IELTS Academic Reading Passage

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are

based on Reading Passage 39 below.

The Motor Car

A. There are now over 700 million motor vehicles in the world - and the number is
rising by more than 40 million each year. The average distance driven by car users is
growing too - from 8 km a day per person in western Europe in 1965 to 25 km a day in
1995. This dependence on motor vehicles has given rise to major problems, including
environmental pollution, depletion of oil resources, traffic congestion and safety.
B. While emissions from new cars are far less harmful than they used to be, city streets
and motorways are becoming more crowded than ever, often with older trucks, buses
and taxis, which emit excessive levels of smoke and fumes. This concentration of
vehicles makes air quality in urban areas unpleasant and sometimes dangerous to
breathe. Even Moscow has joined the list of capitals afflicted by congestion and traffic
fumes. In Mexico City, vehicle pollution is a major health hazard.
C. Until a hundred years ago, most journeys were in the 20 km range, the distance
conveniently accessible by horse. Heavy freight could only be carried by water or rail.
The invention of the motor vehicle brought personal mobility to the masses and made
rapid freight delivery possible over a much wider area. Today about 90 percent of
inland freight in the United Kingdom is carried by road. Clearly, the world cannot revert
to the horse-drawn wagon. Can it avoid being locked into congested and polluting ways
of transporting people and goods?
D. In Europe, most cities are still designed for the old modes of transport. Adaptation to
the motor car has involved adding ring roads, one-way systems and parking lots. In the
United States, more land is assigned to car use than to housing. Urban sprawl means
that life without a car is next to impossible. Mass use of motor vehicles has also killed
or injured millions of people. Other social effects have been blamed on the car such as
alienation and aggressive human behaviour.
E. A 1993 study by the European Federation for Transport and Environment found that
car transport is seven times as costly as rail travel in terms of the external social costs it
entails such as congestion, accidents, pollution, loss of cropland and natural habitats,
depletion of oil resources, and so on. Yet cars easily surpass trains or buses as a flexible
and convenient mode of personal transport. It is unrealistic to expect people to give up
private cars in favour of mass transit.
F. Technical solutions can reduce the pollution problem and increase the fuel efficiency
of engines. But fuel consumption and exhaust emissions depend on which cars are
preferred by customers and how they are driven. Many people buy larger cars than they
need for daily purposes or waste fuel by driving aggressively. Besides, global car use is
increasing at a faster rate than the improvement in emissions and fuel efficiency which
technology is now making possible.
G. One solution that has been put forward is the long-term solution of designing cities
and neighbourhoods so that car journeys are not necessary - all essential services being
located within walking distance or easily accessible by public transport. Not only would
this save energy and cut carbon dioxide emissions, it would also enhance the quality of
community life, putting the emphasis on people instead of cars. Good local government
is already bringing this about in some places. But few democratic communities are
blessed with the vision - and the capital - to make such profound changes in modern
lifestyles.
H. A more likely scenario seems to be a combination of mass transit systems for travel
into and around cities, with small 'low emission' cars for urban use and larger hybrid or
lean burn cars for use elsewhere. Electronically tolled highways might be used to
ensure that drivers pay charges geared to actual road use. Better integration of
transport systems is also highly desirable - and made more feasible by modern
computers. But these are solutions for countries which can afford them. In most
developing countries, old cars and old technologies continue to predominate.
Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 39 has eight paragraphs (A-H). Which paragraphs concentrate on the
following information? Write the appropriate letters (A-H) in boxes 14-19 on your
answer sheet.
NB You need only write ONE letter for each answer.
14. a comparison of past and present transportation methods
15. how driving habits contribute to road problems
16. the relative merits of cars and public transport
17. the writer's own prediction of future solutions
18. the increasing use of motor vehicles
19. the impact of the car on city development
Questions 20-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
In boxes 20-26 on your answer sheet write

YES if the statement agrees with the information

NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage
20. Vehicle pollution is worse in European cities than anywhere else.
21. Transport by horse would be a useful alternative to motor vehicles.
22. Nowadays freight is not carried by water in the United Kingdom.
23. Most European cities were not designed for motor vehicles.
24. Technology alone cannot solve the problem of vehicle pollution.
25. People's choice of car and attitude to driving is a factor in the pollution problem.
26 Redesigning cities would be a short-term solution.
14. C
15. F 20. NOT GIVEN
16. E 21. NO
17. H
18. A 22. NOT GIVEN
19. D
23. YES

