Cambridge IELTS Academic 13 Reading Test 4 Answers with Explanation / IELTS Academic Reading: Cutty Sark: the fastest sailing ship of all time , SAVING THE SOIL , Book Review (2025)

Question Number

Answer

Keywords

Location

Text

1

FALSE

originally intended, used as passenger ships

Paragraph 2, Lines 1-2

"The fastest commercial sailing vessels of all time were the clippers, three-masted ships built to transport goods around the world, although some also took passengers."

2

FALSE

given, name, character in a poem

Paragraph 3, Lines 1-3

"Cutty Sark’s unusual name comes from the poem Tam O’Shanter by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Tam, a farmer, is chased by a witch called Nannie, who is wearing a ‘cutty sark’ – an old Scottish name for a short nightdress."

3

TRUE

contract, John Willis and Scott & Linton, favoured

Paragraph A, Lines 2-3

"To carry out construction, Willis chose a new shipbuilding firm, Scott & Linton, and ensured that the contract with them put him in a very strong position."

4

TRUE

wanted, to be the fastest tea clipper, between the UK and China

Paragraph 5, Lines 1-2

"Willis’s company was active in the tea trade between China and Britain, where speed could bring ship owners both profits and prestige, Cutty Sark was designed to make the journey more quickly than any other ship…"

5

FALSE

despite storm damage, beat, Thermopylae

Paragraph 5, Line 10

"Cutty Sark reached London a week after Thermopylae."

6

TRUE

opening, Suez Canal, steam ships, travel, faster than clippers

Paragraph 6, Lines 2-6

"...Steam ships reduced the journey time between Britain and China by approximately two months."

7

NOT GIVEN

sometimes used, ocean route, to travel, London and China

-

No information provided in the passage.

8

TRUE

Woodget, put, at risk, hitting, iceberg

Paragraph 8, Lines 3-4

"And Woodget took her further south than any previous captain, bringing her dangerously close to icebergs off the southern tip of South America."

9

wool

after 1880, carried, main cargo, successful time

Paragraph 8, Lines 4-6

"This marked a turnaround and the beginning of the most successful period in Cutty Sark’s working life, transporting woolfrom Australia to Britain."

10

navigator

captain and, Woodget, very skilled

Paragraph 8, Line 1

"The ship’s next captain, Richard Woodget, was an excellent navigator."

11

gale

Ferreira, went, Falmouth, repair damage, had caused

Paragraph 10, Line 1

"Badly damaged in a galein 1922, she was put into Falmouth harbor in southwest England, for repairs."

12

training

Between 1923 and 1954, used for

Paragraph 11, Line 1

"Dowman used Cutty Sark as a trainingship..."

13

fire

twice been damaged, 21st century

Paragraph 11, Lines 3-4

"The ship suffered from firein 2007, and again, less seriously, in 2014…"

Question

Answer

Keywords

Location

Text

14

minerals

bacteria, microorganisms, plant remains

Paragraph B, lines 4-6

"A single gram of healthy soil might contain 100 million bacteria, as well as other microorganisms such as viruses and fungi, living amid decomposing plants and various minerals."

15

carbon

food, antibiotics, storing, effect on the climate

Paragraph B, lines 9-11

"Soil is also an ally against climate change: as microorganisms within soil digest dead animals and plants, they lock in their carbon content, holding three times the amount of carbon as does the entire atmosphere."

16

water

prevent damage, property, infrastructure, holds

Paragraph B, lines 11-13

"Soils also store water, preventing flood damage: in the UK, damage to buildings, roads and bridges from floods caused by soil degradation costs £233 million every year."

17

agriculture

main factor, soil degradation, carried out by humans

Paragraph C, lines 5-9

"Agriculture is by far the biggest problem …. Humans tend not to return unused parts of harvested crops directly to the soil to enrich it, meaning that the soil gradually becomes less fertile."

18

C

nutrients, unused parts of harvested crops

Paragraph C, lines 7-8

"Humans tend not to return unused parts of harvested crops directly to the soil to enrich it, meaning that the soil gradually becomes less fertile."

19

E

Synthetic fertilizers, produced, Haber-Bosch process

Paragraph D, lines 3, 6-9

"Chemical fertilisers can release polluting nitrous oxide into the atmosphere and excess is often washed away with the rain, releasing nitrogen into rivers. More recently, we have found that indiscriminate use of fertilisers hurts the soil itself, turning it acidic and salty, and degrading the soil they are supposed to nourish."

