ielts reading case study new zealand website

Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website – IELTS Reading Answers

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Updated On Feb 13, 2024

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Recent IELTS Reading Test with Answers - Free PDF

The IELTS Reading Module offers a fantastic chance to achieve excellent scores. It assesses a candidate’s reading comprehension skills in English. You must comprehend the various question types in order to perform at your best in this area. Ideally, you should not spend more than 20 minutes on a passage.

The Academic passage, Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website reading answers, appeared in an IELTS Test. Try to find the answers to get an idea of the difficulty level of the passages in the actual reading test. If you want more passages to solve, try taking one of our IELTS reading practice tests.

Let’s see how easy this passage is for you and if you can solve it in 20 minutes.

The question types found in this passage are:

• Table Completion (Q. 1-7)
• True/False/Not Given (Q 8-13)

Do you want to revise the steps to solve the Matching Features questions for IELTS Academic Reading?

Check out IELTS Reading Matching Features Questions !

Reading Passage

Case Study: Tourism New Zealand Website 

A 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.

B 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.

C 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.

D 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.

E 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.

F The website was set up to allow both individuals and travel organizations 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.

G 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 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

Questions 8-13

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

In boxes 8-13 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.

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.

‘ Case Study Tourism New Zealand website ’ IELTS Reading Answers With Location and Explanation 

1  Answer: update

Question type: Table Completion

Answer location: Paragraph B

Answer explanation: It is mentioned in the 8th and 9th lines that, “In addition, because participating businesses were able to update the details they gave on a regular basis….”.

2 Answer: environment

Answer explanation: It is mentioned in the last line that, “As part of this, the effect of each business on the environment was considered.”

3 Answer: Captain

Answer location: Paragraph C

Answer explanation: It is mentioned in the 1-3 lines that, “….One of the most popular was an interview with former New Zealand All Blacks rugby captain Tana Umaga.”

4 Answer: films

Answer explanation: It is mentioned in the 4th and 5th lines that, “…… was an interactive journey through a number of locations chosen for blockbuster films …….”.

5 Answer: season

Answer explanation: It is mentioned in the 8th and 9th lines that, “…. the site catalogued the most popular driving routes in the country, highlighting different routes according to the season…..”.

6 Answer: accommodation

Answer location: Paragraph D

Answer explanation: It is mentioned in the 4th line that, “….. There were also links to accommodation in the area.”

7 Answer: blog

Answer explanation: It is mentioned in the 6th and 7th lines that, “ ….. 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.”

8 Answer: FALSE

Question type: TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN

Answer location: Paragraph F

Answer explanation: The response lies in Paragraph 6. The initial two lines indicate that the website’s purpose was to empower individuals and travel organizations to create their own travel plans. The website did not offer pre-packaged itineraries and travel packages.

This assertion directly opposes the information in the passage.

Hence, the answer is FALSE.

9 Answer: NOT GIVEN

Answer explanation: The answer cannot be located within the text. The question pertains to initiating a search on the website.

In Paragraph 6, line 3, the author mentions, “…visitors can search for activities not solely by geographical locations, but also by the particular nature of the activity.” However, there is no information provided regarding how to start a search.

As a result, the answer is NOT GIVEN.

10 Answer: FALSE

Answer explanation: The answer can be found in lines 4, 5, and 6 of paragraph 6.

In these lines, it is evident that the question is contradicted. Transportation and lodging makeup 26%, while visitor satisfaction makes up 74%. If only lodging constituted 26%, we could affirm that it is TRUE.

Therefore, the correct answer is FALSE.

11 Answer: TRUE

Answer explanation: It is mentioned in lines 7-9 that, “…. It has also been found that visitors enjoy cultural activities most when they are interactive, such as visiting a marae (meeting ground) to learn more about traditional life.”

12 Answer: NOT GIVEN

Answer location: Paragraphs F & G

Answer explanation: Staying in hotels is not discussed, and there is also no comparison made between small and large hotels.

Therefore, the answer is NOT GIVEN.

13 Answer: TRUE

Answer location: Paragraph G

Answer explanation: It is mentioned in the 4th and 5th lines that, “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.”

Tips for Answering the Question Types in the ‘Case Study Tourism New Zealand website’ IELTS Reading Answers

Let us check out some quick tips to answer the types of questions in the ‘Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website’ Reading Answers passage.

Table Completion:

The way to solve the table completion questions of the IELTS Reading is similar to Summary Completion. You will be asked to fill in the blanks in a small passage given in the form of a note with the relevant words or numbers. So, let us revise the strategies.

• Read the instructions carefully. It will help you determine the word limit (no more than two, one word, etc.) and important terms like ‘using words from the text’ or ‘from the text’. You have to follow these strictly.
• Go through the incomplete table first. Also, think about keywords and how they could be represented by synonyms or paraphrasing.
• Locate where the information is by scanning quickly . If you can’t, move on.
• Study the reading text by using the skimming and scanning techniques . It will help to establish the answer quickly. When scanning for your answer, make sure you are thinking about paraphrasing and synonyms.
• The answers appear in the same order as the questions . Also, check your spelling and remember that your answer should be grammatically correct.

True/False/Not Given

In IELTS Reading , ‘True, False, Not Given’ questions are based on facts. Several factual statements will be provided to you, and it is up to you to determine whether or not they are accurate by reading the text.

To answer this type of question, you can use the following strategies:

• Read the question and identify the keywords – Before reading the material, have a look at your list of True, False, and Not Given questions.
• Scan the passage for synonyms or paraphrased words of the keywords – When you have highlighted the keywords, swiftly read the text to look for paraphrases or synonyms.
• Match the highlighted words in the questions with their synonyms in the text – Once you find both sets of keywords, cross-check them to find the answer.

Identify the answer – If the facts match, the answer is TRUE, and in case it doesn’t match, it is FALSE. If you are unable to find the answer or unsure of it, mark it NOT GIVEN.

Great work on attempting to solve the ‘Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website’ IELTS reading passage! To crack your IELTS Reading in the first go, try solving more of the Recent IELTS Reading Passages.

Also, check :

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• The True Cost Of Food Reading Answers
• Climate Change And The Inuit Reading Answers
• Zoo Conservation Programmes Reading Answers
• A Workaholic Economy Reading Answers

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Case Study: Tourism New Zealand Website Answers

IELTS Academic Test – Passage 01: Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website reading with answers explanation, location and pdf. This reading paragraph has been taken from our huge collection of Academic & General Training (GT) Reading practice test PDF’s.

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 services 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 travellers 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’ : paces 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 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 travellers enjoy such earning 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 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

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.

________________

1) IELTS 13 READING PASSAGE – WHY BEING BORED IS STIMULATING ↗

2) IELTS 13 READING PASSAGE – ARTIFICIAL ARTISTS ↗

3) IELTS 13 READING PASSAGE – BRINGING CINNAMON TO EUROPE ↗

4) IELTS 13 READING PASSAGE – OXYTOCIN ↗

5) IELTS 13 READING PASSAGE – MAKING THE MOST OF TRENDS ↗

Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website Answers

Check out Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website reading answers below with explanations and locations given in the text.

• ENVIRONMENT
• ACCOMMODATION

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IELTS Reading: Cambridge 13 Test 1 Reading Passage 1, Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website; with best solutions, explanations and bonus tips

This IELTS Reading post deals with a total solution package for IELTS Cambridge 13 Reading test 1 passage 1 . This is a targeted post for candidates who have major difficulties in finding and understanding Reading Answers. This post can guide you the best to understand every Reading answer easily and without much difficulty. Finding IELTS Reading answers is a step-by-step process and I hope this post can help you in this respect.

Reading Passage 1 :

The headline of the passage: case study: tourism new zealand website.

Questions 1-7 ( Completing table with ONE WORD ONLY):

In this type of question, candidates are asked to write only one word to complete a table on the given topic. For this type of question, first, skim the passage to find the keywords in the paragraph concerned with the answer, and then scan to find the exact word.

[ TIPS: Here scanning technique will come in handy. Target the keywords of the questions to find the answers. Remember to focus on Proper nouns, random Capital letters, numbers, special characters of text etc.]

Question 1: allowed businesses to ______ information regularly.

Keywords for these answers: database, allowed businesses, information, regularly,

In paragraph no. 2, we find the mention of the word ‘database’ in the third line. Here, lines 8 & 9, the writer mentions, “In addition, because participating businesses were able to update the details they gave on a regular basis….”.

Here, details = information

So, the answer is:  update

Question 2: provided a country-wide evaluation of businesses, including their impact on the _________.

Keywords for this answer: database, country-wide evaluation, impact on

The last line of paragraph no. 2 has the answer. Here, the writer suggests, “As part of this, the effect of each business on the environment was considered.”

Here, effect = impact

So, the answer is: environment                     

Question 3: e.g. an interview with a former sports __________.  

Keywords for this answer: special features, interview, a former sports

The answer can be found in paragraph 3, lines 1-3. The words ‘interview’ and ‘former’ are formed in line number 2. The writer says, “.. .. . One of the most popular was an interview with former New Zealand All Blacks rugby captain Tana Umaga.”

Here, rugby = sports

So, the answer is: captain                  

Question 4: and an interactive tour of various locations used in ________.

Keywords for this answer: interactive tour, various locations

The answer is in paragraph 3, lines 4-5. The lines say, “…… was an interactive journey through a number of locations chosen for blockbuster films …… ..”.

Here, journey = tour,

A number of locations = various locations,

Chosen for = used in,

So, the answer is: films                      

Question 5: varied depending on the __________. 

Keywords for these answers: driving routes, varied, depending on

Paragraph 3, lines 8-9 has the answer to this question. The lines say, “…. . .the site catalogued the most popular driving routes in the country, highlighting different routes according to the season ….. . .”.

Here, different = varied,

according to = depending on,

So, the answers are:  season            

Question 6: including a map showing selected places, details of public transport and local _______.

Keywords for this answer:   travel planner, a map, public transport, local

The answer lies in paragraph no. 4, line 4. The paragraph begins with ‘travel planner’. In the subsequent lines, we can find the mention of ‘public transport’. In line no. 4 it says, “… . There were also links to accommodation in the area.”

Here, the phrase ‘in the area’ can be replaced with the word ‘local’.

So, the answer is: accommodation

Question 7: travelers could send a link to their ________.

Keywords for this answer:   ‘Your Words’, travelers, send, link to,

The answer is in paragraph no. 4. ‘Your Words’ is the name of a section of the website www.newzealand.com. We can see that the phrase ‘Your Words’ is present in line 6 of paragraph 4. So, we need to read lines 6 & 7 to find the answer.

The author says, “ ….. . . 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.”

Here, anyone could submit = travelers could send a link to

So, the answer is: blog

Questions 8-13: (TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN)

In this type of question, candidates must find out whether:

The statement in the question matches with the account in the text- TRUE The statement contradicts the account in the text- FALSE There is no clear connection of the statement with the account in the text- NOT GIVEN

Question 8: The website www.newzealand.com aimed to provide ready-made itineraries and packages for travel companies and individual tourists.

Keywords for this answer: the website, aimed, itineraries, travel packages

To find the answer to this question, look for the words itineraries and travel packages. The answer is in Paragraph 6. Here, lines 1 and 2 say, “ The website was set up to allow both individuals and travel organizations to create itineraries and travel packages to suit their own needs and interests.”

This means that the aim of the website was to allow individuals and travel organizations to do their work on their own, the website did not provide any ready-made itineraries and travel packages.

The statement clearly contradicts the text.

So, the answer is: FALSE

Question 9: It was found that most visitors started searching on the website by geographical location.

Keywords for this answer: started searching, geographical location

The answer is not anywhere in the passage. The question is about starting the search in the website.

  In paragraph 6 line 3, the author says, “…… visitors can search for activities not solely by geographical locations, but also by the particular nature of the activity.” However, nowhere it says anything about starting the search.

So, the answer is: NOT GIVEN

Question 10: According to research, 26% of visitor satisfaction is related to their accommodation.

Keywords for this answer: 26%, visitor satisfaction, accommodation

** Special answer-finding technique:

There is a number in the question (26%). If the answer is TRUE, 26% has to be in the text. For FALSE, the number will be different; or, the number will be 26% (but it will be related to other matters). If the number is still 26%, yet it doesn’t match with other keywords, the answer will be NOT GIVEN.

The answer is in lines 4, 5 & 6 of paragraph no. 6. Here, the writer says, “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% .”

Here, the lines clearly contradict the question. Transportation and accommodation account for 26%. Visitor satisfaction accounts for 74%. If only accommodation accounted for 26%, we could write TRUE. 

Question 11: Visitors to New Zealand like to become involved in the local culture.

Keywords for this answer: like to, involved, local nature

The answer lies in lines 7-9 of paragraph 6. The author says, “…. It has also been found that visitors enjoy cultural activities most when they are interactive, such as visiting a marae (meeting ground) to learn more about traditional life.”

It means that visitors like to engage in local culture.

So, the answer is: TRUE

Question 12: Visitors like staying in small hotels in New Zealand rather than in larger ones.

Keywords for this answer:  like staying, small hotels

In paragraphs 6 & 7, there is no mention of staying in hotels. There is no comparison between small and large hotels also.

So the answer is: NOT GIVEN

Question 13: Many visitors feel it is unlikely that they will return to New Zealand after their visit.

Keywords for this answer: feel, unlikely, will return, after their visit

The answer is in paragraph 7. Here, lines 4 and 5 states, “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 .”

Here, the phrase ‘often seen as a once-in-a-lifetime visit’ means that there is a very low possibility that the visit will happen again.

So the answer is: TRUE

Bonus tips:

You must pay attention to WORD LIMIT. For instance, if you have to complete a sentence using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS; and the correct answer in the text is ‘dress made of cotton’, you cannot write the answer as ‘dress made of cotton’. You need to change it to ‘cotton dress’.

If you like this post, and need any assistance about IELTS Reading, please make comments below. 

Click here for solutions to Cambridge 13 Reading Test 1 Passage 2

Click here for solutions to Cambridge 13 Reading Test 1 Passage 3

Important vocabulary with explanations for Cambridge 13 Test 1 Reading Passage 1, 2, 3

59 thoughts on “ IELTS Reading: Cambridge 13 Test 1 Reading Passage 1, Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website; with best solutions, explanations and bonus tips ”

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thanku really it’s very helpfull

Thank you for help

it was very helpful, thanks!.

Thank u ???

i although questions were all completely explained, i did n’t understand question number 10.

The question asks you to decide whether 26% visitor satisfaction is related to accommodation. We find in the passage, 26% visitor satisfaction is related to accommodation and transport. So, here in the question, transport is missing. This is why the answer is “FALSE’.

u meant that 26% is divided in transportating and accommodation acc. to passage.

There is a number in the question (26%). If the answer is TRUE, 26% has to be in the text. If it is FALSE, the number will be different; or, the number will be 26% (but it will be related to other matters). If the number is still 26%, yet it doesn’t match with other key-words, the answer will be NOT GIVEN.

The answer can be found in lines 4, 5 & 6 of paragraph no. 6. Here, the writer says, “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%.”

In there,it was written like transport AND accommodation account for remaining 26%. Not ooonly accommodation account for 26% of visitor satisfaction. It is with transport

Thank you so much, it is very helpful

Plzz Sir mainu tusi mcq diya teps diyo reading diya v te listening diya v plzz mainu bht jada problem aa rhi aa ohna nu solve krn ch te ik headings diya v

Hello Kamaljeet, I don’t understand Punjabi much and I didn’t get clearly from what you wrote. But as far as I can understand you, I think you have problems in MCQs. Plz follow my other lessons and surely you’ll get help in this question type. For Headings, I have some good works available in this website.

Hlo sir mainu mcq ch bht problem aa rhi aa te heading ch v plzz mainu ehna dona diya tips dedo menumeration listening ch v mcq di hi problem aundi a jada plzz help me

Super helpful! Thank you so much!

If i add some explanations,

The reason NG isn’t the correct answer: As far as the ‘transport’ was mentioned along with accommodation as one of the factors contributing to the 26% of visitors satisfaction on the paraghagh, we cannot ignore transport’s contribution to the 26%. So, it means there is definitely certain percent related to ‘transport’. And, this means accommodation cannot account for the whole 26%, which is contradicting the sentence of No.10 question. Thereby the evidence to decide whether the No.10 sentence is right or wrong is clearly given on the paragragh, and the answer is F.

I figured it out this way. Hope this helpful to you.

Dear Kimmy, the way you explained can be considered correct. The way I explained it can also be taken as correct.

Hello sir My reading scores had stucked on 5.5 bands and I have exam on 29th June pls share me some tips to crack my ielts.

Dear Rikta, Try to follow these suggestions. 1. give importance in synonyms. 2. learn the tricks of paraphrasing. 3. do not take more than 1 minute in each question. 4. Try to guess some answers. 5. Be careful about proper nouns and use of capital letters. 6. try to practice some mock tests before your exam. 7. Remember you can’t solve all types of questions. so give importance on the types you are comfortable with.

Is it okay to write all your answers in capital letters?

YES, for Reading and Listening. Not for Writing.

Thank you so much! It’s really helpful ??

