IELTS Practice Diagnostic Test Volume 1

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website

New Zealand is a small country of four million inhabitants, a long-haul flight from all the major tourist-generating markets of the world. Tourism currently makes up 9% of the country’s gross domestic product, and is the country’s largest export sector. Unlike other export sectors, which make products and then sell them overseas, tourism brings its customers to New Zealand. The product is the country itself – the people, the places and the experiences. In 1999, Tourism New Zealand launched a campaign to communicate a new brand position to the world. The campaign focused on New Zealand’s scenic beauty, exhilarating outdoor activities and authentic Maori culture, and it made New Zealand one of the strongest national brands in the world.

A key feature of the campaign was the website www.newzealand.com, which provided potential visitors to New Zealand with a single gateway to everything the destination had to offer. The heart of the website was a database of tourism services operators, both those based in New Zealand and those based abroad which offered tourism service to the country. Any tourism-related business could be listed by filling in a simple form. This meant that even the smallest bed and breakfast address or specialist activity provider could gain a web presence with access to an audience of long-haul visitors. In addition, because participating businesses were able to update the details they gave on a regular basis, the information provided remained accurate. And to maintain and improve standards, Tourism New Zealand organised a scheme whereby organisations appearing on the website underwent an independent evaluation against a set of agreed national standards of quality. As part of this, the effect of each business on the environment was considered.

To communicate the New Zealand experience, the site also carried features relating to famous people and places. One of the most popular was an interview with former New Zealand All Blacks rugby captain Tana Umaga. Another feature that attracted a lot of attention was an interactive journey through a number of the locations chosen for blockbuster films which had made use of New Zealand’s stunning scenery as a backdrop. As the site developed, additional features were added to help independent travelers devise their own customised itineraries. To make it easier to plan motoring holidays, the site catalogued the most popular driving routes in the country, highlighting different routes according to the season and indicating distances and times.

Later, a Travel Planner feature was added, which allowed visitors to click and ‘bookmark’ places or attractions they were interested in, and then view the results on a map. The Travel Planner offered suggested routes and public transport options between the chosen locations. There were also links to accommodation in the area. By registering with the website, users could save their Travel Plan and return to it later, or print it out to take on the visit. The website also had a ‘Your Words’ section where anyone could submit a blog of their New Zealand travels for possible inclusion on the website.

The Tourism New Zealand website won two Webby awards for online achievement and innovation. More importantly perhaps, the growth of tourism to New Zealand was impressive. Overall tourism expenditure increased by an average of 6.9% per year between 1999 and 2004. From Britain, visits to New Zealand grew at an average annual rate of 13% between 2002 and 2006, compared to a rate of 4% overall for British visits abroad.

The website was set up to allow both individuals and travel organisations to create itineraries and travel packages to suit their own needs and interests. On the website, visitors can search for activities not solely by geographical location, but also by the particular nature of the activity. This is important as research shows that activities are the key driver of visitor satisfaction, contributing 74% to visitor satisfaction, while transport and accommodation account for the remaining 26%. The more activities that visitors undertake, the more satisfied they will be. It has also been found that visitors enjoy cultural activities most when they are interactive, such as visiting a marae (meeting ground) to learn about traditional Maori life. Many long-haul travelers enjoy such learning experiences, which provide them with stories to take home to their friends and family. In addition, it appears that visitors to New Zealand don’t want to be ‘one of the crowd’ and find activities that involve only a few people more special and meaningful.

It could be argued that New Zealand is not a typical destination. New Zealand is a small country with a visitor economy composed mainly of small businesses. It is generally perceived as a safe English-speaking country with a reliable transport infrastructure. Because of the long-haul flight, most visitors stay for longer (average 20 days) and want to see as much of the country as possible on what is often seen as a once-in-a-lifetime visit. However, the underlying lessons apply anywhere – the effectiveness of a strong brand, a strategy based on unique experiences and a comprehensive and user-friendly website.

Questions 1 - 7

Complete the table below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.

