IELTS READING – Intelligence and Giftedness S56AT2

IELTS Reading Intelligence and Giftedness reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to Psychology and Education subject.. 
 

A. In 1904 the French minister of education, facing limited resources for schooling, sought a way to separate die unable from the merely lazy. Alfred Binet got the job of devising selection principles and his brilliant solution put a stamp on the study of intelligence and was the forerunner of intelligence tests still used today, he developed a thirty-problem test in 1905, which tapped several abilities related to intellect, such as judgment and reasoning, the test determined a given child’s mental age’, the test previously established a norm for children of a given physical age. (for example, five-year-olds on average get ten items correct), therefore, a child with a mental age of five should score 10, which would mean that he or she was functioning pretty much as others of that age. the child’s mental age was then compared to his physical age.

B. A large disparity in the wrong direction (e.g., a child of nine with a mental age of four) might suggest inability rather than laziness and mean he or she was earmarked for special schooling, Binet, however, denied that the test was measuring intelligence, its purpose was simply diagnostic, for selection only. This message was however lost, and caused many problems and misunderstanding later.

C. Although Binet’s test was popular, it was a bit inconvenient to deal with a variety of physical and mental ages. So in 1912 Wilhelm Stem suggested simplifying this by reducing die two to a single number, he divided the mental age by the physical age, and multiplied the result by 100. An average child, irrespective of age, would score 100. a number much lower than 100 would suggest the need for help, and one much higher would suggest a child well ahead of his peer.

D. This measurement is what is now termed the IQ (for intelligence quotient) score and it has evolved to be used to show how a person, adult or child, performed in relation to others, (the term IQ was coined by Lewis m. Terman, professor of psychology and education of Stanford university, in 1916. he had constructed an enormously influential revision of Binet’s test, called the Stanford-Binet test, versions of which are still given extensively.)

E. The field studying intelligence and developing tests eventually coalesced into a sub-field of psychology called psychometrics (psycho for ‘mind’ and metrics for ‘measurements’). The practical side of psychometrics (the development and use of tests) became widespread quite early, by 1917, when Einstein published his grand theory of relativity, massscale testing was already in use. Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare (which led to the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915) provoked the United States to finally enter the First World War in the same year. The military had to build up an army very quickly; it had two million inductees to sort out. Who would become officers and who enlisted men? Psychometricians developed two intelligence tests that helped sort all these people out, at least to some extent, this was the first major use of testing to decide who lived and who died, as officers were a lot safer on the battlefield, the tests themselves were given under horrendously bad conditions, and the examiners seemed to lack commonsense, a lot of recruits simply had no idea what to do and in several sessions most inductees scored zero! The examiners also came up with the quite astounding conclusion from the testing that the average American adult’s intelligence was equal to that of a thirteen-year-old!

F. Intelligence testing enforced political and social prejudice, their results were used to argue that Jews ought to be kept out of the united states because they were so intelligently inferior that they would pollute the racial mix; and blacks ought not to be allowed to breed at all. And so abuse and test bias controversies continued to plaque psychometrics.

G. Measurement is fundamental to science and technology, science often advances in leaps and bounds when measurement devices improve, psychometrics has long tried to develop ways to gauge psychological qualities such as intelligence and more specific abilities, anxiety, extroversion, emotional stability, compatibility, with marriage partner, and so on. Their scores are often given enormous weight, a single IQ measurement can take on a life of its own if teachers and parents see it as definitive, it became a major issue in the 70s, when court cases were launched to stop anyone from making important decisions based on IQ test scores, the main criticism was and still is that current tests don’t really measure intelligence, whether intelligence can be measured at all is still controversial, some say it cannot others say that IQ tests are psychology’s greatest accomplishments.


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IELTS READING – New Agriculture in Oregon, US S56AT1

IELTS Reading New Agriculture in Oregon, US reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to Environment and Agriculture subject..
 

A. Onion growers in eastern Oregon are adopting a system that saves water and keeps topsoil in place, while producing the highest quality “super colossal” onions. Pear growers in southern Oregon have reduced their use of some of the most toxic pesticides by up to two-thirds, and are still producing top-quality pears. Range managers throughout the state have controlled the poisonous weed tansy ragwort with insect predators and saved the Oregon livestock industry up to $4.8 million a year.

