Reading Practice

IELTS Practice 2
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1 – 13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 on the
following pages.
INNOVATIONS IN RECYCLING
Scientists are looking for new ways to recycle plastic in an endless loop, so it never becomes waste. Now,
revolutionary technology is advancing the movement.
A. PLASTIC WASTE IS one of the most urgent environmental issues of our time. Less than 10 percent
of the plastic we use is recycled, and there’s currently an estimated 100 million tons of plastic in oceans
around the world. But what would happen if we stopped thinking of plastic as waste, and instead as
a valuable renewable resource? Scientists around the world want to find out. The plastic “end-of-life
challenge” calls for new ways to recycle and reuse plastics endlessly in a closed loop system, so they
never become waste. Innovation on that scale would convert the current “make-take-dispose” linear
economy into a circular economy, where recycling plastic for eternity is possible.
B. One scientist has made a significant advancement. John Layman, head of material science at Procter
& Gamble and chief technologist and founding inventor of PureCycle Technologies, developed a
revolutionary process to remove color, odor, and contaminants from polypropylene plastic waste and
transform it into a “virgin-like” resin, which is the basis for plastic products. PureCycle’s technology
presents a major development in recycling capabilities, and focusing on polypropylene is especially
notable. It’s the second-most used plastic in the world, yet only 1 percent is currently recycled.
C. Layman’s colleague and former classmate Scott Trenor, a senior polymer scientist at Milliken &
Company, contributed a key set of plastic additives to increase the viability of PureCycle materials.
Additives are chemical substances that modify the properties of plastics so they can be used in
different types of products. For example, a car bumper would need to be more durable and impact-
resistant, while a yogurt cup would need to be more flexible. Now Milliken and PureCycle are working
together to scale and advance the technology, with plans to start commercial-scale production at
PureCycle’s first plant, in Ohio, in 2021.
D. Trenor says the collaboration is a natural fit, partly because “both companies have a very strong
environmental purpose.” Milliken’s first recycling policy dates back to 1901, and the company just
launched ambitious sustainability goals that include creating circular economies and zero waste to
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landfill by 2025. PureCycle’s technology supports P&G’s vision of using 100 percent recyclable or
renewable materials in its packaging. Trenor’s motivation is closer to home. He often takes his 4-year-
old son to ride mountain bikes near his home in South Carolina, and he’s been disheartened to see
an increase in plastic litter in natural spaces. “It’s not the way I want to leave things for the future
generation,” he says. Layman agrees. While studying plastics in graduate school, he was amazed at
the volume of material being produced, and horrified by how much was ending up in the environment.
“Since the day you were born, there’s a pile of trash with your name on it,” he says. “The first diaper
you wore as a newborn is likely still on this planet somewhere.”
E. He got interested in recycling in 2008, when he was tasked with buying plastic waste from recyclers
and surveying its usefulness for P&G’s products and packaging. “You quickly realize there’s a lot of
issues when it comes to the quality of recycled material,” he says. Currently, only two kinds of plastic,
PET and HDPE, are economically viable for recyclers, and even those are hard to upcycle into high-
quality products.
F. Layman focused on polypropylene because it’s one of the three largest plastic resins used in the
world. Its super powers include flexibility and impact resistance. It’s found in most caps on most
bottles. It’s in luggage and carpets, computers and phones. In the grocery store, it’s everywhere—
yet it’s hardly the favorite of recyclers looking to make a profit. It holds onto pungent smells and
contaminants, and it can only be made into black or gray products. For those reasons, the little that’s
recycled is usually made into park benches or car bumpers—important but limited applications.
G. To recycle polypropylene into higher-value products, Layman knew he would first have to purify
the plastic waste, and in an energy-efficient way. He worked on the discovery phase with financial
backing from an internal seed fund program at P&G. The resulting PureCycle technology relies on a
physical solvent-based process that uses less energy than a chemical process because it doesn’t have
to break down and build up the molecule. “It’s the combination of the solvent choice, plus specific
