IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 14

SECTION 1 — Questions 1–14

Read the text below and answer Questions 1–6.

Kingsley Public Library: Getting a Library Card

Membership of Kingsley Public Library is free for anyone who lives, works or studies in Kingsley. A library card lets you borrow books, DVDs and magazines from any of our five branches, and gives you access to our e-books, audiobooks and online newspapers.

How to join

You can start your application online, but you will need to visit a branch to collect your card. Please bring some photo identification, such as a passport or driving licence, together with a utility bill dated within the last three months that shows your current address. Bank statements cannot be accepted as proof of address. Children under 16 can join free of charge, but a parent or guardian must sign the application form.

Borrowing

Adult members can borrow up to 12 items at a time. Books can be kept for three weeks and DVDs for one week. If nobody else has reserved an item, you can renew it online or by phone, up to two times. Since January 2024, we no longer charge fines when items are returned late. However, if an item has not been returned six weeks after its due date, you will be charged the full cost of replacing it.

Lost cards

If you lose your card, please tell us as soon as possible so that nobody else can use it. A replacement card costs $3.

Other services

Every branch has free wi-fi and computers that members can use for up to two hours a day. Printing costs 20 cents a page. The Central Library also has three small study rooms, which members can book for up to three hours. Study rooms cannot be booked online: please ask at the information desk.

Questions 1–6

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the text for each answer.

Kingsley Public Library: notes

• Proof of address: a recent utility 11 word and/or a number (not a bank statement)
• Under-16s: the application form must be signed by a parent or 21 word and/or a number
• Items can be renewed 31 word and/or a number times, unless someone has reserved them
• Members are not charged 41 word and/or a number for late returns
• A new card costs $ 51 word and/or a number if the old one is lost
• To book a study room, go to the 61 word and/or a number desk

Read the text below and answer Questions 7–14.

Harbour Park Barbecue Areas: Booking and Rules

Harbour Park has three barbecue areas, each with electric barbecues, picnic tables and access to drinking water.

The Pines is our largest area, with seating for up to 40 people. It is close to the children's playground and the car park.

Lookout Point seats up to 20 people and has excellent views over the harbour. It can only be reached by a steep path with steps, so it is not suitable for wheelchair users or for pushchairs.

The Lawn seats up to 12 people and is next to the public toilets. It cannot be booked and is available to anyone on a first-come, first-served basis.

Booking

The Pines and Lookout Point can be booked online for a morning session (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.) or an afternoon session (2 p.m. to 6 p.m.). Bookings open 60 days in advance. Each area costs $45 per session on weekdays and $70 at weekends and on public holidays. Groups of residents with a Harbour Council resident's card receive a 20% discount. If you cancel at least seven days before your booking, you will receive a full refund. After that, no refund can be given, unless the park has to close because of bad weather.

Using the barbecues

The barbecues are switched on with a button and turn off automatically after 30 minutes. Please clean the hotplate with the scraper provided when you have finished. You may not bring your own barbecue, or any other kind of cooking equipment that uses gas or charcoal, into the park.

General rules

• Music may be played at a reasonable volume until 6 p.m.
• Glass bottles are not allowed anywhere in the park.
• Decorations such as balloons may be used, but they must not be attached to trees.
• Please take your rubbish home with you, or use the recycling bins at the park entrance.

On days of extreme fire danger, all barbecues in the park are switched off, and bookings are cancelled. Customers who are affected will be contacted by text message and offered a refund or a new date.

Questions 7–14

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

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

SECTION 2 — Questions 15–27

Read the text below and answer Questions 15–20.

Lakeview Regional Hospital: Staying Safe on Home Visits

Many of our community staff, including nurses, physiotherapists and social workers, visit patients in their own homes. Most visits take place without any problems, but because staff often work alone, it is important that everyone follows the procedures below.

Before the visit

All home visits must be entered in the team's electronic diary before you leave the hospital, including the patient's address and the time you expect to arrive and to finish. If this is a first visit to a patient, check the patient's records for any warning notes. These may include information about aggressive behaviour, dogs at the property, or problems with access, such as a broken lift. If there is a warning note, discuss the visit with your team leader, who may decide that two members of staff should attend.