B. These are some of the results Oregon growers have achieved in collaboration with Oregon State University (OSU) researchers as they test new farming methods including integrated pest management (IPM). Nationwide, however, IFM has not delivered results comparable to those in Oregon. A recent U.S General Accounting Office (GAO) report indicates that while integrated pest management can result in dramatically reduced pesticide use, the federal government has been lacking in effectively promoting that goal and implementing IPM. Farmers also blame the government for not making the new options of pest management attractive. “Wholesale changes in the way that farmers control the pests on their farms is an expensive business.” Tony Brown, of the National Farmers Association says. “If the farmers are given tax breaks to offset the expenditure, then they would willingly accept the new practices.” The report goes on to note that even though the use of the riskiest pesticides has declined nationwide, they still make up more than 40 percent of all pesticides used today; and national pesticide use has risen by 40 million kilograms since 1992. “Our food supply remains the safest and highest quality on Earth but we continue to overdose our farmland with powerful and toxic pesticides and to under-use the safe and effective alternatives,” charged Patrick Leahy, who commissioned the report. Green action groups disagree about the safety issue. “There is no way that habitual consumption of foodstuffs grown using toxic chemicals of the nature found on today’s farms can be healthy for consumers,” noted Bill Bowler, spokesman for Green Action, one of many lobbyists interested in this issue.

C. The GAO report singles out Oregon’s apple and pear producers who have used the new IPM techniques with growing success. Although Oregon is clearly ahead of the nation, scientists at OSU are taking the Government Accounting Office criticisms seriously. “We must continue to develop effective alternative practices that will reduce environmental hazards and produce high quality products,” said Paul Jepson, a professor of entomology at OSU and new director of

D. OSU’s Integrated Plant Protection Centre (IPPC). The IPPC brings together scientists from OSU’s Agricultural Experiment Station, OSU Extension service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Oregon farmers to help develop agricultural systems that will save water and soil, and reduce pesticides. In response to the GAO report, the Centre is putting even more emphasis on integrating research and farming practices to improve Oregon agriculture environmentally and economically.

E. “The GAO report criticizes agencies for not clearly communicating the goals of IPM,” said Jepson. “Our challenge is to greatly improve the communication to and from growers, to learn what works and what doesn’t. The work coming from OSU researchers must be adopted in the field and not simply languish in scientific journals.”

F. In Oregon, growers and scientists are working together to instigate new practices. For example, a few years ago scientists at OSU’s Malheur Experiment Station began testing a new drip irrigation system to replace old ditches that wasted water and washed soil and fertilizer into streams. The new system cut water and fertilizer use by half, kept topsoil in place and protected water quality.

G. In addition, the new system produced crops of very large onions, rated “super colossal” and highly valued by the restaurant industry and food processors. Art Pimms, one of the researchers at Malheur comments: “Growers are finding that when they adopt more environmentally benign practices, they can have excellent results. The new practices benefit the environment and give the growers their success.”

H. OSU researchers in Malheur next tested straw mulch and found that it successfully held soil in place and kept the ground moist with less irrigation. In addition, and unexpectedly, the scientists found that the mulched soil created a home for beneficial beetles and spiders that prey on onion thrips – a notorious pest in commercial onion fields – a discovery that could reduce the need for pesticides. “I would never have believed that we could replace the artificial pest controls that we had before and still keep our good results,” commented Steve Black, a commercial onion farmer in Oregon, “but instead we have actually surpassed expectations.”

I. OSU researchers throughout the state have been working to reduce dependence on broad spectrum chemical sprays that are toxic to many kind of organisms, including humans. “Consumers are rightly putting more and more pressure on the industry to change its reliance on chemical pesticides, but they still want a picture-perfect product,” said Rick Hilton, entomologist at OSU’s Southern Oregon Research and Extension Centre, where researchers help pear growers reduce the need for highly toxic pesticides. Picture perfect pears are an important product in Oregon and traditionally they have required lots of chemicals. In recent years, the industry has faced stiff competition from overseas producers, so any new methods that growers adopt must make sense economically as well as environmentally. Hilton is testing a growth regulator that interferes with the molting of codling moth larvae. Another study used pheromone dispensers to disrupt codling moth mating. These and other methods of integrated pest management have allowed pear growers to reduce their use of organophosphates by two-thirds and reduce all other synthetic pesticides by even more and still produce top-quality pears. These and other studies around the state are part of the effort of the IPPC to find alternative farming practices that benefit both the economy and the environment.


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IELTS READING – Extinct: the Giant Deer S55AT3

IELTS Reading Extinct: the Giant Deer reading practice test has 10 question belongs to Paleontology and Natural History subject..

Toothed cats, mastodons, giant sloths, woolly rhinos, and many other big, shaggy mammals are widely thought to have died out around the end of the last ice age, some 10,500 years ago.

A. The Irish elk is also known as the giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus). Analysis of ancient bones and teeth by scientists based in Britain and Russia show the huge herbivore survived until about 5,000 B.C.—more than three millennia later than previously believed. The research team says this suggests additional factors, besides climate change, probably hastened the giant deer’s eventual extinction. The factors could include hunting or habitat destruction by humans.

