Try It And See - IELTS Reading Answers

For scoring a band 8+, you must acquire good reading skills by attempting passages such as ‘Try It And See’. By consistently monitoring your progress level, you can develop reading techniques such as skimming for gist, scanning for keywords, recognizing paraphrasing, and even time management skills. Remember that just reading or passive practice might improve your number of correct answers. However, mastery of the complex vocabulary, recognition of the distractors, and diving into inference-based questions can help you learn the strategies for each question type. Therefore, practising with different IELTS Reading passages will help you build confidence in answering the questions within 60 minutes.

Types of Questions in IELTS Reading Passage ‘Try It And See’

Learning about the question types would help you to read the passage with intention. This could be in terms of identifying the keywords, predicting the areas where the answers might be mentioned, and learning skills such as paraphrasing, reading accuracy, and distractors. By looking at the questions prior to attempting the passage, ‘Try It And See’, you can allocate your time wisely and improve accuracy as well as confidence.

• IELTS Reading Matching Headings [Q.27-Q.32]
• IELTS Reading Summary Completion [Q.33-Q.36]
• IELTS Reading Matching Features [Q.37-Q.40]

How to Manage 20 Minutes for the IELTS Reading Passage ‘Try It And See’?

One of the main difficulties that you might encounter when preparing for the IELTS Reading module would be the time management skills. Remember that each passage is supposed to be read in 20 minutes. By getting familiar with IELTS Exam Preparation Tips for Band Score of 8+, you would learn how to effectively divide the time for reading, locating answers, and checking answers. The table below suggests the strategies to manage the time for the passage, ‘Try It And See’.

Curious to learn how to improve your reading skills to get a band 9? Check out the video below!

IELTS Reading Passage on ‘Try It And See’

Try It And See

In the social sciences, it is often supposed that there can be no such thing as a controlled experiment. Think again.

A In the scientific pecking order, social scientists are usually looked down on by their peers in the natural sciences. Natural scientists do experiments to test their theories or, if they cannot, they try to look for natural phenomena that can act in lieu of experiments. Social scientists, it is widely thought, do not subject their own hypotheses to any such rigorous treatment. Worse, they peddle their untested hypotheses to governments and try to get them turned into policies.

B Governments require sellers of new medicines to demonstrate their safety and effectiveness. The accepted gold standard of evidence is a randomised control trial, in which a new drug is compared with the best existing therapy (or with a placebo, if no treatment is available). Patients are assigned to one arm or the other of such a study at random, ensuring that the only difference between the two groups is the new treatment. The best studies also ensure that neither patient nor physician knows which patient is allocated to which therapy. Drug trials must also include enough patients to make it unlikely that chance alone may determine the result.

C But few education programmes or social initiatives are evaluated in carefully conducted studies prior to their introduction. A case in point is the 'whole-language' approach to reading, which swept much of the English-speaking world in the 1970s and 1980s. The whole-language theory holds that children learn to read best by absorbing contextual clues from texts, not by breaking individual words into their component parts and reassembling them (a method known as phonics). Unfortunately, the educational theorists who pushed the whole-language notion so successfully did not wait for evidence from controlled randomised trials before advancing their claims. Had they done so, they might have concluded, as did an analysis of 52 randomised studies carried out by the US National Reading Panel in 2000, that effective reading instruction requires phonics.

D To avoid the widespread adoption of misguided ideas, the sensible thing is to experiment first and make policy later. This is the idea behind a trial of restorative justice which is taking place in the English courts. The experiment will include criminals who plead guilty to robbery. Those who agree to participate will be assigned randomly either to sentencing as normal or to participation in a conference in which the offender comes face-to-face with his victim and discusses how he may make emotional and material restitution. The purpose of the trial is to assess whether such restorative justice limits re-offending. If it does, it might be adopted more widely.

E The idea of experimental evidence is not quite as new to the social sciences as sneering natural scientists might believe. In fact, randomised trials and systematic reviews of evidence were introduced into the social sciences long before they became common in medicine. An apparent example of random allocation is a study carried out in 1927 of how to persuade people to vote in elections. And randomised trials in social work were begun in the 1930s and 1940s. But enthusiasm later waned. This loss of interest can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that early experiments produced little evidence of positive outcomes. Others suggest that much of the opposition to experimental evaluation stems from a common philosophical malaise among social scientists, who doubt the validity of the natural sciences and therefore reject the potential of knowledge derived from controlled experiments. A more pragmatic factor limiting the growth of evidence-based education and social services may be limitations on the funds available for research.

F Nevertheless, some 11,000 experimental studies are known in the social sciences {compared with over 250,000 in the medical literature). Randomised trials have been used to evaluate the effectiveness of driver-education programmes, job¬training schemes, classroom size, psychological counselling for post-traumatic stress disorder and increased investment in public housing. And where they are carried out, they seem to have a healthy dampening effect on otherwise rosy interpretations of the observations.

G The problem for policymakers is often not too few data, but what to make of multiple and conflicting studies. This is where a body called the Campbell Collaboration comes into its own. This independent non-profit organisation is designed to evaluate existing studies, in a process known as a systematic review. This means attempting to identify every relevant trial of a given question (including studies that have never been published), choosing the best ones using clearly defined criteria for quality, and combining the results in a statistically valid way. An equivalent body, the Cochrane Collaboration, has produced more than 1,004 such reviews in medical fields. The hope is that rigorous review standards will allow Campbell, like Cochrane, to become a trusted and authoritative source of information.

Questions 27-32

27 Paragraph B…………………………………….

28 Paragraph C…………………………………….

29  Paragraph D…………………………………….

30 Paragraph E…………………………………….

31 Paragraph F…………………………………….

32 Paragraph G…………………………………….

Questions 33-36

Fighting Crime

Some criminals in England are agreeing to take part in a trial designed to help reduce their chances of 33 ....................... .  The idea is that while one group of randomly selected criminals undergoes the usual 34 .......................  the other group will discuss the possibility of making some repayment for the crime by meeting the 35 ........................ It is yet to be seen whether this system, known as 36 .......................  will work.

Questions 37-40

37 a tendency for negative results in early trials 

38 the desire to submit results for independent assessment 

39 the prioritisation of research areas to meet government needs 

40 the widespread use of studies that investigate the quality of new products 

Answer with Explanation for ‘Try It And See’

Let’s check the answers now which also include the explanations that will help you evaluate your answers for the IELTS Reading questions. Each explanation would help you to understand the way in which the information is found in the passage, how paraphrasing is perceived, and how to choose the correct answer. This method would help you improve your IELTS Band Score. The answers to questions 27-40 are given below along with their explanations.

Through practice with real passages such as ‘Try It And See’ and careful analysis of the answers, you will be able to find out your areas of improvement. These consistent practice sessions would help you gain precision and learn how to manage time pressure during the actual exam day. With this systematic approach, you can build confidence and approach the reading passages with calmness and specific strategies.

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