The SOL Educa-on – Đào tạo IELTS chất lượng cao

Website: www.thesol.edu.vn
Hotline: 0383 690 866

TEST 1

READING

READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Ques4ons 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage
1 below.

Urban farming
In Paris, urban farmers are trying a soil-free approach to agriculture that uses less space
and fewer resources. Could it help cities face the threats to our food supplies?
On top of a striking new exhibition hall in southern Paris, the world’s largest urban rooftop
farm has started to bear fruit. Strawberries that are small, intensely flavoured and
resplendently red sprout abundantly from large plastic tubes. Peer inside and you see the
tubes are completely hollow, the roots of dozens of strawberry plants dangling down inside
them. From identical vertical tubes nearby burst row upon row of lettuces; near those are
aromatic herbs, such as basil, sage and peppermint. Opposite, in narrow, horizontal trays
packed not with soil but with coconut fibre, grow cherry tomatoes, shiny aubergines and
brightly coloured chards.
Pascal Hardy, an engineer and sustainable development consultant, began experimenting
with vertical farming and aeroponic growing towers — as the soil-free plastic tubes are
known — on his Paris apartment block roof five years ago. The urban rooftop space above
the exhibition hall is somewhat bigger: 14,000 square metres and almost exactly the size
of a couple of football pitches. Already, the team of young urban farmers who tend it have
picked, in one day, 3,000 lettuces and 150 punnets of strawberries. When the remaining
two thirds of the vast open area are in production, 20 staff will harvest up to 1,000 kg of
perhaps 35 different varieties of fruit and vegetables, every day. ‘We’re not ever, obviously,
going to feed the whole city this way,’ cautions Hardy. ‘In the urban environment you’re
working with very significant practical constraints, clearly, on what you can do and where.
But if enough unused space can be developed like this, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t
eventually target maybe between 5% and 10% of consumption.’
Perhaps most significantly, however, this is a real-life showcase for the work of Hardy’s
flourishing urban agriculture consultancy, Agripolis, which is currently fielding enquiries
from around the world to design, build and equip a new breed of soil-free inner-city farm.
‘The method’s advantages are many,’ he says. ‘First, I don’t much like the fact that most
of the fruit and vegetables we eat have been treated with something like 17 different
pesticides, or that the intensive farming techniques that produced them are such huge
generators of greenhouse gases. I don’t much like the fact, either, that they’ve travelled an
average of 2,000 refrigerated kilometres to my plate, that their quality is so poor, because
the varieties are selected for their capacity to withstand such substantial
TEST 1

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The SOL Educa-on – Đào tạo IELTS chất lượng cao
Website: www.thesol.edu.vn
Hotline: 0383 690 866

journeys, or that 80% of the price I pay goes to wholesalers and transport companies, not
the producers.’
Produce grown using this soil-free method, on the other hand — which relies solely on a
small quantity of water, enriched with organic nutrients, pumped around a closed circuit
of pipes, towers and trays — is ‘produced up here, and sold locally, just down there. It
barely travels at all,’ Hardy says. “You can select crop varieties for their flavour, not their
resistance to the transport and storage chain, and you can pick them when they’re really
at their best, and not before.’ No soil is exhausted, and the water that gently showers the
plants’ roots every 12 minutes is recycled, so the method uses 90% less water than a classic
intensive farm for the same yield.
Urban farming is not, of course, a new phenomenon. Inner-city agriculture is booming
from Shanghai to Detroit and Tokyo to Bangkok. Strawberries are being grown in disused
shipping containers, mushrooms in underground carparks. Aeroponic farming, he says, is
‘virtuous’. The equipment weighs little, can be installed on almost any flat surface and is
cheap to buy: roughly €100 to €150 per square metre. It is cheap to run, too, consuming a
tiny fraction of the electricity used by some techniques.
Produce grown this way typically sells at prices that, while generally higher than those of
classic intensive agriculture, are lower than soil-based organic growers. There are limits to
what farmers can grow this way, of course, and much of the produce is suited to the
summer months. ‘Root vegetables we cannot do, at least not yet,’ he says. ‘Radishes are
OK, but carrots, potatoes, that kind of thing — the roots are simply too long. Fruit trees
are obviously not an option. And beans tend to take up a lot of space for not much return.’
Nevertheless, urban farming of the kind being practised in Paris is one part of a bigger and
fast-changing picture that is bringing food production closer to our lives.

