IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 9

SECTION 1 — Questions 1–14

Read the text below and answer Questions 1–7.

Woodvale Car Boot Sale: Information for Sellers

When and where
The Woodvale Car Boot Sale takes place every Sunday from April to October in the field behind Woodvale Leisure Centre. Please use the entrance on Marsh Lane, not the main leisure centre entrance. Sellers may arrive from 6.30 a.m. to set up. The gates open to buyers at 7.30 a.m., and the sale finishes at 1 p.m.

Pitch fees
A pitch for a car costs £10. A pitch for a van, or for a car towing a trailer, costs £15. Fees are paid to the steward at the gate when you arrive, and we accept both cash and cards.

Do I need to book?
On most Sundays, there is no need to book: pitches are given out in the order in which sellers arrive. The exception is the first Sunday of each month, when we hold our larger "Big Sunday" sale. Places for these sales must be booked online at least a week in advance.

What can I sell?
This is a sale for private individuals who want to sell their own unwanted household items. Traders selling new goods are not permitted. Food and drink may only be sold by our approved caterers, so please do not bring cakes or other food to sell. Electrical items may be sold, but sellers must tell buyers clearly that these items have not been safety tested. The sale of animals of any kind is not allowed.

After the sale
There are no bins for sellers on the site. Please take all unsold items and any rubbish home with you. Sellers who leave items behind will not be allowed to return.

Bad weather
If heavy rain makes the field unsafe for vehicles, the sale will be cancelled. We will post a message on our Facebook page by 6 a.m. on the day of the sale. Please check before you set off.

Other information
Toilets are available in the leisure centre from 7 a.m. Dogs are welcome, but they must be kept on a lead at all times.

Questions 1–7

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

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

Read the text below and answer Questions 8–14.

Children's Party Venues in Daleford

A Jumping Jacks Trampoline Park
Children aged five and over can enjoy 90 minutes of bouncing, followed by party food in our private party room. For safety reasons, everyone on the trampolines must wear our special grip socks, which cost £2 a pair and can be kept afterwards. Parties are available every day, for up to 20 children.

B Storytime Parties at Daleford Library
Our children's librarian brings stories to life with puppets, songs and dressing up. These parties are designed for children aged three to seven, and they last one hour. Squash and biscuits are included in the price, but no other food or drink may be brought into the library. Parties take place on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings.

C The Pottery Shed
Each child paints their own mug, plate or bowl to take home. Painted items have to be fired in our kiln before they can be used, so they will be ready to collect a week after the party. Suitable for children aged six and over. Party food can be ordered from our café.

D Greenacre Farm
Children can feed the animals, hold the rabbits and enjoy a tractor ride around the farm. The tractor ride takes place outdoors, but if the weather is poor, we will offer a puppet show in our barn instead. Suitable for children aged four and over. You are welcome to bring your own party food and use our picnic area. Our staff look after the children throughout, so parents are free to relax in the farm shop café.

E Splash Zone at Daleford Leisure Centre
Enjoy an hour in the pool with our giant inflatable obstacle course, supervised by a lifeguard. Children must be at least five years old. For children under eight, there must be one adult in the water for every two children. Parties are held on Sundays only, for up to 30 children.

Questions 8–14

Look at the five party venues, A–E, above.

For which venue are the following statements true?

Write the correct letter, A–E. You may use any letter more than once.

SECTION 2 — Questions 15–27

Read the text below and answer Questions 15–20.

Ardley Home Furnishings: Handling Customer Complaints

Guidance for store staff

Most customers who complain simply want their problem to be taken seriously and dealt with quickly. If a complaint is handled well, the customer is often more loyal to the company afterwards than they were before. This guide explains what you should do when a customer makes a complaint in store.

Listening to the customer
Let the customer explain the problem in their own words, and do not interrupt, even if you think you already know what they are going to say. Make notes if necessary. When they have finished, repeat the main points back to them to check that you have understood correctly.

Apologising
Always apologise for the customer's experience. You may be worried that an apology is an admission that the company was at fault, but this is not the case: you are simply showing that you are sorry the customer has had a problem. Never blame other departments, and never make negative comments about a colleague in front of a customer.

