IELTS Academic Reading Section-Basic Skills

basic skills that needed in ielts reading test

1. International English Language Testing System IELTS Academic Reading Section

2. IELTS Academic Reading 40 questions, 3 sections, 60 minutes Contains long text based on educational or professional issues. Types: short-answer questions, matching headings or sentence endings, identifying information, and completion tasks Important skills: Skimming Scanning Intensive reading 2

3. Skimming 3 What is skimming? A method of reading whereby you read through a text quickly , without stopping to read every word

4. The diets of children have changed dramatically over the last century due to the effect of technologies (such as improved transport, canning and refrigeration), social changes (such as the establishment of boarding schools) and evolving ideas about the nutritional needs of growing bodies. Before World War I, the meals of children and adults alike would typically consist of vegetables (often potatoes), large amounts of bread (often 0.5 kg/day) and soups with small amounts of meat. Imagine a 12-year-old Australian boy from 1970 standing next to a 12-year-old boy from 2010. The boy from 2010 will probably be 3–5 cm taller and 7 kg heavier than his counterpart in 1970. He will also be 25% fatter. A lot of that fat will be around the waist. The 2010 school trousers won’t fit the boy from 1970: they will be 10 cm too big around the waist. Now imagine that the two boys have a running race of over 1,600 metres : the boy from 1970 will finish 300 metres ahead of his mate from 40 years in the future. There are two chances in three that the boy from 1970 walked to school each day; there are three chances in four that the boy from 2010 is driven to school by mum or dad. There are four chances in five that in 1970 the boy was allowed to play unsupervised in the neighbourhood ; there is only one chance in four that in 2010 the boy will be allowed to go down to the park on his own. The boy in 1970 probably played three or four different sports; the boy from 2010 plays one or none. It is 30 times more likely that the local river was the favourite play space of the boy from 1970 than it is for the boy today. What has caused these dramatic changes in the space of a single generation? There are two main theories. Increasing overweight is caused by an energy imbalance: either energy intake (food) increases, or energy expenditure decreases, or both. The ‘Gluttony Theory’ argues that children are fatter because they are eating more than they used to, and more bad food (high energy density, high in fat and sugar, high in saturated fats). The ‘Sloth Theory’ argues that children are fatter because they are less active than they used to be. The two theories have battled it out in nutrition and physical activity journals for the last 10 years. 4

5. Near the beginning In the middle Near the end 5 Try to remember where you can find this information A comparison of children now and in the past Different hypothesis for the changes in weight A list of factors that brought about changes in our diet What is the text about? What information can you get? Evaluation

6. Scanning 6 What is scanning? Reading rapidly in order to find specific information

7. Ochre find reveals ancient knowledge of chemistry The oldest ochre processing toolkits and workshop ever found have been unearthed, indicating that as far back as 100,000 years ago, banians had an understanding of chemistry. South Africa’s Blombos Cave lies within a limestone cliff on the southern Cape coast, 300 km east of Cape Town. Its known for its 75,000-year-old rich deposits of artefacts such as heads, bone tools and ochre engravings. Some engravings date as far back as 100,000 years. Archaeologist Christophers, Henshilwood from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and University of Bergen, Norway has been excavating at the site since 1992, and has reported the discovery of a mixture, rich in ochre, stored in two abalone shells. It dates back to the Middle Stone Age – 100,000 years ago. Ochre is a term used to describe a piece of earth or rock containing red or yellow oxides or hydroxides of iron. It can be used to make pigments, or paints, ranging from golden-yellow and light yellow-brown to a rich red. Its use spans the history of humans from those living more than 200,000 years ago, to modern indigenous communities. Made from an array of materials, this mixture, which could have functioned as wall, object and skin decoration or skin protection (acting in a similar way to modern-day sunscreen), indicates the early developments that occurred in the people who originally used the site. “(Judging from) the complexity of the material that has been collected from different parts of the landscape and brought to the site, they [the people] must have had an elementary knowledge of chemistry to be able to combine these materials to produce this form. It’s not a straightforward process,” said Henshilwood . 7 75,000 100,000 200,000 artefacts ochre

8. Intensive Reading 8 What is intensive reading? Reading in detail with specific learning aims and tasks

9. 9 Question type : True/False/Not Given The statement agrees with the informartion The statement contradicts the information There is no information on this FACTUAL INFORMATION

10. 10 Ensuring our future food supply Climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties of seeds we depend on for food. Luckily, we still have many of the seeds used in the past-but we must take steps to save them. Six miles outside the town of Decorah, Iowa in the USA, an 890-acre stretch of rolling fields and woods called Heritage Farm is letting its crops go to seed. Everything about Heritage Farm is in stark contrast to the surrounding acres of intensively farmed fields of corn and soybean that are typical of modern agriculture. Heritage Farm is devoted to collecting rather than growing seeds. It is home to the Seed Savers Exchange, one of the largest non government-owned seed banks in the United States. In 1975 Diane Ott Whealy was given the seedlings of two plant varieties that her great grandfather had brought to America from Bavaria in 1870: Grandpa Ott’s morning glory and his German Pink tomato. Wanting to preserve similar traditional varieties, known as heirloom plants, Diane and her husband, Kent, decided to establish a place where the seeds of the past could be kept and traded. The exchange now has more than 13,000 members, and the many thousands of heirloom varieties they have donated are kept in its walk-in coolers, freezers, and root cellars the seeds of many thousands of heirloom varieties and, as you walk around an old red barn that is covered in Grandpa Ott’s beautiful morning glory blossoms, you come across the different vegetables, herbs, and flowers they have planted there. "Each year our members list their seeds in this,"Diane Ott Whealy says, handing over a copy of the Seed Savers Exchange 2010 Yearbook. It is as thick as a big-city telephone directory, with page after page of exotic beans, garlic, potatoes, peppers, apples, pears, and plums-each with its own name and personal history .For example, there’s an Estonian Yellow Cherry tomato, which was brought to the seed bank by “an elderly Russian lady” who lived in Tallinn, and a Persian Star garlic from “a bazaar in Samarkand.”There’s also a bean donated by archaeologists searching for pygmy elephant fossils in New Mexico.

