Chelsea Rochman: IELTS Important Reading Passage with Questions and Detailed Answers

The British Council, in collaboration with other agencies in various countries, administers the IELTS exam, which is a globally recognised English language competency examination. The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is a test that assesses your ability to communicate in English. This exam is taken by people and students who want to move to an English-speaking nation such as Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, and so on.

More than 1000 non-educational and educational institutions recognise the results of this test as proof of English language ability. The exam is divided into four sections, and the examinee must appear for each one. IELTS Writing, IELTS Reading, IELTS Speaking, and IELTS Listening are the four components. Without taking a break, the Writing, Reading, and Listening parts are completed on the same day.

The Speaking component of the exam is either scheduled on the same day as the exam or a week before or after.

Let’s look at a reading passage called “Chelsea Rochman” to better comprehend the Reading Section of the IELTS exam.

Chelsea Rochman Reading Passage

Given below is the passage of Chelsea Rochman.

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Section One

Chelsea Rochman, an ecologist at the University of California, Davis, has been trying to answer a dismal question: Is everything terrible, or are things just very, very bad?

Rochman is a member of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis’s marine-debris working group, a collection of scientists who study, among other things, the growing problem of marine debris, also known as ocean trash. Plenty of studies have sounded alarm bells about the state of marine debris; in a recent paper published in the journal Ecology, Rochman and her colleagues set out to determine how many of those perceived risks are real.

Section Two

Often, Rochman says, scientists will end a paper by speculating about the broader impacts of what they’ve found. For example, a study could show that certain seabirds eat plastic bags, and go on to warn that whole bird populations are at risk of dying out. ‘But the truth was that nobody had yet tested those perceived threats,’ Rochman says. ‘There wasn’t a lot of information.’

Rochman and her colleagues examined more than a hundred papers on the impacts of marine debris that were published through 2013. Within each paper, they asked what threats scientists had studied – 366 perceived threats in all – and what they’d actually found.

Section Three

In 83 percent of cases, the perceived dangers of ocean trash were proven true. In the remaining cases, the working group found the studies had weaknesses in design and content which affected the validity of their conclusions – they lacked a control group, for example, or used faulty statistics.

Strikingly, Rochman says, only one well-designed study failed to find the effect it was looking for, an investigation of mussels ingesting microscopic bits. The plastic moved from the mussels’ stomachs to their bloodstreams, scientists found, and stayed there for weeks – but didn’t seem to stress out the shellfish.

While mussels may be fine eating trash, though, the analysis also gave a clearer picture of the many ways that ocean debris is bothersome.

Section Four

Within the studies they looked at, most of the proven threats came from plastic debris, rather than other materials like metal or wood. Most of the dangers also involved large pieces of debris – animals getting entangled in trash, for example, or eating it and severely injuring themselves.

But a lot of ocean debris is ‘microplastic’, or pieces smaller than five millimeters. These may be ingredients used in cosmetics and toiletries, fibers shed by synthetic clothing in the wash, or eroded remnants of larger debris. Compared to the number of studies investigating large-scale debris, Rochman’s group found little research on the effects of these tiny bits. ‘There are a lot of open questions still for microplastic,’ Rochman says, though she notes that more papers on the subject have been published since 2013, the cutoff point for the group’s analysis.

Section Five

There are also, she adds, a lot of open questions about the ways that ocean debris can lead to sea-creature death. Many studies have looked at how plastic affects an individual animal, or that animal’s tissues or cells, rather than whole populations. And in the lab, scientists often use higher concentrations of plastic than what’s really in the ocean. None of that tells us how many birds or fish or sea turtles could die from plastic pollution – or how deaths in one species could affect that animal’s predators, or the rest of the ecosystem.

‘We need to be asking more ecologically relevant questions,’ Rochman says. Usually, scientists don’t know exactly how disasters such as a tanker accidentally spilling its whole cargo of oil and polluting huge areas of the ocean will affect the environment until after they’ve happened. ‘We don’t ask the right questions early enough,’ she says. But if ecologists can understand how the slow-moving effect of ocean trash is damaging ecosystems, they might be able to prevent things from getting worse.

Section Six

Asking the right questions can help policymakers, and the public, figure out where to focus their attention. The problems that look or sound most dramatic may not be the best places to start. For example, the name of the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ – a collection of marine debris in the northern Pacific Ocean – might conjure up a vast, floating trash island. In reality, though, much of the debris is tiny or below the surface; a person could sail through the area without seeing any trash at all. A Dutch group called ‘The Ocean Cleanup’ is currently working on plans to put mechanical devices in the Pacific Garbage Patch and similar areas to suck up plastic. But a recent paper used simulations to show that strategically positioning the cleanup devices closer to shore would more effectively reduce pollution over the long term.

Section Seven

‘I think clearing up some of these misperceptions is really important,’ Rochman says. Among scientists as well as in the media, she says, ‘A lot of the images about strandings and entanglement and all of that cause the perception that plastic debris is killing everything in the ocean.’ Interrogating the existing scientific literature can help ecologists figure out which problems really need addressing, and which ones they’d be better off – like the mussels – absorbing and ignoring.

Chelsea Rochman IELTS Reading Answers

Given below are the questions with answers

Question Type One with Answers

Questions below should be answered based on this information given below:

True: If the statement which is given below agrees with the passage.

False: If the statement which is given below disagrees with the passage.

Not Given: If the statement has no information about the passage at all.

#Rochman and her coworkers were among the first to investigate the issue of marine garbage.

False

#Certain seabirds are the organisms most at risk from ocean rubbish.

Not given

#According to the studies evaluated by Rochman, several bird populations are on the verge of extinction.

False

#Rochman looked at publications on the many types of dangers posed by ocean debris.

True

#Rochman and her colleagues found that the majority of the studies they looked at were poorly structured.

False

#Rochman expected to find that mussels were injured by ingesting plastic in one of the studies he looked into.

True

#Plastic is preferred by certain mussels over their natural diet.

Not given

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Question Type Two with Answers

Fill in the blanks are given and the aspirant needs to choose one word from the passage which fills the blanks

Studies of marine debris found the enormous hazards were

plastic (not wood or metal)

#Bits of garbage that were ………………………….. (dangerous to creatures)

Ans) Large

#There was a slight exploration into …………………………. e.g. from artificial fibres.

Ans) Microplastic

Drawbacks of the studies examined

#Most of them concentrated on particular creatures, not the entire ………………………..

Ans) Populations

#The …………………….. of plastic used in the lab did not constantly indicate those in the deep

Ans) Concentrations

There was inadequate evidence on numbers of animals that could be impacted

The influence on the ecosystem

#Rochman explains more knowledge is required on the possible effect of the possibility ………………………… (e.g. including oil).

Ans) Disasters

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Question Type Three with Answers

What would be the most suitable title for this paragraph?

A   Assessing the threat of marine debris

B   Marine debris: who is to blame?

C   A new solution to the problem of marine debris

D   Marine debris: the need for international action

Ans) A

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Conclusion

Hopefully, this article has provided you with all the information and answers for Chelsea Rochman. While attempting the reading section, one should look into the passage thoroughly. The answers will be provided in the passage, so the aspirant should not feel that something is asked outside of the passage. Preparation and Practice is important for the reading section. Prepare well and all the best!

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