process steps, that enable us to purify this material in a way that nobody’s been able to do before,”
he says.
Once the material has been purified, the question is what to do with it. Trenor explains that when
scientists create plastic products from scratch, “they have a lot of knobs they can turn to select the
exact set of properties they need for a certain application.” Working with recycled material is more
challenging. That’s where Milliken’s additives come in—they can modify PureCycle’s polypropylene
resin for use in a diverse set of applications. For the first time, recycled polypropylene doesn’t have
to become a car bumper. Purified and modified, the resin can be molded into different products with
different properties in a closed loop.
H. The first PureCycle plant is expected to purify and recycle 119 million pounds of polypropylene and
produce 105 million pounds each year. Those numbers sound huge, but Layman puts it in perspective
by pointing out that 120 billion pounds of polypropylene were produced globally in 2018 alone. “You
can see we have a long way to go,” he says. He compares PureCycle with wind and solar energy
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technology before they scaled up. “We have an ambition to build 25 plants around the world, each
one bigger than the last,” he says. “This is plant number one.” Eventually, he hopes to PureCycle at
least 10 to 20 percent of all polypropylene plastic. “For all of these technologies, it's really more of
a marathon than a sprint,” says Trenor. He also notes that the plastic end-of-life challenge doesn’t
concern technology alone. For PureCycle or any other initiative to succeed, consumers need to change
their behavior and recycle more, and recyclers need the ability and financial incentive to process more
than PET and HDPE.
Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
TRUE - if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE - if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN - if there is no information on this
1. Most of plastics used end up in the Earth’s ocean floors. NG
2. The fact that Layman’s new technology places emphasis on recycling polypropylene makes it
remarkable. T
3. Additives are to help maintain plastics’ distinctive attributes F
4. Milliken and PureCycle both aim at protecting the environment. T
5. Trenor tries to raise his son’s awareness of environmental protection. NG
6. It took Layman a long time to recognize various problems with regard to recycled materials’ quality. F
Questions 7-12
Complete the summary below
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER from the text for each answer.
Write your answer in boxes 7-12 on your answer sheet.
Polypropylene, which is chosen as Layman’s focus, is incredible due to its 7 …………………… flexibility as well
as………………...
impact This type of plastic can be easily found in a wide range of daily products. However, it is
resistance
not really profitable because after being recycled, it can only be used to produce dark-colored goods,
such as benches or car bumpers. These are 8………………………which
applications are significant, yet small in number.
In order to filter out plastic waste with minimum amount of energy needed, Layman sought
9………………………..
financial backing from a seed fund program. The energy-saving process that PureCycle technology
bases on is called a 10…………………………….
physical process. The purification process is followed by the stage
solvent-based
of selecting plastic’s desired properties where 11………………………
Milliken’s are added to change PureCycle’s
additives
polypropylene. After that, purified and modified propylene can be used in the production of various
goods in a continuous 12 ……………….
Loop
Question 13
Choose no more than ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER to answer the question below.
Write your answer in box 13 on your answer sheet.
13. How many plants does Layman expect to establish worldwide in the future?
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READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2.
WHAT MAKES A PERSON ATTRACTIVE?
A. Understandably enough, our societies pay vast attention to the idea of ‘sexiness’; far more
questionably, they tempt us to believe that it might be easy to understand what this quality consists
of. The leading suggestion takes its starting point from the biological sciences: we learn that sex aims
at successful reproduction and genetic fitness in the coming generation. Therefore ‘sexiness’ must
logically comprise a host of signals of fertility and of resistance to disease: bilateral facial symmetry,
large bright pupils, full lips, youthful skin and melanin-rich hair.
B. But this analysis too quickly assumes that it might be simple to know what sex really aims at.
Unlike most other living beings, our biological drives sit alongside, and at points take second place
