IELTS Academic Reading — Full Practice Test 2

A In 1839, a French artist named Louis Daguerre announced a process that seemed almost magical: a way to capture a real scene, in perfect detail, on a silver-coated plate. The daguerreotype, as it was called, produced astonishingly sharp images and caused a sensation across Europe. For the first time, ordinary people could own an exact likeness of a place or a face.

B The new process had one great limitation. The plate had to be exposed to light for several minutes before an image formed. Anything that moved during that time simply vanished. Early photographs of busy streets appear strangely empty, because the carriages and pedestrians did not stay still long enough to be recorded. Only fixed objects — buildings, trees, statues — came out clearly.

C Portraits were possible, but uncomfortable. To keep a sitter perfectly still, photographers used a metal frame that gently held the head in place. Subjects were told not to smile, partly because holding a smile for minutes was impossible, and partly because a serious expression was easier to keep steady. This is one reason people in old photographs so rarely look cheerful.

D The daguerreotype had a further drawback: each image was unique and could not be copied. A rival process, developed in England by William Talbot, solved this. Talbot produced a “negative” from which any number of positive prints could be made. Although his images were softer and less detailed than Daguerre's, it was his method — reproducible copies from a single negative — that shaped the future of photography.

A We tend to picture a forest as a collection of separate trees, each competing with its neighbours for light and water. Recent research suggests a very different picture. Beneath the soil, the trees of a forest are linked together in ways that allow them to share resources and even, in a sense, to communicate.

B The connections are made by fungi. Thin threads of fungus wrap around and join the roots of different trees, forming a vast underground network. In exchange for sugars from the trees, the fungi help them absorb water and nutrients from the soil. Through this network, materials can pass from one tree to another.

C The most surprising discovery is that older, larger trees appear to support younger ones. A tall tree with plenty of access to sunlight can send sugars through the fungal network to shaded seedlings that cannot yet make enough of their own. In this way a forest can raise its young much as a family might.

D The network may also carry warnings. When a tree is attacked by insects, it can release chemicals that travel to its neighbours, which then begin to produce substances that make their own leaves harder to eat. A threat to one tree, in effect, becomes a signal to the whole community.

E Not every scientist is convinced. Some argue that the evidence is still thin, and that we should be careful about describing trees as if they think or choose. The exchanges may simply be chemistry, they say, with no intention behind them. The debate over how far the comparison should be taken is far from settled.

F Whatever the final answer, the discovery has practical value. If forests function as connected communities, then removing the oldest trees may do more harm than their numbers alone suggest. Understanding the network could change the way we manage and protect forests for the future.

Boredom has a bad reputation. We treat it as a problem to be solved, reaching for a phone the moment a queue slows or a conversation pauses. Yet a growing number of psychologists argue that boredom is not merely unpleasant but useful, and that by banishing it we may be losing something valuable.

The argument rests on what the mind does when it is unoccupied. Far from switching off, a bored brain tends to wander, drifting over memories, plans and half-formed ideas. This wandering is closely linked to creativity: several studies have found that people who are first made to do a dull task go on to produce more original ideas than those who are not. Boredom, it seems, pushes the mind to look for something more interesting, and in doing so it makes unexpected connections.

Boredom may also serve as a signal. An uncomfortable, restless feeling can be the mind's way of telling us that our current activity is meaningless, prompting us to change direction. People who never feel bored, some researchers suggest, may miss these useful nudges towards more rewarding pursuits.

None of this means boredom is always good. Long-term boredom, such as that felt in an unstimulating job, is linked to stress rather than creativity. The point is narrower: that the small, everyday boredom we now rush to escape may be worth sitting with. Allowing the mind a few empty minutes, rather than filling every gap with a screen, could be one of the simplest ways to think more clearly.