Living with Competing Explanations of Change
About this practice test
Advanced reading practice examining how transport patterns, wetland recovery and marsh change emerge from interacting causes, incomplete evidence and competing expert interpretations.
What you’ll practice
Finding detail
Locate specific information and evidence.
Interpreting ideas
Connect main points and inferences.
Evaluating arguments
Assess claims, evidence, and limitations.
What to expect:
24 questions with explanations to review after submission.
Study the questions and tasks
Work through the material below, or start the interactive practice above to complete an attempt. Try the exercises before opening any answer or transcript sections, then use them to review your work.
- Practice level
- C2. Try this level if you can follow the instructions and understand most of the language; choose an earlier level if you need more support.
- Question formats
- Multiple choice, True / False / Not Given, Cloze (dropdown), Short answer, Matching
How to approach this practice
Read the passage for its main idea, then return to the relevant sentence or paragraph for each question. Base answers on the passage.
Westhaven's Thinning Rush Hour
The first section of the file sets out the broad picture. In Westhaven, a city built around a ring road and two river crossings, the morning commute used to be described in simple terms: cars filled the central bridge before 8:30, buses ran behind schedule, and the tram line carried the rest. By late spring, however, the transport observatory was recording a more awkward pattern. Vehicle counts on the bridge were down by 14 per cent over eighteen months, tram use was up, and bus ridership had recovered after the pandemic. The obvious question was whether the city had entered a permanent post-car phase. Mara Ilyas, who led the review for the observatory, warned against treating one number as a verdict. She pointed out that commuter surveys and automatic counts do not measure the same thing: one records bodies, the other vehicles. A family that used one car in 2019 might now split into two bus trips and one school-run walk, which looks like a fall in traffic even when the total number of journeys has not fallen nearly as much. Her report therefore compared road counts with ticket sales, employer diaries, and short interviews at stations and schools. The second section tested possible explanations. The first explanation tested was hybrid work. Eleven employers in the city centre answered a questionnaire, and they said Tuesday to Thursday were the busiest office days, while Monday and Friday had become noticeably thinner. That pattern fit the idea that people were not abandoning the city centre so much as compressing their visits into fewer days. Yet the surveys covered only firms willing to answer, and several of the largest logistics and health employers were absent, which weakened any claim that the result applied to everyone. A second change complicated the picture. The city opened a bus lane on River Road and adjusted signal timing near the station after complaints about delays. Bus journeys across the river became more reliable, and some drivers said they changed mode when they realised the service now beat the car at rush hour. At the same time, parking fees in the station district doubled, but the report noted that this mainly shifted drivers to outer lots rather than removing the trip altogether. The third section turned to cycling and measurement. Cycling provided a third clue, although not a complete answer. A protected lane was extended to the university quarter, and a mild winter made longer rides less uncomfortable than usual. Counts on the cycle track rose most sharply among commuters aged 20 to 34, but older riders did not follow at the same rate. Because the city had no reliable way of separating leisure riding from commuting outside the peak hour, the increase looked stronger in the raw totals than in the morning peak alone. Then there was the question of measurement. The bridge counter had been upgraded after a roadworks project, and a short calibration error during the first month meant a few buses were misread as two-axle vans. The error was corrected, but the report kept the earlier months in a separate appendix because it could not prove that every correction was applied consistently across all detectors. That caution mattered: a neat trend can be partly an artefact of how the trend is counted. The final section brought in people at the edge of the system. Students travelling to the university tended to shift their departures after lecture timetables changed; hospital staff, whose shifts rarely lined up with office hours, kept travelling through the peak; and some parents simply altered who drove and when. A taxi dispatcher said the city had not seen 'fewer journeys so much as different journeys'. The line was informal, but it matched the report's larger point better than any single statistic did. In the end, the observatory rejected the bluntest explanations. Hybrid work, bus priority, parking costs, weather, and minor counting errors all mattered, but none acted alone. The city had not swapped one commuting model for another overnight; it had stretched the rush hour, redistributed some trips to other modes, and made the old peak look smaller than the underlying need to move. The report's quiet conclusion was less dramatic than the headlines: change was real, yet it was dispersed, conditional, and still uneven across groups.
