Warning! This is not a real IELTS test!
Reading Task 1
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Decide if the
information in this reading is TRUE, FALSE, or NOT GIVEN. You have 8 minutes for this
section.
Electronic libraries will make today's Internet pale by comparison.
But building them will not be easy.
All over the world,
libraries have begun the Herculean task of making faithful digital copies of the books, images and
recordings that preserve the intellectual effort of humankind. For armchair scholars, the work
promises to bring such a wealth of information to the desktop that the present Internet may seem
amateurish in retrospect.
Librarians
see three clear benefits to going digital. First, it helps them preserve rare and fragile objects
without denying access to those who wish to study them. The British Library, for example, holds the
only medieval manuscript of Beowulf in London. Only qualified scholars were allowed to see it
until Kevin S. Kiernan of the University of Kentucky scanned the ancient manuscript with three
different light sources (revealing details not normally apparent to the naked eye) and put the images
up on the Internet for anyone to peruse. Tokyo's National Diet Library is similarly creating
detailed digital photographs of 1,236 wood block prints, scrolls and other materials it considers
national treasures so that researchers can scrutinise them without handling the originals.
A
second benefit is convenience. Once books are converted to digital form, patrons can retrieve them in
seconds rather than minutes. Several people can simultaneously read the same book or view the same
picture. Clerks are spared the chore of reshelving. And libraries could conceivably use the
Internet to lend their virtual collections to those who are unable to visit in person.
The third
advantage of electronic copies is that they occupy millimetres of space on a magnetic disk rather
than metres on a shelf. Expanding library buildings is increasingly costly. The University of
California at Berkeley recently spent $46 million on an underground addition to house 1.5 million
books - an average cost of $30 per volume. The price of disk storage, in contrast, has fallen to
about $2 per 300-page publication and continues to drop.
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1.
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Digital libraries could have a more professional image than the Internet.
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2.
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Only experts are permitted to view the scanned
version of Beowulf.
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3.
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The woodblock prints in Tokyo have been damaged by
researchers.
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4.
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Fewer staff will be required in digital
libraries.
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5.
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People may be able to borrow digital materials from
the library.
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6.
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Digital libraries will occupy more space than
ordinary libraries.
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7.
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The cost of newly published books will
fall.
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Reading Task 2
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Read the following
passage, and write NO MORE THAN 2 WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer. You have
7 minutes to complete this task. Type your answers in the boxes provided.
The First Cyber Criminals
'Cyber crime' sounds like a very new type of crime. In fact, it has
been around since the 1970s - before the personal computer was invented, when when computers far less
powerful than today's game consoles filled entire rooms and were monitored by technicians.
The first cyber crimes were carried out across telephone lines, by a group of electronic
enthusiasts known as 'phone phreakers'. Having studied the US telephone system, they
realised that it used a series of musical tones to connect calls. They found they could imitate those
tones, and steal free phone calls, by creating small musical devices called ·blue boxes'.
One famous 'phreaker', John Draper, even discovered that using a whistle given away inside a
cereal box could do the same job as a blue box.
Cyber crime centred on
the telephone for many years, until the first computer-to-computer cyber crime took place in the
1980s. 'Hacking', as it has since been referred to, gained new public visibility after the
popular 1984 film Wargames, in which a hacker breaks into a US military computer and saves the
world. Many hackers later said this was their inspiration.
It was the
arrival of the Internet that was eventually to make cyber crime a big
issue. When millions of home and business computer
users began to visit the Internet in the early to mid 1990s, few were thinking about the dangers of
cyber crime or about security and so it seemed only a matter of time before banks became the target
for hackers.
In 1994 a group of hackers broke into US bank Citibank's
computers and stole $10 million. This was later nearly all recovered. With the rise of the Internet,
credit cards became the tools of cyber criminals: Kevin Mitnick was arrested for stealing 20,000
credit card numbers over the net in 1995. This and other credit card crime prompted credit card
companies to consider ways they could make cards more secure.
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8.
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First cyber criminals: Called_____________
(1970s)
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9.
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Nature of crime : made free calls by copying
_____________
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10.
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Computer crime : began in
_____________
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11.
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Crime known as :
_____________
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12.
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Promoted by hit movie :
_____________
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13.
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Internet crime : initially
unexpected, but quickly focused on _____________
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14.
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Current concern : _____________
fraud
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Listening
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Click here and after listening
to the talk, label the diagram below with only one word for each answer. Type the words in the boxes
provided.
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1.
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________________
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2.
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________________
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3.
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________________
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4.
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________________
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5.
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________________
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Writing
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The graph shows estimated
oil production capacity for several Gulf countries between 1990 and 2010.
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20.
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Summarise the information by
selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where
relevant.
· You should write
at least 150 words.
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You should spend about 20 minutes on this task.
Type your essay
in the box provided.
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