IELTS Academic Reading - Test 10

Time: 60 minutes

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INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

• Read the instructions for each part of the paper carefully.
• Answer ALL the questions.
• You must complete the answer sheet within the time limit.
• At the end of the test, hand in both this question paper and your answer sheet.

INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES

• There are 40 questions in this test.
• Each question carries one mark.
• The test consists of three sections.

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SECTION 1: Questions 1–13

Read the passage below and answer Questions 1–13.

The Development of Vaccination

A Vaccination stands as one of medicine's greatest achievements, preventing millions of deaths annually and eradicating or controlling diseases that once devastated populations. The deliberate stimulation of immune responses to protect against future infection represents a triumph of scientific understanding over microbial threats. Yet the journey from early folk practices to modern vaccine development spans centuries and involves numerous false starts, ethical controversies, and scientific breakthroughs. Understanding this history illuminates not only medical progress but also the complex interactions between scientific discovery, public health policy, and societal attitudes toward risk and authority.

B Long before scientists understood immune mechanisms, observant individuals noticed that survivors of certain diseases rarely contracted them again. This observation led to the ancient practice of variolation—deliberately exposing healthy individuals to material from mild smallpox cases to induce protective immunity. Chinese practitioners reportedly used dried smallpox scabs as early as the tenth century, either applying them to skin scratches or having patients inhale powdered material. The practice spread along trade routes, reaching the Ottoman Empire and eventually Western Europe in the early eighteenth century. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador to Constantinople, introduced variolation to England after observing its use in Turkey and having her own children treated. Despite initial resistance from the medical establishment, variolation gradually gained acceptance among European elites, though it carried significant risks—approximately two to three percent of those variolated died from the procedure.

C Edward Jenner's development of vaccination in 1796 marked a fundamental advance over variolation. Working as a country physician in Gloucestershire, Jenner investigated the folk belief that milkmaids who contracted cowpox—a relatively mild disease—subsequently proved immune to smallpox. In a now-famous experiment, Jenner inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps with material from a cowpox lesion on a milkmaid's hand, then later exposed the boy to smallpox. When Phipps showed no disease symptoms, Jenner had demonstrated that a related but less dangerous pathogen could provide protection against a deadly one. The term "vaccination" derives from vacca, the Latin word for cow, reflecting these bovine origins. Jenner's method spread rapidly despite initial scepticism, and by 1800 over 100,000 people had been vaccinated in England alone.

D The nineteenth century saw vaccination expand beyond smallpox as scientists developed germ theory and identified the microbial causes of infectious diseases. Louis Pasteur made crucial contributions, creating vaccines against chicken cholera, anthrax, and rabies through methods that weakened or attenuated pathogens to reduce their virulence while maintaining their ability to stimulate immunity. Pasteur's rabies vaccine, first administered to a young boy bitten by a rabid dog in 1885, demonstrated that vaccination could treat exposure after it occurred rather than only preventing future infection. These advances established principles that would guide vaccine development for the next century: identify the causative agent, cultivate it under controlled conditions, modify it to reduce danger, and administer it to stimulate protective responses.

E The twentieth century brought both dramatic successes and sobering setbacks in vaccination. Vaccines against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella transformed childhood survival rates in countries where they became widely available. The global smallpox eradication campaign, coordinated by the World Health Organization beginning in 1967, achieved the complete elimination of a human disease through systematic vaccination—a milestone formally declared in 1980. However, incidents such as the Cutter incident of 1955, when improperly inactivated polio vaccine caused paralysis in recipients, highlighted risks in vaccine manufacturing and prompted stricter regulatory oversight. Public confidence in vaccination has periodically wavered in response to safety concerns, whether scientifically substantiated or not.

F Contemporary vaccine development employs sophisticated technologies far beyond Jenner's empirical methods. Recombinant DNA techniques enable production of specific antigenic proteins without culturing dangerous pathogens. Messenger RNA vaccines, which gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, instruct cells to produce pathogen proteins that stimulate immune responses without introducing any actual pathogenic material. Computational modelling and structural biology allow rational vaccine design targeting specific molecular features. These advances have dramatically accelerated development timelines—the COVID-19 vaccines were created within months rather than the years or decades previously typical—while enabling responses to emerging threats that earlier generations could not have imagined.

