IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 4

Text A — NORTHGATE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT: PASSENGER INFORMATION NOTICES

The following notices are displayed throughout the departure terminals at Northgate International Airport.

CHECK-IN AND BAG DROP Check-in counters generally open three hours before scheduled departure and normally close 45 minutes before departure for short-haul flights and 60 minutes before departure for long-haul flights. Self-service kiosks are available 24 hours a day for passengers travelling with hand baggage only. Online check-in is open from 30 hours before departure for most airlines.

HAND BAGGAGE ALLOWANCE (STANDARD) - Maximum dimensions: 55 x 40 x 23 cm including handles and wheels - Maximum weight: 10 kg unless your airline's rules are more generous - One additional small personal item is normally permitted (handbag, laptop bag, or similar) measuring up to 40 x 30 x 15 cm - Excess or oversized bags must be checked into the hold; the standard charge is £40 if paid at the gate - Sharp objects, sporting equipment over 60 cm, and most batteries above 100 Wh are not permitted

LIQUIDS, AEROSOLS, AND GELS Each container must hold no more than 100 ml. All containers must fit inside a single transparent re-sealable plastic bag of one litre capacity. The bag must be removed from your hand luggage and presented separately at the security X-ray. Baby food, baby milk, and prescription medicines exceeding 100 ml are permitted but must be declared and may sometimes be tested at security.

LOST PROPERTY AND ASSISTANCE Items left in the terminal are held by the airport's Lost Property Office for 90 days. Items unclaimed after 90 days are normally donated to local charities. Passenger assistance (wheelchair service, mobility help, and support for hidden disabilities) must be requested at the time of booking your flight or generally at least 48 hours before departure where possible.

Text B — HORIZON TRAVEL INSURANCE: SINGLE-TRIP COVER LEAFLET

This leaflet summarises the cover provided under our standard Single Trip Worldwide policy. Full terms are in the policy document; please read them before travel.

WHAT IS COVERED - Emergency medical and repatriation expenses: typically up to £10 million per insured person, including the cost of an air ambulance where medically necessary. - Cancellation and curtailment: up to £5,000 per person where the trip is cancelled before departure or cut short, for reasons such as the unexpected serious illness or death of the insured, a close family member, or a travelling companion, jury service, or redundancy after the policy was purchased. - Lost, stolen, or damaged baggage: up to £2,000 in total, with a single-item limit of £400 (proof of purchase or photographs are required for items above £100). - Travel delay: £25 per 12-hour period of delay at the outset of the journey, up to a maximum of £200. - Personal liability: up to £2 million.

WHAT IS NOT COVERED - Pre-existing medical conditions not declared at the time of buying the policy. - Claims arising from being under the influence of alcohol or drugs not prescribed by a doctor. - Loss or theft of cash exceeding £300. - "Adventure activities" not listed in the policy schedule (e.g. scuba diving below 30 m, mountaineering above 4,500 m, off-piste skiing without a qualified guide). - Travel against the advice of the government's Foreign Office.

MAKING A CLAIM Notify our 24-hour helpline (+44 (0) 800 0312 0980) within 28 days of any event giving rise to a claim, and within 24 hours for medical emergencies. Police reports are required for any theft. A standard excess of £75 per insured person per claim applies; this can normally be reduced to £25 by paying an additional premium when the policy is purchased.

Text C — ASHWELL ENGINEERING LTD: WORKPLACE SAFETY POLICY (Extract)

Ashwell Engineering Ltd designs, manufactures, and services precision metal components for the aerospace, automotive, and renewable-energy sectors. Our workshops generally include machining, welding, and assembly areas; our offices broadly include design, finance, and customer-service teams. This policy applies to all employees, contractors, and visitors.

GENERAL DUTIES Every employee must: - Carry out their work in a manner that does not generally endanger themselves or others. - Use the personal protective equipment (PPE) provided and ensure it is in good condition before each use. - Attend all required safety training and refresher sessions. - Report any defect or hazard immediately to the supervisor on duty. - Cooperate with the company in the implementation of this policy.

PPE REQUIREMENTS IN WORKSHOP AREAS - Safety glasses or full-face shield in all machining areas at all times, including by visitors. - Steel-toecap safety footwear in all workshop areas; replacement boots are provided every 18 months at company expense, or sooner where wear and tear requires it. - Hi-visibility jacket in any area where forklifts are operating. - Hearing protection in any area where the noise level exceeds 85 dB (signs are clearly marked). - Respiratory protection during welding, grinding, or spraying. Loose facial hair is incompatible with face-fit masks; staff in these roles must normally remain clean-shaven.

WORKING AT HEIGHT Working above 2 metres requires the use of a harness, a properly inspected ladder or platform, and at minimum one other worker present at ground level. All harnesses are inspected every six months by a competent person. Ladders must not be used as workplaces where work can be reasonably performed from a platform.

MANUAL HANDLING Any individual lift greater than 25 kg requires either mechanical assistance (forklift, hoist, pump truck) or two-person lifting. Mandatory manual-handling training is normally provided in induction week and refreshed every two years.

