Collins Practice Tests For IELTS 3 General Training Reading Test 2 (Online Test)

Read the text below and answer questions 14-22.

Education Now - Online courses

At Education Now, all our online courses are free so anyone can be a student anywhere, any time. Here are some of our trending courses.

A. Songs: How to listen to a song

Music and songs have always been part of human society. Discover what songs can tell us about human emotions and learn techniques for interpreting them. On this course, you will learn how to understand what you are listening to and learn to appreciate songs of all kinds. This course is designed for music lovers and anyone who wants to develop and expand their understanding of songs and songwriting.

What will you learn?

By the end of the course, you will be able to ...

• talk about how songs create their effects and describe how music becomes effective, accessible and compelling.
• develop an understanding of the role of songs in contemporary society.

What topics will you cover?

• Traditions: the history of popular music, where it comes from, how it has changed, and how it has been important to societies at different times and in different places.
• How songs work: songwriting techniques and the craft of writing a good song.

B. Business bookkeeping and personal finance

Develop skills to manage finances in the 21st century. This course is for anyone interested in bookkeeping and financial accounting and will also be of interest to small business owners or those wanting to manage their own finances better.

What will you learn?

By the end of the course, you will have learned ...

• how money works and the skills to manage your personal finances.
• how profit or loss leads to income or debt.
• how to record and organise financial data and how to interpret the information.
• how to prepare a balance sheet and a profit and loss account.

What topics will you cover?

• The main aspects of financial accounting, such as assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses.
• Financial statements and their purposes.

C. Superfood: Truth and fiction

Blueberries, kale and green tea have all been called superfoods. But what exactly is a superfood? Find out about the link between superfoods, society and health in this course.

What will you learn?

By the end of the course, you will ...

• be able to define what a superfood is.
• evaluate the impact of the superfood phenomenon on society and the economy.

What topics will you cover?

• What is a superfood? Are superfoods different from other foods?
• How can we assess superfoods and their impact and role in our diet?
• Are there dangers connected to eating superfoods?

D. How to get a graduate job

This course has been designed for students and graduates looking for guidance on how to land a graduate job more easily. It is also useful for anyone who would like to bring their job-hunting skills up to date.

What will you learn?

By the end of the course, you will ...

• be able to write a professional CV.
• have developed the interview skills necessary to secure the job you want.

What topics will you cover?

• Everything you need to know about the graduate job market.
• How to stand out in a highly competitive graduate job application process.
• How to prepare for work and how to make a good impression in your new job.

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Read the text below and answer questions 23-28.

IT outages

When IT systems are offline for maintenance and upgrading, employees can feel upset and inconvenienced. However, it's a fact of working life that IT systems have to be taken offline periodically so having effective communications systems and practices are essential to take some of the pain out of the process and can avoid questions, confusion and lost productivity.

Communicate in advance

Whenever possible, provide plenty of notice about any planned downtime. This will help people organise their work in advance and plan accordingly. For example, if they know IT systems will be down for several hours one day in the week, they may decide to work at home or do tasks that don't require IT connectivity during that period.

Communicate more than once

People have lots to do at work and an IT outage a few weeks in the future won't be high on their priority list. Sending an email weeks or days in advance of a suspension of IT services isn't an effective way of informing people. It is much better to communicate several times leading up to the event and again shortly before it. Repeating your key message about the IT service helps to maintain awareness of the event.

Use multiple channels

In the same way that you need to inform people more than once about an IT outage, don't just communicate this via email; if you have several communication channels, use these as well. For example, old-fashioned posters in the staff canteen will remind everyone that scheduled maintenance is about to happen.

On-screen pop-ups

We're all used to notifications from our favourite apps on our mobile phones, and when a pop-up notification is flashed onto our screens at work, it has an immediate impact. Specialist software sends messages directly to the user. These messages cannot be dismissed and require a response so that you know they have been seen and hopefully read. For example, if the IT outage is due the next day, a reminder notification can be sent to all users so that they can prepare for it.

Using these simple suggestions can help everyone get smoothly through an IT outage by communicating facts, getting people's attention and preparing everyone in advance.

Read the text below and answer questions 29-40.

Decisions, decisions

A. We make decisions every minute of our lives, from large, life-changing ones about our careers or relationships to mundane, day-to-day ones, like which socks to wear or how to travel to work. But we often make decisions without considering what we are doing and sometimes our emotions get in the way of rational thought. Making good choices is a balance between reason and desire, knowing what has happened in the past and what you want in the future. Most people do this instinctively, without understanding the mental processes that influence our decisions, but what would happen if we understood these processes better? Researchers today are uncovering the hidden influences that direct us one way or the other when we make choices.

B. 'Everyone loves a winner' is a common saying but surprisingly, people dislike losing more than they like winning and it actually takes a lot to tempt us to take a risk. Psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman from Princeton University found that people do not like to bet money in a 50:50 situation unless they can win twice the amount they could lose. So, for example, although the chance of winning or losing is the same, most people will only bet $100 if they can win more than $200. This suggests that people are more likely to decide to stick with a current situation unless there is a powerful reason to change.

C. When a decision needs to be made, emotions seem to get in the way. Daniel Fessler from the University of California asked a group of people to play a game in which they could either get a $15 reward or gamble with the money and risk getting nothing. In one version of the game, he made the people feel angry beforehand and found that men, but not women, gambled more when they were feeling annoyed.

D. So, while emotions can sometimes influence us to make bad decisions, logically, the more information we have, the better decisions we should make. Unfortunately, researchers have found that this is not necessarily the case. Having too much data can be just as problematic as having too little. Ap Dijksterhuis and his colleagues at the University of Amsterdam gave two groups of subjects a problem: which car to choose. One group got a list describing just four features, such as how many miles a car had been driven, while the other group had a list of twelve features. Dijksterhuis found that the subjects who had fewer choices picked the best car for them, whereas the other group became confused by the number of features. Surprisingly, the latter group made the best decision when they did not analyse their options based on the features given and relied on gut instinct.

E. Another factor that influences our decision-making is sunk cost. The supersonic jet Concorde is a good illustration of the sunk cost fallacy, where the British and French governments justified further spending on a project that would never make a profit because of the amount already spent on it. The sunk cost fallacy, in other words, is the belief that if you have already invested time or money in something, this justifies spending more time or money on it. The fallacy also influences decision-making on a much smaller scale. The more time or money we have invested in something, the more attached to it we are. Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer at Ohio State University asked a group of students to imagine they had paid $100 for a trip. They were then told they could buy another holiday to a better resort but for a cheaper price. After they had bought both holidays, the students were told that the trips were on the same weekend and they had to choose one of them. Surprisingly, they chose the more expensive but worse deal - a decision based on the fallacy, not logic.

F. The way we behave around our friends has often been studied and it seems that their behaviour also strongly influences the decisions we take. At Arizona State University, researchers led by Robert Cialdini placed cards in hotel rooms asking guests to use their towels more than once, either a) to help the environment, or b) for the sake of future generations, or c) because most of the other guests in the hotel were doing so. The last reason fumed out to be 30% more effective than the other two reasons. Social validation can be a major factor in decision-making so it is a good idea to ask yourself when you are making a decision whether it really is your own.

G. On the other hand, we make fast and competent judgements all the time about who we want to talk to and to trust. Alexander Todorov and Janine Willis from Princeton University found that people make judgements about qualities like aggressiveness, likability and attractiveness within the first 100 milliseconds of seeing a person for the first time. Even when the research subjects were given one second more time, they usually just became more confident about their initial choice. It seems that snap decisions and quick judgements can be valid ways of making decisions.