Accidental Rainforest IELTS Reading Answers

Preparing for IELTS and passing the exam in the first attempt helped me to gain the confidence to share my learnings. Undoubtedly, the IELTS Reading Section is a big challenge in cracking the IELTS exam and many students struggle with it. However, the test can be much easier to attempt with proper preparation. These “The Accidental Rainforest” reading answers are meant to help you understand the question types and difficulty levels. 

If you want to study abroad and you have a query about the IELTS Reading test, you are just at the right place. Let us talk about the IELTS Reading test section and its band scores.

IELTS Reading Band Scores Explained

The IELTS Reading test is based on three long texts and comprises 40 questions. Let's find out how your IELTS Reading band score is calculated.

Your IELTS Reading scores are calculated by the number of correct answers you have out of 40 questions in the test. On the IELTS Reading test, you get one point for every right answer. The number of correct answers you get will give you a "raw" score, which will then be used to figure out your band score. It's very important to try and answer every question as a blank answer will get no marks.

The reading part of your IELTS score counts towards your overall score.

The IELTS Reading test contains 40 questions. Each correct answer is awarded 1 mark. Scores out of 40 are converted to the IELTS 9-band scale. Full and half bands are used to show scores.

Marks out of 40

Academic

Number of correct Answers out of 40	IELTS Reading Academic Band Score
40	9
35	8
30	7
23	6
15	5

General Training

Number of Correct Questions out of 40	IELTS Reading General Training Band Score
35	7
30	6
23	5
15	4

Overall Band Scores

Band	Skill Level	Description
9	Expert user	Has fully operational command of the language: appropriate, accurate, and fluent with complete understanding.
8	Very good user	Has fully operational command of the language with only occasional unsystematic inaccuracies and inappropriacies. Misunderstandings may occur in unfamiliar situations. Handles complex detailed argumentation well.
6	Good u	Has operational command of the language, though with occasional inaccuracies, inappropriacies, and misunderstandings in some situations. Generally handles complex language well and understands detailed reasoning.
6	Competent user	Has generally effective command of the language despite some inaccuracies, inappropriacies, and misunderstandings. Can use and understand fairly complex language, particularly in familiar situations.
5	Modest user	Has partial command of the language, coping with overall meaning in most situations, though is likely to make many mistakes. Should be able to handle basic communication in own field.
4	Limited user	Basic competence is limited to familiar situations. Has frequent problems in understanding and expression. Is not able to use complex language.
3	Extremely limited user	Conveys and understands only general meaning in very familiar situations. Frequent breakdowns in communication occur.
2	Intermittent user	No real communication is possible except for the most basic information using isolated words or short formulae in familiar situations and to meet immediate needs. Has great difficulty understanding spoken and written English.
1	Non-user	Essentially cannot use the language beyond possibly a few isolated words.
0	Did not attempt the test	No accessible information was provided.

IELTS Reading Preparation: 5 Tips to Increase Your Score

Here are the top 5 tips for increasing your score in the IELTS Reading section:

1. Read the questions first: Familiarize yourself with the types of questions and their formats before starting the passage.
2. Do a quick scan of the passage: Look for keywords and main ideas to help you locate answers quickly.
3. Find the keywords: Each question will have keywords that help locate the information in the passage.
4. Learn how to paraphrase: Practice re-telling stories or information you read to improve comprehension and retention.
5. Build your vocabulary: Expanding your vocabulary will help you understand more complex texts and improve your overall reading speed.

Accidental Rainforest Reading Passage

When PeterOsbeck. a Swedish priest, stopped off at the mid-Atlantic island of Ascension in 1752 on his way home from China, he wrote of ‘a heap of ruinous rocks’ with a bare, white mountain in the middle. All it boasted was a couple of dozen species of plant, most of them ferns and some of them unique to the island.

And so it might have remained. But in 1843 British plant collector Joseph Hooker made a brief call on his return from Antarctica. Surveying the bare earth, he concluded that the island had suffered some natural calamity that had denuded it of vegetation and triggered a decline in rainfall that was turning the place into a desert. The British Navy, which by then maintained a garrison on the island, was keen to improve the place and asked Hooker's advice. He suggested an ambitious scheme for planting trees and shrubs that would revive rainfall and stimulate a wider ecological recovery. And, perhaps lacking anything else to do, the sailors set to with a will.

In 1845, a naval transport ship from Argentina delivered a batch of seedlings. In the following years, more than 200 species of plant arrived from South Africa, from England came 700 packets of seeds, including those of two species that especially liked the place: bamboo and prickly pear. With sailors planting several thousand trees a year, the bare white mountain was soon cloaked in green and renamed Green Mountain, and by the early twentieth century the mountain's slopes were covered with a variety of trees and shrubs from all over the world.

