IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 16

Text A — THE STARLIGHT CINEMA: WEEKLY SCHEDULE, SCREEN 1

This week's screenings on Screen 1 (large auditorium, 320 seats, Dolby Atmos sound). Monday (Classic Film Night) - 14:00 The Sound of Singing (1965, U, 175 min) — afternoon matinee, £6.50 all tickets - 19:30 Casablanca (1942, PG, 102 min) — restored 4K print, £9.50 adults

Tuesday (Family Films) - 11:00 The Friendly Fox and Friends (2025, U, 88 min) — under-fives generally free with an accompanying adult - 14:30 The Friendly Fox and Friends — second screening - 17:00 The Last Treasure of the Marsh (2026, PG, 112 min) - 20:00 Highway Nine (2026, 12A, 134 min) — director Q&A normally takes place after the screening

Wednesday (£5 night, all films): a selection of recent releases at £5 per ticket regardless of age.

Thursday-Sunday: please check the daily printed schedule available at the box office. Bookings can be made online up to one hour before the screening. Ticket types and concessions: - Adult standard ticket: £11.50 - Concession (over-65, student with valid ID, registered carer): £8.50 - Child (4-15): £7.50 - Under-3s admitted free to U and PG films only, on a parent's lap, with no seat allocated. Loyalty card: For £30 per year the loyalty card gives £3.00 off every ticket, a free small popcorn on Tuesdays, and one free guest ticket each calendar month. The loyalty card cannot be combined with the Wednesday £5 night offer.

House rules: - Hot food other than that bought from the cinema kiosk is not permitted in the auditorium. - Latecomers would not be admitted to a screening more than 15 minutes after its scheduled start. - Mobile phones must be silenced. Staff generally have the right to ask customers using a phone screen during the film to leave.

Text B — RIVERTOWN INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL: VISITOR PROGRAMME

The Rivertown Independent Film Festival runs from Friday 19th to Sunday 21st at four venues across the town. This is the eighteenth festival, founded in 2009.

Festival venues: - Main venue: The Starlight Cinema (full programme of features) - The Old Granary (documentary strand only) - Rivertown Town Hall (free outdoor screenings on Saturday evening) - The Library Theatre (short-film programmes and Q&A sessions)

Festival pass: - Three-day full pass: £75 (£60 concession). Generally guarantees admission to all paid screenings except the Saturday outdoor gala, which is free but requires a separate ticket from the Town Hall reception. - One-day pass: £35 (£28 concession). - Individual screening: £10 / £8 concession, normally sold one hour before screening on a first-come, first-served basis.

Volunteer programme: - Volunteers typically receive a festival pass in exchange for two four-hour shifts during the weekend. Apply online at rivertownfilm.example by Sunday 7th of next month. References from a previous volunteer role are welcome but not required.

Family events: - Saturday morning at the Library Theatre: a free children's short-film hour for under-tens, followed by a making-films-with-your-phone workshop. Booking is essential and tickets are released exactly two weeks before the festival opens.

Access: - All festival venues are wheelchair accessible. Live captioning is normally provided for the opening-night feature and three weekend screenings; a complete list of captioned screenings is on the festival website.

Text C — STARLIGHT CINEMA USHER INDUCTION

Congratulations on joining the team at the Starlight Cinema. The following notes broadly summarise the practical information you will need during your first month as an usher.

Your role: - You are the face of the cinema to our customers. The bulk of your work involves checking tickets, guiding customers to their seats, monitoring screens during films, and cleaning auditoriums between shows. - An usher shift is normally six hours, including one paid 20-minute break and one unpaid 30-minute meal break for shifts of more than five hours.

Uniform: - A clean black shirt with the cinema logo (supplied) and black trousers or a black knee-length skirt (purchased by the employee) are worn for every shift. No jeans, leggings, or shorts. - Closed-toe black shoes are required. Soft-soled shoes are recommended given the amount of time you would spend on your feet. - Long hair must be tied back during food-service shifts and when cleaning auditoriums.

Pay and tips: - The hourly rate is set out in your offer letter. A higher Sunday rate applies to all shifts that begin on a Sunday. Public-holiday pay is double the standard rate. - Tips are not part of usher work. If a customer offers a personal cash tip, you should politely refuse it and direct them to the customer-experience comments card at the box office.

Screen checks: - Once a film has largely started, you must enter the auditorium twice during the screening: once approximately twenty minutes in, and once approximately fifteen minutes before the end. Each check is recorded on the screen-check tablet at the door. - During each check, generally scan the room for: phone use during the film, hot food brought in from outside, and any behaviour that disturbs other guests. - Approach any rule-breaker quietly. Speak softly so that the audience is not further disturbed. Escalate to the duty manager if a customer refuses to comply.

Reporting incidents: - Spills, lost property, and customer complaints must be entered in the incident log at the customer-service desk before the end of your shift. - A serious incident — a fall, an injury, an aggressive customer, or a child separated from a parent — must be reported to the duty manager immediately, by radio if possible. Text D — TRAINING TIMELINE: FIRST THREE MONTHS

All new ushers generally complete a structured training programme during the first three months in post. Failure to complete the programme on time may extend your probation by up to three months.

