GT IELTS Collection 1 Reading Test 13

The Best Travel Bags

A. The Apex Adventure Duffel

A stylish travel duffel that’s surprisingly roomy. The heavy-duty canvas exterior is tough and weather-resistant, so it can handle being tossed into cabs or overhead bins without a scratch during your longest travel days.

B. The Sovereign Leather Weekender

With rich mahogany leather and brushed brass hardware, this oversized tote from a top designer is the ultimate luxury buy. If you’re spending this much on a weekend bag, you’d better be planning a five-star getaway to match.

C. The Nomad Tech Pack

A dependable travel backpack made from tough ballistic nylon with sturdy side panels to protect your gear. The built-in locking zippers offer great security, giving you total peace of mind while you commute or fly to your next exciting destination.

D. Wanderlust Packable Daypack

Practical and budget-friendly, these packable daypacks are incredibly reliable. They come in a variety of bright, fun colors to go with anything in your vacation wardrobe, making them easy to spot on a crowded tour bus or a busy airport terminal.

E. Voyager Hybrid Holdall

If you need something between a massive hiking pack and a small gym bag, this is the perfect middle ground. It features tuck-away backpack straps, a padded crossbody strap, and a lifetime warranty. Plus, it's available in a fun neon camo.

F. The Urbanite Courier

From the makers of your favorite minimalist wallets, this messenger bag is a joy to carry. With custom linings and the brand's signature magnetic clasps, this crossbody is as trendy, sleek, and modern as they come.

G. The Heritage Rucksack

Travel in classic style with this gorgeous backpack inspired by old-school mountaineering. Made of waxed cotton, it features thick leather straps and an internal frame to help it keep its classic shape.

LONDON ACADEMY OF MUSIC & DRAMATIC ART (LAMDA)

One-Year Intensive Acting Program

This intensive course is for people who have finished their formal studies and already have some theater or film experience. To be accepted, you need to be highly motivated, know how the industry works, and be driven to succeed.

First Term

: You will take technical classes in acting, voice, general and applied movement, character development, music, singing, film, radio, and career prep. The term ends with an internal show for students and instructors.

Second Term

: Technical classes continue. You will perform an internal one-act play, record an audio showreel in a professional studio, and act in a Showcase Drama for an invited audience of agents and casting directors.

Third Term

: Alongside ongoing technical classes, this term focuses heavily on audition skills, workshops, and masterclasses. You will also act in an outdoor public play at Blenheim Palace and perform in a short film shot on location by a professional crew.

Application Guidelines

Entry to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art is based entirely on your audition; there are no academic requirements for any of our programs.

Once we receive your completed application form and the required audition fee to start the review process, our admissions team will email you your assigned audition date and full details on what to expect during your visit.

In preparation for the first audition, you must carefully prepare two contrasting monologues from published stage plays, each lasting strictly under two minutes. Since the day involves active group work, please wear loose, comfortable clothes.

If you are applying from abroad, you can complete your first audition remotely. After we process your application and fee, we will invite you to submit your video audition via DVD, YouTube, or a secure link. If you pass this initial round, you will be formally invited to attend all future auditions in person at the school.

To make travel easier, the school provides a free bus from central London for everyone attending these in-person auditions.

Saving energy at work — handy hints for managers

Wasted electricity can add significantly to the running costs of UK businesses. Reducing workplace energy use is about working more efficiently. When firms work more efficiently, both bills and pressure on the grid are reduced.

Setting up an energy scheme

Energy audit

Before rolling out an energy scheme, carry out an audit. This shows where most of your energy is being used.

Company policy

Review energy contracts and consider whether a different tariff would reduce costs. Buy energy-saving bulbs. Although they cost more upfront, lighting bills can be cut by reducing use and installing occupancy sensors in spaces where lights are easily left on.

Get everyone involved

Build awareness on every floor by sticking reminder posters above each light switch.

Choose one staff member as the energy champion and the first point of contact for any questions.

