IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 2

Text A — GREENPARK LEISURE CENTRE: MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION 2026

Greenpark Leisure Centre offers four membership tiers designed to suit different needs and budgets. All memberships generally run on a 12-month rolling contract, with one month's notice required for cancellation after the initial three-month minimum period.

BRONZE (£28 / month) - Off-peak gym access only (10:00 - 16:00 weekdays) - Two free fitness assessments per year - 10% discount on personal training sessions - Not valid on bank holidays

SILVER (£42 / month) - Full gym access (06:00 - 22:00 weekdays, 08:00 - 20:00 weekends) - Swimming pool access during open-swim sessions - Four group exercise classes per month included - 15% discount on personal training

GOLD (£58 / month) - Everything included in the Silver tier - Unlimited group exercise classes (yoga, spin, pilates, aqua-fit, body-pump) - Free guest pass each calendar month - Towel service included - Free creche use during peak hours (an additional cost applies outside peak)

PLATINUM (£79 / month) - Everything included in the Gold tier - Sauna and steam-room access - Squash and tennis court bookings included (typically up to 8 hours/month) - Three personal training sessions per month included - Access to the rooftop running track, normally available from April to September

Joining fee: £25 (waived for direct-debit sign-ups completed online before 31st March). Annual upfront payment receives a 10% discount on the total. Family memberships are calculated as full price for the first adult, 50% for the second adult, and £8 per child under 16. Photo ID is required at first visit. Lockers are normally free for members but require a £2 deposit returned at the end of each visit.

Greenpark members are also entitled to a 15% discount in the on-site café and at the sports-shop concession. The centre's manager runs a free "new member" tour each Saturday morning at 10:00, by booking only, lasting around forty-five minutes.

Text B — CITY BIKE-SHARE: NEW USER GUIDE

Welcome to CityCycle, the public bike-share scheme currently operating in 142 stations across the central and inner-suburban zones.

How it works: 1. Download the CityCycle app or use any station kiosk. Registration is completed with a debit or credit card. 2. Unlock a bike using either your app, an RFID card, or a temporary unlock code sent by SMS. 3. Cycle to any CityCycle station and return the bike to a free docking point.

Pricing: - Pay-as-you-go: £1 unlock, then 8p per minute. The first 30 minutes of any single ride are free for registered users. - Daily pass: £6 for unlimited rides under 60 minutes within 24 hours. - Annual membership: £85, includes unlimited rides under 45 minutes. - E-bike supplement: 12p per minute, regardless of membership tier.

If you keep a bike for more than 24 hours without docking, a £150 lost-bike charge will apply. Rides longer than 3 hours generally incur an additional £15 overtime fee on top of standard per-minute rates.

Helmets are not provided and are not currently required by law, although they are strongly recommended. Lights are fitted to every bike and switch on automatically in low light. Damaged bikes should be reported through the app — your account will be credited with a free 30-minute ride.

Children under 14 may not use the standard scheme; family bikes with child seats are available at 11 designated stations on weekends only. Concessionary annual memberships at £40 are available for full-time students, jobseekers, and residents over 65; the application form is normally completed at the central CityCycle office on Market Street.

Text C — WESTLAND HOTELS GROUP: NEW STAFF TRAINING MANUAL (Extract)

Welcome to Westland Hotels Group. This manual covers the structured training programme that every new employee, regardless of role, completes during their first 90 days of employment.

WEEK 1 — INDUCTION AND ORIENTATION All new staff generally complete a five-day induction at one of our three regional training centres, located in Manchester, Birmingham, or London. Travel and accommodation costs are normally covered by the company for staff travelling more than 30 miles from their home address. The week covers company history and values, basic IT systems (front-desk software, payroll portal, internal email), data protection (GDPR Foundations), fire safety, and an introduction to our service standards. Attendance is compulsory; failure to attend without a written-and-approved reason will be treated as a disciplinary matter.

WEEKS 2-4 — ROLE-SPECIFIC SHADOWING For the next three weeks, new staff are paired with an experienced colleague (your "buddy") in their assigned department. Your buddy is responsible for showing you day-to-day procedures, introducing you to colleagues, and answering routine questions. You should keep a learning log during this period and submit it to your line manager at the end of week 4. The line manager will then meet with you for a 30-minute review meeting.

WEEKS 5-8 — SUPERVISED PRACTICE You will now generally perform your duties independently, but with a supervisor reviewing key transactions or service interactions at the end of each shift. Any errors will normally be addressed with you the same day. Two-way feedback is encouraged: if you notice that a procedure could be improved, raise it with your supervisor or use the suggestion portal on the intranet.

WEEKS 9-12 — FULL DUTIES AND ASSESSMENT By week 9 you will be operating as a full member of the team, with formal assessment occurring in week 12. The assessment consists of a written test on policies and procedures (70% pass mark), a customer-service observation conducted by an assessor posing as a guest, and a 45-minute interview with your line manager. Successful completion confirms your permanent status and triggers the first salary review. Staff who do not pass may repeat the assessment once after 30 days of additional training; if the second attempt is unsuccessful, employment will be terminated with statutory notice.

Text D — IT SECURITY POLICY (Required Reading During Induction Week)

All Westland Hotels employees with access to company systems must comply with the following IT security rules. Failure to comply may sometimes result in disciplinary action including dismissal.

