Irish Potato Famine Reading Answers

This article contains the Irish Potato Famine reading answers.

Irish Potato Famine is a real Reading test passage that appeared in the IELTS.

With diligent practice, the Reading Module can be the top-scoring category for IELTS Aspirants. To score well, you must understand how to approach and answer the different question types in the Reading Module.

By solving and reviewing Sample Reading Questions from past IELTS papers, you can ensure that your Reading skills are up to the mark. Take the practice test Irish Potato Famine below and try more IELTS reading practice tests from IELTSMaterial.com.

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The question types found in this passage are: 

Matching Information 

The Matching Information type of questions in the IELTS reading test are very common which requires the test-taker to match the information that is contained in the reading passages. The information asked in the question can be a fact, opinion, description, definition, prediction, reason or explanation. The matching question type test assesses the test-taker’s ability to understand various details and specific information from the reading passage. 

Matching Sentence Endings 

The matching sentence ending type of questions in the IELTS reading test requires the test-taker to give a list of incomplete sentences with no endings and another list with possible endings. The test-taker must match the incomplete sentences with the correct ending based on the reading text. The matching sentence ending type of questions assesses the test-taker’s ability to understand how the ideas in the sentences are connected to the main ideas in the reading passage. 

Irish Potato Famine

Answers

16 Answer: F

Question type: Matching Information 

Answer locations: Paragraph F 

Answer explanations: Paragraph F mentions that the majority of the ‘British officials in the 1840s adopted the laissez-faire philosophy’, which supported a policy of non-intervention in the Irish plight. ‘Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel showed compassion toward the Irish’ by making a move to ‘repeal the Corn Laws’, which had been put in place to protect British grain producers from the competition of foreign markets. For this hasty decision, ‘Peel quickly lost the support of the British’ people and was ‘forced to resign’. The new Prime Minister, ‘Lord John Russell’, allowed assistant Charles Trevelyan to ‘take complete control over all of the relief efforts in Ireland’. Trevelyan believed that the ‘Irish situation should be left to Providence’. Claiming that it would be ‘dangerous to let the Irish become dependent on other countries’, he even ‘took steps to close food depots’ that were selling corn and to ‘redirect shipments of corn that were already on their way to Ireland’. A ‘few relief programs were eventually implemented, such as soup kitchens and 1 workhouse’. This shows that the British exploited the Irish during the famine. Hence, the answer is F.

17 Answer: D

Question type: Matching Information 

Answer locations: Paragraph D

Answer explanations: Paragraph D explains that the potato blight generated mass starvation among the Irish, and the ‘people were held captive to their poverty by the British tenure system’. ‘British landowners realized’ that the ‘best way to profit from the holdings’ was to ‘extract the resources and exports’ and ‘charge expensive rents’ and ‘taxes for people to live on the land’. Under the tenure system, ‘Protestant landlords owned 95 percent of the Irish land’, which was ‘divided up into five-acre plots’ for the people to live and farm on. As the ‘population of Ireland grew’, however, the ‘plots were continuously subdivided into smaller parcels’. As a result, ‘living conditions declined’ dramatically, and ‘families were forced to move to less fertile land’ where almost nothing but the potato would grow. Hence, the answer is D.

18 Answer: B 

Question type: Matching Information 

Answer locations: Paragraph B 

Answer explanations: Paragraph B refers to the fact that it is unknown exactly ‘how or when the potato’ was ‘first introduced to Europe’, however, the ‘general assumption’ is that it ‘arrived on a Spanish ship sometime in the 1600s’. For ‘more than one hundred years’ (early Europeans), Europeans ‘believed that potatoes belonged to a botanical family of a poisonous breed’. It was ‘not until Marie Antoinette wore potato blossoms in her hair’ in the ‘mid-eighteenth century’ that ‘potatoes became a novelty’. Hence, the answer is B. 

19 Answer: E 

Question type: Matching Information 

Answer locations: Paragraph E 

Answer explanations: Paragraph E points out that the ‘Penal Laws were also instituted’ as a ‘means of weakening the Irish spirit’. Under the Penal Laws, ‘Irish peasants were denied basic human rights’ – the right to speak their own native language, seek certain kinds of employment, practice their faith, receive education, and own land. Despite the famine that was devastating Ireland, the ‘landlords had little compassion or sympathy for tenants unable to pay their rent’. Approximately ‘500,000 Irish tenants were evicted by their landlords’ between 1845 and 1847. Many of these people also had their homes burned down and were put in jail for overdue rent. This shows that there was a complete lack of justice towards the Irish. Hence, the answer is E.