Grey Fen and the Problem of a Quiet Recovery
When the ecology students from Northmere College began visiting Grey Fen, they expected a familiar conservation story: damage, intervention, improvement, and a tidy lesson. Grey Fen had been drained, grazed badly, and treated for years as a spare margin behind the bypass. Then, almost two years after the first complaints about algae and smell, the site began to recover. By the time Dr. Mara Venn brought her seminar there, the shallows were clearer, reed edges sharper, and children in the nearby estate were once again naming dragonflies instead of rubbish. The temptation, she warned, was to ask for one decisive cause. The first unmistakable sign was not a dramatic return of birds but a quieter change: water crowfoot reappeared in thin, pale strands, and damselflies began to hover in a quantity that even the volunteers noticed before the scientists did. The spring survey also recorded fewer filamentous algae and more small snails on the submerged stems. None of this proved a single mechanism. Ecological recovery often begins at the margins, where small shifts in light, nutrients, and flow allow one species to nudge another. Grey Fen was therefore useful precisely because it refused to announce its explanation in a grand manner. The local council preferred a simpler story. In 2019 it had upgraded the sewage treatment works upstream, and the phosphate figures fell soon afterwards. That fact mattered: the marsh had spent years receiving enough nutrient-rich water to favour algal bloom over rooted plants. Yet the chronology was awkward for anyone who wanted a clean moral. The clearest improvement at Grey Fen was already visible in the second summer, before the full treatment upgrade had settled into its final operating pattern. Dr. Venn did not deny the upgrade; she only objected to treating it as a complete answer. A second explanation pointed to weather. The two driest summers on record lowered turbidity, let more light reach the bed, and exposed patches of mud where seeds could germinate. At the same time, the Fen Friends group carried out scrub clearance and reopened a sluice that had been jammed with silt. Those actions had immediate effects, but they were not magic either. In an adjacent marsh, where rainfall and canal maintenance were almost identical but volunteer effort was minimal, the improvement was slower and patchier. The contrast suggested that the marsh was responding to conditions, not merely surviving them. The most disputed factor was the return of grazing. Leila Hart, the farmer whose family rented the western meadow, agreed to reintroduce Dexter cattle after a decade without stock on the floodplain. Their trampling created shallow pools, and their browsing kept the margins open enough for marsh marigold and willowherb to spread. Some visitors described the cattle as if they were heroic engineers. Dr. Venn disliked that language. The cattle helped, certainly, but only because water quality and channel structure had already shifted. Grazing in isolation would not have rescued the Fen; it mattered as part of a larger arrangement. The strongest evidence against any single explanation came from comparison. North Pool, just three kilometres away, shared nearly the same chemistry after the sewage upgrade, yet it remained dense with duckweed and thin on submerged plants because no one had cleared the side channels or restored grazing there. Conversely, a shallow ditch on private land had been cut back by volunteers but showed little lasting improvement because it still received heavy runoff. Grey Fen sat between those examples. Its recovery was not random, but neither was it reducible to a solitary event. It looked more like alignment than accident. That is why the students were urged to distrust the single-cause romance. Human beings like a reversible plot: damage, rescue, lesson. Ecological records are less obliging. Surveys were missed in one wet winter, algae counts depended on visibility, and the earliest signs of change were recorded by people who already hoped change was underway. None of this invalidated the recovery; it merely limited how confidently one could assign credit. A responsible explanation had to leave room for timing, measurement, and the possibility that several modest causes had accumulated before anyone noticed. By the end of the seminar, the class had not reached a dramatic verdict, and that was the point. Grey Fen was better than it had been, but its improvement was provisional, uneven, and dependent on continued care. The most defensible account was therefore neither cynical nor celebratory. Cleaner water, lower summer levels, selective clearance, and grazing had each contributed, yet only together did they alter the marsh’s balance. Dr. Venn closed her notebook and said that the lesson was not that nature heals itself, nor that humans can engineer every outcome, but that local recovery is often a negotiation among causes that refuse to stand still.
Six Readings of Eastmere Marsh
Paragraph 1On the edge of Eastmere Marsh, where the county road rises from the old ferry bank, a regional college ran a walking seminar for advanced students in interpretation, not because the landscape had become simple, but because it had become harder to explain. Six invited readers of the place—people trained in soil, farming, archives, planning, ecology, and water engineering—were asked to talk about the same stretch of ground. Their accounts did not converge neatly. Each speaker could point to a real change; none could claim the whole story.
Paragraph 2Mina Vale, a geomorphologist, began with the channels. She said the marsh now receives water in shorter, sharper bursts than it did when she first surveyed it. New paving on the estates upstream had sped runoff into the feeder streams, and that faster arrival, she argued, had left the old ditch network struggling. Yet she refused to treat paving as a total explanation. Storms had also become more intense, and the two effects, in her view, reinforced one another.
