IELTS

PRACTICE TEST 8
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 Listening
SECTION 1 Questions 1 – 10
Questions 1-5
Complete the form below.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.
ROCKET MOVING COMPANY SERVICE REPORT
Example Answer
Sales representative name …. John Terry….

Customer’s name 1. .........................................

Phone number 007539984

Email 2. ......................................... @gmail.com

Address to be collected from 3. ........................................., Bristol.

Country of destination Canada

Departure date 4. .........................................

Arrival date September 15th

Shipping Payment Method 5. .........................................

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Questions 6-10

What shipping method does the customer choose for her belongings?

Write the correct letter, A, B or C, next to questions 6-10.

List of delivery packages

A. Super Fast

B. Fast

C. Standard

List of items

6. mirrors and dishes .........................................

7. computer .........................................

8. business documents .........................................

9. clothes .........................................

10. photo album .........................................

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SECTION 2 Questions 11 – 20

Questions 11 – 15

Choose the correct letter, A, B or C.

NEW EMPLOYEE NOTICES

11. What time does the morning shift start?

A 7:00 a.m.

B 7:30 a.m.

C 8:00 a.m.

12. What do employees have to do before they can use the fingerprint system?

A arrive 30 minutes earlier

B sign a check-in list

C get help from some particular employees

13. How long will it take for the fingerprint system to be ready?

A 2 days

B 3 days

C 4 days

14. On which circumstance would an employee lose 30% of their daily wage?

A when they forget to either check in or check out

B when they are 10 minutes late without a reasonable explanation

C when they do not check in on purpose

15. At least how many times a week does each employee have to wear uniform?

A two times

B three times

C four times

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Questions 16 – 20

Who will be responsible for the following duties?

Write the correct letter A – H next to questions 17 – 20.

List of duties

A. evaluate some of the new employees’ work

B. decide whether to fire any new employees

C. deal with customers who want to buy the company’s products in instalments

D. do the job of a particular person in case he is not at his desk

E. become the new manager of the showroom

F. appoint an assistant who can help the customer behavior research team

G. help a new team on planning and carrying out research on customer behaviors

16 Sarah Thompson

17 Thomas Edgy

18 Elena Johnson

19 Mr. Marcus Cradle

20 Miss Kelly Jenkins

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SECTION 3 Questions 21 – 30

Questions 21-22

Complete the sentences below.

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.

The presentation will last for about 25 minutes.

The deadline for the final draft is on 21 .......................... .

Students must design their own 22 .......................... and .......................... .

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Questions 23-30
Complete the flow-chart below.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.
SALMON’S LIFE CYCLE
EGGS & ALEVINS
• Upper river (slow-moving water)
• Eggs are surrounded by reeds and 23 .......................... for about 24 ..........................
before hatching.
• Newborn salmon (alevins) stay close to their nests for several months.

FRY
• Lower river (fast-flowing water)
• maximum length: approximately 25 ..........................
• ‘fry’ stay in freshwater for up to 4 years before the 26 .......................... takes
place.

OPEN SEA
• Salmon reach 27 .......................... (70-76 cm long)
• Ocean life lasts for 1- 7 years, depending on different species.

HOMEWARD MIGRATION
• Salmon seem to find their way back to their birthplace by using their 28 ...............
• The long journey draws a lot of energy from their body, except for the
29 ..........................
• Both the males and females die after laying and fertilizing eggs, providing
30 .......................... for the next generation.

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SECTION 4 Questions 31 – 40

Complete the notes below.

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.

CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR II

World War II Overview

• Caused by a military 31 .......................... on a global scale.

• Two parties: the Allies and the Axis.

• From September 1st, 1939 to September 2nd, 1945.

Causes

• Germany:

o held responsible for the war.

o was subjected to 32 .........................................

o had to pay a tremendous amount as fine

o had to make territorial concessions

All these factors caused harm to the country’s economy and its 33
...................................