Modern ecologists throw up their hands in horror at what they see as Hookers environmental anarchy. The exotic species wrecked the indigenous ecosystem, squeezing out the islands endemic plants. In fact. Hooker knew well enough what might happen. However, he saw greater benefit in improving rainfall and encouraging more prolific vegetation on the island.

But there is a much deeper issue here than the relative benefits of sparse endemic species versus luxuriant imported ones. And as botanist David Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK pointed out after a recent visit to the island, it goes to the heart of some of the most dearly held tenets of ecology. Conservationists' understandable concern for the fate of Ascension’s handful of unique species has, he says, blinded them to something quite astonishing the fact that the introduced species have been a roaring success.

Today's Green Mountain, says Wilkinson, is ‘a fully functioning man-made tropical cloud forest' that has grown from scratch from a ragbag of species collected more or less at random from all over the planet. But how could it have happened? Conventional ecological theory says that complex ecosystems such as cloud forests can emerge only through evolutionary processes in which each organism develops in concert with others to fill particular niches. Plants evolve with their pollinators and seed dispersers, while microbes in the soil evolve to deal with the leaf litter.

But that’s not what happened on Green Mountain. And the experience suggests that perhaps natural rainforests are constructed far more by chance than by evolution. Species, say some ecologists, don’t evolve so much to create ecosystems as to make the best of what they have. ‘The Green Mountain system is a man-made system that has produced a tropical rainforest without any co-evolution between its constituent species,’ says Wilkinson.

Not everyone agrees. Alan Gray, an ecologist at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. argues that the surviving endemic species on Green Mountain, though small in number, may still form the framework of the new ecosystem. The new arrivals may just be an adornment, with little structural importance for the ecosystem.

But to Wilkinson, this sounds like clutching at straws. The idea of the instant formation of rainforests sounds increasingly plausible as research reveals that supposedly pristine tropical rainforests from the Amazon to Southeast Asia may in places be little more than the overgrown gardens of past rainforest civilizations.

The most surprising thing of all is that no ecologists have thought to conduct proper research into this human-made rainforest ecosystem. A survey of the island’s flora conducted six years ago by the University of Edinburgh was concerned only with endemic species. They characterized everything else as a threat. The Ascension authorities are currently turning Green Mountain into a national park where introduced species, at least the invasive ones, are earmarked for culling rather than conservation.

Conservationists have understandable concerns, Wilkinson says. At least four endemic species have gone extinct on Ascension since the exotics started arriving. But in their urgency to protect endemics, ecologists are missing out on the study of a great enigma.

‘As you walk through the forest, you see lots of leaves that have had chunks taken out of them by various insects. There are caterpillars and beetles around.' says Wilkinson. ‘But where did they come from? Are they endemic or alien? If alien, did they come with the plant on which they feed or discover it on arrival?’ Such questions go to the heart of how- rainforests happen.

The Green Mountain forest holds many secrets. The irony is that the most artificial rainforest in the world could tell us more about rainforest ecology than any number of natural forests.

Read more about: Tips For Reading in IELTS Exam | IELTS Academic Reading | IELTS Reading Tips And Tricks | IELTS Reading Band Score | IELTS General Reading Test | IELTS Reading Section |

Accidental Rainforest Reading Answers

Questions 1-5

Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-G from the box below.

Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

Guidelines/ Tip to Answer these kinds of questions: 

Questions 1-5 ask the candidates to choose the correct response from a list of options in the drop-down boxes next to them. Each letter (A-G) represents half of an idea and is mentioned in the box below the questions. Candidates must go through the passage and find the correct sentence fragment that completes the one in the question. 

A other rainforests may have originally been planted by man. B many of the island's original species were threatened with destruction. C the species in the original rainforest were more successful than the newer arrivals. D rainforests can only develop through a process of slow and complex evolution. E steps should be taken to prevent the destruction of the original ecosystem. F randomly introduced species can coexist together. G the introduced species may have less ecological significance than the original ones.

1. The reason for modern conservationists’ concern over Hooker's tree- planting program is that

Answer: B

Explanation: 

The answer to the above question can be found in the first three lines of the 4th paragraph. It mentions how the attempt by Hooker to restore the rainforest created an “environmental anarchy” by wrecking the existing ecosystem of the forest. Thus, it is evident why modern conservationists were against this gesture.

