Cambridge IELTS Academic 13 Reading Test 3 Answers with Explanation / IELTS Academic Reading: The coconut palm ,How baby talk gives infant brains a boost,Whatever happened to the Harappan Civilisation

READING PASSAGE 1

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

The coconut palm

Question Number	Answer	Keywords	Location in Passage	Associated Text
1	furniture	trunk, 30 metres, making houses	Paragraph 2, Line 3	"The coconut palm has a smooth, slender, grey trunk, up to 30 metres tall. This is an important source of timber for building houses, and is increasingly being used as a replacement for endangered hardwoods in the furniture construction industry."
2	sugar	flowers, top of trunk, sap, used as drink	Paragraph 2, Lines 8-10	"Immature coconut flowers are tightly clustered together among the leaves at the top of the trunk. The flower stems may be tapped for their sap to produce a drink, and the sap can also be reduced by boiling to produce a type of sugar used for cooking."
3	ropes	fruits, middle layer (coir fibres)	Paragraph 3, Lines 3-5	"The thick fibrous middle layer produces coconut fibre, ‘coir’, which has numerous uses and is particularly important in manufacturing ropes."
4	charcoal	inner layer (shell)	Paragraph 3, Lines 5-6	"The woody innermost layer, the shell, with its three prominent ‘eyes’ surrounds the seed. An important product obtained from the shell is charcoal, which is widely used."
5	bowls	fruits, inner layer (shell), when halved	Paragraph 3, Lines 7-8	"When broken in half, the shells are also used as bowls in many parts of Asia."
6	hormones	coconut water	Paragraph 4, Lines 2-3	"Coconut water is a sweetish liquid, coconut water, which is enjoyed as a drink, but also provides the hormones which encourage other plants to grow more rapidly and produce higher yields."
7	cosmetics	fruits, coconut flesh, oil, milk, cooking	Paragraph 4, Lines 5-7	"Dried coconut flesh, ‘copra’, is made into coconut oil and coconut milk, which are widely used in cooking in different parts of the world, as well as in cosmetics."
8	dynamite	coconut flesh, glycerine, ingredient	Paragraph 4, Lines 7-9	"A derivative of coconut fat, glycerine, acquired strategic importance in a quite different sphere, as Alfred Nobel introduced the world to this nitroglycerine-based invention: dynamite."
9	FALSE	coconut seeds, shade, to germinate	Paragraph 5, Lines 4-6	"Literally cast onto desert island shores with little more sand to grow in and exposed to the full glare of the tropical sun, coconut seeds are able to germinate and root."
10	FALSE	probably transported, Asia to America, 16th century	Paragraph 6, Lines 4-6	"16th century trade and human migration patterns reveal that Arab traders and European sailors are likely to have moved coconuts from South and Southeast Asia to Africa and then across the Atlantic to east coast of America

 

Question Number	Answer	Keywords	Location in Passage	Associated Text
11	NOT GIVEN	west coast of America, different type from, east coast	Not Given	Not Given
12	TRUE	all the coconuts, Asia, cultivated varieties	Paragraph 6, Lines 10-12	"In Asia, there is a large degree of coconut diversity and evidence of millennia of human use – but there are no relatives growing in the wild."
13	NOT GIVEN	cultivated, in different ways, America and the Pacific	Not Given	Not Given

 

READING PASSAGE 2

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

How baby talk gives infant brains a boost

Question	Answer	Keywords	Location	Text
14	B (Narián Ramirez-Esparza)	individual attention	Paragraph D, lines 10-11	"‘We also found that it really matters whether you use baby talk in a one-to-one context,’ she adds.”
15	C (Patricia Kuhl)	what babies hear, their own efforts to create speech	Paragraph F, lines 8-11	"suggests that seven-month-olds’ brains are already trying to figure out how to make the right movements that will produce words,” says co-author Patricia Kuhl.”
16	A (Mark VanDam)	advantage, having two parents, each speaking, different way	Paragraph C, lines 10-12	"The idea is that a kid gets to practice a certain kind of speech with mom and another kind of speech with dad, so the kid then has a wider repertoire of kinds of speech to practice,’ says VanDam.’"
17	B (Narián Ramirez-Esparza)	amount of baby talk, babies hear, how much vocalizing, themselves	Paragraph D, lines 7-9	"Those children who listened to a lot of baby talk were talking more than the babies that listened to more adult talk or standard speech,” says Nairán Ramírez-Esparza of the University of Connecticut."
18	recording devices	Washington State University, specialized computer programs	Paragraph C, lines 2-3	"Mark VanDam of Washington State University at Spokane and colleagues equipped parents with recording devices and speech-recognition software to study the way they interacted with their youngsters during a normal day.”
19	dads	tended to modify, ordinary speech, interacting with babies	Paragraph C, lines 6-8	"But we found that dads aren’t doing the same thing. Dads didn’t raise their pitch or fundamental frequency when they talked to kids.”
20	bridge hypothesis	idea known as, more adult type of speech, prepare infants	Paragraph C, lines 8-10	"Their role may be rooted in what is called the bridge hypothesis, which dates back to 1975. It suggests that fathers use less familial language to provide their children with a bridge to the kind of speech they’ll hear in public.”
21	repertoire	'normal' language, other, expands, types of speech	Paragraph C, lines 11-12	"The idea is that a kid gets to practice a certain kind of speech with mom and another kind of speech with dad, so the kid then has a wider repertoire of kinds of speech to practice,’ says VanDam.”
22	(audio-recording) vests	University of Connecticut recorded speech and sound, special	Paragraph D, line 3	"the University of Connecticut collected thousands of 30-second conversations between parents and their babies, fitting 26 children with audio-recording vests that captured language and sound during a typical eight-hour day.”
23	vocabulary	at the age two, who heard, a lot of baby talk in infancy, much larger	Paragraph D, lines 5-7	"And when researchers saw the same babies at age two, they found that frequent baby talk had dramatically boosted vocabulary, regardless of socioeconomic status.”
24	F	change, occurs, babies' brain activity, before, end of first year	Paragraph F, lines 7-11	"Finding activation in motor areas of the brain when infants are simply listening is significant, because it means the baby brain is engaged in trying to talk back right from the start, and suggests that seven-month-olds’ brains are already trying to figure out how to make the right movements that will produce words,’"

