IELTS Reading B1 ⏱️ 15 Minutes

📖 Reading Passage: Making Everyday Steel

Unit: Factories & Workshops

Steel is simply iron mixed with a small amount of carbon, and people use it to build everyday items such as cars, buildings, refrigerators, and ships. According to the World Steel Association, the official group of steel makers, factories around the world produced a total of 1,882.6 million tonnes of steel in 2024.

Steel makers generally use two main routes. About 70 percent of all steel comes from the blast furnace route. This process mainly uses iron ore, coal, and recycled steel. First, the plant turns raw iron ore into iron, and then it changes that iron into steel. After that, the plant casts the steel and rolls it into solid shapes such as long bars.

About 30 percent of steel comes from the electric arc furnace route, which uses electricity to melt recycled steel. The association notes that steel is fully recyclable. In fact, its basic properties stay exactly the same however many times people recycle it.

The association also says that Henry Bessemer, a British inventor, is generally credited with developing the first way to make steel in large amounts, back in the mid-1850s. Today, manufacturing one tonne of steel needs only 40 percent of the energy that it needed in 1960.

"They make our school desks by cutting and joining pieces of wood."

Questions 1–3: True / False / Not Given Question 1 of 8

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

True / False / Not Given Question 2 of 8

____ TRUE ____ FALSE ____ NOT GIVEN

True / False / Not Given Question 3 of 8

____ TRUE ____ FALSE ____ NOT GIVEN

Questions 4–5: Which paragraph contains this information? Question 4 of 8

____ Paragraph A ____ Paragraph B ____ Paragraph C ____ Paragraph D

Paragraph Matching Question 5 of 8

____ Paragraph A ____ Paragraph B ____ Paragraph C ____ Paragraph D

Questions 6–7: Multiple Choice Question 6 of 8

____ a. Changing the iron into steel ____ b. Rolling the metal into long bars ____ c. Melting recycled steel with electricity ____ d. Mixing coal with raw iron ore

Multiple Choice (Inference) Question 7 of 8

____ a. Modern factories produce less steel per year than in 1960. ____ b. Steel made today is much stronger than steel made in 1960. ____ c. Modern production uses much less energy per tonne than in 1960. ____ d. Modern steel makers rely entirely on electricity instead of coal.

Question 8: Sentence Completion Question 8 of 8

8. Producing one tonne of steel today uses ____ percent less energy than it did in 1960.