Đề thi thử IELTS Academic số 6: IELTS Academic Mock Test 6

Listening (30 phút)

Part 1

Questions 1-10. Complete the form below. Write ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer. BRIGHTWAY REMOVALS: MOVING ENQUIRY

Phần nghe phát trong phòng thi.

1. Customer name: Philippa ____
2. Current address: 27 ____ Street, Oldbury
3. Moving date: Saturday ____ March
4. Number of bedrooms in current home: ____
5. New home: a flat on the ____ floor
6. Large item that needs special care: an old ____
7. Brightway will pack the ____ only
8. Storage needed for ____ weeks
9. Price of the move, including the extra charge: £____
10. Surveyor's visit: Thursday at ____

Part 2

Questions 11-15: Choose the correct letter, A, B or C. Questions 16-20: Label the plan of Thornbury Windmill. Choose the correct letter, A-F, for each place.

Phần nghe phát trong phòng thi.

1. Why did the mill stop working in 1951?
   • A storm had destroyed some of the sails.
   • The miller retired and had no one to replace him.
   • Larger mills had taken away all its customers.
2. What does the speaker say about the restoration?
   • Most of the money came from a national heritage grant.
   • Volunteers did most of the skilled work on the machinery.
   • It took longer than planned because there were no drawings.
3. What can visitors do at the mill today?
   • buy flour that has been ground at the mill
   • watch the sails turn on any day of the week
   • climb to the floor where the main gears are
4. What is new at the mill this year?
   • baking workshops in the bakehouse
   • guided walks around the site at night
   • a trail with a quiz for families
5. What are visitors who climb the mill asked to do?
   • keep their dogs outside
   • wear shoes that are flat
   • avoid touching the stones
6. Shop
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
7. Tea room
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
8. Granary exhibition
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
9. Picnic area
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
10. Miller's cottage
    • A
    • B
    • C
    • D
    • E
    • F

Part 3

Questions 21-25: Choose the correct letter, A, B or C. Questions 26-30: What comment does the tutor make about each section of the students' research proposal? Choose FIVE answers from the list, A-F.

Phần nghe phát trong phòng thi.

1. Why did the students choose their topic?
   • They take notes in very different ways.
   • It was on the tutor's list of topics.
   • They wanted to show a study was wrong.
2. What was the most striking result of the pilot study?
   • The recorded lecture was too long for the volunteers.
   • The handwriting group did worse on the factual questions.
   • The laptop group typed the lecture almost word for word.
3. What concern does the tutor have about the participants?
   • There are not enough of them overall.
   • They are all studying the same subject.
   • Some of them are only in their first year.
4. When will the students test the participants' memory?
   • only one week after the lecture
   • immediately after the lecture
   • straight after and a week later
5. What do the students still disagree about?
   • whether the test should be done online or on paper
   • whether participants should be paid for taking part
   • whether participants may read their notes before the test
6. Introduction
   • It should be much shorter.
   • It needs to refer to more studies.
   • It should be moved to an appendix.
   • It is the best part of the proposal.
   • It would be clearer with a diagram.
   • It should be combined with another section.
7. Background reading
   • It should be much shorter.
   • It needs to refer to more studies.
   • It should be moved to an appendix.
   • It is the best part of the proposal.
   • It would be clearer with a diagram.
   • It should be combined with another section.
8. Procedure
   • It should be much shorter.
   • It needs to refer to more studies.
   • It should be moved to an appendix.
   • It is the best part of the proposal.
   • It would be clearer with a diagram.
   • It should be combined with another section.
9. Consent form
   • It should be much shorter.
   • It needs to refer to more studies.
   • It should be moved to an appendix.
   • It is the best part of the proposal.
   • It would be clearer with a diagram.
   • It should be combined with another section.
10. Timeline
    • It should be much shorter.
    • It needs to refer to more studies.
    • It should be moved to an appendix.
    • It is the best part of the proposal.
    • It would be clearer with a diagram.
    • It should be combined with another section.

Part 4

Questions 31-40. Complete the notes below. Write ONE WORD ONLY for each answer. ICE CORES: A RECORD OF PAST CLIMATES

Phần nghe phát trong phòng thi.

