Listening Reading Writing Speaking Exercises

Subscribe for free IELTS lessons

Writing
correction
IELTS Academic Reading Test 1.
Section 1
IELTS
vocabulary This is IELTS
Writing Academic

Speaking Reading practice

test #1. On this
page you can find
Maximize
your score! Reading passage
1 - complete it,

IELTS test click "check" and

samples
proceed to the next section. After you complete all 3
Listening sections, you will get your IELTS-scaled score and
Reading see your mistakes.
Writing

Speaking

READING PASSAGE 1
Speaking
simulator You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions
1–13, which are based on Reading Passage 1
below.
 Aphantasia: A life without mental
images

Close your eyes and imagine walking

along a sandy beach and then gazing
over the horizon as the Sun rises. How
clear is the image that springs to mind?

Most people can readily conjure images

inside their head - known as their mind's
eye. But this year scientists have
described a condition, aphantasia, in
which some people are unable to
visualise mental images.

Niel Kenmuir, from Lancaster, has

always had a blind mind's eye. He knew
he was different even in childhood. "My
stepfather, when I couldn't sleep, told me
to count sheep, and he explained what
he meant, I tried to do it and I couldn't,"
he says. "I couldn't see any sheep
jumping over fences, there was nothing
to count."

Our memories are often tied up in

images, think back to a wedding or first
day at school. As a result, Niel admits,
some aspects of his memory are
"terrible", but he is very good at
remembering facts. And, like others with
aphantasia, he struggles to recognise
faces. Yet he does not see aphantasia
as a disability, but simply a different way
of experiencing life.

Mind's eye blind

Ironically, Niel now works in a bookshop,

although he largely sticks to the non-
fiction aisles. His condition begs the
question what is going on inside his
picture-less mind. I asked him what
happens when he tries to picture his
fiancee. "This is the hardest thing to
describe, what happens in my head
when I think about things," he says.
"When I think about my fiancee there is
no image, but I am definitely thinking
about her, I know today she has her hair
up at the back, she's brunette. But I'm
not describing an image I am looking at,
I'm remembering features about her,
that's the strangest thing and maybe that
is a source of some regret."

The response from his mates is a very

sympathetic: "You're weird." But while
Niel is very relaxed about his inability to
picture things, it is often a cause of
distress for others. One person who took
part in a study into aphantasia said he
had started to feel "isolated" and "alone"
after discovering that other people could
see images in their heads. Being unable
to reminisce about his mother years
after her death led to him being
"extremely distraught".

The super-visualiser

At the other end of the spectrum is

children's book illustrator, Lauren Beard,
whose work on the Fairytale Hairdresser
series will be familiar to many six-year-
olds. Her career relies on the vivid
images that leap into her mind's eye
when she reads text from her author.
When I met her in her box-room studio in
Manchester, she was working on a
dramatic scene in the next book. The
text describes a baby perilously climbing
onto a chandelier.
"Straightaway I can visualise this grand
glass chandelier in some sort of French
kind of ballroom, and the little baby just
swinging off it and really heavy thick
curtains," she says. "I think I have a
strong imagination, so I can create the
world and then keep adding to it so it
gets sort of bigger and bigger in my
mind and the characters too they sort of
evolve. I couldn't really imagine what it's
like to not imagine, I think it must be a
bit of a shame really."

Not many people have mental imagery

as vibrant as Lauren or as blank as Niel.
They are the two extremes of
visualisation. Adam Zeman, a professor
of cognitive and behavioural neurology,
wants to compare the lives and
experiences of people with aphantasia
and its polar-opposite hyperphantasia.
His team, based at the University of
Exeter, coined the term aphantasia this
year in a study in the journal Cortex.

Prof Zeman tells the BBC: "People who

have contacted us say they are really
delighted that this has been recognised
and has been given a name, because
they have been trying to explain to
people for years that there is this oddity
that they find hard to convey to others."
How we imagine is clearly very
subjective - one person's vivid scene
could be another's grainy picture. But
Prof Zeman is certain that aphantasia is
real. People often report being able to
dream in pictures, and there have been
reported cases of people losing the
 ability to think in images after a brain
injury.

He is adamant that aphantasia is "not a

disorder" and says it may affect up to
one in 50 people. But he adds: "I think it
makes quite an important difference to
their experience of life because many of
us spend our lives with imagery hovering
somewhere in the mind's eye which we
inspect from time to time, it's a
variability of human experience."

Questions 1–5

Do the following statements agree with the information in the

IELTS reading text?

In boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, 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

1. Aphantasia is a condition, which describes people, for

whom it is hard to visualise mental images.
TRUE
2. Niel Kenmuir was unable to count sheep in his head.
TRUE

3. People with aphantasia struggle to remember personal

traits and clothes of different people. TRUE

4. Niel regrets that he cannot portray an image of his fiancee

in his mind. TRUE

5. Inability to picture things in someone's head is often a

cause of distress for a person. TRUE

6. All people with aphantasia start to feel 'isolated' or 'alone'

at some point of their lives. TRUE

7. Lauren Beard's career depends on her imagination.

TRUE

8. The author met Lauren Beard when she was working on a

comedy scene in her next book. TRUE

Questions 9–13

Complete the sentences below.

Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for

each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.

9. Only a small fraction of people have imagination as
as Lauren does.

10. Hyperphantasia is to aphantasia.

11.There are a lot of subjectivity in comparing people's

imagination - somebody's vivid scene could be another
person's .

12. Prof Zeman is that aphantasia is

not an illness.

13. Many people spend their lives with

somewhere in the mind's eye.

Show answers

Check

Contact us About the project

© ielts-up.com, 2015-2019. All rights reserved.