Question	Answer	Keywords	Location	Text
25	A	some parents do, before birth	Paragraph A, lines 2-4	"Most babies start developing their hearing while still in the womb, prompting some hopeful parents to play classical music to their pregnant bellies.”
26	E	babies' preference, sounds that other babies make	Paragraph E, lines 5-7	"found that babies seem to like listening to each other rather than to adults – which may be why baby talk is such a universal tool among parents.”

READING PASSAGE 3

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

 

Whatever happened to the Harappan Civilisation?

New research sheds light on the disappearance of an ancient society

Question Number	Answer	Keywords	Location	Text
27	C	proposed explanations, decline	Paragraph C, lines 1-3	"Some have claimed that major glacier-fed rivers changed their course, dramatically affecting the water supply and agriculture; or the city could not cope with an increasing population, they exhausted their resource base, the trading economy broke down or they succumbed to invasion and conflict…."
28	H	present-day application, archeological research findings	Paragraph H, lines 2-4	"By investigating responses to environmental pressures and threats, we can learn from the past to engage with the public, and the relevant governmental and administrative bodies, to be more proactive in issues such as…".
29	A	difference, the Harappan Civilization, another culture of the same period	Paragraph A, lines 2-3, 5-7	"But their lack of self-imagery – at a time when the Egyptians were carving and painting representations of themselves all over the temples – is only part of the mystery."
30	B	description, features, urban design	Paragraph B	"As population increased, cities were built that had great baths, craft workshops, palaces and halls laid out in distinct sectors. Houses were arranged in blocks, with wide main streets and narrow alleyways, and many had their own wells and drainage systems."
31	D	discovery, errors, previous archeologists	Paragraph D, lines 7-8	"They realized that any attempt to use the existing data were likely to be fundamentally flawed."
32	shells	collection, snails	Paragraph E, line 5	"...the researchers gathered shells of Melanoides tuberculate snails from the sediments of an ancient lake…"
33	lake	discovered evidence, change, water levels	Paragraph E, lines 8-10	"But we have observed that there was an abrupt change about 4,100 years ago, when the amount of evaporation from the lake exceeded the rainfall – indicative of a drought."
34	rainfall	less, evaporation, drought	Paragraph E, lines 8-10	"But we have observed that there was an abrupt change about 4,100 years ago, when the amount of evaporation from the lake exceeded the rainfall – indicative of a drought."
35	grains	Petrie and Singh’s, archeological records, five millennia ago	Paragraph G, lines 1-4	"Petrie and Singh’s team is now examining archaeological records and trying to understand details of how people led their lives in the region five millennia ago. They are analysing grains cultivated at the time…"
36	pottery	examining objects, links between inhabitants, different parts of the region	Paragraph G, lines 6-7	"They are also looking at whether the types of pottery used, and other aspects of their material culture, were distinctive to specific regions or more similar across large areas… ."
37	B (Dr. Rabindanath Singh)	changes to environmental conditions, vital	Paragraph F, lines 5-8	"Considering the vast area of the Harappan Civilisation with its variable weather systems, it is essential that we obtain more climate data from areas close to the two great cities at Mohenjodaro and Harappa and also from the Indian Punjab."
38	A (Cameron Petrie)	previous patterns of behaviour, long-term benefits	Paragraph H	"By investigating responses to environmental pressures and threats, we can learn from the past to

Question Number	Answer	Keywords	Location	Text
38	A (Cameron Petrie)	previous patterns of behaviour, long-term benefits	Paragraph H	"By investigating responses to environmental pressures and threats, we can learn from the past to engage with the public, and the relevant governmental and administrative bodies, to be more proactive in issues such as…"
39	D (David Hodell)	rough calculations, water shortage	Paragraph E	"...We estimate that the weakening of the Indian summer monsoon climate lasted about 200 years before recovering to the previous condition…"
40	A (Cameron Petrie)	decline, lacking	Paragraph B	"There is plenty of archaeological evidence to tell us about the rise of the Harappan Civilization, but relatively little about its fall."