G Despite remarkable progress, significant challenges remain in global vaccination efforts. Vaccine hesitancy, driven by misinformation, distrust of institutions, and genuine concerns about safety, undermines uptake even where vaccines are available. Distribution inequities leave populations in lower-income countries without access to vaccines readily available elsewhere, as the COVID-19 pandemic starkly illustrated. Diseases such as HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis have resisted vaccine development despite decades of effort, their biological complexity presenting obstacles that existing approaches cannot overcome. Addressing these challenges requires not only continued scientific innovation but also attention to the social, economic, and political dimensions that determine whether medical advances translate into improved population health.

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Questions 1–4

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 1–4 on your answer sheet.

1 According to the passage, variolation involved {{ANSWER:1}}

A      injecting patients with cowpox material.

B      deliberately exposing people to smallpox to create immunity.

C      using vaccines developed by Edward Jenner.

D      treating patients after they had already contracted smallpox.

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2 Edward Jenner's contribution to medicine was {{ANSWER:2}}

A      discovering the smallpox virus.

B      showing that exposure to cowpox could protect against smallpox.

C      inventing the practice of variolation.

D      founding the World Health Organization.

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3 The passage states that Louis Pasteur's rabies vaccine {{ANSWER:3}}

A      was the first vaccine ever created.

B      could only prevent future infections, not treat existing exposure.

C      demonstrated that vaccination could work after exposure to a disease.

D      was rejected by the scientific community.

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4 According to the passage, the Cutter incident {{ANSWER:4}}

A      led to the eradication of smallpox.

B      resulted from problems with polio vaccine manufacturing.

C      proved that all vaccines are completely safe.

D      occurred in the nineteenth century.

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Questions 5–9

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage?

In boxes 5–9 on your answer sheet, write

5 Variolation was completely safe with no risk of death. {{ANSWER:5}}

6 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu learned about variolation while living in Turkey. {{ANSWER:6}}

7 The word "vaccination" comes from the Latin word for cow. {{ANSWER:7}}

8 Smallpox was officially declared eradicated in 1980. {{ANSWER:8}}

9 All scientists agree that vaccine hesitancy is not a significant problem. {{ANSWER:9}}

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Questions 10–13

The passage has seven paragraphs, A–G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A–G, in boxes 10–13 on your answer sheet.

10 the ancient origins of deliberately inducing immunity in China {{ANSWER:10}}

11 examples of diseases that have proven difficult to develop vaccines for {{ANSWER:11}}

12 how mRNA vaccines function differently from traditional vaccines {{ANSWER:12}}

13 the number of people vaccinated in England by 1800 {{ANSWER:13}}

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SECTION 2: Questions 14–26

Read the passage below and answer Questions 14–26.

Soil Degradation: A Silent Global Crisis

A Beneath our feet lies a resource fundamental to human civilisation yet increasingly threatened by human activities. Soil—the thin layer of organic and mineral material covering Earth's terrestrial surface—supports virtually all food production, filters and stores water, cycles nutrients essential for plant growth, and harbours biodiversity rivalling that of tropical rainforests. Despite this critical importance, soil degradation affects approximately one-third of the planet's land surface, undermining agricultural productivity, exacerbating climate change, and threatening the food security of billions. This slow-motion crisis receives far less attention than more visible environmental problems, yet its consequences may prove equally severe.

B Soil formation occurs over geological timescales, with centimetres of productive topsoil requiring centuries or millennia to develop through the gradual weathering of rock and accumulation of organic matter. This extremely slow regeneration means that soil functions essentially as a non-renewable resource on human timescales—once degraded, recovery requires far longer than human lifetimes. Agricultural practices can deplete in decades what nature required thousands of years to create. The mismatch between the speed of degradation and the pace of formation represents the fundamental challenge underlying soil conservation efforts.