20

A

mixture developed by Pius Floris

Paragraph E, lines 1, 7-10

"One of the people looking for a solution to this problem is Pius Floris, who started out running a tree-care business in the Netherlands, and now advises some of the world’s top soil scientists. When they applied Floris’s mix to the desert-like test plots, a good crop of plants emerged that were not just healthy at the surface, but had roots strong enough to pierce dirt as hard as rock."

21

D

idea of zero net soil degradation

Paragraph G, lines 1-7

"We need ways of presenting the problem that bring it home to governments and the wider public... Chasek and her colleagues have proposed a goal of ‘zero net land degradation...'"

22

E

one person’s motivation for a soil-improvement project

Paragraph E, lines 1-3

"One of the people looking for a solution to this problem is Pius Floris, who started out running a tree-care business in the Netherlands, and now advises some of the world’s top soil scientists."

23

C

explanation of how soil stayed healthy before the development of farming

Paragraph C, lines 1-3, 7-8

"In the wild, when plants grow they remove nutrients from the soil, but then when the plants die and decay these nutrients are returned directly to the soil... Humans tend not to return unused parts of harvested crops directly to the soil to enrich it, meaning that the soil gradually becomes less fertile."

24

F

examples of different ways of collecting information on soil degradation

Paragraph F, lines 6-8

"Researchers from nine countries are working together to create a map linked to a database that can

Question

Answer

Keywords

Location

Text

24

F

different ways of collecting information, soil degradation

Paragraph F, lines 6-8

"Researchers from nine countries are working together to create a map linked to a database that can be fed measurements from field surveys, drone surveys, satellite imagery, lab analyses and so on to provide real-time data on the state of the soil."

25

G

suggestion, keeping, some types of soil, safe, near future

Paragraph G, lines 2-4

"Chasek and her colleagues have proposed a goal of 'zero net land degradation.'"

26

F

difficult, provide an overview, soil degradation

Paragraph F, lines 2-4

"To assess our options on a global scale we first need an accurate picture of what types of soil are out there, and the problems they face. That’s not easy. For one thing, there is no agreed international system for classifying soil."

Question

Answer

Keywords

Location

Text

27

D

reviewer’s attitude, advocates of positive psychology

Paragraph 2, line 12

"Those who think in this way are obliviousto the vast philosophical literature in which the meaning and value of happiness have been explored and questioned, and write as if nothing of any importance had been thought on the subject until it came to their attention."

28

A

Aristotle

Paragraph 2, lines 6-10

"For Bentham it was obvious that the human good consists of pleasure and the absence of pain. The Greek philosopher Aristotle may have identified happiness with self-realisation in the 4th century, but for Bentham all this was mere metaphysics or fiction."

29

B

Davies, Bentham’s suggestion, linking, price of goods

Paragraph 4, last few lines

"By associating money so closely to inner experience, Davies writes, Bentham ‘set the stage for the entangling of psychological research and capitalism that would shape the business practices of the twentieth century’."

Question

Answer

Keywords

Location

Text

35

YES

The Happiness Industry, discussion, relationship, psychology, economics

Paragraph 5, first few lines

"The Happiness Industry describes how the project of a science of happiness has become integral to capitalism. We learn much that is interesting about how economic problems are being redefined and treated as psychological maladies."

36

NOT GIVEN

difficult to measure, some emotions

N/A

N/A

37

NO

Watson’s ideas, behaviuorism, supported, research, humans, before 1915

Paragraph 5, lines 7-9

"When he became president of the American Psychological Association in 1915, he had never even studied a single human being: his research had been confined to experiments on white rats."

38

NOT GIVEN

Watson’s ideas, most influential, governments outside America

N/A

N/A

39

YES

need for happiness, linked, industrialisation

Paragraph 6, opening sentence

"Modern industrial societies appear to need the possibility of ever-increasing happiness to motivate them in their labours."

40

NO

main aim, government, increase, happiness of the population

Paragraph 6, lines 2-3

“But whatever its intellectual pedigree, the idea that governments should be responsible for promoting happiness is always a threat to human freedom.”