A unique golden textile - IELTS Reading with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Luyện tập đề IELTS Reading Practice với passage A unique golden textile được lấy từ cuốn sách Forecast Test 2026 - Q1 - Test 5 - Passage 1 với trải nghiệm thi IELTS trên máy và giải thích đáp án chi tiết bằng Linearthinking, kèm list từ vựng IELTS cần học trong bài đọc.
A unique golden textile - IELTS Reading with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
❓ Câu hỏi (questions)
Question 1 - 6
The Reading Passage has six paragraphs A-F.
From the list of headings below choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph.
Write the appropriate numbers i-ix
List of Headings
I
Experimenting with an old idea
II
Life cycle of Madagascar spiders
III
Advances in the textile industry
IV
Resources needed to meet the project’s demands
V
The physical properties of spider silk
VI
A scientific analysis of spider silk
VII
A unique work of art
VIII
Importance of the silk textile market
IX
Difficulties of raising spiders in captivity
1
Paragraph A
2
Paragraph B
3
Paragraph C
4
Paragraph D
5
Paragraph E
6
Paragraph F
Question 7 - 10
Look at the following statements and the list of researchers below.
Match each statement with the correct researcher, A-C.
Write the correct letter, A-C.
List of Findings
A
Simon Peers
B
Nicholas Godley
C
Todd Blackledge
7
It takes a tremendous number of spiders to make a small amount of silk.
8
Scientists want to use the qualities of spider silk for medical purposes.
9
Scientists are making some progress in their efforts to manufacture spider silk.
10
Spider silk compares favourably to materials known for their strength.
Question 11 - 13
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Producing spider silk in the lab
Both scientists and manufacturers are interested in producing silk for many different purposes. Some researchers have tried to grow silk by introducing genetic material into and some animals. But these experiments have been somewhat disappointing. It is difficult to make spider silk in a lab setting because the silk comes from a liquid protein made in a inside the spider’s body. When a spider spins silk, it causes a that turns this liquid into solid silk. Scientists cannot replicate this yet.
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📖 Bài đọc (reading passage)
A unique golden textile
A two-man project to use spider silk is achieved after 4 years
A
A. A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders has gone on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. To produce the golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while another dozen workers carefully extracted about 24 meters of thread from each of the arachnids. The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today.
B
B.
Spider silk is very elastic and strong compared with steel or Kevlar, said textile expert Simon Peers, who led the project. Kevlar is a lightweight synthetic fabric which is often compared to nylon. It is very tough and durable and used in bullet-proof vests. Spider silk is resistant to wear, tear, and heat and has absolutely no melting point. But the tensile strength of spider silk is even greater than Kevlar’s and maintains elasticity, a strand of high-grade steel. Most importantly, spider silk is extremely lightweight: a strand of spider silk long enough to circle the Earth would weigh less than 500 grams (18 oz). It is also especially ductile, able to stretch up to 140 percent of its length without breaking, and can hold its strength below -40°C. This gives it a very high toughness, which equals that of commercial fibers.
C
Researchers have long been intrigued by the unique properties of spider silk. Unfortunately, spider silk is extremely hard to mass produce. Unlike silkworms, which are easy to raise in captivity, spiders have a habit of chomping off each other’s heads when housed together. According to Peers, there’s scientific research going on all over the world right now trying to replicate the tensile properties of spider silk to apply it to all sorts of areas in medicine and industries, but no one has yet succeeded in replicating 100 percent of the properties of natural spider silk.
D
Peers came up with the idea of weaving spider silk after learning about the French missionary Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with spiders in Madagascar during the 1890s and 1900s. Camboué built a small, hand-driven machine to extract silk from up to 24 spiders at once, without harming them. The spiders were temporarily restrained, their silk extracted, and then let go. Peers managed to build a replica of this 24-spider silk-spinning machine. It was used at the turn of the century, said Nicholas Godley, who co-led the project with Peers. As an experiment, the pair collected and restrained about 80 spiders. When we stuck them in the machine and started turning it, a lot of them started to spin beautiful gold-colored silk straight onto our machine, Godley said.
E
But to make even the tiniest significant size, the silk experts had to drastically scale their plan. Fourteen thousand spiders yield about an ounce of silk, Godley said, and the textile weighs about 2.8 pounds. The numbers are overwhelming. To achieve their goal, Godley and Peers began hiring dozens of spider handlers to collect wild arachnids and carefully harness them to the silk extractors. When they needed people who were willing to work with spiders, Godley said, because by the end of the project, the team had spent more than 1 million spider lifetimes. In return, they produced a beautiful yet absolutely impractical cloth, passion provided by love and obsession. Once the spiders had been silked, they were released back into the wild, said Godley. Godley said it takes them about a week to regenerate their silk. We can go back and get more from the same spiders, he said. It’s like the gift that never stops giving.
