IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 8

Text A — CENTRAL CITY BUSES: PRINCIPAL ROUTES AND FREQUENCIES

Central City Buses runs a fleet of single- and double-decker vehicles across the metropolitan area. The principal services through the city centre are summarised below.

Route 1 (Riverside Loop): Riverside Station → Cathedral Square → Town Hall → University → Hospital → Riverside Station. Typically every 8 minutes Monday-Saturday daytime, dropping to every 15 minutes in the evenings and on Sundays. The earliest bus is around 05:45 and the last around 23:45.

Route 4 (Eastside Express): Central Bus Station → Marketgate → St Andrew's Hospital → Brookfield → Eastpark Retail Park. Typically every 12 minutes at peak and every 20 minutes off-peak. No service is run on Sundays. First bus 06:15, last around 22:50.

Route 12 (Northern Suburbs): Central Bus Station → Northgate → Crown Hill → Pinewood Estate → Northern Industrial Park. Frequency tends to be every 15 minutes Monday to Friday until 19:00; every 30 minutes thereafter; Saturday daytime broadly every 20 minutes; and on Sundays every 40 minutes from 09:00 to 19:00. The earliest weekday bus is around 05:30, with the last at roughly 23:15.

Route 28 (Airport Link): Central Bus Station → Cathedral Square → Riverside Station → International Airport. Generally every 30 minutes from 04:00 to 23:30, seven days a week. Between Riverside Station and the airport, Route 28 typically only halts at designated express stops.

Route 60 (Night Bus, weekends only): Central Bus Station → Town Hall → Cathedral Square → Riverside Station → University → return. Generally operates Friday and Saturday nights only, roughly every 60 minutes between 00:30 and 04:30.

Live arrival information is available through the smartphone app or by texting your stop number to 80088 (standard text rates may apply).

Text B — CENTRAL CITY BUSES: FARES AND TICKETS

A single flat fare applies to all journeys within the city zone. Tickets may be purchased on board (contactless card or smartphone only — physical money has not been accepted since April), at any of the eighteen self-service kiosks across the city centre, or ahead of time via the app.

Single adult: £2.60 Single child (5-15) or under-25 student with valid identification: £1.40 Children under 5 generally travel free when accompanied by a fare-paying adult (a maximum of two children per adult) Day rover (unlimited travel until 04:00 the following morning): £6.20 Weekly rover: £24.00 Monthly rover: £85.00

Concessionary travel Holders of valid older-person or disabled passes are entitled to travel free across the network. Companion passes (allowing a named companion to travel alongside the holder) are issued on application to the council; processing tends to take up to six weeks.

Group travel Up to four adults travelling together at weekends may use a Family Day Rover for £12, which usually works out cheaper than four individual day rovers. The option is available from Saturday 06:00 to Sunday 23:59.

Bicycle and luggage policy Folding bicycles, in their folded state, are carried at no extra charge. Non-folding bicycles, by contrast, are not allowed on city-zone buses. Large luggage may travel in the luggage bay, but on Route 28 only.

Lost property is retained at the depot on Garland Street for fourteen days. Items not reclaimed are donated to a local charity. The bus company accepts no responsibility for valuables left on board.

Text C — TRELAWNEY & PARTNERS: FLEXIBLE-WORKING POLICY (SUMMARY)

Trelawney & Partners is committed to enabling staff to balance their work and personal responsibilities. This summary describes the main forms of flexible working available; the full policy is on the staff intranet.

Forms of flexible working The following arrangements may be requested by any employee with at least 26 weeks of continuous service:

- Hybrid working: routinely splitting the working week between the office and home. The firm-wide expectation is a minimum of three days per week in the office, including Mondays and Wednesdays. - Part-time working: a permanent reduction in contracted hours, with pay and entitlements reduced pro rata. - Compressed hours: contracted hours worked across fewer days (e.g. a five-day week worked across four longer days). Compressed schedules typically require explicit line-manager sign-off. - Term-time working: parents and guardians may apply for an arrangement that gives them school holidays as unpaid leave, while keeping their job grade. - Job sharing: where two employees generally share the responsibilities and pay of a single full-time role.

How to apply Requests should be submitted in writing using the F-WORK-01 form, available from the HR intranet. The form must explain (a) what arrangement is proposed; (b) when the employee wishes it to start; (c) what effect the employee thinks it would have on their work; and (d) how any potential problems could be addressed.

A line manager must respond in writing within twenty-eight days. If the request is granted, the change becomes a permanent variation to the employment contract unless the employee specifies a trial period. If the request is refused, the manager must give one of the eight statutory business reasons (e.g. additional cost, inability to recruit, detrimental effect on quality) and explain how they apply to this case.

Appeals An employee whose request is refused may appeal in writing to the head of the department within fourteen days of the refusal. The head of department will consider the appeal, consult HR, and respond within a further twenty-eight days. The appeal decision is final.

Text D — TRELAWNEY & PARTNERS: PROCEDURAL NOTES FOR LINE MANAGERS

This note supports line managers when handling flexible-working requests. It does not replace the main policy.

1. Acknowledge in writing within five working days of receipt. Make clear that you are starting the formal consideration period under F-WORK-01.

