IELTS Academic10-08-2019 - Reading Passage 3

The Revolutionary Bridges of Robert Maillart

Swiss engineer Robert Maillart built some of the greatest bridges of the 20th century. His designs elegantly solved a basic engineering problem: how to support enormous weights using a slender arch.

A Just as railway bridges were the great structural symbols of the 19th century, highway bridges became the engineering emblems of the 20th century. The invention of the automobile created an irresistible demand for paved roads and vehicular bridges throughout the developed world. The type of bridge needed for cars and trucks, however, is fundamentally different from that needed for locomotives. Most highway bridges carry lighter loads than railway bridges do, and their roadways can be sharply curved or steeply sloping. To meet these needs, many turn-of-the-century bridge designers began working with a new building material: reinforced concrete, which has steel bars embedded in it. And the master of this new material was Swiss structural engineer, Robert Maillart.

B Early in his career, Maillart developed a unique method for designing bridges, buildings and other concrete structures. He rejected the complex mathematical analysis of loads and stresses that was being enthusiastically adopted by most of his contemporaries. At the same time, he also eschewed the decorative approach taken by many bridge builders of his time. He resisted imitating architectural styles and adding design elements solely for ornamentation. Maillart’s method was a form of creative intuition. He had a knack for conceiving new shapes to solve classic engineering problems] And because he worked in a highly competitive field, one of his goals was economy - he won design and construction contracts because his structures were reasonably priced, often less costly than all his rivals’ proposals.

C Maillart’s first important bridge was built in the small Swiss town of Zuoz. The local officials had initially wanted a steel bridge to span the 30-metre wide Inn River, but Maillart argued that he could build a more elegant bridge made of reinforced concrete for about the same cost. His crucial innovation was incorporating the bridge’s arch and roadway into a form called the hollow-box arch, which would substantially reduce the bridge’s expense by minimising the amount of concrete needed. In a conventional arch bridge the weight of the roadway is transferred by columns to the arch, which must be relatively thick. In Maillart’s design, though, the roadway and arch were connected by three vertical walls, forming two hollow boxes running under the roadway (see diagram). The big advantage of this design was that because the arch would not have to bear the load alone, it could be much thinner - as little as one-third as thick as the arch in the conventional bridge.

D His first masterpiece, however, was the 1905 Tavanasa Bridge over the Rhine river in the Swiss Alps. In this design, Maillart removed the parts of the vertical walls which were not essential because they carried no load. This produced a slender, lighter-looking form, which perfectly met the bridge’s structural requirements. But the Tavanasa Bridge gained little favourable publicity in Switzerland; on the contrary, it aroused strong aesthetic objections from public officials who were more comfortable with old-fashioned stone-faced bridges. Maillart, who had founded his own construction firm in 1902, was unable to win any more bridge projects, so he shifted his focus to designing buildings, water tanks and other structures made of reinforced concrete and did not resume his work on concrete bridges until the early 1920s.

E His most important breakthrough during this period was the development of the deck-stiffened arch, the first example of which was the Flienglibach Bridge, built in 1923. An arch bridge is somewhat like an inverted cable. A cable curves downward when a weight is hung from it, an arch bridge curves upward to support the roadway and the compression in the arch balances the dead load of the traffic. For aesthetic reasons, Maillart wanted a thinner arch and his solution was to connect the arch to the roadway with transverse walls. In this way, Maillart justified making the arch as thin as he could reasonably build it. His analysis accurately predicted the behaviour of the bridge but the leading authorities of Swiss engineering would argue against his methods for the next quarter of a century.

F Over the next 10 years, Maillart concentrated on refining the visual appearance of the deck-stiffened arch. His best-known structure is the Salginatobel Bridge, completed in 1930. He won the competition for the contract because his design was the least expensive of the 19 submitted - the bridge and road were built for only 700,000 Swiss francs, equivalent to some $3.5 million today. Salginatobel was also Maillart’s longest span, at 90 metres and it had the most dramatic setting of all his structures, vaulting 80 metres above the ravine of the Salgina brook. In 1991 it became the first concrete bridge to be designated an international historic landmark.

G Before his death in 1940, Maillart completed other remarkable bridges and continued to refine his designs. However, architects often recognised the high quality of Maillart’s structures before his fellow engineers did and in 1947 the architectural section of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City devoted a major exhibition entirely to his works. In contrast, very few American structural engineers at that time had even heard of Maillart. In the following years, however, engineers realised that Maillart’s bridges were more than just aesthetically pleasing - they were technically unsurpassed. Maillart’s hollow-box arch became the dominant design form for medium and long- span concrete bridges in the US. In Switzerland, professors finally began to teach Maillart’s ideas, which then influenced a new generation of designers.

Questions 27-33

Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs A-G.

From the list of headings below choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph.

