IELTS READING

Time: 1 hr
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Question 1-13, which are based on Reading
Passage 1.

How to find your way out of a food desert

Ordinary citizens have been using the internet to draw attention to the lack of healthy
eating options in inner cities
Over the last few months, a survey has been carried out of over 200 greengrocers and
convenience stores in Crown Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. As
researchers from the Brooklyn Food Association enter the details, colorful dots appear on
their online map, which display the specific location of each of the food stores in a
handful of central Brooklyn neighborhoods. Clicking on a dot will show you the store's
name and whether it carries fresh fruit and vegetables, wholegrain bread, low-fat dairy
and other healthy options.
The researchers plan eventually to survey the entire borough of Brooklyn. ‘We want to get
to a more specific and detailed description of what that looks like’, says Jeffrey Heehs, who
leads the project. He hopes it will help residents find fresh food in urban areas where the
stores sell mostly packaged snacks or fast food, areas otherwise known as food deserts.
The aim of the project is also to assist government officials in assessing food availability,
and in forming future policies about what kind of food should be sold and where.
In fact, the Brooklyn project represents the intersection of two growing trends: mapping
fresh food markets in US cities, and private citizens creating online maps of
local neighborhood features. According to Michael Goodchild, a geographer at the
University of California at Santa Barbara, citizen map makers may make maps
because there is no good government map, or to record problems such as burned-out
traffic lights.
According to recent studies, people at higher risk of chronic disease and who receive
minimal incomes for the work they do, frequently live in neighborhoods located in food
deserts. But how did these food deserts arise? Linda Alwitt and Thomas Donley,
marketing researchers at DePaul University in Chicago, found that supermarkets often
can’t afford the amount of land required for their stores in cities. City
planning researcher Cliff Guy and colleagues at the University of Leeds in the UK found in
2004 that smaller urban groceries tend to close due to competition from
suburban supermarkets.

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 1 of 12
As fresh food stores leave a neighborhood, residents find it harder to eat well and stay
healthy. Food deserts are linked with lower local health outcomes, and they may be a
driving force in the health disparities between lower-income and affluent people in the US.
Until recently, the issue attracted little national attention, and received no ongoing funding
for research.
Now, more US cities are becoming aware of their food landscapes. Last year, the United
States Department of Agriculture launched a map of where food stores are located in all
the US counties. Mari Gallagher, who runs a private consulting firm, says her researchers
have mapped food stores and related them to health statistics for the cities of Detroit,
Chicago, Cincinnati and Washington, D.c. These maps help cities identify where food
deserts are and, occasionally, have documented that people living in food deserts have
higher rates of diet-related diseases.
The Brooklyn project differs in that it’s run by a local core of five volunteers who have
worked on the project for the past year, rather than trained, academic researchers. To
gather data, they simply go to individual stores with pre-printed surveys in hand, and once
the storekeeper's permission has been obtained, check off boxes on their list against the
products for sole in the store. Their approach to data collection and research has been
made possible by technologies such as mapping software and GPS-related smart phones,
Google Maps and OpenStreetMap, an open-source online map with a history of
involvement in social issues. Like Brooklyn Food Association volunteers, many citizens
online map makers use maps to bring local problems to official attention, Goodchild says.
Heehs, the mapping project leader, says that after his group gathers more data, it will
compare neighborhoods, come up with solutions to address local needs, and then present
them to New York City officials. Their website hasn’t caught them much local or official
attention yet, however. It was launched only recently, but its creators haven’t yet set up
systems to see who’s looking at it.
Experts who visited the Brooklyn group’s site were optimistic but cautious. ‘This kind of
detailed information could be very useful’ says Michele Ver Ploeg, an economist for
the Department of Agriculture. To make the map more helpful to both residents and policy
makers, she would like to see price data for healthy products, too. Karen Ansel, a
registered dietician and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, found the
site confusing to navigate. ‘That said, with this information in place the group has the tools
to build a more user-friendly site that could be ... very helpful to consumers’, she says. ‘The
group also should ensure their map is available to those who don’t have internet access at
home’, she adds. In fact, a significant proportion of Brooklyn residents don’t have internet
access at home and 8 percent rely on dial-up service, instead of high-speed internet
access, according to Gretchen Maneval, director of Brooklyn College’s Center for the study
of Brooklyn. ‘It’s still very much a work in progress’, Heehs says of the online map. They’ll
start advertising it online and by email to other community groups, such as urban food
garden associations, next month. He also hopes warmer days in the spring will draw out
fresh volunteers to spread awareness and to finish surveying, as they have about two-
thirds of Brooklyn left to cover.

