Table of Contents
BEST IELTS General Reading Test 141
GENERAL READING TEST 141 – PASSAGE – 2
GENERAL READING TEST – 141
READING PASSAGE – 2
Social Body
Offer accessible and diverse leisure opportunities to enhance the well-being of individuals and strengthen a sense of community in a safe and welcoming environment.
Objectives
To assist, develop and to foster community spirit throughout the community
To promote the educational, social, cultural and athletic endeavours of the community
To assist any organization, group, company or individual whose sole aim is to promote the educational, social, cultural or athletic well-being of the people of the community
To receive donations, or do such things as may be necessary to raise funds to carry out the objectives
To carry on the operations of the Association principally in the Marpole Oakridge community
Board of Directors
The Community Association Board meetings are held on the 3rd Tuesday of each month at 7:00 pm. All members are welcome. If you are interested in joining the Board or a Committee contact the Community Recreation Coordinator at 604-257-8177.
Duties of the Board
To Jointly operate the Community Centre with the Park Board
To identify needs of the community and act in the best interest of the community in fulfilling these needs
To exercise the care, diligence and skill of a reasonably prudent person in exercising his/her powers and performing his/her function as a Director
To direct the activities, participation and aims of the Society in conformity with its’ Constitution & By-laws
To determine the policy of the Society, both internally and in regard to its relationship with the Park Board staff
To elect from among its’ members each year the officers of the Society
To attend meeting of the Board and meeting of such committees to which he/she may be appointed
To discharge accepted responsibilities in accordance with the direction of the Board
To work with the professional staff in determining the needs of the community, and support the staff in the undertakings of the Community Centre
To accept from the membership at large complaints and suggestions and requests for programs; to study such complaints and suggestions and to pass them on to the professional staff
To act as liaison between Park Board and the community at large in relationship to park development and delivery of recreational services
To liaison and cooperate with the other community agencies for betterment of the community
Meetings
The Community Association Board meetings at 990 West 59th Avenue. All members of the community are welcome to attend.
Questions 15 – 20
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text?
TRUE – if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE – if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN – if there is no information on this
15. one of the groups objectives is to support sport in the community
16. a further objective is to get money for the group
17. the group meets on every other Tuesday
18. directors are expected to work in careful manner
19. directors should work with all other groups in the community
20. the group’s meetings are solely for directors
Read the text and answer Questions 21 – 27.
Top Trends in Society & culture
A. Speeding up
Everything is speeding up thanks to our obsession with technology and efficiency – although whether anything is actually moving in the right direction is a moot point. You can blame computers, email, the Internet, globalisation, mobile devices, low cost travel, whatever you like. The result is 24/7 access to goods and services, multi-tasking, meals in minutes, hectic households, microwave mums, meals on the run, insecurity, one minute wins and individuals (and organisations) that want everything tomorrow. The result is stress, anxiety, a lack of sleep, a blurring of boundaries between work and home, work-life imbalance and, conversely, an interest in slowing things down.
B. Demographic change
Demographics is the mother of all trends (or, as someone more eloquently once put it, (‘demographics is destiny’). The big demographic shift is ageing. In Europe 25% of the population is already aged 65+. Linked to this is the rise in single person households (46 million in Europe) caused by an increase of widows and widowers, but also caused by more people getting divorced and by people marrying later or not at all (42% of the US workforce is unmarried). Add a declining fertility rate (below the replacement rate in many developed nations) and you have a recipe for significant socio-economic change. Other linked trends include older parents, more one-parent families, male/female imbalance (eg China) and less traditional family units. In 1950 80% of US households were the traditional 2 parent & kids nuclear family. Now the figure is 47%, while over in Europe there will be14% less nuclear families in 2006 than in 1995. This could all change of course, but it’s in the nature of demographic trends that change is usually slow in any given direction.
C. Global and local
Globalisation is obviously a huge trend but if you look forward far enough it looks like the future will be local. You can already see evidence for this shift in the fact that the opposite, localisation – is a major trend in everything from food to politics. And it is entirely possible that the EU could collapse back into local units or even small city-states and the consequences of this would be extraordinary. Theoretically, globalisation still has many years to run (and will run alongside an interest in all things local) but we are increasingly at the mercy of resources. Put simply, when natural resources such as oil run out, we will have no choice but to stop moving around and adopt a more local way of life. Back to where it all started in other words.