 

B. The Irish elk, so-called because its well-preserved remains are often found in lake sediments under peat bogs in Ireland, first appeared about 400,000 years ago in Europe and central Asia. Through a combination of radiocarbon dating of skeletal remains and the mapping of locations where the remains were unearthed, the team shows the Irish elk was widespread across Europe before the last “big freeze.” The deer’s range later contracted to the Ural Mountains, in modern-day Russia, which separate Europe from Asia.

C. The giant deer made its last stand in western Siberia, some 3,000 years after the ice sheets receded, said the study’s co-author, Adrian Lister, professor of palaebiology at University College London, England. “The eastern foothills of the Urals became very densely forested about 8,000 years ago, which could have pushed them on to the plain,” he said. He added that pollen analysis indicates the region then became very dry in response to further climactic change, leading to the loss of important food plants. “In combination with human pressures, this could have finally snuffed them out,” Lister said.

D. Hunting by humans has often been put forward as a contributory cause of extinctions of the Pleistocene mega fauna. The team, though, said their new date for the Irish elk’s extinction hints at an additional human-made problem—habitat destruction. Lister said, “We haven’t got just hunting 7,000 years ago—this was also about the time the first Neolithic people settled in the region. They were farmers who would have cleared the land.” The presence of humans may help explain why the Irish elk was unable to tough out the latest of many climatic fluctuations—periods it had survived in the past.

E. Meanwhile, Lister cast doubt on another possible explanation for the deer’s demise—the male’s huge antlers. Some scientists have suggested this exaggerated feature—the result of females preferring stags with the largest antlers, possibly because they advertised a male’s fitness —contributed to the mammal’s downfall. They say such antlers would have been a serious inconvenience in the dense forests that spread northward after the last ice age. But, Lister said, “That’s a hard argument to make, because the deer previously survived perfectly well through wooded interglacials [warmer periods between ice ages].” Some research has suggested that a lack of sufficient high-quality forage caused the extinction of the elk. High amounts of calcium and phosphate compounds are required to form antlers, and therefore large quantities of these minerals are required for the massive structures of the Irish Elk. The males (and male deer in general) met this requirement partly from their bones, replenishing them from food plants after the antlers were grown or reclaiming the nutrients from discarded antlers (as has been observed in extant deer). Thus, in the antler growth phase. Giant Deer were suffering from a condition similar to osteoporosis. When the climate changed at the end of the last glacial period, the vegetation in the animal’s habitat also changed towards species that presumably could not deliver sufficient amounts of the required minerals, at least in the western part of its range.

F. The extinction of megafauna around the world was almost completed by the end of the last ice age. It is believed that megafauna initially came into existence in response to glacial conditions and became extinct with the onset of warmer climates. Tropical and subtropical areas have experienced less radical climatic change. The most dramatic of these changes was the transformation of a vast area of north Africa into the world’s largest desert. Significantly, Africa escaped major faunal extinction as did tropical and subtropical Asia. The human exodus from Africa and our entrance into the Americas and Australia were also accompanied by climate change. Australia’s climate changed from cold-dry to warm-dry. As a result, surface water became scarce. Most inland lakes became completely dry or dry in the warmer seasons. Most large, predominantly browsing animals lost their habitat and retreated to a narrow band in eastern Australia, where there was permanent water and better vegetation. Some animals may have survived until about 7000 years ago. If people have been in Australia for up to 60 000 years, then megafauna must have co-existed with humans for at least 30 000 years. Regularly hunted modem kangaroos survived not only 10 000 years of Aboriginal hunting, but also an onslaught of commercial shooters.

G. The group of scientists led by A.J. Stuart focused on northern Eurasia, which he was taking as Europe, plus Siberia, essentially, where they ‘ve got the best data that animals became extinct in Europe during the Late Pleistocene. Some cold-adapted animals, go through into the last part of the cold stage, and then become extinct up there. So you’ve actually got two phases of extinction. Now, neither of these coincide — these are Neanderthals here being replaced by modem humans. There’s no obvious coincidence between the arrival of humans or climatic change alone and these extinctions. There’s a climatic change here, so there’s a double effect here. Again, as animals come through to the last part of the cold stage, here there’s a fundamental change in the climate, reorganization of vegetation, and the combination of the climatic change and the presence of humans — of advanced Paleolithic humans — causes this wave of extinction. There’s a profound difference between the North American data and that of Europe, which summarize that the extinctions in northern Eurasia, in Europe, are moderate and staggered, and in North America severe and sudden. And these things relate to the differences in the timing of human arrival. The extinctions follow from human predation, but only at times of fundamental changes in the environment.


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IELTS READING – Father of modern management S55AT2

 IELTS Reading Father of modern management reading practice test has 10 question belongs to Business and Management subject..