Adolf Hitler and Nazism gained popularity among German people.

• Italy:

o Introduction of Fascism by Benito Mussolini.

o Fascism have almost the same 34 .......................... with Nazism.

o Mussolini joined hands with Hitler.

o No 35 .......................... from the Allied Powers due to underestimation.

• Japan:

o Suffered from depression and tried to invade China but failed.

o Attacked Pearl Harbour.

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Effects

• Losses:

o tremendous casualties

o many people were killed in the genocide system because the Nazis
believed those people were 36 ..........................

o Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bombs.

o European’s economy stood still

o Millions of people die of 37 ..........................

• New country 38 .......................... in Europe.

• End of 39 .......................... with the death of Mussolini and Hitler.

• United Nations was found to enhance the world’s 40 …………………….and peace.

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 Reading
Reading Passage 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1.
Don’t go bananas: Should we be cutting down on the fruit we eat?

News that some zoos have stopped feeding monkeys fruit has led people to suggest humans
avoid it too. But that ignores a few crucial details, says James Wong.

If you have ever delved into the world of online diet advice, you might have heard the
claim that modern fruit is so filled with sugar that it is unsafe for zoo animals. It might have
come with links to media reports with headlines like “Zoo bans monkeys from eating
bananas”. The claim that fruit is no longer a healthy part of the diet – for humans as well
as animals – has gathered thousands of likes and shares from low-carb devotees around
the world. But how good is the evidence behind these claims? As a botanist who knows
rather a lot about fruit, but very little about monkeys, I decided to go straight to the source,
and talk to the zoologist whose work first spurred these stories.

Amy Plowman is director of living collections at Paignton Zoo in Devon, UK, and has done
pioneering research on the diets of non-human primates in captivity for the last 10 years.
She observed that the food given to zoo monkeys was often a poor reflection of what they
ate in the wild. In fact, the diet of these animals in some zoos is more like the food
preferences of their human keepers. “We have, whether consciously or unconsciously,
assumed that human food is suitable for non-human primates,” she says. In some leading
zoos, primate species whose diet in the wild is made up overwhelmingly of leaves are
routinely fed chicken, eggs, cheese, yogurt, bread and noodles. This understanding of
primate nutrition is, Plowman says, “far removed from reality”.

To create a diet as similar to the monkeys’ natural diet as possible, she eliminated energy-
dense items such as meat, dairy and grains, and reduced the amount of fruit and some of
the more calorific vegetables. The monkeys’ new regime consisted essentially of specialist
primate feed pellets, leafy vegetables and fresh tree leaves. In a very short time, Plowman
and her team noticed dramatic improvements in the animals’ health, with reduced obesity,
improved dental health and even behavioural improvements. The press enthusiastically

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reported the story, focusing almost exclusively on the angle of zoo monkeys no longer
being fed bananas. When other institutions, such as Melbourne Zoo, started to follow suit,
it triggered a further flurry of headlines.

These news reports rarely mentioned that many of the animals involved in these new
feeding regimes, such as the red pandas in Melbourne Zoo, are essentially leaf eaters and
don’t actually eat much, if any, fruit in their natural habitat anyway. But then, pandas being
fed bamboo instead of fruit is less of a story. Those who linked the switch to the benefits
of particular diets in humans also failed to point out that the new regime given to these
animals involved eliminating all meat and dairy too, and swapping to an essentially 100 per
cent leaf diet. Advocates of ultra-low carb and meat-heavy “carnivore” diets for humans
were therefore sharing research whose findings were contrary to their claims.

What does Plowman think of this interpretation of her findings in zoo animals being used
as justification for excluding fruit from human diets? “I wasn’t aware of this and find it very
surprising,” she says. “Fruit and non-leafy vegetables have a much lower energy content
than most of the foods available to humans, so are a very healthy option for us given most
of us consume too much.” Stressing that her work on zoo animals couldn’t be translated
to humans, she went on to say that the dietary alterations she made were to replace foods
higher in sugar and starch with indigestible fibre, not replace it with fat and protein. There
is plenty of evidence, she says, that a switch from starch to fat and protein is “definitely
not” a good thing.