Paragraph 3Thomas Reed, who grazes cattle on the eastern commons, saw the picture from the opposite side. He said the biggest change was economic: fewer small herds, higher labour costs, and a market that rewarded taking land out of production. Where fields were no longer cropped or grazed, scrub took hold and the marsh edges closed in. Still, he rejected the comfortable claim that abandonment alone explained everything. A few neglected corners had been mown by volunteers, and some heavily used fields had changed little.
Paragraph 4Priya Sen, an ecologist, was more cautious about what counted as decline. In her survey, reedbeds that had been restored for flood control were now sheltering bitterns and marsh harriers in numbers no one had expected. She welcomed that, but she also noted that the same wet ground could become too deep in spring for ground-nesting birds. A place could look healthier to one species and worse to another. For her, the temptation was to call the whole marsh either degraded or recovered when it was actually both, depending on where one stood.
Paragraph 5Julian Frost, the county planner, shifted the discussion from water and wildlife to movement. He pointed out that a new visitor centre, the rerouted footpath, and the raised car park had changed how people crossed the edge of the marsh. More walkers now kept to higher ground, which relieved pressure on the soft lower track but also made the wetlands seem farther away from daily life. He was pleased with the reduced erosion, yet he admitted that a plan designed to protect access could quietly redirect it.
Paragraph 6Nora Bell, who manages the local archive, warned the students against trusting comparison photographs without context. The oldest images in the county drawer were not of an untouched marsh at all; they had been taken after a line of willow planting that altered the skyline. She added that residents who remembered the flood of 1987 often described the same bank as treeless, because the trees came later. Memory, she said, was not inferior to a photograph, only differently selective. It preserved use and fear better than date.
Paragraph 7Idris Kova, a water engineer, chose the vocabulary of trade-offs. The new culvert at North Gate, he explained, had reduced the worst flooding downstream after winter rain, but it had also lowered the water in a corner pond that fed frogs and insects through summer. In his view, talk of drainage was often moralised too quickly: some people praised it as rescue, others condemned it as loss, when the real issue was what was gained, what was shifted, and who bore the cost. One year of measurements could flatter whichever side already had a story.
Paragraph 8By the end of the walk, the group had not produced a master explanation, and no one seemed surprised. The students had heard six qualified accounts of the same landscape, each sharpened by professional habit and narrowed by it as well. What remained persuasive was not a single verdict but a method of comparison: notice where an account fit the ground, notice where it failed, and resist the comfort of a cause that explains too much.
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Question 1 · Multiple choice
Choose all the correct answers.
Choose TWO statements that the report supports about Westhaven's commuting change.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- The city has moved from a single tight rush hour toward a more dispersed pattern of trips.
- The report says parking charges were the main reason all bridge traffic disappeared.
- Hybrid work is presented as the only explanation that the report accepts.
- Some measures changed when and how people travelled rather than eliminating journeys.
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- The city has moved from a single tight rush hour toward a more dispersed pattern of trips.; Some measures changed when and how people travelled rather than eliminating journeys.
The report presents commuting as becoming less concentrated in one short rush hour and more spread across times and modes. It says the city had 'stretched the rush hour' and that some people were 'not abandoning the city centre so much as compressing their visits into fewer days'. The options claiming that hybrid work is the only accepted explanation, or that bridge traffic disappeared because of parking charges, go beyond what the report says.
The city had not swapped one commuting model for another overnight; it had stretched the rush hour, redistributed some trips to other modes, and made the old peak look smaller than the underlying need to move
That pattern fit the idea that people were not abandoning the city centre so much as compressing their visits into fewer days
The city has moved from a single tight rush hour toward a more dispersed pattern of trips.: Supported by the report's conclusion about a stretched rush hour.
The report says parking charges were the main reason all bridge traffic disappeared.: The report never says bridge traffic disappeared, and parking is only one factor.
Hybrid work is presented as the only explanation that the report accepts.: The report lists several factors, so this is too absolute.
Some measures changed when and how people travelled rather than eliminating journeys.: Supported by the discussion of redistributed trips and altered timing.
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Question 2 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
The fall in bridge counts proves that fewer journeys were being made across the city.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- False
False. The report explicitly warns against reading one bridge count as a verdict, and it explains that people may have split one car journey into several separate trips. That means the reduction in vehicle counts does not prove that total journeys fell in the same way.
