Đề thi thử IELTS Academic số 1: IELTS Academic Mock Test 1

Listening (30 phút)

Part 1

Questions 1-10. Complete the form below. Write ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer. HILLCREST COMMUNITY GARDEN: PLOT APPLICATION

Phần nghe phát trong phòng thi.

1. Name: Daniel ____
2. Postcode: ____
3. Plot size chosen: ____ square metres
4. Main crop planned: ____
5. Annual fee: £____
6. Reason for reduced rate: he is a full-time ____
7. Members must bring their own ____
8. Fill watering cans from tanks behind the ____
9. Induction session: Saturday at ____ am
10. Weekend parking: use the car park at the ____

Part 2

Questions 11-14: Choose the correct letter, A, B or C. Questions 15-20: What is the main volunteer task in each area of the reserve? Choose the correct answer for each area.

Phần nghe phát trong phòng thi.

1. Why was the nature reserve created?
   • to protect a rare bird
   • to use land left after a factory closed
   • to reduce flooding in the town
2. What does Ruth say about the volunteer team?
   • Most of the volunteers are retired.
   • The team has doubled in size.
   • Nearly all the volunteers live in the town.
3. What must volunteers do before they work alone?
   • complete a first aid course
   • work three shifts with a partner
   • pass a test on the safety handbook
4. According to Ruth, what is the reserve's biggest problem at present?
   • litter left by visitors
   • dogs off their leads
   • a fast-spreading plant
5. Visitor centre
   • counting birds
   • cutting back plants
   • repairing paths
   • guiding school groups
   • selling memberships
   • checking water levels
6. Reed beds
   • counting birds
   • cutting back plants
   • repairing paths
   • guiding school groups
   • selling memberships
   • checking water levels
7. Woodland trail
   • counting birds
   • cutting back plants
   • repairing paths
   • guiding school groups
   • selling memberships
   • checking water levels
8. Pond dipping platform
   • counting birds
   • cutting back plants
   • repairing paths
   • guiding school groups
   • selling memberships
   • checking water levels
9. Stream bank
   • counting birds
   • cutting back plants
   • repairing paths
   • guiding school groups
   • selling memberships
   • checking water levels
10. Bird hide
    • counting birds
    • cutting back plants
    • repairing paths
    • guiding school groups
    • selling memberships
    • checking water levels

Part 3

Questions 21-25: Choose the correct letter, A, B or C. Questions 26-30: What do the students decide to do with each section of their report? Choose the correct answer for each section.

Phần nghe phát trong phòng thi.

1. Why did the students choose food waste as their topic?
   • Their tutor suggested it.
   • They had read a newspaper article about it.
   • One of them had worked in the canteen.
2. What was the main problem with their first survey?
   • Too few people replied.
   • One question was understood in different ways.
   • It was sent out at the wrong time of year.
3. Which type of food made up the largest share of the waste?
   • rice
   • bread
   • cooked vegetables
4. What does Dr Hughes say about the plate-size experiment?
   • It needs a control group.
   • It should run for a longer period.
   • It repeats earlier research too closely.
5. What do the students decide to do with the interview with the canteen manager?
   • include the full transcript
   • interview him a second time
   • write a short summary of it
6. Background
   • shorten it
   • add a chart
   • move it to an appendix
   • combine it with another section
   • rewrite it completely
   • leave it as it is
7. Methods
   • shorten it
   • add a chart
   • move it to an appendix
   • combine it with another section
   • rewrite it completely
   • leave it as it is
8. Survey results
   • shorten it
   • add a chart
   • move it to an appendix
   • combine it with another section
   • rewrite it completely
   • leave it as it is
9. Questionnaire
   • shorten it
   • add a chart
   • move it to an appendix
   • combine it with another section
   • rewrite it completely
   • leave it as it is
10. Recommendations
    • shorten it
    • add a chart
    • move it to an appendix
    • combine it with another section
    • rewrite it completely
    • leave it as it is

Part 4

Questions 31-40. Complete the notes below. Write ONE WORD ONLY for each answer. HOW MOTHS ESCAPE BATS

Phần nghe phát trong phòng thi.