There are two more ways to keep staff engaged:

Run a friendly contest among floors or teams. Award a small token to the group whose meter shows the biggest drop over a set period.

Monthly bulletins can be circulated, listing the kilowatts saved. Reading them helps workers see the difference their habits are making.

WHAT TO TARGET AND HOW

Lighting

A recent survey suggests that lighting can account for a large share of office electricity use, sometimes approaching 40%. Lighting is essential, but it is not necessary to use overhead lighting at all times. On bright days, daylight from the windows is enough for many tasks, including general paperwork. Desk lamps can also be used for close-up work.

Heating and cooling

Rather than leaving radiators on a single setting all day, fit thermostatic valves so that room temperatures can be controlled more precisely. With proper use, heating costs can come down. In summer, timers and temperature limits on air-conditioning keep cooling demand down.

Office equipment

Office machines draw current even when not in use. This standby load builds up into a sizable share of the bill, particularly when devices stay on overnight, over weekends or during holidays when no one is in. Why not put screens to sleep after a few idle minutes? Kettles and microwaves should also be unplugged from the socket overnight, since they keep drawing power.

HOW TO GIVE A SUCCESSFUL PRESENTATION

Anyone preparing a talk can learn from the coaches who train senior managers to speak in public. Their view is that any speaker can get across the headline point they planned, whatever the day's topic.

Unlike stand-up comedians, who can switch bits if the room cools, business presenters must keep to the brief they have been given, says Caleb Rowe of the speaker training firm Westover. You can still move quickly to the message you really want listeners to remember, he adds.

He tells presenters at company meetings to work to the formula T = O + 3: T is the whole talk; O is the opening; + is the bridge between opening and body; and 3 is the three core points for listeners to take home.

Careful preparation matters just as much to making a presentation land, say senior managers. They share a few practical tips:

Find out about the audience beforehand. Talk to the event organisers in advance to learn what listeners care about. Reading some recent industry articles about their sector can also help, showing what is currently on people's minds. Your examples can then be matched to the room.

Practise the talk aloud before the day, ideally with a colleague whose judgement you trust. A run-through catches sentences that read fine on paper but feel clumsy from the stage, and tells you whether you can fit the material into the time given.

During the Q&A, expect difficult questions on your figures or your conclusions, and resist any urge to wave them off. Ms Tilley, a coach who works with senior speakers, says that bluffing is the worst response to a hard question from the floor. If a question goes beyond your knowledge, say so plainly and carry on with the next part of your plan.

Drawing a lesson from any difficult talk is the final tip. 'A failed talk teaches as much as a brilliant one,' says Mr Holloway, a senior manager who has spoken at conferences for fifteen years. After a talk that went badly this spring, he focused more closely on the real needs of the people attending — what they had come to the conference hoping to learn about the industry — and the next talk went very differently. 'I learnt more from that one talk than from any other,' he adds.

Thomas Young: The last man who knew everything

In the 21st century, it would be quite impossible for even the most learned man to know everything. However, as recently as the 18th century, there were those whose knowledge encompassed most of the information available at that time.

This is a review of a biography of one such man.

Thomas Young (1773–1829) contributed 63 articles to the great British encyclopaedia,

Encyclopaedia Britannica

, including 46 biographical entries (mostly on scientists and classical scholars) and substantial essays on ‘Bridge’ (a card game), ‘Egypt’, ‘Languages’ and ‘Tides’. Was someone who could write authoritatively about so many subjects a genius, or a dilettante? In an ambitious biography, Andrew Robinson argues that Young is a good contender to be described as ‘the last man who knew everything’. Young has competition, however: the phrase, which Robinson uses as the title of his biography of Young, also serves as the subtitle of two other recent biographies – Leonard Warren’s life of palaeontologist Joseph Leidy (1823–1891) and Paula Findlen’s 2004 book on Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680).

