Iii Cambridge Practice Tests for ielts

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Choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in box 12 on your answer sheet
12 Why was this article written?
A
To give an example of a current dictionary.
B
To announce a new approach to dictionary writing.
C
To show how dictionaries have progressed over the years.
D
To compare the content of different dictionaries
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64
Practice Test 3
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 13-26 which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.
Moles happy as homes go underground
A
The first anybody knew about Dutchman
Frank Siegmund and his family was
when workmen tramping through a field
found a narrow steel chimney protruding
through the grass. Closer inspection
revealed a chink of skylight window
among the thistles, and when amazed
investigators moved down the side of the
hill they came across a pine door
complete with leaded diamond glass and
a brass knocker set into an underground
building. The Siegmunds had managed
to live undetected for six years outside
the border town of Breda, in Holland.
They are the latest in a clutch of
individualistic homemakers who have
burrowed underground in search of
tranquillity.
B
Most, falling foul of strict building
regulations, have been forced to
dismantle their individualistic homes and
return to more conventional lifestyles.
But subterranean suburbia, Dutchstyle,
is about to become respectable and
chic. Seven luxury homes cosseted
away inside a high earthcovered noise
embankment next to the main Tilburg
city road recently went on the market for
$296,500 each. The foundations had yet
to be dug, but customers queued up to
buy the unusual partsubmerged
houses, whose back wall consists of a
grassy mound and whose front is a long
glass gallery.
C
The Dutch are not the only wouldbe
moles. Growing numbers of Europeans
are burrowing below ground to create
houses, offices, discos and shopping
malls. It is already proving a way of life in
extreme climates; in winter months in
Montreal, Canada, for instance, citizens
can escape the cold in an underground
complex complete with shops and even
health clinics. In Tokyo builders are
planning a massive underground city to
be begun in the next decade, and
underground shopping malls are already
common in Japan, where 90 percent of
the population is squeezed into 20
percent of the landspace.
D
Building big commercial buildings
underground can be a way to avoid
disfiguring or threatening a beautiful or
“environmentally sensitive” landscape.
Indeed many of the buildings which
consume most land such as cinemas,
supermarkets, theatres, warehouses or
libraries have no need to be on the
surface since they do not need windows.
E 
There are big advantages, too, when it
comes to private homes. A development
of 194 houses which would take up 14
hectares of land above ground would
occupy 2.7 hectares below it, while the
number of roads would be halved. Under
several metres of earth, noise is minimal
and insulation is excellent. “We get 40 to
50 enquiries a week,” says Peter
Carpenter, secretary of the British Earth
Sheltering Association, which builds

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65
Reading
similar homes in Britain. "People see this
as a way of building for the future." An
underground dweller himself, Carpenter
has never paid a heating bill, thanks to
solar panels and natural insulation.
F
In Europe the obstacle has been
conservative local authorities and
developers who prefer to ensure quick
sales with conventional mass produced
housing. But the Dutch development was
greeted with undisguised relief by South
Limburg planners because of Holland's
chronic shortage of land. It was the
Tilburg architect Jo Hurkmans who hit on
the idea of making use of noise
embankments on main roads. His two
floored, fourbedroomed, two
bathroomed detached homes are now
taking shape. "They are not so much
below the earth as in it," he says. "All the
light will come through the glass front,
which runs from the second floor ceiling
to the ground. Areas which do not need
much natural lighting are at the back. The
living accommodation is to the front so
nobody notices that the back is dark."
G
In the US, where energyefficient homes
became popular after the oil crisis of
1973, 10,000 underground houses have
been built. A terrace of five homes,
Britain's first subterranean development,
is under way in Nottinghamshire. Italy's
outstanding example of subterranean
architecture is the Olivetti residential
centre in Ivrea. Commissioned by
Roberto Olivetti in 1969, it comprises
82 onebedroomed apartments and
12 maisonettes and forms a house/
hotel for Olivetti employees. It is built
into a hill and little can be seen from
outside except a glass facade. Patnzia
Vallecchi, a resident since 1992, says
it is little different from living in a
conventional apartment.
H
Not everyone adapts so well, and in
Japan scientists at the Shimizu
Corporation have developed "space
creation" systems which mix light,
sounds, breezes and scents to
stimulate people who spend long
periods below ground. Underground
offices in Japan are being equipped
with "virtual" windows and mirrors,
while underground departments in the
University of Minnesota have
periscopes to reflect views and light.
I
But Frank Siegmund and his family love
their hobbit lifestyle. Their home
evolved when he dug a cool room for
his bakery business in a hill he had
created. During a heatwave they took
to sleeping there. "We felt at peace
and so close to nature," he says.
"Gradually I began adding to the
rooms. It sounds strange but we are
so close to the earth we draw strength
from its vibrations. Our children love it;
not every child can boast of being
watched through their playroom
windows by rabbits.

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66
Practice Test 3
Example
Answer
Paragraph A
xii