🔥The Placebo Effect: Đề thi thật IELTS READING (IELTS Reading Recent Actual Test) - Làm bài online format computer-based, kèm giải thích từ vựng

Reading Passage 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 on pages 10 and 11.

The Placebo Effect

Want to devise a new form of alternative medical treatment? No problem. Here's the recipe. As a practitioner, be warm, sympathetic, reassuring, and enthusiastic. Your treatment should involve physical contact, and each session with your patients should take at least half an hour. Encourage your patients to take an active part in their treatment and understand how their disorders relate to the rest of their lives. Tell them that their own bodies possess the true power to heal. Get them to pay you well. Describe your treatment in familiar words, but embroidered with a hint of mysticism: energy fields, energy flows, energy blocks, meridians, forces, auras, rhythms, and the like. Refer to the knowledge of an early age: wisdom carelessly swept aside by the rise of blind mechanistic science. Oh, come off it, you're saying. Something like that couldn't possibly work, could it?>> Form đăng kí giải đề thi thật IELTS 4 kĩ năng kèm bài giải bộ đề 100 đề PART 2 IELTS SPEAKING quý đang thi (update hàng tuần) từ IELTS TUTOR

Well, yes, it could—and often well enough to earn you a living. And a very good living if you are sufficiently convincing or, better still, really believe in your therapy. Many illnesses get better on their own, so if you are lucky and administer your treatment at just the right time, you'll get the credit. But that's only part of it. Some of the improvement really would be down to you. Not necessarily because you'd recommended ginseng rather than chamomile tea or used this crystal as opposed to that pressure point. Nothing so specific. Your healing power would be the outcome of a paradoxical force that conventional medicine recognizes but remains oddly ambivalent about: the placebo effect.

Placebos are treatments that have no direct effect on the body, yet still work because the patient has faith in their power to heal. Most often, the term refers to a dummy pill, but it applies just as much to any device or procedure, from a sticking plaster to a crystal. The existence of the placebo effect implies that even a complete fraud could make a difference to someone's health, which is why some practitioners of alternative medicine are sensitive about any mention of the subject. In fact, the placebo is a powerful part of all medical care, orthodox or otherwise, though its role is often neglected and misunderstood.

At one level, it should come as no surprise that our state of mind can influence our physiology: anger opens the superficial blood vessels of the face; sadness pumps the tear glands. But exactly how placebos work their medical magic is still largely unknown. Most of the scant research to date has focused on the control of pain because it's one of the...

The placebo effect can be abolished by a drug, naloxone, which blocks the effects of endorphins. Benedetti induced pain in a pressure cuff on the forearm. He did this several times a day for several days, using morphine each time to control the pain. On the final day, without saying anything, he replaced the morphine with a saline solution. This still relieved the subjects' pain: a placebo effect. But when he added naloxone to the saline and blocked the endorphins, the pain relief disappeared. Here was direct proof that the relief of pain by a placebo is carried out, at least in part, by these natural opiates.

Though scientists don't know exactly how placebos work, they have accumulated a fair bit of knowledge about how to trigger the effect. A London rheumatologist found, for example, that red dummy capsules made more effective painkillers than blue, green, or yellow ones. Research on American students revealed that blue pills make better tranquilizers than pink, a color more suitable for stimulants. Even branding can make a difference: if Aspro or Tylenol are what you like to take for a headache, their chemically identical generic equivalents may be less effective.

It matters too how the treatment is delivered. Decades ago, when the major tranquilizer chlorpromazine was being introduced, a doctor in Kansas categorized his colleagues according to whether they were keen on it, openly skeptical of its benefits, or took a "let's try and see" attitude. His conclusion: the more enthusiastic the doctor, the better the drug performed. A recent survey by Ernst on doctors' bedside manners turned up one consistent finding: Physicians who adopt a warm, friendly, reassuring manner are more effective than those whose consultations are formal and do not offer reassurance.

Warm, friendly, and reassuring are precisely what alternative treatment is all about, of course. Many of the ingredients of that opening recipe—the physical contact, the generous swaths of time, the strong hints of supernormal healing power—are just the kind of thing likely to impress patients. It's hardly surprising then, that complementary practitioners are generally best at mobilizing the placebo effect, says Arthur Kleinman, professor of social anthropology at Harvard University.

Questions 27-31

Complete each sentence with the correct ending. A-H below. Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

1. An appointment with an alternative practitioner
2. An alternative practitioner's explanation of their treatment
3. If alternative practitioners have faith in their treatment, they
4. Quite often, a patient's illness
5. Conventional doctors are aware of the placebo effect and they

Answer Options:

A. Should be easy to understand
B. Can improve without treatment
C. Can cost the patient less
D. Ought to last a minimum length of time
E. Can require a range of different products
F. Can be described as serious
G. Should give it greater recognition
H. Should be able to get a high income

Questions 32-34
Choose the correct letter A, B, C, or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 32-34 on your answer sheet.