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 2 of 12
Questions 1-6
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

The Brooklyn Food Association

The online map provides users with a store’s name, 1…………………………. and details of
its produce. One goal of the mapping project is to help develop new 2…………….. on food.
Citizen maps are sometimes made when 3 ……………………….. maps are unsatisfactory.

Reasons for the development of food deserts

New research suggests that people living in food deserts often have low 4……………….. .
Some supermarkets are unable to buy enough 5………………..inside cities for their stores.
Small grocery stores in cities often cannot cope with 6…………………….. supermarkets.

Questions 7-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
Write answers in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

7. A group of professional researchers are in charge of the Brooklyn project.

8. The Brooklyn project team carries out their assessment of stores without the owner’s
knowledge
9. The Brooklyn project has experienced technical difficulties setting up the website.
10. The city government has taken a considerable interest in the Brooklyn project website.
11. Michele Ver Ploeg believes the Brooklyn project website should contain additional
information.
12. The rate of internet use in Brooklyn is unlikely to increase in the near future.
13. Jeffrey Heehs would like more people to assist with the Brooklyn project research.

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 3 of 12
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Question 14-26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 on the following pages.

The importance of law

A. The law influences all of us virtually all the time, it governs almost all aspects of our
behavior, and even what happens to us when we are no longer alive. It affects us from the
embryo onwards. It governs the air we breathe, the food and drink we consume, our travel,
family relationships, and our property. It applies at the bottom of the ocean and in space.
Each time we examine a label on a food product, engage in work as an employee or
employer, travel on the roads, go to school to learn or to teach, stay in a hotel, borrow a
library book, create or dissolve a commercial company, play sports, or engage the services
of someone for anything from plumbing a sink to planning a city, we are in the world of law.
B. Law has also become much more widely recognized as the standard by which behavior
needs to be judged. A very telling development in recent history is the way in which the
idea of law has permeated all parts of social life. The universal standard of whether
something is socially tolerated is progressively becoming whether it is legal, rather than
something that has always been considered acceptable. In earlier times, most people were
illiterate.
Today, by contrast, a vast number of people can read, and it is becoming easier for people
to take an interest in law, and for the general population to help actually shape the law in
many countries. However, law is a versatile instrument that can be used equally well for
the improvement or the degradation of humanity.
C. This, of course, puts law in a very significant position. In our rapidly developing world,
all sorts of skills and knowledge are valuable. Those people, for example, with knowledge
of computers, the internet, and communications technology are relied upon by the rest of
us.
There is now someone with IT skills or an IT help desk in every UK school, every
company, every hospital, every local and central government office. Without their
knowledge, many parts of commercial and social life today would seize up in minutes. But
legal understanding is just as vital and as universally needed. The American comedian
Jerry Seinfeld put it like this, 'We are all throwing the dice, playing the game, moving our
pieces around the board, but if there is a problem, the lawyer is the only person who has
read the inside of the top of the box.' In other words, the lawyer is the only person who has
read and made sense of the rules.
D. The number of laws has never been greater. In the UK alone, about 35 new Acts of
Parliament are produced every year, thereby delivering thousands of new rules. The
legislative output of the British Parliament has more than doubled in recent times from
1,100 pages a year in the early 1970s, to over 2,500 pages a year today. Between 1997
and
2006, the legislature passed 365 Acts of Parliament and more than 32,000 legally binding
statutory instruments. In a system with so much law, lawyers do a great deal not just to

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 4 of 12
vindicate the rights of citizens and organizations but also to help develop the law through
legal arguments, some of which are adapted by judges to become laws. Law courts can
and do produce new law and revise old law, but they do so having heard the arguments of
lawyers.
E. However, despite their important role in developing the rules, lawyers are not universally
admired. Anti-lawyer jokes have a long history going back to the ancient Greeks.
More recently the son of a famous Hollywood actor was asked at his junior school what his
father did for a living, to which he replied, ‘My daddy is a movie actor, and sometimes he
plays the good guy, and sometimes he plays the lawyer. For balance, though, it Is worth
remembering that there are and have been many heroic and revered lawyers such as the
Roman philosopher and politician Cicero and Mahatma Gandi, the Indian campaigner for
independence.
F. People sometimes make comments that characterize lawyers as professionals whose
concerns put personal reward above truth, or who gain financially from misfortune. There
are undoubtedly lawyers that would fit that bill, just as there are some scientists,
Journalists and others in that category, But, In general, it is no more Just to say that
lawyers are bad because they make a living from people's problems than it is to make the
same accusation In respect of nurses or IT consultants, A great many lawyers are involved
in public law work, such as that Involving civil liberties, housing and other Issues. Such
work Is not lavishly remunerated and the quality of the service provided by these lawyers
relies on considerable professional dedication, Moreover, much legal work has nothing to
do with conflict or misfortune, but is primarily concerned with drafting documents, another
source of social disaffection for lawyers, and disaffection for the law, is a limited public
understanding of how law works and how It could be changed. Greater clarity about these
issues, maybe as a result of better public relations, would reduce many aspects of public
dissatisfaction with the law.

