A LEADING expert on the European Union has warned that the entire bloc could crack under the pressure of the coronavirus crisis, after a shocking claim that French President Emmanuel Macron could lead a break-away group if the pandemic takes its toll on Brussels.
GEORGE GALLOWAY has exposed the stark infighting inside the European Union during the coronavirus pandemic, after accusing Brussels of "literally stealing masks and equipment from member-states" and leaving Spain and Italy "to rot".
ITALIAN Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte launched a scathing attack on Brussels as he warned there is a "real risk" the EU will fail unless the bloc comes up with a united response to the coronavirus crisis.
THE daily death toll due to coronavirus in New York has yet again seen its highest increase yet as nurses express concern over the effect the virus is having.
ICMR Previous Papers Pdf here!! Hello Aspirants!! Check the subject wise ICMR JRF Previous Paper now. Download the model question paper along with answers. Get the preparation tips, the study material and syllabus for ICMR JRF Exam. Here you will get complete details of the Indian Council of Medical Research Previous Papers. Preparing for these exams can help you score better in the exam.
Indian Council of Medical Research Previous Papers with Answers
Download the Indian Council of Medical Research Old Question papers pdf from our site. We have provided the ICMR Previous Papers in the Pdf format. Therefore, the applicants can download the ICMR Exam Solved papers easily and quickly. Just click on the below links, to get the Indian Council of Medical Research Previous Papers PDF. Applicants can also check the ICMR Exam Syllabus and Exam Pattern provided below. Therefore Applicants can refer to subject wise Solved Papers which are helpful to get your dream job.
ICMR Previous Year Model Exam Papers Pdf
Interested candidates who have applied for ICMR Recruitment can find all the model question papers here. The notification for this Junior Research Fellowship vacancy was released. Check out all the model papers and download them for free for ICMR exam 2020. This will help you prepare well and score good marks in your exams. We have provided a list of previous year question papers for you to practice, as the more you practice the more you can prepare. It will also help you to understand the structure of the exam, important topics, types of questions asked and other details that are important from exam point of view. For more details, read the sections in this article. You can also visit the official portal of the Indian Council of Medical Research.
ICMR Exam Practice Papers – Details
Description
Details
Organization Name
Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)
Posts Name
Junior Research Fellowship (JRF)
Category
Previous Papers
ICMR Exam Date 2020
12th June 2020
Job Location
India
Official website
www.icmr.nic.in and www.pgimer.edu.in
Selection Process:
Written Test
Interview
Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Junior Research Fellowship Exam Pattern 2020
The entire details of the ICMR exam 2020 is given under this topic. It includes details like Subject name, Number of Questions, Marks allotted etc.
ICMR Exam Pattern
The ICMR exam pattern is given in detail below. There will be a written test conducted. The test will be conducted for 150 marks; 60 marks for aptitude section and 100 marks for life science and social science questions. The exam will be conducted for 2 hours. Candidates who have applied for ICMR Junior Research Fellowship Exam must check the details below for more information. The direct links for ICMR sample papers are given below for you to download for free and prepare well.
ICMR Syllabus for Computer Based Test
Name of the Subject
Number of Questions
Time Duration
Aptitude Section
50
2 Hours
Life Science and Social Science
100
Download ICMR Assistant Previous Year Question Papers Pdf
Here we have provided previous papers for candidates who want to prepare for ICMR exam. By preparing well you can secure very good marks in the exam. You can find the direct link here to download the ICMR Junior Research Fellowship model papers. These papers are as per the exam pattern making it easier for candidates to prepare. Download the subject wise old question papers of ICMR JRF exam below.
Candidates, please remember that the papers that are given above for ICMR Junior Research Fellowship are previous papers/ sample papers only. They are only for reference use. Use the details given to prepare well for the exam.
SAMEER Previous Papers Pdf is available for free download. Aspirants may check Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research Solved Papers. Download SAMEER Model Papers along with Answers. Also, get Study Material, Preparation tips in addition to SAMEER Old Question Papers. Here you will get the complete information of the Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research Previous Papers. Solving previous papers can help you to prepare well for the exams.
Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research Previous Papers with Answers
Download the SAMEER Old Question papers pdf from our site. We have provided the SAMEER sample question papers in the Pdf format. Therefore, the applicants can download the SAMEER Scientist B & C Exam Solved papers easily and quickly. Just click on the below links, to get the Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research Previous Papers PDF. Applicants can also check the SAMEER Exam Syllabus and Exam Pattern provided below. Therefore Applicants can refer to subject wise Solved Papers which are helpful to get your dream job.
SAMEER Previous Year Model Exam Papers Pdf
Interested candidates who have applied for SAMEER Recruitment can find all the model question papers here. The notification for this Scientist B and C vacancy was released on 2nd April 2020. Check out all the model papers and download them for free for SAMEER exam 2020. This will help you prepare well and score good marks in your exams. We have provided a list of previous year question papers for you to practice, as the more you practice the more you will be prepared. It will also help you to understand the structure of the exam, important topics, types of questions asked and other details that are important from the SAMEER exam point of view. For more details, read the sections in this article. You can also visit the official portal of Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research for more details.
SAMEER Scientist B & C Exam Practice Papers – Details
Description
Details
Organization Name
Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research (SAMEER)
Posts Name
Scientist B and C
Category
Previous Papers
Job Location
Maharashtra
Official website
www.sameer.gov.in
Selection Process:
Written Test
Interview
Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research (SAMEER) Scientist B & C Exam Pattern 2020
The entire details of the SAMEER exam 2020 is given under this topic. It includes details like Subject name, Number of Questions, Marks allotted etc.
Name of the Subjects
Type of exam
Time Duration
Electronics and Communication Engineering OR Physics OR Atmospheric Sciences
Objective Type
3 Hours
SAMEER Exam Pattern
The SAMEER exam pattern is given in detail below. There will be a written test conducted. The test will be conducted for 3 hours for the subjects Electronics and Communication Engineering/ Physics/ Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences. The SAMEER Scientist exam will be of objective type. Check the details above for more information. The direct links for SAMEER sample papers are given below for you to download for free and prepare well. Practice well for these exams to score well in the exam. The SAMEER Scientist Syllabus has also been given for candidates.
Download SAMEER Scientist Previous Year Question Papers Pdf
Here we have provided previous papers for candidates who want to prepare for the exam. By preparing well you can secure very good marks in the exam. You can find the direct link here to download the SAMEER Scientist B and C model papers. These papers are as per the exam pattern making it easier for candidates to prepare. Download the subject wise old question papers of SAMEER exam below.
Candidates, please remember that the papers that are given above for SAMEER Scientist B and C are previous papers/ sample papers only. They are only for reference use. All interested candidates can download the subject wise exam papers for free. Prepare well for the exams by practising these papers and referring to the SAMEER Scientist Syllabus also. This will help you score better marks in the exam.
Dear Aspirants!! Here is the Syllabus and the Exam Pattern details for the SAMEER Scientist Job. Candidates who have applied for the SAMEER Scientist Recruitment and looking for the syllabus details to begin your preparation for the written examination in the upcoming months. This section will help you to know about the exam pattern and syllabus topics. Examine the details updated in the below section and get ready for the written test. Check the syllabus and prepare for the exam to score good marks. Make use of the links and the time available. The subject wise syllabus pdf has been given below. Download SAMEER Exam Pattern now.
With the help of the links given below, the candidates can get all the details of the SAMEER Syllabus 2020. We have provided the Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research Syllabus in the pdf format for candidates to download it easily. The candidates can also visit the official website for the syllabus and exam pattern for the written test. Once you are thorough with the syllabus and exam pattern you can start preparing for the exam. So check out the SAMEER Scientist B & C Syllabus 2020 and exam pattern here.
Name of the Organization
Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research (SAMEER)
The SAMEER Exam pattern and syllabus has been given below in detail. The time duration for the exam is 3 hours. Get a brief idea of the exam pattern.
Subject Name
Type of Exam
Time Duration
Electronics and Communication Engineering OR Physics OR Atmospheric Sciences
Objective Type
3 Hours
Punjab PSC Syllabus for Scientist Exam 2020
We have given the SAMEER Scientist Syllabus pdf for all candidates interested. Candidates looking for SAMEER Previous papers can also get it on our page. If you are eligible for the Scientist B & C Posts, start preparing now. Easily download the syllabus and previous papers as study materials and start preparing. This will help you score well in the exam. Get the subject wise SAMEER syllabus along with the PDF below:
Follow the SAMEER exam pattern given above to prepare well for the exams. Refer to the SAMEER notification and previous papers for more details on the same. Get all the syllabus pdf on our page for free download. All The Best!!
ONGC Recruitment 2020: Online Application for 72 Consultant Posts in Mehsana, Ahmedabad @ www.ongcindia.com!! Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has released the ONGC Notification. There has been an announcement to recruit candidates to the post of Associate Consultant/ Junior Consultant Posts. There are 72 vacancies for ONGC Jobs currently. Qualified candidates are called to apply online for these posts. The ONGC Application form must be sent via Email to the IDs given below. Interested candidates can start applying from 03rd April 2020. The last date to apply for ONGC Recruitment is 20th April 2020.
Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Recruitment 2020-21
Interested candidates can start reading the details below. These details are from the official ONGC notification. You can also refer to the notification for more information. Once the candidate has confirmed their eligibility for these posts, they can proceed to apply for these posts. Applications have to be sent via email to the id given below only. To know more about the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, click on the website link below or refer to the official notification @ www.ongc.india.com.
The details of the vacancy as given in the ONGC Recruitment 2020 is as below
Name of the Place of Posting
Number of Posts
Associate Consultant/ Junior Consultant
Ahmedabad
46
Mehsana
26
Total
72
Eligibility Criteria for ONGC Recruitment 2020
Candidates interested in ONGC Jobs can check their eligibility with the details below to apply.
Academic Qualification:
Retired ONGC persons at E3 to E5 level with at least 10 years of experience in Work-over/ Drilling operations
Read the official notification for more details on ONGC Careers.
Age Limit:
Maximum Age – 65 Years
For age limit as given in the ONGC Recruitment 2020, refer to the official notification
Selection Process:
Written Test
Interview
Document Verification
Pay Scale for ONGC Recruitment 2020:
Refer to the official website for details on the pay scale for ONGC Jobs
ONGC Online Application Fee:
Candidates may read the official notification to get more details on ONGC online application fees
How to apply for ONGC Recruitment 2020?
Open the notification using the link below
Read all the details and check if you are eligible
Eligible candidates can send their application forms to the email ids given below before the last date
EMAIL ID:
For Ahmedabad – arun.sharma4@ongc.co.in
For Mehsana – pramanik_s@ongc.co.in
General Information :
Candidates can contact the officials to get the format of the application form
The engagement will be for 3 months
The offer of engagement will have all the details of ONGC Jobs
Arrangement to stay in Ahmedabad or Mehsana must be made by the candidate itself
Consultants will not have any financial power
Selected candidates will have to follow the round the clock shift pattern
Roles and Responsibility of Consultant:
The Consultant is expected to provide complete supervision of all activities associated with workover operations in RTC shift pattern such as:
The adequate inspection of the installation and the equipment thereof
A thorough supervision of all operations at the installation
To ensure that the installations, running and maintenance, of all machinery in the mine are carried out in a safe manner
To ensure compliance of SOPs, statutory guidelines and Mines act
Regular update of QHSE documentation site inspection and supervision of site preparation, rig deployment at the site, smooth execution of workover operations in co-ordination with Installation Manager and other departments, preparation of pipe tally and completion report etc
Any other responsibility required as per DGMS & other statutory authorities
The Oil and Gas Company (CGSB) is an Indian oil and gas multinational based in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India. As a company, its head office is now in Deendayal Urja Bhavan, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070 India. It is a public sector company of the Government of India, under the administrative control of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. ONGC India is the largest oil and gas exploration and production company in India. It produces about 70% of India's crude oil (around 30% of the country's total demand) and about 62% of its natural gas.
In a survey conducted by the government for the 2016-2017 fiscal year, it was classified as the largest source of food for profit in India. It ranks 11th out of the 250 largest global energy companies in Platts. CGSB was founded on 14th August 1956, by the government of India, which currently holds a 68.94% stake. It participates in the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons in 26 sedimentary basins in India and owns and operates more than 11,000 kg of pipelines in the country.