Its really a most helpful website

I need tips in paragraph type questions nad match the heading

Please share some techniques regarding solving list of heading or match the statement with paragraph…please!

Sir I don’t understand Question 13 What does the question mean ?

Dear Yoon, Thanks for the question. Question 13: Many visitors feel it is unlikely that they will return to New Zealand after their visit. This question means that many visitors fear that they may not return to New Zealand after their visit.

I’m very confused between not given and false. Please give me some tips.

http://ieltsdeal.com/ielts-reading-how-to-find-answers-for-true-false-not-given-or-yes-no-not-given-questions-best-strategies-methodstricks-and-tips/

Thank you Najib for useful support. It is rare that anyone who gives explanation of IELTS reading with tips. Everybody gives simple tips only, what makes difference between you and them. Request explanation on rest of the Cambridge books. Its really really helpful and useful. Your website is unique.

Welcome! And I request you to pray for me. And the rest is coming. Work is going on.

i didn’t understood the answer of quest 10.. can u plz hlp me.. i have doubt that why it is false because it clearly said that 26 % accounts for transport and accommodation

26% = accommdation + transportation, not accommodation alone. Our key word here is’ accommodation’ and it is very much necessary to understand the clear and exact meaning of each question for true/false questions in general.

• Pingback: IELTS Reading: Cambridge 13 Test 1 Reading Passage 2, Why being bored is stimulating and useful, too; with best solutions, explanations and bonus tips | IELTS Deal

Hlo sir muja heading ma bhut didn’t aa Rahe ba

Can you write that in English, please?

hi guys , i have a question is that if i use the word blockbusters instead of films , is it correct ?

blockbusters = films which have broken all sorts of records

It’s really very helpful.

I’m delighted to hear that. Thank you. Here’s my YouTube channel for your consideration: https://www.youtube.com/c/IELTSDeal

where are you from sir?

I’m from Bangladesh.

What is the main different between yesnong and truefalseng?

Thanks alot, this is really explanatory and I find it helpful

Welcome! You can follow my YouTube Channel as well: https://www.youtube.com/c/IELTSDeal/

In fact your website has been of a tremendous help to me. I understood true, false and not given from your website.. But I still need help in the other part too, writing listening n speaking My date is very close that is 2nd Dec n 5th

Thank you so much, it’s really helpful for me!!!

GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

very helpful

• Pingback: IELTS Reading: Cambridge 13 Reading Test 1; Passage 3; Artificial artists; with top solutions and explanations - IELTS Deal

Thanks for your clear explanation. It really helps to deal with reading tasks. I really appreciate you.

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Academic IELTS Reading: Test 2 Passage 1; The Dead Sea Scrolls; with top solutions and best explanations

This Academic IELTS Reading post focuses on solutions to an IELTS Reading Test 2 passage 1 that has a passage titled ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls’. This is a targeted post for Academic IELTS candidates who have major problems locating and understanding Reading Answers in the AC module. This post can guide you the best to understand […]

Academic IELTS Reading: Test 1 Reading passage 3; To catch a king; with best solutions and explanations

This Academic IELTS Reading post focuses on solutions to an IELTS Reading Test 1 Reading Passage 3 titled ‘To catch a king’. This is a targeted post for IELTS candidates who have great problems finding out and understanding Reading Answers in the AC module. This post can guide you the best to understand every Reading answer […]

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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 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

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.  

Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too

This most common of emotions is turning out to be more interesting than we thought

We all know how it feels – it’s impossible to keep your mind on anything, time stretches out, and all the things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you feel better. But defining boredom so that it can be studied in the lab has proved difficult. For a start, it can include a lot of other mental states, such as frustration, apathy, depression and indifference. There isn’t even agreement over whether boredom is always a low-energy, flat kind of emotion or whether feeling agitated and restless counts as boredom, too. In his book, Boredom: A Lively History , Peter Toohey at the University of Calgary, Canada, compares it to disgust – an emotion that motivates us to stay away from certain situations. ‘If disgust protects humans from infection, boredom may protect them from “infectious” social situations,’ he suggests.

By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted on two axes – one running left to right, which measures low to high arousal, and the other from top to bottom, which measures how positive or negative the feeling is. Intriguingly, Goetz has found that while people experience all kinds of boredom, they tend to specialise in one. Of the five types, the most damaging is ‘reactant’ boredom with its explosive combination of high arousal and negative emotion. The most useful is what Goetz calls ‘indifferent’ boredom: someone isn’t engaged in anything satisfying but still feels relaxed and calm. However, it remains to be seen whether there are any character traits that predict the kind of boredom each of us might be prone to.

Psychologist Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, goes further. ‘All emotions are there for a reason, including boredom,’ she says. Mann has found that being bored makes us more creative. ‘We’re all afraid of being bored but in actual fact it can lead to all kinds of amazing things,’ she says. In experiments published last year, Mann found that people who had been made to feel bored by copying numbers out of the phone book for 15 minutes came up with more creative ideas about how to use a polystyrene cup than a control group. Mann concluded that a passive, boring activity is best for creativity because it allows the mind to wander. In fact, she goes so far as to suggest that we should seek out more boredom in our lives.

Psychologist John Eastwood at York University in Toronto, Canada, isn’t convinced. ‘If you are in a state of mind-wandering you are not bored,’ he says. ‘In my view, by definition boredom is an undesirable state.’ That doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t adaptive, he adds. ‘Pain is adaptive – if we didn’t have physical pain, bad things would happen to us. Does that mean that we should actively cause pain? No. But even if boredom has evolved to help us survive, it can still be toxic if allowed to fester.’ For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an inability to focus on anything, which makes time seem to go painfully slowly. What’s more, your efforts to improve the situation can end up making you feel worse. ‘People try to connect with the world and if they are not successful there’s that frustration and irritability,’ he says. Perhaps most worryingly, says Eastwood, repeatedly failing to engage attention can lead to state where we don’t know what to do any more, and no longer care.

Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails. It’s early days but they think that at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a variety of traits. People who are motivated by pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other personality traits, such as curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold. More evidence that boredom has detrimental effects comes from studies of people who are more or less prone to boredom. It seems those who bore easily face poorer prospects in education, their career and even life in general. But of course, boredom itself cannot kill – it’s the things we do to deal with it that may put us in danger. What can we do to alleviate it before it comes to that? Goetz’s group has one suggestion. Working with teenagers, they found that those who ‘approach’ a boring situation – in other words, see that it’s boring and get stuck in anyway – report less boredom than those who try to avoid it by using snacks, TV or social media for distraction.

Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom. ‘In modern human society there is a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of problems finding meaning,’ she says. So instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave our phones alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more meaningful way.

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 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            The productive outcomes that may result from boredom

ii           What teachers can do to prevent boredom 

iii          A new explanation and a new cure for boredom

iv          Problems with a scientific approach to boredom

v          A potential danger arising from boredom

vi          Creating a system of classification for feelings of boredom

vii         Age groups most affected by boredom

viii        Identifying those most affected by boredom

14    Paragraph A

15    Paragraph B

16    Paragraph C

17    Paragraph D

18    Paragraph E

19    Paragraph F

Questions 20-23

Look at the following people (Questions 20-23 ) and the list of ideas below.

Match each person with the correct idea, A-E .

Write the correct letter, A-E , in boxes 20-23 on your answer sheet.

20    Peter Toohey

21    Thomas Goetz

22    John Eastwood

23    Francoise Wemelsfelder

List of Ideas

A      The way we live today may encourage boredom.

B      One sort of boredom is worse than all the others.

C      Levels of boredom may fall in the future.

D      Trying to cope with boredom can increase its negative effects.

E      Boredom may encourage us to avoid an unpleasant experience.

Questions 24-26

Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.

Responses to boredom

For John Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is that people cannot 24 ……………………………, due to a failure in what he calls the ‘attention system’, and as a result they become frustrated and irritable. His team suggests that those for whom 25 ……………………….. is an important aim in life may have problems in coping with boredom, whereas those who have the characteristic of 26 ……………………….. can generally cope with it.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Artificial artist?

Can computers really create works of art.

The Painting Fool is one of a growing number of computer programs which, so their makers claim, possess creative talents. Classical music by an artificial composer has had audiences enraptured, and even tricked them into believing a human was behind the score. Artworks painted by a robot have sold for thousands of dollars and been hung in prestigious galleries. And software has been built which creates are that could not have been imagined by the programmer.

Human beings are the only species to perform sophisticated creative acts regularly. If we can break this process down into computer code, where does that leave human creativity? ‘This is a question at the very core of humanity,’ says Geraint Wiggins, a computational creativity researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. ‘It scares a lot of people. They are worried that it is taking something special away from what it means to be human.’

To some extent, we are all familiar with computerised art. The question is: where does the work of the artist stop and the creativity of the computer begin? Consider one of the oldest machine artists, Aaron, a robot that has had paintings exhibited in London’s Tate Modern and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Aaron can pick up a paintbrush and paint on canvas on its own. Impressive perhaps, but it is still little more than a tool to realise the programmer’s own creative ideas.

Simon Colton, the designer of the Painting Fool, is keen to make sure his creation doesn’t attract the same criticism. Unlike earlier ‘artists’ such as Aaron, the Painting Fool only needs minimal direction and can come up with its own concepts by going online for material. The software runs its own web searches and trawls through social media sites. It is now beginning to display a kind of imagination too, creating pictures from scratch. One of its original works is a series of fuzzy landscapes, depicting trees and sky. While some might say they have a mechanical look, Colton argues that such reactions arise from people’s double standards towards software-produced and human-produced art. After all, he says, consider that the Painting Fool painted the landscapes without referring to a photo. ‘If a child painted a new scene from its head, you’d say it has a certain level of imagination,’ he points out. ‘The same should be true of a machine.’ Software bugs can also lead to unexpected results. Some of the Painting Fool’s paintings of a chair came out in black and white, thanks to a technical glitch. This gives the work an eerie, ghostlike quality. Human artists like the renowned Ellsworth Kelly are lauded for limiting their colour palette – so why should computers be any different?

Researchers like Colton don’t believe it is right to measure machine creativity directly to that of humans who ‘have had millennia to develop our skills’. Others, though, are fascinated by the prospect that a computer might create something as original and subtle as our best artists. So far, only one has come close. Composer David Cope invented a program called Experiments in Musical Intelligence, or EMI. Not only did EMI create compositions in Cope’s style, but also that of the most revered classical composers, including Bach, Chopin and Mozart. Audiences were moved to tears, and EMI even fooled classical music experts into thinking they were hearing genuine Bach. Not everyone was impressed however. Some, such as Wiggins, have blasted Cope’s work as pseudoscience, and condemned him for his deliberately vague explanation of how the software worked. Meanwhile, Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University said EMI created replicas which still rely completely on the original artist’s creative impulses. When audiences found out the truth they were often outraged with Cope, and one music lover even tried to punch him. Amid such controversy, Cope destroyed EMI’s vital databases.

But why did so many people love the music, yet recoil when the discovered how it was composed? A study by computer scientist David Moffat of Glasgow Caledonian University provides a clue. He asked both expert musicians and non-experts to assess six compositions. The participants weren’t told beforehand whether the tunes were composed by humans or computers, but were asked to guess, and then rate how much they liked each one. People who thought the composer was a computer tended to dislike the piece more than those who believed it was human. This was true even among the experts, who might have been expected to be more objective in their analyses.

Where does this prejudice come from? Paul Bloom of Yale University has a suggestion: he reckons part of the pleasure we get from art stems from the creative process behind the work. This can give it an ‘irresistible essence’, says Bloom. Meanwhile, experiments by Justin Kruger of New York University have shown that people’s enjoyment of an artwork increases if they think more time and effort was needed to create it. Similarly, Colton thinks that when people experience art, they wonder what the artist might have been thinking or what the artist is trying to tell them. It seems obvious, therefore, that with computers producing art, this speculation is cut short – there’s nothing to explore. But as technology becomes increasingly complex, finding those greater depths in computer art could become possible. This is precisely why Colton asks the Painting Fool to tap into online social networks for its inspiration: hopefully this way it will choose themes that will already be meaningful to us.

Questions 27-31

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

27    What is the writer suggesting about computer-produced works in the first paragraph?

A    People’s acceptance of them can vary considerably.

B    A great deal of progress has already been attained in this field.

C    They have had more success in some artistic genres than in others.

D    the advances are not as significant as the public believes them to be.

28    According to Geraint Wiggins, why are many people worried by computer art?

A    It is aesthetically inferior to human art.

B    It may ultimately supersede human art.

C    It undermines a fundamental human quality.

D    It will lead to a deterioration in human ability.

29    What is a key difference between Aaron and the Painting Fool?

A    its programmer’s background

B    public response to its work

C    the source of its subject matter

D    the technical standard of its output

30    What point does Simon Colton make in the fourth paragraph?

A    Software-produced art is often dismissed as childish and simplistic.

B    The same concepts of creativity should not be applied to all forms of art.

C    It is unreasonable to expect a machine to be as imaginative as a human being.

D    People tend to judge computer art and human art according to different criteria.

31    The writer refers to the paintings of a chair as an example of computer art which

A    achieves a particularly striking effect.

B    exhibits a certain level of genuine artistic skill.

C    closely resembles that of a well-known artist.

D    highlights the technical limitations of the software.

Questions 32-37

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G below.

Write the correct letter, A-G , in boxes 32-37 on your answer sheet.

32    Simon Colton says it is important to consider the long-term view then

33    David Cope’s EMI software surprised people by

34    Geraint Wiggins criticized Cope for not

35    Douglas Hofstadter claimed that EMI was

36    Audiences who had listened to EMI’s music became angry after

37    The participants in David Moffat’s study had to assess music without

A      generating work that was virtually indistinguishable from that of humans.

B      knowing whether it was the work of humans or software.

C      producing work entirely dependent on the imagination of its creator.

D      comparing the artistic achievements of humans and computers.

E      revealing the technical details of his program.

F      persuading the public to appreciate computer art.

G     discovering that it was the product of a computer program

Questions 38-40

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

In boxes 38-40 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 impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

38    Moffat’s research may help explain people’s reactions to EMI.

39    The non-experts in Moffat’s study all responded in a predictable way.

40    Justin Kruger’s findings cast doubt on Paul Bloom’s theory about people’s prejudice towards computer art.

Cam 12 Reading Test 04

Cam 13 reading test 02, answer cam 13 reading test 01.

2. environment

6. accommodation

9. NOT GIVEN

12. NOT GIVEN

25. pleasure

26. curiosity

39. NOT GIVEN

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Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website Reading Answers: IELTS Reading Practice Test

Updated on Jun 23, 2024, 05:21

The IELTS Reading section is a pivotal part of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), designed to evaluate your ability to understand and interpret written texts. It consists of three passages of increasing complexity, followed by questions that assess your reading comprehension skills. 

Throughout this section, you will encounter diverse text types, ranging from descriptive to analytical, requiring you to extract specific details, comprehend main ideas, and infer information from the text effectively.

Key highlights of the Reading section:

• The IELTS Reading section consists of three passages, each progressively more challenging in terms of complexity and vocabulary.
• Passage types include descriptive, narrative, factual, and discursive texts, reflecting real-life academic and everyday situations.
• Questions are designed to test a range of reading skills, from locating specific information to understanding main ideas and implied meanings.
• Time management is crucial, with approximately 20 minutes allocated per passage and its associated questions, totaling 60 minutes for the entire section.
• Test takers must demonstrate their ability to read and comprehend texts accurately within a specified timeframe, showcasing their proficiency in English reading skills.

On this page

1. Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website Reading Passage Reading Answers Reading Passage

You should spend approximately 20 minutes answering  Questions 1 - 13  based on the Reading Passage below. This approach can help manage time effectively during a reading comprehension activity or exam.

2. Case Study Tourism New Zealand

Discover exciting and informative IELTS reading answers about Case Study Tourism New Zealand

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Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website Reading Passage

• Read Instructions: Understand each question before answering.
• Manage Time: Spend about 20 minutes per passage.
• Skim and Scan: Quickly get the main idea and find specific information.
• Highlight Key Info: Underline essential words or phrases.
• Answer All Questions: Attempt every question; no penalty for wrong answers.
• Stay Focused: Avoid distractions and keep your attention on the task.
• Check Spelling: Ensure correct spelling and grammar.
• Transfer Answers Clearly: Write answers neatly on the answer sheet.
• Don’t Dwell: Move on if stuck and return later.
• Review: If time allows, review your answers.

 Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website Reading Passage

Paragraph A: 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.

Paragraph B: 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 services to the country. Any tourism-related business could be listed by filling in a simple form.

Paragraph C: 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.

Paragraph D: The Tourism New Zealand website won two Webby awards for online achievement and innovation. More importantly, perhaps, the growth of tourism in New Zealand was impressive. Overall tourism expenditure increased by an average of 6.9% per year between 1999 and 2004.

Paragraph E: 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.

Paragraph F: 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 organized a scheme whereby organizations 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.

Paragraph G: 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 about their New Zealand travels for possible inclusion on the website.

Paragraph H: 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.

Case Study Tourism New Zealand Question & Answers

Questions and answers 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.

Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website Reading Answers with Explanations 1-7

Type of Question: Table Completion   

These types of questions involve locating the relevant information in the passage and accurately transfer the details to complete the table, ensuring that your answers fit the context and are grammatically correct.  

How to best answer:

• Understand what information is required to complete the table and how many words or numbers you are allowed to use.
• Quickly scan the relevant paragraphs to locate where the missing information might be found.
• Look for keywords or synonyms in the question that match information in the passage. Focus on key details such as names, dates, figures, or specific terms.
• Skim through the passage for an overview, then scan more closely for the specific details needed to complete the table accurately.
• After filling in the table, review your answers to ensure they make sense contextually and grammatically, and that they fit the required format and word/number limits.

From Paragraph F , "participating businesses were able to update the details" 

Explanation: Businesses could regularly update their information, ensuring the accuracy of their listings on the website.

From Paragraph F , "effect of each business on the environment was considered" 

Explanation : The evaluation included assessing each business's impact on the environment, reflecting a commitment to sustainability.  

From Paragraph E, "interview with former New Zealand All Blacks rugby captain Tana Umaga" 

Explanation:  The website featured an interview with Tana Umaga, enhancing its appeal through sports-related content.

From Paragraph E,  "interactive journey through a number of the locations chosen for blockbuster films" 

Explanation: Users could explore film locations interactively, highlighting New Zealand's role in major films.  

From Paragraph C, "highlighting different routes according to the season"

  Explanation : The website provided driving routes tailored to seasonal conditions, aiding trip planning for visitors.

From Paragraph C, "links to accommodation in the area" 

Explanation: Users had access to links for local accommodation options, facilitating comprehensive travel planning.

From Paragraph G, "submit a blog of their New Zealand travels" 

Explanation: Visitors could share their travel experiences through blogs, contributing to user-generated content on the website.

Questions and Answers 8-13

• 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.

Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website Reading Answers with Explanations 8-13 

Type of Question: True/False/Not Given 

These types of questions in IELTS reading involve identifying whether the sentence is  True, False, or Not Given  using the given paragraph. 

How to best answer: 

• Read the statements and paragraphs carefully to understand the context and meaning.
• Identify keywords or key phrases in both the statements and paragraphs.
• Look for direct matches between the statements and the content of the paragraphs.
• Pay attention to synonyms or paraphrases that convey similar meanings.
• Choose the paragraph that best aligns with the statement based on the information provided in the passage.  

From Paragraph G,  "The website was set up to allow both individuals and travel organisations to create itineraries and travel packages". 

Explanation: The statement suggests the website allowed customisation rather than offering ready-made itineraries.  

Not available 

Explanation: The passage does not specify how visitors started their searches on the website, so it cannot be determined if the statement is true or false

From Paragraph H,  "Visitor satisfaction, contributing 74% to visitor satisfaction, while transport and accommodation account for the remaining 26%" 

Explanation : The passage states that activities contribute 74% to visitor satisfaction, not accommodation.

From Paragraph H , "It has also been found that visitors enjoy cultural activities most when they are interactive" 

Explanation:  This aligns with the information provided in the paragraph about visitor preferences for interactive cultural experiences.

Not Given 

Explanation : The passage does not provide information about visitor preferences for small hotels versus larger ones, so it cannot be determined if the statement is true or false.

From Paragraph H, "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" 

Explanation:  This statement accurately reflects the passage's description of visitor behavior and intentions when visiting New Zealand.

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Q. How can I manage my time effectively during the IELTS Reading test?

Ans. Managing time during the IELTS Reading test is crucial. Allocate about 20 minutes per section to read and answer questions. Skim through questions before reading passages to focus on key details. Don’t get stuck on difficult questions; mark them and return if time permits. Practicing with timed mock tests helps build speed and confidence.

Q. What are some good sources for practice materials for the IELTS Reading test?

Ans.  Utilize official IELTS practice materials, including past papers and sample tests available on the IELTS website. Cambridge IELTS books (1-15) are excellent for structured practice. Online platforms like British Council and IDP websites offer additional resources and practice tests. Reviewing academic texts, newspapers, and magazines can also enhance familiarity with varied reading styles and topics.

Q. How can I improve my comprehension skills for the IELTS Reading test?

Ans. Enhance comprehension by actively engaging with texts. Practice scanning for specific information and skimming for main ideas. Focus on understanding context, vocabulary, and how ideas are structured. Summarize paragraphs after reading to reinforce understanding. Work on increasing reading speed without compromising accuracy. Regularly attempt practice tests to identify weak areas and improve strategy, ensuring you’re prepared for the test’s demands.

‘Case study: Tourism New Zealand website’- Reading Answer Explanation- CAM- 13

Here are explanations of the Questions of passage named ‘Case study: Tourism New Zealand website’, which is from the Cambridge 13 book. The Questions that have been asked are True/False/Not Given and Blanks. You will find the locations of the Reading Answers, Keywords( highlighted and underlined) and justifications.  

READING PASSAGE 1: Case Study: Tourism New Zealand 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 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

8    The website www.newzealand.com aimed to provide ready-made itineraries and packages for travel companies and individual tourists.

Location: 6 th paragraph

Explanation: The main keyword ‘ready-made itineraries’ helps to locate the answer in the first line of the paragraph. ‘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…’The question statement contradicts the passage statement. ‘Create itineraries’ is opposite to the ‘ready-made itineraries’. Thus, the answer is very clear.

Answer: False

9    It was found that most visitors started searching on the website by geographical location.

Explanation: The answer to this question is in the second line of the passage. ‘Visitors can search for activities not solely by geographical location, but also by the particular nature of the activity…’Here, the writer does not give information about the starting of search. Hence, no information available.

Answer: Not Given

10    According to research, 26% of visitor satisfaction is related to their accommodation.

Explanation: The main keyword ‘visitor satisfaction’ is in the fourth line of the paragraph. ‘Visitor satisfaction, contributing 74% to visitor satisfaction, while transport and accommodation account for the remaining 26%…’Here, transportation and accommodation account for 26%.But in question statement 26% accounts for accommodation only. Thus, the answer is False.

11    Visitors to New Zealand like to become involved in the local culture. Location: 6 th paragraph

Explanation: The location of the answer is in the middle line of the paragraph. ‘It has also been found that visitors enjoy cultural activities most when they are interactive…’Here,  ‘like to become involved in’ is visible as ‘enjoy cultural activities…’Thus, the answer is clear.

Answer: True

12    Visitors like staying in small hotels in New Zealand rather than in larger ones.

Location: Last paragraph

Explanation: Though the writer talks about the visitors in New Zealand. But there is no information regarding hotels in the New Zealand. Thus, no information available.

13    Many visitors feel it is unlikely that they will return to New Zealand after their visit.

Explanation: The location of the answer is in the second last line of the paragraph. ‘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…’Here, ‘often seen as a once-in-a-lifetime visit…’ makes it clear that there is less possibility  that they will return.   Thus, the answer is True.

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Case study tourism New Zealand website Reading Ielts Answers and Questions

Stay informed and prepared for success – Explore our comprehensive Reading Test Info page to get valuable insights, exam format details, and expert tips for mastering the IELTS Reading section .

Case study tourism New Zealand website

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 services 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 organized a scheme whereby organizations 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.

The Tourism New Zealand website won two Webby awards for online achievement and innovation. More importantly, perhaps, the growth of tourism in 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.

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Questions 8-13

8 . The website www.newzealand.com aimed to provide ready-made itineraries and packages for travel companies and individual tourists.

12. Visitors like staying in small hotels in New Zealand rather than in larger ones.

Answers for case study tourism New Zealand

Related posts, travel books reading answers and question, the value of handwriting reading answers and question.

Cambridge IELTS 13: Academic Reading Test 1: Case Study: Tourism New Zealand Website

Test procedure, “first, click on ‘start test ’, then read the passage below. select or write your answers on the right side corresponding to the questions. if you find any issue, please contact us.”, 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 services 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 travellers 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’ : paces 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 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 travellers enjoy such earning 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.

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Test 1: case study: tourism new zealand website.

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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 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.

Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too

This most common of emotions is turning out to be more interesting than we thought

We all know how it feels – it’s impossible to keep your mind on anything, time stretches out, and all the things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you feel better. But defining boredom so that it can be studied in the lab has proved difficult. For a start, it can include a lot of other mental states, such as frustration, apathy, depression and indifference. There isn’t even agreement over whether boredom is always a low-energy, flat kind of emotion or whether feeling agitated and restless counts as boredom, too. In his book, Boredom: A Lively History , Peter Toohey at the University of Calgary, Canada, compares it to disgust – an emotion that motivates us to stay away from certain situations. ‘If disgust protects humans from infection, boredom may protect them from “infectious” social situations,’ he suggests.

By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted on two axes – one running left to right, which measures low to high arousal, and the other from top to bottom, which measures how positive or negative the feeling is. Intriguingly, Goetz has found that while people experience all kinds of boredom, they tend to specialise in one. Of the five types, the most damaging is ‘reactant’ boredom with its explosive combination of high arousal and negative emotion. The most useful is what Goetz calls ‘indifferent’ boredom: someone isn’t engaged in anything satisfying but still feels relaxed and calm. However, it remains to be seen whether there are any character traits that predict the kind of boredom each of us might be prone to.

Psychologist Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, goes further. ‘All emotions are there for a reason, including boredom,’ she says. Mann has found that being bored makes us more creative. ‘We’re all afraid of being bored but in actual fact it can lead to all kinds of amazing things,’ she says. In experiments published last year, Mann found that people who had been made to feel bored by copying numbers out of the phone book for 15 minutes came up with more creative ideas about how to use a polystyrene cup than a control group. Mann concluded that a passive, boring activity is best for creativity because it allows the mind to wander. In fact, she goes so far as to suggest that we should seek out more boredom in our lives.

Psychologist John Eastwood at York University in Toronto, Canada, isn’t convinced. ‘If you are in a state of mind-wandering you are not bored,’ he says. ‘In my view, by definition boredom is an undesirable state.’ That doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t adaptive, he adds. ‘Pain is adaptive – if we didn’t have physical pain, bad things would happen to us. Does that mean that we should actively cause pain? No. But even if boredom has evolved to help us survive, it can still be toxic if allowed to fester.’ For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an inability to focus on anything, which makes time seem to go painfully slowly. What’s more, your efforts to improve the situation can end up making you feel worse. ‘People try to connect with the world and if they are not successful there’s that frustration and irritability,’ he says. Perhaps most worryingly, says Eastwood, repeatedly failing to engage attention can lead to state where we don’t know what to do any more, and no longer care.

Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails. It’s early days but they think that at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a variety of traits. People who are motivated by pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other personality traits, such as curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold. More evidence that boredom has detrimental effects comes from studies of people who are more or less prone to boredom. It seems those who bore easily face poorer prospects in education, their career and even life in general. But of course, boredom itself cannot kill – it’s the things we do to deal with it that may put us in danger. What can we do to alleviate it before it comes to that? Goetz’s group has one suggestion. Working with teenagers, they found that those who ‘approach’ a boring situation – in other words, see that it’s boring and get stuck in anyway – report less boredom than those who try to avoid it by using snacks, TV or social media for distraction.

Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom. ‘In modern human society there is a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of problems finding meaning,’ she says. So instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave our phones alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more meaningful way.

Artificial artist?

Can computers really create works of art.

The Painting Fool is one of a growing number of computer programs which, so their makers claim, possess creative talents. Classical music by an artificial composer has had audiences enraptured, and even tricked them into believing a human was behind the score. Artworks painted by a robot have sold for thousands of dollars and been hung in prestigious galleries. And software has been built which creates art that could not have been imagined by the programmer.

Human beings are the only species to perform sophisticated creative acts regularly. If we can break this process down into computer code, where does that leave human creativity? ‘This is a question at the very core of humanity,’ says Geraint Wiggins, a computational creativity researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. ‘It scares a lot of people. They are worried that it is taking something special away from what it means to be human.’

To some extent, we are all familiar with computerised art. The question is: where does the work of the artist stop and the creativity of the computer begin? Consider one of the oldest machine artists, Aaron, a robot that has had paintings exhibited in London’s Tate Modern and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Aaron can pick up a paintbrush and paint on canvas on its own. Impressive perhaps, but it is still little more than a tool to realise the programmer’s own creative ideas.

Simon Colton, the designer of the Painting Fool, is keen to make sure his creation doesn’t attract the same criticism. Unlike earlier ‘artists’ such as Aaron, the Painting Fool only needs minimal direction and can come up with its own concepts by going online for material. The software runs its own web searches and trawls through social media sites. It is now beginning to display a kind of imagination too, creating pictures from scratch. One of its original works is a series of fuzzy landscapes, depicting trees and sky. While some might say they have a mechanical look, Colton argues that such reactions arise from people’s double standards towards software-produced and human-produced art. After all, he says, consider that the Painting Fool painted the landscapes without referring to a photo. ‘If a child painted a new scene from its head, you’d say it has a certain level of imagination,’ he points out. ‘The same should be true of a machine.’ Software bugs can also lead to unexpected results. Some of the Painting Fool’s paintings of a chair came out in black and white, thanks to a technical glitch. This gives the work an eerie, ghostlike quality. Human artists like the renowned Ellsworth Kelly are lauded for limiting their colour palette – so why should computers be any different?

Researchers like Colton don’t believe it is right to measure machine creativity directly to that of humans who ‘have had millennia to develop our skills’. Others, though, are fascinated by the prospect that a computer might create something as original and subtle as our best artists. So far, only one has come close. Composer David Cope invented a program called Experiments in Musical Intelligence, or EMI. Not only did EMI create compositions in Cope’s style, but also that of the most revered classical composers, including Bach, Chopin and Mozart. Audiences were moved to tears, and EMI even fooled classical music experts into thinking they were hearing genuine Bach. Not everyone was impressed however. Some, such as Wiggins, have blasted Cope’s work as pseudoscience, and condemned him for his deliberately vague explanation of how the software worked. Meanwhile, Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University said EMI created replicas which still rely completely on the original artist’s creative impulses. When audiences found out the truth they were often outraged with Cope, and one music lover even tried to punch him. Amid such controversy, Cope destroyed EMI’s vital databases.

But why did so many people love the music, yet recoil when they discovered how it was composed? A study by computer scientist David Moffat of Glasgow Caledonian University provides a clue. He asked both expert musicians and non-experts to assess six compositions. The participants weren’t told beforehand whether the tunes were composed by humans or computers, but were asked to guess, and then rate how much they liked each one. People who thought the composer was a computer tended to dislike the piece more than those who believed it was human. This was true even among the experts, who might have been expected to be more objective in their analyses.

Where does this prejudice come from? Paul Bloom of Yale University has a suggestion: he reckons part of the pleasure we get from art stems from the creative process behind the work. This can give it an ‘irresistible essence’, says Bloom. Meanwhile, experiments by Justin Kruger of New York University have shown that people’s enjoyment of an artwork increases if they think more time and effort was needed to create it. Similarly, Colton thinks that when people experience art, they wonder what the artist might have been thinking or what the artist is trying to tell them. It seems obvious, therefore, that with computers producing art, this speculation is cut short – there’s nothing to explore. But as technology becomes increasingly complex, finding those greater depths in computer art could become possible. This is precisely why Colton asks the Painting Fool to tap into online social networks for its inspiration: hopefully this way it will choose themes that will already be meaningful to us.

Questions 1-7

Complete the table below. Choose  ONE WORD ONLY  from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes on your answer sheet.

Questions 8-13

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

In boxes 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

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 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

i            The productive outcomes that may result from boredom

ii           What teachers can do to prevent boredom

iii          A new explanation and a new cure for boredom

iv          Problems with a scientific approach to boredom

v           A potential danger arising from boredom

vi          Creating a system of classification for feelings of boredom

vii         Age groups most affected by boredom

viii         Identifying those most affected by boredom

Questions 20-23

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

Match each person with the correct idea,  A-E .

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

List of Ideas

A      The way we live today may encourage boredom.

B      One sort of boredom is worse than all the others.

C      Levels of boredom may fall in the future.

D      Trying to cope with boredom can increase its negative effects.

E      Boredom may encourage us to avoid an unpleasant experience.

Questions 24-26

Responses to boredom.

For John Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is that people cannot 24 , due to a failure in what he calls the ‘attention system’, and as a result they become frustrated and irritable. His team suggests that those for whom 25 is an important aim in life may have problems in coping with boredom, whereas those who have the characteristic of 26  can generally cope with it.

Questions 27-31

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

Write the correct letter in boxes on your answer sheet.

Questions 32-37

Complete each sentence with the correct ending,  A-G  below.

Write the correct letter,  A-G , in boxes on your answer sheet.

A      generating work that was virtually indistinguishable from that of humans.

B      knowing whether it was the work of humans or software.

C      producing work entirely dependent on the imagination of its creator.

D      comparing the artistic achievements of humans and computers.

E      revealing the technical details of his program.

F      persuading the public to appreciate computer art.

G     discovering that it was the product of a computer program

Questions 38-40

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

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

Cambridge IELTS 13 Academic Reading Test 1

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IELTS Cambridge 13 Test 1: ACADEMIC Reading Module

Reading Passage 1: The headline of the passage:  Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website

Questions 1-7 ( Completing table with  ONE WORD ONLY):

In this type of question, candidates are asked to write  only one word  to complete a table on the given topic. For this type of question, first, skim the passage to find the keywords in the paragraph concerned with the answer, and then scan to find the exact word.