32. In the third paragraph, the writer says that the placebo effect:
A) works best in tablet form.
B) is a new type of medical treatment.
C) is trusted more by some patients than others.
D) has a significant role in both alternative and conventional medicine.

33. A reference is made to anger and sadness in order to show that:
A) personal feelings can alter our physical condition.
B) some human behavior has no clear explanation.
C) placebos, like emotions, are experienced by everyone.
D) people find some physical reactions hard to control.

Questions 35-40
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet, write:
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

35. Scientists now have enough information to understand how the placebo effect becomes active in people.
36. As a result of experiments, some painkillers have been taken off the market.
37. Individual preference can have an impact on the effectiveness of different brands of headache tablets.
38. Doctors expressed a range of views on the drug chlorpromazine when it was first introduced.
39. Ernst’s study had a big influence on doctors’ behavior with patients.
40. Alternative practitioners work in a way that is likely to trigger the placebo effect.

1. Practitioner
   Vietnamese: Người hành nghề
   Explanation: A person who practices a profession, especially in medicine.
   IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "As a practitioner, be warm, sympathetic, reassuring, and enthusiastic."

2. Sympathetic
   Vietnamese: Thông cảm
   Explanation: Showing understanding and care for someone's feelings or situation.
   IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "As a practitioner, be warm, sympathetic, reassuring, and enthusiastic."

3. Reassuring
   Vietnamese: An ủi, động viên
   Explanation: Making someone feel less worried or afraid.
   IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "As a practitioner, be warm, sympathetic, reassuring, and enthusiastic."

4. Embroidered
   Vietnamese: Thêu dệt, tô điểm
   Explanation: Made more elaborate or exaggerated, especially in describing something.
   IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "Describe your treatment in familiar words, but embroidered with a hint of mysticism."

5. Mysticism
   Vietnamese: Mê tín
   Explanation: Belief in the supernatural or the unknown, often beyond scientific understanding.
   IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "Describe your treatment in familiar words, but embroidered with a hint of mysticism."

6. Ambivalent
   Vietnamese: Mơ hồ, không rõ ràng, phân vân
   Explanation: Having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.
   IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "The existence of the placebo effect implies that even a complete fraud could make a difference to someone's health, which is why some practitioners of alternative medicine are sensitive about any mention of the subject."

7. Paradoxical
   Vietnamese: Nghịch lý
   Explanation: Seemingly contradictory or opposite, yet possibly true.
   IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "Some of the improvement really would be down to you. Not necessarily because you'd recommended ginseng rather than chamomile tea or used this crystal as opposed to that pressure point. Nothing so specific. Your healing power would be the outcome of a paradoxical force."

8. Abolished
   Vietnamese: Bãi bỏ
   Explanation: Formally put an end to something.
   IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "The placebo effect can be abolished by a drug, naloxone, which blocks the effects of endorphins."

9. Induced
   Vietnamese: Gây ra, tác động
   Explanation: Caused or brought about, especially in relation to a condition or effect.
   IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "Benedetti induced pain in a pressure cuff on the forearm."

10. Tranquilizers
    Vietnamese: Thuốc an thần
    Explanation: Drugs used to reduce anxiety or stress.
    IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "Research on American students revealed that blue pills make better tranquilizers than pink, a color more suitable for stimulants."

11. Branding
    Vietnamese: Thương hiệu
    Explanation: The process of promoting and distinguishing a product or service.
    IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "Even branding can make a difference: if Aspro or Tylenol are what you like to take for a headache, their chemically identical generic equivalents may be less effective."

12. Rheumatologist
    Vietnamese: Bác sĩ chuyên khoa thấp khớp
    Explanation: A medical doctor specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of rheumatic diseases, which affect the joints and connective tissues.
    IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "A London rheumatologist found, for example, that red dummy capsules made more effective painkillers than blue, green, or yellow ones."

13. Tranquilizer
    Vietnamese: Thuốc an thần
    Explanation: A drug used to relieve tension or anxiety.
    IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "Research on American students revealed that blue pills make better tranquilizers than pink, a color more suitable for stimulants."

14. Physician
    Vietnamese: Bác sĩ
    Explanation: A medical doctor.
    IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "A recent survey by Ernst on doctors' bedside manners turned up one consistent finding: Physicians who adopt a warm, friendly, reassuring manner are more effective than those whose consultations are formal and do not offer reassurance."

15. Mobilizing
    Vietnamese: Vận động, kích hoạt
    Explanation: To make something active or effective, especially in terms of bringing resources or people into action.
    IELTS TUTOR xét ví dụ từ bài đọc: "It’s hardly surprising then, that complementary practitioners are generally best at mobilizing the placebo effect."

• D
• A
• H
• B
• G
• D
• A
• C
• No
• Not given
• Yes
• Yes
• Not given
• Yes