1. Snow that does not melt is pressed into ice, and each year forms a separate ____.
2. Near the surface, years can be counted like the rings of a ____.
3. Tiny ____ trapped between ice crystals hold samples of ancient air.
4. Carbon dioxide levels rose and fell together with ____.
5. Thin layers of ash and acid are used to date volcanic ____.
6. Cold periods left more ____ in the ice, showing a drier, windier climate.
7. Pollution from Roman mining raised the level of ____ in Greenland ice.
8. Cores are cut into sections about one ____ long.
9. Ice from middle depths may ____ if it is handled too soon.
10. Teams are now looking for ice more than one ____ years old.

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 notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. THE POTATO IN EUROPE

THE POTATO'S LONG JOURNEY

Few foods are as ordinary as the potato. It is boiled, fried, mashed and baked on every continent, and world production now runs to several hundred million tonnes a year. Yet for most of human history the potato was unknown outside one mountainous region of South America, and its arrival in the rest of the world was slow, uncertain and, at times, disastrous.

The potato was first domesticated in the Andes, in the area around Lake Titicaca on the border of modern Peru and Bolivia, at least 7,000 years ago. Wild potatoes are small and often bitter, and they contain natural toxins that protect them from insects. Over thousands of years, Andean farmers selected plants with larger and less bitter tubers, and they developed an astonishing number of varieties suited to different heights, soils and climates. Several thousand traditional varieties are still grown in the region today, in colours ranging from cream and yellow to deep purple.

High in the mountains, where frost is common, Andean people also found a way of preserving potatoes for years. Potatoes were left outside to freeze during the cold nights and then thawed in the daytime sun. Families walked on them with bare feet to press out the water, and after several days of repeated freezing and drying, the potatoes became light, hard and almost weightless. This product, called chuño, could be stored for long periods, which made it a valuable reserve in years of poor harvests and a convenient food for soldiers and travellers.

Spanish explorers encountered the potato in the 1530s, and by the second half of the sixteenth century it had crossed the Atlantic; records show potatoes being shipped from the Canary Islands to Europe in the 1560s. At first, however, Europeans were cautious. The potato belongs to the same plant family as deadly nightshade, a poisonous plant well known in Europe, and its leaves and green parts are in fact toxic. Some people believed it caused illness, and in many regions it was grown mainly in botanical gardens as a curiosity or fed to farm animals. It was also unfamiliar in another way: unlike wheat or barley, which were grown from seed, the potato was usually planted from pieces of the tuber itself.

Attitudes began to change in the eighteenth century, often because of war and hunger. Grain fields could be burned or trampled by armies, and stored grain could be seized, but potatoes stayed safely underground until they were needed. Frederick the Great of Prussia ordered his farmers to grow them, and in France the pharmacist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, who had survived on potatoes as a prisoner of war, campaigned to persuade his countrymen that they were healthy. A popular story says that he placed armed guards around a potato field near Paris during the day, so that local people would believe the crop was valuable and come at night to steal it. Whether or not this is true, by the end of the century the potato was a common sight in European fields.

The effects were significant. An acre planted with potatoes can feed far more people than an acre of grain, and the potato provides vitamin C as well as energy. Economic historians have argued that the spread of the crop helped to support the rapid growth of population in Europe between 1700 and 1900; one study estimated that it may account for around a quarter of that growth. Cheap potatoes also helped to feed the workers who moved into the expanding industrial cities.

But dependence brought danger. In Ireland, a large part of the rural population came to rely on potatoes for most of their food, and most farmers grew a single high-yielding variety. In 1845 a disease known as late blight, caused by an organism carried from the Americas, reached Europe. Because the Irish plants were so similar to one another, almost none could resist it, and whole crops rotted in the ground. Over the following years about a million people died, and at least as many emigrated. The famine had political causes as well as natural ones, but it remains the clearest warning of what can happen when a population relies on one crop with little genetic variety.

That lesson is one reason why the wild and traditional potatoes of the Andes are now so carefully protected. The International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, keeps thousands of samples in its gene bank, some as seeds and others as living plants grown in test tubes. Plant breeders return to this collection when they need resistance to a new disease or tolerance of heat and drought. As the climate changes, the variety that Andean farmers created over thousands of years may prove to be the potato's most valuable feature.