INCIDENT REPORTING All accidents, near-misses, and dangerous conditions must be reported in writing to the Health & Safety Officer within 24 hours, using the accident form available in any workshop office or on the intranet. Reportable injuries under RIDDOR (the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations) — including fractures, amputations, loss of consciousness, and injuries leading to more than seven days off work — must be reported by the Health & Safety Officer to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) within 15 calendar days.

Text D — VISITOR AND CONTRACTOR PROCEDURE

All visitors and contractors to Ashwell Engineering must comply with the following procedure on arrival.

ARRIVAL 1. Report to reception and sign in using the electronic visitor system. You will be issued with a visitor badge that must be worn visibly at all times. 2. Watch the three-minute safety video on the screen at reception, which covers basic workshop hazards and fire-evacuation procedures. 3. Wait for your host, who must be a current Ashwell employee, to collect you from reception. Visitors and contractors are not permitted to walk through the workshop unaccompanied.

DURING THE VISIT - Stay within the marked walking lanes (yellow lines on workshop floors). - Wear all PPE issued by your host. PPE for short visits is normally available from reception; for longer contracts, contractors must provide their own to the equivalent or higher standard. - Do not use mobile phones in machining areas; a designated phone area is provided in each workshop. - Photography is permitted only with the prior written agreement of your host's line manager.

DEPARTURE On leaving, return your badge to reception and sign out. Failure to sign out will trigger an automatic enquiry, including a search of the workshops and a call to your registered phone number. Repeated failure to sign out may result in withdrawal of site access privileges.

A The umbrella has been a familiar object on streets for so many centuries that its history is often easily forgotten. Yet the modern collapsible rain-umbrella is regarded as a comparatively recent invention, dating from the early nineteenth century. Its ancestor — a fixed shade-canopy held on a long handle — is far older, having been depicted in monuments and on pottery from a remarkable range of ancient cultures.

B The earliest evidence of umbrellas is found in ancient Egypt and Assyria, in carved reliefs from around the eighth century BC. These early canopies were almost always carried by an attendant for a ruler or for a member of the priestly class. They were objects of status, not protection from rain: the climates of Egypt and Mesopotamia meant that they were intended primarily to shield the head from the fierce sun. A similar pattern is found in ancient China, where parasols carried over high-ranking officials by their servants signified rank as much as comfort. By the fourth century BC, however, the Chinese had begun to add wax-treated paper or oiled silk to their parasols, making them water-resistant. This is widely considered the first clear evidence anywhere in the world of an umbrella designed against rain.

C The classical Mediterranean world adopted the parasol but largely treated it as primarily a female accessory. Greek and Roman women carried umbrellas at outdoor festivals, theatres, and gardens; they were associated with elegance and modesty rather than with kingship. Men, by contrast, rarely used them and were often ridiculed if they did, on the grounds that umbrellas were widely considered effeminate. This association would prove unusually persistent: it is still detectable in some European cultures in the eighteenth century.

D After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the umbrella vanished almost entirely from European life for around a thousand years. It survived in church ceremonial — the canopy held over the Pope in formal processions is widely regarded as a direct descendant of the imperial umbrella of late antiquity — but ordinary Europeans simply did not use them. People wore hooded cloaks instead and largely accepted that bad weather meant staying indoors. The umbrella re-entered European secular life only with renewed contact with East Asia: Portuguese and Dutch traders reportedly brought oiled-paper umbrellas back from China and Japan from the sixteenth century onwards.

E The decisive figure in popularising the rain-umbrella in Britain is widely considered to have been the philanthropist Jonas Hanway (1712-1786), who travelled to Persia as a merchant and observed the Persian use of waxed paper umbrellas. On his return to London in the 1750s, Hanway adopted the daily habit of carrying an umbrella whenever it rained — an extraordinary, almost scandalous, public act for an Englishman at that period. Coachmen in particular detested him, on the grounds that anyone using an umbrella was reducing their potential trade. For about thirty years Hanway was widely mocked, but by the time of his death in 1786 the habit had spread to a section of the London middle class. By 1800, umbrellas were a common urban accessory in Britain for both sexes.

F Until the early nineteenth century, umbrellas remained heavy, bulky, and inconvenient. Their frames were made of whalebone or wood, their canopies of waxed cotton or oiled silk, and the whole assembly normally weighed about ten times more than a comparable modern umbrella. The transformative innovation came in 1852, when the English inventor Samuel Fox patented a frame design using thin steel ribs of U-shaped cross-section. The steel-ribbed umbrella was lighter, stronger, and considerably cheaper to manufacture. It quickly displaced earlier designs and became the basic form still used today.

G The twentieth century brought two further refinements: the folding-pocket umbrella, developed in Germany in the late 1920s and refined by Hans Haupt in 1928, and modern lightweight synthetic fabrics replacing oiled silk. Today's umbrellas are produced in their hundreds of millions each year — the great majority in China, where one city, Shangyu in Zhejiang province, makes roughly a third of all umbrellas worldwide. Despite increasingly sophisticated waterproof clothing, the umbrella has proved unexpectedly resistant to obsolescence, perhaps because it is widely viewed as one of the few personal objects whose basic shape and function would still be recognisable to a Persian merchant of the eighteenth century or, indeed, to a Chinese courtier of the fourth century BC.