sense. But if government still picks up the tab for defaults, there is little pressure on colleges to curb costs and students to choose wisely. Mrs Clinton’s answer is to make subsidies to colleges contingent on reducing costs.
[C] Mr Rubio deals with the three reform priorities more comprehensively. He wants to encourage the take-up of online education platforms to curb costs and has good ideas for how to spread information on the earnings associated with particular degrees. But his boldest proposal is to link repayment of university funding to income by using equity financing, an idea floated by Milton Friedman in 1955.

[D]Under Mr Rubio’s plan, private investors would pay for a student’s education in return for a claim on a chunk of his future earnings. Just as dividends accruing to a shareholder depend on a firm’s profits, so a student’s subsequent payments to the investor would rise and fall with his income. Equity financing would lead to more informed choices because investors would be less willing to fund courses and colleges that offer low returns. And it would squeeze costs because unpopular courses would have to trim their spending.
The logic is impeccable. Nonetheless, the idea of equity financing for college is controversial. There are silly criticisms, for instance that any equity contract on human capital is tantamount to indentured servitude. In fact, these contracts would be less constraining than a student loan that imposes fixed payment obligations and cannot be discharged in America’s bankruptcy courts. It is possible—and sensible—to set caps on the period in which income is shared, the percentage of earnings that can be given away and the total amount paid out.
Marco to market
[E]The more substantive problems involve information asymmetries and moral hazard. Prospective students know better than any investor what they plan to do with their lives. A lawyer who financed his study by issuing equity could, on graduating, afford to choose whether to join a well-paying law firm or to become a public defender without having that decision influenced by the need to repay a mound of debt. From society’s point of view, that freedom to choose has benefits: a debt-laden graduate is less likely to take a risk on setting up a new company and more likely to head for Wall Street instead. But from the investor’s perspective, the risk that students might offer low returns would need to be compensated for by other students pursuing more remunerative paths.
[F]People who think they will do well in later life also have an incentive to opt for the certainty of fixed debt repayments rather than face the possibility of handing over big chunks of future income. Again, there are potential solutions: some fintech startups have experimented with models of future income that enable students with better earnings potential to give up a smaller share of income in return for the same amount of funding as those with dimmer prospects.
[G]Resolving these difficulties will take time and ingenuity. And whatever happens, it makes sense to have a combination of debt and equity, and of private and public money, in the mix. That’s why Mrs Clinton’s proposals are a sensible start, but Mr Rubio’s ideas are worth serious debate.

Questions 28-34

Reading passage 5 has seven sections, A-G

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 28-40 on your answer sheet.

28.  Choice must lie with the student

29. solutions to fiscal concerns

30. Higher pays in later years makes the difference

31. Promotion of online education takes place

32. War between Rubio and Clinton ideas.

33. America on the way of Australia

34. Independent lenders pay the loan

Questions 35-40

Do the following statements agree with the information given in reading passage 5?

In boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE             if the statement agrees with the information.

FALSE           if the statement contradicts with the information.

NOT GIVEN  if there is no information on this.

35. The American higher education often involves high student debts.

36. Mr. Rubio’s plans are similar to the ones in Australia and Britain.

37. Online education has come up as a solution to debts.

38. Hilary Clinton suggests individual investors to pay the students loans.

39. Investors if invest, take away the freedom to choose from students.

40. A debate between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton is about to happen.

ANSWERS

28. E

29. A

30. F

31. C

32. G

33. B

34. D

35. True

36. False

37. True

38. False

39. True

40. Not given

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Greece Elections # Reading Passage