2. David Wilkinson says the creation of the rainforest in Ascension is important because it shows that

Answer: F

Explanation: 

The answer to this can be found in two separate passages. The last line of paragraph 5 mentions how Wilkinson believed the Ascension tree planting program was a “roaring success.” However, the answer to the above question is mentioned in the 5th line of the 6th paragraph. There, it says the co-evolving of various organisms in a complex ecosystem. 

3. Wilkinson says the existence of Ascension’s rainforest challenges the theory that

Answer: D

Explanation: 

The answer to this segment is provided in the 6th and 7th paragraphs. In the 4th line of the 6th paragraph, the conventional ecological theory of “complex ecosystems” is mentioned. However, this theory is challenged in the 1st line of the 7th paragraph. The following line states that rainforests are instead constructed rather than developed due to evolution, making D the right option.

4. Alan Gray questions Wilkinson’s theory, claiming that

Answer: G

Explanation: 

Alan Gray is mentioned in the 1st line of the 8th paragraph. The claims by the ecologist at Edinburgh University are further elaborated in the following lines. The mention of an argument challenging the previous statements by Wilkinson is in coherence with the idea in option G, making it the correct choice. 

5. Additional support for Wilkinson's theory comes from findings that

Answer: A

Explanation: 

Other than option A, all other options are exhausted now, making it the obvious choice. However, even without that conclusion, the idea can be seen mentioned in the last sentence of the 5th paragraph. The ecologists are said to remain “blinded” to the fact that the Ascension’s unique species was a success. A further argument is exhibited in the 1st line of the 6th paragraph, stating most tropical cloud forests are man-made. In the 3rd and 4th lines of the same section, the conventional theories of ecological significance have been dismissed by Wilkinson. 

Questions 6-8

Choose the correct letter: A, B, C or D

Write your answers in boxes 6-8 on your answer sheet.

Guidelines/ Tips to Answer these kinds of questions: 

To answer the accidental rainforest reading questions 6-8, candidates must read the entire passage and comprehend its concepts. Afterward, they need to choose the correct option that completes the idea of the question. This is similar to questions 1-5. The only difference here is that instead of giving a bunch of common answers to select form, each segment here comes with its own separate set of options. However, candidates must understand that answering these sections requires a higher level of comprehensive ability. 

6.    Wilkinson suggests that conservationists' concern about the island is misguided because

1.  it is based on economic rather than environmental principles.
2. it is not focusing on the most important question.
3. it is encouraging the destruction of endemic species.
4. it is not supported by the local authorities.

Answer: B

Explanation: 

The accidental rainforest reading answer to the above statement is B since Wilkinson’s theory has been shown to dismiss that of the conservationists throughout the passage. This can be seen in paragraph 5, where Wilkinson is quoted as calling the conservationists “blinded” by their ideas. In the 6th paragraph, further arguments have been established in favor of Wilkinson’s justification. All of this indicates that the conservationists are not looking at the bigger picture, making B the correct answer. 

7.    According to Wilkinson, studies of insects on the island could demonstrate

1.   the possibility of new ecological relationships.
2. a future threat to the ecosystem of the island.
3. the existence of previously unknown species.
4. a chance for the survival of rainforest ecology.

Answer: A

Explanation: 

The correct answer to the accidental rainforest reading question no. 7 is A, as can be seen in the 12th paragraph. Insects are mentioned in the 2nd line of the 12th paragraph. The entire section questions the conventional theories of conservationists. This is a continuation of the previous paragraph in which the possibilities of the “great enigma” are explained. 

8.    Overall, what feature of the Ascension rainforest does the writer stress?

1. the conflict of natural and artificial systems
2. the unusual nature of its ecological structure
3. the harm done by interfering with nature
4. the speed and success of its development

Answer: D

Explanation: 

Deriving the answer to this question can be challenging. Nowhere in the accidental rainforest reading passage are the words “speed” and “success” mentioned. To make things more confusing, all the other statements may seem to correlate with the main idea. However, the passage focuses on the coexistence of natural and artificial systems instead of the conflict. According to the passage, the “harm done by interfering with nature” is a false statement. But options B and D both can be correct in this case. D is the right answer here only because it establishes the entire theme of the passage rather than focusing on the paragraphs separately.

Conclusion

Going through the intricacies of the IELTS Reading section can indeed be a challenge, but it becomes significantly more manageable with good preparation. The insights from “The Accidental Rainforest” answers are crafted to make you understand the question types and their complexities. For aspirants aiming to study abroad, understanding small details of the IELTS Reading test and its scoring system is pivotal. As shown, each correct response contributes to your overall band score, underscoring the importance of precision and comprehension.