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The SOL Educa-on – Đào tạo IELTS chất lượng cao
Website: www.thesol.edu.vn
Hotline: 0383 690 866

TEST 1

Questions 1-3
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for
each answer. Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.

Urban farming in Paris

1. Vertical tubes are used to grow strawberries, ………………………… and herbs.
2. There will eventually be a daily harvest of as much as ……………………….. in
weight of fruit and vegetables.
3. It may be possible that the farm’s produce will account for as much as 10% of the
city’s …………………………… overall.
Questions 4—7
Complete the table below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 4-7 on your answer sheet.

Intensive farming versus aeroponic urban farming

Growth Selection Sale

Intensive • wide range • quality not good • 6………………..

farming of 4……………… used • varieties of fruit and receive very little
• techniques pollute air vegetables chosen of overall income
that can survive
long 5………………
Aeroponic • no soil used • produce chosen
urban • nutrients added to because of
farming water, which is its 7………………….
recycled

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The SOL Educa-on – Đào tạo IELTS chất lượng cao
Website: www.thesol.edu.vn
Hotline: 0383 690 866

TEST 1

Questions 8-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
8. Urban farming can take place above or below ground.
9. Some of the equipment used in aeroponic farming can be made by hand.
10. Urban farming relies more on electricity than some other types of farming.
11. Fruit and vegetables grown on an aeroponic urban farm are cheaper than
traditionally grown organic produce.
12. Most produce can be grown on an aeroponic urban farm at any time of the year.
13. Beans take longer to grow on an urban farm than other vegetables.

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The SOL Educa-on – Đào tạo IELTS chất lượng cao
Website: www.thesol.edu.vn
Hotline: 0383 690 866

TEST 2

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

Stonehenge
For centuries, historians and archaeologists have puzzled over the many mysteries of
Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument that took an estimated 1,500 years to erect. Located
on Salisbury Plain in southern England, it is comprised of roughly 100 massive upright
stones placed in a circular layout.
Archaeologists believe England’s most iconic prehistoric ruin was built in several stages,
with the earliest constructed 5,000 or more years ago. First, Neolithic* Britons used
primitive tools, which may have been fashioned out of deer antlers, to dig a massive
circular ditch and bank, or henge. Deep pits dating back to that era and located within the
circle may have once held a ring of timber posts, according to some scholars.
Several hundred years later, it is thought, Stonehenge’s builders hoisted an estimated 80
bluestones, 43 of which remain today, into standing positions and placed them in either a
horseshoe or circular formation. These stones have been traced all the way to the Preseli
Hills in Wales, some 300 kilometres from Stonehenge. How, then, did prehistoric builders
without sophisticated tools or engineering haul these boulders, which weigh up to four
tons, over such a great distance?
According to one long-standing theory among archaeologists, Stonehenge’s builders
fashioned sledges and rollers out of tree trunks to lug the bluestones from the Preseli Hills.
They then transferred the boulders onto rafts and floated them first along the Welsh coast
and then up the River Avon toward Salisbury Plain; alternatively, they may have towed
each stone with a fleet of vessels. More recent archaeological hypotheses have them
transporting the bluestones with supersized wicker baskets on a combination of ball
bearings and long grooved planks, hauled by oxen.
As early as the 1970s, geologists have been adding their voices to the debate over how
Stonehenge came into being. Challenging the classic image of industrious builders pushing,
carting, rolling or hauling giant stones from faraway Wales, some scientists have suggested
that it was glaciers, not humans, that carried the bluestones to Salisbury Plain. Most
archaeologists have remained sceptical about this theory, however, wondering how the
forces of nature could possibly have delivered the exact number of stones needed to
complete the circle.
The third phase of construction took place around 2000 BCE. At this point, sandstone
slabs — known as ‘sarsens’ — were arranged into an outer crescent or ring; some were

