What is Port City IELTS Reading Answers
What is Port City IELTS Reading Answers assesses the examinee's reading skills over a set of passages and 40 questions of different kinds. The IELTS Reading test helps students in improving their skills which includes reading, accessing and analysing. In this What is Port City IELTS Reading Answers, there are few questions divided into sets, each demanding the performance of a different type of task.
- Select the correct heading
- Match the port cities
- Select Yes, No, Not Given
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Section 1
Read the Passage to Answer the Following Questions
What is Port City IELTS Reading Answers
The port city provides a fascinating and rich understanding of the movement of people and goods around the world. We understand a port as a centre of land-sea exchange, and as a major source of livelihood and a major force for cultural mixing. But do ports all produce a range of common urban characteristics which justify classifying port cities together under a single generic label? Do they have enough in common to warrant distinguishing them from other kinds of cities?
- A port must be distinguished from a harbour. They are two very different things. Most ports have poor harbours, and many fine harbours see few ships. Harbour is a physical concept, a shelter for ships; port is an economic concept, a centre of land-sea exchange which requires good access to a hinterland even more than a sea-linked foreland. It is landward access, which is productive of goods for export and which demands imports, that is critical. Poor harbours can be improved with breakwaters and dredging if there is a demand for a port. Madras and Colombo are examples of harbours expensively improved by enlarging, dredging and building breakwaters.
- Port cities become industrial, financial and service centres and political capitals because of their water connections and the urban concentration which arises there and later draws to it railways, highways and air routes. Water transport means cheap access, the chief basis of all port cities. Many of the world's biggest cities, for example, London, New York, Shanghai, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Jakarta, Calcutta, Philadelphia and San Francisco began as ports - that is, with land-sea exchange as their major function - but they have since grown disproportionately in other respects so that their port functions are no longer dominant. They remain different kinds of places from non-port cities and their port functions account for that difference.
- Port functions, more than anything else, make a city cosmopolitan. A port city is open to the world. In it races, cultures, and ideas, as well as goods from a variety of places, jostle, mix and enrich each other and the life of the city. The smell of the sea and the harbour, the sound of boat whistles or the moving tides are symbols of their multiple links with a wide world, samples of which are present in microcosm within their own urban areas.
- Sea ports have been transformed by the advent of powered vessels, whose size and draught have increased. Many formerly important ports have become economically and physically less accessible as a result. By-passed by most of their former enriching flow of exchange, they have become cultural and economic backwaters or have acquired the character of museums of the past. Examples of these are Charleston, Salem, Bristol, Plymouth, Surat, Galle, Melaka, Soochow, and a long list of earlier prominent port cities in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
- Much domestic port trade has not been recorded. What evidence we have suggests that domestic trade was greater at all periods than external trade. Shanghai, for example, did most of its trade with other Chinese ports and inland cities. Calcutta traded mainly with other parts of India and so on. Most of any city's population is engaged in providing goods and services for the city itself. Trade outside the city is its basic function. But each basic worker requires food, housing, clothing and other such services. Estimates of the ratio of basic to service workers range from 1:4 to 1:8.
- No city can be simply a port but must be involved in a variety of other activities. The port function of the city draws to it raw materials and distributes them in many other forms. Ports take advantage of the need for breaking up the bulk material where water and land transport meet and where loading and unloading costs can be minimised by refining raw materials or turning them into finished goods. The major examples here are oil refining and ore refining, which are commonly located at ports. It is not easy to draw a line around what is and is not a port function. All ports handle, unload, sort, alter, process, repack, and reship most of what they receive. A city may still be regarded as a port city when it becomes involved in a great range of functions not immediately involved with ships or docks.
- Cities which began as ports retain the chief commercial and administrative centre of the city close to the waterfront. The centre of New York is in lower Manhattan between two river mouths, the City of London is on the Thames, Shanghai along the Bund. This proximity to water is also true of Boston, Philadelphia, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Yokohama, where the commercial, financial, and administrative centres are still grouped around their harbours even though each city has expanded into a metropolis. Even a casual visitor cannot mistake them as anything but port cities.
Section 2
Solution and Explanation
Questions 1-4:
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-E.
Write the appropriate numbers (I-VII) in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
NB: There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them at all.
List of Headings
I - A truly international environment
II - Once a port city, always a port city
III - Good ports make huge profits
IV - How the port changes a city’s infrastructure
V - Reasons for the decline of ports
VI - Relative significance of trade and service industry
VII - Ports and harbours
- Paragraph B
Answer: II
Supporting sentence: They remain different kinds of places from non-port cities and their port functions account for that difference.
Keywords: remain, port functions
Keyword Location: Paragraph B, last line
Explanation: Many of the world’s biggest cities like London, New York, Calcutta, Shanghai began as ports but they have grown gradually in different respects. Still, they remain different from the non-port cities and their port functions account for that difference.
Read More IELTS Reading Related Samples
- Paragraph C
Answer: I
Supporting sentence: The smell of the sea and the harbour, the sound of boat whistles, or the moving tides are symbols of their multiple links with a wide world, samples of which are present in microcosm within their urban areas.
Keywords: multiple links, wide world
Keyword Location: Paragraph C, last line
Explanation: A port city is open to the world as a whole. The symbols of a port city’s multiple links with the wide world are the smell of the sea and the harbour, the sound of the boat, and moving tides.