SECTION TWO                                    QUESTIONS 15-22

Read the passage below and answer Questions 15-22 on the following page

On the very day that Greece received the first tranche of its new bailout from the European Union, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has decided to resign and call a general election, which will be held next month. Until then, the country will be led by a woman, Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou, the president of Greece’s Supreme Court. On the face of it, Tsipras’s move seems premature. In the next few months, his government has much to do in order to meet the terms of the bailout and persuade its creditors to consider giving Greece some much needed debt relief. The election will complicate that timetable and will, inevitably, create more uncertainty about where the country is going. But, despite the risks it involves, Tsipras’s gambit was necessary for broader democratic and political reasons. When Tsipras did a U-turn last month and accepted the harsh bailout terms imposed by Germany, he created a big split in his Syriza party, which took office in January. About a third of Syriza’s members of parliament voted against the deal or abstained. Since then, the government has been ruling with the support of its coalition partner, a right-wing populist party called Independent Greeks. But Tsipras was facing a likely parliamentary vote of no confidence, which he wasn’t certain to survive, and a formal schism with anti-bailout members of Syriza, who have been talking about setting up their own party. Rather than engaging his internal opposition, the Prime Minister has chosen to try and outflank them by calling a snap election, which he hopes will bestow him with a new mandate.

That is probably a smart move, and it will also give the Greek public an opportunity to register their feelings, once again, about the bailout package and its attendant continuation of austerity policies. When last consulted, in the “Oxi” referendum, on July 5th, the voters overwhelmingly rejected the bailout terms being demanded by the E.U. and the International Monetary Fund, only for Tsipras and his colleagues to accept a similar deal a couple of weeks later, under threat of Greece being ejected from the eurozone. The upcoming election will effectively be a referendum on Tsipras’s decision to accept more austerity and more international supervision of Greece’s economy. “The political landscape must clear up,” the energy minister Panos Skourletis, an ally of Tsipras, said on Thursday. “We need to know whether the government has or does not have a majority.”

Since Greece is a very divided country, an outright majority for Syriza is an unlikely outcome. In its January triumph, which left it as the largest party in parliament, it won just thirty-six per cent of the vote. This time around, at least some of Syriza’s supporters are likely to support its dissident faction, which is led by the former energy minister, Panagiotis Lafazanis, who last week accused Tsipras of giving into an E.U. “dictatorship” and called for the creation of a new “united movement that will justify people’s desire for democracy and social justice.” It seems as though Lafazanis and his colleagues will campaign on the idea of taking Greece out of the eurozone and restoring the drachma, which, at least in theory, would give the government the leeway to pursue more expansionary monetary and fiscal policies.

This is a political debate Greece needs to have. For the past six months, some of Syriza’s supporters have been suffering from a form of cognitive dissonance. Perfectly understandably, they want an end to austerity policies; but they also want Greece to stay in the eurozone. If the dramatic showdown between Syriza and the country’s creditors demonstrated anything, it is that Greece and other E.U. debtor countries cannot have both of these things. Germany, with the support of the Benelux countries and many of the newer E.U. members from Eastern Europe, won’t allow it. In seeking reëlection, Tsipras, who, according to recent opinion polls, still retains a lot of popular support, will argue that he got the best deal possible. That’s what he did in his address to the nation on Thursday night.

It is now up to the critics of austerity, including Lafazanis and possibly even Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister whom my colleague Ian Parker profiled recently, to make the argument that an alternative set of policies, including a new Greek currency, is viable. If they proceed down this road, emphasizing the practicality of their program rather than simply criticizing Tsipras for capitulating, the election campaign could be interesting.

QUESTIONS 15-22

Do the following statements agree with the information in the passage?

In boxes 15-22 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE                    if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE                  if the statement contradicts  the information

NOT GIVEN         if the information is not given in the passage

15. Greece will be led by a woman prime minister because the current one died.

16. The government of Tsipras was facing internal issues, however it managed to survive because of people’s support.

17. The demands of the bailout were rejected by everyone in Greece and has yet not been accepted.

18. Syrzia won a majority in the January elections.

19. Lafazanis are taking steps to take Greece out of euro zone, expecting to gain some monetary issues.

20. The debate proved that Germany won’t allow EU country that own money to have all the benefits.

21. The finance minister of Greece at present is Yanis Varoufakis.

22. The main task of the former finance minister is make alternative policies.

 

ANSWER

15. False

16.False

17.False

18. True

19. True

20. True

21. True

22. True

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