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IELTS READING COMPLETION PRACTICE TASKS

Practice Task 1
Careers with Kiwi Air Flight Attendants
Recruitment and Training Process

Recruitment
The position of Flight Attendant is one of prestige and immense responsibility. Recruitment is
conducted according to operational demands and there can be periods of up to 12 months where no
new intake is required. However, applications are always welcomed.

After you submit your initial application online, the Kiwi Air HR Services Team reviews the details you
have provided. Candidates whose details closely match the requirements of the position are then
contacted via email advising that their application has progressed to the next stage of the recruitment
process. Potential candidates are then asked to attend a Walk-In Day. This could occur several weeks
or months after the original application has been submitted depending on current needs.

The Walk-In Day consists of a brief presentation about the role and a short interview. Candidates who
are successful on the Walk-In Day are notified within 10 days and invited to attend an Assessment
Centre. Please note that candidates are required to pass a swimming test before attending the
Assessment Centre. At the Assessment Centre, candidates attend an interview as well as participating
in a number of assessments. Verbal references are then requested, and candidates attend a medical
check.

At times, there may not be a need to recruit for Flight Attendant positions. However, the company
continuously maintains a ‘recruitment pool’ of those who have completed the Assessment Centre stage.
These candidates are contacted when a need for Flight Attendants is established, and attend a full
interview before a decision is made on whether to extend an offer of employment.

Due to the volume of applications received, Kiwi Air is not able to offer verbal feedback to candidates
at any stage of the recruitment process. Unsuccessful candidates may reapply at any time after 12
months from the date at which their applications are declined.

Training
Upon being offered a role as a trainee Flight Attendant, a 5-week training course is undertaken at our
Inflight Services Training Centre in Auckland. This covers emergency procedures, customer care and
service delivery, and equipment knowledge. To successfully complete the course, high standards must
be attained and maintained in all subjects.

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Practice Task 2
Beetles
[Note: This is an extract from an Academic Reading passage on the subject of dung beetles. The text
preceding this extract gave some background facts about dung beetles, and went on to describe a
decision to introduce non-native varieties to Australia.]

Introducing dung1 beetles into a pasture is a simple process: approximately 1,500 beetles are released,
a handful at a time, into fresh cow pats2 in the cow pasture. The beetles immediately disappear
beneath the pats digging and tunnelling and, if they successfully adapt to their new environment, soon
become a permanent, self-sustaining part of the local ecology. In time they multiply and within three
or four years the benefits to the pasture are obvious.

Dung beetles work from the inside of the pat so they are sheltered from predators such as birds and
foxes. Most species burrow into the soil and bury dung in tunnels directly underneath the pats, which
are hollowed out from within. Some large species originating from France excavate tunnels to a depth
of approximately 30 cm below the dung pat. These beetles make sausage-shaped brood chambers along
the tunnels. The shallowest tunnels belong to a much smaller Spanish species that buries dung in
chambers that hang like fruit from the branches of a pear tree. South African beetles dig narrow
tunnels of approximately 20 cm below the surface of the pat. Some surface-dwelling beetles, including
a South African species, cut perfectly-shaped balls from the pat, which are rolled away and attached to
the bases of plants.

For maximum dung burial in spring, summer and autumn, farmers require a variety of species with
overlapping periods of activity. In the cooler environments of the state of Victoria, the large French
species (2.5 cms long), is matched with smaller (half this size), temperate-climate Spanish species. The
former are slow to recover from the winter cold and produce only one or two generations of offspring
from late spring until autumn. The latter, which multiply rapidly in early spring, produce two to five
generations annually. The South African ball-rolling species, being a sub-tropical beetle, prefers the
climate of northern and coastal New South Wales where it commonly works with the South African
tunneling species. In warmer climates, many species are active for longer periods of the year.

Glossary 1. dung: the droppings or excreta of animals 2. cow pats: droppings of cows

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Practice Task 3
Bee Behaviour (von Frisch)
[Note: This is an extract from a General Training Reading text on the subject of understanding bee
behaviour. The text preceding this extract described Karl von Frisch's experiments and his conclusions
about two bee dances.]

At first, von Frisch thought the bees were responding only to the scent of the food. But what did the
third dance mean? And if bees were responding only to the scent, how could they also ‘sniff down’ food
hundreds of metres away from the hive*, food which was sometimes downwind? On a hunch, he started
gradually moving the feeding dish further and further away and noticed as he did so that the dances of
the returning scout bees also started changing. If he placed the feeding dish over nine metres away,
the second type of dance, the sickle version, came into play. But once he moved it past 36 metres, the
scouts would then start dancing the third, quite different, waggle dance.

The measurement of the actual distance too, he concluded, was precise. For example, a feeding dish
300 metres away was indicated by 15 complete runs through the pattern in 30 seconds. When the dish
was moved to 60 metres away, the number dropped to eleven.

Von Frisch noted something further. When the scout bees came home to tell their sisters about the
food source, sometimes they would dance outside on the horizontal entrance platform of the hive, and
sometimes on the vertical wall inside. And, depending on where they danced, the straight portion of
the waggle dance would point in different directions. The outside dance was fairly easy to decode: the
straight portion of the dance pointed directly to the food source, so the bees would merely have to
decode the distance message and fly off in that direction to find their food.

But by studying the dance on the inner wall of the hive, von Frisch discovered a remarkable method
which the dancer used to tell her sisters the direction of the food in relation to the sun. When inside
the hive, the dancer cannot use the sun, so she uses gravity instead. The direction of the sun is
represented by the top of the hive wall. If she runs straight up, this means that the feeding place is in
the same direction as the sun. However, if, for example, the feeding place is 40º to the left of the sun,
then the dancer would run 40º to the left of the vertical line. This was to be the first of von Frisch’s
remarkable discoveries. Soon he would also discover a number of other remarkable facts about how
bees communicate and, in doing so, revolutionise the study of animal behaviour generally.

* Hive – a ‘house’ for bees; the place where they build a nest and live

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Practice Task 4
Plain English
[Note: This is an extract from a Part 3 text about the ‘Plain English’ movement, which promotes the
use of clear English.]

‘The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language’, David Crystal, 3rd Edition, © Cambridge University Press,
2010.

The instructions accompanying do-it-yourself products are regularly cited as a source of unnecessary
expense or frustration. Few companies seem to test their instructions by having them followed by a
first-time user. Often, essential information is omitted, steps in the construction process are taken for
granted, and some degree of special knowledge is assumed. This is especially worrying in any field
where failure to follow correct procedures can be dangerous.

Objections to material in plain English have come mainly from the legal profession. Lawyers point to
the risk of ambiguity inherent in the use of everyday language for legal or official documents, and draw
attention to the need for confidence in legal formulations, which can come only from using language
that has been tested in courts over the course of centuries. The campaigners point out that there has
been no sudden increase in litigation as a consequence of the increase in plain English materials.

Similarly, professionals in several different fields have defended their use of technical and complex
language as being the most precise means of expressing technical or complex ideas. This is undoubtedly
true: scientists, doctors, bankers and others need their jargon in order to communicate with each
other succinctly and unambiguously. But when it comes to addressing the non-specialist consumer, the
campaigners argue, different criteria must apply.

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