ielts foundation 2

UNIT 2
PLACES AND BUILDINGS
A. VOCABULARY: DESCRIBING A TOWN / CITY
Exercise 1: Complete the sentences. Use the words in the box.
crowded fashionable historic leafy modern noisy
quiet remote

1. A ____________ part of town is full of people.

2. A ____________ village is a long way from any towns or cities.
3. A ____________ part of town is pleasant and has a lot of trees.
4. A ____________ part of town is popular.
5. A ____________ part of town doesn’t have many people or cars.
6. A ____________ street is very loud, so it might be difficult to sleep if you live there.
7. A ____________ part of town is very new.
8. A ____________ area of town is old and has important buildings in it.

Exercise 2: Complete the sentences. Use the words in the box.

a village the city center the coast the countryside
the outskirts of
the seaside the south of the suburbs

1. I come from a tourist town by ______________ . Every summer the beach is full of visitors.
2. My house is in ___________________ , so it’s part of the city but away from the city center.
Many of the people who work in the city live here.
3. We live on __________________ the city – it takes just five minutes to walk from our
house to the countryside.
4. I’d love to live in ______________________ , away from all the noise and traffic of the city.
5. Our house is in _____________________ in the mountains. There are only about 30 houses
and two shops.
6. he city where I was born is on _______________________ . There are always a lot of ships
from around the world in the port.
7. I live in _____________________ , which is great. It means that I can walk to restaurants,
cinemas and museums. But it does get very noisy here sometimes.
8. My town is in _____________________ my country, not far from the mountains.

Exercise 3: Choose the correct verbs to complete the text.

When I was a teenager, I didn’t like living with my parents, so I left/moved/lived home when I was 20
years old.
At first, I rented/ bought/ borrowed a room in a flat – it wasn’t my flat, so I had to pay money every

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month to live there. I didn’t live there alone – I paid/lent/ shared the flat with three other people. It
was horrible. The other people never cleaned the flat, and we had a lot of arguments. So I moved
alone/out/in after a couple of weeks and caught/ stayed/gave with some friends for about a week.
Then I moved in/on/across with my brother and his family. They help/owned/owed a big house in the
suburbs. I lived with them for about six months, but then they left/moved/chose house and went to
live in a different city. So I had to find a new place to live. In the end, I moved about/back/ between
in with my parents. It’s much nicer now than when I first lived here. But now I’m saving money to
buy/become/earn a flat – hopefully I’ll have enough money in a few years.

Exercise 4: Put the words in the correct categories.

leisure center library tower block shopping center retail
park cinema
museum historic castle theatre department store
residential area
housing estate

places to live places to buy things

places to learn about your city’s

places to relax and have fun
past

Exercise 5: Choose the correct option to complete the sentences.

1. A cottage is a modern house in a city/a small house, usually in the countryside.
2. A neighborhood is a part of a town or city where people live/work.
3. A stream is a very small river/wide river.
4. A pond is an extremely small forest/lake.
5. A path is a narrow road for cars to drive along/people to walk along.
6. A town is bigger than a city/bigger than a village, but not as big as a city.
7. A hill is higher/lower than a mountain and easier to climb.
8. A wood is a group of trees/large lake.

B. GRAMMAR: PAST SIMPLE

Exercise 1: Read the information. Then complete the sentences with the past simple of the
verbs in brackets.
Be careful with the spelling of the past simple form of regular verbs.

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 Verb ends in ‘e’ (e.g. hope →hoped)

 Verb ends in vowel + ‘y’ (e.g. play →played)
 Verb ends in consonant + ‘y’ (e.g. try →tried)
 One-syllable verb ends in one vowel + one consonant (e.g. rob →
robbed)
 Longer verb ends in one vowel + one consonant, stressed final
syllable (e.g. regret →regretted)
 Longer verb ends in one vowel + one consonant, unstressed
final syllable (e.g. happen → happened)

1. It was a beautiful evening, so we ______________ (walk) along the beach.

2. I was born in Spain, but my parents _______________ (move) to Switzerland when I was a
baby.
3. Last week, we _________________ (visit) the History Museum. It was really interesting.
4. We ________________ (plan) to spend our holiday in the countryside, but we spent almost
all the time on the beach.
5. There isn’t a university in my town, so I ______________ (study) in a big city.
6. I _______________ (enjoy) my trip to London, but there were a lot of tourists everywhere.
7. When we lived in the city center, we went to the theatre every week, but we ______________
(stop) going after we moved to the suburbs.
8. I ______________ (try) to contact you, but we were in a very remote house and our phones
didn’t work.
9. We ______________ (stay) in a lovely guest house by the seaside – it was smaller than a
hotel, but it had everything we needed.
10. We moved to the countryside when I was a teenager. My parents loved it, but I
_______________ (prefer) living in the city.