C Erosion constitutes the most widespread form of soil degradation, removing topsoil through water and wind action at rates far exceeding natural replacement. Agricultural land loses an estimated 24 billion tonnes of topsoil annually to erosion—roughly three tonnes per person on Earth each year. Deforestation and removal of vegetation cover expose soil to rainfall impact and surface runoff, dramatically accelerating erosion rates. Conventional tillage practices that leave soil bare between growing seasons similarly increase vulnerability. The eroded material carries nutrients, organic matter, and agricultural chemicals into waterways, causing downstream pollution while depleting the productivity of source areas.

D Chemical degradation encompasses processes that reduce soil fertility through nutrient depletion, acidification, salinisation, and contamination. Intensive agriculture without adequate nutrient replacement exhausts soil reserves of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and micronutrients essential for plant growth. Improper irrigation practices concentrate salts in upper soil layers as water evaporates, eventually reaching levels toxic to most crops—a problem affecting approximately 20 percent of irrigated land worldwide. Industrial pollution, improper waste disposal, and excessive agrochemical application introduce heavy metals and persistent organic compounds that accumulate in soils and enter food chains.

E Compaction from heavy machinery and livestock trampling degrades soil structure, reducing the pore spaces that allow water infiltration, root penetration, and air circulation essential for healthy soil function. Compacted soils absorb less rainfall, increasing runoff and erosion while leaving plants vulnerable to drought stress. The biological communities inhabiting healthy soils—bacteria, fungi, earthworms, and countless other organisms—suffer population declines in degraded conditions, further impairing nutrient cycling and soil structure maintenance. This biological degradation often accompanies and reinforces physical and chemical degradation in downward spirals that prove difficult to reverse.

F The consequences of soil degradation extend far beyond reduced agricultural yields. Land rendered unproductive by degradation forces farmers onto marginal lands, often driving deforestation that accelerates broader environmental damage. Food insecurity resulting from degraded agricultural capacity contributes to rural poverty, migration pressures, and social instability. Degraded soils store less carbon than healthy soils, releasing previously sequestered carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and reducing capacity for future sequestration—making soil degradation both a consequence of climate change through altered precipitation and temperature patterns, and a contributor to further warming.

G Addressing soil degradation requires transforming agricultural practices at scales from individual farms to global food systems. Conservation tillage methods that minimise soil disturbance and maintain crop residue cover dramatically reduce erosion while building organic matter. Cover cropping—planting vegetation specifically to protect soil between cash crops—provides similar benefits while often improving soil fertility. Integrated nutrient management combines organic matter additions with judicious fertiliser use to maintain soil fertility without excess application. Agroforestry systems that incorporate trees into agricultural landscapes reduce erosion, cycle nutrients from deep soil layers, and diversify farm income.

H Despite available solutions, implementing soil conservation at necessary scales faces substantial obstacles. Farmers operating under economic pressure often prioritise short-term yields over long-term soil health, particularly when they do not own the land they farm and thus cannot capture returns from conservation investments. Policy frameworks rarely account for soil degradation's true costs, failing to incentivise conservation or penalise degradation. Knowledge gaps persist regarding which practices work best under specific local conditions, while extension services that might transfer existing knowledge often lack resources. Meeting the challenge of soil degradation ultimately requires recognising soil as the foundational resource it is and restructuring incentives accordingly.

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Questions 14–21

The passage has eight paragraphs, A–H.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A–H from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i–xii, in boxes 14–21 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings

14 Paragraph A {{ANSWER:14}}

15 Paragraph B {{ANSWER:15}}

16 Paragraph C {{ANSWER:16}}

17 Paragraph D {{ANSWER:17}}

18 Paragraph E {{ANSWER:18}}

19 Paragraph F {{ANSWER:19}}

20 Paragraph G {{ANSWER:20}}

21 Paragraph H {{ANSWER:21}}

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Questions 22–24

Complete the sentences below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 22–24 on your answer sheet.