Write the appropriate numbers (i—x) in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.

	List of headings
i	The long-term impact
ii	A celebrated achievement
iii	Early brilliance passes unrecognised
iv	Outdated methods retain popularity
v	The basis of a new design is born
vi	Frustration at never getting the design right
vii	Further refinements meet persistent objections
viii	Different in all respects
ix	Bridge-makers look elsewhere
x	Transport developments spark a major change

27 Paragraph A

28 Paragraph B

29 Paragraph C

30 Paragraph D

31 Paragraph E

32 Paragraph F

33 Paragraph G

Tip  Although the instructions ask you to choose the 'most suitable' heading, each heading will only fit one paragraph. Read through the list of headings. Note that each heading expresses a main idea. There are ten headings and seven questions, so three of the headings do not fit any of the paragraphs. Skim through the whole passage so that you have a good idea of what it is about. Read each paragraph carefully, noting the main idea or theme. Do not worry if there are words that you do not understand. Select the heading that best describes the main idea of the paragraph.

Questions 34-36

Complete the labels on the diagrams below using ONE or TWO WORDS from the reading passage. Write your answers in boxes 34-36 on your answer sheet.

34 

35 

36 

Questions 37-40

Complete each of the following statements (Questions 37-40) with the best ending (A-G) from the box below.

Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet.

37 Maillart designed the hollow-box arch in order to

38 Following the construction of the Tavanasa Bridge, Maillart failed to

39 The transverse walls of the Flienglibach Bridge allowed Maillart to

40 Of all his bridges, the Salginatobel enabled Maillart to

A	prove that local people were wrong.
B	find work in Switzerland.
C	win more building commissions.
D	reduce the amount of raw material required.
E	recognise his technical skills.
F	capitalise on the spectacular terrain.
G	improve the appearance of his bridges.

ANSWERS

• 27x
• 28viii
• 29v
• 30iii
• 31vii
• 32ii
• 33i
• 34columns
• 35vertical walls
• 36hollow boxes
• 37D
• 38C
• 39G
• 40F

IELTS Academic10-08-2019 - Reading Passage 2

READING THE SCREEN

Are the electronic media exacerbating illiteracy and making our children stupid? On the contrary, says Colin McCabe, they have the potential to make us truly literate.

The debate surrounding literacy is one of the most charged in education. On the one hand there is an army of people convinced that traditional skills of reading and writing are declining. On the other, a host of progressives protest that literacy is much more complicated than a simple technical mastery of reading and writing. This second position is supported by most of the relevant academic work over the past 20 years. These studies argue that literacy can only be understood in its social and technical context. In Renaissance England, for example, many more people could read than could write, and within reading there was a distinction between those who could read print and those who could manage the more difficult task of reading manuscript. An understanding of these earlier periods helps us understand today’s ‘crisis in literacy’ debate.

There does seem to be evidence that there has been an overall decline in some aspects of reading and writing - you only need to compare the tabloid newspapers of today with those of 50 years ago to see a clear decrease in vocabulary and simplification of syntax. But the picture is not uniform and doesn’t readily demonstrate the simple distinction between literate and illiterate which had been considered adequate since the middle of the 19th century.

While reading a certain amount of writing is as crucial as it has ever been in industrial societies, it is doubtful whether a fully extended grasp of either is as necessary as it was 30 or 40 years ago. While print retains much of its authority as a source of topical information, television has increasingly usurped this role. The ability to write fluent letters has been undermined by the telephone and research suggests that for many people the only use for writing, outside formal education, is the compilation of shopping lists.

The decision of some car manufacturers to issue their instructions to mechanics as a video pack rather than as a handbook might be taken to spell the end of any automatic link between industrialisation and literacy. On the other hand, it is also the case that ever-increasing numbers of people make their living out of writing, which is better rewarded than ever before. Schools are generally seen as institutions where the book rules - film, television and recorded sound have almost no place; but it is not clear that this opposition is appropriate. While you may not need to read and write to watch television, you certainly need to be able to read and write in order to make programmes.

Those who work in the new media are anything but illiterate. The traditional oppositions between old and new media are inadequate for understanding the world which a young child now encounters. The computer has re-established a central place for the written word on the screen, which used to be entirely devoted to the image. There is even anecdotal evidence that children are mastering reading and writing in order to get on to the Internet. There is no reason why the new and old media cannot be integrated in schools to provide the skills to become economically productive and politically enfranchised.

Nevertheless, there is a crisis in literacy and it would be foolish to ignore it. To understand that literacy may be declining because it is less central to some aspects of everyday life is not the same as acquiescing in this state of affairs. The production of school work with the new technologies could be a significant stimulus to literacy. How should these new technologies be introduced into the schools? It isn’t enough to call for computers, camcorders and edit suites in every classroom; unless they are properly integrated into the educational culture, they will stand unused. Evidence suggests that this is the fate of most information technology used in the classroom. Similarly, although media studies are now part of the national curriculum, and more and more students are now clamouring to take these course, teachers remain uncertain about both methods and aims in this area.

