IELTS General Reading Test 10 – with Answers

VOLUNTEERS
Thank you for volunteering to work one-on-one with some of the students at our school who need extra help.

SMOKING POLICY
Smoking is prohibited by law in the classrooms and anywhere on the school grounds.

SAFETY AND HEALTH
Volunteers are responsible for their own personal safety and should notify the school of any preexisting medical conditions. Prescription and any other medications that you normally carry with you must be handed in to the school nurse on arrival and collected on departure. If you require them, the nurse will dispense them to you in her office.

SIGN IN
A signing book is located at an office reception. Please sign this register every time you come to the school. This is important for insurance purposes and emergency situations. After signing the book, collect a Visitor’s badge from the office. This must be worn at all times when you are on school premises. Remember to return the badge afterward.

MESSAGES
Teachers will communicate with volunteers via telephone, email or messages left at the office. Always ask for messages. You may communicate with teachers in the same way – the preferred method is to leave a memo in the relevant teacher’s pigeonhole. These can be found at the end of the corridor in the staffroom block.

WORK HOURS
We understand that your time commitment is entirely voluntary and therefore flexible. If your personal schedule should change and this affects your availability, please contact the Coordinator for Volunteers at the school on extension 402; alternatively, you could drop into her office situated in F block.

ROLE OF THE COORDINATOR
The Coordinator is responsible for matching volunteer tutors with students, organizing tutorial rooms, ensuring student attendance, and overseeing volunteer tutor training. If you encounter any problems, contact her as above.

Camping in the Bush

MINIMAL IMPACT BUSH WALKING Responsible campers observe minimal impact bushwalking practices. This is a code of ethics and behavior aimed at preserving the natural beauty of bushwalking areas.

PLANNING
Good planning is the key to safe and successful camping trips. Obtaining a camping permit in advance of leaving to camp out overnight in a national park is obligatory. Bookings are also compulsory for some parks. There could be limits on group sizes in some parks. Occasionally campsites may be closed owing to bush-fire danger or for other reasons. Always obtain permission from the owner prior to crossing private property.

EQUIPMENT
As well as your usual bushwalking gear, you will need the right equipment for camping. A fuel stove and fuel for cooking are essential: not only is it safer, faster, and cleaner; but it is easier to use in wet weather. It is recommended that you pitch a freestanding tent that requires few pegs and therefore has a less ecological impact. Take a sleeping mat, if you have one, to put your sleeping bag on for a more comfortable night’s sleep. You will also need a hand trowel to bury human waste – for proper sanitation and hygiene.

CAMPFIRES
The traditional campfire actually causes a huge amount of environmental damage. If you gather firewood, you are removing the vital habitat of insects, reptiles, birds, and small mammals. When campfires lead to bushfires, they create an enormous danger to native bush inhabitants and bush-walkers alike and result in the destruction of the environment. Under no circumstances should you light a fire in the bush.

CAMPSITES
Erect your tent at an existing site if possible; otherwise, try to find a spot where you won’t damage vegetation. Never cut branches or move rocks or disturb the soil unnecessarily. Aim to leave your campsite as you found it or even cleaner.

RUBBISH
Remove all rubbish – carry it out with you. Don’t attempt to burn or bury rubbish because this creates a fire hazard and/or disturbs the soil. Animals can dig up buried rubbish and scatter it about. Never feed the local wildlife – carry out all food scraps as these disturb the natural nutrient balance and can create weed problems.

WALK SAFELY
Keep on the track. Wear footwear suitable for the terrain. Take a map.

Savants

Superheroes like Superman have powers that are the envy of many children and even adults. Yet, we don’t have to read comic books to find people with superpowers. These

1. Leslie Lemke

Born blind, he was 15 when he eventually learned how to walk. When he was 16 he played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. after hearing this piece of music on the television the previous night. He is now able to play any piece of music simply by listening to it once.

2. Orlando Serrell

He was not born a savant. He was ten years old when he was hit on the head with a baseball. Since then he has been able to perform complicated calendar calculations and remember the weather every day from the day of the accident.

3. Kim Peek

Kim was the inspiration for the character played by Dustin Hoffman in the Rain Man. His nickname is “Kimputer” because he has read over 12,000 books and remembers everything about them. He reads two pages at once – his left eye reads the left page and his right eye reads the right page – in 3 seconds!

4. Stephen Wiltshire

When he was nine he learned to talk but before this, he had already developed a love for drawing. After a helicopter ride in Tokyo, he drew an accurate and detailed view of the city on a piece of paper 10 meters long!

5. Ellen Boudreaux

Like Leslie Lemke, Ellen Boudreaux is a blind autistic savant with exceptional musical abilities. She can play music perfectly after hearing it just once. She can also walk around without bumping into things. She does this by making little chirping sounds that seem to act like a human sonar.

6. Daniel Tammet

Daniel is exceptionally gifted mathematically and linguistically. He can speak 11 languages fluently and learned one of them, Icelandic, in 7 days. He appears normal but Daniel contends that he actually had to will himself to learn how to talk to and behave around people.

Job Sharing Job sharing is the perfect solution for people who want to carry on with their career but also raise a family. Before you do it you need to learn a few things as it can be more difficult than it might seem.

Job Sharing Is Like Marriage

When looking for a job share partner you need to look for someone that is the perfect teammate. You don’t need to find someone who is a carbon copy of you but certainly, they need to have a similar professional style, work ethic, and standards as you.