The evidence suggests she is right. In several exhaustive reviews of the best scientific
studies we have to date, higher fruit consumption has been consistently linked to a lower
incidence of obesity in humans, as well as a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease
and even certain types of cancer. Perhaps more pertinently, if you or I were to put on a
leaf-only diet we would need to eat more than 300 cups of chopped, raw lettuce a day.
That wouldn’t be pretty. We would struggle to get anywhere near the adequate amount
of calories to meet our daily needs, and would quickly succumb to nutrient deficiencies. It
seems, much like zookeepers of the past, our close-relatedness to monkeys means many
of us, low carb activists included, can’t help but project their needs onto ourselves and vice
versa. But to do so requires us to ignore one small detail, which even I as a botanist can
confirm: Humans aren’t zoo monkeys. Shocking, I know.

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Questions 1-3

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

1. What component in fruit that makes it believed to cause harm to animals in zoos?

2. Which group of people had a great interest in the claim of fruit being unhealthy for
humans?

3. On what subject has Amy Plowman pioneered research about diets for the last
decade?

Questions 4-8

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 4-8 on your answer sheet.

According to Amy Plowman’s observation during her research, what monkeys feed on in
zoos is quite different from their food in 4 ……………. In several zoos, the food given to
these animals more closely resembles what 5 ………………… favour as their food. Primate
species in some famous zoos are given foods differing from their main food which is leaves.

In her attempt to create a diet which closely resembles the natural diet of monkeys,
Plowman removed foods high in calories, cut down on fruit and some 6 ……………… which
contain a lot of calories. After a short time, it is recorded that there were positive changes
in the 7 ……………… of the monkeys. This story was quickly delivered in news; however, the
lack of 8 ………. in the new diet was basically the only thing the press paid attention to.

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Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?

In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write:

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Fruit is not a main part in the natural diet of red pandas in Melbourne Zoo.

10. That people advocating for the elimination of fruit from human diets based on
Plowman’s research findings was something she already expected.

11. Plowman believes that her research has direct relevance to human’s diets.

12. Eating a higher proportion of fruit every day is the best way to fight cancer.

13. An all-leaf diet will only provide us with just enough energy on a daily basis.

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Reading Passage 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2.

A LANGUAGE THAT BECOMES EXTINCT

On a residential block at the border between Brooklyn and Queens, Gottscheer

Hall appears like a mirage from 1945. Alfred Belay has been coming to Gottscheer Hall
since he arrived in America more than 60 years ago. Then, the neighborhood was filled
with refugees from Gottschee, those just like Belay, a settlement that once occupied the
highlands of modern-day Slovenia. Now, he’s one of a few thousand remaining speakers
of its language, Gottscheerisch. Every Christmas he leads a service in his 600 -year-old
native language that few understand.

Belay and his sister, 83-year-old Martha Hutter, have agreed to let 26-year-old Daniel
Bogre Udell film them having a conversation. They walk past the dark wood bar of
Gottscheer Hall serving pretzels and sausages, and they climb the stairs to an empty
banquet room. Bogre Udell sets up his camera and the siblings begin to banter in their
inscrutable Germanic mother tongue. Hearing such a rare language spoken on a
residential block of Queens is not unusual for Bogre Udell, the co-founder of a nonprofit
called Wikitongues. There are some 800 languages spoken within the 10-mile radius of
New York City, which is more than 10 percent of the world’s estimated 7,099 languages.
Since he has decided to record all of them, the melting-pot metropolis is a natural
launching point.