- Paragraph D
Answer: V
Supporting sentence: Many formerly important ports have become economically and physically less accessible as a result.
Keywords: important ports, less accessible
Keyword Location: Paragraph D, 2nd line
Explanation: Seaports have transformed by the advent of powered vessels, whose size and draught have increased. As a result, many of such important ports have become economically and physically less accessible.
- Paragraph E
Answer: VI
Supporting sentence: What evidence we have suggests that domestic trade was greater at all periods than external trade……Estimates of the ratio of basic to service workers range from 1:4 to 1:8.
Keywords: trade, service
Keyword Location: Paragraph E, 2nd line
Explanation: Evidence of the past suggests that domestic trade was greater at all periods than external trade. Also, the ratio of basic to service workers ranges from 1:4 to 1:8.
Questions 5-8:
Look at the following descriptions(Questions 5-8 )of some port cities mentioned in Reading Passage
Match the pairs of cities (A-H) listed below, with the descriptions.
Match the appropriate letters A-H in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.
NB: There are more pairs of port cities than descriptions, so you will not use them all.
A - Bombay and Buenos Aires
B - Hong Kong and Salem
C - Istanbul and Jakarta
D - Madras and Colombo
E - New York and Bristol
F - Plymouth, and Yokohama
H - Surat and London
- Required considerable harbour development
Answer: D
Supporting sentence: Madras and Colombo are examples of harbours expensively improved by enlarging, dredging, and building breakwaters.
Keywords: harbours, expensively improved
Keyword Location: Paragraph A, last line
Explanation: Poor harbours can be improved with breakwaters and dredging and building breakwaters. Examples of such are the ports of Madras and Colombo that required considerable harbour development.
- began as ports but other facilities later dominated
Answer: C
Supporting sentence: ….that is, with the land-sea exchange as their major function- but they have since grown disproportionately in other respects so that their port functions are no longer dominant.
Keywords: no longer, dominant
Keyword Location: Paragraph B, 2nd last line
Explanation: Many of the world’s biggest cities like Istanbul and Jakarta began with ports as their major function, but they have since grown disproportionately in other respects so that their port functions are no longer dominant.
- lost their prominence when large ships could not be accommodated
Answer: F
Supporting sentence: Seaports have been transformed by the advent of powered vessels, whose size and draught have increased.
Keywords: transformed, size, increased
Keyword Location: Paragraph D, 1st line
Explanation: Plymouth and Melaka are among the list of earlier prominent port cities that lost their prominence when large ships were introduced and could not be accommodated at the ports.
- maintain their business centres near the port waterfront
Answer: G
Supporting sentence: Cities that began as ports retain the chief commercial and administrative centre of the city close to the waterfront.
Keywords: retain, waterfront
Keyword Location: Paragraph G, 1st line
Explanation: Singapore and Yokohama are among the cities that began as ports and continue to retain the chief commercial and administrative centre of the city close to the waterfront.
Questions 9-14:
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
In boxes 9-14 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage
- Cities cease to be port cities when other functions dominate.
Answer: NO
Supporting sentence: Cities which began as ports retain the chief commercial and administrative centre of the city close to the waterfront.
Keywords: retain, port cities
Keyword Location: Paragraph G, 1st line
Explanation: According to the Reading passage, the cities that earlier emerged as port cities continue to retain their state of running the functions of a port city even when other functions dominate the business environment.
- In the past, many port cities did more trade within their own country than with overseas ports.
Answer: YES
Supporting sentence: Much domestic port trade has not been recorded. What evidence we have suggests that domestic trade was greater at all periods than external trade.
Keywords: domestic trade, greater
Keyword Location: Paraph E, 1st line
Explanation: According to the past evidence, it can be concluded that in the past, many port cities did more trade within their own country than with the overseas ports.
- Most people in a port city are engaged in international trade and finance.
Answer: NO
Supporting sentence: But each basic worker requires food, housing, clothing, and other such services. Estimates of the ratio of basic to service workers range from 1:4 to 1:8.
Keywords: workers, basic, service
Keyword Location: Paragraph E, last line of paragraph
Explanation: Most people that are engaged as workers in the ports are recorded to have been working more for domestic trade than external trade. Estimates of the ratio of basic to service workers range from 1:4 to 1:8.
- Ports attract many subsidiary and independent industries.
Answer: YES
Supporting sentence: Port cities become industrial, financial, and service centres and political capitals because of their water connections and the urban concentration which arises there and later draws to it railways, highways, and air routes.
Keywords: industrial, political capitals
Keyword Location: Paragraph B, 1st line
Explanation: As ports have water connections throughout the water channels, many subsidiary and independent industries find themselves getting attracted toward such port cities.
- Ports have to establish a common language of trade.
Answer: NOT GIVEN
- Ports often have river connections.
Answer: YES
Supporting sentence: Cities that began as ports retain the chief commercial and administrative centre of the city close to the waterfront.
Keywords: ports, waterfront
Keyword Location: Paragraph G, 1st line
Explanation: The cities that began as ports often have river connections and administrative centres of the city close to the waterfront. Also, the centre of New York is in lower Manhattan between two river mouths.
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