Mara Ilyas, who led the review for the observatory, warned against treating one number as a verdict
one records bodies, the other vehicles
True: The report does not treat the bridge figure as proof of fewer journeys.
False: The report says the figure cannot be taken as direct proof of fewer journeys.
Not Given: The report does discuss how to interpret the figure, so this is not unstated.
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Question 3 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
The report says cycling among commuters aged 20 to 34 increased by more than 10 per cent.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Not Given
Not Given. The report identifies the age group in which cycling rose most sharply, but it gives no exact percentage increase. It also warns that raw totals may overstate commuting because leisure riding could not be separated reliably outside the peak hour.
Counts on the cycle track rose most sharply among commuters aged 20 to 34, but older riders did not follow at the same rate
the increase looked stronger in the raw totals than in the morning peak alone
True: No exact percentage is stated in the report.
False: The report does not contradict the claim; it simply gives no figure.
Not Given: The age group is given, but not any percentage above 10 per cent.
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Question 4 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
The weekday pattern suggests that hybrid work may have concentrated commuting into fewer days rather than reducing it evenly across the week.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- True
True. The report says Tuesday to Thursday were the busiest office days, while Monday and Friday were thinner, and it explicitly links that pattern to the idea of compressed visits into fewer days. That supports the inference that the change redistributed commuting across the week rather than evenly reducing it.
they said Tuesday to Thursday were the busiest office days, while Monday and Friday had become noticeably thinner
people were not abandoning the city centre so much as compressing their visits into fewer days
True: The report links the weekday pattern to compressed visits.
False: The report draws the opposite implication from the weekday pattern.
Not Given: The implication is discussed explicitly.
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Question 5 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
Because the employer questionnaire came from only eleven city-centre employers, the report treats its hybrid-work finding as suggestive rather than fully representative.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- True
True. The report says that eleven employers answered and that several large employers were absent, which weakened any claim that the result applied to everyone. So the finding is presented as informative, but not broadly representative of all commuting behaviour.
Eleven employers in the city centre answered a questionnaire
the surveys covered only firms willing to answer, and several of the largest logistics and health employers were absent
True: The report limits the scope of the employer responses.
False: The report explicitly says the sample was incomplete.
Not Given: The limitation is stated directly, not left unstated.
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Question 6 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
The bus lane on River Road was built before complaints about delays.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- False
False. The report says the city opened the bus lane and adjusted signals after complaints about delays, so the statement reverses the order given in the passage. The timing is stated directly, not left open to interpretation.
The city opened a bus lane on River Road and adjusted signal timing near the station after complaints about delays
True: The passage says the opposite sequence.
False: The bus lane came after the complaints, not before them.
Not Given: The passage states the timing explicitly.
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Question 7 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
The report says the station-district parking fees were doubled specifically to encourage drivers to use outer lots.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Not Given
Not Given. The passage states that parking fees doubled and describes what happened afterwards, but it never gives the specific reason for raising them. The effect is given, but the policy intention in the statement is not.
parking fees in the station district doubled
this mainly shifted drivers to outer lots rather than removing the trip altogether
True: The passage does not state that as the specific purpose.
False: The passage does not contradict that purpose directly; it simply never states it.
Not Given: The report gives the fee change and its effect, but not the specific motive stated here.
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Question 8 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
The report suggests that a smaller morning peak is not enough on its own to prove that the city needs less travel overall.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- True
True. Across the report, bridge counts are separated from journey totals, surveys are shown to be incomplete, and counting errors are treated as a possible distortion. The conclusion is that the peak looks smaller, but that alone does not prove a lower underlying need to travel.
one records bodies, the other vehicles
a neat trend can be partly an artefact of how the trend is counted
made the old peak look smaller than the underlying need to move
True: This follows the report's broader caution about interpretation.
False: The report repeatedly warns that the peak figure alone is not enough.
Not Given: The report does address this issue directly.
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Question 9 · Cloze (dropdown)
Choose the correct option for each blank.
Complete the summary below. Choose the best option for each gap. The writer rejects a 1___ explanation of Grey Fen's comeback. The council upgraded 2___ upstream, and the two driest summers helped, but so did volunteer 3___ and the return of 4___. Comparison with nearby sites suggests the recovery depended on several conditions together. The best conclusion is that the improvement is 5___, not final, and that readers should avoid the 6___.