2. Hold a meeting with the employee within fourteen days. The meeting must be in private (face-to-face or video), with sufficient time to discuss the request properly. The employee may be accompanied by a colleague or trade-union representative.

3. Consider the operational impact. Consult relevant colleagues but do not disclose the identity of the requesting employee beyond what is necessary. Particular attention should be paid to: - whether the work can be performed effectively under the proposed arrangement; - whether team coverage and client-facing time can be maintained; - whether there is a precedent within the team and what was agreed.

4. Communicate the decision within twenty-eight days of receipt. The decision letter should be clear, polite, and specific. If approval is conditional (e.g. on a six-month trial), the conditions must be set out in writing.

5. If you cannot meet the twenty-eight-day deadline, request an extension from HR in writing. Failing to respond within the statutory period may give rise to a claim before an employment tribunal.

6. Record-keeping. All correspondence, meeting notes, and decision letters must be retained on the employee's HR file for a minimum of three years.

7. Wellbeing. Approved flexible-working arrangements should be reviewed at the next normal performance review and, in any event, at least once a year, to check that the arrangement is working for both employee and team.

A Bottled water is sometimes treated as a quintessentially modern invention — a product, it is widely assumed, of late twentieth-century consumerism and slick branding. In reality, its lineage is considerably longer, and the reasons behind its commercial success appear to have largely shifted in intriguing ways over the centuries. From medicinal spa waters in the Roman world, through bottled mineral waters served to the bourgeoisie of nineteenth-century Europe, to the global brands of the present, the story of bottled water tracks evolving ideas about health, status, and trust in the public supply.

B The earliest documented case of bottled water being treated as a marketable commodity is associated with thermal and mineral springs in ancient Greece and Rome. Particular springs were widely credited with healing properties — for arthritis, for digestion, for skin disease — and clay-jarred water from these sources appears to have been sold and transported considerable distances. The Romans built elaborate spa towns around such springs, of which Bath in England is the best-known northern example. The water itself tended to be secondary to the bath, although the practice of carrying some away in sealed jars was already established by the second century of the common era.

C Spa culture revived in early modern Europe. From the sixteenth century onwards, wealthy patients visited spa towns such as Spa in present-day Belgium (which is said to have given its name to the practice itself), Bad Ems in Germany, and Vichy and Évian in France. Physicians recommended particular waters for particular ailments, and the springs largely developed reputations that appear to have been enthusiastically marketed. Glass bottling at scale, however, was not yet really practical: the bottles themselves were too expensive, and the cork-and-wax seals largely too unreliable. Bottled spa water tended therefore to remain a preserve of the wealthy throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

D The decisive shift, on the whole, came in the early nineteenth century with two roughly simultaneous developments. The first was the industrialisation of glassmaking, which dramatically lowered the cost of bottles. The second was the invention of the carbonated drink. Joseph Priestley had largely demonstrated the artificial carbonation of water in 1767, and by the 1810s and 1820s a substantial industry had grown up around the bottling of natural sparkling mineral waters, as well as artificially carbonated ones. The Apollinaris spring in Germany — uncovered in 1852 — was bottled and exported on a vast scale, becoming a familiar drink in British clubs and hotels by the 1880s.

E By the late nineteenth century, bottled water carried a fairly clear social meaning: it tended to signal health, refinement, and a measure of distance from the dirty municipal supply. This was an era, it should be noted, in which urban tap water was genuinely unreliable. Cholera outbreaks in London, Paris, and Hamburg had killed tens of thousands; the link between contaminated water and disease had been largely established but adequate treatment systems were not yet universal. For middle-class households, bottled mineral water was both pleasant and prudent. For travellers, it was effectively a safety product. Brands including Perrier, Evian, and Apollinaris appear to have built strong international reputations during this period.

F The twentieth century proved an awkward one for the industry. As municipal water supplies became cleaner and more dependable, the medical case for bottled water weakened. Inter-war advertising shifted away from health claims and increasingly towards lifestyle and elegance: photographs of evening parties, with mineral water served alongside cocktails, became fairly standard. Sales remained substantial, but the product seemed to lose much of its sense of necessity. After the Second World War, particularly in countries with safe and inexpensive tap water, bottled water risked becoming a niche product.

G What ultimately revived the industry was, paradoxically, the very success of public water systems. By the 1970s and 1980s, tap water in wealthy countries was so reliably safe that consumers had largely stopped thinking of water as something dangerous. Marketers were able to reposition bottled water as a healthy alternative to sugary soft drinks rather than a medical product. The 1980s and 1990s saw an explosion of new brands, the introduction of plastic PET bottles (substantially lighter and cheaper than glass), and the rise of "purified" tap water sold under brand names — Aquafina, Dasani — which were initially controversial when their actual origin was disclosed.

H The early twenty-first century has produced a fresh wave of scrutiny. Environmental campaigners have drawn attention to the carbon footprint of bottled water, particularly those products shipped long distances, and to the slow degradation of plastic bottles in the marine environment. A number of cities — San Francisco, Hamburg, and Bundanoon in Australia — have banned the sale of bottled water from public buildings or municipal events. The industry has, on the whole, responded with lighter bottles, recycled-plastic content, and a renewed emphasis on the natural credentials of its products. The history that began with a Roman taking water away from a sacred spring continues, in much-changed form, into the present.