A. It’s been said that Peter Drucker invented the discipline of management Before he wrote his first book on the topic, he knew of only two companies in the world with management development programs. Ten years after the book’s publication, 3,000 companies were teaching the subject. Q14 Widely considered as the father of “modem management,” he wrote 39 books and countless scholarly and popular articles exploring how humans are organized in all sectors of society—business, government and the nonprofit world. His writings have predicted many of the major developments of the late twentieth century, including privatization and decentralization; the rise of Japan to a world economic power; the decisive importance of marketing; and the emergence of the information society with its necessity of lifelong learning.

 

B. Q15 Drucker has said that writing is die foundation of everything he does. In 1937, he published his first book, which was written in Europe. The End of Economic Man: A Study of the New Totalitarianism examined the spiritual and social origins of fascism. In 1940, before the United States entered World War n, he wrote The Future of Industrial Man, in which he presented his social vision for the postwar world. In 1943, General Motors asked Drucker to study its management practices. Drucker accepted and spent 18 months researching and writing the 1945 book. Concept of the Corporation.

C. The concepts Drucker introduced in the 1940s and 1950s have endured. In 1954, Drucker wrote his first book that taught people how to manage. Tided The Practice of Management, Q16 it introduced the concept of “management by objectives”. Management by objectives require managers to establish goals for theft subordinates and devise means of measuring results. Workers are then left alone to perform as they will and measure theft performance. Drucker wrote, “It is not possible to be effective unless one first decides what one wants to accomplish. He went on to explain that every worker must be given the tools “to appraise himself, rather than be appraised and controlled from the outside. Q24 Management by objectives has become an accepted business concept and is probably Drucker’s most important contribution. Drucker issued challenges to junior, middle, and senior management: ‘Q21 The very term “middle management” is becoming meaningless [as some] will have to learn how to work with people over whom they have no direct line control, to work transnationally, and to create, maintain, and run systems-none of which are traditionally middle management tasks. “It is top management that faces the challenge of setting directions for the enterprise, of managing the fundamentals.

D. Drucker interviewed executives and workers, visited plants, and attended board meetings. While the book focused on General Motors, Drucker went on to discuss the industrial corporation as a social institution and economic policy in the postwar era. He introduced previously unknown concepts such as cooperation between labor and management, decentralization of management, and viewing workers as resources rather than costs. Q25 Drucker saw people as a resource, and considered that they would be more able to satisfy customers if they had more involvement in then jobs and gained some satisfaction from doing them. Drucker claimed that an industrial society allows people to realize their dreams of personal achievement and equal opportunity-the need to manage business by balancing a variety of needs and goals, rather than subordinating an institution to a single value. This concept of management by objectives forms the keynote of his 1954 landmark The Practice of Management. He referred to decentralization as ‘a system of local self government, in which central management tells division managers what to do, but not how to do it. The young executives are given the freedom to make decisions — and mistakes — and learn from the experience. Top leaders at General Motors disliked the book and discouraged their executives from reading it. Many other American executives criticized Concept for its challenge to management authority.

E. Q18 Drucker wasn’t immune to criticism. The Wall Street Journal researched several of his lectures in 1987 and reported that he was sometimes loose with factsQ27 Drucker was off the mark, for example, when he told an audience that English was the official language for all employees at Japan’s Mitsui trading company. And he was known for his prescience. Given the recent involvement of the US government with financial companies, he was probably correct in his forecast when he anticipated, for instance, that the nation’s financial center would shift from New York to Washington, others maintain that one of Drucker’s core concepts—”management by objectives”—is flawed and has never really been proven to work effectively. Specifically, critics say that the system is difficult to implement, and that companies often wind up overemphasizing control, as opposed to fostering creativity, to meet their goals. Drucker didn’t shy away from controversy, either.

F. Q26 Throughout his career, Drucker expanded his position that management was “a liberal art ” and he infused his management advice with interdisciplinary lessons including history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, culture and religionQ19 He also strongly believed that all institutions, including those in the private sector, had a responsibility for the whole society. “The fact is,” Drucker wrote in 1973, “that in modem society there is no other leadership group but managers. If the managers of our major institutions, especially in business, do not take responsibility for the common good, no one else can or will.” In his books, lectures and interviews, the emergence of knowledge workers is only one of the demographic changes Drucker warns businesses to prepare for. Others include a decreasing birth rate in developed countries, a shift in population from rural to urban centers, shifts in distribution of disposable income and global competitiveness. Q22 Drucker believes these changes will have a tremendous impact on business. Drucker held a profound skepticism of macroeconomic theory and contended that economists of all schools fail to explain significant aspects of modem economies. Business “gums” have come and gone during the last 50 years, but Drucker’s message continues to inspire managers. During the 1990s, Drucker wrote about social, political and economic changes of the” post capitalist” era, which he says are as profound as those of the industrial revolution. In Managing for the Future: The 1990s and Beyond (1992), Drucker discussed the emergence of the “knowledge worker” — whose resources include specialized learning or competency rather than land, labor or other forms of capital.


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