IELTS Mock Test 2022

October
Reading Practice Test 1

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READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14, which are based on Reading Passage
1 below.

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THE CREATIVITY MYTH
A. It is a myth that creative people are born with their talents: gifts from God or nature.
Creative genius is, in fact, latent within many of us, without our realising. But how far do we
need to travel to find the path to creativity? For many people, a long way. In our everyday lives,
we have to perform many acts out of habit to survive, like opening the door, shaving, getting
dressed, walking to work, and so on. If this were not the case, we would, in all probability,
become mentally unhinged. So strongly ingrained are our habits, though this varies from
person to person, that sometimes, when a conscious effort is made to be creative, automatic
response takes over. We may try, for example, to walk to work following a different route, but
end up on our usual path. By then it is too late to go back and change our minds. Another day,
perhaps. The same applies to all other areas of our lives. When we are solving problems, for
example, we may seek different answers, but, often as not. Find ourselves walking along the
same well-trodden paths.

B. So, for many people, their actions and behaviour are set in immovable blocks, their minds
clogged with the cholesterol of habitual actions, preventing them from operating freely, and
thereby stifling creation. Unfortunately, mankind’s very struggle for survival has become a
tyranny – the obsessive desire to give order to the world is a case in point. Witness people’s
attitude to time, social customs and the panoply of rules and regulations by which the human
mind is now circumscribed.

C. The groundwork for keeping creative ability in check begins at school. School, later university
and then work, teach us to regulate our lives, imposing a continuous process of restrictions
which is increasing exponentially with the advancement of technology. Is it surprising then that
creative ability appears to be so rare? It is trapped in the prison that we have erected. Yet, even
here in this hostile environment, the foundations for creativity’ are being laid; because setting
off on the creative path is also partly about using rules and regulations. Such limitations are
needed so that once they are learnt, they can be broken.

D. The truly creative mind is often seen as totally free and unfettered. But a better image is of a
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mind, which can be free when it wants, and one that recognises that rules and regulations are
parameters, or barriers, to be raised and dropped again at will. An example of how the human
mind can be trained to be creative might help here. People s minds are just like tense muscles
that need to be freed up and the potential unlocked. One strategy is to erect artificial barriers or
hurdles in solving a problem. As a form of stimulation, the participants in the task can be
forbidden to use particular solutions or to follow certain lines of thought to solve a problem. In
this way they are obliged to explore unfamiliar territory, which may lead to some startling
discoveries. Unfortunately, the difficulty in this exercise, and with creation itself, is convincing
people that creation is possible, shrouded as it is in so much myth and legend. There is also an
element of fear involved, however subliminal, as deviating from the safety of one’s own thought
patterns is very much akin to madness. But, open Pandora’s box, and a whole new’ world
unfolds before your very eyes.

E. Lifting barriers into place also plays a major part in helping the mind to control ideas rather
than letting them collide at random. Parameters act as containers for ideas, and thus help the
mind to fix on them. When the mind is thinking laterally, and two ideas from different areas of
the brain come or are brought together, they form a new’ idea, just like atoms floating around
and then forming a molecule. Once the idea has been formed, it needs to be contained or it will
fly away, so fleeting is its passage. The mind needs to hold it in place for a time so that it can
recognise it or call on it again. And then the parameters can act as channels along which the
ideas can flow, developing and expanding. When the mind has brought the idea to fruition by
thinking it through to its final conclusion, the parameters can be brought down and the idea
allowed to float off and come in contact with other ideas.

Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has five paragraphs, A-E.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

1 the way parameters in the mind help people to be creative

2 the need to learn rules in order to break them

3 how habits restrict us and limit creativity

4 how to train the mind to be creative

5 how the mind is trapped by the desire for order

Questions 6-10
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Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D

Write your answers in boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet.

6 According to the writer, creative people

A are usually born with their talents.

B are born with their talents.

C are not born with their talents.

D are geniuses.

7 According to the writer, creativity is

A a gift from Cod or nature.

B an automatic response.

C difficult for many people to achieve.

D a well-trodden path.

8 According to the writer

A the human race’s fight to live is becoming a tyranny.

