IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 3

Text A — HILLSIDE COMMUNITY LIBRARY: SPRING TERM SCHEDULE

Hillside Community Library is open seven days a week and offers a full programme of regular events for all ages. All sessions listed below are normally free unless otherwise stated. Booking is required for most adult sessions and can be arranged in person, by phone (01632 555 0214), or via the library's online booking page.

CHILDREN'S SESSIONS - Rhyme Time (under-3s): Monday 10:00 - 10:30 and Thursday 10:30 - 11:00. Drop-in, no booking required. - Storytime (3-6 years): Tuesday 14:00 - 14:45 and Saturday 10:30 - 11:15. The Saturday session is signed for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. - LEGO Club (5-11 years): Wednesday 16:00 - 17:30. Booking is required because of limited spaces (12 children per session). - Homework Club (7-14 years): Tuesday and Thursday 16:00 - 17:30. Drop-in, with qualified volunteers generally available.

ADULT SESSIONS - Reading Group: First Wednesday of each month, 19:00 - 20:30. Each month's title is published on the library noticeboard six weeks in advance. - Knit and Natter: Friday 14:00 - 16:00. All abilities welcome, including absolute beginners. Needles and yarn are provided for first-time attendees. - Beginners' IT Help: Tuesday 11:00 - 12:30 and Saturday 13:00 - 14:30. One-to-one 30-minute slots, booking required. - Local History Society: Last Monday of each month, 19:00 - 21:00. A voluntary contribution of £2 towards refreshments is suggested.

OTHER SERVICES The library offers free access to ancestry.com and findmypast.co.uk on its public computers (limit normally 60 minutes per visit). Printing costs 8p per black-and-white A4 page and 25p per colour A4 page. Photocopying and scanning are available at the same rates. The library now stocks "Library of Things" — items such as sewing machines, projectors, pressure washers, and ladders — which members may borrow for up to one week with a £5 deposit per item. Quiet study rooms can normally be booked free of charge by library members for up to two hours at a time. The mobile-library van usually visits the village green outside the library each Friday afternoon during term-time.

Text B — VOLUNTEER WITH HILLSIDE COMMUNITY LIBRARY

We are currently recruiting volunteers for two roles starting in April.

ROLE 1: HOMEWORK CLUB VOLUNTEER Hours: 2 hours per week (Tuesday OR Thursday, 16:00 - 18:00). Term-time only. Purpose: To help children aged 7-14 with their school homework, particularly Maths and English. You do not need formal teaching qualifications — patience, friendliness, and confidence with primary or lower-secondary level work are what matter.

What we provide: - Initial three-hour training session - An enhanced DBS check (we normally pay the fee) - Reimbursement of travel costs above £3 per session

Requirements: - Available for at least two terms (i.e. roughly six months) - Willing to commit to the same day each week so that children can build a relationship with you - Two character references

ROLE 2: DIGITAL BUDDY Hours: 1.5 hours per week, on a flexible day during library opening times. Purpose: To support adult library users who are improving their digital skills, particularly older adults applying for benefits, booking GP appointments, or learning to use a smartphone.

What we provide: - Initial two-hour training plus shadowing - Free Microsoft Office and Google Workspace training certificates

Requirements: - Confident with smartphones, tablets, email, and basic online forms - Patient and clear communicator - Available for at least three months

To apply for either role: pick up a paper application form at the library reception desk or download one from the council's volunteering page. Submit completed forms to volunteers@hillsidelibrary.gov.uk by 31st March. Successful applicants will be invited to an informal interview during the second week of April.

Text C — LAUREL & THORNE LTD: NEW EMPLOYEE INDUCTION HANDBOOK (Extract)

This handbook summarises the main points you will need to know during your first three months at Laurel & Thorne Ltd. It is not a substitute for your individual employment contract, which always takes priority.

WORKING HOURS AND ATTENDANCE The standard working week is 37 hours, normally worked between 08:30 and 17:00 Monday to Friday with a 30-minute unpaid lunch break. Flexible working arrangements may sometimes be negotiated with your line manager after the first six months of employment but cannot generally be guaranteed. Core hours, during which all staff must be available, are 10:00 - 12:00 and 14:00 - 16:00.

If you cannot come to work because of illness, you must contact your line manager by telephone (not text or email) before 09:30 on the first day of absence. For absences of more than seven calendar days you must provide a doctor's "fit note" within 14 days. Self-certification covers the first seven days.

PAY, PENSION, AND BENEFITS Salaries are paid monthly, on the 25th of the calendar month (or the preceding working day where the 25th falls on a weekend or bank holiday). Payslips are normally available through the online HR portal. Annual pay reviews generally take effect from 1st April each year.

All employees aged 22 or over and earning above £10,000 a year are automatically enrolled in the company pension scheme after three months of employment, with an employer contribution of 5%. You may opt out within one month of being enrolled, although we strongly recommend taking financial advice first.

Other benefits typically include life insurance at four times annual salary, a cycle-to-work scheme, an employee assistance programme, and 25 days of paid annual leave (in addition to bank holidays), rising to 28 days after five years of service. Long-service awards are given after ten and twenty years of continuous employment.

GRIEVANCES AND DISCIPLINARY MATTERS If you have a workplace concern, please discuss it with your line manager informally in the first instance. If it cannot be resolved informally, you may raise a formal grievance in writing to the HR department. The company will then typically arrange a grievance meeting within 14 calendar days and provide a written response within a further 14 days.