11. Heirloom vegetables have become fashionable in the United States and Europe over the past decade, prized by a food movement that emphasizes eating locally and preserving the flavor and uniqueness of heirloom varieties. Found mostly in farmers' markets and boutique groceries, heirloom varieties have been squeezed out of supermarkets in favor of modern single-variety fruits and vegetables bred to ship well and have a uniform appearance, not to enhance flavor. But the movement to preserve heirloom varieties goes way beyond the current interest in North America and Europe in tasty, locally grown food. It’s also a campaign to protect the world’s future food supply.Most people in the well-fed world give little thought to where their food comes from or how it’s grown. They wander through well-stocked supermarkets without realizing that there may be problem ahead.We’ve been hearing for some time about the loss of flora and fauna in our rainforests.Very little,by contrast,is being said or done about the parallel decline in the diversity of the foods we eat. Food variety extinction is happening all over the world - and it's happening fast. In the United States an estimated 90 percent of historic fruit and vegetable varieties are no longer grown. Of the 7,000 different apple varieties that were grown in the 1800s, fewer than a hundred remain. In the Philippines thousands of varieties of rice once thrived; now only about a hundred are grown there. In China 90 percent of the wheat varieties cultivated just a hundred years ago have disappeared. Experts estimate that in total we have lost more than 50 percent of the world's food varieties over the past century. 11

12. Why is this a problem? Because if disease or future climate change affects one of the handful of plants we've come to depend on to feed our growing planet, we might desperately need one of those varieties we've let become extinct. The loss of the world's cereal diversity is a particular cause for concern. A fungus called Ug99, which was first identified in Uganda in 1999, is spreading across the world's wheat crops. From Uganda it moved to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen. By 2007 it had jumped the Persian Gulf into Iran. Scientists predict that the fungus will soon make its way into India and Pakistan, then spread to Russia and China, and eventually the USA. Roughly 90 percent of the world's wheat has no defense against this particular fungus. If it reached the USA, an estimated one billion dollars' worth of crops would be at risk. Scientists believe that in Asia and Africa alone, the portion currently in danger could leave one billion people without their primary food source. A famine with significant humanitarian consequences could follow, according to Rick Ward of Cornell University. The population of the world is expected to reach nine billion by 2045. Some experts say we’ll need to double our food production to keep up with this growth. Given the added challenge of climate change and disease, it is becoming ever more urgent to find ways to increase food yield. The world has become increasingly dependent upon a technology-driven, one-size-fits-all approach to food supply. Yet the best hope for securing our food's future may depend on our ability to preserve the locally cultivated foods of the past. 12

13. Ensuring our future food supply Climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties of seeds we depend on for food. Luckily, we still have many of the seeds used in the past-but we must take steps to save them. Six miles outside the town of Decorah, Iowa in the USA, an 890-acre stretch of rolling fields and woods called Heritage Farm is letting its crops go to seed. Everything about Heritage Farm is in stark contrast to the surrounding acres of intensively farmed fields of corn and soybean that are typical of modern agriculture. Heritage Farm is devoted to collecting rather than growing seeds. It is home to the Seed Savers Exchange, one of the largest non government-owned seed banks in the United States. 13 T/F/NG EXERCISE Heritage Farm is different from most other nearby farms. Most nongovernment-owned seed banks are bigger than Seed Savers Exchange. TRUE FALSE

14. In 1975 Diane Ott Whealy was given the seedlings of two plant varieties that her great grandfather had brought to America from Bavaria in 1870: Grandpa Ott’s morning glory and his German Pink tomato. Wanting to preserve similar traditional varieties, known as heirloom plants, Diane and her husband, Kent, decided to establish a place where the seeds of the past could be kept and traded. The exchange now has more than 13,000 members, and the many thousands of heirloom varieties they have donated are kept in its walk-in coolers, freezers, and root cellars the seeds of many thousands of heirloom varieties and, as you walk around an old red barn that is covered in Grandpa Ott’s beautiful morning glory blossoms, you come across the different vegetables, herbs, and flowers they have planted there. 14 T/F/NG EXERCISE Diane Ott Whealy’s grandfather taught her a lot about seed varieties. The seeds people give to the Seed Savers Exchange are stored outdoors. Diane and her husband choose which heirloom seeds to grow on Heritage Farm. NOT GIVEN FALSE NOT GIVEN

15. "Each year our members list their seeds in this,"Diane Ott Whealy says, handing over a copy of the Seed Savers Exchange 2010 Yearbook. It is as thick as a big-city telephone directory, with page after page of exotic beans, garlic, potatoes, peppers, apples, pears, and plums-each with its own name and personal history .For example, there’s an Estonian Yellow Cherry tomato, which was brought to the seed bank by “an elderly Russian lady” who lived in Tallinn, and a Persian Star garlic from “a bazaar in Samarkand.”There’s also a bean donated by archaeologists searching for pygmy elephant fossils in New Mexico. 15 T/F/NG EXERCISE The seeds are listed in alphabetical order in The Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook. The Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook describes how each seed was obtained. NOT GIVEN TRUE

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