Know more about Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC):
Its international subsidiary ONGC Videsh currently has projects in 17 countries. CGSB has discovered 6 of the 7 Indian basins in commercial production in the last 50 years, adding more than 7.1 billion tons of hydrocarbons on the site to the Indian basins. In response to the global decline in the production of mature fields, CGSB has maintained the production of abandoned industrial sites such as Tripura High, through aggressive investments in several programs of IOR (Improved Oil Recovery) and EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery). ). CGSB has many mature fields with a current recovery factor of 25-33%.
Its reserve replacement rate for the period from 2005 to 2013 was greater than one. During the fiscal year 2012-2013, CGSB had to share the largest recorded lack of recovery: 8993.78 billion INR (an increase of 567.89 million INR compared to the previous year) in favour of Recovery insufficient oil marketing companies (IOC, BPCL and HPCL). On November 1, 2017, the Union Cabinet authorized CGSB to acquire a controlling interest of 51.11% in HPCL (Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited). On January 30, 2018, Oil & Natural Gas Corporation acquired a 51.11% stake in Hindustan Petroleum Corporation.
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Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) is a temporary program that provides an extra $600 a week on top of your regular unemployment insurance benefit.
Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) is a program that provides an extra 13 weeks of unemployment insurance after you have exhausted your regular benefits.
The price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio is a company's stock price to earnings ratio divided by the growth rate of its earnings for a specified time period.
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A stop order is an order type that is triggered when the price of a security reaches the stop price level. It may then initiate a market or limit order.
While most people won't have to do anything to receive their stimulus payment, there are important steps to take to make sure there are no hangups or delays.
Airbnb offers travelers relatively inexpensive accommodations while providing their hosts with an opportunity to earn some extra income from their property. But both parties should be aware of the risks.
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Credit cards aren't always bad possessions to have. There are certain perks associated with using credit cards as we make routine or irregular purchases.
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There are many valuation methods available to investors, each with unique characteristics, such as the dividend discount model and the discounted cash flow model.
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DuPont is one of the world's largest producers of chemicals and agricultural products. These five companies show its broad range of science-based products.
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Supply chain finance is a set of tech-based business and financing processes linking the parties in a transaction for lower costs and improved efficiency.
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In this post, we’ll discuss the seven ways to speed up your WordPress blog. Site speed is essential for the following reasons: Impacts your digital strategy and online presence Affects SEO rankings on both mobile and desktop Also the total user experience and your sites conversion rate for sales and services you offer As you can tell, it is now a requirement that affects all websites, and if you pay attention to this metric, you will improve your SEO, brand awareness, and overall user experience. Let’s review seven ways that you can speed up your WordPress blog. 1.Choose a Reliable
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NEW DELHI: A second stimulus package India is poised to announce in coming days will be worth around Rs 1 lakh crore ($13 billion) and focus on help for small and medium businesses weathering the coronavirus outbreak, two senior officials said on Wednesday. Last month, India outlined a Rs-1.7-lakh-crore($22.6-billion) economic stimulus plan providing direct cash transfers and food security measures to give relief to millions of poor hit by an ongoing 21-day nationwide lockdown. "The second package could be focused largely on MSMEs," one of the senior government officials, with direct knowledge of the plan told Reuters, using an acronym for micro, small and medium enterprises. The official said a separate package could be announced for bigger companies after assessing the extent of the hit they have faced due to the lockdown imposed to fight the outbreak. Small businesses account for nearly one-quarter of India's $2.9 trillion economy and employ more than 500 million workers, according to government estimates. India has so far recorded 5274 cases of the coronavirus, which has also killed 149 people in the country. The country is now considering narrowing its lockdown to coronavirus hotspots after the nationwide lockdown ends on April 14. Indian media have been speculating that the government would soon announce more relief to help the struggling economy. The new package aimed at MSMEs could include increases in the limits of bank loans for working capital needs, hiking threshold limits for availing tax exemptions and relaxing rules for deposits of income tax and other dues, the sources said. A finance ministry spokesman declined to comment. The second government source said that the government was also planning to partially clear tax refunds owed to small businesses within one month to provide some immediate relief. The Indian government on Wednesday said it will also release Rs 18,000 crores in tax refunds to small businesses and individuals immediately and impose expenditure curbs on a host of departments for the April-June period. K.E. Raghunathan, former president of All India Manufacturers Association (AIMO), said the government should also clear long-pending dues for the sale of their products to federal and state governments, as well as state-run firms. Federal and state governments and state-owned companies owe more than $66 billion to small businesses, the government told parliament last month. "We do not know how long we will be able to survive if our dues are not cleared," said Raghunathan, a small-time manufacturer of solar parts in the Southern Indian city of Chennai. Hundreds of thousands of cash-starved Indian small businesses have either deferred or cut their workers' wages this month while trade union leaders said more than five million workers, mainly on contract, have suffered wage losses. Industry body AIMO, which represents some 100,000 small manufacturers, has said more than two-thirds of its members faced problems in paying salaries.
By Bibek Debroy & Vijay P OjhaOn March 24, a 21-day lockdown was announced to control the spread of Covid-19. Despite the odd breach, overall compliance has been good, and there has been citizen support. Specifically, the objective was to limit India to Stage 2 (local transmission) and prevent a slide into Stage 3 (community transmission). There were some alarmist predictions, suggesting cumulative infection numbers of 900 million by June. If 900 million people are infected and a high case fatality rate of 2% is assumed, 18 million Indians may die. Models make assumptions, and assumptions are not proven propositions. For instance, the total number of infected form three distinct categories: (1) infected, but asymptomatic; (2) infected and symptomatic, but unreported; (3) infected and identified as infected. In modelling, should one club all three together? Can one mechanically apply a fatality rate deduced from Category 3 on 900 million? Can one facilely apply a fatality rate from other countries, without controlling for age, life expectancy, other morbidity conditions, or even temperature? Which countries does one choose? Take China. It has, on April 7, 81,740 identified infections -- though questions have been asked about definitions used in Chinese numbers, such as non-inclusion of asymptomatic cases. Even if one assumes India's numbers could be three times as much, there will be 246,000 identified infections. With a fatality rate of 5% for identified infections, the absolute figure is 12,300, a far cry from 18 million. Alarmist numbers based on questionable assumptions should not be used to prolong the lockdown, at least not in its present form. Even if there are 25,000 deaths, the economic costs of the present lockdown are disproportionately high. India is probably under-counting infections. But under-counting of deaths is unlikely. In any event, a fatality rate is a ratio. Under-counting the denominator makes the case for low Indian fatality higher.What has lockdown in its present form achieved? Comparison of India's epidemic growth curve with other countries depends on the timeline and country concerned. For instance, our growth curve is flatter than the US's, Spain's or Italy's, but steeper than Japan's and Singapore's. What has the lockdown done to the underlying shape of the curve? The answer is a counter-factual. In its absence, the number of infections and deaths may have been twice as high. For all one knows, it may have simply shifted the curve to the right. With large numbers, most variables have bell-shaped symmetric distributions. The present slow rate of increase may imply (a) the curve has shifted to the right; (b) the curve has been flattened. In either event, we have to reckon the curve with a long tail to the right. If one plots number of cases over time, for (b), the curve is no longer that high, but becomes longer. As result of the epidemic, the same number of people may get infected, but over a longer period of time. When not normal, variables sometimes have long normal distributions. Even then, one has to reckon with a long tail. The time bought allows for possible development of herd immunity. It allows for supply (including domestic manufacture) of testing kits, personal protection equipment (PPE), ventilator machines, creation of testing centres and isolation beds in district/sub-district hospitals and awareness campaigns. Reducing R0 (the mathematical term that indicates the average number of people who will catch a disease from a contagious person) to less than 1 (a contagious person transmitting the disease to 'less than one person'), when the disease ceases to be an epidemic, is a long haul. Development of vaccines will also be a long haul. Nor is there much point in complaining about the inadequacy of medical infrastructure. Solving that is long-term.India is a large and heterogeneous country. As of April 7, the health ministry numbers are of 4,312 active cases, 352 cured/discharged, and 124 deaths. If one separates the Tablighi Jamaat event of New Delhi, evidence for community transmission is limited. The shape of the epidemic curve in Delhi or Mumbai is not the same as its shape in Bengaluru. Lockdown is not a binary.A slide into the community transmission stage is almost inevitable, at least in some parts. But that does not warrant a continuation of the present 21-day lockdown in the middle of the rabi harvesting season, with the informal sector, daily wage workers and MSMEs bearing the brunt of the lockdown. There was an initial identification of 75 high-risk districts. The targeted identification needs to be finer than that -- zeroing in on hotspots at sub-district level, such as identified urban localities, including slums, where testing needs to be focused. India is not in a position to test the entire population, though pooled testing can make more efficient use of infrastructure. For example, in Delhi, Dilshad Garden and Nizamuddin are obvious areas where restrictions need to continue. Everywhere else, economic activity needs to be revived. Easing of lockdown is also not a binary. In areas that aren't hotspots, restrictions are needed on large gatherings. Obviously, as one moves away from a nationwide lockdown, and inter-state migration revives, unified procedures for such migration are needed. Targeted graduation from the lockdown and phased easing are the key.But, while state governments need to identity hotspots, secluding them is easier said than done. There will also be testing and PPE constraints, even for those hotspots. However, that attempt to differentially break the chain of transmission is no argument for bearing disproportionately high economic costs.Debroy is chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. Ojha is director, Policy Modelling Association for Inclusive Development, New Delhi.
In the final week of the 21-day lockdown, India has begun using the 'phone booth' testing method to tackle the spread of the novel coronavirus, reports said.The testing method involves collection of samples from inside a box of aluminium and glass. The suspected coronavirus-infected individual, whose samples are being taken, has to walk up to the booth and stand in front of the glass exterior. Thereafter, s/he is directed to follow the instruction given through a public address system for collection of swab sample.The healthcare worker inside the kiosk collects the sample and then, follows the sanitisation process before proceeding to take the next sample. The collection process, fully contactless, gets over in five minutes.The phone booth test is likely to significantly reduce manpower requirement and the need for PPE kits that are anyway in short supply — a major boost to the safety of healthcare workers.The main advantages of this procedure are that it needs fewer healthcare workers and strictly adheres to the norms of social distancing.Consisting of a small cubicle, the structure looks very much like a phone booth. It has PPE items such as gloves for the healthcare worker and a kit for collecting samples.The booth is low-cost. Each model costs about Rs 15,000-20,000. It is also portable — it can be mounted on a vehicle and transported to any location. It can be particularly useful for collecting samples in hotspots and border checkpoints, a PTI report said quoting an official.A booth was installed at a government hospital in UP's Ghaziabad a couple of days ago — so far the only one of its kind in Delhi-NCR region. Kerala and Jharkhand are among the states that have already adopted this method. There are plans to do the same in Mumbai. According to reports, many such 'phone booths' are likely to begin operations in other parts of the country as well.This procedure is modelled on South Korea's "telephone booth" test centres. The Indian version, however, resembles a traffic police booth more, ToI has reported.