22 Agricultural land loses approximately {{ANSWER:22}} of topsoil to erosion every year.

23 Around 20 percent of land that uses irrigation is affected by {{ANSWER:23}} in the upper soil.

24 {{ANSWER:24}} involves planting vegetation specifically to protect soil when main crops are not growing.

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Questions 25–26

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 25–26 on your answer sheet.

25 According to the passage, soil degradation contributes to climate change because {{ANSWER:25}}

A      healthy soils produce more greenhouse gases than degraded soils.

B      degraded soils release stored carbon and store less new carbon.

C      farming on degraded land requires no machinery.

D      conservation tillage increases carbon emissions.

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26 The writer suggests that farmers often fail to conserve soil because {{ANSWER:26}}

A      conservation methods are too expensive to implement.

B      they do not believe soil degradation is real.

C      economic pressures push them toward short-term priorities.

D      governments prohibit conservation farming methods.

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SECTION 3: Questions 27–40

Read the passage below and answer Questions 27–40.

The Science of Subjective Well-being

For most of its history, psychology focused predominantly on mental illness, dysfunction, and pathology. Researchers devoted enormous resources to understanding depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and other conditions that cause suffering, while largely neglecting the positive end of human experience. This imbalance began to shift in the late twentieth century with the emergence of positive psychology—a scientific movement dedicated to understanding what makes life worth living. At its centre lies the concept of subjective well-being: individuals' evaluations of their own lives, encompassing both cognitive judgments of life satisfaction and the emotional experience of positive and negative feelings over time.

Measuring something as apparently personal as happiness presents significant methodological challenges that researchers have addressed through multiple approaches. Self-report measures ask individuals directly how satisfied they feel with their lives or how frequently they experience various emotions, typically using standardised questionnaire scales. While such measures might seem vulnerable to distortion, extensive validation research has demonstrated their reliability, stability, and meaningful correlation with objective indicators including health outcomes, social relationships, and even subsequent behaviour. Experience sampling methods that prompt participants to report feelings at random moments throughout daily life capture emotional fluctuations that retrospective reports might miss, while informant reports from friends and family provide external perspectives that generally converge with self-assessments.

Research has consistently identified factors associated with higher subjective well-being across diverse populations. Strong social relationships emerge as perhaps the most robust correlate—people with close friendships, satisfying marriages, and supportive family connections report substantially higher life satisfaction than socially isolated individuals. Employment, particularly in meaningful work, contributes significantly to well-being beyond its income effects. Physical health affects happiness, though adaptation processes mean that chronic conditions often impact well-being less than initially expected. Religious participation correlates with greater happiness in most studies, though whether this reflects social community, meaning-making, or other mechanisms remains debated.

The relationship between income and happiness has generated particular research attention and considerable controversy. Within countries, wealthier individuals report higher life satisfaction than poorer ones, and this relationship persists even at high income levels rather than reaching a satiation point as earlier research suggested. However, the magnitude of income's effect proves modest compared to factors like relationships and health. Cross-national comparisons show that average happiness is substantially higher in wealthy countries than poor ones, yet increases in national income over time produce smaller happiness gains than cross-sectional comparisons would predict—a puzzle sometimes termed the Easterlin paradox after the economist who first documented it. Possible explanations include adaptation to improved circumstances and social comparison processes that shift reference points as societies become wealthier.

Genetic factors appear to influence subjective well-being substantially, accounting for approximately forty to fifty percent of individual variation according to twin studies. This genetic contribution operates partly through personality traits, particularly extraversion and neuroticism, that show strong heritability and consistent relationships with happiness. However, genetic influence does not imply determinism—environmental factors explain the remaining variance, and even genetically influenced traits can be modified through intentional effort. The concept of a genetic "set point" around which happiness fluctuates has been challenged by evidence that major life events can produce lasting changes in well-being, though people do generally adapt more than initially expected to both positive and negative circumstances.