1. World potato production has doubled over the past fifty years.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
2. Wild potatoes are generally smaller than those grown by Andean farmers.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
3. The method used to make chuño depended on cold night temperatures.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
4. Chuño was eaten only in years when the harvest failed.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
5. Every part of the potato plant is safe for people to eat.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
6. Frederick the Great grew potatoes in the gardens of his own palace.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
7. Most Irish farmers grew the same variety of potato before 1845.
   • TRUE
   • FALSE
   • NOT GIVEN
8. In wartime, potatoes were safer than grain because they remained ____ until needed.
9. Cheap potatoes fed workers who moved to growing industrial ____.
10. In 1845 a disease called late ____ reached Europe.
11. Irish crops failed because the plants were too ____ to one another.
12. The gene bank in Lima keeps some samples as seeds and some as plants grown in test ____.
13. Breeders use the collection to find resistance to disease or tolerance of heat and ____.

Passage 2

Read the passage and answer Questions 14-26. Questions 14-18: The passage has six paragraphs, A-F. Which paragraph contains the following information? Choose the correct letter, A-F. You may choose any letter more than once. Questions 19-22: Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Questions 23-26: Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

THE BRAINLESS PROBLEM-SOLVER

A. On the floor of a damp forest, among fallen leaves and rotting logs, lives an organism that has no brain, no nerves and, for much of its life, no fixed shape. Physarum polycephalum, sometimes called the many-headed slime mould, looks like a spreading patch of bright yellow jelly. It feeds on bacteria and the spores of fungi, and it moves very slowly across the ground in search of food. For a long time it interested only a handful of biologists. Over the past twenty-five years, however, it has attracted the attention of physicists, engineers and computer scientists, who have found that this simple creature can solve problems that once seemed to require intelligence.

B. Despite its name, the slime mould is not a mould, and it is not a fungus either. Early naturalists grouped it with the fungi because it produces spores, but it is now placed in a separate group of single-celled organisms. What makes Physarum unusual is that its whole body is one enormous cell. As it grows, its nucleus divides again and again, but the cell itself does not, so a single organism can contain millions of nuclei and spread over an area larger than a dinner plate. Its body is a network of branching tubes, through which a fluid flows back and forth in a regular rhythm, changing direction every minute or two. By making some tubes contract more strongly than others, the organism directs its flow, and therefore its growth, towards food.

C. The experiment that made Physarum famous was published in 2000 by a team in Japan led by Toshiyuki Nakagaki. The researchers allowed the slime mould to fill a small plastic maze, and then placed pieces of food, oat flakes, at the entrance and the exit. Within hours, the organism had pulled back from the dead ends and the longer paths, leaving a single thick tube that connected the two food sources along the shortest route. The result was surprising because nothing in the slime mould knows the shape of the maze. Tubes that carry a lot of fluid grow thicker, while tubes that carry little shrink and disappear, so the shortest connection simply wins.

D. Ten years later, members of the same group tried something more ambitious. They arranged oat flakes on a flat dish in the positions of the cities around Tokyo, and let the slime mould spread out from the point that represented the capital. To imitate mountains and coastline, where railway lines cannot easily be built, they shone light on certain areas, because Physarum avoids bright light. The network of tubes that developed was remarkably similar to the real railway system of the region. When the researchers measured it, they found that it was almost as efficient, and in some respects better able to survive the loss of a single link. Engineers who design transport and communication networks took notice, and computer programs that copy the slime mould's simple rules have since been used to plan networks of their own.

E. Other studies suggest that the organism can, in a simple sense, remember. As Physarum moves across a surface, it leaves behind a thin film of slime, and researchers in Australia showed in 2012 that it avoids areas it has already covered, using the trail as a kind of external memory that stops it searching the same place twice. In France, a team asked whether it could also learn. They placed food on the far side of a bridge coated with substances that slime moulds dislike, such as quinine or caffeine, but which do them no harm. At first the organisms hesitated for hours before crossing. After a few days, they crossed almost as quickly as organisms offered a bridge with nothing on it. This kind of learning, known as habituation, had previously been described only in animals with nervous systems.

F. Not everyone is comfortable with calling a slime mould intelligent. Critics point out that every one of its achievements can be explained by a few physical rules: tubes thicken where the flow is strong, the cell avoids light and certain chemicals, and it grows towards food. Supporters reply that this is exactly the point. If complex and useful behaviour can emerge from simple rules without a brain, then intelligence may be less a single special ability than a family of problem-solving strategies, some of them shared by very different forms of life. For the public, at least, the creature has become a minor celebrity. When the Paris Zoological Park put one on display in 2019, it drew large crowds and a nickname, the blob, borrowed from an old science-fiction film.

