IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 20

Text A — LITTLE OAKLEY SUMMER FETE: SATURDAY 14 JUNE

Come and join us on the village green for our 47th annual summer fete, raising funds for the village hall roof repair. The event has been argued to be the highlight of the village's social calendar.

Programme: - 11:00 — Brass band procession from the church to the green - 11:30 — Official opening by the mayor and ribbon-cutting at the main marquee - 12:00 - 14:00 — Children's races and tug-of-war on the lower lawn - 12:30 — Judging of the home-baking competition (entries handed in by 11:45) - 13:00 - 16:00 — Live music from the Riverside Folk Trio (bandstand) - 14:00 — Dog show: best in show, waggiest tail, and looks-most-like-its-owner - 15:00 — Vintage tractor parade - 16:00 — Raffle draw at the main marquee (winners need not be present) - 17:00 — Hog roast and bar open until 22:00 (over-18s only after 19:00)

Entry: £3 adults, £1 children, under-fives free. Wristbands generally cover the whole day, including the evening hog roast (food and drink paid separately). Free parking at Hall Farm; please follow the marshals. Dogs typically welcome on leads. A first-aid point is normally located beside the brass-band stand and is staffed by trained volunteers from 11:00 to closing.

Stalls include: cake stall, plant stall, second-hand books, white-elephant tombola, face painting, pony rides (£2), and a coconut shy. All stalls generally accept cash; card readers are not guaranteed. Stallholders are asked to bring small change as the village green generally has no cash machine.

In the event of severe weather, the fete will be moved to the village hall and the lower playing field; we do not cancel.

Text B — LITTLE OAKLEY FARMERS' MARKET: RULES FOR STALLHOLDERS

The Little Oakley Farmers' Market normally runs on the first Saturday of every month from 09:00 to 13:00, on the village green. The market has been argued to be one of the most successful small markets in the region.

Stall fees: £15 per metre frontage, payable to the parish clerk by the Wednesday before the market. Stalls typically range from 2 to 5 metres; stallholders bring their own gazebos and weights. Vehicle access to set up is between 07:30 and 08:30; vehicles must leave the green by 08:45 and may not return until 13:15.

Eligibility: - All produce must be grown, raised, made, or finished within 30 miles of Little Oakley. Reselling of bought-in produce is not permitted. - Hot food stalls must hold a current food-hygiene rating of 4 or 5 from the local council. Cold food stalls must hold a rating of 3 or above. - Live animals may not be sold at the market. Live plants are permitted.

Conduct: - Stallholders must remain at their stall during opening hours. Power for refrigeration units is available from a generator at a cost of £4 per market day; please book in advance. - Litter from each stall is the responsibility of the stallholder. - Music must not exceed 65 decibels at the front of the stall.

Cancellation: If you cannot attend, please inform the parish clerk by 18:00 on the Thursday before the market. No refund is given after that time, but a credit may be applied to a future market. Repeat no-shows have been argued to risk forfeiting future market places. A standby list operates for vacant pitches and has occasionally allowed new stallholders to join a market at short notice.

Text C — THE VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR ROLE: AN INTRODUCTION

The Volunteer Coordinator is responsible for the recruitment, support, training, and recognition of volunteers across all programmes run by the Little Oakley Community Trust. The role is part-time (28 hours per week) and reports to the Chief Executive. The post has been argued to be one of the most rewarding roles in the Trust.

Main duties: - Plan and run quarterly recruitment campaigns, including social-media adverts, leaflets in libraries and community centres, and information sessions in the village hall. - Carry out telephone interviews with prospective volunteers and arrange in-person meetings where appropriate. Each new volunteer must complete a short application form, provide two references, and undergo a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check before being placed in a role. - Match volunteers to suitable roles and introduce them to the appropriate programme manager. - Run a monthly induction session covering the Trust's values, safeguarding, data protection, lone-working procedures, and incident reporting. - Maintain the volunteer database (an online system called VolHub) and ensure that records of training, references, and DBS expiry dates are up to date. - Organise an annual 'Thank You' event for volunteers, usually held in November, with a budget of £1,800.

Essential requirements: experience of working with volunteers or community groups, confident with VolHub or similar databases (training is available), and the ability to communicate clearly with people of all ages and backgrounds. A clean driving licence is desirable but not essential, as most roles are at the village hall. Familiarity with safeguarding procedures has been argued to be increasingly important for the post.

Text D — DAY-TO-DAY EXPECTATIONS AND WELLBEING

Volunteers are not employees, but they are central to everything the Trust does. The following expectations broadly apply to all coordinators when working with volunteers:

Boundaries. Always be clear about what the Trust can and cannot ask of a volunteer. A volunteer's time is, in the Trust's view, a gift; do not place last-minute pressure on volunteers to cover shifts. Volunteers must never be asked to perform tasks that should be done by paid staff.