1. Hearing: many moths have ears on the sides of the ____.
2. If a bat's calls are faint, the moth flies ____ from the sound.
3. If a bat is very close, the moth drops or makes a sudden ____.
4. Sound: the clicks of some tiger moths can ____ the bat's sonar.
5. In other species, the clicks warn that the moth tastes ____.
6. Physical: long tails on the hind wings act as a ____.
7. Wing scales absorb sound, like panels used in recording ____.
8. Research: movements are filmed with high-speed ____ using infrared light.
9. Bats were trained to hunt moths in a large flight ____.
10. Application: the findings may help companies build quieter ____.

Reading (60 phút)

Passage 1

Read the passage and answer Questions 1-13. Questions 1-7: Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage? Choose TRUE if the statement agrees with the information, FALSE if the statement contradicts the information, NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this. Questions 8-13: Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

BEES ABOVE THE CITY

For most of the twentieth century, keeping bees was regarded as a country pursuit, practised by farmers and enthusiasts with orchards and open fields. The idea of producing honey in the middle of a busy city would have struck most people as absurd. Over the past twenty years, however, hives have appeared on the roofs of hotels, office towers, schools and railway stations in cities across the world. In one large European capital, the number of registered urban hives is reported to have grown more than sixfold in a single decade, and similar growth has been recorded in North America and East Asia.

Several factors explain this trend. The first is public concern about the decline of pollinating insects, which became front-page news in the early 2000s when beekeepers in several countries reported losing a large proportion of their colonies over the winter. Many city dwellers wanted to do something practical to help, and keeping a hive seemed a direct way to contribute. A second factor is commercial. Companies have discovered that a rooftop hive is an attractive story to tell customers and employees, and a number of hotels now serve honey from their own roofs at breakfast. Some firms pay specialist beekeeping services to install and manage hives for them, so that their staff never need to handle the bees themselves.

Surprisingly, cities can be good places for honeybees. Urban areas are often warmer than the surrounding countryside, which allows colonies to start foraging earlier in spring. Parks, private gardens, street trees and railway embankments together offer a wide variety of flowers that bloom at different times of the year. In contrast, much modern farmland is planted with a single crop, which provides a large amount of food for a few weeks and then very little for the rest of the season. Pesticide use is also generally lower in towns than on intensively farmed land. For these reasons, some studies have found that city hives produce as much honey as rural ones, or even more.

The honey itself often surprises those who taste it. Because urban bees visit so many different plants, city honey tends to have a complex flavour that changes from month to month. Tests have generally found that the amount of pollution in urban honey is very low, as the bees' bodies and the wax of the comb appear to filter out most contaminants before the honey is stored. Nonetheless, beekeepers are advised not to place hives directly beside major roads.

Not everyone, however, welcomes the boom. A growing number of ecologists argue that urban beekeeping may be harming the very insects it is meant to protect. Their concern is that the honeybee is only one of many pollinators. In the United Kingdom alone there are over 250 species of wild bee, most of which live alone rather than in colonies and nest in the ground or in hollow plant stems. These wild bees, along with hoverflies and butterflies, depend on the same flowers as honeybees. A single honeybee colony may contain 50,000 workers in summer, and when many hives are placed in a small area, they can collect so much nectar and pollen that little is left for other species.

A study carried out in one European city found that, as the number of hives increased over a five-year period, the number of wild bees visiting flowers in nearby parks fell. The researchers were careful to point out that this did not prove the hives were responsible, but they recommended that city authorities set limits on how many hives could be kept in each district. Another concern is disease. Honeybees can carry viruses that pass to wild bees when they feed on the same flowers, and a high density of hives makes this more likely.

As a result, attitudes are shifting. Some conservation groups that once encouraged people to keep bees now advise them to plant flowers instead. Their argument is simple: the shortage that most pollinators face is not a shortage of honeybees but a shortage of food and nesting places. A balcony planted with lavender, thyme and other flowering herbs, or a small patch of lawn left uncut, can support far more species than a hive. Several cities have now created pollinator corridors, chains of planted roundabouts, roofs and road verges that allow insects to move from one green area to another.

Beekeepers' associations have responded by placing greater emphasis on training. Many now require new members to complete a course before they acquire their first colony, and they encourage existing keepers to plant for wild bees as well as for their own. Rooftop beekeeping is unlikely to disappear, but its supporters increasingly accept that a hive on every roof is not the answer. The future of city bees, it seems, depends less on how many hives we keep than on how many flowers we grow.