The hedonic treadmill metaphor captures the tendency for people to return toward baseline happiness levels after both positive and negative events—a phenomenon with profound implications for understanding what actually produces lasting well-being. Lottery winners, research suggests, are not much happier than others several months after their windfall, while accident victims experiencing paralysis adapt better than most people would predict. This adaptation creates a paradox: events that people anticipate will dramatically change their happiness often produce smaller and more temporary effects than expected. Understanding hedonic adaptation has prompted researchers to explore whether certain activities or orientations might produce more sustainable happiness gains than others.

Interventions designed to increase happiness have shown promising results in controlled studies, though effect sizes vary and long-term maintenance remains challenging. Gratitude exercises that direct attention toward positive aspects of life consistently boost positive affect in experimental research. Kindness interventions that encourage prosocial behaviour increase happiness in those performing kind acts as well as recipients. Mindfulness practices that cultivate present-moment awareness reduce negative affect and may enhance positive experiences. However, the contexts in which such interventions work best, the mechanisms through which they operate, and their effectiveness for clinical populations with depression or other conditions require continued investigation.

The pursuit of happiness raises philosophical questions that empirical research cannot fully resolve. Critics argue that focusing on subjective feelings neglects more substantive conceptions of human flourishing that encompass meaning, virtue, and accomplishment beyond mere pleasant feelings. The distinction between hedonic well-being—feeling good—and eudaimonic well-being—living well according to one's values and potential—reflects ancient debates about the nature of the good life that psychology has inherited rather than settled. Whether societies should pursue policies maximising aggregate happiness, and how such happiness should be measured and compared across individuals, involve value judgments beyond scientific determination. The science of subjective well-being illuminates aspects of human experience previously neglected by psychology while raising questions that extend beyond any single discipline's capacity to answer.

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Questions 27–32

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the passage?

In boxes 27–32 on your answer sheet, write

27 Traditional psychology devoted more attention to mental illness than to positive experiences. {{ANSWER:27}}

28 Self-report measures of happiness have been shown to be unreliable and invalid. {{ANSWER:28}}

29 Social relationships are strongly associated with higher levels of life satisfaction. {{ANSWER:29}}

30 Wealthy individuals within a country report lower life satisfaction than poorer individuals. {{ANSWER:30}}

31 Genetic factors account for all individual differences in subjective well-being. {{ANSWER:31}}

32 Research suggests that lottery winners become permanently much happier than other people. {{ANSWER:32}}

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Questions 33–37

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 33–37 on your answer sheet.

Understanding Happiness and Adaptation

Research has shown that genetics influence happiness significantly, accounting for around {{ANSWER:33}} of variation between individuals. These genetic effects work partly through personality traits like extraversion and neuroticism. The idea of a genetic "set point" has been questioned because {{ANSWER:34}} can cause lasting changes in happiness levels. The concept of the {{ANSWER:35}} describes how people tend to return to their normal happiness levels after experiencing good or bad events. Studies have found that people who win lotteries are not much happier after {{ANSWER:36}}, showing how quickly humans adapt. Researchers have developed various interventions to increase happiness, including {{ANSWER:37}} that focus attention on the positive elements of life.

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Questions 38–40

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write the correct letter in boxes 38–40 on your answer sheet.

38 What does the writer suggest about the relationship between income and happiness across countries? {{ANSWER:38}}

A      Poor countries have the highest average happiness levels.

B      Increases in national income over time produce happiness gains as large as cross-country comparisons suggest.

C      Wealthy countries have higher average happiness, but income growth produces smaller gains than expected.

D      There is no relationship between national wealth and average happiness.

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39 According to the passage, why has the concept of a genetic "set point" been challenged? {{ANSWER:39}}

A      Because genetic factors have no influence on happiness at all.

B      Because evidence shows major life events can produce lasting well-being changes.

C      Because personality traits are not heritable.

D      Because twin studies have been proven unreliable.

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40 What is the writer's main point in the final paragraph? {{ANSWER:40}}

A      Scientific research has completely answered all questions about happiness.

B      The study of happiness raises philosophical and value questions beyond what science alone can resolve.

C      Eudaimonic well-being is proven to be more important than hedonic well-being.

D      Governments should never consider happiness in policy decisions.

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— END OF TEST —