This is not the fault of the teachers. The entertainment and information industries must be drawn into a debate with the educational institutions to determine how best to blend these new technologies into the classroom.

Many people in our era are drawn to the pessimistic view that the new media are destroying old skills and eroding critical judgement. It may be true that past generations were more literate but - taking the pre-19th century meaning of the term - this was true of only a small section of the population. The word literacy is a 19th-century coinage to describe the divorce of reading and writing from a full knowledge of literature. The education reforms of the 19th century produced reading and writing as skills separable from full participation in the cultural heritage.

The new media now point not only to a futuristic cyber-economy, they also make our cultural past available to the whole nation. Most children’s access to these treasures is initially through television. It is doubtful whether our literary heritage has ever been available to or sought out by more than about 5 per cent of the population; it has certainly not been available to more than 10 per cent. But the new media joined to the old, through the public service tradition of British broadcasting, now makes our literary tradition available to all.

Questions 14-17

Choose the appropriate letters A-D and write them in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.

Tip   The questions follow the order of information in the passage.  Read the first question and the four options A-D. One of these completes the statement so that it expresses an idea that is also given in the passage.  Decide whether the question focuses on a detail in the passage or a main idea.  Note the key words in the question. These will help you locate the area of the passage where you will find the answer.  Read this part of the passage very carefully. You will find that some of the vocabulary in options A-D also occurs in the passage but only one of the options will complete the sentence correctly.

14

When discussing the debate on literacy in education, the writer notes that

• A children cannot read and write as well as they used to.
• B academic work has improved over the last 20 years.
• C there is evidence that literacy is related to external factors.
• D there are opposing arguments that are equally convincing.

15

In the 4th paragraph, the writer’s main point is that

• A the printed word is both gaining and losing power.
• B all inventions bring disadvantages as well as benefits.
• C those who work in manual jobs no longer need to read.
• D the media offers the best careers for those who like writing.

16

According to the writer, the main problem that schools face today is

• A how best to teach the skills of reading and writing.
• B how best to incorporate technology into classroom teaching.
• C finding the means to purchase technological equipment.
• D managing the widely differing levels of literacy amongst pupils.

17

At the end of the article, the writer is suggesting that

• A literature and culture cannot be divorced.
• B the term ‘literacy’ has not been very useful.
• C 10 per cent of the population never read literature.
• D our exposure to cultural information is likely to increase.

Questions 18-23

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

In boxes 18-23 on your answer sheet write

YES	if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO	if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN	if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

18    It is not as easy to analyse literacy levels as it used to be.

19  Our literacy skills need to be as highly developed as they were in the past.

20  Illiteracy is on the increase.

21  Professional writers earn relatively more than they used to.

22   A good literacy level is important for those who work in television.

23  Computers are having a negative impact on literacy in schools

Questions 24-26

Complete the sentences below with words taken from Reading Passage 2.

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

Use NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

In Renaissance England, the best readers were those able to read 24 

The writer uses the example of 25  to illustrate the general fall in certain areas of literacy.

It has been shown that after leaving school, the only things that a lot of people write are 26 

ANSWERS

• 14C
• 15A
• 16B
• 17D
• 18YES
• 19NO
• 20NOT GIVEN
• 21YES
• 22YES
• 23NO
• 24manuscript
• 25(the) (tabloid) newspapers
• 26shopping lists

IELTS Academic10-08-2019 - Reading Passage 1

A After hours of driving south in the pitch-black darkness of the Nevada desert, a dome of hazy gold suddenly appears on the horizon. Soon, a road sign confirms the obvious: Las Vegas 30 miles. Looking skyward, you notice that the Big Dipper is harder to find than it was an hour ago.

B Light pollution—the artificial light that illuminates more than its intended target area—has become a problem of increasing concern across the country over the past 15 years. In the suburbs, where over-lit shopping mall parking lots are the norm, only 200 of the Milky Way’s 2,500 stars are visible on a clear night. Even fewer can be seen from large cities. In almost every town, big and small, street lights beam just as much light up and out as they do down, illuminating much more than just the street. Almost 50 percent of the light emanating from street lamps misses its intended target, and billboards, shopping centres, private homes and skyscrapers are similarly over-illuminated.

C America has become so bright that in a satellite image of the United States at night, the outline of the country is visible from its lights alone. The major cities are all there, in bright clusters: New York, Boston, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and, of course, Las Vegas. Mark Adams, superintendent of the McDonald Observatory in west Texas, says that the very fact that city lights are visible from on high is proof of their wastefulness. “When you’re up in an airplane, all that light you see on the ground from the city is wasted. It’s going up into the night sky. That’s why you can see it.”