F
Of course, spending four years to produce a single textile of spider silk isn’t very practical for scientists trying to study the properties of spider silk, or companies that want to manufacture the fabric for use as a biomedical product, or an alternative to Kevlar armor. Several groups have tried inserting spider genes into bacteria or even cows and goats to produce silk, but so far, the attempts have been only moderately successful. Part of the reason it’s so hard to generate spider silk in the lab is that it starts out as a liquid protein that’s produced by a special gland in the spider’s abdomen. Using their spinneret, spiders apply force to rearrange the protein’s molecular structure and transform it into solid silk. When we talk about a spider spinning silk, we’re talking about how the spider applies force to produce a transformation from liquid to solid, said spider silk expert Todd Blackledge of the University of Akron, Ohio, US, who was not involved in creating the textile. Scientists simply can’t replicate the efficiency with which a spider produces silk. Every year we’re getting closer and closer to being able to mass-produce it, but we’re not there yet. For now, it seems we’ll have to be content with one incredibly beautiful cloth, graciously provided by more than a million spiders.
🔥 Answer key (đáp án và giải thích)
1
VII
Giải thích chi tiết
Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng Matching Headings
Step 01: Read relevant information to understand
Dựa vào phần Simplify & Connection ở trên, có thể suy ra:
→ Đại ý toàn đoạn: Giới thiệu một tấm vải vàng dệt từ tơ hơn một triệu con nhện – tác phẩm độc nhất vô nhị được trưng bày sau bốn năm lao động kỳ công.
----------------
Step 02: Compare meaning with meaning 📌 Đại ý của đoạn: Mô tả một tác phẩm duy nhất, mang tính nghệ thuật đặc biệt (vừa “rare”, vừa “only one”).
Chọn đáp án đúng: G. A unique work of art
Giải thích: đoạn nhấn mạnh sự độc nhất và giá trị trưng bày của tấm vải, phù hợp với “unique work of art”.
Lưu ý: Nếu chỉ scan từ khóa “spiders”, “collecting”, “silk”, người đọc dễ nhầm sang D (Resources needed …) hoặc E (physical properties), nhưng cả hai không tóm được ý chính “tác phẩm độc nhất” của đoạn.
Spider silk is very elastic and strong compared with steel or Kevlar, said textile expert Simon Peers, who led the project. Kevlar is a lightweight synthetic fabric which is often compared to nylon. It is very tough and durable and used in bullet-proof vests. Spider silk is resistant to wear, tear, and heat and has absolutely no melting point. But the tensile strength of spider silk is even greater than Kevlar’s and maintains elasticity, a strand of high-grade steel. Most importantly, spider silk is extremely lightweight: a strand of spider silk long enough to circle the Earth would weigh less than 500 grams (18 oz). It is also especially ductile, able to stretch up to 140 percent of its length without breaking, and can hold its strength below -40°C. This gives it a very high toughness, which equals that of commercial fibers.
C. Researchers have long been intrigued by the unique properties of spider silk. Unfortunately, spider silk is extremely hard to mass produce. Unlike silkworms, which are easy to raise in captivity, spiders have a habit of chomping off each other’s heads when housed together. According to Peers, there’s scientific research going on all over the world right now trying to replicate the tensile properties of spider silk to apply it to all sorts of areas in medicine and industries, but no one has yet succeeded in replicating 100 percent of the properties of natural spider silk.
D. Peers came up with the idea of weaving spider silk after learning about the French missionary Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with spiders in Madagascar during the 1890s and 1900s. Camboué built a small, hand-driven machine to extract silk from up to 24 spiders at once, without harming them. The spiders were temporarily restrained, their silk extracted, and then let go. Peers managed to build a replica of this 24-spider silk-spinning machine. It was used at the turn of the century, said Nicholas Godley, who co-led the project with Peers. As an experiment, the pair collected and restrained about 80 spiders. When we stuck them in the machine and started turning it, a lot of them started to spin beautiful gold-colored silk straight onto our machine, Godley said.
E. But to make even the tiniest significant size, the silk experts had to drastically scale their plan. Fourteen thousand spiders yield about an ounce of silk, Godley said, and the textile weighs about 2.8 pounds. The numbers are overwhelming. To achieve their goal, Godley and Peers began hiring dozens of spider handlers to collect wild arachnids and carefully harness them to the silk extractors. When they needed people who were willing to work with spiders, Godley said, because by the end of the project, the team had spent more than 1 million spider lifetimes. In return, they produced a beautiful yet absolutely impractical cloth, passion provided by love and obsession. Once the spiders had been silked, they were released back into the wild, said Godley. Godley said it takes them about a week to regenerate their silk. We can go back and get more from the same spiders, he said. It’s like the gift that never stops giving.
F. Of course, spending four years to produce a single textile of spider silk isn’t very practical for scientists trying to study the properties of spider silk, or companies that want to manufacture the fabric for use as a biomedical product, or an alternative to Kevlar armor. Several groups have tried inserting spider genes into bacteria or even cows and goats to produce silk, but so far, the attempts have been only moderately successful. Part of the reason it’s so hard to generate spider silk in the lab is that it starts out as a liquid protein that’s produced by a special gland in the spider’s abdomen. Using their spinneret, spiders apply force to rearrange the protein’s molecular structure and transform it into solid silk. When we talk about a spider spinning silk, we’re talking about how the spider applies force to produce a transformation from liquid to solid, said spider silk expert Todd Blackledge of the University of Akron, Ohio, US, who was not involved in creating the textile. Scientists simply can’t replicate the efficiency with which a spider produces silk. Every year we’re getting closer and closer to being able to mass-produce it, but we’re not there yet. For now, it seems we’ll have to be content with one incredibly beautiful cloth, graciously provided by more than a million spiders.