Young, of course, did more than write encyclopaedia entries. He presented his first paper, on the human eye, to the prestigious academic institution, the Royal Society of London, at the age of 20 and was elected a Fellow of the Society shortly afterwards. In the paper, which sought to explain how the eye focuses on objects at varying distances, Young hypothesised that this was achieved by changes in the shape of the lens. He also theorised that light travels in waves and believed that, to be able to see in colour, there must be three receptors in the eye corresponding to the three principal colours (red, green and violet) to which the retina could respond. All these hypotheses were subsequently proved correct.

Later in his life, when he was in his forties, Young was instrumental in cracking the code that unlocked the unknown script on the Rosetta Stone, a tablet found in Egypt by the Napoleonic army in 1799. The stone has text in three alphabets: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs and another script that was originally unrecognisable. The unrecognisable script is now known as demotic and, as Young deduced, is directly related to Egyptian hieroglyphs. His initial work on this appeared in the ‘

Britannica

entry ‘Egypt’. In another entry, Young coined the term ‘Indo-European’ to describe the family of languages spoken throughout most of Europe and northern India. These works are landmark achievements for a man who was a child prodigy but who, unlike many remarkable children, did not fade into obscurity as an adult.

Born in 1773 in Somerset, England, Young lived with his maternal grandfather from an early age. He devoured books from the age of two and excelled at Latin, Greek, mathematics and natural philosophy (the 18th-century term for science). After leaving school, he was greatly encouraged by Richard Brocklesby, a physician and Fellow of the Royal Society. Following Brocklesby’s lead, Young decided to pursue a career in medicine. He studied in London and then moved on to more formal education in Edinburgh, Göttingen and Cambridge. After completing his medical training at the University of Cambridge in 1808, Young set up practice as a physician in London and, a few years later, was appointed physician at St George’s Hospital.

Young’s skill as a physician, however, did not equal his talent as a scholar of natural philosophy or linguistics. In 1801, he had been appointed to a professorship of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution, where he delivered as many as 60 lectures a year. His opinions were sought by civic and national authorities on matters such as the introduction of gas lighting to London streets and methods of ship construction. From 1819, he was Superintendent of the

Nautical Almanac

and Secretary to the Board of Longitude. Between 1816 and 1825, he contributed many entries to the Encyclopaedia

Britannica

, and throughout his career he authored numerous other essays, papers and books.

Young is a perfect subject for a biography – perfect, but daunting. Few men contributed so much to so many technical fields. Robinson’s aim is to introduce non-scientists to Young’s work and life. He succeeds, providing clear expositions of the technical material (especially that on optics and Egyptian hieroglyphs). Some readers of this book will, like Robinson, find Young’s accomplishments impressive; others will see him, as some historians have, as a dilettante. Yet despite the rich material presented in this book, readers will not end up knowing Young personally. We catch glimpses of a playful Young, doodling Greek and Latin phrases in his notes on medical lectures and translating the verses that a young lady had written on the walls of a summerhouse into Greek elegiacs. Young was introduced into elite society, attended the theatre and learned to dance and play the flute. In addition, he was an accomplished horseman. However, his personal life looks pale next to his vibrant career and studies.

Young married Eliza Maxwell in 1804, and according to Robinson, ‘their marriage was happy and she appreciated his work’. Almost all we know about her is that she sustained her husband through some acrimonious disputes about optics and that she worried about money when his medical career was slow to take off. Little evidence survives concerning the complexities of Young’s relationships with his mother and father, and Robinson does not credit them with shaping Young’s extraordinary mind. Despite the lack of personal detail, anyone interested in what it means to be a genius should read this book.

Thomas Young: The last man who knew everything

In the 21st century, it would be quite impossible for even the most learned man to know everything. However, as recently as the 18th century, there were those whose knowledge encompassed most of the information available at that time.

This is a review of a biography of one such man.