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 5 of 12
Questions 14-19
The reading Passage has six paragraphs A-F.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i. Different areas of professional expertise
ii. Reasons why it is unfair to criticise lawyers
iii. The disadvantages of the legal system
iv. The law applies throughout our lives
v. The law has affected historical events
vi. A negative regard for lawyers
vii. public's increasing ability to influence the law
viii. growth in laws

14. Paragraph A
15. Paragraph B
16. Paragraph C
17. Paragraph D
18. Paragraph E
19. Paragraph F

Questions 20-21
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO of the following statements does the writer make about legal skills in
today's world?

A. There should be a person with legal training in every hospital.

B. Lawyers with experience in commercial law are the most in demand.
C. Knowledge of the law is as important as having computer skills.
D. Society could not function effectively without legal experts.

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 6 of 12
E. Schools should teach students about the law.
Questions 22-26
Complete the summary below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.

Lawyers as professionals People sometimes say that 22. …………………………. is of little

interest to lawyers, who are more concerned with making money. This may well be the
case with some individuals, in the same way that some 23. …………………………. or
scientific experts may also be driven purely by financial greed. However, criticizing lawyers
because their work is concerned with people's problems would be similar to attacking IT
staff or 24.…………………………. for the same reason. In fact, many lawyers focus on
questions relating, for example, to housing or civil liberties, which requires them to
have 25. …………………………. to their work. What's more, a lot of lawyers' time is spent
writing 26.…………………………. rather than dealing with people's misfortunes.

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

The creation of lasting memories

Many studies of the brain processes underlying the creation of memory consolidation
(lasting memories) have involved giving various human and animal subjects treatment,
while training them to perform a task. These have contributed greatly to our understanding.

In pioneering studies using goldfish, Bernard Agranoff found that protein synthesis
inhibitors injected after training caused the goldfish to forget what they had learned. In
other experiments, he administered protein synthesis inhibitors immediately before the fish
were trained. The remarkable finding was that the fish learned the task completely
normally, but forgot it within a few hours - that is, the protein synthesis inhibitors blocked
memory consolidation, but did not influence short-term memory.

There is now extensive evidence that short-term memory is spared by many kinds of
treatments, including electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), that block memory consolidation.
On the other hand, and equally importantly, neuroscientist Ivan Izquierdo found that many
drug treatments can block short-term memory without blocking memory consolidation.

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 7 of 12
Contrary to the hypothesis put forward by Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb, in 1949,
long-term memory does not require short-term memory, and vice versa.

Such findings suggest that our experiences create parallel, and possibly independent
stages of memory, each with a different life span. All of this evidence from clinical and
experimental studies strongly indicates that the brain handles recent and remote memory
in different ways; but why does it do that?

We obviously need to have memory that is created rapidly: reacting to an ever and rapidly
changing environment requires that. For example, most current building codes require that
the heights of all steps in a staircase be equal. After taking a couple of steps, up or down,
we implicitly remember the heights of the steps and assume that the others will be the
same. If they are not the same, we are very likely to trip and fall. Lack of this kind of rapidly
created implicit memory would be bad for us and for insurance companies, but perhaps
good for lawyers. It would be of little value to us if we remembered the heights of the steps
only after a delay of many hours, when the memory becomes consolidated.

The hypothesis that lasting memory consolidates slowly over time is supported primarily by
clinical and experimental evidence that the formation of long-term memory is influenced by
treatments and disorders affecting brain functioning. There are also other kinds of
evidence indicating more directly that the memories consolidate over time after learning.
Avi Kami and Dov Sagi reported that the performance of human subjects trained in a visual
skill did not improve until eight hours after the training was completed, and that
improvement was even greater the following day. Furthermore, the skill was retained for
several years.

Studies using human brain imaging to study changes in neural activity induced by learning
have also reported that the changes continue to develop for hours after learning. In an
innovative study using functional imaging of the brain, Reza Shadmehr and Henry
Holcomb examined brain activity in several brain regions shortly after human subjects were
trained in a motor learning task requiring arm and hand movements. They found that while
the performance of the subjects remained stable for several hours after completion of the
training, their brain activity did not; different regions of the brain were predominantly active
at different times over a period of several hours after the training. The activity shifted from
the prefrontal cortex to two areas known to be involved in controlling movements, the

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 8 of 12
motor cortex and cerebellar cortex. Consolidation of the motor skill appeared to involve
activation of different neural systems that increased the stability of the brain processes
underlying the skill.