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday thanked India for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to allow the export of malaria drug Hydroxychloroquine to the United States."Extraordinary times require even closer cooperation between friends. Thank you India and the Indian people for the decision on HCQ. Will not be forgotten!" Trump said in a tweet, a day after India lifted the hold on export of the drug to the US."Thank you Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) for your strong leadership in helping not just India, but humanity, in this fight!" he said.Extraordinary times require even closer cooperation between friends. Thank you India and the Indian people for the… https://t.co/aDMD5VmPa8— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 1586369511000President Trump has been pushing for the use of Hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 patients. United States has emerged as a hotspot of coronavirus.The dreaded disease has inflicted more than four lakh Americans, claiming lives of over 14,000 of them till Wednesday.Hydroxychloroquine has been identified by the US Food and Drug Administration as a possible line of treatment for the COVID-19 and it is being tested on more than 1,500 coronavirus patients in New York.Anticipating that it will work, given initial positive results, Trump has bought more than 29 million doses of Hydroxychloroquine for potential treatment of the COVID-19 patients.President Trump and Prime Minister Modi spoke over the phone last week. During the call, Trump had requested Modi to lift the hold on the American order of Hydroxychloroquine, of which India is the major producer."I bought millions of doses (of Hydroxychloroquine). More than 29 million. I spoke to Prime Minister Modi, a lot of it (Hydroxychloroquine) comes out of India. I asked him if he would release it? He was Great. He was really good," Trump told Sean Hannity of the Fox News on Monday night."You know they put a stop because they wanted it for India," Trump said, responding to a question on the usage of Hydroxychloroquine. India allowed on Tuesday the export of Hydroxychloroquine to the US, which has emerged as the global hotspot of COVID-19.During the interview, Trump described Hydroxychloroquine as a powerful malaria drug, saying the drug is being tested on hundreds of coronavirus patients in New York."But there are a lot of good things coming from that," he said."Lot of people are looking at it and saying, you know I don't hear bad stories, I hear good stories. And I don't hear anything where it is causing death," said the US President.Hydroxychloroquine, an old and inexpensive drug used to treat malaria, is seen as a viable therapeutic solution by President Trump to coronavirus.Last week Trump had said he sought help from Prime Minister Modi to allow the sale of Hydroxychloroquine tablets ordered by the US to treat the growing number of coronavirus patients in his country, hours after India banned the export of the anti-malarial drug.India has received similar requests from several other countries including its immediate neighbours Sri Lanka and Nepal. India has said that it is reviewing its export ban order. Notably, India's decision to ban the exports of Hydroxychloroquine is driven by its desire to take stock of the domestic requirements and ensure that the country has enough of the drug."I would be surprised if he would, you know, because India does very well with the United States," Trump told reporters during a press briefing at the White House on Monday.Trump and Modi enjoy a personal friendship as reflected in the president joining the prime minister at the "Howdy, Modi!" event in Houston last September. This February, Trump made a rare India-specific solo trip to Ahmedabad and New Delhi.India on Monday agreed to lift the ban on export of Hydroxychloroquine to the US. Three Gujarat-based companies would export these tablets to the US, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said on Tuesday.India produces 70 per cent of the world's supply of Hydroxychloroquine, according to Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA) secretary-general Sudarshan Jain.The country has a production capacity of 40 tonnes of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) every month, implying 20 crore tablets of 200 mg each. And since the drug is also used to auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, manufacturers have good production capacities that can also be ramped up.
New Delhi | Bengaluru: Diageo India, Pernod Ricard, Beam Suntory, Bacardi, Remy Martin and other liquor companies have jointly called upon the government to allow shops that sell alcoholic beverages to open for some time everyday after enforcing social distancing norms. Only essentials such as groceries and medicines are currently exempted under the Covid-19 lockdown.The Indian Spirits & Wine Association of India (ISWAI), which represents India's largest liquor makers, told the consumer affairs ministry that the suspension of alcohol sales is only helping the illegal trade. The letter, a copy of which ET has seen, was also addressed to the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and Niti Aayog."Food is an essential commodity and alcohol is classified as food under the Food Safety & Standards Act of 2006," said the letter signed by ISWAI chairman Amrit Kiran Singh. "The black market is operating in the vacuum created by legal alcohol retail shops being closed, which is becoming an additional menace for the police force."Bengal Allows Home DeliveryOne state has relented — West Bengal will allow home delivery of alcoholic beverages."Till the lockdown period, liquor will be sold on home delivery basis from shops having valid liquor licences, and orders can be placed between 11 am to 2 pm," said the West Bengal government notification. "Nobody can be allowed to come to liquor shop physically."75057334Deliveries will be made to homes between 2 and 5 pm the same day. The liquor shops have to obtain passes for delivery staff from the police and other concerned authorities. Each store will get a maximum three passes.The ISWAI said 15-30% of all state revenue comes from the alcohol sector, money that will be critical as the economy has come to a halt."Shuttering down liquor stores is self-defeating as state governments currently need revenue more than ever to fight the pandemic," said Deepak Roy, executive vice chairman of Allied Blenders and Distillers (ABD), which makes Officer's Choice whisky. "Second, piracy has doubled during shutdown as big brands are being copied and sold in smaller markets, which is not safe for consumption and impacts our brand value."Roy, also chairman of the Confederation of Indian Alcoholic Beverage Companies (CIABC), an apex body of Indian liquor firms, said a similar representation had been made on April 6."If the lockdown continues beyond April 14, ABD will lose an average of 8% of turnover per month," he said. "The government must allow normal hours of operation for liquor stores to avoid overcrowding in these times of social distancing." The three-week lockdown is supposed to end on April 14, but it's not clear whether it will be extended or in what form this may be done.The CIABC had sent its plea to 10 states, asking them to allow the sale of alcoholic beverages during the lockdown. The letter highlighted concerns such as the growing sales of illicit liquor leading to health hazards and impact on state revenue besides permitting prescription-based alcohol. The letter was sent to the Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal governments. Diageo India, Pernod Ricard, Bacardi and Beam Suntory had said last week that they were only making sanitisers at their plants, having stopped production of all alcoholic beverages."There are no specific negative implications of alcohol from a health perspective during coronavirus," the ISWAI said, adding that bars and restaurants will stay closed.Single malt whisky maker Amrut Distilleries managing director Rakshit Jagdale said partial opening of liquor stores with some policing would be a win-win for both the liquor industry and enforcement agencies. "If the lockdown continues beyond April 14, we are estimating a 15% reduction in our turnover for the month," he said. "The Centre and state governments should sit together and discuss a plan as instant reopening of stores should not lead to overcrowding, resulting in another crisis."As of March 30, taxes earned by states from the alcoholic beverage sector in 2019-20 totalled Rs 2.5 lakh crore, according to ISWAI.
Kolkata: The Delhi High Court has given some relief to companies that have missed a loan repayment or two but whose loans were not classified as 'bad' by March 1, 2020. The court has said banks should maintain status quo on asset classification between March 1 and May 31 — the period for which the RBI has advised moratorium on term loans for stressed borrowers.Hearing a case between Yes Bank and Anant Raj, the court said the company's account should be counted as 'standard' and it must be permitted to avail of the moratorium even if it has missed payments, since the account was not classified as a 'bad loan' before March 1.Banks classify a loan as 'bad' if it is overdue for 90 days. Missing a payment after 30 days leads to a loan being classified as Special Mention Account-1 (SMA-1). Failing to make payments for two straight months leads to an account being classified as SMA-2.75057095The verdict means companies that had missed a payment or two can avail of the moratorium announced by the RBI, without fear of their loans being classified as 'bad'.Interest, Penalty will Continue to Accrue"The restriction on change in classification as mentioned in the regulatory package shows that RBI has stipulated that the account which has been classified as SMA-2 cannot further be classified as a nonperforming asset in case the instalment is not paid during the moratorium period, i.e.- between 01.03.2020 and 31.05.2020, and status quo qua the classification as SMA-2 shall have to be maintained," the court said in its interim order.However, the HC said interestand penal charges will continue to accrue and the loan classification will change to 'bad' if the borrower fails to repay at the end of the moratorium."The effect of the order will be that for a period of three months, there will be a moratorium on payment of installments. However, stipulated interest and penal charges shall continue to accrue on the outstanding amount during the moratorium period. If the borrower fails to pay the said instalment at the end of the moratorium period, the classification of the loan would automatically change as per IRAC (Income Recognition and Asset Classification) guidelines," said Delhi High Court judge Sanjeev Sachdeva.Asset ClassificationThe RBI has directed banks to offer a moratorium of three months ending May 31 for all loan repayments. But in a separate communication, it refused banks' request for a freeze in asset classification for borrowers who had missed a payment or two. It said these borrowers' woes were not because of the Covid-19 outbreak."The benefit of moratorium can be extended to such borrowers in respect of payment falling due during March 1 to May 31. However, the payments overdue as on or before February 29 will attract the current IRAC norms," the RBI told banks separately.Bankers tracking the issue said they expect more companies to take the legal route if doubts persist over asset classification norms. "We cannot deny the fact that borrowers, even with previous overdue payments, may be facing genuine hurdles in generating cash flows," said a senior executive with a public sector bank.Anant Raj had borrowed Rs 1,570 crore from Yes Bank. It has repaid Rs 1,056 crore, apart from interest running into hundreds of crores. It had been regularly servicing the loans till December, but defaulted on the instalment due on January 1, 2020. The account was classified as SMA-2 since the payment was overdue for more than 60 days.The court has listed the case for final hearing on May 4.
On expected lines, NSE Nifty extended its technical pullback in the early part of the session on Wednesday as it found resistance in the 9,050-9,100 range. The index pared gains after moving past the crucial 9,100 level. After coming off over 400 points from the day's high, the 50-stock pack finally settled 43.45 points or 0.49 per cent lower at 8,748.75. Thursday's session is likely to remain guided by the weekly options expiry. Also, the upcoming will be the last trading session of this truncated week, as Friday is a trading holiday on account of Good Friday. The market is expected to stay in a range, and as per the options data, the 8,500 strike holds the highest Put open interest, followed by 8,700. The maximum Call OI stands at 9,000 level. Volatility saw a marginal increase as India VIX moved higher by 0.85 per cent to 52.24. Thursday's session is likely to see 8,810 and 8,895 levels act as overhead resistance. Support may come in at 8,550 and 8,410.75053353 The Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the daily chart stood at 43.01 and remained neutral, showing no divergence against the price. The daily MACD continued to remain bullish and traded above its signal line. A candle with a long upper shadow was formed on the daily charts.The emergence of this type of candle near the resistance point adds to the credibility of the 9,050-9,100 zone as stiff resistance. As per pattern analysis, Nifty has attempted to mark a potential bottom by first making a low near 7,800 and then a higher bottom near 8,050. However, it is yet to be confirmed, as this would happen only after Nifty moves past the 9,050-9,100 zone and stays above those levels. The market is likely to display a cautious and tentative mood given the long weekend. That being said, the present technical structure also warrants a cautious approach as Nifty is yet to provide any sort of confirmation of a temporary bottom. The market will continue to remain vulnerable above 9,000 levels unless the 9,050-9,100 zone is taken out. We would advise traders to keenly watch the market behaviour against the 9,050-9,100 zone in the event of an upside. With Nifty likely to remain broadly in a defined range, we recommend continuing avoiding excessive exposures. We suggest protecting profits on either side as long as Nifty stays in the present trading range. (Milan Vaishnav, CMT, MSTA, is a Consulting Technical Analyst and founder of Gemstone Equity Research & Advisory Services, Vadodara. He can be reached at milan.vaishnav@equityresearch.asia)
MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) move to open up trading in foreign exchange derivative products for all investors at home may not find takers immediately in view of the coronavirus crisis, but the bold step could help shift the centre of gravity in currency trades from overseas money hubs to Mumbai in the long run.Releasing the long-pending guidelines on such trades late Tuesday, the RBI said that banks based in India could sell all types of derivative and forward products to help companies based here hedge their foreign exchange risks.Many of these products were banned in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. RBI has now allowed these products from June 1. But banks will have to seek the approval of their boards to sell these derivative products to companies with a net worth of Rs 500 crore or more. Plain forward forex products with call and put options are also open to retail investors, RBI said."This has been in the works for a long time now and it is good the RBI has chosen to open up despite the ongoing crisis. Both banks and companies have to take the approval of their boards to deal in these products. I think we will see a slow introduction to these instruments, starting with basic products and gradually moving to more exotic stuff but only when the market is stable, steady and more liquid," said Ashish Vaidya, head of treasury at DBS Bank India.The norms allow companies to hedge their foreign currency risk even on anticipated exposures, which means companies can enter into derivative contracts before a deal to ensure that their investment is not hurt by a volatile rupee.Meanwhile, the rupee hit a new record low, mirroring the weakness in other emerging market currencies. The local unit lost 0.90 percent to close at 76.34 Wednesday, ending the day as the worst performing Asian currency.Foreign institutional investors also face no restrictions on cancelling or rebooking their forward contracts, which marks a change from the earlier policy in which they faced a 10% limit on cancelling and rebooking contracts."Earlier, FIIs used to go to overseas markets to hedge their exposure. These markets were not regulated by RBI and were out of control of the regulator. With no restrictions now, there is a possibility that all these trades will move to India, which is good for the regulator as well as market participants," said UR Bhat, director Dalton Capital Advisors.The only restriction the new norms have is that companies and investors cannot leverage their transactions. However, the accountability on products is on the banks."Determining anticipated or underlying exposures is now the onus of the authorised dealer (i.e. a bank)," said Abhishek Goenka, founder & CEO at IFA Global. "Everyone will be more focussed on protecting their business margins and cash flows. Companies will have to show their underlying exposures; otherwise profits may not be passed on at maturity."During 2008, many small and medium enterprises, such as export units based out Tamil Nadu, had been hit due to the derivative products they had bought. By restricting trades to companies only above 500 crore net-worth, RBI has tried to protect them. Retail clients can enter into spreads structures while bigger clients can enter into exotic derivatives, bankers said.