Return to the passage, recording or visualChoices for blank 1
- heroic
- single-cause
- public
- seasonal
Choices for blank 2
- sewage treatment works
- school library
- flood barrier
- drainage ditch
Choices for blank 3
- scrub clearance
- tree planting
- nest counting
- soil sampling
Choices for blank 4
- reed warblers
- otter traps
- Dexter cattle
- migratory geese
Choices for blank 5
- provisional
- decisive
- irrelevant
- permanent
Choices for blank 6
- public warning
- simple miracle
- dry summer
- single-cause romance
Check answers and explanations
- Blank 1
- single-cause
- Blank 2
- sewage treatment works
- Blank 3
- scrub clearance
- Blank 4
- Dexter cattle
- Blank 5
- provisional
- Blank 6
- single-cause romance
Gap 1: single-cause. The passage rejects explaining the recovery through one decisive cause, describing Grey Fen as a combination of interacting factors. Evidence: “The temptation, she warned, was to ask for one decisive cause.” Gap 2: sewage treatment works. The council upgraded the upstream sewage treatment works, and phosphate levels fell afterwards. Evidence: “In 2019 it had upgraded the sewage treatment works upstream.” Gap 3: scrub clearance. The Fen Friends group carried out scrub clearance and reopened a silted sluice, contributing to immediate local effects. Evidence: “the Fen Friends group carried out scrub clearance and reopened a sluice that had been jammed with silt.” Gap 4: Dexter cattle. Leila Hart reintroduced Dexter cattle, whose trampling and browsing helped create pools and keep margins open. Evidence: “agreed to reintroduce Dexter cattle after a decade without stock on the floodplain.” Gap 5: provisional. The recovery is described as uneven and dependent on continued care, so it is not presented as final or permanent. Evidence: “its improvement was provisional, uneven, and dependent on continued care.” Gap 6: single-cause romance. The students are explicitly urged to distrust this appealing but oversimplified explanation of ecological recovery. Evidence: “the students were urged to distrust the single-cause romance.”
The most defensible account was therefore neither cynical nor celebratory
The two driest summers on record lowered turbidity
the students were urged to distrust the single-cause romance
heroic: Incorrect: the writer criticises heroic-style simplifications.
single-cause: Correct: the passage rejects any one-factor account.
public: Incorrect: public attention is not the point here.
seasonal: Incorrect: weather is discussed as one influence, not the whole explanation.
sewage treatment works: Correct: the council upgraded the sewage treatment works upstream.
school library: Incorrect: nothing like this appears in the passage.
flood barrier: Incorrect: the passage discusses water quality, not a flood barrier.
drainage ditch: Incorrect: the upgrade was to the sewage treatment works, not a ditch.
scrub clearance: Correct: the volunteers carried out scrub clearance.
tree planting: Incorrect: the group cleared scrub rather than planting trees.
nest counting: Incorrect: that is a survey task, not the work described.
soil sampling: Incorrect: the passage mentions clearance, not sampling.
reed warblers: Incorrect: reed warblers are birds, not the livestock in the text.
otter traps: Incorrect: the passage discusses grazing, not trapping.
Dexter cattle: Correct: Leila Hart reintroduced Dexter cattle.
migratory geese: Incorrect: geese are not mentioned as the grazing animals.
provisional: Correct: the passage says the improvement was provisional.
decisive: Incorrect: the writer says the opposite of a decisive verdict.
irrelevant: Incorrect: the improvement matters, but is not final.
permanent: Incorrect: the passage stresses that the recovery is not final.
public warning: Incorrect: the text warns against a way of thinking, not a warning notice.
simple miracle: Incorrect: the writer rejects miraculous simplification.
dry summer: Incorrect: the passage discusses dry summers as one factor, not as the thing to avoid.
single-cause romance: Correct: this is the phrase the students are told to distrust.
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Question 10 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. Which plant reappeared in thin, pale strands?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- water crowfoot
The passage says that water crowfoot reappeared in thin, pale strands. The question asks for the plant itself, so the answer is the plant name, not the later description of its appearance.
water crowfoot reappeared in thin, pale strands
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Question 11 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What insect did the volunteers notice in greater numbers?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- damselflies
The text states that damselflies began to hover in a quantity noticed by the volunteers. That makes damselflies the correct answer, not the algae or snails mentioned elsewhere in the sentence.
damselflies began to hover in a quantity
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Question 12 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What did the council upgrade upstream?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- sewage treatment works
The passage says the council upgraded the sewage treatment works upstream. The question targets the infrastructure, so the correct answer is that phrase, not the later phosphate figures or the broader idea of cleaner water.
it had upgraded the sewage treatment works upstream
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Question 13 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What did the two driest summers lower?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- turbidity
The two driest summers lowered turbidity, allowing more light to reach the bed. Evidence: “The two driest summers on record lowered turbidity.”
