Thematic ielts reading practice tests toshkent «pir» nashriyoti – 2023 Cambridge English

40 
When the reviewer says the book ‘doesn’t quite hit the mark’, she is making the 
point that
A 
it overlooks the impact of events on ordinary people.
B 
it lacks an analysis of prevalent views on monarchy.
C 
it omits any references to the deceit practised by Charles II during his time in 
hiding.
D 
it fails to address whether Charles II’s experiences had a lasting influence on him.

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DIAGRAM LABEL COMPLETION
TEST 143 READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on 
Questions 1-6
 which are based on 
Reading Passage 1 below.
[Note: This is an extract from READING PASSAGE 1 about Roman tunnels]
The Romans, who once controlled areas of Europe, North Africa and Asia 
Minor, adopted the construction techniques of other civilizations to build 
tunnels in their territories
The Persians, who lived in present-day Iran, were one of the first civilizations to 
build tunnels that provided a reliable supply of water to human settlements in 
dry areas. In the early first millennium BCE, they introduced the qanat method of 
tunnel construction, which consisted of placing posts over a hill in a straight line, 
to ensure that the tunnel kept to its route, and then digging vertical shafts down 
into the ground at regular intervals. Underground, workers removed the earth from 
between the ends of the shafts, creating a tunnel. The excavated soil was taken 
up to the surface using the shafts, which also provided ventilation during the work. 
Once the tunnel was completed, it allowed water to flow from the top of a hillside 
down towards a canal, which supplied water for human use. Remarkably, some 
qanats built by the Persians 2,700 years ago are still in use today.
They later passed on their knowledge to the Romans, who also used the qanat 
method to construct water-supply tunnels for agriculture. Roma qanat tunnels were 
constructed with vertical shafts dug at intervals of between 30 and 60 meters. The 
shafts were equipped with handholds and footholds to help those climbing in and 
out of them and were covered with a wooden or stone lid. To ensure that the shafts 
were vertical, Romans hung a plumb line from a rod placed across the top of each 
shaft and made sure that the weight at the end of it hung in the center of the shaft. 
Plumb lines were also used to measure the depth of the shaft and to determine 
the slope of the tunnel. The 5.6-kilometer-long Claudius tunnel, built in 41 CE to 
drain the Fucine Lake in central Italy, had shafts that were up to 122 meters deep, 
took 11 years to build and involved approximately 30,000 workers.
By the 6th century BCE, a second method of tunnel construction appeared called 
the counter-excavation method, in which the tunnel was constructed from both 
ends. It was used to cut through high mountains when the qanat method was 
not a practical alternative. This method required greater planning and advanced 
knowledge of surveying, mathematics and geometry as both ends of a tunnel had 
to meet correctly at the center of the mountain. Adjustments to the direction of the 
tunnel also had to be made whenever builders encountered geological problems or 
when it deviated from its set path. They constantly checked the tunnel’s advancing 
direction, for example, by looking back at the light that penetrated through the 
tunnel mouth, and made corrections whenever necessary. Large deviations 
could happen, and they could result in one end of the tunnel not being usable. An 
inscription written on the side of a 428-meter tunnel, built by the Romans as part of 
the Saldae aqueduct system in modern-day Algeria, describes how the two teams 
of builders missed each other in the mountain and how the later construction of a 
lateral link between both corridors corrected the initial error.

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