Infosys' chief operating officer Pravin Rao has taken over as chairman of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), the IT industry lobby group, at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the global economy.Rao, the second leader from Infosys to head the grouping after founder N R Narayana Murthy, says the $191 billion Indian IT industry will face near-term disruption, but its fortunes will revive soon after the outbreak is contained. While large companies will weather the impact, it will be challenging for small companies, Rao told ET's Megha Mandavia and Raghu Krishnan in an interview. Edited excerpts: You have taken over at a time when the world has changed...These are challenging times for the Indian IT industry. We are dealing with this unprecedented situation. However, the industry has time and again proven its resilience and it will emerge stronger. Our immediate priority is to navigate the current situation and ensure minimum impact on business and employees.Globally, the tourism and hospitality sectors have been hit hard. Has it had a fallout on the technology services industry in India?Every industry is trying to come to grips with what's happening… depending on how long this will last and the corresponding recession that could happen. Most companies are trying to figure out how to be resilient… there is definitely an opportunity for the industry …and we believe that this is a tipping point for the digital transformation of the workplace. Remote digital work will accelerate. Notwithstanding the impact in the short term, in the long run technology providers will be more relevant than ever.What are you hearing from clients?Business and clients have accepted that this is the new normal. Some parts of the business model have changed forever. They want to get resilient and adapt to remote working. In most cases, supply chains are dramatically impacted. There is a lot of focus on workforce transformation, migrating to the Cloud. They want to take the cost out, see how to make the costs variable. One of the biggest concerns is job losses. Should employees be worried?We are a very diverse industry... about 80% of Nasscom membership is SMEs, mid-tier Business Process Management companies, startups. Large companies that have good balance sheets will be able to withstand this for a long time…and they will not get into retrenchment. The real challenge is in small companies. They are struggling with cash flow issues and 30% of the workforce is just sitting without any work. Nasscom is requesting the government to provide some relief to small companies so they don't have to let go of workers. Bankruptcy filings may increase in the United States. How does that impact Indian IT?In the short term, there will definitely be an impact. Companies in travel, hospitality, retail are particularly struggling. There are cash flow issues, so we expect to see some demand for delayed payments etc. Even these industries have to bounce back and technology will play a key role there…in the medium to long term they will have to invest in technology for their own survival.Do you think Indian IT will adapt to remote working? What will the workforce of the future look like?It's a good question. One thing's for sure, the remote way of working will become much more acceptable. There will be some part of the business where clients would want you to work from offices. Otherwise, a big part of what we do can be done from home…there will be a mix of onshore and offshore...the entire thinking will change and this will accelerate workforce transformation.
As far as you know, IELTS has 4 modules or sections, including Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing.
To familiarise yourself with the answer sheets used in the IELTS exam, you should download the IELTS answer sheets for Listening, Reading and Writing to practice at home.
IELTS Listening Answer Sheet
In the listening test, you will be having 30 minutes to listen to the recordings, and also you are allowed to write the points on the question sheet or the booklet that is given along with the pencil. After you listen to the audio, you will be given an extra 10 minutes to transfer them to the answer sheet that is given. You are also allowed to underline the important sentences for your reference while transferring the answers.
IELTS Reading Recent Actual Tests Jan - May 2020 with Answers
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IELTS Reading Actual Tests & Suggested Answers written by IELTS teachers aims to help IELTS candidates perform at their best on the big day.
IELTS Reading Answer Sheet
In the IELTS reading test, 1 hour to complete the answer. Here the main task is to read the passage and write the answers for the questions given simultaneously, you can write the answers in the question paper also but, it will be a waste of time because there will be no extra time given again to transfer the answers to the answer sheet. Thus, it is advisable to directly write the answers in the answer sheet.
IELTS Writing Answer Sheet
Before actually taking the writing test, it is advisable to practice the witing test using the official website because there will be different tasks in writing test and you will not have enough time to transfer the answer from the booklet to the answer sheet simultaneously and quickly, so it needs a lot of practice to do it.
As a conclusion, the scores for the IELTS test can be given only when there are answers written in the answer sheet. Even if the answers in the booklet or the question paper are correct. until and unless you transfer them to the answer sheet you will not get the scores. So it is important to quickly transfer your answers to the answer sheet.
During the test write the answers on the listening paper itself.
The candidates will get only 10 minutes to transfer their answers to the answer sheet.
Use a pencil in order to avoid mistakes.
Write the answer in front of every question number so that if you do a mistake you can erase it and write the correct answer.
You must stop writing after 10 minutes.
You will have time to check the spellings after you transfer the answer.
You are supposed to write your full name in capital letters. The centre which you are going to write the exam will automatically completed on your answer sheet.
You need to share the appropriate boxes in order to indicate the date and the candidate number. The candidate number is provided to you as soon as you enter the examination hall or it will be displayed on the desk in which you sit to write the exam.
The three sections will give you an idea as to how to appear for the actual IELTS reading exam. There are also answer keys for which you can refer to. You can give a practice test and check for the answers whether they are proper or no.
SECTION 1
Plant Scents
Everyone is familiar with scented flowers, and many people have heard that floral odors help the plant attract pollinators. This common notion is mostly correct, but it is surprising how little scientific proof of it exists. Of course, not all flowers are pollinated by biological agents— for example, many kinds of grass are wind-pollinated—but the flowers of the grasses may still emit volatiles. In fact, plants emit organic molecules all the time, although they may not be obvious to the human nose. As for flower scents that we can detect with our noses, bouquets that attract moths and butterflies generally smell "sweet," and those that attract certain flies seem "rotten" to us.
IELTS Reading Recent Actual Tests Jan - May 2020 with Answers
$80 $37
IELTS Reading Actual Tests & Suggested Answers written by IELTS teachers aims to help IELTS candidates perform at their best on the big day.
The release of volatiles from vegetative parts of the plant is familiar, although until recently the physiological functions of these chemicals were less clear and had received much less attention from scientists. When the trunk of a pine tree is injured- for example, when a beetle tries to burrow into it- it exudes a very smelly resin. This resin consists mostly of terpenes—hydrocarbons with a backbone of 10，15 or 20 carbons that may also contain atoms of oxygen. The heavier C20 terpenes, called diterpenes, are glue-like and can cover and immobilize insects as they plug the hole. This defense mechanism is as ancient as it is effective: Many samples of fossilized resin, or amber, contain the remains of insects trapped inside. Many other plants emit volatiles when injured, and in some cases the emitted signal helps defend the plant. For example,(Z)_3_ hexenyl acetate, which is known as a "green leaf volatile" because it is emitted by many plants upon injury, deters females of the moth Heliothis virescens from laying eggs on injured tobacco plants. Interestingly, the profile of emitted tobacco volatiles is different at night than during the day, and it is the nocturnal blend, rich in several (Z)_3_hexen_i-olesters，that is most effective in repelling the night-active H. virescens moths.
Herbivore induced volatiles often serve as indirect defenses. These bulwarks exist in a variety of plant species, including corn, beans, and the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana. Plants not only emit volatiles acutely, at the site where caterpillars, mites, aphids or similar insects are eating them but also generally from non-damaged parts of the plant. These signals attract a variety of predatory insects that prey on the plant-eaters. For example, some parasitic wasps can detect the volatile signature of a damaged plant and will lay their eggs inside the offending caterpillar; eventually, the wasp eggs hatch, and the emerging larvae feed on the caterpillar from the inside out. The growth of infected caterpillars is retarded considerably, to the benefit of the plant. Similarly, volatiles released by plants in response to herbivore egg laying can attract parasites of the eggs, thereby preventing them from hatching and avoiding the onslaught of hungry herbivores that would have emerged. Plant volatiles can also be used as a kind of currency in some very indirect defensive schemes. In the rainforest understory tree Leonardoxa Africana, ants of the species Petalomyrmex phylax patrol young leaves and attack any herbivorous insects that they encounter. The young leaves emit high levels of the volatile compound methyl salicylate, a compound that the ants use either as a pheromone or as an antiseptic in their nests. It appears that methyl salicylate is both an attractant and a reward offered by the tree to get the ants to perform this valuable deterrent role.
Floral scent has a strong impact on the economic success of many agricultural crops that rely on insect pollinators, including fruit trees such as the bee-pollinated cherry, apple, apricot, and peach, as well as vegetables and tropical plants such as papaya. Pollination not only affects crop yield, but also the quality and efficiency of crop production. Many crops require most, if not all, ovules to be fertilized for optimum fruit size and shape. A decrease in fragrance emission reduces the ability of flowers to attract pollinators and results in considerable losses for growers, particularly for introduced species that had a specialized pollinator in their place of origin. This problem has been exacerbated by recent disease epidemics that have killed many honeybees, the major insect pollinators in the United States.
One means by which plant breeders circumvent the pollination problem is by breeding self-compatible, or apomictic, varieties that do not require fertilization. Although this solution is adequate, its drawbacks include near genetic uniformity and consequent susceptibility to pathogens. Some growers have attempted to enhance honeybee foraging by spraying scent compounds on orchard trees, but this approach was costly, had to be repeated, had potentially toxic effects on the soil or local biota, and, in the end, proved to be inefficient. The poor effectiveness of this strategy probably reflects the inherent limitations of the artificial, topically applied compounds, which clearly fail to convey the appropriate message to the bees. For example, general spraying of the volatile mixture cannot tell the insects where exactly the blossoms are. Clearly, a more refined strategy is needed. The ability to enhance the existing floral scent, create scent de novo or change the characteristics of the scent, which could all be accomplished by genetic engineering, would allow us to manipulate the types of insect pollinators and the frequency of their visits. Moreover, the metabolic engineering of fragrance could increase crop protection against pathogens and pests.
Genetic manipulation of the scent will also benefit the floriculture industry. Ornamentals, including cut flowers, foliage, and potted plants, play an important aesthetic role in human life. Unfortunately, traditional breeding has often produced cultivars with improved vase life, shipping characteristics, color, and shape while sacrificing desirable perfumes. The loss of scent among ornamentals, which have a worldwide value of more than $30 billion, makes them important targets for the genetic manipulation of flower fragrance. Some work has already begun in this area, as several groups have created petunia and carnation plants that express the linalool synthase gene from C. Brewery. These experiments are still preliminary: For technical reasons, the gene was expressed everywhere in the plant, and although the transgenic plants did create small amounts of linalool, the level was below the threshold of detection for the human nose. Similar experiments in tobacco used genes for other monoterpene synthases, such as the one that produces limonene, but gave similar results.
The next generation of experiments, already in progress, includes sophisticated schemes that target the expression of scent genes specifically to flowers or other organs—such as special glands that can store antimicrobial or herbivore- repellent compounds.
Questions 1-4
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
A substance released to help plants themselves.
The scent helps the plant's pollination.
Practice on the genetic experiments of fragrance.
Plant's scent attracts herbivore's enemy for protection.
Questions 5-8
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement is true
FALSE
if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN
if the information is not given in the passage
We have little evidence to support the idea that scent attracts pollinators.
Heliothis virescens won't eat those tobacco leaves on which they laid eggs.
Certain ants are attracted by volatiles to guard plants in the rainforest.
Pollination only affects fruit trees’ production rather than other crop trees.
Questions 9-13
Choose the correct letter, A, B，C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.
How do wasps protect plants when they are attracted by scents according to the passage?
plants induce wasps to prey herbivore.
wasps lay eggs into caterpillars.
wasps laid eggs on plants to expel herbivore.
offending caterpillars and wasp eggs coexist well.
What reason caused the number of honeybees to decline in the United States.
pollination process
spread illness
crop trees are poisonous
grower’s overlook
Which of the following drawbacks about artificial fragrance is NOT mentioned in the passage?
it's very expensive
it can’t tell correct information to pollinators.
it needs massive manual labor
it poisons the local environment
The number of $30 billion quoted in the passage is to illustrate the fact that:
Favorable perfumes are made from ornamental flowers
traditional floriculture industry needs reform.
genetic operation on scent can make a vast profit.