1. For much of the twentieth century, producing honey in cities would have seemed unrealistic to most people.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
2. Some businesses with rooftop hives do not use their own employees to look after the bees.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
3. Bees in cities start collecting food later in the year than bees in the countryside.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
4. Honey produced in cities usually sells for a higher price than rural honey.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
5. Most species of wild bee in the United Kingdom live in large colonies.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
6. The study in a European city showed that the hives were the cause of the fall in wild bees.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
7. Viruses carried by honeybees have killed large numbers of butterflies.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
8. Public concern grew after beekeepers reported losing many colonies over the ____.
9. Unlike towns, much farmland is planted with a ____, which provides food for only a few weeks.
10. Most contaminants are filtered out by the bees' bodies and the ____ of the comb.
11. Beekeepers are advised not to put hives directly beside ____.
12. Some conservation groups now tell people to ____ instead of keeping bees.
13. Chains of planted areas known as ____ help insects move between green spaces.

Passage 2

Read the passage and answer Questions 14-26. Questions 14-18: The passage has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B-F from the list of headings. Questions 19-22: Which paragraph contains the following information? Choose the correct letter, A-F. Questions 23-26: Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

LISTENING TO THE REEF

A. Anyone who has put their head underwater near a healthy coral reef knows that it is far from silent. Snapping shrimps produce a constant crackle, like fat frying in a pan; fish grunt, croak and purr; and sea urchins scrape at the rock as they feed. For most of the history of marine science, this noise was treated as little more than background. Over the past two decades, however, a growing number of researchers have come to see the sound of a reef as a valuable source of information, and even as a tool that might help damaged reefs to recover.

B. The study of natural soundscapes, known as ecoacoustics, began on land, where scientists recorded forests and grasslands in order to estimate how many species were present. Applying the same methods underwater proved difficult at first. Early hydrophones, the microphones used underwater, were expensive and bulky, and their batteries lasted only a few hours. The situation changed when cheap, waterproof recorders became widely available. Modern devices, some no larger than a drinks can, can be fixed to the seabed and left to record for months at a time, collecting thousands of hours of sound from places that divers are able to visit only occasionally.

C. The first important finding was that healthy and damaged reefs sound very different. A reef that has been hit by bleaching, which happens when high water temperatures cause corals to lose the tiny algae living inside them, quickly loses many of the fish and invertebrates that depend on it. Recordings made before and after bleaching events showed that the soundscape became quieter and less varied, with entire categories of sound disappearing. The evening chorus of fish calls, which on a healthy reef can last for several hours after sunset, was often reduced to a few scattered grunts, and the crackle of shrimps grew noticeably weaker. One researcher compared a damaged reef to a city after a power cut: the buildings are still standing, but the life that filled them has gone.

D. This contrast suggested a new way of monitoring reefs. Traditional surveys rely on teams of divers who swim along a fixed line and count every fish and coral they see. These surveys are accurate, but they are slow and costly, and they can only be carried out in calm weather and in daylight. Acoustic recorders, by contrast, work around the clock and in all conditions. The difficulty lies in making sense of the enormous quantity of data they produce. One research group recently trained a computer program on recordings that had already been labelled by human experts as coming from either healthy or degraded sites. The program was then able to classify new recordings correctly more than 90 per cent of the time, in a fraction of the time a person would need to listen to them.

E. The most striking research, though, concerns not monitoring but restoration. Many reef fish spend the first weeks of their lives drifting in the open ocean as larvae. When they are ready to settle, they must find a reef, and experiments have shown that sound is one of the main signals they follow. In a field trial in the Indo-Pacific, a team placed underwater loudspeakers on patches of dead coral and played recordings of healthy reefs. Over a period of six weeks, the patches with loudspeakers attracted roughly twice as many young fish as silent patches, and the number of species was around 50 per cent higher. Because some of these fish graze on the seaweed that can smother young corals, the researchers argued that this process, which they called acoustic enrichment, could give a damaged reef a better chance of recovering.

F. Not all scientists share this optimism. Some point out that attracting fish to a dead reef could be counterproductive if there is not enough food or shelter for them to survive; the loudspeakers could, in effect, be leading young fish into a trap. Others note that the trials have so far been small and short, and that nobody yet knows whether the effect lasts once the loudspeakers are removed. There is also the problem of human noise. Shipping, coastal construction and motorboats now fill many coastal waters with sound, which can drown out the natural signals that larvae rely on. Several researchers argue that reducing this noise, for example by setting speed limits for boats near sensitive reefs, would do more good than adding artificial sound. Most agree, however, that sound alone cannot save reefs from the main threat they face, which is rising ocean temperatures. At best, acoustic methods may buy time for reefs while that larger problem is tackled.