to, a range of emotional priorities. Chief among these is the desire to overcome loneliness and share
our vulnerability within the arms of a safe and intimate other. We seek, through a physical act, to
overcome our customary psychological alienation and a host of painful barriers to being known and
accepted. Viewed through such a lens, the erotic is not so much a promise of reproductive health as
a suggestion of a redemptive capacity for closeness, connection, understanding and an end to shame
and isolation.
C. The people whom we call sexy despite, or aside from, the raw facts of their appearance are those
whose features and manner suggest an unusual ability to fulfill the underlying emotional purpose of
love-making. The way they respond to a joke, the curve of an eyebrow, the characteristic motion of
their forehead, the way of holding their hands convey in an unconsciously understood but hugely
eloquent language, that one is in the presence of a kindly being who is liable to understand our broken
and confused aspects, to help us overcome our loneliness and submerged sadness and reassure us of
our basic legitimacy and worth; someone with whom we can at last reduce our normal suspicions, cast
aside our armour and feel safe, playful and accepted. Whatever the quality of their skin or balance of
their proportions, it is these aspects that have a true power to excite us; in a melancholy and avoidant
world, this is the real turn on.
D. We hear so much about what we might need to do to increase our physical appeal. But by getting
more detailed about the psychological traits that drive desire, we could learn to pay as much, if not
more, attention to the foundations of an exciting mindset. Armed with a broader understanding of the
aims of sexuality, some of the following might also – henceforth – deserve to be counted as valuable
sources of sexiness:
E. Whether at work, with friends or around family, we are too often hemmed in by exhausting
requirements to fit in and subscribe to dominant notions of what it means to be good and acceptable,
which nevertheless leave behind, or censor a lot of our internal reality; there ends up being a lot we
190
mustn’t say and even more we shouldn’t even really feel. What a relief then to note that we are in
the presence of someone who knows how to adopt a sceptical perspective on prevailing assumptions
– someone who would be able to express personal doubts about popularly revered ideas and cast a
sceptical gaze on the normal rules of life.
F. The more we are honest with, and exploratory about ourselves, the more we realise that there is
much inside our characters that might surprise or horrify outsiders: that we possess alarming features
such as vulnerability, meanness, strangeness, waywardness and folly. Our standard response may be
shame and embarrassment – and yet we always quietly hunger to be properly witnessed and accepted
as we really are. What may prove supremely sexy therefore are suggestions that another person has
explored their own deeper selves with courage, has a handle on their darkness – and may on this basis
be capable of extending an uncensorious perspective on our own.
G. Someone who paid no attention to decency and scoffed at all propriety might be merely alarming.
Yet what can prove uniquely appealing is a person alive both to personal responsibility and temptation.
In addition, it might come a potential for anger that they managed to keep very sanely under control in
daily life, but they knew how to release at points in private; someone whose capacity for a little cruelty
was all the more moving because it stood out against a customary habit of extreme consideration and
gentleness.
H. A lot of our reality deserves compassion and sympathy. How compelling, therefore, to come across
someone whose features would show a willingness to extend charity towards a lot that is less than
perfect in human nature, someone who could know how much we stand in need of forgiveness and
who could laugh generously with and at us – because they knew how to do the same in relation to
themselves.
Questions 14-19
Reading passage 2 has eight sections A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 14-19 of your answer sheet.
14. examples of shockable qualities that may emerge when we explore our deeper selves
15. attractiveness coming from the good management of a particular feeling that involves harm to
other people
16. behaviors that show slight disagreements with normal society
17. acts of kindness of a warm-hearted person towards imperfect ones or those making mistakes
18. sexily powerful features of a person that could fulfill others’s emotional needs
19. what sets human beings apart from other creatures
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Questions 20-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet, write:
TRUE if the statement agrees with the text