B the human brain is blocked with cholesterol.

C the human race is now circumscribed by talents.

D the human race’s fight to survive stifles creative ability.

9 Advancing technology

A holds creativity in check.

B improves creativity.

C enhances creativity.

D is a tyranny.

10 According to the author, creativity

A is common.

B is increasingly common.
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 C is becoming rarer and rarer.

D is a rare commodity.

Questions 11-14
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer?

In boxes 11-14 on your answer sheet write

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

11
Rules and regulations are examples of parameters.

12
The truly creative mind is associated with the need for free
speech and a totally free society.

13
One problem with creativity is that people think it is
impossible.

14
The act of creation is linked to madness.

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READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-27, which are based on Reading Passage
2 below.

The Dinosaurs Footprints and Extinction

A

EVERYBODY knows that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid. Something big hit the earth
65 million years ago and, when the dust had fallen, so had the great reptiles. There is thus a
nice if ironic, symmetry in the idea that a similar impact brought about the dinosaurs’ rise. That
is the thesis proposed by Paul Olsen, of Columbia University, and his colleagues in this week’s
Science.

Dinosaurs first appeared in the fossil record 230m years ago, during the Triassic period. But
they were mostly small, and they shared the earth with lots of other sorts of reptile. It was in
the subsequent Jurassic, which began 202 million years ago, that they overran the planet and
turned into the monsters depicted in the book and movie “Jurassic Park”. (Actually, though, the
dinosaurs that appeared on screen were from the still more recent Cretaceous period.) Dr Olsen
and his colleagues are not the first to suggest that the dinosaurs inherited the earth as the
result of an asteroid strike. But they are the first to show that the takeover did, indeed, happen
in a geological eyeblink.

Dinosaur skeletons are rare. Dinosaur footprints are, however, surprisingly abundant. And the
sizes of the prints are as good an indication of the sizes of the beasts as are the skeletons
themselves. Dr Olsen and his colleagues, therefore, concentrated on prints, not bones.

The prints in question were made in eastern North America, a part of the world the full of rift
valleys to those in East Africa today. Like the modern African rift valleys, the Triassic/Jurassic

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American ones contained lakes, and these lakes grew and shrank at regular intervals because of
climatic changes caused by periodic shifts in the earth’s orbit. (A similar phenomenon is
responsible for modern ice ages.) That regularity, combined with reversals in the earth’s
magnetic field, which are detectable in the tiny fields of certain magnetic minerals, means that
rocks from this place and period can be dated to within a few thousand years. As a bonus,
squishy lake-edge sediments are just the things for recording the tracks of passing animals. By
dividing the labour between themselves, the ten authors of the paper were able to study such
tracks at 80 sites.

The researchers looked at 18 so-called ichnotaxa. These are recognizable types of the footprint
that cannot be matched precisely with the species of animal that left them. But they can be
matched with a general sort of animal, and thus act as an indicator of the fate of that group,
even when there are no bones to tell the story. Five of the ichnotaxa disappear before the end
of the Triassic, and four march confidently across the boundary into the Jurassic. Six, however,
vanish at the boundary, or only just splutter across it; and there appear from nowhere, almost
as soon as the Jurassic begins.

That boundary itself is suggestive. The first geological indication of the impact that killed the
dinosaurs was an unusually high level of iridium in rocks at the end of the Cretaceous when the
beasts disappear from the fossil record. Iridium is normally rare at the earth’s surface, but it is
more abundant in meteorites. When people began to believe the impact theory, they started
looking for other Cretaceous-and anomalies. One that turned up was a surprising abundance of
fern spores in rocks just above the boundary layer – a phenomenon known as a “fern spike”.

That matched the theory nicely. Many modern ferns are opportunists. They cannot compete
against plants with leaves, but if a piece of land is cleared by, say, a volcanic eruption, they are
often the first things to set up shop there. An asteroid strike would have scoured much of the
earth of its vegetable cover, and provided a paradise for ferns. A fern spike in the rocks is thus
a good indication that something terrible has happened.

