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

Cambridge IELTS Academic 17
TEST 2 
Questions 1 – 6
Complete the notes below.
Choose
 ONE WORD ONLY
 from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 
1-6
 on your answer sheet.
The London underground railway
The problem
●
The 
1
.…………………… of London increased rapidly between 1800 and 1850
●
The streets were full of horse-drawn vehicles
The proposed solution
●
Charles Pearson, a solicitor, suggested building an underground railway
●
Building the railway would make it possible to move people to better housing 
in the 
2
.……………………
●
A number of 
3
.…………………… agreed with Pearson’s idea
●
The company initially had problems getting the 
4
.…………………… needed 
for the project
●
Negative articles about the project appeared in the 
5
.……………………
The construction
●
The chosen route did not require many buildings to be pulled down
●
The ‘cut and cover’ method was used to construct the tunnels
●
With the completion of the brick arch, the tunnel was covered with 
6
...…………………

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IDENTIFYING INFORMATION
TEST 19 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 Bats to the 
rescue]
How Madagascar’s bats are helping to save the rainforest
There are few places in the world where relations between agriculture and 
conservation are more strained. Madagascar’s forests are being converted to 
agricultural land at a rate of one percent every year. Much of this destruction 
is fuelled by the cultivation of the country’s main staple crop: rice. And a key 
reason for this destruction is that insect pests are destroying vast quantities of 
what is grown by local subsistence farmers, leading them to clear forest to create 
new paddy fields. The result is devastating habitat and biodiversity loss on the 
island, but not all species are suffering. In fact, some of the island’s insectivorous 
bats are currently thriving and this has important implications for farmers and 
conservationists alike.
Enter University of Cambridge zoologist Ricardo Rocha. He’s passionate 
about conservation, and bats. More specifically, he’s interested in how bats are 
responding to human activity and deforestation in particular. Rocha’s new study 
shows that several species of bats are giving Madagascar’s rice farmers a vital 
pest control service by feasting on plagues of insects. And this, he believes, can 
ease the financial pressure on farmers to turn forest into fields.
Bats comprise roughly one-fifth of all mammal species in Madagascar and thirty-six 
recorded bat species are native to the island, making it one of the most important 
regions for conservation of this animal group anywhere in the world.
Co-leading an international team of scientists, Rocha found that several species 
of indigenous bats are taking advantage of habitat modification to hunt insects 
swarming above the country’s rice fields. They include the Malagasy mouse-
eared bat, Major’s long-fingered bat, the Malagasy white-bellied free-tailed bat 
and Peters’ wrinkle-lipped bat.
‘These winner species are providing a valuable free service to Madagascar 
as biological pest suppressors,’ says Rocha. ‘We found that six species of bat 
are preying on rice pests, including the paddy swarming caterpillar and grass 
webworm. The damage which these insects cause puts the island’s farmers under 
huge financial pressure and that encourages deforestation.’
The study, now published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 
set out to investigate the feeding activity of insectivorous bats in the farmland 
bordering the Ranomafana National Park in the southeast of the country.

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