The Search for Colour - IELTS Reading Answers With Explanations

To achieve your desired band score in the IELTS Reading test, you should start by skimming the passage quickly to understand the main idea and then scan for keywords to locate specific answers efficiently.

In this article, we give you the freedom to practice a recently asked reading topic, “The Search for Colour”, and access our expert tricks to crack the question types in it. So why wait? Let us begin now! 

The question types found in ‘The Search for Colour’ IELTS Academic Reading Answers are:

• IELTS Reading Sentence Completion (Q. 1 - 4)
• True/False/Not Given IELTS Reading (Q. 5 - 8)
• IELTS Reading Summary Completion (Q. 9 - 13)

‘The Search for Colour’ IELTS Reading Passage

You should spend 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on the Reading Passage below.

We seldom reflect on the artificial colour of modern merchandise. A blue car is blue; a red chair, red; a green bicycle, green. But why does it have colour? Answer, because its surface contains pigment. If this was originally dissolved in a carrier liquid to transfer the colour, it is known as a dye, but whatever the case, since colour is the most visible element in all objects we desire, pigments can be said to be the basis of customer choice, and therefore of almost all hard trade and transactions. Consequently, production of this substance is big business, now accounting for over twenty billion dollars annually in global sales—yet there was a time when none of it existed.

Going back into the mists of prehistory, objects, tools, and clothing were all earthen and bland, without anything except their natural colours. The first pigments used were of mineral origin — from natural clays tinted by the presence of iron oxides. The best known examples are the gold colour of ochre, the brown of umber, and the yellow of sienna. These were ground up and mixed with fat to create paint, used, for example, in the earliest European cave paintings. Ash, as well as charcoal (derived from heating wood in the absence of oxygen), were also used to provide black, but in the search for colour, it was soon discovered that biological matter, such as plants, animal waste, mollusks, and insects, could yield more interesting results.

Crimson —a bright red colour—is a good example. It was extracted from kermes, a small insect found on Southern-European oak trees. The pigment is a constituent of the carminic acid produced inside the creature’s body, used to discourage predation by birds or other insects. However, with the trees being large and bushy, and the sap-feeding insects few and far between, pigment production was a meticulous and time-consuming process. This increased the price of the product, the end result being that, in Northern Europe, pure crimson long remained a luxury colour for clothing and textiles.

Interestingly, across the Pacific Ocean, people were producing the same colour from the same chemical within another insect. They were called cochineals: small scaly creatures which breed in abundant clusters on the fleshy leaves of a commonly occurring cactus. These insects have many advantages over kermes. Being so prolific and so easily seen by predators, they need to produce higher concentrations of carminic acid for protection, up to a quarter of their body weight. The pigment which results is also stronger and longer-lasting. Finally, the insects are far more easily obtained, being simply scrapped or knocked off the cactus leaves. Thus, after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, cochineals replaced kermes almost completely, becoming a lucrative Central American export for the next few centuries.

The lure of crimson was only exceeded by the vivid ‘Tyrian purple’ — a colour which had ranked in highest favour since antiquity. Its source was the medium-sized Murex sea snail. With a range around the coastal Mediterranean, early civilisations there soon realised that the mucus the snail secretes when poked and prodded could be treated to produce a purplish-blue dye which did not fade with time. However, by needing thousands of sea snails and using a complicated (and still little known) process, all for the production of only small amounts of pigment, the colour was so expensive it could only be afforded by the ruling classes. This led to purple becoming associated with royalty. Roman emperors traditionally wore clothing of this colour.

For a less durable blue, suitable for dyeing clothes, the indigo plant was discovered. Its leaves were fermented, and then left to age, and the sediment eventually produced was dried, treated, then reduced to a blue powder. This pigment can, in fact, be said to be the oldest used to colour fabric. It is one reason jeans were originally blue, and remain so to this day, indigo being the dye used to colour them. However, it was not suitable for painting or artistic purposes. For that, European artists used a mixture derived from the grinding up of lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone, whose only known source was in far Afghanistan. Consequently, this colour was very costly, and many artists avoided it altogether. Others, however, were deliberately extravagant in its use, producing proportionally more expensive paintings.

The cost of this paint resulted in much experimentation during the Industrial Revolution in search of chemical-based alternatives. This eventually led to the first modern synthetic pigment, Prussian Blue. Discovered in Germany in the early 18th century, it was put into rapid production and exportation, giving artists around the world the first cheap, yet stable, blue pigment. Other chemists were making similar breakthroughs. The vivid purple of the Murex snail was accidentally produced by an English chemist, William Perkins, who soon put ‘mauveine’ into commercial production. With such efforts, affordable pigments were soon found in all colours.