Scent plays a significant role in the Ornamental industry.
What is the weakness of genetic experiments on fragrance?
Linalool level is too low to be smelt by nose
no progress made in linalool emission
experiment on tobacco has a better result
transgenic plants produce an intense scent
SECTION 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26，which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.
The Development of Plastics
When rubber was first commercially produced in Europe during the nineteenth century, it rapidly became a very important commodity, particularly in the fields of transportation and electricity. However, during the twentieth century a number of new synthetic materials, called plastics, superseded natural rubber in all but a few applications.
Rubber is a polymer — a compound containing large molecules that are formed by the bonding of many smaller, simpler units, repeated over and over again. The same bonding principle 一 polymerisation一underlies the creation of a huge range of plastics by the chemical industry.
The first plastic was developed as a result of a competition in the USA. In the 1860s, $10,000 was offered to anybody who could replace ivory — supplies of which were declining — with something equally good as a material for making billiard balls. The prize was won by John Wesley Hyatt with a material called celluloid. Celluloid was made by dissolving cellulose, a carbohydrate derived from plants, in a solution of camphor dissolved in ethanol. This new material rapidly found uses in the manufacture of products such as knife handles, detachable collars and cuffs, spectacle frames and photographic film. Without celluloid, the film industry could never have got off the ground at the end of the 19th century.
Celluloid can be repeatedly softened and reshaped by heat and is known as a thermoplastic. In 1907 Leo Baekeland, a Belgian chemist working in the USA， invented a different kind of plastic by causing phenol and formaldehyde to react together. Baekeland called the material Bakelite, and it was the first of the thermosets’ plastics that can be cast and molded while hot but cannot be softened by heat and reshaped once they have set. Bakelite was a good insulator and was resistant to water, acids and moderate heat. With these properties, it was soon being used in the manufacture of switches, household items, such as knife handles, and electrical components for cars.
Soon chemists began looking for other small molecules that could be strung together to make polymers. In the 1930s, British chemists discovered that the gas ethylene would polymerize under heat and pressure to form a thermoplastic they called polythene. Polypropylene followed in the 1950s. Both were used to make bottles, pipes and plastic bags. A small change in the starting material 一 replacing a hydrogen atom in ethylene with a chlorine atom — produced PVC (polyvinyl chloride) ，a hard, fireproof plastic suitable for drains and gutters. And by adding certain chemicals, a soft form of PVC could be produced, suitable as a substitute for rubber in items such as waterproof clothing. A closely related plastic was Teflon, or PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene). This had a very low coefficient of friction, making it ideal for bearings, rollers, and non-stick frying pans. Polystyrene, developed during the 1930s in Germany, was a clear, glass-like material, used in food containers, domestic appliances, and toys. Expanded polystyrene — a white, rigid foam — was widely used in packaging and insulation. Polyurethanes, also developed in Germany, found uses as adhesives, coatings, and — in the form of rigid foams — as insulation materials. They are all produced from chemicals derived from crude oil, which contains exactly the same elements ——carbon and hydrogen ——as many plastics.
The first of the man-made fibers, nylon, was also created in the 1930s. Its inventor was a chemist called Wallace Carothers, who worked for the Du Pont Company in the USA. He found that under the right conditions, two chemicals — hexamethylenediamine and adipic acid would form a polymer that could be pumped out through holes and then stretched to form long glossy threads that could be woven like silk. Its first use was to make parachutes for the US armed forces in World War II. In the post-war years, nylon completely replaced silk in the manufacture of stockings. Subsequently, many other synthetic fibers joined nylon，including Orion, Acrilan, and Terylene. Today most garments are made of a blend of natural fibers, such as cotton and wool, and man-made fibers that make fabrics easier to look after.
The great strength of the plastic is its indestructibility. However, this quality is also something of a drawback: beaches all over the world, even on the remotest islands, are littered with plastic bottles that nothing can destroy. Nor is it very easy to recycle plastics，as different types of plastic are often used in the same items and call for different treatments. Plastics can be made biodegradable by incorporating into their structure a material such as starch, which is attacked by bacteria and causes the plastic to fall apart. Other materials can be incorporated that gradually decay in sunlight 一 although bottles made of such materials have to be stored in the dark, to ensure that they do not disintegrate before they have been used.
Questions 14-20
Complete the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.
Name of plastic
Date of invention
Original
region
Property
Common use
Celluloid
The 1860S
US
Clothing
and 14______
15 ______
1907
US
can be cast and molded but cannot be softened by heat
16 ______ 'household items and car parts
Polythene
The 1930s
17 ______
bottles
Rigid PVC
18 ______
drains and gutters
Polystyrene
The 1930s
Germany
transparent
and resembled to 19 ______
Food container domestic
Polyurethanes
Germany
formation like 20 ______
adhesives, coatings, and insulation
Questions 21-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement is true
FALSE
if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN
if the information is not given in the passage
The chemical structure of plastic is very different from that of rubber.
John Wesley was a famous chemist.
Celluloid and Bakelite react to heat in the same way.
The mix of different varieties of plastic can make them less recyclable.
Adding starch into plastic does not necessarily make plastic more durable.
Some plastic containers have to be preserved in special conditions.
SECTION 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40，which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Global Warming in New Zealand
For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting warmer. As the nearest country of the South Polar Region, New Zealand has maintained an upward trend in its average temperature in the past few years. However, the temperature in New Zealand will go up 4°C in the next century while the polar region will go up more than 6°C . The different pictures of temperature stem from its surrounding ocean which acts as the air conditioner. Thus New Zealand is comparatively fortunate.
Scientifically speaking, this temperature phenomenon in New Zealand originated from what researchers call " SAM (Southern Annular Mode), which refers to the wind belt that circles the Southern Oceans including New Zealand and Antarctica. Yet recent work has revealed that changes in SAM in New Zealand have resulted in a weakening of moisture during the summer, and more rainfall in other seasons. A bigger problem may turn out to be heavier droughts for agricultural activities because of more water loss from soil, resulting in the poorer harvest before winter when the rainfall arrives too late to rescue.
Among all the calamities posed by drought, moisture deficit ranks the first. Moisture deficit is the gap between the water plants need during the growing season and the water the earth can offer. Measures of moisture deficit were at their highest since the 1970s in New Zealand. Meanwhile, ecological analyses clearly show moisture deficit is imposed at the different growth stages of crops. If moisture deficit occurs around a crucial growth stage, it will cause about a 22% reduction in grain yield as opposed to moisture deficit at the vegetative phase.
Global warming is not only affecting agriculture production. When scientists say the country's snowpack and glaciers are melting at an alarming rate due to global warming, the climate is putting another strain on the local places. For example, when the development of global warming is accompanied by the falling snow line， the local skiing industry comes into a crisis. The snow line may move up as the temperature goes up, and then the snow at the bottom will melt earlier. Fortunately, it is going to be favorable for the local skiing industry to tide over tough periods since the quantities of snowfall in some areas are more likely to increase.
What is the reaction of the glacier region? Climate change can be reflected in the glacier region in southern New Zealand or land covered by ice and snow. The reaction of a glacier to a climatic change involves a complex chain of processes, Overtime periods of years to several decades, cumulative changes in mass balance cause volume and thickness changes, which will affect the flow of ice via altered internal deformation and basal sliding. This dynamic reaction finally leads to glacier length changes, the advance or retreat of glacier tongues. Undoubtedly, glacier mass balance is a more direct signal of annual atmospheric conditions.
The latest research result of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric (NIWA) Research shows that the glaciers line keeps moving up because of the impacts of global warming. Further losses of ice can be reflected in the Mt. Cook Region. By 1996, a 14 km long sector of the glacier had melted down forming a melt lake (Hooker Lake) with a volume. Melting of the glacier front at a rate of 40 m/yr will cause the glacier to retreat at a rather uniform rate. Therefore, the lake will continue to grow until it reaches the glacier bed.
A direct result of the melting glaciers is the change of high tides that serves the main factor for sea-level rise. The trend of sea-level rise will bring a threat to the groundwater system for its hypersaline groundwater and then pose a possibility to decrease agricultural production. Many experts believe that the best way to counter this trend is to give a longer-term view of sea-level change in New Zealand. Indeed, the coastal boundaries need to be upgraded and redefined.
There is no doubt that global warming has affected New Zealand in many aspects. The emphasis on global warming should be based on the joints efforts of local people and experts who conquer the tough period. For instance, farmers are taking a long term, multi-generational approach to adjust the breeds and species according to the temperature. Agriculturists also find ways to tackle the problems that may bring to the soil. In broad terms, going forward, the systemic resilience that's been going on a long time in the ecosystem will continue.
How about animals’ reactions? Experts have surprisingly realized that animals have an unconventional adaptation to global warming. A study has looked at sea turtles on a few northern beaches in New Zealand and it is very interesting to find that sea turtles can become male or female according to the temperature. Further researches will try to find out how rising temperatures would affect the ratio of sex reversal in their growth. Clearly, the temperature of the nest plays a vital role in the sexes of the baby turtles.
Tackling the problems of global warming is never easy in New Zealand because records show the slow process of global warming may have a different impact on various regions. For New Zealand, the emission of carbon dioxide only accounts for 0.5% of the world's total, which has met the governmental standard. However, New Zealand's effort counts only on the tip of the iceberg. So far, global warming has been a world issue that still hangs in an ambiguous future.
Questions 27-32
Choose the correct letter, A, B，C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.
What is the main idea of the first paragraph?
The temperature in the polar region will increase less than that in New Zealand in the next century.
The weather and climate of New Zealand are very important to its people because of its close location to the polar region.
The air condition in New Zealand will maintain a high quality because of the ocean.
The temperature of New Zealand will increase less than that of other regions in the next 100 years because it is surrounded by sea.
What is one effect of the wind belt that circles the Southern Oceans?
New Zealand will have more moisture in winds in summer.
New Zealand needs to face droughts more often in hotter months in a year.
Soil water will increase as a result of weakening moisture in the winds.
Agricultural production will be reduced as a result of more rainfall in other seasons.
What does "moisture deficit" mean to the grain and crops?
The growing condition will be very tough for crops.
The growing season of some plants can hardly be determined.
There will be a huge gap between the water plants needed and the water the earth can offer.
The soil of grain and crops in New Zealand reached its lowest production since the 1970s.
What changes will happen to the skiing industry due to the global warming phenomenon?
The skiing station may lower the altitude of skiing.
Part of the skiing station needs to move to the north.
The snowfall may increase in the part of the skiing station.
The local skiing station may likely to make a profit because of the snowfall increase.
Cumulative changes over a long period of time in mass balance will lead to
alterations in the volume and thickness of glaciers.
faster changes in internal deformation and basal sliding.
bigger length of glaciers.
the retreat of glacier tongues as a result of a change in annual atmospheric conditions.
Why does the writer mention NIWA in the sixth paragraph?
To use a particular example to explain the effects brought by glacier melting.
To emphasize the severance of the further loss of ice in the Mt. Cook Region.
To alarm the reader of the melting speed of glaciers at a uniform rate.
To note the lake in the region will disappear when it reaches the glacier bed.
Questions 33-35
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 33-35 on your answer sheet
Research data shows that sea level has a close relationship with the change of climate. The major reason for the increase in sea level is connected with 33 ____________, The increase in sea level is also said to have a threat to the underground water system, the destruction of which caused by the rise of sea level will lead to a high probability of a reduction in 34_____________. In the long run, New Zealanders may have to improve the 35__________ if they want to diminish the effect change in sea levels.
Questions 36-40
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 36-40 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
Farmers are less responsive to climate change than agriculturists.
The agricultural sector is too conservative and deals with climate change.
Turtle is vulnerable to climate change.
Global warming is going slowly, and it may have different effects on different areas in New Zealand
New Zealand must cut carbon dioxide emissions if they want to solve the problem of global warming.
AThe recognition of the wealth and diversity of England’s coastal archaeology has been one of the most important developments of recent years. Some elements of this enormous resource have long been known. The so-called ‘submerged forests’ off the coasts of England, sometimes with clear evidence of human activity, had attracted the interest of antiquarians since at least the eighteenth century but serious and systematic attention has been given to the archaeological potential of the coast only since the early 1980s.