Bogre Udell, who speaks four languages, met Frederico Andrade, who speaks five, at the
Parsons New School in New York City. In 2014, they launched an ambitious project to
make the first public archive of every language in the world. They’ve already
documented more than 350 languages, which they are tracking online, and plan to hit
1,000 in the coming years. “When humanity loses a language, we also lose the potential
for greater diversity in art, music, literature, and oral traditions,” says Bogre Udell.
“Would Cervantes have written the same stories had he been forced to write in a
language other than Spanish? Would the music of Beyoncé be the same in a language
other than English?”

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Between 1950 and 2010, 230 languages went extinct, according to the UNESCO Atlas
of the World’s Languages in Danger. Today, a third of the world’s languages have fewer
than 1,000 speakers left. Every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker, 50 to 90
percent of them are predicted to disappear by the next century. Priceless documentation
opportunities disappear regularly. Not long ago, one of the last two speakers of a Saami
language dialect in the Russian steppes died right before his recording session with
Wikitongues. Some 500 languages could slip through their grasp in the next five years,
they estimate.

Political persecution, a lack of preservation, and globalization are to blame for the
dwindling language diversity. For much of the 20th century, governments across the
world have imposed language on indigenous people, often through coercion. Some 100
aboriginal languages in Australia have disappeared since European settlers arrived. A
half-century after China annexed Tibet, dozens of distinct dialects with unique alphabets
are on the verge of extinction. Studies have shown that suppressing language impairs
everything from health to school performance. This forced suppression, however, is no
longer the biggest threat facing our linguistic ecosystem. “Most languages die today not
because of abject and outright persecution—though this does happen on occasion—but
rather because they are made unviable,” says Andrade. Factors like climate change and
urbanization force linguistically diverse rural and coastal communities to migrate and
assimilate to new communities with new languages. “This form of language loss is a
cancer, not a gunshot.”

In Gottscheer Hall, Belay and Hutter transform as they chatter for Daniel Bogre Udell’s
video camera. At one point Hutter breaks into song. In Gottscheerisch, they recall
growing up in a single bedroom home where they spoke Gottscheerisch—German was
used for school and church. In 1941, Gottschee was annexed by the Italians and its
residents were sent to resettlement camps. Four years later, the Gottscheer Relief
Association opened its doors to the thousands of immigrants arriving in New York. By
the time Belay and Hutter arrived, in the 1950s, the neighborhood was so full of
immigrants that Hutter was barely able to practice her English.

The newcomers spoke Gottscheerisch to each other and raised their kids with English.
Now, 60 years later, Belay has started speaking to his kids in Gottscheerisch for the first
time, but the language is on the brink of extinction. As a street language, Gottscheerisch

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was rarely written down. It could only be learned by ear until 1994, when Hutter
published a five-year effort collecting definitions for 1,400 words: the first English-
Gottscheerisch dictionary. “The old Gottscheers were convinced that nobody can learn
Gottscheerisch, so they didn’t try to teach it,” Hutter recalls. “But any language can be
learned, so I thought, ‘This old language is going to die and they won’t know anything.’”

Questions 14-19

Look at the following actions and the list of people below.

Match each action with the correct person, A-D.

Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet

NB: YOU MAY USE ANY LETTER MORE THAN ONCE.

14. stated that some minor language speakers believed their tongue couldn’t be taught
so they refused to pass it down

15. came to the US no less than half a century ago

16. began to teach the young generation his language but this may be too late

17. stressed that the extinction of languages is not a sudden event

18. is concerned about the dire consequences of language extinction

19. prepared to be filmed in front of the camera together with her brother

LIST OF PEOPLE

A. Martha Hutter

B. Alfred Belay

C. Frederico Andrade

D. Bogre Udell

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Questions 20-22

Choose THREE letters, A-G.

Write your answers in boxes 20-22 on your answer sheet.

Which THREE of the following factors are mentioned in the passage as the main causes
of language extinction?

A. Declining diversity in music, literature and arts

B. Globalization

C. Industrialization

D. Climate change

E. Disappearance of priceless documentation

F. Lack of humanity in contemporary society

G. Urbanization

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Questions 23-26
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.