Week 1: - Two shifts paired with an experienced usher. You will normally observe but should not yet attempt independent ticket checks or seat-conflict resolution. - Complete e-learning modules: Fire Evacuation, Customer-First Basics, and Data Protection Essentials. Week 2: - Begin independent ticket checking with light supervision. You will start to lead screen checks during your second week, supported by your buddy for the first three checks. - Attend a one-hour briefing on accessible seating, including how to operate the platform lift to the wheelchair rows.

Weeks 3-4: - Complete the e-learning module Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults. Attend the half-day in-person session at the head-office training room. - A first probation review takes place at the end of week four. Your duty manager will give written feedback and agree any additional training.

Months 2-3: - You will be added to the rota for solo closing-up duties at the end of late screenings. Closing-up means a final check of all auditoriums, locking the kiosk and main entrance, and setting the alarm. - Begin shadowing the box-office team for two short shifts to learn the booking system, in preparation for moving to a flexible 'usher and box-office' role at the end of your probation.

After three months: the final probation review normally takes place with the deputy manager. Successful trainees generally move onto the full hourly rate and become eligible for the staff loyalty card, which gives free entry to all weekday screenings.

A Popcorn — the snack that today seems inseparable from a cinema visit — predates the cinema by thousands of years. The Native peoples of the Americas have been growing and popping a variety of maize known as Zea mays everta, 'popcorn corn,' since at least 4700 BCE. Charred kernels of popcorn corn were excavated by archaeologists from a cave in the Tehuacán Valley of central Mexico in the 1960s, and the variety was being cultivated across what is now the southwestern United States and Peru long before European arrival. The mechanism of popping was understood in practical terms: each kernel of popcorn corn has a thick, sealed hull with a small reserve of moisture inside. When heated, the moisture turns to steam, and at around 180 degrees Celsius the pressure splits the hull, expanding the starch into the white, irregular shape we recognise today.

B Popcorn arrived as a commercial product in nineteenth-century United States, where small operators sold it from carts and wagons in towns and at outdoor entertainments. The crucial industrial development came in 1893, when the inventor Charles Cretors of Chicago patented a steam-powered popcorn cart. The Cretors machine could pop, season, and dispense popcorn while moving through a fairground or down a street — a small spectacle in itself, and one that, according to most accounts, established the smell of fresh popcorn as part of public entertainment. Within fifteen years, Cretors machines were operating in every major American city.

C The cinema, by contrast, was hostile to popcorn for its first two decades. The early movie theatres of the 1910s and 1920s were modelled on theatrical venues, with carpeted floors, plush seats, and proprietors who considered street food beneath their establishment's dignity. Customers were sometimes searched for outside snacks at the door. Popcorn was sold instead from street vendors who stationed their carts near cinema entrances, and customers smuggled bags inside. The cinema operators complained about the mess, but the smell continued to draw customers in.

D The relationship was transformed by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cinema profits collapsed, and operators began to look hungrily at the popcorn sellers on the pavement outside. Popcorn was cheap to produce — a sack of unpopped kernels yielded an enormous quantity of finished product, with a margin of more than five hundred per cent. Cinemas began to install their own popcorn counters in lobbies during the early 1930s. By the end of the decade, popcorn sales were contributing substantially to cinema revenues. The Second World War, which made sugar scarce and reduced the supply of chocolate-based sweets, only accelerated the rise of popcorn, which used no sugar at all in its traditional salt-and-butter form.

E The post-war decades brought further industrial advances. Pre-popped popcorn sold in cellophane bags reached supermarket shelves in the 1950s. The breakthrough product, however, was microwave popcorn, first patented in 1945 by an engineer at the Raytheon company who had been investigating microwave radiation for radar applications. The development of low-cost microwave ovens for domestic kitchens in the 1970s and 1980s allowed microwave popcorn to become a mass product. By the 1990s it was, in the author's view, one of the most common items in an American supermarket trolley.

F Two contemporary trends are reshaping the industry. The first is health and ingredients. Microwave popcorn bags traditionally contained a chemical called diacetyl, which produced an artificial butter flavour but was linked in the early 2000s to a respiratory condition known informally as 'popcorn lung.' Major manufacturers reformulated their products following lawsuits brought by factory workers, and diacetyl has now reportedly been removed from almost all commercial popcorn. At the same time, popcorn has been rebranded as a relatively healthy snack — high in fibre, low in calories when air-popped, and gluten-free — and has been adopted by a new generation of artisan brands selling premium small-batch flavoured varieties.

G The second trend concerns the cinema itself. As cinema attendance has declined under competition from streaming services, the share of cinema revenues coming from food has risen further: by some industry estimates, food and drink now generate more profit than ticket sales in many North American multiplexes, and popcorn remains the single most important product. Chains have responded by widening their menus to include savoury hot food, beer, and wine — but popcorn, still served in the familiar paper bucket, remains the unmistakable signature of a cinema visit. The smell that drew customers into the lobbies of the Depression-era cinemas is still doing its work today.

H Few snack foods have, in the author's view, so closely tracked the cultural history of an entertainment medium. The popcorn industry is, in its way, a small history of the twentieth century: of mass entertainment, of mass production, of changing ideas about diet and health, and of an unbroken connection between cinema-going and a particular smell that has lasted for almost a hundred years.