Questions 8 - 13

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

In boxes 8-13 on, 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

8. The website www.newzealand.com aimed to provide ready-made itineraries and packages
   for travel companies and individual tourists.
9. It was found that most visitors started searching on the website by geographical location.
10. According to research, 26% of visitor satisfaction is related to their accommodation.
11. Visitors to New Zealand like to become involved in the local culture.
12. Visitors like staying in small hotels in New Zealand rather than in larger ones.
13. Many visitors feel it is unlikely that they will return to New Zealand after their visit.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

The Growth Mindset

Over the past century, a powerful idea has taken root in the educational landscape. The concept of intelligence as something innate has been supplanted by the idea that intelligence is not fixed, and that, with the right training, we can be the authors of our own cognitive capabilities. Psychologist Alfred Binet, the developer of the first intelligence tests, was one of many 19th-century scientists who held that earlier view and sought to quantify cognitive ability. Then, in the early 20th century, progressive thinkers revolted against the notion that inherent ability is destiny. Instead, educators such as John Dewey argued that every child’s intelligence could be developed, given the right environment.

‘Growth mindset theory’ is a relatively new – and extremely popular – version of this idea. In many schools today you will see hallways covered in motivational posters and hear speeches on the mindset of great sporting heroes who simply believed their way to the top. A major focus of the growth mindset in schools is coaxing students away from seeing failure as an indication of their ability, and towards seeing it as a chance to improve that ability. As educationalist Jeff Howard noted several decades ago: ‘Smart is not something that you just are, smart is something that you can get.’

The idea of the growth mindset is based on the work of psychologist Carol Dweck in California in the 1990s. In one key experiment, Dweck divided a group of 10- to 12-year-olds into two groups. All were told that they had achieved a high score on a test but the first group were praised for their intelligence in achieving this, while the others were praised for their effort. The second group – those who had been instilled with a ‘growth mindset’ – were subsequently far more likely to put effort into future tasks. Meanwhile, the former took on only those tasks that would not risk their sense of worth. This group had inferred that success or failure is due to innate ability, and this ‘fixed mindset’ had led them to fear of failure and lack of effort. Praising ability actually made the students perform worse, while praising effort emphasised that change was possible.

One of the greatest impediments to successfully implementing a growth mindset, however, is the education system itself: in many parts of the world, the school climate is obsessed with performance in the form of constant testing, analysing and ranking of students – a key characteristic of the fixed mindset. Nor is it unusual for schools to create a certain cognitive dissonance, when they applaud the benefits of a growth mindset but then hand out fixed target grades in lessons based on performance.

Aside from the implementation problem, the original growth mindset research has also received harsh criticism. The statistician Andrew Gelman claims that ‘their research designs have enough degrees of freedom that they could take their data to support just about any theory at all’. Professor of Psychology Timothy Bates, who has been trying to replicate Dweck’s work, is finding that the results are repeatedly null. He notes that: ‘People with a growth mindset don’t cope any better with failure … Kids with the growth mindset aren’t getting better grades, either before or after our intervention study.’

Much of this criticism is not lost on Dweck, and she deserves great credit for responding to it and adapting her work accordingly. In fact, she argues that her work has been misunderstood and misapplied in a range of ways. She has also expressed concerns that her theories are being misappropriated in schools by being conflated with the self-esteem movement: ‘For me the growth mindset is a tool for learning and improvement. It’s not just a vehicle for making children feel good.’

But there is another factor at work here. The failure to translate the growth mindset into the classroom might reflect a misunderstanding of the nature of teaching and learning itself. Growth mindset supporters David Yeager and Gregory Walton claim that interventions should be delivered in a subtle way to maximise their effectiveness. They say that if adolescents perceive a teacher’s intervention as conveying that they are in need of help, this could undo its intended effects.

A lot of what drives students is their innate beliefs and how they perceive themselves. There is a strong correlation between self-perception and achievement, but there is evidence to suggest that the actual effect of achievement on self-perception is stronger than the other way round. To stand up in a classroom and successfully deliver a good speech is a genuine achievement, and that is likely to be more powerfully motivating than vague notions of ‘motivation’ itself.