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B It is possible to trace a variety of causes for this concentration of effort and interest In the 1980s and 1990s scientific research into climate change and its environmental impact spilled over into a much broader public debate as awareness of these issues grew; the prospect of rising sea levels over the next century, and their impact on current coastal environments, has been a particular focus for concern. At the same time archaeologists were beginning to recognize that the destruction caused by natural processes of coastal erosion and by human activity was having an increasing impact on the archaeological resource of the coast.
C The dominant process affecting the physical form of England in the post- glacial period has been the rise in the altitude of sea level relative to the land, as the glaciers melted and the landmass readjusted. The encroachment of the sea, the loss of huge areas of land now under the North Sea and the English Channel, and especially the loss of the land bridge between England and France, which finally made Britain an island, must have been immensely significant factors in the lives of our prehistoric ancestors. Yet the way in which prehistoric communities adjusted to these environmental changes has seldom been a major theme in discussions of the period. One factor contributing to this has been that, although the rise in relative sea level is comparatively well documented, we know little about the constant reconfiguration of the coastline. This was affected by many processes, mostly quiet, which have not yet been adequately researched. The detailed reconstruction of coastline histories and the changing environments available for human use will be an important theme for future research.
D So great has been the rise in sea level and the consequent regression of the coast that uch of the archaeological evidence now exposed in the coastal zone, whether being eroded or exposed as a buried land surface, is derived from what was originally terres-trial occupation. Its current location in the coastal zone is the product of later unrelated processes, and it can tell us little about past adaptations to the sea. Estimates of its significance will need to be made in the context of other related evidence from dry land sites. Nevertheless, its physical environment means that preservation is often excellent, for example in the case of the Neolithic structure excavated at the Stumble in Essex.
E In some cases these buried land surfaces do contain evidence for human exploitation of what was a coastal environment, and elsewhere along the modem coast there is similarevidence. Where the evidence does relate to past human exploitation of the resources and the opportunities offered by the sea and the coast, it is both diverse and as yet little understood. We are not yet in a position to make even preliminary estimates of answers to such fundamental questions as the extent to which the sea and the coast affected human life in the past, what percentage of the population at any time lived within reach of the sea, or whether human settlements in coastal environments showed a distinct character from those inland.
F The most striking evidence for use of the sea is in the form of boats, yet we still have much to learn about their production and use. Most of the known wrecks around our coast are not unexpectedly of post-medieval date, and offer an unparalleled opportunity for research which has as yet been little used. The prehistoric sewn-plank boats such as those from the Humber estuary and Dover all seem to belong to the second millennium BC; after this there is a gap in the record of a millennium, which cannot yet be explained, before boats reappear, but built using a very different technology. Boatbuilding must have been an extremely important activity around much of our coast, yet we know almost nothing about it, Boats were some of the most complex artefacts produced by pre-modem societies, and further research on their production and use make an important contribution to our understanding of past attitudes to technology and technological change.
G Boats needed landing places, yet here again our knowledge is very patchy In many cases the natural shores and beaches would have sufficed, leaving little or no archaeological trace, but especially in later periods, many ports and harbors, as welJ as smaller facili- ties such as quays, wharves, and jetties, were built. Despite a growth of interest in the waterfront archaeology of some of our more important Roman and medieval towns, very little attention has been paid to the multitude of smaller landing places. Redevelopment of harbor sites and other development and natural pressures along the coast are subject- ing these important locations to unprecedented threats, yet few surveys of such sites have been undertaken.
H One of the most important revelations of recent research has been the extent ofindustrial activity along the coast. Fishing and salt production are among the better documented activities, but even here our knowledge is patchy Many forms of fishing will eave little archaeological trace, and one of the surprises of recent survey has been the extent of past investment in facilities for procuring fish and shellfish. Elaborate wooden fish weirs, often of considerable extent and responsive to aerial photography in shallow water, have been identified in areas such as Essex and the Severn estuary. The production of salt, especially in the late Iron Age and early Roman periods, has been recognized for some time, especially in the Thames estuary and around the Solent and Poole Harbor, but the reasons for the decline of that industry and the nature of later coastal salt working are much less well understood. Other industries were also located along the coast, either because the raw materials outcropped there or for ease of working and transport: mineral resources such as sand, gravel, stone, coal, ironstone, and alum were all exploited. These industries are poorly documented, but their mains are sometimes extensive and striking.
I Some appreciation of the variety and importance of the archaeological remains preserved in the coastal zone, albeit only in preliminary form, can thus be gained from recent work, but the complexity of the problem of managing that resource is also being realised. The problem arises not only from the scale and variety of the archaeological remains, but also from two other sources: the very varied natural and human threats to the resource, and the complex web of organisations with authority over, or interests in, the coastal zone. Human threats include the redevelopment of historic towns and old dockland areas, and the increased importance of the coast for the leisure and tourism industries, resulting in pressure for the increased provision of facilities such as marinas. The larger size of ferries has also caused an increase in the damage caused by their wash to fragile deposits in the intertidal zone. The most significant natural threat is the predicted rise in sea level over the next century especially in the south and east of England. Its impact on archaeology is not easy to predict, and though it is likely to be highly localised, it will be at a scale much larger than that of most archaeological sites. Thus protecting one site may simply result in transposing the threat to a point further along the coast. The management of the archaeological remains will have to be considered in a much longer time scale and a much wider geographical scale than is common in the case of dry land sites, and this will pose a serious challenge for archaeologists.
Questions 1-3
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.
1.What has caused public interest in coastal archaeology in recent years?
A Golds and jewelleries in the ships that have submerged
B The rising awareness of climate change
C Forests under the sea
D Technological advance in the field of sea research
2. What does the passage say about the evidence of boats?
A We have a good knowledge of how boats were made and what boats were for prehistorically
B Most of the boats discovered were found in harbors
C The use of boats had not been recorded for a thousand years
D The way to build boats has remained unchanged throughout human history
3. What can be discovered from the air?
A Salt mines
B Shellfish
C Ironstones
D Fisheries
Questions 4-10
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 4-10 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement is true
FALSE
if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN
if the information is not given in the passage
4. England lost much of its land after the ice-age due to the rising sea level.
5. The coastline of England has changed periodically.
6. Coastal archaeological evidence may be well-protected by sea water.
7. The design of boats used by pre-modem people was very simple.
8. Similar boats were also discovered in many other European countries
9. There are few documents relating to mineral exploitation.
10. Large passenger boats are causing increasing damage to the seashore.
Questions 11-13
Choose THREE letters J-G Write your answer in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet Which THREE of the following statements are mentioned in the passage?
A Our prehistoric ancestors adjusted to the environmental change caused by the rising sea level by moving to higher lands
B It is difficult to understand how many people lived close to the sea.
C Human settlements in coastal environment were different from those inland.
D Our knowledge of boat evidence is limited.
E The prehistoric boats were built mainly for collecting sand from the river.
F Human development threatens the archaeological remains.
G The reason for the decline of salt industry was the shortage of laborers.
SECTION 2
Activities for Children
A Twenty-five years ago, children in London walked to school and played in parks and playing fields after school and at the weekend. Today they are usually driven to school by parents anxious about safety and spend hours glued to television screens or computer games. Meanwhile, community playing fields are being sold off to property developers at an alarming rate. ‘This change in lifestyle has, sadly, meant greater restrictions on children,’ says Neil Armstrong, Professor of Health and Exercise Sciences at the University of Exeter. ‘If children continue to be this inactive, they’ll be storing up big problems for the future.’
B In 1985, Professor Armstrong headed a five-year research project into children’s fitness. The results, published in 1990, were alarming. The survey, which monitored 700 11-16-year-olds, found that 48 per cent of girls and 41 per cent of boys already exceeded safe cholesterol levels set for children by the American Heart Foundation. Armstrong adds, “heart is a muscle and need exercise, or it loses its strength." It also found that 13 per cent of boys and 10 per cent of girls were overweight. More disturbingly, the survey found that over a four-day period, half the girls and one-third of the boys did less exercise than the equivalent of a brisk 10-minute walk. High levels of cholesterol, excess body fat and inactivity are believed to increase the risk of coronary heart disease.
C Physical education is under pressure in the UK – most schools devote little more than 100 minutes a week to it in curriculum time, which is less than many other European countries. Three European countries are giving children a head start in PE, France, Austria and Switzerland – offer at least two hours in primary and secondary schools. These findings, from the European Union of Physical Education Associations, prompted specialists in children’s physiology to call on European governments to give youngsters a daily PE programme. The survey shows that the UK ranks 13th out of the 25 countries, with Ireland bottom, averaging under an hour a week for PE. From age six to 18，British children received, on average, 106 minutes of PE a week. Professor Armstrong, who presented the findings at the meeting, noted that since the introduction of the national curriculum there had been a marked fall in the time devoted to PE in UK schools, with only a minority of pupils getting two hours a week.
D As a former junior football international, Professor Armstrong is a passionate advocate for sport. Although the Government has poured millions into beefing up sport in the community, there is less commitment to it as part of the crammed school curriculum. This means that many children never acquire the necessary skills to thrive in team games. If they are no good at them, they lose interest and establish an inactive pattern of behaviour. When this is coupled with a poor diet, it will lead inevitably to weight gain. Seventy per cent of British children give up all sport when they leave school, compared with only 20 per cent of French teenagers. Professor Armstrong believes that there is far too great an emphasis on team games at school. “We need to look at the time devoted to PE and balance it between individual and pair activities, such as aerobics and badminton, as well as team sports. “He added that children need to have the opportunity to take part in a wide variety of individual, partner and team sports.
E The good news, however, is that a few small companies and children’s activity groups have reacted positively and creatively to the problem. Take That, shouts Gloria Thomas, striking a disco pose astride her mini-spacehopper. Take That, echo a flock of toddlers, adopting outrageous postures astride their space hoppers. ‘Michael Jackson, she shouts, and they all do a spoof fan-crazed shriek. During the wild and chaotic hopper race across the studio floor, commands like this are issued and responded to with untrammelled glee. The sight of 15 bouncing seven-year-olds who seem about to launch into orbit at every bounce brings tears to the eyes. Uncoordinated, loud, excited and emotional, children provide raw comedy.
F Any cardiovascular exercise is a good option, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be high intensity. It can be anything that gets your heart rate up: such as walking the dog, swimming, miming, skipping, hiking. “Even walking through the grocery store can be exercise,” Samis-Smith said. What they don’t know is that they’re at a Fit Kids class, and that the fun is a disguise for the serious exercise plan they’re covertly being taken through. Fit Kids trains parents to run fitness classes for children. ‘Ninety per cent of children don’t like team sports,’ says company director, Gillian Gale.
G A Prevention survey found that children whose parents keep in shape are much more likely to have healthy body weights themselves. “There’s nothing worse than telling a child what he needs to do and not doing it yourself,” says Elizabeth Ward, R.D., a Boston nutritional consultant and author of Healthy Foods, Healthy Kids . “Set a good example and get your nutritional house in order first.” In the 1930s and ’40s, kids expended 800 calories a day just walking, carrying water, and doing other chores, notes Fima Lifshitz, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist in Santa Barbara. “Now, kids in obese families are expending only 200 calories a day in physical activity,” says Lifshitz, “incorporate more movement in your family’s lifepark farther away from the stores at the mall, take stairs instead of the elevator, and walk to nearby friends’ houses instead of driving.”
Questions 14 -17
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.
14. Health and living condition of children
15. Health organization monitored physical activity
16. Comparison of exercise time between UK and other countries
17. Wrong approach for school activity
Questions 18-21
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement is true
FALSE
if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN
if the information is not given in the passage
18. According to American Heart Foundation, cholesterol levels of boys are higher than girls’.
19. British children generally do less exercise than some other European countries.
20. Skipping becomes more and more popular in schools of UK.
21. According to Healthy Kids, the first task is for parents to encourage their children to keep the same healthy body weight.
Questions 22-26
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 22-26 on your answer sheet.