D. Happiness
Materialism is still in full swing but for many people it’s starting to lose its appeal. We are working harder and working longer – and earning more money as a result – but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that money can’t buy you happiness. People are also starting to realise that identity is not shaped by what you own or consume but by who you are and how you live. To some extent the happiness phenomenon is really a search for meaning. Hence the increase in spiritualism. But it is also down to the fact that people have too much time on their hands. A century or two ago people were focussed on survival and just didn’t have time for self-introspection. Keep an eye on how often the topic of happiness appears in the general media and when politicians and companies pick up on the issue you’ll know the trend has truly arrived.
E. Authenticity
Life is complicated and getting more so. We are suffering from Too Much Information (TMI), Too Much Choice (TMC) and Too Much Technology (TMT). We are also being subjected to multiple truths (one minute coffee is going to kill you, the next it’s a miracle cure) and fed a seemingly endless diet of half-truths and lies from companies and politicians who want to sell us something. The response to all this is an interest in authenticity or ‘realness’. People want to know where things (or people) are from and whether they can trust them. They also want to know what the story is. Of course there are contradictions. On the one hand we expect people and products to be trustworthy, ethical, real and tell stories about their history. On the other hand we are ourselves leading increasingly fake lives – filling our lips with Botox, dying our hair blonde, enlarging our breasts and pretending we’re happier than we really are.
F. Memory
We increasingly live in a world that forgets. Companies have almost no sense of their own history while politicians positively revel in the fact that voters cannot remember (or choose to forget) lies, deceptions and even criminal behaviour. This is a problem because power is essentially a battle between memory and forgetting. Unfortunately, memory loss is a by-product of trends like speeding-up and convergence. It means that attention spans can almost be measured in nano-seconds (have you noticed how members of Generation Y won’t wait for anything anymore?). This in turn may give rise to memory loss in older age (cue various technical and pharmaceutical solutions). Conversely, we are also becoming increasingly fixated with preserving our own memory. ‘Life caching’ is a major trend (and a US $2.5 billion industry) where people effectively download (or upload) everything from emails and text messages to photographs, video clips, words and spoken words. Similarly scrap booking is a hot trend at the moment, although one suspects that this might have more to do with nostalgia and relaxation than immortality.
G. Networked
They used to say that when the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold. These days we all get to see and hear that cold in real time. Everything from countries and computers to industries and gadgets are increasingly linked together. In the future you can expect to see this trend accelerate even more thanks to everything from RFID tags to smart dust. This is both good news and bad. It’s good because information (good and bad) will travel around the world instantly. This means everything becomes transparent. It’s bad because in the future there will be little or no privacy and, since everything is connected, if something fails in one area the whole ‘network’ can be effected (‘cascading failure’ is the term used by some people). This explains how SARS can travel around the world at such speed and also how innovations are copied so quickly. We are assured that the Internet and devices such as mobile phones are immune from such networked failures due to their design. We disagree. Expect a catastrophic (but recoverable) failure within the next ten years.
H. Personalisation
How can you have a list of top trends and innovations without mentioning Apple’s i-Pod somewhere? The i-Pod is an excellent example of all sorts of trends including place shifting, device convergence, Moore’s Law and miniaturisation. However, the most interesting thing about the innovation is that it personifies personalisation.Globalisation creates commodification and homogenisation, which in turn creates the counter trend of personalisation as people react against standard issue products. Add a dose of technology and hey presto you’ve got a product that users can tailor to their own tastes and needs. Expect dozens of products in different markets to offer a similar degree of personalisation in the coming years as customer desire meets technological possibilities.
Questions 21 – 27
The text has eight paragraphs, A – H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
21. why preserving our past is becoming more important
22. the consequences of a depletion of energy resources
23. why people are looking more and more for contentment
24. our rejection of standard goods
25. a rise in the number of households occupied by just one person
26. a search for the truth
27. reasons which lead to people worrying more
ANSWERS ARE BELOW
ANSWERS
15. TRUE
16. TRUE
17. FALSE
18. TRUE
19. NOT GIVEN
20. FALSE
21. F
22. C
23. D
24. H
25. B
26. E
27. A