IELTS Modular

Matching Information
A. About the task
1. Read the information about the task type.

The Matching Information task tests your ability to read a passage carefully and
understand the main ideas as well as detailed information and arguments. On the
question paper, you see a set of numbered statements.
Your job is to read the passage and find the information and ideas that match the
statements.
Here are the basic rules for the Matching Information task:

• The passage is divided into paragraphs and each paragraph has a letter written above
it.

• The lettered paragraphs are in the correct order.

• The numbered list of statements is in random order.

• The statements do not use exactly the same words and phrases as the passage, but
they do refer to the same information and ideas.

• The statements often tell you the type of information you are looking for, for
example, a comparison or a description.

• The answer to each question is the letter that appears above the relevant paragraph.

• Some letters may not be used if those paragraphs include no answers.

• Sometimes a letter may be used more than once because some paragraphs may
include more than one answer. (The instructions tell you if this is possible.)

• You decide which of the paragraphs contains the information in each statement.

• You write the correct letter on the answer sheet.

B. Sample questions
2. Read the passage on the next page and answer the questions. Use the rules about
the task from Section A to help you. Then check your answers. Which questions
did you find difficult?
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IELTS PRACTICE TASK: Do Animals Laugh?

A
According to a recent study, laughter and joy may not be unique to humans. Ancestral
forms of play and laughter existed in other animals long before they did in humans. Jaak
Panksepp, a professor of psychobiology at Washington State University and the author of
the study, says, "Human laughter has robust roots in our animal past."
B
While humans are the only creatures that tell jokes, it's long been suspected that some
animals like to laugh. In his 1872 treatise, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
Animals, Charles Darwin pointed out that "very many kinds of monkeys, when pleased,
utter a reiterated sound, clearly analogous to our laughter." In an experiment Panksepp
had performed earlier, he found that when chimpanzees play and chase each other, they
make noises strikingly like human laughter, and that dogs have a similar response.
C
Panksepp notes that children who are too young to laugh at verbal jokes tend to shriek
and laugh during rowdy play. Panksepp found in his recent study that when young rats are
playing, they also make sounds - they chirp, although people can't hear them. These
chirps are ultrasonic sounds, far too high-pitched for the human ear. Researchers must
use special electronic receivers that convert the chirps to sounds that humans can hear.
Rats also chirp when they are playfully tickled by researchers. During the course of the
experiment, it was discovered that rats are especially ticklish in the area around the back
of the neck, which is also the area young rats tend to nip each other during chases and
play.
D
According to Panksepp, the chirps resemble our giggles, and are a primitive form of
laughter. Rats who have been tickled before seem to bond socially with their human
ticklers. The animals seek out specific human hands that had tickled them previously and
seek to be tickled more.
E
In studying laughter, scientists have focused mostly on related issues - humour,
personality, health benefits, social theory - rather than laughter itself. New research,
however, shows that circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the human
brain. The capacity to laugh appears early in childhood, as anyone who has tickled a baby
knows. As humans have incorporated language into play, we may have developed new
connections to parts of our brains that evolved before the cerebral cortex, the outer
layer associated with thought and memory. In separate experiments, scientists have
scanned subjects' brains with magnetic resonance imaging as they took part in activities
that made them laugh. The two types of humour - verbal and non-verbal - lit up different
parts of the brain. Non-verbal, physical humour apparently appeals to some of the brain's
more 'primitive' parts.
F
Indeed, some scientists say that other mammals, just like humans, are capable of many
feelings. "The recognition by neuroscientists that the brain mechanisms underlying pain,
pleasure and fear are the same in humans and other mammals underscores our similarity
to other species and is extremely important," said Tecumseh Fitch, a psychology lecturer
at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Science has traditionally held that humour is
exclusively a human trait, and many scientists believe that more research is required
before the rats' chirping sounds can be considered real laughter. Panksepp believes that,
through a study of laughter in rats, the human sense of humour can be more fully
understood.
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Questions 1-7
The Reading Passage has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, next to each statement.
NB You may use any letter more than once.

