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IELTS READING – The Problem of Scarce Resources S28AT3

IELTS Reading The Problem of Scarce Resources reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to 💰 Economics & Environment subject..

Section A

Q28 The problem of how health-care resources should be allocated or apportioned, so that they are distributed in both, the most just and most efficient way, is not a new one. Every health system in an economically developed society is faced with the need to decide (either formally or informally) what proportion of the community’s total resources should be spent on health-care; how resources are to be apportioned; what diseases and disabilities and which forms of treatment are to be given priority; which members of the community are to be given special consideration in respect of their health needs; and which forms of treatment are the most cost-effective.

Section B

What is new is that, from the 1950s onwards, there have been certain general changes in outlook about the finitude of resources as a whole and of health-care resources in particular, as well as more specific changes regarding the clientele of health-care resources and the cost to the community of those resources. Q34 Thus, in the 1950s and 1960s, there emerged an awareness in Western societies that resources for the provision of fossil fuel energy were finite and exhaustible and that the capacity of nature or the environment to sustain economic development and population was also finite. In other words, we became aware of the obvious fact that there were ‘limits to growth’. The new consciousness that there were also severe limits to health-care resources was part of this general revelation of the obvious. Looking back, it now seems quite incredible that in the national health systems that emerged in many countries in the years immediately after the 1939-45 World War, Q34 it was assumed without question that all the basic health needs of any community could be satisfied, at least in principle; the ‘invisible hand’ of economic progress would provide.

Section C

However, at exactly the same time as this new realisation of the finite character of health-care resources was sinking in, an awareness of a contrary kind was developing in Western societies: that people have a basic right to health-care as a necessary condition of a proper human life. Q29 Like education, political and legal processes and institutions, public order, communication, transport, and money supply, health-care came to be seen as one of the fundamental social facilities necessary for people to exercise their other rights as autonomous human beings. Q36 People are not in a position to exercise personal liberty and to be self-determining if they are poverty-stricken, or deprived of basic education, or do not live within a context of law and order. In the same way, basic health-care is a condition of the exercise of autonomy.

Section D

Although the language of ‘rights’ sometimes leads to confusion, Q35 by the late 1970s it was recognised in most societies that people have a right to health-care (though there has been considerable resistance in the United States to the idea that there is a formal right to health-care). Q30 It is also accepted that this right generates an obligation or duty for the state to ensure that adequate health-care resources are provided out of the public purse. The state has no obligation to provide a health-care system itself, but to ensure that such a system is provided. Put another way, basic health-care is now recognised as a ‘public good’, rather than a ‘private good’ that one is expected to buy for oneself. As the 1976 declaration of the World Health Organisation put it: ‘The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.’ As has just been remarked, in a liberal society basic health is seen as one of the indispensable conditions for the exercise of personal autonomy.

Section E

Q32&33&37 Just at the time when it became obvious that health-care resources could not possibly meet the demands being made upon them, Q31 people were demanding that their fundamental right to health-care be satisfied by the state. The second set of more specific changes that have led to the present concern about the n of health-care resources Q38 stems from the dramatic rise in health costs in most OECD1 countries, accompanied by large-scale demographic and social changes which have meant, to take one example, that elderly people are now major (and relatively very expensive) consumers of health-care resources. Thus in OECD countries as a whole, Q32&33 health costs increased from 3.8% of GDP1 2 in 1960 to 7% of GDP in 1980, and it has been predicted that the proportion of health costs to GDP will continue to increase. (In the US the current figure is about 12% of GDP and in Australia about 7.8% of GDP)

Q31 As a consequence, during the 1980s a kind of doomsday scenario (analogous to similar doomsday extrapolations about energy needs and fossil fuels or about population increases) was projected by health administrators, economists, and politicians. In this scenario, ever-rising health costs were matched against static or declining resources.

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IELTS READING – The Nature and Aims of Archaeology S28AT2

IELTS Reading The Nature and Aims of Archaeology reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to 🏺 Archaeology & History subject..

Q14 Archaeology is partly the discovery of the treasures of the past, partly the careful work of the scientific analyst, partly the exercise of the creative imagination. It is toiling in the sun on an excavation in the Middle East, it is working with living Inuit in the snows of Alaska, and it is investigating the sewers of Roman Britain. But it is also the painstaking task of interpretation so that we come to understand what these things mean for the human story. And it is the conservation of the world’s cultural heritage against looting and careless harm.