20 Answer: C

Question type: Matching Information 

Answer locations: Paragraph C 

Answer explanations: Paragraph C states that by 1800, the ‘vast majority of the Irish population’ had ‘become dependent on the potato as its primary staple’. It wasn’t uncommon for an Irish potato farmer to ‘consume more than six pounds of potatoes a day’. Families ‘stored potatoes for the winter’ and ‘even fed potatoes to their livestock’. Hence, the answer is C.

21 Answer: I

Question type: Matching Sentence Endings 

Answer locations: Paragraph B 

Answer explanations: Paragraph B informs that for more than one hundred years, Europeans believed that ‘potatoes belonged to a botanical family of a poisonous breed’. So, that is the reason they did not eat potatoes. Hence, the answer is I (because they believed that potatoes were poisonous).

22 Answer: K

Question type: Matching Sentence Endings 

Answer locations: Paragraph B 

Answer explanations: Paragraph B notes that by the ‘late 1700s’, the ‘dietary value of the potato’ (full of nutrients) ‘had been discovered’, and the ‘monarchs of Europe’ ‘ordered’ (encouraged) ‘the vegetable to be widely planted’ (potato growing). Hence, the answer is K (because it was discovered that potatoes are full of nutrients).

23 Answer: C 

Question type: Matching Sentence Endings 

Answer locations: Paragraph C 

Answer explanations: Paragraph C reveals that by 1800, the ‘vast majority of the Irish population’ had become ‘dependent on the potato’ as its ‘primary staple’ (main source of food). ‘Because of this dependency’, the ‘unexpected potato blight of 1845 devastated the Irish’. Hence, the answer is C (because potatoes were their main source of food).

24 Answer: E 

Question type: Matching Sentence Endings 

Answer locations: Paragraph C 

Answer explanations: In the last sentence of paragraph C, the writer says that those ‘who did manage to grow’ things such as ‘oats, wheat, and barley’ ‘relied on earnings from these exported crops to keep their rented homes’. So, instead of eating them, the farmers sold their crops to make profits to pay rent. Hence, the answer is E (because they needed the profits to pay the rent).

25 Answer: G 

Question type: Matching Sentence Endings 

Answer locations: Paragraph D 

Answer explanations: In paragraph D, it is revealed that while the ‘potato blight generated mass starvation among the Irish’, the ‘people were held captive to their poverty by the British tenure system’. As the ‘population of Ireland grew’, however, the ‘plots were continuously subdivided into smaller parcels’. ‘Living conditions declined dramatically’ (due to lack of land for the increasing population), and ‘families were forced to move to less fertile land’ where ‘almost nothing but the potato would grow’. Hence, the answer is G(because there wasn’t enough land for the increasing population).

26 Answer: A 

Question type: Matching Sentence Endings 

Answer locations: Paragraph E

Answer explanations:  Paragraph E brought up the fact that despite the ‘famine that was devastating Ireland’, the ‘landlords had little compassion or sympathy for tenants unable to pay their rent’. Many of these ‘people also had their homes burned down’ and ‘were put in jail for overdue rent’ (could not pay rent on their farms). Hence, the answer is A(because they couldn’t pay the rent on their farms).

27 Answer: H 

Question type: Matching Sentence Endings 

Answer locations: Paragraph F 

Answer explanations: Paragraph F discusses that while the ‘majority of the British officials adopted the laissez-faire philosophy’, which supported a policy of non-intervention in the Irish plight, ‘Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel showed compassion toward the Irish’ by making a move to ‘repeal the Corn Laws’, which had been put in place to protect British grain producers from the competition of foreign markets. ‘For this hasty decision’ (to repeal the Corn Laws), ‘Peel quickly lost the support of the British’ (this compassion for the Irish made him unpopular) and ‘was forced to resign’. Hence, the answer is H (because his efforts to help the Irish were unpopular among the British).

28 Answer: F 

Question type: Matching Sentence Endings 

Answer locations: Paragraph F

Answer explanations: At the end of paragraph F, it is stated that ‘few relief programs’, such as ‘soup kitchens and 1 workhouse were eventually implemented’. However, these were ‘poorly run institutions’ (not well managed) that ‘facilitated the spread of disease’, ‘tore apart families’, and ‘offered inadequate food supplies’ considering the extent of Ireland’s shortages. Hence, the answer is F(because they weren’t well-managed).

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