1. the reason why the organism was once placed in the wrong biological group
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
2. a method used to represent places where building would be difficult
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
3. the organism's response to substances that are unpleasant but not harmful
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
4. a claim that all of the organism's achievements can be explained by a few simple rules
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
5. a description of the organism's habitat and diet
   • A
   • B
   • C
   • D
   • E
   • F
6. According to paragraph C, the slime mould found the shortest route through the maze because
   • it could sense the overall shape of the maze from the start.
   • the researchers placed extra food along the shortest path.
   • it was moving towards a source of light at the maze exit.
   • tubes carrying more fluid grew while the others disappeared.
7. What did the researchers find about the network in the Tokyo experiment?
   • It was considerably more efficient than the real railway.
   • It was better than the railway at coping with the loss of one link.
   • It grew most quickly towards the largest of the cities.
   • It matched the real railway exactly in every part of the region.
8. In paragraph E, the slime trail is said to help the organism to
   • avoid searching places that it has already visited.
   • find its way back to a food source it has left.
   • warn other slime moulds about dangers in the area.
   • protect itself from drying out on open surfaces.
9. What is the main point made by supporters in paragraph F?
   • Slime moulds are more intelligent than most animals.
   • Simple physical rules cannot explain what it does.
   • Intelligent behaviour may not depend on having a brain.
   • Researchers should stop studying how the cell moves.
10. The body of Physarum is a network of branching ____.
11. In the maze experiment, the food placed at the entrance and exit was ____.
12. The researchers shone ____ on some areas because the organism avoids it.
13. The kind of learning shown on the bridge is known as ____.

Passage 3

Read the passage and answer Questions 27-40. Questions 27-30: Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Questions 31-35: Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-F. One ending is not needed. Questions 36-40: 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.

WHEN A MEASURE BECOMES A TARGET

Modern organisations love numbers. Hospitals are judged by waiting times, schools by examination results, police forces by crime figures and call centres by the number of calls answered per hour. The appeal is obvious. Numbers seem objective, they can be compared across places and years, and they allow managers and governments to see at a glance whether things are getting better. Yet there is a growing body of evidence that, when numbers are used to reward or punish people, they often stop telling the truth. In my view, this is not an occasional side effect of measurement; it is built into the way targets work.

The idea is usually summed up as Goodhart's law, after the British economist Charles Goodhart, who observed in the 1970s that a statistical relationship tends to break down once it is used for control. A shorter version, popularised later by others, says that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. At around the same time, the American social scientist Donald Campbell made a similar point about social programmes: the more a single figure is used for making decisions, the more it will be subject to pressures that distort it. Neither man was opposed to measurement. Both were warning that a number is only useful as long as nobody has a strong reason to change it.

Examples are not hard to find. When hospitals in one health system were told that patients must be seen within four hours of arriving at the emergency department, there were reports of patients being kept waiting in ambulances outside, because the clock only started once they entered the building. When schools are ranked by the proportion of pupils who pass a particular examination, teachers may concentrate on pupils just below the pass mark, while those who are certain to pass, or certain to fail, receive less attention. None of this requires dishonesty in the ordinary sense. Most of the people involved are simply responding sensibly to the rules they have been given.

There is also a famous story, probably more legend than history, of a colonial government that offered a reward for every dead cobra in order to reduce the number of snakes in a city. People began breeding cobras to collect the money, and when the government discovered this and cancelled the scheme, the breeders released their now worthless snakes, leaving the city with more cobras than before. The tale has survived not because anyone can prove it but because it captures something real: a target can produce the exact opposite of what it was designed to achieve.

Defenders of targets argue that these are problems of design, not of measurement itself. If hospitals find ways round a waiting-time target, the answer is to measure more carefully; if schools neglect some pupils, the answer is to measure the progress of every pupil rather than the pass rate. There is some truth in this, and better measures are certainly possible. But I am not convinced that design can solve the problem completely. Every new measure creates new ways of meeting it without improving the thing that matters, and people under pressure are very good at finding them. Adding more and more measures also has a cost: staff spend time recording information instead of doing their jobs, and the overall picture becomes so complicated that it no longer helps anyone to decide.