There is also evidence that learning-induced changes in the activity of neurons in the
cerebral cortex continue to increase for many days after the training. In an extensive series
of studies using rats with electrodes implanted in the auditory cortex, Norman Weinberger
reported that, after a tone of specific frequency was paired a few times with footshock,
neurons in the rats’ auditory cortex responded more to that specific tone and less to other
tones of other frequencies. Even more interestingly, the selectivity of the neurons’
response to the specific tone used in training continued to increase for several days after
the training was terminated.

It is not intuitively obvious why our lasting memories consolidate slowly. Certainly, one can
wonder why we have a form of memory that we have to rely on for many hours, days or a
lifetime, that is so susceptible to disruption shortly after it is initiated. Perhaps the brain
system that consolidates long-term memory over time was a late development in
vertebrate evolution. Moreover, maybe we consolidate memories slowly because our
mammalian brains are large and enormously complex. We can readily reject these ideas.
All species of animals studied to date have both short and long-term memory; and all are
susceptible to retrograde amnesia. Like humans, birds, bees, and molluscs, as well as fish
and rats, make long-term memory slowly. Consolidation of memory clearly emerged early
in evolution, and was conserved.

Although there seems to be no compelling reason to conclude that a biological system

such as a brain could not quickly make a lasting memory, the fact is that animal brains do
not. Thus, memory consolidation must serve some very important adaptive function or
functions. There is considerable evidence suggesting that the slow consolidation is
adaptive because it enables neurobiological processes occurring shortly after learning to
influence the strength of memory for experiences. The extensive evidence that memory
can be enhanced, as well as impaired, by treatments administered shortly after training,
provides intriguing support for this hypothesis

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 9 of 12
Questions 27-31
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

27. Experiments by Bernard Agranoff described in Reading Passage 3 involved

A. injecting goldfish at different stages of the experiments.

B. training goldfish to do different types of tasks.
C. using different types of treatment on goldfish.
D. comparing the performance of different goldfish on certain tasks.

28. Most findings from recent studies suggest that

A. drug treatments do not normally affect short-term memories.

B. long-term memories build upon short-term memories.
C. short and long-term memories are formed by separate processes.
D. ECT treatment affects both short-and long-term memories.

29. In the fifth paragraph, what does the writer want to show by the example of staircases?

A. Prompt memory formation underlies the performance of everyday

tasks.
B. Routine tasks can be carried out unconsciously.
C. Physical accidents can impair the function of memory.
D. Complex information such as regulations cannot be retained by the
memory.

30. Observations about memory by Kami and Sagi

A. cast doubt on existing hypotheses.

B. related only to short-term memory.
C. were based on tasks involving hearing.
D. confirmed other experimental findings.

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 10 of 12
31. What did the experiment by Shadmehr and Holcomb show?

A. Different areas of the brain were activated by different tasks.

B. Activity in the brain gradually moved from one area to other areas.
C. Subjects continued to get better at a task after training had finished.
D. Treatment given to subjects improved their performance on a task.

Question 32-36
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
Write the answers in boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet.
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

32. The training which Kami and Sagi’s subjects were given was repeated over several
days.
33. The rats in Weinberger’s studies learned to associate a certain sound with a specific
experience.
34. The results of Weinberger’s studies indicated that the strength of the rats’ learned
associations increases with time.
35. It is easy to see the evolutionary advantage of the way lasting memories in humans are
created.
36. Long-term memories in humans are more stable than in many other species.

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 11 of 12
Questions 37-40
Complete the summary using list of words below.
Write the answers (A-I) in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

Long-term memory
Various researchers have examined the way lasting memories are formed. Laboratory
experiments usually involve teaching subjects to do something 37. …………………. and
treating them with mild electric shocks or drugs. Other studies monitor behaviour after a
learning experience, or use sophisticated equipment to observe brain activity.

The results are generally consistent: they show that lasting memories are the result of a
38. ………………………… and complex biological process.

The fact that humans share this trait with other species, including animals with 39.
……………………… brains, suggests that it developed 40.……………………………. in our
evolutionary history.

A. early B. easy C large D. late E lengthy

. .
F. new G. recently H small I. quick
.

Copyright© Unialoy IELTS & PTE Centre Dial: 01896-263646 www.unialoy.com Date- 8 May 2024 Page 12 of 12