[ TIPS:  Here scanning technique will come in handy. Target the keywords of the questions to find the answers. Remember to focus on Proper nouns, random Capital letters, numbers, special characters of text etc.]

Question 1:  allowed businesses to ______ information regularly.

Keywords for these answers:  database, allowed businesses, information, regularly,

In paragraph no. 2, we find the mention of the word ‘database’ in the third line. Here, lines 8 & 9, the writer mentions, “In addition, because participating businesses were able to  update  the  details,  they gave on a  regular  basis….”.

Here,  details = information

So, the answer is:  update

Question 2:  provided a country-wide evaluation of businesses, including their impact on the _________.

Keywords for this answer:  database, country-wide evaluation, impact on

The last line of paragraph no. 2 has the answer. Here, the writer suggests, “As part of this, the effect of each business on the  environment  was considered.”

Here,  effect = impact

So, the answer is:  environment                      

Question 3:  e.g. an interview with a former sports __________.  

Keywords for this answer:  special features, interview, a former sport

The answer can be found in paragraph 3, lines 1-3. The words  ‘interview’  and  ‘former’  are formed in line number 2. The writer says, “.. .. . One of the most popular was  an interview  with  former  New Zealand All Blacks  rugby   captain  Tana Umaga.”

Here, rugby = sports

So, the answer is:  captain                   

Question 4:  and an interactive tour of various locations used in ________.

Keywords for this answer:  interactive tour, various locations

The answer is in paragraph 3, lines 4-5. The lines say, “…… was an interactive journey through a number of locations  chosen for  blockbuster  films  …… ..”.

Here,  journey = tour,

A number of locations = various locations,

Chosen for = used in,

So, the answer is:  films                       

Question 5:  varied depending on the __________. 

Keywords for these answers:  driving routes, varied, depending on

Paragraph 3, lines 8-9 has the answer to this question. The lines say, “…. . .the site catalogued the most popular driving routes in the country, highlighting different routes  according to  the  season ….. . .”.

Here,  different = varied,

according to = depending on,

So, the answers are:  season            

Question 6:  including a map showing selected places, details of public transport and local _______.

Keywords for this answer:    travel planner, a map, public transport, local

The answer lies in paragraph no. 4, line 4. The paragraph begins with ‘travel planner’. In the subsequent lines, we can find the mention of ‘public transport’. In line no. 4 it says, “… . There were also links to  accommodation  in the area.”

Here, the phrase ‘in the area’ can be replaced with the word ‘local’.

So, the answer is:  accommodation

Question 7:  travelers could send a link to their ________.

Keywords for this answer:    ‘Your Words’, travelers, send, link to,

The answer is in paragraph no. 4. ‘Your Words’ is the name of a section of the website www.newzealand.com. We can see that the phrase ‘Your Words’ is present in line 6 of paragraph 4. So, we need to read lines 6 & 7 to find the answer.

The author says, “ ….. . . 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.”

Here,  anyone could submit = travelers could send a link to

So, the answer is:  blog

Questions 8-13: (TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN)

In this type of question, candidates must find out whether:

The statement in the question matches with the account in the text-  TRUE The statement contradicts the account in the text-  FALSE There is no clear connection of the statement with the account in the text-  NOT GIVEN

Question 8:  The website www.newzealand.com aimed to provide ready-made itineraries and packages for travel companies and individual tourists.

Keywords for this answer:  the website, aimed, itineraries, travel packages

To find the answer to this question, look for the words  itineraries and travel packages.  The answer is in Paragraph 6. Here, lines 1 and 2 say, “ The website was set up to  allow both individuals and travel organizations to create  itineraries and travel packages  to suit their own needs and interests.”

This means that the aim of the website was to allow individuals and travel organizations to do their work on their own, the website did not provide any ready-made itineraries and travel packages.

The statement clearly contradicts the text.

So, the answer is:   FALSE

Question 9:  It was found that most visitors started searching on the website by geographical location.

Keywords for this answer:  started searching, geographical location

The answer is not anywhere in the passage. The question is about  starting the search in the website.

  In paragraph 6 line 3, the author says, “…… visitors can search for activities not solely by geographical locations, but also by the particular nature of the activity.” However, nowhere it says anything about  starting the search.

So, the answer is:   NOT GIVEN

Question 10:  According to research, 26% of visitor satisfaction is related to their accommodation.

Keywords for this answer:  26%, visitor satisfaction, accommodation

** Special answer-finding technique:

There is a number in the question (26%). If the answer is TRUE, 26% has to be in the text. For FALSE, the number will be different; or, the number will be 26% (but it will be related to other matters). If the number is still 26%, yet it doesn’t match with other keywords, the answer will be NOT GIVEN.

The answer is in lines 4, 5 & 6 of paragraph no. 6. Here, the writer says, “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% .”

Here, the lines clearly contradict the question. Transportation and accommodation account for 26%. Visitor satisfaction accounts for 74%. If only accommodation accounted for 26%, we could write TRUE. 

Question 11:  Visitors to New Zealand like to become involved in the local culture.

Keywords for this answer:   like to, involved, local nature

The answer lies in lines 7-9 of paragraph 6. The author says, “…. It has also been found that visitors enjoy cultural activities most when they are interactive, such as visiting a  marae  (meeting ground) to learn more about traditional life.”

It means that visitors like to engage in local culture.

So, the answer is:   TRUE

Question 12:  Visitors like staying in small hotels in New Zealand rather than in larger ones.

Keywords for this answer:  like staying, small hotels

In paragraphs 6 & 7, there is no mention of staying in hotels. There is no comparison between small and large hotels also.

So the answer is:  NOT GIVEN

Question 13:  Many visitors feel it is unlikely that they will return to New Zealand after their visit.

Keywords for this answer:   feel, unlikely, will return, after their visit

The answer is in paragraph 7. Here, lines 4 and 5 states, “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 .”

Here, the phrase  ‘often seen as a once-in-a-lifetime visit’  means that there is a very low possibility that the visit will happen again.

So, the answer is: TRUE

Reading Passage 2 :The headline of the passage: Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too

Questions 14-19: (List of headings)

Follow the same rules of finding answers for the  List of Headings  and check the first and last few lines of each paragraph. Most of the time, the answer is there for you containing some synonymous words, which match with the lists of headings. If you cannot find the answers in the first and last few lines, you may need to check the middle of the paragraphs. (This we did in other tests too.)

Question 14:  Paragraph A

For this question, check line 3 of Paragraph A. The line says, “But defining boredom so that it can be studied in the lab  has proved difficult .” Let’s analyse the sentence here. The phrase ‘ has proved difficult ’ in the sentence means that there is a problem with the science to define boredom.

So, the answer is:  iv  (Problems with a scientific approach to boredom)

Question 15:  Paragraph B

The answer is in lines 1-3 of the paragraph. Here, the writer says, “ By asking people  about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted … …  .”

So, we can gather from these lines that there is an explanation of how a team of scientists has classified the feelings of boredom.

So, the answer is:  vi (Creating a system of classification for feelings of boredom)

Question 16:  Paragraph C

In lines 2 and 3 of Paragraph C, we can find a sentence about the finding of psychologist Sandi Mann of the University of Central Lancashire. “Mann has found that  being bored makes us more creative .” This means that boredom can result in something good (productive outcomes).

So, the answer is:  i (The productive outcomes that may result from boredom)

Question 17:  Paragraph D

We can get the answer having a quick look in lines 6-7 of paragraph D. The lines say, “… . .. But even if boredom has evolved to help us survive, it  can still be toxic if allowed to fester .” The word ‘toxic’ here means poisonous or extremely bad or dangerous.

So, the answer is:  v (A potential danger arising from boredom)

Question 18:  Paragraph E

We can get an idea of what paragraph E talks about by reading the first 2-3 lines. Here the writer says, “Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the ‘attention system’ fails. It’s early days but they think that at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a variety of traits.” From these lines, we can gather that the researchers or scientists are working on the identification of people who are most prone to or most affected by boredom.

So, the answer is:  viii (Identifying those most affected by boredom)

Question 19:  Paragraph F

The first and second lines of paragraph F talk about a new theory about boredom – “…. that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom.” Then, in lines 4-5, the writer provides a possible treatment for this new source of boredom – “…. So instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave our phones alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more meaningful way . .. …”.

So, the answer is:  iii (A new explanation and a new cure for boredom)

Question 20-23:  (Matching names of people with their ideas or statements)

(The rules for finding answers to this sort of question are simple. Just find the name of the person and read around it carefully. Then, give a quick look to check whether there is another statement or idea provided by the same person in the text. If there is, check the reference carefully and decide your answer. Remember, the questions may not follow any sequential order. )

Question 20:  Peter Toohey

In paragraph A, we find an idea shared by Peter Toohey. Look at the last lines – “If disgust protects humans from infection, boredom may protect them, from ‘infectious’ social situations .. . ..” It means boredom may help us to avoid an unpleasant situation. Here, infectious means displeasing/unpleasant.

So, the answer is:  E (Boredom may encourage us to avoid an unpleasant experience)

Question 21:  Thomas Goetz

There are two references for Thomas Goetz in this passage – in paragraphs B & E. So, we need to look at paragraph B first. In the first few lines, we can see that Goetz and his team have identified five types of boredom and when you read further, in lines 7-8, the writer states, “Of the five types, the most damaging is ‘reactant’ boredom with its explosive combination of high arousal and negative emotion.”

So, the answer is:  B (One sort of boredom is worse than all the others)

Question 22:  John Eastwood

Again, there are two references to John Eastwood in paragraphs D & E. So, we need to look at paragraph D first. If we don’t find the answer there, we can have a look at paragraph E. In paragraph D, lines 7-9 say, “For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an inability to focus on anything which makes time seem to go painfully slowly.” The lines indicate that if anyone tries and cannot focus on anything (attention system failure), this may give a bad feeling that the time has slowed down which may make anyone more and more irritated.

So, the answer is:  D (Trying to cope with boredom can increase its negative effects)

Question 23:  Francoise Wemelsfelder

There is only one reference to Wemelsfelder and that’s in Paragraph F, the very last one. Take a careful look lines 1-2, “Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom.” This clearly indicates that our present lifestyle may inspire boredom.

So, the answer is:  A (The way we live today may encourage boredom)

Questions 24-26: (Completing summary with ONE WORD ONLY):

Question 24:  For John Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is that people cannot ________, due to failure in what he calls the ‘attention system’,.. .. . . .

Keywords for this answer:  central feature, people cannot

The question starts with the name of John Eastwood. So, we simply need to go to paragraph D and start looking for answers there. In line 7, we can see the phrase ‘central feature’. So, we can read this line – “For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an  inability to   focus  on anything.” Here,  inability  = cannot

So, the answer is:  focus

Question 25:  His team suggests that those for whom ______ is an important aim in life may have problems in coping with boredom, …. . . ..

Keywords for this answer:  suggests,  important  aim in life, may have problems

In paragraph E, lines 3-4 say, “People who are motivated by  pleasure  seem to suffer particularly badly.”

This means people who depend on pleasure, may have problems coping with pleasure.

So, the answer is:  pleasure

Question 26:  …. whereas those who have the characteristic of ______ can generally cope with it.

Keywords for this answer:  characteristic, generally cope with it

This answer needs some understanding. In lines 4 and 5, we see – “Other personality traits (characteristics), such as  curiosity,  are associated with a high boredom threshold.” Here, the word ‘threshold’ means the point where something changes or turns into something else. So,  high boredom threshold  means where  boredom changes completely/ tendency to not get bored quickly . Thus, it further means people with curiosity can cope with boredom.

So, the answer is:  curiosity

Reading Passage 3 :Artificial Artists

Questions 27-31: (Multiple Choice Questions)

‘Multiple choice questions’ is a common type of question set in the IELTS Reading test. It is also found in the Listening test.  Most of the time, they come with four options but sometimes there are three options. Candidates need to work hard for this type of questions because this may confuse them easily in passage 2 or passage 3. There will be long answers for each question, so they may kill valuable time. So, quick reading or skimming technique might come handy here.  Remember that answers in 3 options out of 4 will be very close. So, vocabulary power will help a lot to choose the best answer.

TIP:  Skimming is the best reading technique. You need not understand every word here. Just try to gather the gist of the sentences. That’s all. Read quickly and don’t stop until you finish each sentence.

Question 27: What is the writer suggesting about computer-produced works in the first paragraph?

Keywords for this answer:  computer-produced works, first paragraph

In the first paragraph, the answer to this question can be guessed from line 1.

In line 1 the writer of the passage says, “The Painting Fool is  one of a growing number  of computer programs which, so their makers claim, possess creative talents.” Here, the phrase  one of a growing number  is a clear indication that the number of computer programs is on the rise. So, great progress has been made here.

So, the answer is:  B ( A great deal of progress has already been attained in this field. )

Question 28: According to Geraint Wiggins, why are many people worried by computer art?

Keywords for this answer:  Geraint Wiggins, worried by computer art

The answer to this question can be found in line 5 of paragraph 2. Here the writer says, “…. It scares a lot of people. They are worried that it is taking something special away from what it means to be human.”

Many of you (IELTS candidates) may think that the answer would be D (It will lead to a deterioration in human ability). But the answer cannot be it because the answer is in  future form (..will lead..),  while the lines in the text are in present form. Answer A and B are ruled out because there is no comparison on any aesthetic power between computer or human art and the line does not say anywhere that computer art may overtake or supersede human art.

But answer C (It undermines a fundamental human ability) has a close relationship with the line. The line indicates to the fact that people are worried that machines like computer may have the powers which are found generally in humans. Thus, computer art can undermine or make human quality weaker.

So, the answer is:  C  (It undermines a fundamental human ability)

Question 29: What is a key difference between Aaron and the Painting Fool?

Keywords for this answer:  key difference, Aaron, Painting Fool

The answer is in lines 2-5 of paragraph 4. Here, the author mentions some amazing and interesting features of the computer program named the Painting Fool – such as “only need minimal direction”, “can come up with its own concepts”, “runs its own web searches”, “trawls through social media sites”, “beginning to display a kind of imagination”, “creating pictures from scratch”. All these features or characteristics indicate that The Painting Fool is different from Aaron in its source of subject for painting.

So, the answer is:  C  (the source of its subject matter)

Question 30: What point does Simon Colton make in the fourth paragraph?

Keywords for this answer:  fourth paragraph, Simon Colton

For this question, answer A is ruled out because there is no reference to anything childish and simplistic. There are also no points on whether people should apply the same concepts of creativity to all forms of art. So, answer B is also wrong. Take a close look at lines 7-8, where the author says, “….. Colton agrees that such reactions arise from  people’s double standards  towards software-produced and human-produced art.” Here, the phrase ‘double-standard’ matches with the phrase in answer D ‘different criteria’.

So, the answer is:  D  (People tend to judge computer art and human art according to different criteria)

Question 31: The writer refers to the paintings of a chair as an example of computer art which –

Keywords for this answer:  paintings of a chair

In lines 12-14 of paragraph no. 4, we find the reference of the painting of a chair. “Some of the Painting Fool’s paintings of a chair came out in black and white, thanks to a technical glitch. This gives the work an eerie, ghostlike quality.” It means that though there was a  glitch or problem  in the program, it created an excellent black and white feature in the painting which was very  attractive/striking/spooky ( eerie, ghostlike quality ) .

So, the answer is:  A  (achieves a particularly striking effect)

Questions 32-37 (Completing sentence with given list of Ideas)

Here, candidates have to complete sentences with a list of ideas. It is just like completing sentences. Candidates need to check the keywords from the question parts and try to match those keywords with the information given in the passage.

Question 32: Simon Colton says it is important to consider long-term view when –

Keywords for this answer:  Simon Colton, important, long-term view

The answer is in the first two lines of paragraph 5. Here, the writer says, “Researchers like Colton don’t believe it is right to measure machine creativity directly to that of humans who ‘have had  millennia  to develop our skills.’ These lines clearly indicate that we should not be so direct or so quick to compare machine creativity with human creativity because humans have had developed their skills in  several millennia (thousand years)  to become as creative as they are now, but machines have evolved only recently and more time is necessary to understand what machines can create.

So, the answer is:  D (comparing the artistic achievements of humans and computers)

Question 33: David Cope’s EMI software surprised people by –

Keywords for this answer:  David Cope’s EMI, surprised people

We find the mention of David Cope’s EMI software in lines 4-5 of paragraph 5. Then, in lines 7-8, we can find the answer. Here, the writer states, “Audiences were moved to experts into thinking they were hearing genuine Bach.” It means the audience was so moved by their experience of listening to machine-created music that they failed to distinguish (to find the difference) between machine-created music and human-created music.”

So, the answer is:  A (generating work that was virtually indistinguishable from that of humans)

Question 34: Geraint Wiggins criticized Cope for not –

Keywords for this answer:  Geraint Wiggins, criticized, Cope

We can see a criticism made by Geraint Wiggins about Cope’s EMI software in paragraph 5, lines 9-11. The author states, “Some, such as Wiggins, have  blasted  Cope’s work as pseudoscience, and condemned him for his deliberately vague explanation of how the software worked.” It means Wiggins does not like Cope’s work because it is pseudoscience (a kind of scientific work which is not what it claims to be) and Cope’s explanations about the work are  vague (unclear/elusive) .