1. examples of situations in which different animal species produce a kind of laughter

2. mention of the point in human development when the ability to laugh develops
3. a description of the method used to capture certain noises
4. a reference to earlier research conducted by the author of the new study
5. the idea that humans were not the first species to develop laughter
6. the realization that one species has a particularly sensitive region of its body
7. the idea that people and animals may share a range of emotional responses
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C. Tips and tactics

3. Read the tips and tactics about Matching Information questions.

1. Before you read the passage, read the title and the list of statements and think about
what you're going to read.
2. Read the passage quickly to get an idea of the type of information and ideas in each
paragraph. Mark any sections that contain the type of information and ideas indicated
in the list of statements.
3. Write the number of the statement next to these sections. You probably need to mark
more than one section for each statement at this stage.
4. Then read the numbered statements in order and read the sections you have marked
with that number carefully to decide which section contains exactly the information
or idea in the statement.
5. Remember that the statements don't use exactly the same words and phrases as you
see in the passage.
6. Quickly read the paragraph or section again to make sure you haven't missed anything.
7. When you are sure you have found the correct section, write only the correct letter on
the answer sheet.
8. Remember that some sections may contain two answers and some none at all.
9. Always answer all the questions, even if you're not sure of the answer.
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IELTS PRACTICE TASK: Leonardo's lost mural

A
According to historical records, in 1502 Florentine statesman Piero Soderini commissioned the
artist Leonardo da Vinci to paint a fresco on the inside wall of the Hall of the Five Hundred - a
room named after the 500 members of the Republic of Florence's Grand Council - which now
serves as the city hall. The painting, six metres long and three metres tall, was to depict the
scene of the knights of the Italian League defeating an army from Milan near theTuscan town
of Anghiari. Da Vinci, it is said, used the opportunity to try out a new oil painting technique,
but it was not very successful, possibly because of the high humidity in the hall. He never
completed the mural.
B
In the 1550s, biographer and artist Giorgio Vasari was commissioned to remodel the Hall of
the Five Hundred and paint several enormous murals, each four or five metres high. One
mural - picturing the same battle - was to be painted over Leonardo's unfinished work, but at
least one source describes Vasari as a Leonardo fan who couldn't bring himself to destroy the
work.
C
Maurizio Seracini, an art diagnostician at the University of California, San Diego, has spent
around 40 years on a quest to find out what happened to da Vinci's painting. He has said, "I'm
convinced it's there." A break came in the 1970s, when he climbed a scaffold in front of
Vasari's painting and spied two words inscribed on a banner one of the knights is carrying:
'cerca trova,' it said, which roughly translates as 'seek and find'. Seracini took it as a clue that
rather than doing what had been asked, Vasari had built a false wall in front of da Vinci's
work and painted his mural on that surface instead.
D
A team led by Seracini eventually got permission to scan the entire building with high-
frequency surface penetrating radar. The scanning revealed some sort of hollow space
directly behind the section of mural where the inscription had been found. To peek behind
Vasari's fresco, the team planned to drill 14 strategically located centimetre-wide holes in the
work. But an outcry ensued after journalists publicised the project. Some 300 Italian scholars
petitioned the mayor of Florence to halt the work. "But the team was making little boreholes
some nine to twelve metres above the ground," said art historian Martin Kempof of Oxford
University, who wasn't involved in the work. "That kind of damage can be repaired invisibly."
E
Despite the public protests, in late 2011 Seracini and his team were given permission to
continue their work - but not in the 14 spots they'd originally hoped to investigate. To avoid
damaging original portions of Vasari's painting, museum curators permitted them to drill only
into existing cracks and recently restored spots. This time the researchers struck gold: a
hollow space behind 17 centimetres of fresco and brick. They inserted an endoscopic camera
into the space and took video footage of rough masonry work as well as spots that appear to
have been stroked by a brush. A substance removed from the void was analysed with x-rays,
and the results suggested it contained traces of black pigment.
F
Based on the x-ray data, Seracini thinks the black pigment, which is made up of an unusual
combination of manganese and iron, is similar to those found in brown glazes of what is
probably da Vinci's most famous painting, La Gioconda (Mona Lisa). That Seracini found
components unique to Renaissance painting leads him to call the results 'encouraging
evidence', yet he complained that further samples couldn't be collected because he was only
permitted to work on the project within a very narrow time period. "Unless I get hold of a
piece of it, and prove that it is real paint, I cannot say anything definite, and that's very
frustrating," he said.
fresco (n) a painting done directly in the wet plaster of a wall; a type of mural
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Questions 1-8
The Reading Passage has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-F, next
to each statement.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
1. a compromise that allowed work to continue
2. a connection that lends weight to a theory
3. a report that suggests great professional respect
4. a restriction that prevented a conclusion from being reached
5. evidence of instructions not being followed
6. a long-term commitment to an investigation
7. an experiment that failed to produce satisfactory results
8. an independent opinion on a contentious issue