The two driest summers on record lowered turbidity
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Question 14 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. Which task did Fen Friends carry out to clear unwanted vegetation?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- scrub clearance
The group carried out scrub clearance. Reopening the silted sluice was a separate task and does not answer the question about vegetation.
At the same time, the Fen Friends group carried out scrub clearance and reopened a sluice that had been jammed with silt
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Question 15 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What breed of cattle did Leila Hart reintroduce?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- Dexter cattle
Leila Hart agreed to reintroduce Dexter cattle to the floodplain. Evidence: “agreed to reintroduce Dexter cattle after a decade without stock on the floodplain.”
agreed to reintroduce Dexter cattle after a decade without stock on the floodplain
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Question 16 · Short answer
Write a short answer to the question.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage. What phrase does the writer say students should distrust?
Return to the passage, recording or visualCheck answers and explanations
- Accepted answers
- single-cause romance / the single-cause romance
The students were urged to distrust the phrase “single-cause romance,” which describes the appealing but oversimplified explanation of recovery. Evidence: “the students were urged to distrust the single-cause romance.”
the students were urged to distrust the single-cause romance
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Question 17 · Matching
Match each item to the correct choice.
Match each statement to the interpreter who makes it. Choose the correct letter.
Return to the passage, recording or visualAnswer choices
- Nora Bell
- Leah Byrne
- Thomas Reed
- Mina Vale
- Idris Kova
- Julian Frost
- Priya Sen
Items
- Links faster water arrival to paving upstream, while refusing to treat weather as the only factor.
- Connects scrub spread to fewer cattle, higher costs, and land being taken out of production.
- Argues that restoration helps some wildlife but can still disadvantage other species.
- Says new visitor facilities altered how people crossed the marsh edge.
- Warns that photographs can mislead because they omit the timing of earlier planting.
- Describes drainage as a trade-off with both gains and losses.
Check answers and explanations
- 1. Links faster water arrival to paving upstream, while refusing to treat weather as the only factor.
- Mina Vale
- 2. Connects scrub spread to fewer cattle, higher costs, and land being taken out of production.
- Thomas Reed
- 3. Argues that restoration helps some wildlife but can still disadvantage other species.
- Priya Sen
- 4. Says new visitor facilities altered how people crossed the marsh edge.
- Julian Frost
- 5. Warns that photographs can mislead because they omit the timing of earlier planting.
- Nora Bell
- 6. Describes drainage as a trade-off with both gains and losses.
- Idris Kova
Match 1: D — Mina Vale links faster water arrival to upstream paving and says storms also became more intense. Evidence: “New paving on the estates upstream had sped runoff into the feeder streams.” Match 2: C — Thomas Reed connects scrub spread with fewer herds, higher labour costs and land leaving production. Evidence: “fewer small herds, higher labour costs, and a market that rewarded taking land out of production.” Match 3: G — Priya Sen explains that restoration may benefit some species while making conditions worse for others. Evidence: “A place could look healthier to one species and worse to another.” Match 4: F — Julian Frost says the visitor centre, rerouted footpath and raised car park changed movement around the marsh edge. Evidence: “had changed how people crossed the edge of the marsh.” Match 5: A — Nora Bell warns that photographs can mislead because the oldest images were taken after willow planting. Evidence: “they had been taken after a line of willow planting.” Match 6: E — Idris Kova describes drainage in terms of benefits, losses and shifted costs. Evidence: “what was gained, what was shifted, and who bore the cost.”
Six invited readers of the place—people trained in soil, farming, archives, planning, ecology, and water engineering—were asked to talk about the same stretch of ground
What remained persuasive was not a single verdict but a method of comparison
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Question 18 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
The six invited speakers all argued that one cause explained most of the marsh changes.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- False
False. The speakers offered qualified accounts, but none claimed that one cause explained the whole story. Evidence: “Their accounts did not converge neatly. Each speaker could point to a real change; none could claim the whole story.”