Exercise 2: Correct the sentences. Change the irregular verbs from the present simple to the
past simple. The number of changes you need to make is in brackets.
1. My parents buy their house 20 years ago. (1)
2. It is quite expensive, but the bank lends them half the money so they can afford to buy it. (3)
3. It is a small house, but it feels OK when my brother and I are children. (3)
4. But as we grow older, the house becomes too small. (2)
5. After about ten years, my parents build a new room at the back of the house. (1)
6. But then my brother leaves home and the house is too big again! (2)
7. House prices then rise very quickly. (1)
8. So when my parents sell their house last year, they make a lot of money. (2)
Exercise 3: Complete the sentences with the past simple negative form of the verbs in brackets.
Use contractions (e.g. wasn’t) where possible. The first one has been done for you.
1. We couldn’t (can) find their house for hours. It was in the middle of nowhere.
2. I _____________ (like) living in the city center – it was too crowded.

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3. Our old flat ______________ (have) a balcony, but our new flat’s got one.
4. There _____________ (be) many other children in the part of town where I grew up.
5. I _____________ (see) my grandparents often when I was young because they lived a long
way away.
6. We _______________ (need) a car when we lived in the city, but now we’re in the suburbs,
we have two!
7. It ________________ (be) a very fashionable neighborhood, but I liked living there.
Exercise 4: Put the words in the correct order to complete the questions.

were a child? didyou you where young live

when
1. _________ __________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________
_________ _________ _________

what your was like? house

2. _________ __________ _________ _________ _________

living enjoy you did there?

3. _________ __________ _________ _________ _________

you didn’t it? what about like

4. _________ __________ _________ _________ _________ _________

could from your you walk house? to school

5. _________ __________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________
_________

to up? place grow it was a good

6. _________ __________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________
_________

home? you how you old left were when

7. _________ __________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________
_________

you why did leave home?

8. _________ __________ _________ _________ _________

Exercise 5: Match the answers with the questions.

I left home because I went to study at university. I lived in a small
mountain village.

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I was 18. No, I couldn’t. It was too far away.

There weren’t many other children, so sometimes I felt quite lonely.
Yes, I did. It was a lovely place to live. Yes, it was. It was very safe.
1. Where did you live when you were a child?
_______________________________________________________
2. Did you enjoy living there?
_______________________________________________________
3. What didn’t you like about it?
_______________________________________________________
4. Could you walk to school from your house?
_______________________________________________________
5. Was it a good place to grow up?
_______________________________________________________
6. How old were you when you left home?
_______________________________________________________
7. Why did you leave home?
_______________________________________________________

C. READING:
In this unit, you will answer IELTS Reading sentence completion questions and read a text about
mammoths.
Exercise 1: In this text, there is a range of vocabulary about the natural world and the
conservation of animals. Match the words with the definitions.

a population a skeleton an ecosystem to become extinct to

decrease
to hunt to preserve

1. This happens when a type of bird, animal or plant doesn’t

exist anymore:
2. to become smaller in size or number:
3. to follow and kill an animal for food or for sport:
4. to put something (e.g. food) in ice, salt, sugar or
chemicals, so it can stay in good condition:
5. all the people or animals that live in one place or area:
6. all the living things in an area and the way they affect
each other and the environment:
7. the frame of bones supporting a human or animal body:

Exercise 2: Complete the sentences about the natural world. Use the
words in the box.
decrease ecosystem extinct hunt population
preserve skeleton

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1. Pollution harms all the plants, fish and animals in the ________________ .
2. The tutor showed the ________________ to the medical students and asked which small
bones were missing.
3. We expect the number of people living in the countryside will ________________ as
families move to the cities.
4. There are so few polar bears left that it is possible they will soon become
_________________ .
5. The ________________ of my city has risen to 8 million people.
6. Lions often ________________ other animals at night.
7. Nowadays, most people use fridges to _______________ their food.

Exercise 3: Match the words and phrases with the correct synonyms and paraphrases.
get smaller make a possibility both some lower (than)
the contents of

1. build or create
2. inside of or within
3. a pair of
4. not as high as
5. a little or an
amount of
6. decrease or fall
7. might or may

Exercise 4: Complete the sentences below. Write ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each
answer.
Bringing the mammoth back to life

Mammoths once lived in large numbers across Asia, Africa, North America
and Europe. However, over time, their numbers fell until the mammoth
became extinct. Scientists think this happened for two reasons. Firstly, the
mammoths’ natural habitat decreased in size because of climate change.
Secondly, many mammoths were killed by people who hunted them. The
last population of mammoths lived on Wrangel Island, off north-east
Siberia in the Chukchi Sea. These were woolly mammoths that could

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survive in very cold conditions, but they also died out around 4,000 years
ago.