22. According to paragraph A, what does Professor Neil Armstrong concern about?
A Spending more time on TV affect academic level
B Parents have less time stay with their children
C Future health of British children
D Increasing speed of property’s development
23. What does Armstrong indicate in Paragraph B?
A We need to take a 10 minute walk everyday
B We should do more activity to exercise heart
C Girls’ situation is better than boys
D Exercise can cure many disease
24.What is aim of First Kids’ trainning?
A Make profit by running several sessions
B Only concentrate on one activity for each child
C To guide parents how to organize activities for children
D Spread the idea that team sport is better
25. What did Lifshitz suggest in the end of this passage?
ACreate opportunities to exercise your body
B Taking elevator saves your time
C Kids should spend more than 200 calories each day
D We should never drive but walk
26. What is main idea of this passage?
A health of the children who are overweight is at risk in the future
B Children in UK need proper exercises
C Government mistaken approach for children
D Parents play the most important role in children’s activity
SECTION 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 on the following pages.
Mechanisms of Linguistic Change
A The changes that have caused the most disagreement are those in pronunciation. We have various sources of evidence for the pronunciations of earlier times, such as the spellings, the treatment of words borrowed from other languages or borrowed by them, the descriptions of contemporary grammarians and spelling-reformers, and the modern pronunciations in all the languages and dialects concerned From the middle of the sixteenth century, there are in England writers who attempt to describe the position of the speech-organs for the production of English phonemes, and who invent what are in effect systems of phonetic symbols. These various kinds of evidence, combined with a knowledge of the mechanisms of speech-production, can often give us a very good idea of the pronunciation of an earlier age, though absolute certainty is never possible.
B When we study the pronunciation of a language over any period of a few generations or more, we find there are always large-scale regularities in the changes: for example, over a certain period of time, just about all the long [a:] vowels in a language may change into long [e:] vowels, or all the [b] consonants in a certain position (for example at the end of a word) may change into [p] consonants. Such regular changes are often called sound laws. There are no universal sound laws (even though sound laws often reflect universal tendencies), but simply particular sound laws for one given language (or dialect) at one given period
C It is also possible that fashion plays a part in the process of change. It certainly plays a part in the spread of change: one person imitates another, and people with the most prestige are most likely to be imitated, so that a change that takes place in one social group may be imitated (more or less accurately) by speakers in another group. When a social group goes up or down in the world, its pronunciation of Russian, which had formerly been considered desirable, became on the contrary an undesirable kind of accent to have, so that people tried to disguise it. Some of the changes in accepted English pronunciation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have been shown to consist in the replacement of one style of pronunciation by another style already existing, and it is likely that such substitutions were a result of the great social changes of the period: the increased power and wealth of the middle classes, and their steady infiltration upwards into the ranks of the landed gentry, probably carried elements of middle-class pronunciation into upper-class speech.
D A less specific variant of the argument is that the imitation of children is imperfect: they copy their parents' speech, but never reproduce it exactly. This is true, but it is also true that such deviations from adult speech are usually corrected in later childhood. Perhaps it is more significant that even adults show a certain amount of random variation in their pronunciation of a given phoneme, even if the phonetic context is kept unchanged. This, however, cannot explain changes in pronunciation unless it can be shown that there is some systematic trend in the failures of imitation: if they are merely random deviations they will cancel one another out and there will be no net change in the language.
E One such force which is often invoked is the principle of ease, or minimization of effort. The change from fussy to fuzzy would be an example of assimilation, which is a very common kind of change. Assimilation is the changing of a sound under the influence of a neighbouring one. For example, the word scant was once skamt, but the /m/ has been changed to /n/ under the influence of the following /t/. Greater efficiency has hereby been achieved, because /n/ and /t/ are articulated in the same place (with the tip of the tongue against the teeth-ridge), whereas /m/ is articulated elsewhere (with the two lips). So the place of articulation of the nasal consonant has been changed to conform with that of the following plosive. A more recent example of the same kind of thing is the common pronunciation of football as football.
F Assimilation is not the only way in which we change our pronunciation in order to increase efficiency. It is very common for consonants to be lost at the end of a word: in Middle English, word-final [-n] was often lost in unstressed syllables, so that baken 'to bake' changed from [‘ba:kan] to [‘ba:k3],and later to [ba:k]. Consonant-clusters are often simplified. At one time there was a [t] in words like castle and Christmas, and an initial [k] in words like knight and know. Sometimes a whole syllable is dropped out when two successive syllables begin with the same consonant (haplology): a recent example is temporary, which in Britain is often pronounced as if it were tempory.
Questions 27-30
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 27-30 on your answer sheet.
The pronunciation of living language undergo changes throughout thousands of years. Large scale regular Changes are usually called
27___________ . There are three reasons for these changes. Firstly, the influence of one language on another; when one person imitates another pronunciation(the most prestige's), the imitation always partly involving factor of 28______________ . Secondly, the imitation of children from adults1 language sometimes are 29___________ , and may also contribute to this change if there are insignificant deviations tough later they may be corrected Finally, for those random variations in pronunciation, the deeper evidence lies in the 30______________or minimization of effort.
Questions 31-37
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 31-37 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement is true
FALSE
if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN
if the information is not given in the passage
31. it is impossible for modern people to find pronunciation of words in an earlier age
32. The great change of language in Russian history is related to the rising status and fortune of middle classes.
33. All the children learn speeches from adults white they assume that certain language is difficult to imitate exactly.
34. Pronunciation with causal inaccuracy will not exert big influence on language changes.
35. The link of can be influenced being pronounced as ‘nf’
36. The [g] in gnat not being pronounced will not be spelt out in the future.
37. The sound of ‘temporary’ cannot wholly present its spelling.
Questions 38-40
Look at the following sentences and the list of statements below. Match each statement with the correct sentence, A-D.
Write the correct letter, A-D, in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet
A Since the speakers can pronounce it with less effort
B Assimilation of a sound under the influence of a neighbouring one
C It is a trend for changes in pronunciation in a large scale in a given period
D Because the speaker can pronounce [n] and [t] both in the same time
38. As a consequence, 'b' will be pronounced as
39. The pronunciation of [mt] changed to [nt]
40. The omit of ‘f in the sound of Christmas
ANSWER KEYS
1 B 2 C 3 D
4 TRUE 5 FALSE 6 TRUE
7 FALSE 8 NOT GIVEN 9 TRUE 10 TRUE
11 B 12 D 13 F
14 A 15 B 16 C 17 D
18 NOT GIVEN 19 TRUE
20 NOT GIVEN 21 FALSE
22 C 23 B 24 C 25 A 26 B
27 Sound laws 28 Fashion 29 Imperfect 30 Principle of
The IELTS Reading Actual Test 2 with Answer keys is a great help to the students who are taking up IELTS examinations. There is a sample of questions that appear in the actual IELTS test which will help them to improve their reading skills.
SECTION 1
Eco-Resort Management Practices
Ecotourism is often regarded as a form of nature-based tourism and has become an important alternative source of tourists. In addition to providing the traditional resort-leisure product, it has been argued that ecotourism resort management should have a particular focus on best-practice environmental management, and educational and interpretive components, and direct and indirect contributions to the conservation of the natural and cultural environment (Ayala, 1996).
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Couran Cove Island Resort is a large integrated ecotourism-based resort located south of Brisbane on the Gold Coast, Queensland, and Australia. As the world’s population becomes increasingly urbanized, the demand for tourist attractions which are environmentally friendly, serene and offer amenities of a unique nature, has grown rapidly. Couran Cove Resort, which is one such tourist attractions, is located on South Stradbroke Island, occupying approximately 150 hectares of the island. South Stradbroke Island is separated from the mainland by the Broadwater, a stretch of sea 3 kilometers wide More than a century ago, there was only one Stradbroke Island, and there were at least four aboriginal tribes living and hunting on the island. Regrettably, most of the original island dwellers were eventually killed by diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpOx, and influenza by the end of the 19th century. The second shipwreck on the island in 1894, and the subsequent destruction of the ship (the Cambus Wallace) because it contained dynamite, caused a large crater in the sandhills on Stradbroke Island. Eventually, the ocean broke through the weakened landform and Stradbroke became two islands. Couran Cove Island Resort is built on one of the world’s few naturally-occurring sand lands, which is home to a wide range of plant communities and one of the largest remaining remnants of the rare Livistona Rainforest left on the Gold Coast. Many mangrove and rainforest areas and Melaleuca Wetlands on South Stradbroke Island (and in Queensland), have been cleared, drained or filled for residential, industrial, agricultural or urban development in the first half of the 20th century. Farmers and graziers finally abandoned South Stradbroke Island in 1939 because the vegetation and the soil conditions there were not suitable for agricultural activities.
SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES OF COURANT COVE RESORT
Being located on an offshore island, the resort is only accessible by means of water transportation. The resort provides an hourly ferry service from the marina on the mainland to and from the island. Within the resort, transport modes include walking trails, bicycle tracks, and the beach train. The reception area is the counter of the shop which has not changed in 8 years at least. The accommodation is an octagonal “Bure”. These are large rooms that are clean but! The equipment is tired and in some cases just working. Our ceiling fan only worked on high speed for example. Beds are hard but clean, there is a television, radio, an old air conditioner and a small fridge. These “Bures” are right on top of each other and night noises do carry so be careful what you say and do. The only thing is the mosquitos but if you forget to bring mosquito repellant they sell some on the island. As an ecotourism-based resort, most of the planning and development of the attraction has been concentrated on the need to co-exist with the fragile natural environment of South Stradbroke Island to achieve sustainable development.
WATER AND ENERGY MANAGEMENT
South Stradbroke Island has groundwater at the center of the island, which has a maximum height of 3 meters above sea level. The water supply is recharged by rainfall and is commonly known as an unconfined freshwater aquifer ( StK/1-). Couran Cove Island Resort obtains its water supply by tapping into this aquifer and extracting it via a bore system. Some of the problems which have threatened the island’s freshwater supply include pollution, contamination, and over-consumption. In order to minimize some of these problems, all laundry activities are carried out on the mainland. The resort considers washing machines as onerous to the island’s freshwater supply, and that the detergents contain a high level of phosphates which are a major source of water pollution. The resort uses LPG-power generation rather than a diesel-powered plant for its energy supply, supplemented by a wind turbine, which has reduced greenhouse emissions by 70% of diesel-equivalent generation methods. Excess heat recovered from the generator is used to heat the swimming pool. Hot water in the eco-cabins and for some of the resort’s vehicles are solar-powered. Water-efficient fittings are also installed in showers and toilets. However, not all the appliances used by the resort are energy efficient, such as refrigerators. Visitors who stay at the resort are encouraged to monitor their water and energy usage via the in-house television systems and are rewarded with prizes (such as a free return trip to the resort) accordingly if their usage level is low.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
We examined a case study of good management practice and a pro-active sustainable tourism stance of an eco-resort. In three years of operation, Couran Cove Island Resort has won 23 international and national awards, including the 2001 Australian Tourism Award in the 4-Star Accommodation category. The resort has embraced and has effectively implemented contemporary environmental management practices. It has been argued that the successful implementation of the principles of sustainability should promote long-term social, economic and environmental benefits while ensuring and enhancing the prospects of continued viability for the tourism enterprise. Couran Cove Island Resort does not conform to the characteristics of the Resort DevelopmentSpectrum, as proposed by Prideaux (2000). According to Prideaux, the resort should be at least at Phase 3 of the model (the National tourism phase), which describes an integrated resort providing 3-4 star hotel-type accommodation. The primary tourist market in Phase 3 of the model consists mainly of interstate visitors. However, the number of interstate and international tourists visiting the resort is small, with the principal locals and residents from nearby towns and the Gold Coast region. The carrying capacity of Couran Cove does not seem to be of any concern to the Resort management. Given that it is a private commercial ecotourist enterprise, regulating the number of visitors to the resort to minimize the damage done to the natural environment on South Stradbroke Island is not a binding constraint. However, the Resort’s growth will eventually be constrained by its carrying capacity, and quantity control should be incorporated into the management strategy of the resort.
Questions 1 – 4.
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 1 -4 on your answer sheet.
the Stradbroke became two islands
by intended destruction of the ship of the Cambus Wallace
by an explosion of dynamite on a ship and following nature erosion
by the movement sandhills on Stradbroke Island
by the volcanic eruption on the island
Why are laundry activities for the resort carried out on the mainland?