 Job Sharing Relies on Communication

For a job share to work smoothly and efficiently you must work like one person. The transition from one person to another, from one day to the next must be seamless. Sharing information successfully can be done by setting up a shared email account, and using the same filing system to organize computer and paper files.

Be Flexible

No matter how well organized your schedule is things happen. Your child needs to visit the dentist. A friend flies in to visit you. A hundred and one reasons why you can’t be at work tomorrow. If you have a good job sharing relationship then your partner will cover for you.

Job Sharing Means Less Income

This might be obvious but when you job share you not only share the work but you also share the income. That’s right you will only get half the income maybe even less if you decide to do less than half the work.

You Share Accomplishments

Just as in marriage many things you do, probably all the things you do, will be achieved because of you and your job share partner. In other words, you must share any praise for accomplishments.

Your Circumstances May Change

No matter how much you like your job, things change and so your commitment to it might also change. Things that you can’t predict now might make you think about getting a full-time job again; your spouse might move to another city, you decide to go back to university who knows what the future might bring?

A
Slow Pood is an international grassroots movement dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of good food. It started as a humorous protest against the spread of 7 fast food around the world and has developed into a major advocate for the world’s unique food products. The movement’s logo is a snail. Since being founded in 1986 the Slow Food snail has crept from its home in Italy to 45 other countries around the world and now boasts over 650,000 members. The movement challenges the loss of flavor resulting from the industrialization of food and agriculture. Its approach is ‘eco-gastronomic’. Slow Food is committed to compiling and distributing information about local foods, drinks and culture. Its purpose is to preserve endangered foods, encourage bio-diversity, and support small-scale producers of ethnic and local products around the world.

B
Modern agri-business has given the world cheap food with little taste, produced at a high cost to the environment. Slow Food has been instrumental in developing initiatives to revive products that take time and craftsmanship to create and which are threatened by global corporate practices. Protecting traditional local products also means safeguarding the people and ecosystems involved in their manufacture. It also provides incentives for the pursuit of production methods that are healthier for taste, the environment, and the agricultural economy.

C
Statistics on the loss of biodiversity in our food chain are alarming. In less than a century over 300,000 plant species have disappeared — one plant species disappears every six hours. Today less than 30 varieties of plant feed 95% of the world’s population. In Europe, half the breeds of domestic livestock became extinct during the course of the twentieth century. The crisis over mad cow disease and the ongoing debate over genetically modified food have given Slow Food, with its emphasis on organic methods, unexpected political influence.

D
In the space of a few years, Slow Food has become a major lobbying force in the European Union on agriculture and trade policy. Agribusiness practices that have become dominant worldwide are geared to produce in quantity. This is a carryover from agricultural policies set in the 1950s in Europe when hunger from the war was still a vivid memory. At that time, when the goal was self-sufficiency, farmers received subsidies according to the amounts they produced. There was and still is no reward for quality. Two generations ago, the average European family spent about one-half of its income on food. Today it spends about 15 percent. Surveys conducted by Slow Food show that a large majority of Italians would be willing to pay up to 20 percent more for food in order to guarantee its quality, especially given recent food scares and scandals.

E
As national boundaries disappear in Europe and become more open around the world, food has emerged as an important source of identity. Slow Food’s position on globalization is that it has the potential to help as well as harm the small food producer. On the one hand, globalization has allowed multinational corporations to extend their reach to virtually every comer of the world. However, rather than being afraid of the fast-food giants, Slow Food is attempting to offer an alternative choice of “virtuous globalization” by choosing to focus on quality and helping the small, local producer to access the global market.

F
The Slow Food organization had to find ways to ensure its own economic viability. An initial strategy to generate income through publishing led to a number of food guides that were quickly successful Some of the most popular of these feature restaurants serving authentic, local foods at local prices. Numerous and varied initiatives have sprung up since. The popular quarterly magazine, ‘SLOW’, features articles about food culture around the world. Italy’s largest food show, the ‘Salon de Gusto’, sponsored by the Slow Food movement, provides an international market to hundreds of small producers whose goods, until recently, rarely left their village or region. Now there is even ‘slow travel’. A growing number of tour operators in Italy, France, Australia, and India subscribe to the movement, promoting “cultural and educational journeys using food and the people that produce it as the learning medium.” ‘Slow cities’ are entire communities dedicated to improving the quality of life for their citizens through environmentally sound, culturally-aware, eco-gastronomic policies and activities.

G
Another significant initiative of Slow Food is the Ark of Taste, a database of endangered species of edible plants and domestic animals worldwide. Commissions have been set up in many countries to seek out and catalogue new products. So far, 800 products from 26 countries have been figuratively brought on board the Ark in an attempt to save them. The Ark of Taste has become an international project and a resource for agricultural biodiversity around the world.

H
So, a movement that began as a humorous protest against fast food has, in its own organic way, evolved into a versatile and intelligent advocate for the protection of the environment. The best response to global forces challenging the ability to enjoy our food and our lives begin, according to the Slow Food movement, ‘at the table’. We are invited to slow down, appreciate the flavors of food and drink, and cultivate the art of living. Fast food isn’t likely to disappear, but Slow Food seems to be here to stay as well. Its message is getting through — encouraging pleasure-loving environmentalism as an alternative to the high-speed pace of the fast-food world. From its humble beginnings, Slow Food now includes a global network of people capable of generating ideas, and programs to defend the right to a responsible form of pleasure, respectful of cultural diversity, and available to all.