Both an iridium anomaly and a fern spike appear in rocks at the end of the Triassic, too. That
accounts for the disappearing ichnotaxa: the creatures that made them did not survive the
holocaust. The surprise is how rapidly the new ichnotaxa appear.

Dr Olsen and his colleagues suggest that the explanation for this rapid increase in size may be
a phenomenon called ecological release. This is seen today when reptiles (which, in modern
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times, tend to be small creatures) reach islands where they face no competitors. The most
spectacular example is on the Indonesian island of Komodo, where local lizards have grown so
large that they are often referred to as dragons. The dinosaurs, in other words, could flourish
only when the competition had been knocked out.

That leaves the question of where the impact happened. No large hole in the earth’s crust
seems to be 202m years old. It may, of course, have been overlooked. Old craters are eroded
and buried, and not always easy to find. Alternatively, it may have vanished. Although the
continental crust is more or less permanent, the ocean floor is constantly recycled by the
tectonic processes that bring about continental drift. There is no ocean floor left that is more
than 200m years old, so a crater that formed in the ocean would have been swallowed up by
now.

There is a third possibility, however. This is that the crater is known, but has been misdated.
The Manicouagan “structure”, a crater in Quebec, is thought to be 214m years old. It is huge –
some 100km across – and seems to be the largest of between three and five craters that
formed within a few hours of each other as the lumps of a disintegrated comet hit the earth one
by one.

Questions 15-20
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage
1?

In boxes 15-20 on your answer sheet, write

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

15
Dr Paul Olsen and his colleagues believe that asteroid knock
may also lead to dinosaurs’ boom.

16
Books and movie like Jurassic Park often exaggerate the size
of the dinosaurs.

17
Dinosaur footprints are more adequate than dinosaur
skeletons.

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18
The prints were chosen by Dr Olsen to study because they are
more detectable than the earth magnetic field to track the date of geological precise
within thousands of years.

19
Ichnotaxa showed that footprints of dinosaurs offer exact
information of the trace left by an individual species.

20
We can find more Iridium in the earth’s surface than in
meteorites.

Questions 21-27
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage

Using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 21-27 on your answer sheet.

Dr Olsen and his colleagues applied a phenomenon named 21 to explain

the large size of the Eubrontes, which is a similar case to that nowadays reptiles
invade a place where there are no 22 ; for example, on an island called
Komodo, indigenous huge lizards grow so big that people even regarding them as
23 .

However, there were no old impact trace being found? The answer may be that we
have 24 . the evidence. Old craters are difficult to spot or it probably
25 . Due to the effect of the earth moving. Even a crater formed in Ocean
had been 26 under the impact of crust movement. Besides, the third
hypothesis is that the potential evidence – some craters maybe 27

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READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-40, which are based on Reading Passage
3 below.

A leap into history

A. Between the Inishowen peninsula, north west of Derry, and the Glens of Antrim, in the east
beyond the Sperrin Mountains, is found some of Western Europe’s most captivating and
alluring landscape.

B. The Roe Valley Park, some 15 miles east of Derry is a prime example. The Park, like so many
Celtic places, is steeped in history and legend. As the Roc trickles down through heather bogs
in the Sperrin Mountains to the South, it is a river by the time it cuts through what was once
called the ‘garden of the soul’ – in Celtic ‘Gortenanima’.

C. The castle of O’Cahan once stood here and a number of houses which made up the town of
Limavady. The town takes its name from the legend of a dog leaping into the river Roe carrying
a message, or perhaps chasing a stag. This is a wonderful place, where the water traces its
way through rock and woodland; at times, lingering in brooding pools of dark cool water under
the shade of summer trees, and, at others, forming weirs and leads for water mills now long
gone.

D. The Roe, like all rivers, is witness to history and change. To Mullagh Hill, on the west bank of
the River Roe just outside the present day town of Limavady, St Columba came in 575 AD for
the Convention of Drumceatt. The world is probably unaware that it knows something of
Limavady; but the town is, in fact, renowned for Jane Ross’s song Danny Roy, written to a tune
once played by a tramp in the street. Limavady tow n itself and many of the surrounding
villages have Celtic roots but no one knows for sure just how old the original settlement of

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Limavady is.