So, the answer is:  E (revealing the technical details of his program)

Question 35: Douglas Hofstadter claimed that EMI was –

Keywords for this answer:  Douglas Hofstadter, claimed, EMI

The answer is in lines 11-12 of paragraph 5. The lines say, “…. Meanwhile, Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University said EMI created  replicas  which  still rely completely on the original artist’s creative impulses .”

So, the answer is:  C (producing work entirely dependent on the imagination of its creator)

Question 36: Audiences who had listened to EMI’s music became angry after –

Keywords for this answer:  Audiences, listened, EMI’s music, angry

The answer lies in lines 13-14 of paragraph 5. Here, the author states, “When audiences found out the truth, they were often  outraged  with Cope, and one music lover even tried to punch him.” This means when audiences found out that they actually listened to music that a machine created,  they were outraged  or  became angry  at the creator of the program.

So, the answer is:  G (discovering that it was the product of a computer program)

Question 37: The participants in David Moffat’s study had to assess music without –

Keywords for this answer:  participants, David Moffat’s study, assess music without

To find the answer to this question, we must find  David Moffat  first. In paragraph no. 6, we find the name in line no. 2. The next lines give us clues to the answer. Here, in lines 3-4, the writer says, “He asked both expert musicians and non-experts to assess six compositions. The  participants weren’t told beforehand  whether the tunes were composed by humans or computers”. This means the listeners were not given information about the original composer until they listened to the music.

So, the answer is:  B (knowing whether it was the work of humans or software)

Questions 38-40: (YES, NO, NOT GIVEN)

[In this type of question, candidates are asked to find out whether:

The statement in the question matches with the account in the text-  YES The statement in the question contradicts the account in the text-  NO The statement in the question has no clear connection with the account in the text-  NOT GIVEN

For this type of question, you can divide each statement into three independent pieces and make your way through with the answer.]

Question 38:  Moffat’s research may help explain people’s reactions to EMI.

Keywords for this answer:  Moffat’s research, help, explain, reactions, EMI

We had to read the first half of paragraph 6 for question no. 37 before. Here, we learned that Moffat’s study was giving listeners six music compositions without telling them who the composers were. Now, the last half of the paragraph tells us how people might react to this. “People who thought the composer was a computer tended to dislike the piece more than those who believed it was human. This was true even among the experts, .. . .”

So, the result of the experiment helps to understand people’s reactions.

So, the answer is:  YES

Question 39:  The non-experts in Moffat’s study all responded in a predictable way.

Keywords for this answer:  non-experts, Moffat’s study, all responded, predictable way

There is no reference as to whether there was any predictable way to respond by non-experts in Moffat’s study.

So, the answer is:  NOT GIVEN

Question 40:  Justin Kruger’s findings cast doubt on Paul Bloom’s theory about people’s prejudice towards computer art.

Keywords for this answer:  Justin Kruger’s findings, cast doubt, Paul Bloom’s theory

The last paragraph’s lines 1-5 give us the answer. Though we find here two views of Justin Kruger and Paul Bloom, these two views actually approve or support each other.

Paul Bloom’s theory says, “…. . . .. part of the pleasure we get from art stems….. .” This matches with Justin Kruger’s experiments, “… . . have shown that people’s enjoyment of  an artwork increases.”

There is another clue: In Paul Bloom’s suggestion, there is a mention of ‘the creative process’.

This also matches with Justin Kruger’s findings where we can see the mention of “more time and effort was needed to create it”.

Thus, the two findings do not cast any doubt. Rather, one supports the other.

So, the answer is:  NO

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IELTS STUDY MATERIAL

Luyện thi IELTS – TP Vinh

CAMBRIDGE IELTS 13 – TEST 1 PASSAGE 1 – 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 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

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.

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Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website - IELTS Reading Answers

The IELTS Reading Module offers a fantastic chance to achieve excellent scores. It assesses a candidate’s reading comprehension skills in English. You must comprehend the various question types in order to perform at your best in this area. Ideally, you should not spend more than 20 minutes on a passage. The Academic passage, Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website reading answers, appeared in an IELTS Test. Try to find the answers to get an idea of the difficulty level of the passages in the actual reading test. If you want more passages to solve, try taking one of our IELTS reading practice tests.

The  IELTS Reading test is essential for anybody planning to study, work, or relocate to English-speaking nations. Mastery of this part necessitates strong linguistic abilities and efficient reading comprehension techniques. In this situation, understanding reading passages and correctly recognizing responses is critical. This article will examine "Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website" and how it relates to IELTS reading. By analyzing the passage and critiquing example responses, we want to give valuable insights and tactics to assist test takers in effectively traversing this area. This article provides thorough information for improving reading comprehension and eventually succeeding on the IELTS Reading exam, from understanding the material to breaking down sample responses.

Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website Reading Passage

Paragraph 1

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.

Paragraph 2

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 services 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 organized a scheme whereby organizations 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.

Paragraph 3

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 customized itineraries. To make it easier to plan motoring holidays, the site cataloged the most popular driving routes in the country, highlighting different routes according to the season and indicating distances and times.

Paragraph 4

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 about their New Zealand travels for possible inclusion on the website.

Paragraph 5

The Tourism New Zealand website won two Webby awards for online achievement and innovation. More importantly, perhaps, the growth of tourism in 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.

Paragraph 6

The website was set up to allow both individuals and travel organizations 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.

Paragraph 7

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.

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Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website Reading Questions

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 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

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.

Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website Reading Answers

In this section, the case study tourism New Zealand website reading answers with explanations, are given to evaluate your errors.

(Note: The text in italics mentions the location and referring lines written in the reading passage)

1. Answer:Update Explanation: participating businesses were able to update the details they gave on a regular basis, the information provided remained accurate. The given answer is located in 8-10 lines of the 2nd paragraph.

2. Answer: Environment  Explanation:  As part of this, the effect of each business on the environment was considered. The given answer is located in the last 2 lines of the 2nd paragraph.

3. Answer:Captain Explanation: One of the most popular was an interview with former New Zealand All Blacks rugby captain Tana Umaga.The given answer is located in the 2-3 lines of the 3rd paragraph.

4. Answer: Flims Explanation:Attracted a lot of attention was an interactive journey through a number of the locations chosen for blockbuster films. The given answer is located in the 4-5 line of the 3rd paragraph.

5. Answer: Seasons  Explanation: The site cataloged the most popular driving routes in the country, highlighting different routes according to the season and indicating distances and times. The given answer is located in the last 3 lines of the 3rd paragraph.

6. Answer: Accommodation  Explanation: There were also links to accommodation in the area. The given answer is located in the 4-5 lines of the 4th paragraph.

7. Answer: Blog Explanation:  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 given answer is located in the last 3 lines of the 4th paragraph.

8. Answer: False Explanation:  The website was set up to allow both individuals and travel organizations to create itineraries and travel packages to suit their own needs and interests. The given answer is located in the first 3 lines of the 6th paragraph.

9. Answer: Not given

10. Answer: False Explanation:  Visitor satisfaction, contributing 74% to visitor satisfaction, while transport and accommodation account for the remaining 26%. The given answer is located in the 5-7 lines of the 6th paragraph.

11. Answer: True Explanation:  It has also been found that visitors enjoy cultural activities most when they are interactive. The given answer is located in the 7-9 lines of the 6th paragraph.

12. Answer: Not given

13. Answer: True  Explanation:  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. The given answer is located in the 4-6 lines of the 7th paragraph.

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Tips for the IELTS Reading Test

Below are some tips to help you improve your band score in the IELTS reading test:

• Mark essential words as you read the section. It helps you keep your attention on the critical points.
• Look over the questions quickly before you read them. Find keywords in the questions to help you learn.
• Keep track of time. Make good use of your time for each part, and don’t spend too much on any one question.
• Skim the sentence before entering the details. Know what the primary thought is and how the information is put together.
• Begin with the easiest questions for you. It makes sure you get those questions before moving on to harder ones.

To summarize, mastering the  IELTS Reading  test involves a combination of successful tactics, persistent practice, and confidence. You may quickly and accurately explore the chapters by establishing strong skimming and scanning methods, growing your vocabulary, and becoming familiar with various questions. Identify and manage your time effectively, remain calm under pressure, and systematically address each question. Yocket's extensive study materials and professional assistance may provide additional support and tools to help you succeed in your IELTS. With effort and the correct resources, you may confidently take the IELTS Reading exam and attain your goal score. Visit  Yocket  today and take your  IELTS preparation to the next level.

FAQ's on Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website - IELTS Reading Answers

How many parts does the IELTS Reading test have?

There are three parts to the IELTS Reading test, each with a different written text. From sections one to three, these sentences get more complicated and complex as you read them. Quickly read through the questions to know what to expect. You can read more quickly and easily with this.

How can I qualify for the IELTS Reading test?

To prepare for the IELTS Reading test, practice reading various literature, such as academic articles, newspapers, and magazines. Familiarize yourself with various question forms and use efficient reading skills, including skimming, scanning, and paraphrasing.

What sorts of questions might I expect on the IELTS Reading test?

The IELTS Reading test has a variety of question formats, including multiple-choice, matching headers, True/False/Not Given, sentence completion, summary completion, and more. These questions measure reading abilities, such as comprehending key concepts, accessing particular material, and recognizing viewpoints or attitudes.

What is the IELTS Reading test, and what does it cover?

The IELTS Reading exam measures a candidate's ability to comprehend and interpret written English content. It is divided into three sections, each with distinct content: an article, an essay, and an advertisement. Test takers must attentively read each section and respond to text-related questions.

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पर्यटन न्यूज़ीलैंड वेबसाइट केस स्टडी उत्तर पढ़ना: अपनी आईईएलटीएस तैयारी को बढ़ावा देने का तरीका

For now, we have talked a lot about the speaking & listening sections of the IELTS examination. Today, let’s move forward to know more about the IELTS reading section.

The आईईएलटीएस पढ़ना section is an extremely important yet tough exams but it is not possible for one to not crack it in time. All you need is the right reading practice and by that we mean, a lot of it to make sure that you do not cease anywhere while you’re giving the exam during the final attempt. Along with this, you need to tackle a lot of reading passage’s questions and increase your difficulty level every day to make sure that you are easily able to solve all these questions, no matter what type or any sort of questions you’re presented with.

So, today let’s move forward to know more about it.

Case Study Tourism New Zealand Website Reading Answers

The IELTS reading passage topic: Tourism New Zealand Website” is a very common yet interesting topic in the IELTS examination. In the sections below, this topic is divided into different parts to help you practice in a better yet easy manner for this passage.

पर्यटन New Zealand Website IELTS Reading Answers: Part 1

New Zealand is a small country with a minimum of just four million inhabitants that are spread across the country in a peaceful manner.

Currently, the total GDP of the country has the highest percentage of tourism in it. Tourism contributes to making up to 9% of this country’s GDP and is the largest export sector of the country. Unlike all the other export sectors, tourism is one such sector in this country which helps to bring a lot of its customers to this country. And while we talk about the other products of this country – they are just people, places, and the experiences that are taken out of it.

In the year 1999, Tourism New Zealand launched a great campaign which was there to help communicate a new brand position to the world. This campaign focused on New Zealand’s scenic beauty, its exhilarating outdoor activities and the authentic Maori culture that is being followed here which helps in making it the most powerful yet the strongest brands in the world.

यह भी पढ़ें एक अच्छा आईईएलटीएस स्कोर क्या है? क्या 7.5 एक अच्छा आईईएलटीएस स्कोर है? यहां वह सब कुछ है जो आपको जानना आवश्यक है

पर्यटन New Zealand Website IELTS Reading Answers: Part 2

A key feature of this campaign was the website that was launched during this period for this country, www.newzealand.com. This website helped in providing great potential visitors to the country with a single gateway to each and everything that the destination had to offer to its people.

But the heart of the business is the database of tourism services operators, both of which are based in New Zealand as well as abroad which helps in providing great tourism services to the country. So, any tourism-related form can be filled easily without taking anybody’s help at all. Further, to maintain the standards and improve them, Tourism New Zealand organised a scheme with the help of which organisations that appear on the website underwent an independent evaluation against a set of the national standards of quality that they all agreed on. And due to this, the effect it had on each of the businesses was considered too.

पर्यटन New Zealand Website IELTS Reading Answers: Part 3

Further, to communicate the New Zealand experience, this site also carried forward various features related to the famous people and places which was one of the most popular interviews that this country had with the former New Zealand All Blacks Rugby Captain “Tana Umaga.”

Another such feature that helped in increasing a lot of attention towards his country is through the help of those blockbuster films that were made here which helps in providing people with an interactive journey through a number of some amazing yet extremely beautiful locations.

A Travel Planner feature was also added to this list which helped the visitors to click and bookmark the places of attraction for them so that when they visit this country, they’ll have a long list of places to roam around. This planner also helps in suggesting routes and public transport options to the readers in order to easily choose between the locations that they have chosen for them.

यह भी पढ़ें: एक सितारे का जीवन चक्र: एक आईईएलटीएस रीडिंग उत्तर विषय जिसमें हल किए गए प्रश्न शामिल हैं

पर्यटन New Zealand Website IELTS Reading Answers: Part 4

New Zealand is not just any typical destination where people could come and roam around; it’s an emotion, a feeling for all those four million people residing here. New Zealand is just a small & pretty country with little less population in it and it creates a visitor economy for the tourists which is generally composed of small businesses. It is generally perceived as a safe English-speaking country with reliable transport infrastructure. And because of the long-haul flights, most visitors have to stay for a long period of time in this country, let’s say, for about a period of 20 days so that they can see as much of the country as is possible for them on a one-time long visit to this country.

पर्यटन New Zealand Website IELTS Reading Questions

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.

#1. Easy for Tourism-related business to get on the list

#2. Allowed businesses to _____________ information regularly

#3. Provided a countrywide evaluation of businesses, including their impact on the _________________

#4. Special features on local topics

Example – an interview with a former sports _________________, and an interactive tour of various locations used in ____________________________

#5. Information on driving routes that varied depending on the ___________________________

#6. Travel Planner • included a map showing selected places, details of public transport and local ________________

#7. ‘Your Words’ • travelers could send a link to their ________________________

#2. Environment

#3. Captain

#6. Accommodation

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

In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, mention

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 ” created by the tourism department of New Zealand has been aiming to provide some great deals, itineraries, and good-deal packages for the travel companies as well as for all those travel enthusiasts.

#9. Many of the visitors out of these were found to be searching for the information that they want on the official website by the geographical location of the area.

#10. According to research, 26% of visitor satisfaction is related to their accommodation.

#11. Many-a-times, it has been noticed that many of the visitors to this country become more involved in the local culture of the country and enjoy it a lot.

#12. Many visitors like staying in small hotels as they like the vibe of such hotels a lot rather than those big, grand, and new ones recently built in the country.

#13. Visitors feel it unlikely to return to the country after their first visit here.

#9. Not Given

#12. Not Given

आईईएलटीएस Preparation Tips: Reading Section

#1.the two “s”.

By the two S here, we mean Skimming and Scanning, that is to skim and scan the lines of the passage. This requires an individual to go through the reading passage in order to get a general understanding of the content and what could be the answers to the questions that follow behind it.

#2.Good Reading Speed

While practising for the IELTS reading section, an individual is asked to read as many passages as he/she can in order to increase their reading speed. This can further help an individual a lot in the future.

#3.Don’t Understand the Full Passage

While sitting in the exam hall, the aim of an individual should not be to understand the entire passage completely because this will put the ability to answer the questions in a timely manner to the test. And after all, your only aim should be to just find the correct answers to the questions.

After reading the above paragraph, we hope that you might have understood it well and have got an idea of how you can further solve the questions related to it or find out the different answers for the various questions being provided. If you have any doubts in your mind regarding the same, just feel free to comment down below and let us know all about it so that we can help you with that in the future because we’ll be more than happy to help you out through this.

Also, if you want more help in any of these reading passages, don’t forget to just check out our other blogs that will help you with the same.

यह भी पढ़ें: पुरातत्व की प्रकृति और उद्देश्य: आईईएलटीएस रीडिंग टेस्ट के लिए रीडिंग उत्तर खोजें

helped alott

प्रातिक्रिया दे जवाब रद्द करें

आलेख साझा करें:

लेखक के बारे में

साक्षी बचानी.

साक्षी बचानी एक फ्रीलांस कंटेंट राइटर और टीचर हैं। उन्होंने दिल्ली विश्वविद्यालय से स्नातक की डिग्री पूरी की है। वह पिछले पांच वर्षों से एक स्वतंत्र शिक्षिका हैं और उन्होंने छोटे बच्चों को उनके सपने हासिल करने में मदद करने की दिशा में काम किया है। उन्होंने एक एनजीओ के साथ इंटर्न टीचर के तौर पर भी काम किया था। लिखने और पढ़ाने के अलावा, वह वास्तव में संगीत, जानवरों और पौधों का आनंद लेती हैं। उसका अपना छोटा सा बगीचा भी है जिसे वह बहुत प्यार करती है और कभी-कभी उसे अपने लिए और पौधे खरीदते हुए भी देखा जा सकता है।

आप इसे भी पसंद कर सकते हैं

माइट हार्वेस्टमेन उत्तर पढ़ना: आइए आईईएलटीएस मॉक टेस्ट और आईईएलटीएस अभ्यास टेस्ट के साथ तैयारी करें!

