Cambridge IELTS Academic 18 Reading Test 4 Answers with Explanation / IELTS Academic Reading: Green roofs , The growth mindset , Alfred Wegener: science, exploration and the theory of continental

READING PASSAGE 1

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

Green roofs

Q	Answer	Keywords	Location in Passage	Text Associated with Answer
1	D	challenges	Paragraph D (last sentence)	"For green roofs to become the norm for new developments, there needs to be support from public authorities and private investors. Those responsible for maintaining buildings may have to acquire new skills, such as landscaping, and in some cases, volunteers may be needed to help out."
2	C	existing green roofs	Paragraph C (line 12-14)	"Toronto, Canada, has policies dating from the 1990s, encouraging the development of urban farms on rooftops."
3	E	model for new ones	Paragraph E (line 1-3)	"As the expertise about green roofs grows, official standards have been developed to ensure that they are designed, constructed and maintained properly, and function well."
4	B	combination with other green urban initiatives	Paragraph B (line 1-4)	"Ongoing research is showcasing how green roofs in cities can integrate with 'living walls': environmentally friendly walls which are partially or completely covered with greenery."
5	D	financial benefits	Paragraph D (line 6-10)	"To convince investors and developers that installing green roofs is worthwhile, economic arguments are still the most important."
6	energy	lessening floods	Paragraph A (line 5-6)	"Among the benefits are saving on energy costs, mitigating the risk of floods..."
7	food	producing	Paragraph A (line 9-10)	"making habitats for urban wildlife, tackling air pollution and even growing food."
8	gardening	cope with mental health issues	Paragraph B (line 5-6)	"Doctors are increasingly prescribing time spent gardening outdoors for patients dealing with anxiety and depression."
9	obesity	prevent physical problems	Paragraph B (line 8-9)	"And research has found that access to even the most basic green spaces can provide a better quality of life for dementia sufferers and help people avoid obesity."
10 & 11	C, D	advantages of using newer buildings	Paragraph C (line 12-14)	"Being able to keep enough water at roof height and distribute it right across the rooftop is crucial to maintaining the plants on any green roof – especially on 'edible roofs' where fruit and vegetables are farmed." "Having a stronger roof also makes it easier to grow a greater variety of plants since the soil can be deeper."
12 & 13	A, D	aims of new variations on the concept of green roofs	Paragraph E (line 1-3, 8-9)	"There are also combinations of green roofs with solar panels, and 'brown roofs' which are wilder in nature and maximize biodiversity." "If the trend continues, it could create new jobs and a more vibrant and sustainable local food economy – alongside many other benefits."

READING PASSAGE 2

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

The growth mindset

Question Number	Answer	Keywords	Location in Passage	Text Associated with Answer
14	B	first paragraph	First paragraph (line 2-6)	"The concept of intelligence as something innate has been supplanted by the idea that intelligence is not fixed, and that, with the right training, we can be the authors of our own cognitive capabilities."
15	C	second paragraph	Second paragraph	"A major focus of the growth mindset in schools is coaxing students away from seeing failure as an indication of their ability, and towards seeing it as a chance to improve that ability."
16	D	third paragraph	Third paragraph	"This group had inferred that success or failure is due to innate ability, and this ‘fixed mindset’ had led them to fear of failure and lack of effort."
17	C	growth mindset studies	Last paragraph	"The statistician Andrew Gelman claims that ‘their research designs have enough degrees of freedom that they could take their data to support just about any theory at all’."
18	B	growth mindset	Last paragraph	"In fact, she argues that her work has been misunderstood and misapplied in a range of ways."
19	A	intellectual ability	Last paragraph	"The failure to translate the growth mindset into the classroom might reflect a misunderstanding of the nature of teaching and learning itself."
20	E	growth mindset promotion	Last paragraph	"Growth mindset supporters David Yeager and Gregory Walton claim that interventions should be delivered in a subtle way to maximise their effectiveness."
21	B	growth mindset	Last paragraph	"She has also expressed concerns that her theories are being misappropriated in schools by being conflated with the self-esteem movement."
22	D	growth mindset effect	Last paragraph	"Professor of Psychology Timothy Bates, who has been trying to replicate Dweck’s work, is finding that the results are repeatedly null."
23	YES	Dweck's response to criticism	Last paragraph	"Much of this criticism is not lost on Dweck, and she deserves great credit for responding to it and adapting her work accordingly."
24	NO	self-perception vs. achievement	Last paragraph	"A lot of what drives students is their innate beliefs and how they perceive themselves."
25	NOT GIVEN	media coverage of recent evidence	Not mentioned	Not mentioned
26	YES	deliberate attempts to encourage high achievement	Last paragraph	"Perhaps growth mindset works best as a philosophy and not an intervention."