23. In what way Udell and Andrade are alike?

A. They both came from Parsons New School in New York City
B. They share similar personalities
C. They are both multi-lingual people
D. They both have recorded 1000 languages for their project

24. Why did Bogre Udell mention Cervantes in paragraph 3?

A. To question about a solution to language disappearance
B. To stress the significance of language diversity
C. To state possible causes of language extinction
D. To compare the difference between literature and music in different languages

25. Why did the writer mention the event in Russian steppes in the fourth paragraph?
A. To illustrate the regular disappearance of minor languages
B. To estimate the undesirable consequences of language disappearance
C. To record the death of a minor group of people in Russia
D. To prove that their prediction about the disappearance of some languages
were true

26. What can be inferred from the fifth paragraph?

A. Prior to the arrival of European colonizers, a hundred of minor languages in
Australia went extinct.
B. Language suppression is harmful to everything apart from health and academic
performance.
C. Language needs preserving; otherwise, they will become extinct out of sudden
D. Climate change and urbanization lead to immigration, language assimilation and
possibly language extinction.

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Reading Passage 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3.

WINNING AT WORK

Why hot-desking and open-plan offices are bad for you?

A. Two trends have dominated workplace design in the past few decades: open-plan
offices, where everyone sits in the same space, and “non-territorial” or hot-desking offices,
where no one has their own place. The stated aim of both is to foster creativity and
collaboration – by having everyone within sight in an open-plan office for example. But
while there is some evidence that workers do move around more in open-plan settings,
and so benefit from increased physical activity, it seems it’s not to talk to each other. The
lack of privacy in an open-plan setting makes us retreat into our shells, putting on
headphones to block background noise and emailing and instant messaging people just a
few desks away.

B. Open-plan isn’t necessarily bad, says Casey Lindberg, who researches workplace
design at HKS architects in Texas – it is just that it isn’t good for all the people all the time.
“We are only just starting to recognise individual differences, including age, personality,
the type of work and more,” he says. “This means office design needs to be flexible.” Hence
hot-desking. In principle, this allows people to move to areas best suited to their task and
mood: a private room if they need to concentrate hard, an open area if they want to
collaborate and be inspired. But in 2004, Theo van der Voordt at Delft University of
Technology in the Netherlands and his colleagues surveyed companies that switched from
fixed-desk offices to hot-desking. They found no evidence of a productivity boost, but
there was a definite minus: animal territorialism. “Users often try to claim a familiar place
by arriving at work earlier or by leaving items behind during their absence,” van der Voordt
wrote. So perhaps I should learn to love my flimsy, shared cubicle.

C. In the end, few of us have much control over the design of our workplace, but
employers might do well to pay heed: according to William Bordass, a London-based
building scientist, changes in individual efficiency of up to 15 per cent “might be
attributable to the design, management and use of the indoor environment”.
How to stay focused and avoid distractions?

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D. The world is full of distractions. Unfortunately, the world also requires us to work.
If you work in an office, it might be emails, phone calls or colleagues with queries; if you’re
at home, the contents of the fridge or a sudden fixation on dust mice under the sofa.
Sometimes it takes even less. “If you’re sitting and doing work and someone near you says
something particularly interesting, like ‘love’ or maybe ‘Brexit’, that can pull your focus,”
says Adrian Furnham, a psychologist and management expert at the BI Norwegian
Business School in Oslo.

E. So how can we rein in our wandering minds? Switching off email and messaging
services helps. And put your smartphone and other extraneous screens away – they attract
our attention even if they are off. “If you’ve got a screen, that’s not good if you’re trying
to process information,” says Furnham. If you are tempted to pop on headphones and use
music to shut out distractions, avoid listening to anything familiar: knowing the words or
tune well will distract you even more. Furnham’s own research shows this effect is most
pronounced for introverted people. “The worst distraction of all-time would be introverts
doing complex word-processing tasks with loud, familiar music,” he says. But not all
distractions are bad, however. If you are doing something repetitive like stuffing envelopes
or laying bricks, being distracted by listening to music or a podcast or engaging in a
conversation with a co-worker can ultimately boost productivity.