उत्तर पढ़ने वाले चींटियों के नमूने एकत्र करना: आइए आईईएलटीएस परीक्षा में सफल होने की तैयारी करें

जैविक खेती और रासायनिक उर्वरक उत्तर पढ़ना: आइए आईईएलटीएस परीक्षा में अच्छा स्कोर करें!

अन्य कहानियाँ, क्या आईईएलटीएस स्पीकिंग टेस्ट आमने-सामने है यहां बताया गया है कि आप इसमें कैसे सफल हो सकते हैं और 8+ बैंड स्कोर हासिल कर सकते हैं, ऊबना क्यों उत्तेजक और उपयोगी भी है आईईएलटीएस उत्तर पढ़ना.

Cambridge IELTS 13 Academic Reading Test 1 with Answers

Cambridge ielts 13 academic reading test 1, reading passage 1, 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 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

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.

Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too

This most common of emotions is turning out to be more interesting than we thought

We all know how it feels – it’s impossible to keep your mind on anything, time stretches out, and all the things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you feel better. But defining boredom so that it can be studied in the lab has proved difficult. For a start, it can include a lot of other mental states, such as frustration, apathy, depression and indifference. There isn’t even agreement over whether boredom is always a low-energy, flat kind of emotion or whether feeling agitated and restless counts as boredom, too. In his book,  Boredom: A Lively History , Peter Toohey at the University of Calgary, Canada, compares it to disgust – an emotion that motivates us to stay away from certain situations. ‘If disgust protects humans from infection, boredom may protect them from “infectious” social situations,’ he suggests.

By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted on two axes – one running left to right, which measures low to high arousal, and the other from top to bottom, which measures how positive or negative the feeling is. Intriguingly, Goetz has found that while people experience all kinds of boredom, they tend to specialise in one. Of the five types, the most damaging is ‘reactant’ boredom with its explosive combination of high arousal and negative emotion. The most useful is what Goetz calls ‘indifferent’ boredom: someone isn’t engaged in anything satisfying but still feels relaxed and calm. However, it remains to be seen whether there are any character traits that predict the kind of boredom each of us might be prone to.

Psychologist Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, goes further. ‘All emotions are there for a reason, including boredom,’ she says. Mann has found that being bored makes us more creative. ‘We’re all afraid of being bored but in actual fact it can lead to all kinds of amazing things,’ she says. In experiments published last year, Mann found that people who had been made to feel bored by copying numbers out of the phone book for 15 minutes came up with more creative ideas about how to use a polystyrene cup than a control group. Mann concluded that a passive, boring activity is best for creativity because it allows the mind to wander. In fact, she goes so far as to suggest that we should seek out more boredom in our lives.

Psychologist John Eastwood at York University in Toronto, Canada, isn’t convinced. ‘If you are in a state of mind-wandering you are not bored,’ he says. ‘In my view, by definition boredom is an undesirable state.’ That doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t adaptive, he adds. ‘Pain is adaptive – if we didn’t have physical pain, bad things would happen to us. Does that mean that we should actively cause pain? No. But even if boredom has evolved to help us survive, it can still be toxic if allowed to fester.’ For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an inability to focus on anything, which makes time seem to go painfully slowly. What’s more, your efforts to improve the situation can end up making you feel worse. ‘People try to connect with the world and if they are not successful there’s that frustration and irritability,’ he says. Perhaps most worryingly, says Eastwood, repeatedly failing to engage attention can lead to state where we don’t know what to do any more, and no longer care.

Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails. It’s early days but they think that at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a variety of traits. People who are motivated by pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other personality traits, such as curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold. More evidence that boredom has detrimental effects comes from studies of people who are more or less prone to boredom. It seems those who bore easily face poorer prospects in education, their career and even life in general. But of course, boredom itself cannot kill – it’s the things we do to deal with it that may put us in danger. What can we do to alleviate it before it comes to that? Goetz’s group has one suggestion. Working with teenagers, they found that those who ‘approach’ a boring situation – in other words, see that it’s boring and get stuck in anyway – report less boredom than those who try to avoid it by using snacks, TV or social media for distraction.

Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom. ‘In modern human society there is a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of problems finding meaning,’ she says. So instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave our phones alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more meaningful way.

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 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            The productive outcomes that may result from boredom

ii           What teachers can do to prevent boredom

iii          A new explanation and a new cure for boredom

iv          Problems with a scientific approach to boredom

v           A potential danger arising from boredom

vi          Creating a system of classification for feelings of boredom

vii         Age groups most affected by boredom

viii         Identifying those most affected by boredom

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

Questions 20-23

Look at the following people (Questions  20-23 ) and the list of ideas below.

Match each person with the correct idea,  A-E .

Write the correct letter,  A-E , in boxes  20-23  on your answer sheet.

20    Peter Toohey

21    Thomas Goetz

22    John Eastwood

23    Francoise Wemelsfelder

List of Ideas

A      The way we live today may encourage boredom.

B      One sort of boredom is worse than all the others.

C      Levels of boredom may fall in the future.

D      Trying to cope with boredom can increase its negative effects.

E      Boredom may encourage us to avoid an unpleasant experience.

Questions 24-26

Complete the summary below. Choose  ONE WORD ONLY  from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes  24-26  on your answer sheet.

Responses to boredom

For John Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is that people cannot  24 ……………………………, due to a failure in what he calls the ‘attention system’, and as a result they become frustrated and irritable. His team suggests that those for whom  25 ……………………….. is an important aim in life may have problems in coping with boredom, whereas those who have the characteristic of  26 ……………………….. can generally cope with it.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Artificial artist?

Can computers really create works of art?

The Painting Fool is one of a growing number of computer programs which, so their makers claim, possess creative talents. Classical music by an artificial composer has had audiences enraptured, and even tricked them into believing a human was behind the score. Artworks painted by a robot have sold for thousands of dollars and been hung in prestigious galleries. And software has been built which creates are that could not have been imagined by the programmer.

Human beings are the only species to perform sophisticated creative acts regularly. If we can break this process down into computer code, where does that leave human creativity? ‘This is a question at the very core of humanity,’ says Geraint Wiggins, a computational creativity researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. ‘It scares a lot of people. They are worried that it is taking something special away from what it means to be human.’

To some extent, we are all familiar with computerised art. The question is: where does the work of the artist stop and the creativity of the computer begin? Consider one of the oldest machine artists, Aaron, a robot that has had paintings exhibited in London’s Tate Modern and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Aaron can pick up a paintbrush and paint on canvas on its own. Impressive perhaps, but it is still little more than a tool to realise the programmer’s own creative ideas.

Simon Colton, the designer of the Painting Fool, is keen to make sure his creation doesn’t attract the same criticism. Unlike earlier ‘artists’ such as Aaron, the Painting Fool only needs minimal direction and can come up with its own concepts by going online for material. The software runs its own web searches and trawls through social media sites. It is now beginning to display a kind of imagination too, creating pictures from scratch. One of its original works is a series of fuzzy landscapes, depicting trees and sky. While some might say they have a mechanical look, Colton argues that such reactions arise from people’s double standards towards software-produced and human-produced art. After all, he says, consider that the Painting Fool painted the landscapes without referring to a photo. ‘If a child painted a new scene from its head, you’d say it has a certain level of imagination,’ he points out. ‘The same should be true of a machine.’ Software bugs can also lead to unexpected results. Some of the Painting Fool’s paintings of a chair came out in black and white, thanks to a technical glitch. This gives the work an eerie, ghostlike quality. Human artists like the renowned Ellsworth Kelly are lauded for limiting their colour palette – so why should computers be any different?

Researchers like Colton don’t believe it is right to measure machine creativity directly to that of humans who ‘have had millennia to develop our skills’. Others, though, are fascinated by the prospect that a computer might create something as original and subtle as our best artists. So far, only one has come close. Composer David Cope invented a program called Experiments in Musical Intelligence, or EMI. Not only did EMI create compositions in Cope’s style, but also that of the most revered classical composers, including Bach, Chopin and Mozart. Audiences were moved to tears, and EMI even fooled classical music experts into thinking they were hearing genuine Bach. Not everyone was impressed however. Some, such as Wiggins, have blasted Cope’s work as pseudoscience, and condemned him for his deliberately vague explanation of how the software worked. Meanwhile, Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University said EMI created replicas which still rely completely on the original artist’s creative impulses. When audiences found out the truth they were often outraged with Cope, and one music lover even tried to punch him. Amid such controversy, Cope destroyed EMI’s vital databases.

But why did so many people love the music, yet recoil when the discovered how it was composed? A study by computer scientist David Moffat of Glasgow Caledonian University provides a clue. He asked both expert musicians and non-experts to assess six compositions. The participants weren’t told beforehand whether the tunes were composed by humans or computers, but were asked to guess, and then rate how much they liked each one. People who thought the composer was a computer tended to dislike the piece more than those who believed it was human. This was true even among the experts, who might have been expected to be more objective in their analyses.

Where does this prejudice come from? Paul Bloom of Yale University has a suggestion: he reckons part of the pleasure we get from art stems from the creative process behind the work. This can give it an ‘irresistible essence’, says Bloom. Meanwhile, experiments by Justin Kruger of New York University have shown that people’s enjoyment of an artwork increases if they think more time and effort was needed to create it. Similarly, Colton thinks that when people experience art, they wonder what the artist might have been thinking or what the artist is trying to tell them. It seems obvious, therefore, that with computers producing art, this speculation is cut short – there’s nothing to explore. But as technology becomes increasingly complex, finding those greater depths in computer art could become possible. This is precisely why Colton asks the Painting Fool to tap into online social networks for its inspiration: hopefully this way it will choose themes that will already be meaningful to us.

Questions 27-31

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

Write the correct letter in boxes  27-31  on your answer sheet.

27    What is the writer suggesting about computer-produced works in the first paragraph?

A    People’s acceptance of them can vary considerably. B    A great deal of progress has already been attained in this field. C    They have had more success in some artistic genres than in others. D    the advances are not as significant as the public believes them to be.

28    According to Geraint Wiggins, why are many people worried by computer art?

A    It is aesthetically inferior to human art. B    It may ultimately supersede human art. C    It undermines a fundamental human quality. D    It will lead to a deterioration in human ability.

29    What is a key difference between Aaron and the Painting Fool?

A    its programmer’s background B    public response to its work C    the source of its subject matter D    the technical standard of its output

30    What point does Simon Colton make in the fourth paragraph?

A    Software-produced art is often dismissed as childish and simplistic. B    The same concepts of creativity should not be applied to all forms of art. C    It is unreasonable to expect a machine to be as imaginative as a human being. D    People tend to judge computer art and human art according to different criteria.

31    The writer refers to the paintings of a chair as an example of computer art which

A    achieves a particularly striking effect. B    exhibits a certain level of genuine artistic skill. C    closely resembles that of a well-known artist. D    highlights the technical limitations of the software.

Questions 32-37

Complete each sentence with the correct ending,  A-G  below.

Write the correct letter,  A-G , in boxes  32-37  on your answer sheet.

32    Simon Colton says it is important to consider the long-term view then

33    David Cope’s EMI software surprised people by

34    Geraint Wiggins criticized Cope for not

35    Douglas Hofstadter claimed that EMI was

36    Audiences who had listened to EMI’s music became angry after

37    The participants in David Moffat’s study had to assess music without

A      generating work that was virtually indistinguishable from that of humans.

B      knowing whether it was the work of humans or software.

C      producing work entirely dependent on the imagination of its creator.

D      comparing the artistic achievements of humans and computers.

E      revealing the technical details of his program.

F      persuading the public to appreciate computer art.

G     discovering that it was the product of a computer program

Questions 38-40

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

In boxes  38-40  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 impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

38    Moffat’s research may help explain people’s reactions to EMI.

39    The non-experts in Moffat’s study all responded in a predictable way.

40   Justin Kruger’s findings cast doubt on Paul Bloom’s theory about people’s prejudice towards computer art.

Cambridge IELTS 13 Academic Reading Test 1 Answers

1. update 2. environment 3. captain 4. films 5. season 6. accommodation 7. blog 8. FALSE 9. NOT GIVEN 10. FALSE 11. TRUE 12. NOT GIVEN 13. TRUE 14. iv 15. vi 16. i 17. v 18. viii 19. iii 20. E

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IELTS Myths Busted: What You Really Need to Know

Discover the truth about these common myths about IELTS. Read on to learn tips to help you prepare with confidence.

Taking the IELTS test is a big step towards your dreams, whether it's to study, work, or migrate. But with so much information floating around, it’s easy to get lost. You might hear things like “ it’s easier to take the test in another country, ” or “ you need a British accent to score well .” These myths aren’t true and can make the whole process seem even more confusing.

We're here to clear things up and make sure you have the facts straight.

In reality, the IELTS test is designed to be fair and consistent , no matter where you take it or where you are from. It's accepted by over 12,000 organisations worldwide , including universities, employers, and immigration authorities. That means you can trust your IELTS score to open doors for you, wherever you go.

Here are 5 most common myths about the IELTS test. We want to make sure you have the right information so you can prepare with confidence and ace your test. Let’s dive in!

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Myth 1: The IELTS Test is Easier in Certain Locations

It’s a misconception that taking the IELTS test in another country is easier. The IELTS test is fair and consistent, no matter where you take it.

Your tests will be marked by highly qualified and skilled examiners who don’t know why you’re taking the test or what scores you need.

The Listening and Reading test comprise of 40 questions each, and you get one mark for each correct answer. Your individual band scores for these tests depend on how many correct answers you get.

For the Writing and Speaking tests, the examiners mark your performance using detailed criteria to assess your skills.

Each Writing test is checked by at least two examiners to ensure accuracy and impartiality. The Speaking test is facilitated by expert examiners. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if you take the test at home or abroad, as the test location doesn’t affect its difficulty .

You should also keep in mind that some universities have introduced specific requirements regarding test locations. For example, a recent update from the University of Melbourne specifies that it will only accept approved English test results conducted in the student’s country of citizenship, their last country of education, or their current country of residence or employment. Be sure to check with your university or institution to understand their requirements.

The short is answer is that: test location does not affect the test difficulty.

Your test will maintain the same standard that IELTS consistently upholds. However, it might be worthwhile to check the test centre you plan on taking the test in to see what delivery formats or test dates they have available. Some test centres may have limited seats, so it’s important to book your test early to secure your spot.

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Myth 2: Human Bias in the IELTS Speaking Test

Some believe that human examiners are biased, especially about accents and dress code. Well, that’s simply not true.

IELTS accepts all accents .

IELTS examiners are qualified English language teachers who have been certified to assess your spoken English and not your accent. The examiner’s job is to see how well you communicate, not to judge your accent. Unlike some tests where you have to start speaking right away or get “timed out”, the IELTS Speaking test lets you speak naturally.

Also, you don’t need to dress formally as if you’re attending a job interview. Just wear something comfortable on your test day.

Refer to the Speaking Band Descriptors and focus on fluency and coherence when you practise. Techniques like using discourse markers and functional language are two easy ways to improve fluency and coherence.

Or, if you want more hands-on experience, you can try IELTS Speaking Coaching – a 45-minute one-on-one coaching session with an IELTS expert. Your session will include: a discussion with your coach about your previous test experience and your target band score, a mock Speaking test, and a detailed report within 3-5 days with tips to improve your spoken English.

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Myth 3: Enquiry on Result (EOR) versus One Skill Retake (OSR)

Another common myth is that Enquiry on Results (EOR) is better than One Skill Retake (OSR) because some believe that most universities don’t accept OSR.

Again, this belief is not true.

The EOR is a re-marking of the original test that allows you to choose one or more sections to be re-marked. It only involves a second evaluation of the same answers. The OSR is a proactive choice for you to retake a single section of the test, which only IELTS offers and comes with various benefits. They serve different purposes and hence, it’s untrue to say that one is better than the other.

Many renowned Australian universities, including the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Monash University , and the University of Queensland , recognise the IELTS One Skill Retake. The Australian Department of Home Affairs also accepts One Skill Retake for most visa subclasses. On a global scale, over 1,200 organisations accept OSR , establishing it as a highly credible option. Remember to always check with the university or organisation you intend to apply to for more information about eligibility requirements.

Note: IELTS One Skill Retake is available for IELTS on computer tests taken in eligible test centres. You must book your One Skill Retake test within 60 days of your original test date.

Compare EOR and OSR: what's the difference?

Myth 4: IELTS is Harder Than Other Tests

IELTS isn’t a difficult test, but rather, an “ accurate test ” designed to accurately measure your English proficiency.

It's not harder than others, just precise. The test provides accurate results that make IELTS useful for future plans on education, work, or migration.