Recognition. Recognition should be timely, specific, and proportionate. A handwritten card after a busy weekend is widely valued more than a generic email after a month. Small, regular thank-yous typically matter more than a single grand gesture. Anniversaries of joining have often been argued to be worth marking with a short personal message.

Reasonable expenses. Volunteers may claim out-of-pocket expenses for travel and materials. Travel by car is reimbursed at the standard mileage rate (currently 45p per mile up to 10,000 miles, then 25p thereafter). Claims should be submitted on the expenses form, accompanied by receipts, within one calendar month of being incurred.

Safeguarding. If a volunteer reports a concern about a child or vulnerable adult, the Coordinator must inform the Designated Safeguarding Lead the same working day. Concerns must be recorded on the secure log; do not record sensitive personal details on email or in unsecured documents.

Wellbeing. Volunteering should be enjoyable. If a volunteer appears stressed, withdrawn, or upset, arrange a private conversation as soon as possible. Many of our volunteers reportedly come to us at difficult points in their own lives; some of the most rewarding placements arise from this. However, the Trust is, in the author's view, not a substitute for professional support. If you believe a volunteer needs counselling or other professional help, signpost them to local services rather than attempting to provide that support yourself. Where a volunteer chooses to step back temporarily, the Trust normally keeps their role open for up to three months.

A For the modern reader, the postage stamp is a small and faintly old-fashioned object: a square of gummed paper attached to the corner of an envelope, mostly displaced by email. Yet at the moment of its invention, the stamp transformed the way ordinary people communicated, and it has shaped postal services worldwide ever since. The first postage stamp was issued in Britain on 1 May 1840, and its arrival is widely regarded as one of the cleanest examples in history of an administrative reform changing daily life. The reform has often been argued to have anticipated, in miniature, the much larger expansion of mass communications that would follow over the next century.

B Before 1840, postage in Britain — and in most countries — was paid by the recipient, not the sender. Rates were calculated on distance and on the number of sheets of paper. A short letter from London to Edinburgh might cost more than a working person's daily wage. Recipients frequently refused delivery, leaving letters in postal limbo; senders sometimes coded messages into the outside of an envelope so that the recipient could read them without paying. The system was, in the author's view, both expensive and chaotic, and it discouraged ordinary people from writing at all. Most of the post that reached working-class homes was bills and official notices, not personal letters.

C The reformer who changed this was Rowland Hill, a former schoolmaster with no postal experience. In 1837 Hill published a pamphlet called Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability, which made a striking economic argument: the cost of delivering a letter, he claimed, had very little to do with distance and a great deal to do with handling. If the price could be reduced and standardised at one penny for any letter weighing up to half an ounce, paid in advance by the sender, the volume of post would rise dramatically and the system as a whole would become profitable, not just affordable.

D Hill's proposal was opposed by the Post Office establishment, who believed that volume would overwhelm the staff and that prepayment would not work. After three years of public campaigning, however, his plan was adopted by Parliament. The Penny Black, the world's first prepaid adhesive postage stamp, was issued on 1 May 1840 and went into use on 6 May. It depicted the young Queen Victoria in profile, was printed without perforations (users cut individual stamps from sheets with scissors), and bore no country name — a privilege Britain has retained on its stamps to this day. In its first year the new system delivered around 169 million letters, more than double the pre-reform volume.

E The idea spread rapidly. Switzerland and Brazil issued their own stamps in 1843; the United States followed in 1847; France, Belgium, and Bavaria in 1849. Within twenty years almost every country in Europe and the Americas had adopted prepaid adhesive stamps. The General Postal Union, founded in Bern in 1874 and renamed the Universal Postal Union four years later, standardised rates between countries and made international post a reliable global system for the first time. The cost of sending a letter from Berlin to Sydney fell to a few pence, and the world's volume of post exploded. The Union has often been argued to be one of the earliest examples of successful international technical cooperation.

F The technical development of the stamp itself was rapid. Perforations were introduced in Britain in 1854, replacing scissors. Colour printing, watermarks, and security features followed. The first commemorative stamps — celebrating events rather than simply paying postage — were issued by New South Wales in 1888 and were quickly imitated elsewhere; today some smaller countries are said to earn a significant share of their foreign-currency income from selling commemorative stamps to collectors. Stamp collecting itself — philately — emerged as a hobby in the 1860s and remains one of the world's most widespread.

G The twentieth century brought repeated waves of competition for the postage stamp. The telegram, the telephone, and air mail each reduced the role of the everyday letter; the fax and then email reduced it again. From a peak of more than 200 billion items globally in the early 2000s, the volume of letter post has fallen sharply every year since. Postal services have responded by raising prices, by closing local sorting offices, by relying increasingly on parcel post for online retail, and by introducing self-adhesive stamps in place of the traditional gummed paper. In several countries the stamp itself is becoming an optional product: bar-coded labels printed at the counter are now more common than the small printed square that Rowland Hill introduced. The Penny Black is now a museum object — but the system of universal, low-cost, prepaid postal service that it began still underpins the global flow of cards, letters, and packages.