During the visit

Every member of community staff is issued with a personal safety alarm. This small device is worn on a cord around the neck. When its button is pressed, it opens a call to a monitoring centre, which is staffed twenty-four hours a day. The person at the centre can hear what is happening and can contact the police if necessary. If you feel unsafe but are not in immediate danger, you can use the code phrase "Can you check whether Dr Blue is available?" in a phone call to your team, who will understand that you need help without the patient realising.

If you decide that a situation has become unsafe, you should leave immediately. You will never be criticised for ending a visit early for safety reasons.

After the visit

When you finish the visit, you must update the diary within 15 minutes. If a member of staff has not updated the diary within 30 minutes of the time they were due to finish, the team leader will try to contact them by phone. If there is no reply after a further 30 minutes, the team leader will contact the police and give them the details from the diary.

Reporting incidents

Any incident in which you felt threatened, even if no one was hurt, should be reported on the hospital's online incident form by the end of the next working day. Reports help us to update warning notes and to protect other staff.

Questions 15–20

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

• A tell the patient what time they will arrive
• B ask their team leader for permission
• C record the details of the visit in the team diary
• D arrange for a colleague to go with them

• A are only added after a member of staff has been hurt.
• B may describe practical difficulties in reaching the patient.
• C mean that a visit cannot take place.
• D are sent to the police.

• A A loud noise frightens away the attacker.
• B The member of staff's team leader is called.
• C A message is sent to the patient's family.
• D Someone at a monitoring centre is able to listen.

• A wants to leave a visit early.
• B is worried but does not need emergency help.
• C needs advice from a doctor.
• D has been unable to find the patient's home.

• A phone the member of staff
• B phone the patient
• C contact the police
• D visit the patient's home

• A only if someone was injured.
• B by telephone to the team leader.
• C by the end of the following working day.
• D when the warning notes have been updated.

Read the text below and answer Questions 21–27.

Lakeview Regional Hospital: The Cycle to Work Scheme

The Cycle to Work scheme allows staff to get a new bicycle and safety equipment at a lower cost and to spread the payments over twelve months. It is available to all permanent staff, and to staff on fixed-term contracts that have at least twelve months left to run.

How it works

The hospital buys the bicycle on your behalf and hires it to you for a year. The cost is taken from your salary each month before tax is deducted, which means that you save the tax you would normally pay on that part of your salary. Depending on your income, this can reduce the total cost of a bicycle by between 25% and 40%.

You can choose any bicycle, including an electric bicycle, up to a value of $2,500. You can also include equipment such as a helmet, lights and a lock in the same order, as long as the total stays within the limit. Clothing and accessories that are not related to safety, such as bags and drink bottles, cannot be included.

Applying

First, choose your bicycle and equipment at one of our partner shops, which are listed on the staff website. The shop will give you a quote. You then fill in an application form on the staff website and upload the quote. The application must be approved by your line manager, who will normally do this within five working days. Once it has been approved, you will be sent a certificate by email. Take this certificate to the shop, and you can collect your bicycle straight away.

At the end of the hire period

At the end of the twelve months, you will be offered the chance to buy the bicycle for a small final payment, usually around 7% of its original value. Most staff choose to do this, but you can also return the bicycle if you prefer.

Using the scheme

The bicycle must mainly be used for travelling to and from work, although you may use it at weekends and on holiday too. Secure bike storage is available at the hospital in the staff car park, and showers and lockers can be found on the ground floor of the Education Centre. If you leave the hospital before the end of the hire period, any payments still owed will be taken from your final salary.

Questions 21–27

Complete the flow-chart below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the text for each answer.

Getting a bicycle through the Cycle to Work scheme

Choose a bicycle and equipment at a 212 words and/or a number . The total must not be more than $2,500.

↓

Get a 222 words and/or a number from the shop.

↓

Complete the application form on the staff website.

↓

Wait for your 232 words and/or a number to approve the application (usually within 242 words and/or a number ).

↓

Receive a 252 words and/or a number by email and take it to the shop to collect the bicycle.

↓

Make monthly payments from your salary for 262 words and/or a number .

↓

Return the bicycle, or buy it for about 272 words and/or a number of its original value.