Their accounts did not converge neatly. Each speaker could point to a real change; none could claim the whole story
True: This would require the passage to support a single shared cause, but it does the opposite.
False: Correct: the passage rejects a single explanation and stresses competing accounts.
Not Given: The passage does not merely leave this unstated; it directly contradicts it.
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Question 19 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
The students were later asked to vote for the best explanation.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Not Given
Not Given. The passage says the students heard six accounts and were encouraged to compare where each fitted or failed, but it does not say that they voted for one explanation. Evidence: “The students had heard six qualified accounts of the same landscape.”
The students had heard six qualified accounts of the same landscape
notice where an account fit the ground, notice where it failed
True: There is no evidence of a vote in the passage.
False: The passage does not contradict a vote; it simply never mentions one.
Not Given: Correct: voting is not mentioned anywhere in the text.
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Question 20 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
Priya Sen said the same wet ground could become too deep in spring for ground-nesting birds.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- True
True. Priya Sen explicitly noted that the same wet ground could become too deep in spring for ground-nesting birds. Evidence: “the same wet ground could become too deep in spring for ground-nesting birds.”
the same wet ground could become too deep in spring for ground-nesting birds
True: Correct: this is stated directly in Priya's account.
False: This contradicts Priya's warning about spring water depth.
Not Given: The passage states this clearly, so it is not just missing information.
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Question 21 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
Julian Frost said the visitor centre, the rerouted footpath, and the raised car park were completed in the same year.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Not Given
Not Given. Julian Frost identifies the visitor centre, rerouted footpath and raised car park as changes to the marsh edge, but the passage gives no information about whether they were completed in the same year. Evidence: “a new visitor centre, the rerouted footpath, and the raised car park had changed how people crossed the edge of the marsh.”
a new visitor centre, the rerouted footpath, and the raised car park had changed how people crossed the edge of the marsh
True: The passage never says they were completed in the same year.
False: The passage does not contradict the timing claim; it simply omits it.
Not Given: Correct: the passage describes their effect, not their completion date.
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Question 22 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
Nora Bell said the willow planting began before the flood of 1987.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- False
False. Nora says residents remembered the bank as treeless during the 1987 flood because the trees came later. The statement reverses that sequence.
She added that residents who remembered the flood of 1987 often described the same bank as treeless, because the trees came later
True: This reverses the order Nora gives; the trees came later, not earlier.
False: Correct: the passage places the willow planting after the 1987 flood.
Not Given: The timing is stated, so this is not left open.
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Question 23 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
Mina Vale said the new paving on the estates upstream had been installed to protect the marsh from flooding.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- Not Given
Not Given. Mina Vale says that new paving sped runoff into feeder streams, but she does not say that the paving was installed to protect the marsh from flooding. Evidence: “New paving on the estates upstream had sped runoff into the feeder streams.”
New paving on the estates upstream had sped runoff into the feeder streams
True: The passage never says the paving was installed for this purpose.
False: The passage does not contradict that motive; it simply does not state it.
Not Given: Correct: the passage explains the effect of the paving, not the reason for it.
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Question 24 · True / False / Not Given
Decide whether the statement agrees with the information. Choose Not Given when the text or recording does not provide the information.
Thomas Reed said a market that rewarded taking land out of production contributed to changes on the eastern commons.
Return to the passage, recording or visual- True
- False
- Not Given
Check answers and explanations
- Answer
- True
True. Thomas Reed identifies fewer small herds, higher labour costs and a market rewarding the removal of land from production as economic changes affecting the marsh edges. Evidence: “a market that rewarded taking land out of production.”
a market that rewarded taking land out of production
True: Correct: this is stated directly in Thomas Reed's account.
False: This would wrongly deny the economic role Thomas explicitly describes.
Not Given: The passage gives this point clearly, so it is not merely unstated.
What to review next
Find the words that support each answer. For a mistake, compare the question with the evidence and identify the detail or inference you missed.
A focused practice result shows how you did on these tasks. Use several activities across skills to decide what to study next; one practice score does not certify an overall CEFR level.
Before you practise: a worked example
Look for evidence in the text. Separate what the writer says from what you already know about the topic.
The library normally closes at six, but on Fridays it stays open until eight. When does it close on Friday?
The answer is eight. But introduces an exception to the normal closing time, so the first time mentioned is not the answer.
This teaching example is separate from the scored questions. After your test, compare any mistakes with the explanation and revisit the topic before trying again.