FALSE if the statement contradicts with the text
NOT GIVEN if there is no information about this in the text
20. An attractive person is conscious of being responsible rather than fulfilling personal desire. F
21. Emotional satisfactions are always more important than our biological drives.
22. From the angle of biological sciences, attractiveness includes the showing of features of being
able to produce young and fight against illnesses. NG
23. We usually desire our deep horrifying characteristics to be viewed acceptable by other people.
24. It is true that our thoughts and feelings are negatively affected by expectations of acceptable
behaviors from our family, friends and colleagues. T
25. A sexy person is not judgmental to others’ unpleasant characteristics. F
26. We have always been able to discover negative qualities inside each one of us.
192
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3.
The Gory Origins of Valentine’s Day

On Feb. 14, sweethearts of all ages will exchange cards, flowers, candy, and more lavish gifts in
the name of St. Valentine. But at the root of our modern holiday is a beautiful fiction. St. Valentine
was no lover or patron of love.
A. Ancient sources reveal that there were several St. Valentines who died on Feb. 14. Two of them
were executed during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius Gothicus in 269-270 A.D. How do we
know this? Because, an order of Belgian monks spent three centuries collecting evidence for the lives
of saints from manuscript archives around the known world. Since then, successive generations of
monks continued the work until the last volume was published in 1940. They dug up every scrap of
information about every saint on the liturgical calendar and printed the texts arranged according to the
saint’s feast day. Valentine’s Day, in fact, originated as a liturgical feast to celebrate the decapitation of
a third-century Christian martyrr, or perhaps two.
B. The volume encompassing Feb. 14 contains the stories of a handful of “Valentini,” including the
earliest three of whom died in the third century. The earliest Valentinus is said to have died in Africa,
along with 24 soldiers. According to an ancient legend reprinted in the “Acta,” a Roman priest named
Valentinus was arrested during the reign of Emperor Gothicus and put in jail with the observation of a
man named Asterius. As the story goes, Asterius made a bargain with Valentinus: If the Christian could
cure Asterius’s daughter of blindness, he would convert. Valentinus put his hands over the girl’s eyes
and chanted: “Lord Jesus Christ, enlighten your handmaid because you are God, the True Light.” Easy
as that, the child could see, according to the medieval legend. Unfortunately, when Emperor Gothicus
heard the news, he ordered them all to be executed, but Valentinus was the only one to be beheaded.
Later, a church was built over the saint’s remains.
C. The third third-century Valentinus was a minister of Terni in the province of Umbria, Italy. According
to his equal legend, Terni’s minister got into a situation like the other Valentinus by debating a potential
convert and afterward healing his son. The rest of the story is quite similar as well. Indeed, African,
Roman or Umbrian, none of the Valentines seems to have been a romantic. Nonetheless, ancient
legends, repeated in modern media, had St. Valentine performing Christian marriage ceremonies or
passing notes between Christian lovers jailed by Gothicus. Other stories romantically involved him
with the blind girl whom he allegedly healed. Yet none of these ancient tales had any basis in third-
century history, as the Bollandists pointed out.
D. Many scholars have deconstructed Valentine and his day in books, articles and blog postings. Some
suggest that the modern holiday is a Christian cover-up of the more ancient Roman celebration of
Lupercalia in mid-February. Lupercalia originated as a ceremony in a rural area involving the sacrifice
of goats and dogs and evolved later into an urban festival. During the festivities half-naked young
men ran through the streets of Rome, streaking people with thongs cut from the skins of newly killed
193
goats. Pregnant women thought it brought them healthy babies. In 496 A.D., however, Pope Gelasius
supposedly denounced the disorderly festival. Still, there is no evidence that the pope purposely
replaced Lupercalia with the calmer ceremony for the sacrificed St. Valentine or any other Christian
celebration.
E. The love connection probably appeared more than a thousand years after the saints’ death,
when Geoffrey Chaucer, author of “The Canterbury Tales” declared the February celebration of St.
Valentinus to the mating of birds. It seems that, in Chaucer’s day, English birds paired off to produce
eggs in February. Soon, nature-minded European nobility began sending love notes during bird-mating
seasons. English audiences embraced the idea of February mating. Shakespeare’s lovestruck Ophelia
spoke of herself as Hamlet’s Valentine.
F. In the following centuries, Englishmen and women began using Feb. 14 as an excuse for penning
verses to their love objects. Industrialization made it easier with mass-produced illustrated cards with
poetry. Then along came Cadbury, Hershey’s, and other chocolate manufacturers marketing sweets
for one’s sweetheart on Valentine’s Day. Today, shops everywhere in England and the U.S. decorate
their windows with hearts and banners proclaiming the annual Day of Love. Merchants stock their
shelves with candy, jewelry, and Cupid-related trinkets begging “Be My Valentine.” For most lovers,
this request does not require beheading.
G. It seems that the ancient saint behind the holiday of love remains as elusive as love itself. Still,
as St. Augustine, the great fifth-century theologian and philosopher argued in his treatise on “Faith
in Invisible Things,” someone does not have to be standing before our eyes for us to love them. And
much like love itself, St. Valentine and his reputation as the patron saint of love are not matters of
verifiable history, but of faith.
Questions 27-31
Reading passage 3 has seven sections A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 27-31 of your answer sheet.
27. a habit in bird-mating seasons

28. the early origin of Valentine’s Day
29. current ways to celebrate love
30. a misbelief that Valentine was related to romantic tales
31. several similarities between love and the reputation of Valentine
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Questions 32-36
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage to answer the question.
32. How much time did the monks in Belgium spend on proving the existence of the saints Valentine?
33. What condition did Asterius’s daughter have?
34. In which country did the third Valentinus’s story happen?
35. When was the bird mating season in English during Chaucer’s day?
36. What did industrialization make easier with mass-produced illustrated cards?
Question 37-40
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each sentence.
37. The ceremony of Lupercalia was held in ………………….

38. The ancient Roman originally celebrated Lupercalia by offering ……………..
39. During the ancient festival, the skins of newly killed goats were thought to bring …………….. healthy
babies.
40. The celebration of St. Valentine was ………….. than the ceremony for Lupercalia.
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IELTS Practice 2

TRUE - if the statement agrees with the information

1. Most of plastics used end up in the Earth’s ocean floors. NG

WHAT MAKES A PERSON ATTRACTIVE?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the text

The Gory Origins of Valentine’s Day

27. a habit in bird-mating seasons

37. The ceremony of Lupercalia was held in ………………….

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