SECTION 3 — Questions 28–40

Read the text below and answer Questions 28–40.

Lunch on the move: the dabbawalas of Mumbai

A Every weekday morning, in the crowded suburbs of Mumbai, India's largest city, thousands of men and a smaller number of women set off on bicycles to collect lunches. Each lunch is packed in a metal container, known as a tiffin box or dabba, which has been filled with home-cooked food by a family member. By half past twelve, the boxes have been delivered to offices, schools and shops across the city, often more than twenty kilometres away. In the afternoon, the empty boxes make the same journey in reverse. The people who carry them are known as dabbawalas, which means "box people", and the system they run has become one of the most famous delivery services in the world.

B The service began in 1890, when Mumbai, then called Bombay, was growing rapidly as a centre of trade. Many office workers lived far from their workplaces, and there were few places in the city centre where they could buy a meal that suited their tastes and religious beliefs. A man named Mahadeo Havaji Bachche saw an opportunity. He hired about a hundred men to collect lunches from workers' homes and take them to the city, and the business grew as the city grew. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were around five thousand dabbawalas, delivering roughly two hundred thousand lunches a day.

C The system depends on Mumbai's suburban railway, which carries millions of passengers every day. After collecting lunches from homes in their area, dabbawalas take them to the nearest railway station. There, on the platform, the boxes are sorted according to their destination and loaded onto wooden crates, which are carried onto special luggage compartments of the trains. At the stations in the city centre, they are sorted again and handed to other dabbawalas, who deliver them on foot, by bicycle or using handcarts. A single box may pass through the hands of four or five people on its journey.

D With so many boxes changing hands, it might be expected that mistakes would be common. In fact, they are very rare. The key to this is a simple system of codes painted on the lid of each box. A combination of colours, numbers and letters shows the station where the box started, the station where it is going, the dabbawala who will deliver it, and the building and even the floor where the customer works. Many dabbawalas have had little formal education, and the codes were designed so that they could be learned quickly by anyone. A figure of one mistake in every sixteen million deliveries has often been quoted in newspapers, although it has never been checked by an independent study.

E The dabbawalas are organised in an unusual way. They are not employees of a company. Instead, they work in groups of around twenty to twenty-five people, and each group manages its own customers and shares its income equally among its members. A charitable trust represents the dabbawalas as a whole, settles disagreements between groups and sets standards of behaviour. Dabbawalas are expected to arrive on time, to wear a white cap while working, and not to drink alcohol during working hours. Anyone who repeatedly breaks these rules may be fined by the group. Most dabbawalas come from farming villages in the area around the city of Pune, and many have family members who did the same work before them.

F In recent decades, the dabbawalas have attracted attention from around the world. Business schools have studied their methods as an example of how a complex operation can run efficiently without computers, and senior managers from large companies have travelled to Mumbai to watch them at work. The dabbawalas themselves now give talks about their system, and the income from these talks helps to support the trust.

G The service has also faced serious difficulties. In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Mumbai's offices and trains closed for many months, and with no lunches to deliver, many dabbawalas returned to their villages. Not all of them came back. At the same time, food delivery apps have made it easy for office workers to order meals from restaurants, and more people now work from home for at least part of the week. In response, the dabbawalas have begun to accept bookings online, and some groups have started delivering meals for restaurants and for elderly people. Whether these changes will be enough to protect a service that has lasted for more than a century remains to be seen.

Questions 28–33

The text has seven paragraphs, A–G.

Choose the correct heading for paragraphs B–G from the list of headings below.

List of headings

• i How the boxes travel across the city
• ii A service that must adapt to survive
• iii Rules and shared rewards
• iv Why so few lunches go to the wrong place
• v The cost of the service to customers
• vi Lessons for the business world
• vii The origins of the service
• viii A lunch service like no other
• ix The training that new dabbawalas receive

Example: Paragraph A — viii

Questions 34–37

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A–F, below.

• A there was no work for them while offices were closed.
• B they could be learned by people with little schooling.
• C there was a shortage of trains on the suburban railway.
• D many workers could not find suitable food near their offices.
• E it has not been confirmed by independent research.
• F customers would be able to track their lunches.

Questions 38–40

Answer the questions below.

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