Thomas Young (1773–1829) contributed 63 articles to the great British encyclopaedia,

Encyclopaedia Britannica

, including 46 biographical entries (mostly on scientists and classical scholars) and substantial essays on ‘Bridge’ (a card game), ‘Egypt’, ‘Languages’ and ‘Tides’. Was someone who could write authoritatively about so many subjects a genius, or a dilettante? In an ambitious biography, Andrew Robinson argues that Young is a good contender to be described as ‘the last man who knew everything’. Young has competition, however: the phrase, which Robinson uses as the title of his biography of Young, also serves as the subtitle of two other recent biographies – Leonard Warren’s life of palaeontologist Joseph Leidy (1823–1891) and Paula Findlen’s 2004 book on Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680).

Young, of course, did more than write encyclopaedia entries. He presented his first paper, on the human eye, to the prestigious academic institution, the Royal Society of London, at the age of 20 and was elected a Fellow of the Society shortly afterwards. In the paper, which sought to explain how the eye focuses on objects at varying distances, Young hypothesised that this was achieved by changes in the shape of the lens. He also theorised that light travels in waves and believed that, to be able to see in colour, there must be three receptors in the eye corresponding to the three principal colours (red, green and violet) to which the retina could respond. All these hypotheses were subsequently proved correct.

Later in his life, when he was in his forties, Young was instrumental in cracking the code that unlocked the unknown script on the Rosetta Stone, a tablet found in Egypt by the Napoleonic army in 1799. The stone has text in three alphabets: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs and another script that was originally unrecognisable. The unrecognisable script is now known as demotic and, as Young deduced, is directly related to Egyptian hieroglyphs. His initial work on this appeared in the ‘

Britannica

entry ‘Egypt’. In another entry, Young coined the term ‘Indo-European’ to describe the family of languages spoken throughout most of Europe and northern India. These works are landmark achievements for a man who was a child prodigy but who, unlike many remarkable children, did not fade into obscurity as an adult.

Born in 1773 in Somerset, England, Young lived with his maternal grandfather from an early age. He devoured books from the age of two and excelled at Latin, Greek, mathematics and natural philosophy (the 18th-century term for science). After leaving school, he was greatly encouraged by Richard Brocklesby, a physician and Fellow of the Royal Society. Following Brocklesby’s lead, Young decided to pursue a career in medicine. He studied in London and then moved on to more formal education in Edinburgh, Göttingen and Cambridge. After completing his medical training at the University of Cambridge in 1808, Young set up practice as a physician in London and, a few years later, was appointed physician at St George’s Hospital.

Young’s skill as a physician, however, did not equal his talent as a scholar of natural philosophy or linguistics. In 1801, he had been appointed to a professorship of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution, where he delivered as many as 60 lectures a year. His opinions were sought by civic and national authorities on matters such as the introduction of gas lighting to London streets and methods of ship construction. From 1819, he was Superintendent of the

Nautical Almanac

and Secretary to the Board of Longitude. Between 1816 and 1825, he contributed many entries to the Encyclopaedia

Britannica

, and throughout his career he authored numerous other essays, papers and books.

Young is a perfect subject for a biography – perfect, but daunting. Few men contributed so much to so many technical fields. Robinson’s aim is to introduce non-scientists to Young’s work and life. He succeeds, providing clear expositions of the technical material (especially that on optics and Egyptian hieroglyphs). Some readers of this book will, like Robinson, find Young’s accomplishments impressive; others will see him, as some historians have, as a dilettante. Yet despite the rich material presented in this book, readers will not end up knowing Young personally. We catch glimpses of a playful Young, doodling Greek and Latin phrases in his notes on medical lectures and translating the verses that a young lady had written on the walls of a summerhouse into Greek elegiacs. Young was introduced into elite society, attended the theatre and learned to dance and play the flute. In addition, he was an accomplished horseman. However, his personal life looks pale next to his vibrant career and studies.

Young married Eliza Maxwell in 1804, and according to Robinson, ‘their marriage was happy and she appreciated his work’. Almost all we know about her is that she sustained her husband through some acrimonious disputes about optics and that she worried about money when his medical career was slow to take off. Little evidence survives concerning the complexities of Young’s relationships with his mother and father, and Robinson does not credit them with shaping Young’s extraordinary mind. Despite the lack of personal detail, anyone interested in what it means to be a genius should read this book.