Recent evidence would suggest that growth mindset interventions are not the elixir of student learning that its proponents claim it to be. The growth mindset appears to be a viable construct in the lab, which, when administered in the classroom via targeted interventions, doesn’t seem to work. It is hard to dispute that having faith in the capacity to change is a good attribute for students. Paradoxically, however, that aspiration is not well served by direct interventions that try to instil it.

Motivational posters and talks are often a waste of time, and might well give students a deluded notion of what success actually means. Teaching concrete skills such as how to write an effective introduction to an essay then praising students’ effort in getting there is probably a far better way of improving confidence than telling them how unique they are, or indeed how capable they are of changing their own brains. Perhaps growth mindset works best as a philosophy and not an intervention.

Questions 14-16

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

14.  What can we learn from the first paragraph?

15. The second paragraph describes how schools encourage students to

16. In the third paragraph, the writer suggests that students with a fixed mindset

Questions 17-22

Look at the following statements (Questions 17-22) and the list of people below.

Match each statement with the correct person or people, A-E.

List of People

        A   Alfred Binet

        B   Carol Dweck

        C   Andrew Gelman

        D   Timothy Bates

        E   David Yeager and Gregory Walton

Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 17-22 below. You may use any letter more than once.

17. The methodology behind the growth mindset studies was not strict enough.
18. The idea of the growth mindset has been incorrectly interpreted.
19. Intellectual ability is an unchangeable feature of each individual.
20. The growth mindset should be promoted without students being aware of it.
21. The growth mindset is not simply about boosting students’ morale.
22. Research shows that the growth mindset has no effect on academic achievement.

Questions 23-26

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 2?

In boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet, write

YES                  if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO                   if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN    if it is impossibLle to say what the writer thinks about this

23. Dweck has handled criticisms of her work in an admirable way.
24. Students’ self-perception is a more effective driver of self-confidence than actual
    achievement is.
25. Recent evidence about growth mindset interventions has attracted unfair coverage in the
    media.
26. Deliberate attempts to encourage students to strive for high achievement may have a
    negative effect.

Reading Passage 3

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

Insight or Evolution?

Two scientists consider the origins of discoveries and other innovative behavior

Scientific discovery is popularly believed to result from the sheer genius of such intellectual stars as naturalist Charles Darwin and theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. Our view of such unique contributions to science often disregards the person’s prior experience and the efforts of their lesser-known predecessors. Conventional wisdom also places great weight on insight in promoting breakthrough scientific achievements, as if ideas spontaneously pop into someone’s head – fully formed and functional.

There may be some limited truth to this view. However, we believe that it largely misrepresents the real nature of scientific discovery, as well as that of creativity and innovation in many other realms of human endeavor.

Setting aside such greats as Darwin and Einstein – whose monumental contributions are duly celebrated – we suggest that innovation is more a process of trial and error, where two steps forward may sometimes come with one step back, as well as one or more stops to the right or left. This evolutionary view of human innovation undermines the notion of creative genius and recognizes the cumulative nature of scientific progress.

Consider one unheralded scientist: John Nicholson, a mathematical physicist working in the 1910s who postulated the existence of ‘proto-elements’ in outer space. By combining different numbers of weights of these proto-elements’ atoms, Nicholson could recover the weights of all the elements in the then-known periodic table. These successes are all the more noteworthy given the fact that Nicholson was wrong about the presence of proto-elements: they do not actually exist. Yet, amid his often fanciful theories and wild speculations, Nicholson also proposed a novel theory about the structure of atoms. Niels Bohr, the Nobel prize-winning father of modern atomic theory, jumped off from this interesting idea to conceive his now-famous model of the atom.

What are we to make of this story? One might simply conclude that science is a collective and cumulative enterprise. That may be true, but there may be a deeper insight to be gleaned. We propose that science is constantly evolving, much as species of animals do. In biological systems, organisms may display new characteristics that result from random genetic mutations. In the same way, random, arbitrary or accidental mutations of ideas may help pave the way for advances in science. If mutations prove beneficial, then the animal or the scientific theory will continue to thrive and perhaps reproduce.