24. YES

25. YES

26. NO

https://www.ielts-mentor.com/reading-sample/academic-reading/64-ielts-academic-
reading-sample-39-the-motor-car
 WHAT COOKBOOKS REALLY TEACH US
A. Shelves bend under their weight of cookery books. Even a medium-sized bookshop contains
many more recipes than one person could hope to cook m a lifetime. Although the recipes in one
book are often similar to those in another, their presentation varies wildly, from an array of
vegetarian cookbooks to instructions on cooking the food that historical figures might have
eaten. The reason for this abundance is that cookbooks promise to bring about a land of domestic
transformation for the user. The daily routine can be put to one side and they liberate the user, if
only temporarily. To follow their instructions is to turn a task which has to be performed every
day into an engaging, romantic process. Cookbooks also provide an opportunity to delve into
distant cultures without having to turn up at an airport to get there.
B. The first Western cookbook appeared just over 1,600 years ago. De re coquinara (it means
concerning cookery1) is attributed to a Roman gourmet named Apicius. It is probably a
complilation of Roman and Greek recipes, some or all of them drawn from manuscripts that were
later lost. The editor was sloppy, allowing several duplicated recipes to sneak in. Yet Apicius’s
book set die tone of cookery advice in Europe for more than a thousand years. As a cookbook it
is unsatisfactory with very basic instructions. Joseph Vehling, a chef who translated Apicius in
the 1930s, suggested the author had beat obscure on purpose, in case his secrets leaked out.
C. But a more likely reason is that Apicius’s recipes were written by and for professional cooks,
who could follow their shorthand. This situation continued for hundreds of years. There was no
order to cookbooks: a cake recipe might be followed by a mutton one. But then, they were not
written for careful study. Before the 19th century few educated people cooked for themselves.
D. The wealthiest employed literate chefs; others presumably read recipes to their servants. Such
cooks would have been capable of creating dishes from the vaguest of instructions. The
invention of printing might have been expected to lead to greater clarity but at first the reverse
was true. As words acquired commercial value, plagiarism exploded Recipes were distorted
through reproduction A recipe for boiled capon in The Good Huswives Jewell, printed in 1596t
advised the cook to add three or four dates. By 1653, when the recipe was given by a different
author in A Book of Fruits & Flowers, the cook was told to set the dish aside for three or four
days.
E. The dominant theme in 16th and 17th century cookbooks was order. Books combined recipes
and household advice, on the assumption that a well-made dish, a well-ordered larder and well-
disciplined children were equally important. Cookbooks thus became a symbol of dependability
in chaotic times. They hardly seem to have been affected by the English civil war or the
revolutions in America and France.
F. In the 1850s Isabella Beeton published The Book of Household Management. Like earlier
cookery writers she plagiarised freely, lifting not just recipes but philosophical observations from
other hooks. If Beetons recipes wore not wholly new, though, the way in which she presented
them certainly was. She explains when the chief ingredients are most likely to be in season, how
long the dish will take to prepare and even how much it is likely to cost. Beetons recipes were
well suited to her times. Two centuries earlier, an understanding of rural ways had been so
widespread that one writer could advise cooks to heat water until it was a little hotter than milk
comes from a cow. By the 1850b Britain was industrialising. The growing urban midrib class
needed details, and Beeton provided them in full.
G. In France, cookbooks were last becoming even more systematic. Compared with Britain,
France had produced few books written for the ordinary householder by the end of the 19th
century. The most celebrated French cookbooks were written by superstar chefs who had a clear
sense of codifying a unified approach to sophisticated French cooking. The 5,000 recipes in
Auguste Escoffiers Le Guide Culinaire (The Culinary Guide), published in 1902, might as well
have been written in stone, given the book’s reputation among French chefs, many of whom still
consider it the definitive reference book.
H. What Escoffier did for French cooking, Fannie Farmer did for American home cooking. She
not only synthesised American cuisine; she elevated it to the status of science. ‘Progress in
civilisation has been accompanied by progress in cookery,’ she breezily announced in The
Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, before launching into a collection of recipes that sometimes
resembles a book of chemistry experiments. She was occasionally over-fussy. She explained that
currants should be picked between June 28th and July 3rd, but not when it is raining. But in the
main her book is reassuringly authoritative. Its recipes are short, with no unnecessary chat and no
unnecessary spices.
I. In 1950 Mediterranean Food by Elizabeth David launched a revolution in cooking advice in
Britain. In some ways Mediterranean Food recalled even older cookbooks but the smells and
noises that filled David’s books were not mere decoration for her recipes. They were the point of
her books. When she began to write, many ingredients were not widely available or affordable.
She understood this, acknowledging in a later edition of one of her books that even if people
could not very often make the dishes here described, it was stimulating to think about them.’
David’s books were not so much cooking manuals as guides to the kind of food people might
well wish to eat.
Questions 14-16
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS firm the passage for
each answer. Write your answers inboxes 14-16 on your answer sheet.
Why are there so many cookery books?
There are a great number more cookery books published than is really necessary and it is
their 14 ………….which makes them differ from each other. There are such large numbers
because they offer people an escape from their 15 …………..and some give the user the chance
to inform themselves about other 16……..
Questions 17-21
Reading Passage has nine paragraphs, A-I Which paragraph contains the following
information? Write the correct letter, A-I in boxes 17-21 on your answer sheet
NB: YOU MAY USE ANY LETTER MORE THAN ONCE.
17. cookery books providing a sense of stability during periods of unrest
18. details in recipes being altered as they were passed on
19. knowledge which was in danger of disappearing
20. the negative effect on cookery books of a new development
21. a period when there was no need for cookery books to be precise
Questions 22-26
Look at the following statements (Questions 22-26) and list of books (A-E) below. Match each
statement with the correct book. Write the correct letter, A-E, m boxes 22-26 on your answer
sheet
22. Its recipes were easy to follow despite the writer’s attention to detail.
23. Its writer may have deliberately avoided pawing on details.
24. It appealed to ambitious ideas people have about cooking.
25. Its writer used ideas from other books but added additional related
information.

26. It put into print ideas which are still respected today.
List of cookery books
A. De re coquinara
B. The Book of Household Management
C. Le Guide Culinaire
D. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
E. Mediterranean Food
14. PRESENTATION 15.(DAILY ROUTINE) 17E 18D 19B 20D 21C 22D 23A 24E
16. CULTURES
25B 26C