How to stay awake?

F. During dull meetings, it is sometimes hard to stifle a yawn. In the worst case, you
feel your eyes getting heavier and heavier… Next time you gruntingly return from the land
of nod to your colleagues’ disapproving stares, try blaming the room. The fact is, our
buildings are making us sleepy. “In the past 40 years, we have tried to conserve energy by
building airtight offices,” says Joseph Allen at Harvard University. “But it’s not beneficial
to the people working within.” As ventilation rates fall, odours and harmful chemicals build
up. In poorly ventilated offices, carbon dioxide can reach as high as 2500 parts per million,
a concentration more than six times that outdoors. This increases the incidence not just of
fatigue, but also of headache and respiratory tract irritation.

G. In controlled experiments, Allen and his team put workers in an office space in
which the CO2 level was varied from day to day, and measured their information-gathering
skills, attention levels and ability to manage crises. On days when the CO2 concentration

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was at a common indoor level, workers performed 15 per cent worse than when the level
of this gas was halved. If the windows are sealed in your workplace, the best thing you can
hope for is a good ventilation system. Otherwise, crack open windows regularly to
replenish indoor oxygen. If colleagues who are sensitive to the cold protest, tell them it is
for their own good.

H. While you are there, take a good look at the view, too. “Human eyes are organs to
exercise. It’s good to focus on something far away, then near and then far away,” says
architect Vivian Loftness at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. The muscles in
your eyes will get stiff after too long staring at a computer screen, increasing your sense
of tiredness. Plus, exposure to daylight has a role in regulating the hormone melatonin.
This helps us stay awake during the day and get a good night’s sleep – the number-one
way to avoid embarrassing board-room snoozes.

Questions 27-30

Reading Passage 3 has eight sections, A-H.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.

27. a downside of open workspace driving us to isolate ourselves

28. a measured drop in performance resulted from a higher concentration of a particular

toxic gas

29. several types of beneficial distractions in certain situations

30. the severe consequences of inadequate ventilation on workers’ health

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Questions 31-34

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 31-34 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

31. People are able to choose places where they feel most suitable for working in non-
territorial offices.

32. Working at home may prevent you from being distracted more easily compared to
working in an office.

33. Listening to recognizable tunes is a good way to stay away from distractions.

34. Talking to another person when doing monotonous tasks can improve productivity.

Questions 35-40

Looking at the following statements and the list of people’s names below.

Match each statement with the correct person, A-F.

Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

List of people

A. Joseph Allen D. Vivian Loftness

B. Casey Lindberg E. Theo van der Voordt

C. Adrian Furnham F. William Bordass

35. The interior design of the workplace might affect people’s productivity.

36. Fascinating words from others can act as a distraction in the workplace.

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37. Workplace design should be divided into areas which suit different working
preferences.

38. Airtight buildings might be harmful to people working inside.

39. People can relax their eyes by alternating their distance-related visual concentration.

40. People tend to deliberately hold their preferred working territories.

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 Writing
TASK 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.

The diagram shows the process of how to make smoked fish.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make
comparisons where relevant.

Write at least 150 words.

TASK 2

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Scientists predict in the near future cars will be driven by computers, not people.

Do you think it is a positive or negative development?

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own
knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.

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 Speaking
Part 1

• What is your plan for the future and when will you start?
• How do you intend to achieve that?
• If you go abroad, do you plan to live in the countryside or in a big city? (Why?)

Part 2

Describe a time when a child made you laugh

You should say:

• When it was
• Who the child was
• What he/she did

And explain why you laughed IELTS Speaking

Part 3

• Why do many people say childhood is the most beautiful period of life?
• At what age should people have a baby?
• What can parents do to help children know how to protect themselves?

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