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The SOL Educa-on – Đào tạo IELTS chất lượng cao
Website: www.thesol.edu.vn
Hotline: 0383 690 866

assembled into the iconic three-pieced structures called trilithons that stand tall in the
centre of Stonehenge. Some 50 of these stones are now visible on the site, which may once
have contained many more. Radiocarbon dating has revealed that work continued at
Stonehenge until roughly 1600 BCE, with the bluestones in particular being repositioned
multiple times.
But who were the builders of Stonehenge? In the 17th century, archaeologist John Aubrey
made the claim that Stonehenge was the work of druids, who had important religious,
judicial and political roles in Celtic” society. This theory was widely popularized by the
antiquarian William Stukeley, who had unearthed primitive graves at the site.
Even today, people who identify as modern druids continue to gather at Stonehenge for
the summer solstice. However, in the mid-20th century, radiocarbon dating demonstrated
that Stonehenge stood more than 1,000 years before the Celts inhabited the region.
Many modern historians and archaeologists now agree that several distinct tribes of people
contributed to Stonehenge, each undertaking a different phase of its construction. Bones,
tools and other artefacts found on the site seem to support this hypothesis. The first stage
was achieved by Neolithic agrarians who were likely to have been indigenous to the British
Isles. Later, it is believed, groups with advanced tools and a more communal way of life
left their mark on the site. Some believe that they were immigrants from the European
continent, while others maintain that they were probably native Britons, descended from
the original builders.
If the facts surrounding the architects and construction of Stonehenge remain shadowy at
best, the purpose of the striking monument is even more of a mystery. While there is
consensus among the majority of modern scholars that Stonehenge once served the
function of burial ground, they have yet to determine what other purposes it had.
In the 1960s, the astronomer Gerald Hawkins suggested that the cluster of megalithic
stones operated as a form of calendar, with different points corresponding to astrological
phenomena such as solstices, equinoxes and eclipses occurring at different times of the
year. While his theory has received a considerable amount of attention over the decades,
critics maintain that Stonehenge’s builders probably lacked the knowledge necessary to
predict such events or that England’s dense cloud cover would have obscured their view
of the skies.
More recently, signs of illness and injury in the human remains unearthed at Stonehenge
~ led a group of British archaeologists to speculate that it was considered a place of healing,
perhaps because bluestones were thought to have curative powers.

* Neolithic — The era, also known as the New Stone Age, which began around 12,000 years ago and ended around
3500 BCE

** Celtic — The Celts were people who lived in Britain and northwest Europe during the Iron Age from 600 BCE to
43 CE

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The SOL Educa-on – Đào tạo IELTS chất lượng cao
Website: www.thesol.edu.vn
Hotline: 0383 690 866

TEST 2

Questions 1-8
Complete the notes below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write
your answers in boxes 1—8 on your answer sheet.
Stonehenge
Construction
Stage 1:
• the ditch and henge were dug, possibly using tools made
from 1.................................
• 2.................... may have been arranged in deep pits inside the circle
Stage 2:
• bluestones from the Preseli Hills were placed in standing position
• theories about the transportation of the bluestones:
- archaeological:
o builders used 3................. to make sledges and rollers
o 4......................... pulled them on giant baskets
- geological:
o they were brought from Wales by 5.....................
Stage 3:
• sandstone slabs were arranged into an outer crescent or ring
Builders
• a theory arose in the 17th century that its builders were
Celtic 6.........................
Purpose
• many experts agree it has been used as a 7............................ site
• in the 1960s, it was suggested that it worked as a kind of 8.........................

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The SOL Educa-on – Đào tạo IELTS chất lượng cao
Website: www.thesol.edu.vn
Hotline: 0383 690 866

TEST 2

Question 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9 During the third phase of construction, sandstone slabs were placed in both
the outer areas and the middle of the Stonehenge site.
10 There is scientific proof that the bluestones stood in the same spot until
approximately 1600 BCE.
11 John Aubrey’s claim about Stonehenge was supported by 20th-century
findings.
12 Objects discovered at Stonehenge seem to indicate that it was constructed by
a number of different groups of people.
13 Criticism of Gerald Hawkins’ theory about Stonehenge has come mainly from
other astronomers.

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