READING PASSAGE 3

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

Alfred Wegener: science, exploration and the theory of continental drift

Question No.	Answer	Keywords	Location in Passage	Text Associated with Answer
27	YES	Wegener’s ideas about continental drift	Last paragraph (Paragraph 5)	As important as Wegener’s work on continental drift has turned out to be, it was largely a sideline to his interest in atmospheric physics, geophysics, and paleoclimatology, and thus I have been at great pains to put Wegener’s work on continental drift in the larger context of his other scientific work, and in the even larger context of atmospheric sciences in his lifetime.
28	NOT GIVEN	idea that the continents remained fixed in place	-	-
29	NO	limited range of scientific fields	Paragraph 1, Line 8	Wegener showed in great detail how such continental movements were plausible and how they worked, using evidence from a large number of sciences including geology, geophysics, paleontology, and climatology.
30	NO	similarities between Wegener’s theory and modern-day plate tectonics	Paragraph 1	Plate tectonics is in many respects quite different from Wegener’s proposal, in the same way that modern evolutionary theory is very different from the ideas Charles Darwin proposed in the 1850s about biological evolution. Yet plate tectonics is a descendant of Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift...
31	I	remarkable things about Wegener	Paragraph 7	One of the remarkable things about Wegener from a biographer’s perspective is that although he proposed a theory of continental drift, he was not a geologist.
32	F	his research methods	Paragraph 7	His professional interests were limited to atmospheric physics.
33	A	person of modest fame	Paragraph 7	However, at the time he proposed his theory of continental drift in 1912, he was already a person of modest fame.
34	C	52 hours in a hot-air balloon	Paragraph 7, Line 17	Six years previously, there had been his record-breaking achievement of 52 hours in a hot-air balloon...
35	H	expedition to Greenland’s coast	Paragraph 7, Line 18	...followed by his well-publicized but hazardous exploration of Greenland’s coast.
36	E	a select group of German scientists	Paragraph 7, Line 20	With the publication of his textbook on thermodynamics, he had also come to the attention of a select group of German scientists.
37	B	describing why it is desirable to read the whole book	Paragraph 5	When I started writing about Wegener’s life and work, one of the most intriguing things about him for me was that... My treatment of his other scientific work is no less detailed, though I certainly have devoted more attention to the reception of his ideas on continental displacement, as they were much more controversial than his other work.
38	A	He was not a particularly ambitious person.	Paragraph 6, Line 1	He was not active (with a few exceptions) in scientific societies, and did not seek to find influence or advance his ideas through professional contacts and politics...
39	D	Wegener's scientific ideas	Paragraph 6, Line 7	Some famous scientists, such as Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, left mountains of written material behind, hundreds of notebooks and letters numbering in the tens of thousands. Others, like Michael Faraday, left extensive journals of their thoughts and speculations, parallel to their scientific notebooks. The more such material a scientist leaves behind, the better chance a biographer has of forming an accurate picture of how a scientist’s ideas took shape and evolved.

Question No.	Answer	Keywords	Location in Passage	Text Associated with Answer
40	C	People have little control over many aspects of their lives.	Last paragraph (Paragraph 9)	I am firmly of the opinion that most of us, Wegener included, are not in any real sense the authors of our own lives. We plan, think, and act, often with apparent freedom, but most of the time our lives ‘happen to us’, and we only retrospectively turn this happenstance into a coherent narrative of fulfilled intentions. This book, therefore, is a story both of the life and scientific work that Alfred Wegener planned and intended and of the life and scientific work that actually ‘happened to him’. These are, as I think you will soon see, not always the same thing.