Archaeology, then, is both a physical activity out in the field, and an intellectual pursuit in the study or laboratory. That is part of its great attraction. Q16 The rich mixture of danger and detective work has also made it the perfect vehicle for fiction writers and film-makers, from Agatha Christie with Murder in Mesopotamia to Stephen Spielberg with Indiana Jones. However far from reality such portrayals are, they capture the essential truth that archaeology is an exciting quest – the quest for knowledge about ourselves and our past.

But how does archaeology relate to disciplines such as anthropology and history, that are also concerned with the human story? Is archaeology itself a science? And what are the responsibilities of the archaeologist in today’s world?

Anthropology, at its broadest, is the study of humanity – our physical characteristics as animals and our unique non-biological characteristics that we call culture. Q17 Culture in this sense includes what the anthropologist, Edward Tylor, summarised in 1871 as ‘knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’. Anthropologists also use the term ‘culture’ in a more restricted sense when they refer to the ‘culture1 of a particular society, meaning the non-biological characteristics unique to that society, which distinguish it from other societies. Q20 Anthropology is thus a broad discipline – so broad that it is generally broken down into three smaller disciplines: physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, and archaeology.

Q21 Physical anthropology, or biological anthropology as it is also called, concerns the study of human biological or physical characteristics and how they evolved. Cultural anthropology – or social anthropology – analyses human culture and society. Two of its branches are ethnography (the study at first hand of individual living cultures) and ethnology (which sets out to .compare cultures using ethnographic evidence to derive general principles about human society).

Archaeology is the ‘past tense of cultural anthropology’. Whereas cultural anthropologists will often base their conclusions on the experience of living within contemporaly communities, archaeologists study past societies primarily through their material remains – the buildings, tools, and other artefacts that constitute what is known as the material culture left over from former societies.

Nevertheless, one of the most important tasks for the archaeologist today is to know how to interpret material culture in human terms. How were those pots used? Why are some dwellings round and others square? Here the methods of archaeology and ethnography overlap. Archaeologists in recent decades have developed ‘ethnoarchaeology’, where, like ethnographers, they live among contemporary communities, Q22&23 but with the specific purpose of learning how such societies use material culture – how they make their tools and weapons, why they build their settlements where they do, and so on. Moreover, archaeology has an active role to play in the field of conservation. Heritage studies constitutes a developing field, where it is realised that the world’s cultural heritage is a diminishing resource which holds different meanings for different people.

If, then, archaeology deals with the past, in what way does it differ from history? In the broadest sense, just as archaeology is an aspect of anthropology, so too is it a part of history – where we mean the whole history of humankind from its beginnings over three million years ago. Indeed, for more than ninety-nine percent of that huge span of time, archaeology – the study of past material culture – is the only significant source of information. Q19 Conventional historical sources begin only with the introduction of written records around 3,000 BC in western Asia, and much later in most other parts of the world.

A commonly drawn distinction is between pre-history, i.e. the period before written records – and history in the narrow sense, meaning the study of the past using written evidence. To archaeology, which studies all cultures and periods, whether with or without writing, the distinction between history and pre-history is a convenient dividing line that recognises the importance of the written word, but in no way lessens the importance of the useful information contained in Q24 oral histories.

Since the aim of archaeology is the understanding of humankind, it is a Q25 humanistic study, and since it deals with the human past, it is a Q26 historical discipline. But it differs from the study of written history in a fundamental way. The material the archaeologist finds does not tell us directly what to think. Historical records make statements, offer opinions, and pass judgements. The objects the archaeologists discover, on the other hand, tell us nothing directly in themselves. In this respect, the practice of the archaeologist is rather like that of the Q27 scientist, who collects data, conducts experiments, formulates a hypothesis, tests the hypothesis against more data, and then, in conclusion, devises a model that seems best to summarise the pattern observed in the data. The archaeologist has to develop a picture of the past, just as the scientist has to develop a coherent view of the natural world.

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IELTS READING – How much higher? How much faster? S28AT1

IELTS reading sample 2

 IELTS Reading How much higher? How much faster? reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to 🏃 Sports Science & Human Performance subject..