Mass production followed, bringing industrial prosperity to Northern Europe, but decline in many parts of the world where traditional organic pigments were still under production. In the Americas, for example, the crimson of cochineals, having long been a Spanish monopoly and rich source of export income, went into steady decline. However, all was not lost. In this modern age, there has been a shift back towards naturalness, even in pigments, and this has seen a resurgence in the popularity of cochineals. The pigment is now commercially produced in several countries, with Peru being the largest exporter.

Questions - The Search for Colour

Questions 1-4

Complete the sentences. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Ultimately, pigments are important because they are so (1)………………………..

Umber and sienna are examples of (2)……………………….

Originally, more unusual colours were derived from (3)……………………

Generally, predators of insects do not like the taste of (4)………………………

Questions 5-8

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage One?

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN If there is no information on this

5. Kermes were easy to collect.
6. Kermes produce better pigment than cochineals.
7. Kermes are bigger than cochineals.
8. Cochineals are still a valuable crop.

Questions 9-13

Complete the summary of the second half of the passage. Choose ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.

The best purple originally came from the (9)……………………of sea snails, although the oldest pigment for clothing was from the (10)………………………..of indigo. The blue for picture-painting originated from a (11)………………………costing so much that an artificial replacement. Prussian Blue, was eventually produced, being not only inexpensive but also (12)……………………….Ironically, the prized purple colour was discovered (13)………………….

To conclude, we strongly believe that you would benefit greatly from taking additional IELTS Reading practice tests including passages like ‘The Search for Colour’ with the thorough explanation and location. Join our free online sessions and speak with an IELTS expert if you need help strengthening your weak areas so you can ace the IELTS reading exam!

‘The Search for Colour' IELTS Reading Answers With Explanations

Tips to Solve the Question Types in ‘The Search for Colour’ IELTS Reading Answers

As you now know the answers to the Reading Answers of ‘The Search for Colour’ with explanation, let us look at some quick tips for answering the three types of questions in the passage.

Sentence Completion:

In the sentence completion of the IELTS Reading test, you will be asked to fill in the blanks in incomplete phrases with the relevant words or numbers.

• Read the instructions carefully. It will help you determine the word limit (no more than two, one word, etc) and important terms like ‘using words from the text’ or ‘from the text’. You have to follow these strictly.
• Read the incomplete sentences first. Also, think about keywords and how they could be represented by synonyms or paraphrasing.
• Locate where the information is by using IELTS Reading keyword techniques. If you can’t, move on.
• Study the reading text by using the skimming and scanning techniques. It will help to establish the answer quickly. When scanning for your answer, make sure you are thinking about paraphrasing and synonyms.
• The answers appear in the same order as the questions. Also, check your spelling and remember that your answer should be grammatically correct.

True/False/Not Given:

In IELTS Reading, ‘True, False, Not Given’ questions are based on facts. Several factual statements will be provided to you, and it is up to you to determine whether or not they are accurate by reading the text. To answer this type of question, you can use the following strategies:

• Read the question and identify the keywords - Before reading the material, have a look at your list of True, False, and Not Given questions.
• Scan the passage for synonyms or paraphrased words of the keywords - When you have highlighted the keywords, swiftly read the text to look for paraphrases or synonyms.
• Match the highlighted words in the questions with their synonyms in the text - Once you find both sets of keywords, cross-check them to find the answer.
• Identify the answer - If the facts match, the answer is TRUE, and in case it doesn’t match, it is FALSE. If you are unable to find the answer or unsure of it, mark it NOT GIVEN.

Summary Completion:

In the IELTS Reading Sentence Completion, just like the Sentence Completion question type, you will be asked to fill in the blanks of a paragraph.

• Read the Summary - Begin by reading the summary first to understand the topic and the type of information that is missing.
• Keywords are important - Start by underlining the keywords around each gap. Mainly look out for nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Next
• Skim the text - Skimming the reading passage is the next major key to finding the section that matches the topic of the summary.
• Do not miss out on the synonyms - Scan for synonyms and paraphrased phrases, since the exact words from the summary rarely appear in the reading text. 
• Make your answers grammatically correct and align them with the mentioned word limit. For example, if an instruction says “NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS,” you must never write more than three words in your answer.
• The answers appear in order in the reading text, so once you find an answer, the others will surely follow that. 
• Finally, once you are done, read the completed summary to ensure that the answers make a meaningful paragraph. 

Check More IELTS Reading Answers

Also check :