Prehistoric cave paintings show us that people ate the woolly mammoths
they killed, but also used their bones and tusks. They used these to make
simple animal and human figures, an early kind of art, and also to create
some basic tools. We also know a lot about the woolly mammoth because
the freezing conditions in Alaska and Siberia have preserved them.
Researchers have studied their skeletons, their teeth and even the grass
and plants that were still inside their stomachs. We know that their fur
was an orange-brown colour, they had a thick layer of fat, and they had
long, curved tusks. Their ears were short compared to an African or Asian
elephant’s we might see today, so they would not lose so much heat or
get frostbite.

In recent years, some researchers have suggested that we could bring

woolly mammoths back to life. Interestingly, not all scientists believe that
bringing the mammoth back to life would be a good thing. They think it
would be unfair to create a ‘new’ mammoth and then keep it in a small
space. They think the right thing to do would be to give it a certain
amount of freedom, perhaps in a wildlife park. But where would this be?
And the mammoth would also be alone, and like elephants, mammoths
were probably social in the way they behaved. This does seem to be a
strong reason against bringing the mammoth back to life. Perhaps the
‘new’ mammoth might also develop an ‘old’ disease – and this might have
an effect on the ecosystem that scientists cannot predict. Although the
idea of bringing the mammoth back seems like an exciting one at first,
there are many issues that we need to consider

1. The number of mammoths started to fall when their __________________ got smaller.
2. Humans used mammoths for food, and to make art and ____________________ .
3. Scientists have examined the contents of mammoths’ __________________ .
4. Mammoths had smaller _____________________ than modern elephants.
5. Some scientists think that a ‘new’ mammoth should have some ____________________ .

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6. Both elephants and mammoths are ___________________ animals.

7. There is a possibility that a ‘new’ mammoth could get a ____________________ .

Exercise 5: EXAM PRACTICE

Complete questions 1-8.
The honey badger
It looks harmless and vulnerable. But the honey badger is afraid of
nothing…and will attack and eat almost anything.
The honey badger (Melivora capensis) is an African and south-Asian
mammal that has a reputation for being one of the world’s most fearless
animals, despite its small size. And in spite of its gentle-sounding name, it is
also one of its most aggressive. Honey badgers have been known to attack
lions, buffalo, and snakes three times their size. Even humans are not safe
from a honey badger if it thinks the human will attack or harm it. They are
also extremely tough creatures and can recover quickly from injuries that
would kill most other animals.
At first glance, honey badgers look like the common European badger.
They are usually between 75cm and 1 meter long, although males are about
twice the size of females. They are instantly recognizable by grey and white
stripes that extend from the top of the head to the tail. Closer inspection,
which is probably not a wise thing to do, reveals pointed teeth, and sharp
front claws which can be four centimeters in length.
Honey badgers are meat-eating animals with an extremely varied diet.
They mainly eat a range of small creatures like beetles, lizards and birds, but
will also catch larger reptiles like snakes and small crocodiles. Some
mammals, such as foxes, antelope and wild cats also form part of their diet.
The badgers locate their prey mainly using their excellent sense of
smell, and catch most of their prey through digging. During a 24-hour period,
they may dig as many as fifty holes, and travel more than 40 kilometers. They
are also good climbers, and can easily climb very tall trees to steal eggs from
birds’ nests, or catch other tree-dwelling creatures.
As their name suggests, honey badgers have always been associated
with honey, although they do not actually eat it. It is the highly nutritious bee
eggs (called “brood”) that they prefer, and they will do anything to find it.
They usually cause a lot of damage to the hive in the process, and for this
reason, humans are one of their main predators. Bee-keepers will often set
special traps for honey badgers, to protect their hives.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the honey badger is its working
relationship with a bird called the greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator).
This bird deliberately guides the badger to beehives, then waits while the
badger breaks into the hive and extracts the brood. The two creatures, bird
and mammal, then share the brood between them.

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1. Although they are not big animals, honey badgers are fearless, _______________and tough.
2. Honey badgers will attack ________________if they need to protect themselves.
3. The pattern and colors on the honey badger’s back make it _______________.
4. The food they eat is meat-based and _________________.
5. _______________form the biggest part of a honey badger’s diet.
6. Honey badgers find the creatures they eat by their____________________.
7. ________________are often used to catch honey badgers which attack beehives.
8. For one particular type of food, the honey badger has a ____________with another creature.

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