— Limits to human sporting performance are not yet in sight —

Q1 Since the early years of the twentieth century, when the International Athletic Federation began keeping records, there has been a steady improvement in how fast athletes run, how high they jump, and how far they are able to hurl massive objects, themselves included, through space. Q3 For the so-called power events –that require a relatively brief, explosive release of energy, like the 100-metre sprint and the long jump-times and distances have improved ten to twenty percent. In the endurance events the results have been more dramatic. At the 1908 Olympics, John Hayes of the U.S. team ran to marathon in a time of 2:55:18. In 1999, Morocco’s Khalid Khannouchi set a new world record of 2:05:42, almost thirty percent faster.

No one theory can explain improvements in performance, but the most important factor has been genetics. ‘The athlete must choose his parents carefully,’ says Jesus Dapena, a sports scientist at Indiana University, invoking an oft-cited adage. Over the past century, the composition of the human gene pool has not changed appreciably, Q6 but with increasing global participation in athletics and greater rewards to tempt athletes-it is more likely that individuals possessing the unique complement of genes for athletic performance can be identified early. ‘Was there someone like [sprinter] Michael Johnson in the 1920s?’ Dapena asks. ‘I’m sure there was, but his talent was probably never realized.’

Identifying genetically talented individuals is only the first step. Michael Yessis, an emeritus professor of Sports Science at California State University at Fullerton, Q4 maintains that ‘genetics only determines about one-third of what an athlete can do. But with the right training, we can go much further with that one-third than we’ve been going.’ Yesis believes that U.S. runners, despite their impressive achievements, are ‘running on their Q7 genetics’. By applying more scientific methods, ‘they’re going to go much faster’. These methods include strength training that duplicates what they are doing in their running events as well as plyometrics, a technique pioneered in the former Soviet Union.

Whereas most exercises are designed to build up strength or endurance, plyometrics focuses on increasing Q8 power-the rate at which an athlete can expend energy. When a sprinter runs, Yesis explains, her foot stays in contact with the ground for just under a tenth of a second, half of which is devoted to landing and the other half to pushing off. Plyometric exercises help athletes make the best use of this brief interval.

Nutrition is another area that sports trainers have failed to address adequately. ‘Many athletes are not getting the best nutrition, even through supplements,’ Yessis insists. Each activity has its own nutritional needs. Few coaches, for instance, understand how deficiencies in trace minerals can lead to Q9 injuries.

Focused training will also play a role in enabling records to be broken. ‘If we applied the Russian training model to some of the outstanding runners we have in this country,’ Yessis asserts, ‘they would be breaking records left and right.’ He will not predict by how much, however: ‘Exactly what the limits are it’s hard to say, but there will be increases even if only by hundredths of a second, as long as our Q10 training continues to improve.’

One of the most important new methodologies is biomechanics, the study of the body in motion. Q11 A biomechanic films an athlete in action and then digitizes her performance, recording the motion of every joint and limb in three dimensions. By applying Newton’s law to these motions, ‘we can say that this athlete’s run is not fast enough; that this one is not using his arms strongly enough during take-off,’ says Dapena, who uses these methods to help high jumpers. To date, however, biomechanics has made only a small difference to athletic performance.

Revolutionary ideas still come from the athletes themselves. For example, during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, a relatively unknown high jumper named Dick Fosbury won the gold by going over the bar backwards, in complete contradiction of all the received high-jumping wisdom, a move instantly dubbed the Fosbury flop. Fosbury himself did not know what he was doing. Q12 That understanding took the later analysis of biomechanics specialists. who put their minds to comprehending something that was too complex and unorthodox ever to have been invented through their own mathematical simulations. Fosbury also required another element that lies behind many improvements in athletic performance: an innovation in athletic equipment. In Fosbury’s case, it was the cushions that jumpers land on. Traditionally, high jumpers would land in pits filled with sawdust. But by Fosbury’s time, sawdust pits had been replaced by soft foam cushions, ideal for flopping.

In the end, most people who examine human performance are humbled by the resourcefulness of athletes and the powers of the human body. ‘Once you study athletics, you learn that it’s a vexingly complex issue,’ says John S. Raglin, a sports psychologist at Indiana University. ‘Core performance is not a simple or mundane thing of higher, faster, longer. So many variables enter into the equation, and Q13 our understanding in many cases is fundamental. We’re got a long way to go.’ For the foreseeable future, records will be made to be broken.

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IELTS READING – Obtaining Linguistic Data S27AT3

IELTS Reading Obtaining Linguistic Data reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to 🗣️ Linguistics & Language Research subject..