Solving the problem
Wherever possible, deal with the complaint immediately. Any sales assistant can authorise a refund or exchange of up to £50. For larger amounts, you must ask a supervisor to approve the refund. Customers should normally show their receipt, but if they do not have it, a bank statement showing the payment is acceptable.

If you cannot solve the problem straight away, for example because an item needs to be inspected, complete a yellow Customer Concern Form with the customer. Give them a reference number, and explain that a member of our Customer Care team will contact them within three working days.

Difficult situations
If a customer becomes abusive or threatening, you do not have to continue the conversation. Calmly tell the customer that you will fetch the duty manager, and do so immediately.

After the complaint
At the end of each shift, every complaint, including those that were solved in store, must be recorded in the complaints log. This helps us to identify problems with particular products. Staff must never discuss complaints about the company on social media.

Questions 15–20

Complete the sentences below.

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

Read the text below and answer Questions 21–27.

Ardley Home Furnishings: Understanding Your Payslip

When you are paid
All staff are paid monthly, on the last working day of the month. Your payslip will be available on the MyArdley staff website from the 25th of each month. Paper copies are no longer sent out automatically, but they can be provided on request.

Gross pay
This is the total amount you have earned before anything is taken off. As well as your basic pay, it includes any overtime you have worked and any commission you have earned on sales.

Deductions
The following amounts are taken from your gross pay:

• Income tax and National Insurance. These are paid to the government on your behalf.
• Pension. All staff are automatically enrolled in the company pension scheme, and 5% of your pay is paid into it each month. The company pays in a further 4%. You may choose to leave the scheme, but if you do, you will no longer receive the company's contribution.
• Social club. If you are a member of the staff social club, a fee of £2 a month is taken from your pay.

Your tax code
Your tax code appears in the top right-hand corner of your payslip. It is set by the government's tax office, not by Ardley, so if you think your code is wrong, you should contact the tax office directly. New employees who do not have a P45 form from their previous employer may be given an emergency tax code for the first few months. This may mean that you pay too much tax at first, but any extra tax will be returned to you.

Net pay
This is the amount that is paid into your bank account after all deductions have been made.

If something is wrong
If you think there is a mistake on your payslip, contact the Payroll team within ten days. If you have been paid too much, you will have to pay the extra amount back. This is usually done by taking it from your pay over three months, but you can ask for a longer period if this would cause you difficulty.

Changing your bank details
Update your bank details on MyArdley. Changes must be made by the 15th of the month if they are to take effect that month.

If you close your old account before your new details take effect, ask the bank for written confirmation of the closure and send a copy to Payroll. This lets us match a payment to the right employee if the bank sends it back. However, the date on the letter does not tell us whether the money has arrived. Our system first shows a failed payment as "pending" while the bank checks it, and Payroll can only send your wages to your new account once its status has changed to "returned". If your old account is still open, your pay will reach it in the usual way, and you can transfer the money yourself.

Questions 21–27

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.

Payslips at Ardley

• Payslips appear online from the 25th; 211 word copies are available if requested.
• Gross pay includes basic pay, overtime and 221 word .
• Staff who leave the pension scheme lose the company's 231 word .
• Questions about tax codes should go to the tax 241 word .
• New staff without a P45 may be given an 251 word tax code.
• The standard repayment period for an overpayment is 261 word months.
• If an employee's old account has closed, Payroll can only resend their wages when the failed payment is shown as 271 word .

SECTION 3 — Questions 28–40

Read the text below and answer Questions 28–40.

Walking on the sea: the story of Britain's piers

A For many people in Britain, a day at the seaside is not complete without a walk along the pier. These long platforms, built on iron legs and stretching out over the sea, are found in seaside towns all around the coast, and although piers exist in many other countries, the pleasure pier is largely a British creation. At the height of their popularity, around the beginning of the twentieth century, there were about a hundred of them. Today, just over fifty survive, and many of those face an uncertain future.

B The first piers had a practical purpose. Before they were built, there was often nowhere for boats to tie up at seaside towns, and passengers arriving by sea had to be carried ashore by boatmen or wade through the shallow water. One of the earliest piers, at Ryde on the Isle of Wight, was opened in 1814 to allow ferry passengers to land without getting wet. However, the people of Ryde soon discovered that walking out over the water was a pleasant activity in itself. At a time when sea air was widely believed to be good for the health, visitors were happy to pay a small charge simply to stroll up and down the pier, and many piers came to earn more from walkers than from boats. Before long, other towns along the coast were building piers of their own, often extending them several times as the number of visitors grew.