IELTS also provides a wide variety of preparation materials and resources to ensure that you are able to take your test well-prepared and confident. There are plenty of free resources such as free practice tests available on our Prepare hub, exclusive free trial to preparation courses on the IELTS by IDP app, and free IELTS Masterclass events designed to help you become familiar with the test. We also offer premium test preparation with IELTS Assist, where you can get personalised feedback and coaching to improve your skills in either Writing, Speaking, or Reading.

It’s important to choose a trusted English test like IELTS, no matter what your goals are. This is because policies and requirements can change, and you need a test that is reliable.

On May 14th, 2024, the Australian Government released the Federal Budget for 2024-25 . The minimum English requirement for student visas increased from an IELTS band score of 5.5 to 6.0 (or equivalent). Requirements may change but IELTS remains the benchmark when it comes to English proficiency tests, making it the trusted standard compared to other tests.

Tip: Download the IELTS by IDP app to get access to a exclusive 14 free trial of our new IELTS preparation course. We have partnered with E2 Language on a new IELTS Short Course, which has guided overviews, an IELTS score estimator, practice materials and lessons, live classes, and more.

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Myth 5: AI Marking versus Human Marking

Given recent discussions around artificial intelligence, some assume that AI marking is fairer and more accurate than human marking.

AI marking might seem quick and easy, but it lacks the depth of human understanding.

It can’t always assess complicated answers, jokes, or slang words. Depending on how the AI has been trained, it may not recognise different accents. A human examiner has been trained to think about the social context and can pick up some of these nuances, which machines cannot. Computers can check grammar and structure but struggle with meaning and context.

MIT research examined that in some cases, the AI itself can be biased. Artificial Intelligence learns through the data it is given, as well as other stages including the “data preparation stage,” which means selecting what “attributes” the algorithm should consider. For example, if the AI is taught that when speaking, pauses in your answer are bad, you can get marked down or “timed out.” It can misinterpret pauses that would generally be for emphasising a point or a slight delay when thinking of the best way to respond.

Our human examiners are trained to understand the nuances of language and provide a fair evaluation, based on clear and publicly available criteria . Human-marked tests like IELTS are trusted and accepted by universities and organisations worldwide, making them more reliable and suitable for study , work and migration .

Plus, you get the benefits of human-to-human interaction , and many others:

Our private Speaking test rooms are free from noise and distraction.

We can repeat and rephrase a question for you.

We can match your pace and level of English.

We hear your accent and we accept your accent wherever in the world you’re from.

We won’t cut you off if you take too long to start or if you pause: you don't get "timed out" with IELTS.

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Immigration and the law

Legislation about immigration changes frequently. It’s important to check the Australian Department of Home Affairs website for changes that may apply to you. If you are interested in Australian student visas , work visas, or looking to migrate permanently, you need to lodge an application with the Australian Government. You may want to consider getting support from a lawyer or migration agent .

Hopefully we have helped you gain a better understanding of the IELTS test and debunked some common myths so you can focus on what really matters: preparing for your test.

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Ielts Reading-Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website | IELTS reading Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website with answers

by Navita Thakur | Apr 8, 2020

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

READING PASSAGE 1 – Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website

New Zealand is a small country of four million inhabita nts, 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.

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

READING PASSAGE 2 – Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too

This most common of emotions is turning out to be more interesting than we thought

We all know how it feels – it’s impossible to keep your mind on anything, time stretches out, and all the things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you feel better. But defining boredom so that it can be studied in the lab has proved difficult. For a start, it can include a lot of other mental states, such as frustration, apathy, depression and indifference. There isn’t even agreement over whether boredom is always a low-energy, flat kind of emotion or whether feeling agitated and restless counts as boredom, too. In his book,  Boredom: A Lively History , Peter Toohey at the University of Calgary, Canada, compares it to disgust – an emotion that motivates us to stay away from certain situations. ‘If disgust protects humans from infection, boredom may protect them from “infectious” social situations,’ he suggests.

By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted on two axes – one running left to right, which measures low to high arousal, and the other from top to bottom, which measures how positive or negative the feeling is. Intriguingly, Goetz has found that while people experience all kinds of boredom, they tend to specialise in one. Of the five types, the most damaging is ‘reactant’ boredom with its explosive combination of high arousal and negative emotion. The most useful is what Goetz calls ‘indifferent’ boredom: someone isn’t engaged in anything satisfying but still feels relaxed and calm. However, it remains to be seen whether there are any character traits that predict the kind of boredom each of us might be prone to.

Psychologist Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, goes further. ‘All emotions are there for a reason, including boredom,’ she says. Mann has found that being bored makes us more creative. ‘We’re all afraid of being bored but in actual fact it can lead to all kinds of amazing things,’ she says. In experiments published last year, Mann found that people who had been made to feel bored by copying numbers out of the phone book for 15 minutes came up with more creative ideas about how to use a polystyrene cup than a control group. Mann concluded that a passive, boring activity is best for creativity because it allows the mind to wander. In fact, she goes so far as to suggest that we should seek out more boredom in our lives.

Psychologist John Eastwood at York University in Toronto, Canada, isn’t convinced. ‘If you are in a state of mind-wandering you are not bored,’ he says. ‘In my view, by definition boredom is an undesirable state.’ That doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t adaptive, he adds. ‘Pain is adaptive – if we didn’t have physical pain, bad things would happen to us. Does that mean that we should actively cause pain? No. But even if boredom has evolved to help us survive, it can still be toxic if allowed to fester.’ For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an inability to focus on anything, which makes time seem to go painfully slowly. What’s more, your efforts to improve the situation can end up making you feel worse. ‘People try to connect with the world and if they are not successful there’s that frustration and irritability,’ he says. Perhaps most worryingly, says Eastwood, repeatedly failing to engage attention can lead to state where we don’t know what to do any more, and no longer care.

Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails. It’s early days but they think that at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a variety of traits. People who are motivated by pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other personality traits, such as curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold. More evidence that boredom has detrimental effects comes from studies of people who are more or less prone to boredom. It seems those who bore easily face poorer prospects in education, their career and even life in general. But of course, boredom itself cannot kill – it’s the things we do to deal with it that may put us in danger. What can we do to alleviate it before it comes to that? Goetz’s group has one suggestion. Working with teenagers, they found that those who ‘approach’ a boring situation – in other words, see that it’s boring and get stuck in anyway – report less boredom than those who try to avoid it by using snacks, TV or social media for distraction.

Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom. ‘In modern human society there is a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of problems finding meaning,’ she says. So instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave our phones alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more meaningful way.

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

READING PASSAGE 3 – Artificial artist?

Can computers really create works of art?

The Painting Fool is one of a growing number of computer programs which, so their makers claim, possess creative talents. Classical music by an artificial composer has had audiences enraptured, and even tricked them into believing a human was behind the score. Artworks painted by a robot have sold for thousands of dollars and been hung in prestigious galleries. And software has been built which creates are that could not have been imagined by the programmer.

Human beings are the only species to perform sophisticated creative acts regularly. If we can break this process down into computer code, where does that leave human creativity? ‘This is a question at the very core of humanity,’ says Geraint Wiggins, a computational creativity researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. ‘It scares a lot of people. They are worried that it is taking something special away from what it means to be human.’

To some extent, we are all familiar with computerised art. The question is: where does the work of the artist stop and the creativity of the computer begin? Consider one of the oldest machine artists, Aaron, a robot that has had paintings exhibited in London’s Tate Modern and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Aaron can pick up a paintbrush and paint on canvas on its own. Impressive perhaps, but it is still little more than a tool to realise the programmer’s own creative ideas.

Simon Colton, the designer of the Painting Fool, is keen to make sure his creation doesn’t attract the same criticism. Unlike earlier ‘artists’ such as Aaron, the Painting Fool only needs minimal direction and can come up with its own concepts by going online for material. The software runs its own web searches and trawls through social media sites. It is now beginning to display a kind of imagination too, creating pictures from scratch. One of its original works is a series of fuzzy landscapes, depicting trees and sky. While some might say they have a mechanical look, Colton argues that such reactions arise from people’s double standards towards software-produced and human-produced art. After all, he says, consider that the Painting Fool painted the landscapes without referring to a photo. ‘If a child painted a new scene from its head, you’d say it has a certain level of imagination,’ he points out. ‘The same should be true of a machine.’ Software bugs can also lead to unexpected results. Some of the Painting Fool’s paintings of a chair came out in black and white, thanks to a technical glitch. This gives the work an eerie, ghostlike quality. Human artists like the renowned Ellsworth Kelly are lauded for limiting their colour palette – so why should computers be any different?

Researchers like Colton don’t believe it is right to measure machine creativity directly to that of humans who ‘have had millennia to develop our skills’. Others, though, are fascinated by the prospect that a computer might create something as original and subtle as our best artists. So far, only one has come close. Composer David Cope invented a program called Experiments in Musical Intelligence, or EMI. Not only did EMI create compositions in Cope’s style, but also that of the most revered classical composers, including Bach, Chopin and Mozart. Audiences were moved to tears, and EMI even fooled classical music experts into thinking they were hearing genuine Bach. Not everyone was impressed however. Some, such as Wiggins, have blasted Cope’s work as pseudoscience, and condemned him for his deliberately vague explanation of how the software worked. Meanwhile, Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University said EMI created replicas which still rely completely on the original artist’s creative impulses. When audiences found out the truth they were often outraged with Cope, and one music lover even tried to punch him. Amid such controversy, Cope destroyed EMI’s vital databases.

But why did so many people love the music, yet recoil when the discovered how it was composed? A study by computer scientist David Moffat of Glasgow Caledonian University provides a clue. He asked both expert musicians and non-experts to assess six compositions. The participants weren’t told beforehand whether the tunes were composed by humans or computers, but were asked to guess, and then rate how much they liked each one. People who thought the composer was a computer tended to dislike the piece more than those who believed it was human. This was true even among the experts, who might have been expected to be more objective in their analyses.

Where does this prejudice come from? Paul Bloom of Yale University has a suggestion: he reckons part of the pleasure we get from art stems from the creative process behind the work. This can give it an ‘irresistible essence’, says Bloom. Meanwhile, experiments by Justin Kruger of New York University have shown that people’s enjoyment of an artwork increases if they think more time and effort was needed to create it. Similarly, Colton thinks that when people experience art, they wonder what the artist might have been thinking or what the artist is trying to tell them. It seems obvious, therefore, that with computers producing art, this speculation is cut short – there’s nothing to explore. But as technology becomes increasingly complex, finding those greater depths in computer art could become possible. This is precisely why Colton asks the Painting Fool to tap into online social networks for its inspiration: hopefully this way it will choose themes that will already be meaningful to us.

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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 http://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 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

8   The website http://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.

2. environment

6. accommodation

9. NOT GIVEN

12. NOT GIVEN

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Reading Reference: Cambridge Book 13 - Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website reading answers.

Case study: tourism new zealand website: ielts reading mock test 29.

Complete Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website reading answers after reading the following passage.

IELTS Mock Test: Reading Passage 1

You should spend around 20 minutes attempting Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website reading answers to Questions 1–13 based on the passage 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.

(Reading passage source: Cambridge Book 13 – Passage 1 –  Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website Reading answers)

Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website IELTS Reading Questions

Read the following text and attempt Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website reading answers.

Questions 1-7

Complete the table below and attempt Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website reading answers.

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 your answer sheet, attempt Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website reading answers and 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 questions source: Cambridge Book 13 – Passage 1 –  Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website Reading answers)

IELTS Mock Test: Reading Passage 2

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

Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too

This most common of emotions is turning out to be more interesting than we thought

A We all know how it feels – it’s impossible to keep your mind on anything, time stretches out, and all the things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you feel better. But defining boredom so that it can be studied in the lab has proved difficult. For a start, it can include a lot of other mental states, such as frustration, apathy, depression and indifference. There isn’t even agreement over whether boredom is always a low-energy, flat kind of emotion or whether feeling agitated and restless counts as boredom, too. In his book,  Boredom: A Lively History , Peter Toohey at the University of Calgary, Canada, compares it to disgust – an emotion that motivates us to stay away from certain situations. ‘If disgust protects humans from infection, boredom may protect them from “infectious” social situations,’ he suggests.

B By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted on two axes – one running left to right, which measures low to high arousal, and the other from top to bottom, which measures how positive or negative the feeling is. Intriguingly, Goetz has found that while people experience all kinds of boredom, they tend to specialise in one. Of the five types, the most damaging is ‘reactant’ boredom with its explosive combination of high arousal and negative emotion. The most useful is what Goetz calls ‘indifferent’ boredom: someone isn’t engaged in anything satisfying but still feels relaxed and calm. However, it remains to be seen whether there are any character traits that predict the kind of boredom each of us might be prone to.

C Psychologist Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, goes further. ‘All emotions are there for a reason, including boredom,’ she says. Mann has found that being bored makes us more creative. ‘We’re all afraid of being bored but in actual fact it can lead to all kinds of amazing things,’ she says. In experiments published last year, Mann found that people who had been made to feel bored by copying numbers out of the phone book for 15 minutes came up with more creative ideas about how to use a polystyrene cup than a control group. Mann concluded that a passive, boring activity is best for creativity because it allows the mind to wander. In fact, she goes so far as to suggest that we should seek out more boredom in our lives.

D Psychologist John Eastwood at York University in Toronto, Canada, isn’t convinced. ‘If you are in a state of mind-wandering you are not bored,’ he says. ‘In my view, by definition boredom is an undesirable state.’ That doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t adaptive, he adds. ‘Pain is adaptive – if we didn’t have physical pain, bad things would happen to us. Does that mean that we should actively cause pain? No. But even if boredom has evolved to help us survive, it can still be toxic if allowed to fester.’ For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an inability to focus on anything, which makes time seem to go painfully slowly. What’s more, your efforts to improve the situation can end up making you feel worse. ‘People try to connect with the world and if they are not successful there’s that frustration and irritability,’ he says. Perhaps most worryingly, says Eastwood, repeatedly failing to engage attention can lead to state where we don’t know what to do any more, and no longer care.

E Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails. It’s early days but they think that at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a variety of traits. People who are motivated by pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other personality traits, such as curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold. More evidence that boredom has detrimental effects comes from studies of people who are more or less prone to boredom. It seems those who bore easily face poorer prospects in education, their career and even life in general. But of course, boredom itself cannot kill – it’s the things we do to deal with it that may put us in danger. What can we do to alleviate it before it comes to that? Goetz’s group has one suggestion. Working with teenagers, they found that those who ‘approach’ a boring situation – in other words, see that it’s boring and get stuck in anyway – report less boredom than those who try to avoid it by using snacks, TV or social media for distraction.

F Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom. ‘In modern human society there is a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of problems finding meaning,’ she says. So instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave our phones alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more meaningful way.

Questions 14-19

Reading Passage 2 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            The productive outcomes that may result from boredom ii           What teachers can do to prevent boredom  iii          A new explanation and a new cure for boredom iv          Problems with a scientific approach to boredom v           A potential danger arising from boredom vi          Creating a system of classification for feelings of boredom vii         Age groups most affected by boredom viii         Identifying those most affected by boredom

14    Paragraph  A

15    Paragraph  B

16    Paragraph  C

17    Paragraph  D

18    Paragraph  E

19    Paragraph  F

Questions 20-23

Look at the following people (Questions  20-23 ) and the list of ideas below.

Match each person with the correct idea,  A-E .

Write the correct letter,  A-E , in boxes  20-23  on your answer sheet.

20    Peter Toohey

21    Thomas Goetz

22    John Eastwood

23    Francoise Wemelsfelder

List of Ideas

A      The way we live today may encourage boredom. B      One sort of boredom is worse than all the others. C      Levels of boredom may fall in the future. D      Trying to cope with boredom can increase its negative effects. E      Boredom may encourage us to avoid an unpleasant experience.

Questions 24-26

Complete the summary below.

Write your answers in boxes  24-26  on your answer sheet.

Responses to boredom

For John Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is that people cannot  24 ……………………………, due to a failure in what he calls the ‘attention system’, and as a result they become frustrated and irritable. His team suggests that those for whom  25 ……………………….. is an important aim in life may have problems in coping with boredom, whereas those who have the characteristic of  26 ……………………….. can generally cope with it.

IELTS Mock Test: Reading Passage 3

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

Artificial artist?

Can computers really create works of art?

The Painting Fool is one of a growing number of computer programs which, so their makers claim, possess creative talents. Classical music by an artificial composer has had audiences enraptured, and even tricked them into believing a human was behind the score. Artworks painted by a robot have sold for thousands of dollars and been hung in prestigious galleries. And software has been built which creates are that could not have been imagined by the programmer.

Human beings are the only species to perform sophisticated creative acts regularly. If we can break this process down into computer code, where does that leave human creativity? ‘This is a question at the very core of humanity,’ says Geraint Wiggins, a computational creativity researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. ‘It scares a lot of people. They are worried that it is taking something special away from what it means to be human.’

To some extent, we are all familiar with computerised art. The question is: where does the work of the artist stop and the creativity of the computer begin? Consider one of the oldest machine artists, Aaron, a robot that has had paintings exhibited in London’s Tate Modern and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Aaron can pick up a paintbrush and paint on canvas on its own. Impressive perhaps, but it is still little more than a tool to realise the programmer’s own creative ideas.