A. Many procedures are available for obtaining data about a language. They range from a carefully planned, intensive field investigation in a foreign country to a casual introspection about one’s mother tongue carried out in an armchair at home.

B. In all cases, someone has to act as a source of language data – an informant Informants are (ideally) native speakers of a language, who provide utterances for analysis and other kinds of information about the language (e.g. translations, comments about correctness, or judgements on usage). Often, when studying their mother tongue, Q32 linguists act as their own informants, judging the ambiguity, acceptability, or other properties of utterances against their own intuitions. The convenience of this approach makes it widely used, and it is considered the norm in the generative approach to linguistics. But a linguist’s personal judgements are often uncertain, or disagree with the judgements of other linguists, at which point recourse is needed to more objective methods of enquiry, using non-linguists as informants.

The latter procedure is unavoidable when working on Q33 foreign languages, or child speech.

C. Many factors must be considered when selecting informants – whether one is working with single speakers (a common situation when languages have not been described before), two people interacting, small groups or large-scale samples. Age, sex, social background and other aspects of identity are important, as these factors are known to influence the kind of language used. Q29 The topic of conversation and the characteristics of the social setting (e.g. the level of formality) are also highly relevant, as are the personal qualities of the informants (e.g. their fluency and consistency). For larger studies, scrupulous attention has been paid to the sampling theory employed, and in all cases, decisions have to be made about the best investigative techniques to use.

D. Q27 Today, researchers often tape-record informants. This enables the linguist’s claims about the language to be checked, and provides a way of making those claims more accurate (‘difficult’ pieces of speech can be listened to repeatedly). But obtaining naturalistic, good-quality data is never easy. Q27 People talk abnormally when they know they are being recorded, and Q34 sound quality can be poor. A variety of tape-recording procedures have thus been devised to minimise the ‘observer’s paradox’ (how to observe the way people behave when they are not being observed). Q30 Some recordings are made without the speakers being aware of the fact – a procedure that obtains very natural data, though ethical objections must be anticipated. Alternatively, attempts can be made to make the speaker forget about the recording, such as keeping the tape recorder out of sight, or using radio microphones. A useful technique G is to introduce a topic that quickly involves the speaker, and stimulates a natural language style (e.g. asking older informants about how times have changed in their locality).

E. Q28 An audio tape recording does not solve all the linguist’s problems, however. Speech is often unclear and ambiguous. Where possible, therefore, the recording has to be supplemented by the observer’s written comments on the Q35 non-verbal behaviour of the participants, and about the context in general, A facial expression, for example, can dramatically alter the meaning of what is said. Q36 Video recordings avoid these problems to a large extent, but even they have limitations (the camera cannot be everywhere), and transcriptions always benefit from any additional commentary provided by an observer.

F. Q31 Linguists also make great use of structured sessions, in which they systematically ask their informants for utterances that describe certain actions, objects or behaviours. With a bilingual informant, or through use of an interpreter, it is possible to use translation techniques (‘How do you say table in your language?’). A large number of points can be covered in a short time, using interview worksheets and questionnaires. Often, the researcher wishes to obtain information about just a single variable, in which case a restricted set of questions may be used: a particular feature of pronunciation, for example, can be elicited by asking the informant to say a restricted set of words. There are also several direct methods of elicitation, such as asking informants to fill in the blanks in a substitution frame (e.g. I_see a car), or feeding them the wrong stimulus for correction (‘Is it possible to say / no can see?’).

G. A representative sample of language, compiled for the purpose of linguistic analysis, is known as a corpus. A corpus enables the linguist to make unbiased statements about Q37 frequency of usage, and it provides accessible data for the use of different researchers. Its range and size are variable. Some corpora attempt to cover the language as a whole, taking extracts from many kinds of text; others are extremely selective, providing a collection of material that deals only with a Q38 particular linguistic feature. The Q39 size of the corpus depends on practical factors, such as the time available to collect, process and store the data: it can take up to several hours to provide an accurate transcription of a few minutes of speech. Sometimes a small sample of data will be enough to decide a linguistic hypothesis; by contrast, corpora in major research projects can total millions of words. An important principle is that all corpora, whatever their size, are inevitably limited in their coverage, and always need to be supplemented by data derived from the Q40 intuitions of native speakers of the language, through either introspection or experimentation.

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