D But don’t we need all those lights to ensure our safety? The answer from light engineers, light pollution control advocates and astronomers is an emphatic “no.” Elizabeth Alvarez of the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), a non-profit organization in Tucson, Arizona, says that overly bright security lights can actually force neighbours to close the shutters, which means that if any criminal activity does occur on the street, no one will see it. And the old assumption that bright lights deter crime appears to have been a false one: A new Department of Justice report concludes that there is no documented correlation between the level of lighting and the level of crime in an area. And contrary to popular belief, more crimes occur in broad daylight than at night.

E For drivers, light can actually create a safety hazard. Glaring lights can temporarily blind drivers, increasing the likelihood of an accident. To help prevent such accidents, some cities and states prohibit the use of lights that impair night-time vision. For instance, New Hampshire law forbids the use of “any light along a highway so positioned as to blind or dazzle the vision of travellers on the adjacent highway.”

F Badly designed lighting can pose a threat to wildlife as well as people. Newly hatched turtles in Florida move toward beach lights instead of the more muted silver shimmer of the ocean. Migrating birds, confused by lights on skyscrapers, broadcast towers and lighthouses, are injured, sometimes fatally, after colliding with high, lighted structures. And light pollution harms air quality as well: Because most of the country’s power plants are still powered by fossil fuels, more light means more air pollution.

G So what can be done? Tucson, Arizona is taking back the night. The city has one of the best lighting ordinances in the country, and, not coincidentally, the highest concentration of observatories in the world. Kitt Peak National Optical Astronomy Observatory has 24 telescopes aimed skyward around the city’s perimeter, and its cadre of astronomers needs a dark sky to work with.

H For a while, that darkness was threatened. “We were totally losing the night sky,” Jim Singleton of Tucson’s Lighting Committee told Tulsa, Oklahoma’s KOTV last March. Now, after retrofitting inefficient mercury lighting with low-sodium lights that block light from “trespassing” into unwanted areas like bedroom windows, and by doing away with some unnecessary lights altogether, the city is softly glowing rather than brightly beaming. The same thing is happening in a handful of other states, including Texas, which just passed a light pollution bill last summer. “Astronomers can get what they need at the same time that citizens get what they need: safety, security and good visibility at night,” says McDonald Observatory’s Mark Adams, who provided testimony at the hearings for the bill.

I And in the long run, everyone benefits from reduced energy costs. Wasted energy from inefficient lighting costs us between $1 and $2 billion a year, according to IDA. The city of San Diego, which installed new, high-efficiency street lights after passing a light pollution law in 1985, now saves about $3 million a year in energy costs.

J Legislation isn’t the only answer to light pollution problems. Brian Greer, Central Ohio representative for the Ohio Light Pollution Advisory Council, says that education is just as important, if not more so. “There are some special situations where regulation is the only fix,” he says. “But the vast majority of bad lighting is simply the result of not knowing any better.” Simple actions like replacing old bulbs and fixtures with more efficient and better-designed ones can make a big difference in preserving the night sky.

*The Big Dipper: a group of seven bright stars visible in the Northern Hemisphere.

Questions 1-5

The first six paragraphs of Reading Passage 1 are lettered A-F.

Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs A-F from the list of headings below.

NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all.

List of Headings
i  Why lights are needed
ii  Lighting discourages law breakers
iii  The environmental dangers
iv  People at risk from bright lights
v  Illuminating space
vi  A problem lights do not solve
vii  Seen from above
viii  More light than is necessary
ix  Approaching the city

Example) Paragraph A   ix


1) Paragraph B   

2) Paragraph C   

3) Paragraph D   

4) Paragraph E   

5) Paragraph F  

Questions 6-9

Complete each of the following statements with words taken from the passage.

Write ONE or TWO WORDS for each answer.

6) According to a recent study, well-lit streets do not .................... or make neighbourhoods safer to live in.

7) Inefficient lighting increases .................... because most electricity is produced from coal, gas or oil.

8) Efficient lights .................... from going into areas where it is not needed.

9) In dealing with light pollution .................... is at least as important as passing new laws.

Questions 10-13

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

In boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet, write

YES	if the statement agrees with the writer's claims
NO	if the statement contradicts the writer's claims
NOT GIVEN	if there is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

10) One group of scientists find their observations are made more difficult by bright lights.  

11) It is expensive to reduce light pollution.  

12) Many countries are now making light pollution illegal.  

13) Old types of light often cause more pollution than more modern ones.  

ANSWERS

1) Paragraph B   viii

2) Paragraph C   vii

3) Paragraph D   vi

4) Paragraph E   iv

5) Paragraph F   iii

6) deter crime

7) (air) pollution

8) block light

9) education

10) YES

11) No

12) Not Given

13) Yes

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