IELTS Practice Test 1: Answers

The table compares visitor numbers at four categories of tourist attraction in a single country at three points between 2005 and 2019.

Overall, museums and galleries were the most popular attraction throughout the period and also grew the fastest, while historic houses were the least visited and were the only category to decline. Theme parks changed very little.

Museums and galleries received 6.8 million visitors in 2005, rising to 9.1 million in 2012 and 12.4 million by 2019 - an increase of over 80 per cent across the period, and by 2019 they attracted more visitors than theme parks and national parks combined in 2005.

National parks showed the steepest proportional growth. Numbers climbed from 4.2 million to 5.6 million between 2005 and 2012, and then rose far more sharply to 8.3 million by 2019, almost doubling overall. As a result, national parks overtook theme parks between 2012 and 2019.

Theme parks, by contrast, were essentially static, peaking at 5.9 million in 2012 before falling back to 5.5 million, barely above their 2005 figure. Historic houses fell steadily throughout, from 3.1 million to 2.7 million and then to 2.2 million, a loss of roughly a third.

Whenever crime rises, the demand for longer sentences follows, and it is easy to see why: the argument is simple, it sounds firm, and it offers something that can be done immediately. I understand its appeal, but I believe the evidence points towards a different approach.

The case for longer sentences rests on two claims. The first is deterrence: a person weighing up a crime will be put off by the prospect of ten years rather than three. The second is incapacitation, which is harder to dispute - somebody in prison cannot burgle a house. For a small number of persistently violent offenders, this is a genuine argument, and no serious alternative exists for them.

The difficulty is that deterrence appears to depend far more on the likelihood of being caught than on the length of the sentence. Someone committing a burglary is not calculating tariffs; they are assuming they will not be arrested at all. This explains why increasing police presence in an area tends to reduce crime quickly, while lengthening sentences produces little measurable effect. Long sentences also carry a cost that is rarely counted: prisoners lose work, housing and family contact, which are precisely the things that make reoffending less likely on release.

The alternatives are less satisfying politically because they are slow. Reliable investigation, drug and alcohol treatment, education inside prison, and supervised release with real support all reduce reoffending, but none of them can be announced as a single decisive measure.

In my view, prison should be reserved for those who present a danger to others, and the money saved by shorter sentences elsewhere should be spent on detection and rehabilitation. That is a less dramatic policy than simply doubling sentences, but I believe it would prevent considerably more crime.

Do you enjoy cooking?

I do now, though I didn't for a long time. I think what changed it was cooking for other people - when it's just me I'll eat almost anything, but if someone's coming round I actually enjoy the planning part.

Do you think children should be taught to cook at school?

Yes, definitely, and I'd say it's more useful than some of the things they are taught. It's not really about the cooking either - it's that you learn to read instructions properly, and you learn that if you rush a stage, it shows. Those are quite general lessons, actually.

I'm going to talk about my grandfather, who taught me how to sharpen a knife properly - which sounds like a very small thing, but I've thought about it more than almost anything else I was taught at that age.

He'd been a carpenter for about forty years, and he had this leather strop and an oilstone that he'd had since he was an apprentice. I must have been nine or ten. I remember being quite impatient about it, because I wanted to get on and use the knife, and he simply wouldn't let me.

The way he taught it was the interesting part. He didn't explain anything at first. He just did it, over and over, and made me watch - and then he handed me the stone and corrected the angle of my hand with his fingers, without saying very much at all. He said you couldn't learn it from being told, only from feeling when it was right. And he was correct: it took me about a week before something clicked and I could feel the difference.

As for why it's stayed with me - partly it's that I still do it, so there's a physical reminder every few months. But mainly I think it was the first time I understood that some things can't be rushed, and that there are skills you acquire in your hands rather than in your head. I've used that idea about all sorts of things since - learning an instrument, driving, even writing. So it turned out not to be about knives at all.

I think it usually happens when the skill stops being necessary rather than when people stop valuing it. My grandmother could mend clothes very well, and my mother can a bit, and I can't at all - but that's not because we respect it less. It's that a shirt costs almost nothing now, so the skill has no work to do.

The thing that makes it permanent, though, is that these skills are passed on by watching, not by reading. If one generation doesn't learn it, there's nobody left to demonstrate it, and a written description isn't enough - you can read how to sharpen a knife and still not be able to do it.

So I'd say there's a kind of tipping point. As long as a few people still do it, it can come back, and you see that with things like baking or repairing bicycles. But once it drops below that, it's effectively gone, and reviving it means starting again from books rather than from people.