1. Paragraph B
   • Using sound to bring young fish back
   • Doubts about an artificial solution
   • Why some reef animals are louder than others
   • The silence that follows damage
   • How new equipment made long-term recording possible
   • Teaching machines to recognise reef health
2. Paragraph C
   • Using sound to bring young fish back
   • Doubts about an artificial solution
   • Why some reef animals are louder than others
   • The silence that follows damage
   • How new equipment made long-term recording possible
   • Teaching machines to recognise reef health
3. Paragraph D
   • Using sound to bring young fish back
   • Doubts about an artificial solution
   • Why some reef animals are louder than others
   • The silence that follows damage
   • How new equipment made long-term recording possible
   • Teaching machines to recognise reef health
4. Paragraph E
   • Using sound to bring young fish back
   • Doubts about an artificial solution
   • Why some reef animals are louder than others
   • The silence that follows damage
   • How new equipment made long-term recording possible
   • Teaching machines to recognise reef health
5. Paragraph F
   • Using sound to bring young fish back
   • Doubts about an artificial solution
   • Why some reef animals are louder than others
   • The silence that follows damage
   • How new equipment made long-term recording possible
   • Teaching machines to recognise reef health
6. a comparison between a damaged reef and an urban setting
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
7. a reference to a method that was first used to study environments on land
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
8. a mention of the conditions that limit when divers can carry out surveys
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
9. examples of creatures that produce the sounds heard on a reef
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
10. In a field trial, loudspeakers playing recordings of healthy reefs were placed on patches of dead ____.
11. After six weeks these patches had about twice as many young fish, and around 50 per cent more ____.
12. Some of the fish feed on ____, which can smother young corals.
13. Critics warn that, without enough food or shelter, the loudspeakers could lead young fish into a ____.

Passage 3

Read the passage and answer Questions 27-40. Questions 27-31: Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Questions 32-36: Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer? Choose YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer, NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer, NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this. Questions 37-40: Match each statement with the correct person, A-D.

CAN MACHINES SAVE ENDANGERED LANGUAGES?

Of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists estimate that around 40 per cent are endangered, meaning that they are no longer being learned by children, or are spoken only by a small and ageing population. When the last fluent speaker of such a language dies, an entire way of describing the world disappears too: its vocabulary for local plants and animals, its stories and songs, and its particular way of organising grammar and thought. For decades, the main response from linguists was documentation: recording speakers, transcribing their words and producing dictionaries and grammars before it was too late. In recent years, a new and much debated question has emerged. Can the artificial intelligence that now powers translation apps and voice assistants help to keep these languages alive?

The technology behind modern machine translation learns by analysing very large collections of text. Systems for major languages such as English, Spanish or Chinese are trained on billions of sentences drawn from books, websites and official documents. Endangered languages, almost by definition, lack such resources. Many have never had a standard written form, and the total amount of recorded material may amount to a few hundred hours of audio and a few thousand pages of text. According to the computer scientist Lars Henriksen, this is less of an obstacle than it once was. "Systems can now transfer what they have learned from large languages to small ones," he explains. "A model that has seen a hundred related languages needs far less data to make a reasonable attempt at the hundred and first." Henriksen's team has built speech-recognition tools for several languages with fewer than a thousand speakers, which allow hours of old recordings to be transcribed in days rather than years.

For linguists working in documentation, this is a significant change. The linguist Amara Okafor estimates that, before automatic transcription, it took an experienced researcher around forty hours to transcribe and translate a single hour of recorded speech. "Archives all over the world are full of recordings that nobody has had time to process," she says. "Some were made seventy years ago, and the communities they came from have never heard them." Okafor sees transcription tools as a way of returning this material to the people it belongs to. She is, however, cautious about going further. Automatic translation of endangered languages, in her view, remains unreliable, and errors in a language with few speakers are much harder to detect and correct than errors in English.

Others are more concerned about who controls the technology. Mere Tawhiri, who teaches an indigenous language in a community school, points out that recordings of elders often contain knowledge that the community regards as private or sacred. "When a technology company collects our language to train its systems, who owns the result?" she asks. "We have already had our land taken. We do not want our words taken too." Some communities have responded by drawing up their own data agreements, which allow outside researchers to use recordings only for agreed purposes and require that any tools built from them are made available free of charge to speakers. Tawhiri believes that such agreements should become standard practice rather than the exception.