Support for this evolutionary view of behavioral innovation comes from many domains. Consider one example of an influential innovation in US horseracing. The so-called ‘acey-deucy’ stirrup placement, in which the rider’s foot in his left stirrup is placed as much as 25 centimeters lower than the right, is believed to confer important speed advantages when turning on oval tracks. It was developed by a relatively unknown jockey named Jackie Westrope. Had Westrope conducted methodical investigations or examined extensive film records in a shrewd plan to outrun his rivals? Had he foreseen the speed advantage that would be conferred by riding acey-deucy? No. He suffered a leg injury, which left him unable to fully bend his left knee. His modification just happened to coincide with enhanced left-hand turning performance. This led to the rapid and widespread adoption of riding acey-deucy by many riders, a racing style which continues in today’s thoroughbred racing.

Plenty of other stories show that fresh advances can arise from error, misadventure, and also pure serendipity – a happy accident. For example, in the early 1970s, two employees of the company 3M each had a problem: Spencer Silver had a product – a glue which was only slightly sticky – and no use for it, while his colleague Art Fry was trying to figure out how to affix temporary bookmarks in his hymn book without damaging its pages. The solution to both these problems was invention of the brilliantly simple yet phenomenally successful Post-It note. Such examples give lie to the claim that ingenious, designing minds are responsible for human creativity and invention. Far more banal and mechanical forces may be at work; forces that are fundamentally connected to the laws of science.

The notions of insight, creativity and genius are often invoked, but they remain vague and of doubtful scientific utility, especially when one considers the diverse and enduring contributions of individuals such as Plato, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Curie, Pasteur and Edison. These notions merely label rather than explain the evolution of human innovations. We need another approach, and there is a promising candidate.

The Law of Effect was advanced by psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1898, some 40 years after Charles Darwin published his groundbreaking work on biological evolution, On the Origin of Species. This simple law holds that organisms tend to repeat successful behaviors and to refrain from performing unsuccessful ones. Just like Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection, the Law of Effect involves an entirely mechanical process of variation and selection, without any end objective in sight.

Of course, the origin of human innovation demands much further study. In particular, the provenance of the raw material on which the Law of Effect operates is not as clearly known as that of the genetic mutations on which the Law of Natural Selection operates. The generation of novel ideas and behaviors may not be entirely random, but constrained by prior successes and failures – of the current individual (such as Bohr) or of predecessors (such as Nicholson).

The time seems right for abandoning the naïve notion of intelligent design and genius, and for scientifically exploring the true origins of creative behavior.

Questions 27-31
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Choose the correct letter in boxes 27-31 below.

27. The purpose of the first paragraph is to

28. What are the writers doing in the second paragraph?

29. In the third paragraph, what do the writers suggest about Darwin and Einstein?

30. John Nicholson is an example of a person whose idea

31. What is the key point of interest about the ‘acey-deucy’ stirrup placement?

Questions 32 - 36

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 32-36 belowt, write

YES                  if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO                   if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN    if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

32. Acknowledging people such as Plato or da Vinci as geniuses will help us understand the
    process by which great minds create new ideas.
33. The Law of Effect was discovered at a time when psychologists were seeking a scientific
    reason why creativity occurs.
34. The Law of Effect states that no planning is involved in the behaviour of organisms.
35. The Law of Effect sets out clear explanations about the sources of new ideas and behaviours.
36. Many scientists are now turning away from the notion of intelligent design and genius.

Questions 37 - 40

Complete the summary using the list of words, A-G, below.

Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 37-40 below.

The Origins of Creative Behavior

The traditional view of scientific discovery is that breakthroughs happen when a single great mind has sudden  Although this can occur, it is not often the case. Advances are more likely to be the result of a longer process. In some cases, this process involves such as Nicholson’s theory about proto-elements. In others, simple necessity may provoke innovation, as with Westrope’s decision to modify the position of his riding stirrups. There is also often an element of , for example, the coincidence of ideas that led to the invention of the Post-It note. With both the Law of Natural Selection and the Law of Effect, there may be no clear  involved, but merely a process of variation and selection.

A   invention

B   goals

C   compromise

D   mistakes

E   luck

F   inspiration

G   experiments