PASSWORDS - Passwords must contain a minimum of 12 characters and include uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and at least one symbol. - Passwords must be changed every 90 days. Re-use of any of the previous five passwords is prohibited. - Never share your password with any colleague, manager, or external party — including IT support, who will never ask for it.

EMAIL AND PHISHING - Treat any unexpected email asking for personal information, money transfers, or login credentials as suspicious. Forward it to phishing@westlandhotels.com and delete. - Do not click on links in unsolicited emails. Hover over the link to verify the destination before clicking on any business email.

PERSONAL DEVICES - Personal mobile phones and laptops may not be connected to the company guest Wi-Fi while you are on duty. A separate staff Wi-Fi network is available for personal use during breaks. - Storage of guest data on personal devices is strictly prohibited.

LOST OR STOLEN DEVICES - Any loss of a company laptop, tablet, or mobile phone must be reported to your line manager and the IT helpdesk within one hour of discovery.

GENERAL CONDUCT - Treat the systems and the data within them as the property of the company and its guests. - The IT helpdesk is staffed weekdays 07:00 to 22:00; outside these hours, voicemail messages should be left and will be returned at the next opening.

A The bicycle, in something like its modern form, is barely 150 years old, yet its impact on personal mobility, urban design, and even the social position of women has been profound. The story of how a curious nineteenth-century novelty became what is widely considered the most extensively produced vehicle in human history begins not with the chain-driven safety bicycle of the 1880s but with a much earlier and rather stranger ancestor: the Laufmaschine, or "running machine," patented by the German inventor Karl Drais in 1817. Typically pushed along by the rider's feet on the ground, the Laufmaschine had no pedals, no chain, and no brakes — yet it established the basic principle that a human being could balance on two in-line wheels.

B Pedals were added in the 1860s by French inventors, who attached them directly to the front wheel of a wooden-framed two-wheeler. The resulting machine, commonly known as the "boneshaker" because of the harsh ride produced by its iron-rimmed wooden wheels on cobbled streets, enjoyed a brief vogue but was soon overtaken by the high-wheeler, or "penny-farthing," so named after the dramatic difference in size between its enormous front wheel and its tiny rear one. The penny-farthing's huge front wheel allowed each pedal-stroke to cover more ground, but riding it was difficult and frequently dangerous: mounting normally required acrobatic skill, and a fall from the seat — six feet or more above the ground — could often be serious.

C The decisive innovation arrived in 1885 with John Kemp Starley's "Rover Safety Bicycle." Starley returned both wheels to roughly equal size, connected the rear wheel to a chain driven by pedals mounted between the wheels, and gave the rider a low, stable centre of gravity. The result was almost immediately recognisable as a modern bicycle. Within a decade, the safety bicycle had displaced the penny-farthing almost completely. The introduction of pneumatic rubber tyres by the Scottish inventor John Boyd Dunlop in 1888 added the final ingredient: a smooth, cushioned ride on rough roads. Cycling became something that almost anyone could learn and enjoy.

D The social effects are widely considered to have been dramatic. The bicycle gave working-class men and women an affordable, independent mode of transport for the first time in history. For women in particular, it appeared transformative. The American suffragist Susan B. Anthony declared in 1896 that the bicycle had "done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world." Cycling required clothing that allowed movement, and so dress reform — the abandonment of corsets and the adoption of shorter, divided skirts or even trousers — was driven in part by cycling. Cycling clubs sprang up in virtually every European and American city, and competitive cycling commonly drew enormous crowds.

E The bicycle's dominance as everyday transport peaked between roughly 1895 and 1920. The arrival of cheap mass-produced motorcars, especially after the Ford Model T entered mass production in 1908, gradually pushed the bicycle into a secondary role in wealthy countries. By the 1950s, most Western governments were designing their cities around the private motorcar, with little or no provision for cyclists. The bicycle largely survived as a children's toy and as recreational equipment, but as serious transport it nearly disappeared in much of North America and Australia.

F A striking exception was the Netherlands, which retained and then deliberately rebuilt its cycling infrastructure during the 1970s in response to the oil crisis and what was widely viewed as an unacceptable level of road deaths involving children. Dutch cities such as Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Groningen were progressively redesigned around separate cycle paths, cyclist-priority junctions, and traffic-calming measures. Today the average Dutch person makes roughly a quarter of all daily journeys by bicycle — a figure largely unmatched in any other industrialised country. Copenhagen in Denmark has pursued a similar policy with comparable results.

G In the twenty-first century, the bicycle has experienced a substantial revival. Concerns about air quality, climate change, traffic congestion, and personal fitness have all generally driven increased cycling rates in many cities. Bike-share schemes — first launched in a recognisably modern form in Amsterdam in 1965, but repeatedly failing until the introduction of digital docking stations in the 2000s — now reportedly operate in more than a thousand cities worldwide. Electric-assist bicycles, or e-bikes, are growing even more rapidly than conventional bikes in many markets. The shape of the modern bicycle would still be perfectly recognisable to John Kemp Starley, although its place in the city is currently being reinvented yet again.

H Looked at as a whole, the bicycle is widely seen as a reminder that significant transport innovations need not always require enormous machines or vast capital. A bicycle is cheap to make, easy to repair, and almost endlessly adaptable to local conditions. Its history shows that small, simple technologies can have outsized social and political consequences, particularly when they happen to expand individual mobility in societies that previously offered very little of it to ordinary people.