Simon Colton, the designer of the Painting Fool, is keen to make sure his creation doesn’t attract the same criticism. Unlike earlier ‘artists’ such as Aaron, the Painting Fool only needs minimal direction and can come up with its own concepts by going online for material. The software runs its own web searches and trawls through social media sites. It is now beginning to display a kind of imagination too, creating pictures from scratch. One of its original works is a series of fuzzy landscapes, depicting trees and sky. While some might say they have a mechanical look, Colton argues that such reactions arise from people’s double standards towards software-produced and human-produced art. After all, he says, consider that the Painting Fool painted the landscapes without referring to a photo. ‘If a child painted a new scene from its head, you’d say it has a certain level of imagination,’ he points out. ‘The same should be true of a machine.’ Software bugs can also lead to unexpected results. Some of the Painting Fool’s paintings of a chair came out in black and white, thanks to a technical glitch. This gives the work an eerie, ghostlike quality. Human artists like the renowned Ellsworth Kelly are lauded for limiting their colour palette – so why should computers be any different?

Researchers like Colton don’t believe it is right to measure machine creativity directly to that of humans who ‘have had millennia to develop our skills’. Others, though, are fascinated by the prospect that a computer might create something as original and subtle as our best artists. So far, only one has come close. Composer David Cope invented a program called Experiments in Musical Intelligence, or EMI. Not only did EMI create compositions in Cope’s style, but also that of the most revered classical composers, including Bach, Chopin and Mozart. Audiences were moved to tears, and EMI even fooled classical music experts into thinking they were hearing genuine Bach. Not everyone was impressed however. Some, such as Wiggins, have blasted Cope’s work as pseudoscience, and condemned him for his deliberately vague explanation of how the software worked. Meanwhile, Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University said EMI created replicas which still rely completely on the original artist’s creative impulses. When audiences found out the truth they were often outraged with Cope, and one music lover even tried to punch him. Amid such controversy, Cope destroyed EMI’s vital databases.

But why did so many people love the music, yet recoil when the discovered how it was composed? A study by computer scientist David Moffat of Glasgow Caledonian University provides a clue. He asked both expert musicians and non-experts to assess six compositions. The participants weren’t told beforehand whether the tunes were composed by humans or computers, but were asked to guess, and then rate how much they liked each one. People who thought the composer was a computer tended to dislike the piece more than those who believed it was human. This was true even among the experts, who might have been expected to be more objective in their analyses.

Where does this prejudice come from? Paul Bloom of Yale University has a suggestion: he reckons part of the pleasure we get from art stems from the creative process behind the work. This can give it an ‘irresistible essence’, says Bloom. Meanwhile, experiments by Justin Kruger of New York University have shown that people’s enjoyment of an artwork increases if they think more time and effort was needed to create it. Similarly, Colton thinks that when people experience art, they wonder what the artist might have been thinking or what the artist is trying to tell them. It seems obvious, therefore, that with computers producing art, this speculation is cut short – there’s nothing to explore. But as technology becomes increasingly complex, finding those greater depths in computer art could become possible. This is precisely why Colton asks the Painting Fool to tap into online social networks for its inspiration: hopefully this way it will choose themes that will already be meaningful to us.

Questions 27-31

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

Write the correct letter in boxes  27-31  on your answer sheet.

27    What is the writer suggesting about computer-produced works in the first paragraph?

A    People’s acceptance of them can vary considerably. B    A great deal of progress has already been attained in this field. C    They have had more success in some artistic genres than in others. D    the advances are not as significant as the public believes them to be.

28    According to Geraint Wiggins, why are many people worried by computer art?

A    It is aesthetically inferior to human art. B    It may ultimately supersede human art. C    It undermines a fundamental human quality. D    It will lead to a deterioration in human ability.

29    What is a key difference between Aaron and the Painting Fool?

A    its programmer’s background B    public response to its work C    the source of its subject matter D    the technical standard of its output

30    What point does Simon Colton make in the fourth paragraph?

A    Software-produced art is often dismissed as childish and simplistic. B    The same concepts of creativity should not be applied to all forms of art. C    It is unreasonable to expect a machine to be as imaginative as a human being. D    People tend to judge computer art and human art according to different criteria.

31    The writer refers to the paintings of a chair as an example of computer art which

A    achieves a particularly striking effect. B    exhibits a certain level of genuine artistic skill. C    closely resembles that of a well-known artist. D    highlights the technical limitations of the software.

Questions 32-37

Complete each sentence with the correct ending,  A-G  below.

Write the correct letter,  A-G , in boxes  32-37  on your answer sheet.

32    Simon Colton says it is important to consider the long-term view then

33    David Cope’s EMI software surprised people by

34    Geraint Wiggins criticized Cope for not

35    Douglas Hofstadter claimed that EMI was

36    Audiences who had listened to EMI’s music became angry after

37    The participants in David Moffat’s study had to assess music without

A      generating work that was virtually indistinguishable from that of humans. B      knowing whether it was the work of humans or software. C      producing work entirely dependent on the imagination of its creator. D      comparing the artistic achievements of humans and computers. E      revealing the technical details of his program. F      persuading the public to appreciate computer art. G     discovering that it was the product of a computer program

Questions 38-40

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

In boxes  38-40  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 impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

38    Moffat’s research may help explain people’s reactions to EMI.

39    The non-experts in Moffat’s study all responded in a predictable way.

40    Justin Kruger’s findings cast doubt on Paul Bloom’s theory about people’s prejudice towards computer art.

Case Study: Tourism New Zealand website reading answers:

• environment
• accommodation

Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too reading answers:

Artificial artist reading answers:

IELTS Mock Test: Academic Reading

The history of glass: ielts reading mock test 30, flying tortoises: ielts reading mock test 31, the risks agriculture faces in developing countries: ielts reading mock test 32, cork: ielts reading mock test 33.

free ielts tests - online simulation - practice with solution

Cambridge 13 IELTS Academic Reading Test 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.

READING PASSAGE 2

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

Why being bored is stimulating – and useful, too

This most common of emotions is turning out to be more interesting than we thought

We all know how it feels – it’s impossible to keep your mind on anything, time stretches out, and all the things you could do seem equally unlikely to make you feel better. But defining boredom so that it can be studied in the lab has proved difficult. For a start, it can include a lot of other mental states, such as frustration, apathy, depression and indifference. There isn’t even agreement over whether boredom is always a low-energy, flat kind of emotion or whether feeling agitated and restless counts as boredom, too. In his book,  Boredom: A Lively History , Peter Toohey at the University of Calgary, Canada, compares it to disgust – an emotion that motivates us to stay away from certain situations. ‘If disgust protects humans from infection, boredom may protect them from “infectious” social situations,’ he suggests.

By asking people about their experiences of boredom, Thomas Goetz and his team at the University of Konstanz in Germany have recently identified five distinct types: indifferent, calibrating, searching, reactant and apathetic. These can be plotted on two axes – one running left to right, which measures low to high arousal, and the other from top to bottom, which measures how positive or negative the feeling is. Intriguingly, Goetz has found that while people experience all kinds of boredom, they tend to specialise in one. Of the five types, the most damaging is ‘reactant’ boredom with its explosive combination of high arousal and negative emotion. The most useful is what Goetz calls ‘indifferent’ boredom: someone isn’t engaged in anything satisfying but still feels relaxed and calm. However, it remains to be seen whether there are any character traits that predict the kind of boredom each of us might be prone to.

Psychologist Sandi Mann at the University of Central Lancashire, UK, goes further. ‘All emotions are there for a reason, including boredom,’ she says. Mann has found that being bored makes us more creative. ‘We’re all afraid of being bored but in actual fact it can lead to all kinds of amazing things,’ she says. In experiments published last year, Mann found that people who had been made to feel bored by copying numbers out of the phone book for 15 minutes came up with more creative ideas about how to use a polystyrene cup than a control group. Mann concluded that a passive, boring activity is best for creativity because it allows the mind to wander. In fact, she goes so far as to suggest that we should seek out more boredom in our lives.

Psychologist John Eastwood at York University in Toronto, Canada, isn’t convinced. ‘If you are in a state of mind-wandering you are not bored,’ he says. ‘In my view, by definition boredom is an undesirable state.’ That doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t adaptive, he adds. ‘Pain is adaptive – if we didn’t have physical pain, bad things would happen to us. Does that mean that we should actively cause pain? No. But even if boredom has evolved to help us survive, it can still be toxic if allowed to fester.’ For Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is a failure to put our ‘attention system’ into gear. This causes an inability to focus on anything, which makes time seem to go painfully slowly. What’s more, your efforts to improve the situation can end up making you feel worse. ‘People try to connect with the world and if they are not successful there’s that frustration and irritability,’ he says. Perhaps most worryingly, says Eastwood, repeatedly failing to engage attention can lead to state where we don’t know what to do any more, and no longer care.

Eastwood’s team is now trying to explore why the attention system fails. It’s early days but they think that at least some of it comes down to personality. Boredom proneness has been linked with a variety of traits. People who are motivated by pleasure seem to suffer particularly badly. Other personality traits, such as curiosity, are associated with a high boredom threshold. More evidence that boredom has detrimental effects comes from studies of people who are more or less prone to boredom. It seems those who bore easily face poorer prospects in education, their career and even life in general. But of course, boredom itself cannot kill – it’s the things we do to deal with it that may put us in danger. What can we do to alleviate it before it comes to that? Goetz’s group has one suggestion. Working with teenagers, they found that those who ‘approach’ a boring situation – in other words, see that it’s boring and get stuck in anyway – report less boredom than those who try to avoid it by using snacks, TV or social media for distraction.

Psychologist Francoise Wemelsfelder speculates that our over-connected lifestyles might even be a new source of boredom. ‘In modern human society there is a lot of overstimulation but still a lot of problems finding meaning,’ she says. So instead of seeking yet more mental stimulation, perhaps we should leave our phones alone, and use boredom to motivate us to engage with the world in a more meaningful way.

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Artificial artist?

Can computers really create works of art?

The Painting Fool is one of a growing number of computer programs which, so their makers claim, possess creative talents. Classical music by an artificial composer has had audiences enraptured, and even tricked them into believing a human was behind the score. Artworks painted by a robot have sold for thousands of dollars and been hung in prestigious galleries. And software has been built which creates are that could not have been imagined by the programmer.

Human beings are the only species to perform sophisticated creative acts regularly. If we can break this process down into computer code, where does that leave human creativity? ‘This is a question at the very core of humanity,’ says Geraint Wiggins, a computational creativity researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. ‘It scares a lot of people. They are worried that it is taking something special away from what it means to be human.’

To some extent, we are all familiar with computerised art. The question is: where does the work of the artist stop and the creativity of the computer begin? Consider one of the oldest machine artists, Aaron, a robot that has had paintings exhibited in London’s Tate Modern and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Aaron can pick up a paintbrush and paint on canvas on its own. Impressive perhaps, but it is still little more than a tool to realise the programmer’s own creative ideas.

Simon Colton, the designer of the Painting Fool, is keen to make sure his creation doesn’t attract the same criticism. Unlike earlier ‘artists’ such as Aaron, the Painting Fool only needs minimal direction and can come up with its own concepts by going online for material. The software runs its own web searches and trawls through social media sites. It is now beginning to display a kind of imagination too, creating pictures from scratch. One of its original works is a series of fuzzy landscapes, depicting trees and sky. While some might say they have a mechanical look, Colton argues that such reactions arise from people’s double standards towards software-produced and human-produced art. After all, he says, consider that the Painting Fool painted the landscapes without referring to a photo. ‘If a child painted a new scene from its head, you’d say it has a certain level of imagination,’ he points out. ‘The same should be true of a machine.’ Software bugs can also lead to unexpected results. Some of the Painting Fool’s paintings of a chair came out in black and white, thanks to a technical glitch. This gives the work an eerie, ghostlike quality. Human artists like the renowned Ellsworth Kelly are lauded for limiting their colour palette – so why should computers be any different?

Researchers like Colton don’t believe it is right to measure machine creativity directly to that of humans who ‘have had millennia to develop our skills’. Others, though, are fascinated by the prospect that a computer might create something as original and subtle as our best artists. So far, only one has come close. Composer David Cope invented a program called Experiments in Musical Intelligence, or EMI. Not only did EMI create compositions in Cope’s style, but also that of the most revered classical composers, including Bach, Chopin and Mozart. Audiences were moved to tears, and EMI even fooled classical music experts into thinking they were hearing genuine Bach. Not everyone was impressed however. Some, such as Wiggins, have blasted Cope’s work as pseudoscience, and condemned him for his deliberately vague explanation of how the software worked. Meanwhile, Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University said EMI created replicas which still rely completely on the original artist’s creative impulses. When audiences found out the truth they were often outraged with Cope, and one music lover even tried to punch him. Amid such controversy, Cope destroyed EMI’s vital databases.

But why did so many people love the music, yet recoil when the discovered how it was composed? A study by computer scientist David Moffat of Glasgow Caledonian University provides a clue. He asked both expert musicians and non-experts to assess six compositions. The participants weren’t told beforehand whether the tunes were composed by humans or computers, but were asked to guess, and then rate how much they liked each one. People who thought the composer was a computer tended to dislike the piece more than those who believed it was human. This was true even among the experts, who might have been expected to be more objective in their analyses.

Where does this prejudice come from? Paul Bloom of Yale University has a suggestion: he reckons part of the pleasure we get from art stems from the creative process behind the work. This can give it an ‘irresistible essence’, says Bloom. Meanwhile, experiments by Justin Kruger of New York University have shown that people’s enjoyment of an artwork increases if they think more time and effort was needed to create it. Similarly, Colton thinks that when people experience art, they wonder what the artist might have been thinking or what the artist is trying to tell them. It seems obvious, therefore, that with computers producing art, this speculation is cut short – there’s nothing to explore. But as technology becomes increasingly complex, finding those greater depths in computer art could become possible. This is precisely why Colton asks the Painting Fool to tap into online social networks for its inspiration: hopefully this way it will choose themes that will already be meaningful to us.

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.

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

In boxes 8-13  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

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 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            The productive outcomes that may result from boredom

ii           What teachers can do to prevent boredom 

iii          A new explanation and a new cure for boredom

iv          Problems with a scientific approach to boredom

v           A potential danger arising from boredom

vi          Creating a system of classification for feelings of boredom

vii         Age groups most affected by boredom

viii         Identifying those most affected by boredom

14. Paragraph A

15. Paragraph B

16. Paragraph C

17. Paragraph D

18. Paragraph E

19. Paragraph F

Look at the following people (Questions  20-23 ) and the list of ideas below.

Match each person with the correct idea,  A-E .

List of Ideas

A      The way we live today may encourage boredom.

B      One sort of boredom is worse than all the others.

C      Levels of boredom may fall in the future.

D      Trying to cope with boredom can increase its negative effects.

E      Boredom may encourage us to avoid an unpleasant experience.

Write the correct letter, A-E , in boxes 20-23  on your answer sheet.

20. Peter Toohey

21. Thomas Goetz

22. John Eastwood

23. Francoise Wemelsfelder

Complete the summary below.

Write your answers in boxes 24-26  on your answer sheet.

Responses to boredom

For John Eastwood, the central feature of boredom is that people cannot  24. , due to a failure in what he calls the ‘attention system’, and as a result they become frustrated and irritable. His team suggests that those for whom  25.  is an important aim in life may have problems in coping with boredom, whereas those who have the characteristic of  26.  can generally cope with it.

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

Write the correct letter in boxes 27-31  on your answer sheet.

27. What is the writer suggesting about computer-produced works in the first paragraph?

28. According to Geraint Wiggins, why are many people worried by computer art?

29. What is a key difference between Aaron and the Painting Fool?

30. What point does Simon Colton make in the fourth paragraph?

31. The writer refers to the paintings of a chair as an example of computer art which

Complete each sentence with the correct ending,  A-G  below.

Write the correct letter,  A-G , in boxes 32-37  on your answer sheet.

A      generating work that was virtually indistinguishable from that of humans.

B      knowing whether it was the work of humans or software.

C      producing work entirely dependent on the imagination of its creator.

D      comparing the artistic achievements of humans and computers.

E      revealing the technical details of his program.

F      persuading the public to appreciate computer art.

G     discovering that it was the product of a computer program

32. Simon Colton says it is important to consider the long-term view then

33. David Cope’s EMI software surprised people by

34. Geraint Wiggins criticized Cope for not

35. Douglas Hofstadter claimed that EMI was

36. Audiences who had listened to EMI’s music became angry after

37. The participants in David Moffat’s study had to assess music without

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

In boxes 38-40  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 impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

38. Moffat’s research may help explain people’s reactions to EMI.

39. The non-experts in Moffat’s study all responded in a predictable way.

40. Justin Kruger’s findings cast doubt on Paul Bloom’s theory about people’s prejudice towards computer art.

Time’s up

2. environment

6. accommodation

9. NOT GIVEN

12. NOT GIVEN

25. pleasure

26. curiosity

39. NOT GIVEN

hehehe ajib

27 out of 40

That is now corrected, Thank you!

The box for questions # 20 to 23 and 32 to 37 are missing.

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