C The real growth came with the railways. From the middle of the nineteenth century, cheap train travel allowed working families from the industrial cities to spend a day or a week by the sea, and seaside towns competed to attract them. A pier became an essential feature of any resort, and between 1860 and 1910, dozens were built purely for pleasure. Many were designed by the engineer Eugenius Birch, who was responsible for fourteen piers, beginning with Margate in 1855. Birch made use of a recent invention, the screw pile: an iron column with a large screw at its base, which could be twisted into the sand and rock of the seabed. This allowed piers to be built quickly and at relatively low cost, even in places where the seabed was too soft for traditional foundations.

D Once visitors had paid to enter, they expected to be entertained. Piers soon acquired bandstands, tea rooms, theatres and concert halls, and later amusement arcades full of slot machines. Visitors could have their fortunes told, watch puppet shows, or simply sit in a deckchair and listen to the band. For keen anglers, the end of the pier offered a chance to fish in deep water without needing a boat, and at many piers, steamers called regularly to take passengers on trips along the coast. For many working families, an afternoon on the pier was one of the few luxuries they could afford. Many of the most popular entertainers of the early twentieth century began their careers performing in the theatres at the end of piers, and the phrase "end-of-the-pier show" entered the language. Today, however, it is used mostly to describe entertainment that is old-fashioned or of poor quality.

E Piers have always been vulnerable. Standing in the sea, they are exposed to the full force of winter storms, and the Chain Pier at Brighton, which opened in 1823, was destroyed by a storm in 1896. The timber decks and wooden buildings that stood on the iron legs meant that fire was a constant danger, and many piers have been badly damaged or destroyed by fire. Ships have also crashed into them on several occasions. Southend Pier, which at 2.16 kilometres is the longest pleasure pier in the world and has its own railway to carry visitors to the end, has suffered from all of these problems at different times in its history.

F The greatest threat today is cost. Salt water slowly eats away at iron, and repairing a pier can cost many millions of pounds. A number of piers have been closed and left to decay. Brighton's West Pier, which closed in 1975, was further damaged by storms and fires in 2002 and 2003, and today only part of its iron frame remains standing in the sea. There have been successes, however. At Hastings, residents had already been campaigning to save their pier for two years when it was badly damaged by fire in 2010. With lottery funding and money raised by local people, who bought shares in the project, a charity rebuilt the pier, and it opened again in 2016, going on to win a major architecture prize. Two years later, however, after the charity had run into financial difficulties, the pier was sold to a private owner. Raising enough money to reopen a pier was one achievement; keeping it in community hands proved much harder.

Questions 28–33

The text has six paragraphs, A–F.

Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

Write the correct number, i–viii, next to Questions 28–33.

List of Headings

• i Dangers that piers have always faced
• ii Why some towns refused to build piers
• iii From a practical structure to a place for pleasure
• iv The struggle to save piers today
• v New visitors and a new building method
• vi A British tradition with fewer examples today
• vii Piers in other countries
• viii What visitors came to enjoy

Questions 34–37

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.

Building and damaging piers

Eugenius Birch built many of his piers using screw piles, which could be twisted into the seabed. This meant that piers could be built rapidly and at a low 341 word . However, the decks were made of 351 word , and the buildings on them were also wooden, so fires were common. Piers have also been damaged by storms and by 361 word crashing into them. Over time, the iron legs are damaged by 371 word water, which makes repairs very expensive.

Questions 38–40

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

• A had to wait for the tide to come in.
• B were carried or walked through the water.
• C used a harbour in a nearby town.
• D paid a charge to land on the beach.

• A It was first used by entertainers themselves.
• B It now usually suggests poor or outdated entertainment.
• C It is used only in seaside towns.
• D It describes the shows that were most popular with visitors.

• A Residents can persuade a council to take over a pier permanently.
• B Reopening a pier can make it possible to cover its future running costs.
• C A community may help to save a pier but still struggle to keep it.
• D Private investment can allow a community to buy back its pier.