A further question is whether technology addresses the real reasons that languages decline. Historically, languages have usually disappeared not because people forgot them but because speakers were pressured, sometimes by law, to abandon them in favour of a dominant language, or because parents believed that their children would have better opportunities if they spoke the majority language at home. The sociolinguist Sofia Paredes argues that "no app can replace a grandmother speaking to a child". For Paredes, the evidence from successful revival movements is clear: what matters most is that the language is used in daily life, in families, schools and local media. She does not reject technology entirely. Children who spend hours on their phones, she notes, may be more likely to see their heritage language as modern and relevant if it appears in games, keyboards and messaging apps. But she warns that a well-funded digital project can create the impression that a language has been "saved" when the number of people actually speaking it continues to fall.

There are encouraging examples. In one region of northern Europe, a language that had fewer than 500 fluent speakers in the 1990s now has several thousand, following the introduction of immersion nurseries in which young children spend the whole day hearing and speaking it. Technology played a supporting role: a spell-checker, a predictive keyboard and an online dictionary made it easier for young parents, many of whom were learning the language themselves, to write it with confidence. Yet the people involved are clear that the nurseries came first and the digital tools came later.

The most likely answer to the question, then, is a qualified one. Machines cannot save a language on their own, and when they are developed without the consent of speakers they may do more harm than good. Used carefully, however, and placed in the hands of the communities themselves, they can lighten the workload of documentation, reconnect people with recordings of their ancestors, and help a language take its place in the digital world where young people increasingly live.

1. According to the first paragraph, the traditional response of linguists to language loss has been to
   • teach endangered languages in schools
   • record and describe languages before they disappear
   • develop software to translate them
   • persuade governments to give them legal status
2. What does Lars Henriksen say about languages with few resources?
   • They need as much data as major languages.
   • They are unsuitable for speech recognition.
   • Systems can apply knowledge gained from other languages to them.
   • They must be given a standard written form first.
3. The figure of forty hours mentioned by Amara Okafor refers to
   • the time once needed to process one hour of recorded speech
   • the length of recordings made seventy years ago
   • the time needed to train a speech-recognition tool
   • the amount of audio available for most endangered languages
4. What is Okafor's opinion of automatic translation for endangered languages?
   • It will soon be as good as systems for English.
   • It is more useful than automatic transcription.
   • Its mistakes are easy for speakers to notice.
   • It cannot yet be relied upon.
5. The example from northern Europe shows that
   • digital tools were what started the revival.
   • young parents were unwilling to use technology.
   • technology supported a revival based on early immersion.
   • the language had no written form before the 1990s.
6. When a language dies, knowledge about the local natural world is lost.
   • YES
   • NO
   • NOT GIVEN
7. Most endangered languages have a large amount of written material.
   • YES
   • NO
   • NOT GIVEN
8. In the past, languages usually disappeared simply because people forgot them.
   • YES
   • NO
   • NOT GIVEN
9. Technology companies have paid communities large sums of money for language recordings.
   • YES
   • NO
   • NOT GIVEN
10. Language technology built without the agreement of speakers can be harmful.
    • YES
    • NO
    • NOT GIVEN
11. Communities should control how recordings of their language are used.
    • Lars Henriksen
    • Amara Okafor
    • Mere Tawhiri
    • Sofia Paredes
12. Old recordings could be returned to the communities where they were made.
    • Lars Henriksen
    • Amara Okafor
    • Mere Tawhiri
    • Sofia Paredes
13. A digital project may hide the fact that a language is still declining.
    • Lars Henriksen
    • Amara Okafor
    • Mere Tawhiri
    • Sofia Paredes
14. Recent advances mean that a lack of data is less of a problem than before.
    • Lars Henriksen
    • Amara Okafor
    • Mere Tawhiri
    • Sofia Paredes

Writing (60 phút)

Task 1

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

1. The chart below shows the percentage of adults in the city of Northbridge who used four different ways of travelling to work in 2000, 2010 and 2020. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

   Tối thiểu 150 từ.

Task 2

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task. Write at least 250 words.

1. Some people believe that the main purpose of a university is to give students practical skills that employers need. Others think that universities should mainly offer knowledge for its own sake, whether or not it leads to a job. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

   Tối thiểu 250 từ.