E. Some 30 miles along the coast road from Limavady, one comes upon the forlorn, but
imposing ruin of Dunluce Castle, which stands on a soft basalt outcrop, in defiance of the
turbulent Atlantic lashing it on all sides. The jagged​-toothed ruins sit proud on their rock top
commanding the coastline to east and west. The only connection to the mainland is by a
narrow bridge. Until the kitchen court fell into the sea in 1639 killing several servants, the castle
was fully inhabited. In the next hundred years or so, the structure gradually fell into its present
dramatic state of disrepair, stripped of its roofs by wind and weather and robbed by man of its
caned stonework. Ruined and forlorn its aspect may​be yet, in the haunting Celtic twilight of the
long summer evenings, it is redolent of another age, another dream.

F. A mile or so to the east of the castle lies Port na Spaniagh, where the Neapolitan Galleas,
Girona, from the Spanish Armada went down one dark October night in 1588 on its way to
Scotland, of the 1500-odd men on board, nine survived.

G. Even further to the east, is the Giant’s Causeway stunning coastline with strangely
symmetrical columns of dark basalt – a beautiful geological wonder. Someone once said of the
Causeway that it was worth seeing, but not worth going to see. That was in thê days of horses
and carriages, when travelling was difficult. But it is certainly well worth a visit. The last
lingering moments of the twilight hours are the best lime to savour the full power of the
coastline s magic; the time when the place comes into its own. The tourists are gone and if you
are very lucky you will be alone. A fine circular walk will take you down to the Grand
Causeway, past amphitheatres of stone columns and formations. It is not frightening, but there
is a power in the place – tangible, yet inexplicable. The blackness of some nights conjure up
feelings of eeriness and unease. The visitor realises his place in the scheme of the magnificent
spectacle. Once experienced, it is impossible to forget the grandeur of the landscape.

H. Beyond the Causeway, connecting the mainland with an outcrop of rock jutting out of the
turbulent Atlantic, is the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, when first constructed, the bridge was a
simple rope handrail with widely spaced slats which was used mainly by salmon fishermen
needing to travel from the island to the mainland. In time, the single handrail was replaced with
a more sturdy caged bridge, however, it is still not a crossing for the faint- hearted. The Bridge
swings above a chasm of rushing, foaming water that seems to drag the unwary- down, and
away. Many visitors who make the walk one way are unable to return resulting in them being
taken off the island by boat.

Questions 28-32
Looking at the following list of places (Questions 28–32) from the paragraphs A-E of
reading passage 3 and their locations on the map.

Match each place with its location on the map

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Write your answers m boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet.

28
The Sperrin Mountains

29
Dunluce Castle

30
Inishowen

31
The Glens of Antrim

32
Limavady

Questions 33-38
Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 33-38 on your answer sheet write

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 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

33
After 1639, the castle of Dunluce was not completely
uninhabited.

34
For the author, Dunluce Castle evokes another period of
history.

35
There were more than 1500 men on die Girona when it went
down.

36
The writer believes that the Giant’s Causeway is worth going
to visit.

37
The author recommends twilight as the best time to visit the
Giant’s Causeway.

38
The more study cage added to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope
Bridge has helped to increase the number of visitors to the area.

Questions 39-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write your answers in boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet.

39 The writer feels that the Giant’s Causeway is

A an unsettling place.

B a relaxing place.

C a boring place.

D an exciting place.

40 Which of the following would be a good title for the passage?

A The Roe Valley Park.

B The Giant’s Causeway.

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 C Going East to West.

D A leap into history.

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 Solution:

1 E 2 C

3 A 4 D

5 B 6 C

7 C 8 A

9 A 10 D

11 YES 12 NOT GIVEN

13 YES 14 YES

15 YES 16 NOT GIVEN

17 YES 18 NOT GIVEN

19 NO 20 NO

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 21 ecological release 22 competitors

23 dragons 24 overlooked

25 (have) vanished 26 swallowed up

27 misdated 28 E

29 C 30 A

31 D 32 B

33 NOT GIVEN 34 YES

35 YES 36 YES

37 YES 38 NOT GIVEN

39 A 40 D

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