Nor should we forget what targets do to the people who work under them. Doctors, teachers and police officers mostly choose their professions because they want to do good work. When their performance is reduced to a handful of numbers, many feel that their professional judgement is no longer trusted, and some of the most committed leave. It is difficult to put a figure on this loss, which is perhaps why it so rarely appears in discussions of performance management.

None of this means that organisations should stop counting. Numbers are extremely useful for noticing problems: a sudden rise in complaints or a fall in attendance is worth investigating. The mistake lies in tying rewards and punishments directly to a single figure. A better approach is to treat measurements as the start of a conversation rather than the end of one, to ask why a number has changed before deciding whether anyone deserves praise or blame, and to combine figures with the observations of people who understand the work. That is slower and less tidy than a league table. It is also far more likely to tell us what is really happening.

1. What is the writer's main claim in the first paragraph?
   • Organisations now depend on numbers less than in the past.
   • Numbers are useful only when compared across several years.
   • Using numbers as targets tends to make them less reliable.
   • Waiting times are the most misleading figure used by hospitals.
2. What does the writer say about Goodhart and Campbell?
   • Neither of them thought that measurement should be abandoned.
   • They worked together on a study of social programmes.
   • Both of them rejected the use of statistics in economics.
   • Campbell's version of the idea became more widely accepted.
3. The writer uses the examples of hospitals and schools to show that
   • most professionals cheat deliberately when set targets.
   • exam results are more reliable than waiting times.
   • health targets cause more harm than school targets.
   • people can distort figures without being dishonest.
4. Why does the writer tell the story about cobras?
   • to prove that colonial governments misused data
   • to show how a target can defeat its own purpose
   • to suggest that rewards work better than penalties
   • to give an example of a well-designed target
5. Defenders of targets believe that the problems they cause
   • should lead to questions before anyone is praised or blamed.
   • can be removed by measuring more carefully.
   • feel that their professional judgement is not trusted.
   • is usually the result of dishonest record-keeping.
   • creates new ways of being met without real improvement.
   • becomes too complicated to help anyone decide.
6. According to the writer, every new measure
   • should lead to questions before anyone is praised or blamed.
   • can be removed by measuring more carefully.
   • feel that their professional judgement is not trusted.
   • is usually the result of dishonest record-keeping.
   • creates new ways of being met without real improvement.
   • becomes too complicated to help anyone decide.
7. When more and more measures are added, the overall picture
   • should lead to questions before anyone is praised or blamed.
   • can be removed by measuring more carefully.
   • feel that their professional judgement is not trusted.
   • is usually the result of dishonest record-keeping.
   • creates new ways of being met without real improvement.
   • becomes too complicated to help anyone decide.
8. Many professionals whose work is judged by a few numbers
   • should lead to questions before anyone is praised or blamed.
   • can be removed by measuring more carefully.
   • feel that their professional judgement is not trusted.
   • is usually the result of dishonest record-keeping.
   • creates new ways of being met without real improvement.
   • becomes too complicated to help anyone decide.
9. In the writer's view, a change in a number
   • should lead to questions before anyone is praised or blamed.
   • can be removed by measuring more carefully.
   • feel that their professional judgement is not trusted.
   • is usually the result of dishonest record-keeping.
   • creates new ways of being met without real improvement.
   • becomes too complicated to help anyone decide.
10. Goodhart's original statement was easier to understand than the shorter version.
    • YES
    • NO
    • NOT GIVEN
11. The story about the cobras is unlikely to be historically accurate.
    • YES
    • NO
    • NOT GIVEN
12. It is possible to develop better measures than some of those used now.
    • YES
    • NO
    • NOT GIVEN
13. Careful design can remove all of the problems caused by targets.
    • YES
    • NO
    • NOT GIVEN
14. League tables give a more accurate picture than the approach the writer recommends.
    • YES
    • NO
    • NOT GIVEN

Writing (60 phút)

Task 1

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

1. The table below shows the stages in the production of smoked rubber sheets from the latex of rubber trees. 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 smartphones should be banned completely in secondary schools, not only during lessons but also during breaks and lunchtimes. To what extent do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

   Tối thiểu 250 từ.