The disciplinary process follows the ACAS Code of Practice and ordinarily consists of three stages: a first written warning, a final written warning, and dismissal. Gross misconduct may sometimes result in dismissal without prior warnings. Examples typically include theft, fraud, deliberate damage to property, harassment, and serious breaches of health and safety.

Text D — HEALTH AND SAFETY POLICY (Required Reading)

Laurel & Thorne Ltd is firmly committed to maintaining a safe and healthy workplace for all employees, contractors, and visitors. This policy summarises the principal duties of every employee.

EMPLOYEE DUTIES - Use all equipment in accordance with training received. - Do not interfere with or misuse anything provided for safety. - Report any accident, near-miss, dangerous condition, or hazardous behaviour to your line manager and the Health & Safety Officer within 24 hours. - Attend all required health and safety training, including the annual fire-evacuation drill.

FIRE EVACUATION On hearing the fire alarm, leave the building by the nearest safe route. Do not stop to collect personal belongings or use the lifts. Assemble at the marked assembly point in the rear car park (Building A) or the front pavement opposite the main entrance (Buildings B and C). Wait for the all-clear from a designated fire warden before re-entering.

FIRST AID Trained first-aiders are listed on the noticeboard in each kitchen area and on the intranet. In a medical emergency, call 999 first, then notify reception so that they can direct paramedics on arrival. Minor injuries should be recorded in the accident book kept at reception, regardless of whether further treatment is sought.

DSE AND COMFORT AT WORK Display screen equipment is assessed for every desk-based employee within four weeks of joining. Standing desks, ergonomic keyboards, and chair adjustments are available on request.

A For most of human history, a letter has been a precarious thing. Sending a written message from one city to another might involve days of travel by horse, ship, or foot, and there was no guarantee that the message would arrive at all, or that the recipient could pay for it on arrival. The development of organised, affordable postal services is therefore widely considered one of the underappreciated revolutions of the modern world. It transformed how families stayed in contact, how merchants traded, and even how nations governed themselves.

B Some kind of imperial messenger system has existed for almost as long as writing itself. The Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great operated a relay-mounted system in the sixth century BC, with riders changing horses at well-spaced staging posts. The Roman cursus publicus, founded by the emperor Augustus, was used to carry official correspondence across the empire for nearly five hundred years, although it was open only to government messages and authorised travellers. Similar relay systems existed in China and in the Mongol Empire; the European travellers Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta both described them in detail. These early services were tools of state, not amenities for ordinary citizens.

C Public postal services as we would recognise them today first developed in early modern Europe. The Thurn und Taxis family, originally Italian and later based in the Habsburg lands, operated a continent-spanning private courier network from the late fifteenth century onwards. They had stations across central Europe, fixed timetables, and recognisable uniformed riders. England's General Post Office was founded by Charles II in 1660 and was open in principle to all senders, although the cost — calculated on distance and number of sheets — was prohibitively high for ordinary citizens. Letters were normally paid for on receipt, and recipients commonly refused to accept and pay for unwanted mail.

D The transforming reform came in 1840, when the British educator and inventor Rowland Hill introduced the Penny Post. Under his scheme, postage was a flat one penny within Britain regardless of distance, paid in advance by the sender, and indicated by attaching the world's first adhesive postage stamp — the famous Penny Black. The volume of mail in Britain more than doubled in the first year of operation, and then doubled again over the next decade. The model was rapidly copied: a uniform postal rate, prepaid by stamp, was introduced in Switzerland and Brazil in 1843, the United States in 1847, France in 1849, and across most of Europe by the 1860s.

E The growth of the railways from the 1840s onwards transformed delivery speed once again. Sorting carriages, in which mail was sorted by clerks during the train journey itself rather than on arrival, allowed letters posted in London in the afternoon to be delivered in Manchester or Edinburgh by the following morning. By the end of the nineteenth century, ten or more deliveries a day were normal in central London, and a letter posted in the morning could often be answered, by return post, the same afternoon.

F The Universal Postal Union, established by treaty in Bern in 1874, made international post almost as straightforward as domestic post. Under the UPU's rules, each country agreed to deliver mail arriving from any other member country at its own cost, with no settlement required for ordinary letters. The number of member countries grew from 22 in 1874 to nearly 200 by the twenty-first century; the UPU has been a specialised agency of the United Nations since 1948. Its existence explains why a letter posted in Tokyo for Toronto can be paid for entirely in Japan and yet delivered, without further charge, to a Canadian address.

G The twentieth century reportedly brought airmail, mechanised sorting, postcodes (introduced in Britain in 1959 and the United States in 1963), and eventually the bar-coded automated handling now used worldwide. But the more recent picture is one of decline as well as growth. The volume of personal letters has fallen sharply since 2000 as email and messaging apps have displaced handwritten correspondence. By contrast, parcel volumes have grown enormously, largely driven by online shopping; in some postal services, parcels now generate more revenue than letters for the first time in history. The postal service of the future may be more about packages than about written words, but in either form it is widely considered to remain an extraordinary piece of low-cost infrastructure.

H The story of organised post is widely treated as a reminder that institutions which appear permanent and unremarkable often required centuries of incremental work to construct. Each generation has, in some sense, inherited the postal system from the last and reshaped it for its own purposes — from the imperial relay rider to the modern parcel driver — and that long, patient process is far from complete.