In order to obtain its water supply via a bore system
In order to preserve the water and anti-pollution
In order to save the cost of installing onerous washing machines
In order to reduce the level of phosphates in the water around
What is the major water supplier in South Stradbroke Island is by
desalinating the seawater
collecting the rainfall
transporting from the mainland
boring groundwater
What is applied for heating water on Couran Cove Island Resort
the LPG-power
a diesel-powered plant
the wind power
the solar-power
what does, as the managers of resorts believe, the prospective future focus on
more awards for the resort’s accommodation
sustainable administration and development in the long run
Economic and environmental benefits for the tourism enterprise
successful implementation of the Resort Development Spectrum
Questions 6-10
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no more than two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet.
Being located away from the mainland, tourists can attain the resort only by 6…………………………………………………………. in regular service. Within the resort, transports include trails for walking or tracks for both 7…………………………………….. and the beach train. The on-island equipment is old-fashioned which is barely working such as the 8……………………………………………. overhead. There is a television, radio, an old 9……………………………………….. and a small fridge. And you can buy the repellant for 10……………………………………………… if you forget to bring some.
Questions 11-13
Choose three correct letters among A-E
Write your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet.
What is true as to the contemporary situation of the Couran Cove Island Resort in the last paragraph?
Couran Cove Island Resort goes for more eco-friendly practices
the accommodation standard only conforms to the Resort Development Spectrum of Phase 3
Couran Cove Island Resort should raise the accommodation to build more standard and build more facilities
the principal group visiting the resort is international tourists
its carrying capacity will restrict the future business' expansion
SECTION 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on question 14-26, which are based on reading passage 2 on the following pages.
TV Addiction 1
The amount of time people spend watching television is astonishing. On average, individuals in the industrialized world devote three hours a day to the pursuit —fully half of their leisure time, and more than on any single activity save work and sleep. At this rate, someone who lives to 75 would spend nine years in front of the tube. To some commentators, this devotion means simply that people enjoy TV and make a conscious decision to watch it. But if that is the whole story, why do so many people experience misgivings about how much they view? In Gallup polls in 1992 and 1999, two out of five adult respondents and seven out of 10 teenagers said they spent too much time watching TV. Other surveys have consistently shown that roughly 10 percent of adults call themselves TV addicts
To study people’s reactions to TV, researchers have experiments in which they have monitored the brain waves (using an electroencephalograph, or EEG) to track behavior and emotion in the normal course of life, as opposed to the artificial conditions of the lab. Participants carried a beeper, and we signaled them six to eight times a day, at random, over the period of a week; whenever they heard the beep, they wrote down what they were doing and how they were feeling using a standardized scorecard.
As one might expect, people who were watching TV when we beeped them reported feeling relaxed and passive. The EEG studies similarly show less mental stimulation, as measured by alpha brain-wave production, during viewing than during reading. What is more surprising is that the sense of relaxation ends when the set is turned off, but the feelings of passivity and lowered alertness continue. Survey participants say they have more difficulty concentrating after viewing than before. In contrast, they rarely indicate such difficulty after reading. After playing sports or engaging in hobbies, people report improvements in mood. After watching TV, people’s moods are about the same or worse than before. That may be because of viewers’ vague learned sense that they will feel less relaxed if they stop viewing. So they tend not to turn the set-off. Viewing begets more viewing which is the same as the experience of habit-forming drugs. Thus, the irony of TV: people watch a great deal longer than they plan to, even though prolonged viewing is less rewarding. In our ESM studies the longer people sat in front of the set, the less satisfaction they said they derived from it. For some, a twinge of unease or guilt that they aren’t doing something more productive may also accompany and depreciate the enjoyment of prolonged viewing. Researchers in Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. have found that this guilt occurs much more among middle-class viewers than among less affluent ones.
What is it about TV that has such a hold on us? In part, the attraction seems to spring from our biological ‘orienting response/ First described by Ivan Pavlov in 1927, the orienting response is our instinctive visual or auditory reaction to any sudden or novel stimulus. It is part of our evolutionary heritage, a built-in sensitivity to movement and potential predatory threats. In 1986 Byron Reeves of Stanford University, Esther Thorson of the University of Missouri and their colleagues began to study whether the simple formal features of television—cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden noises — activate the orienting response, thereby keeping attention on the screen. By watching how brain waves were affected by formal features, the researchers concluded that these stylistic tricks can indeed trigger involuntary responses and ‘derive their attentional value through the evolutionary significance of detecting movement… It is the form, not the content, of television that is unique.
The natural attraction to television’s sound and the light starts very early in life. Dafna Lemish of Tel Aviv University has described babies at six to eight weeks attending to television. We have observed slightly older infants who, when lying on their backs on the floor, crane their necks around 180 degrees to catch what light through yonder window breaks. This inclination suggests how deeply rooted the orienting response is.
The Experience Sampling Method permitted us to look closely at most every domain of everyday life: working, eating, reading, talking to friends, playing a sport, and so on. We found that heavy viewers report feeling significantly more anxious and less happy than light viewers do in unstructured situations, such as doing nothing, daydreaming or waiting in line. The difference widens when the viewer is alone. Subsequently, Robert D. Mcllwraith of the University of Manitoba extensively studied those who called themselves TV addicts on surveys. On a measure called the Short Imaginal Processes Inventory (SIPI), he found that the self-described addicts are more easily bored and distracted and have poorer attentional control than the non-addicts. The addicts said they used TV to distract themselves from unpleasant thoughts and to fill time. Other studies over the years have shown that heavy viewers are less likely to participate in community activities and sports and are more likely to be obese than moderate viewers or non-viewers.
More than 25 years ago psychologist Tannis M. MacBeth Williams of the University of British Columbia studied a mountain community that had no television until cable finally arrived. Over time, both adults and children in the town became less creative in problem-solving, less able to persevere at tasks, and less tolerant of unstructured time.
Nearly 40 years ago Gary A. Steiner of the University of Chicago collected fascinating individual accounts of families whose set had broken. In experiments, families have volunteered or been paid to stop viewing, typically for a week or a month. Some fought, verbally and physically. In a review of these cold-turkey studies, Charles Winick of the City University of New York concluded: ‘The first three or four days for most persons were the worst, even in many homes where the viewing was minimal and where there were other ongoing activities. In over half of all the households, during these first few days of loss, the regular routines were disrupted, family members had difficulties in dealing with the newly available time, anxiety and aggressions were expressed By the second week, a move toward adaptation to the situation was common.’ Unfortunately, researchers have yet to flesh out these anecdotes; no one has systematically gathered statistics on the prevalence of these withdrawal symptoms.
Even though TV does seem to meet the criteria for substance dependence, not all researchers would go so far as to call TV addictive. Mcllwraith said in 1998 that ‘displacement of other activities by television may be socially significant but still fall short of the clinical requirement of significant impairment.’ He argued that a new category of ‘TV addiction’ may not be necessary if heavy viewing stems from conditions such as depression and social phobia. Nevertheless, whether or not we formally diagnose someone as TV-dependent, millions of people sense that they cannot readily control the amount of television they watch.
Questions 14-18
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet, write TRUE if the statement is true FALSE if the statement is false NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
Study shows that males are more likely to be addicted to TV than females.
Greater improvements in mood are experienced after watching TV than playing sports.
TV addiction works in similar ways as drugs.
It is reported that people’s satisfaction is in proportion to the time they spend watching TV.
Middle-class viewers are more likely to feel guilty about watching TV than the poor.
Questions 19-23
Look at the following researchers (Questions 19-23) and the list of statements below. Match each researcher with the correct statements. Write the correct letter A-H in boxes 19-23 on your answer sheets.
Byron Reeves and Esther Thorson
Dafna Lemish
Robert D. Mcllwraith
Tannis M. MacBeth Williams
Charles Winick
List of Statements
Audiences would get hypnotized from viewing too much television.
People have been sensitive to TV signals from a younger age.
People are less likely to accomplish their work with television.
A handful of studies have attempted to study other types of media addiction.
The addictive power of television could probably minimize the problems.
Various media formal characters stimulate people's reaction on the screen.
People who believe themselves to be TV addicts are less likely to join in the group activities.
It is hard for people to accept life without a TV at the beginning.
Questions 24-26 Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
People in the industrialized world
devote ten hours watching TV on average.
spend more time on TV than other entertainment.
call themselves TV addicts.
working best.
When compared with light viewers, heavy viewers
like playing sport more than reading.
feels relaxed after watching TV.
spends more time daydreaming.
is more easily bored while waiting in line.
Which of the following statements is true about the family experiment?
Not all subjects participate in the experiment for free.
There has been a complete gathered data.
People are prevented from other activities during the experiment.
People cannot adapt to the situation until the end
SECTION 3
Music: Language We All Speak
Section A: Music is one of the human specie’s relatively few universal abilities. Without formal training, any individual, from Stone Age tribesman to suburban teenager has the ability to recognize music and, in some fashion, to make it. Why this should be so is a mystery. After all, music isn’t necessary for getting through the day, and if it aids in reproduction, it does so only in highly indirect ways. Language, by contrast, is also everywhere- but for reasons that are more obvious. With language, you and the members of your tribe can organize a migration across Africa, build reed boats and cross the seas, and communicate at night even when you can’t see each other. Modem culture, in all its technological extravagance, springs directly from the human talent for manipulating symbols and syntax. Scientists have always been intrigued by the connection between music and language. Yet over the years, words and melody have acquired a vastly different status in the lab and the seminar room. While language has long been considered essential to unlocking the mechanisms of human intelligence, music is generally treated as an evolutionary frippery-mere “auditory cheesecake,” as the Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker puts it.
Section B: But thanks to a decade-long wave of neuroscience research, that tune is changing. A flurry of recent publications suggests that language and music may equally be able to tell us who we are and where we’re from – not just emotionally, but biologically. In July, the journal Nature Neuroscience devoted a special issue to the topic. And in an article in the August 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, David Schwartz, Catherine Howe, and Dale Purves of Duke University argued that the sounds of music and the sounds of language are intricately connected. To grasp the originality of this idea, it’s necessary to realize two things about how music has traditionally been understood. First, musicologists have long emphasized that while each culture stamps a special identity onto its music; the music itself has some universal qualities. For example, in virtually all cultures sound is divided into some or all of the 12 intervals that make up the chromatic scale – that is, the scale represented by the keys on a piano. For centuries, observers have attributed this preference for certain combinations of tones to the mathematical properties of sound itself. Some 2,500 years ago, Pythagoras was the first to note a direct relationship between the harmoniousness of a tone combination and the physical dimensions of the object that produced it. For example, a plucked string will always play an octave lower than a similar string half its size, and a fifth lower than a similar string two-thirds it’s the length. This link between simple ratios and harmony has influenced music theory ever since.
Section C: This music-is-moth idea is often accompanied by the notion that music formally speaking at least, exists apart from the world in which it was created. Writing recently in The New York Review of Books, pianist and critic Charles Rosen discussed the long-standing notion that while painting and sculpture reproduce at least some aspects of the natural world, and writing describes thoughts and feelings we are all familiar with, music is entirely abstracted from the world in which we live. Neither idea is right, according to David Schwartz and his colleagues. Human musical preferences are fundamentally shaped not by elegant algorithms or ratios but by the messy sounds of real life, and of speech in particular -which in turn is shaped by our evolutionary heritage." The explanation of music, like the explanation of any product of the mind, must be rooted in biology, not in numbers per se,” says Schwartz.
Schwartz, Howe, and Purves analyzed a vast selection of speech sounds from a variety of languages to reveal the underlying patterns common to all utterances. In order to focus only on the raw sound, they discarded all theories about speech and meaning and sliced sentences into random bites. Using a database of over 100,000 brief segments of speech, they noted which frequency had the greatest emphasis in each sound. The resulting set of frequencies, they discovered, corresponded closely to the chromatic scale. In short, the building blocks of music are to be found in speech
Far from being abstract, music presents a strange analog to the patterns created by the sounds of speech. “Music, like the visual arts, is rooted in our experience of the natural world,” says Schwartz. "It emulates our sound environment in the way that visual arts emulate the visual environment. ” In music, we hear the echo of our basic sound-making instrument- the vocal tract. The explanation for human music is simple; still than Pythagoras’s mathematical equations. We like the sounds that are familiar to us- specifically, we like sounds that remind us of us.
This brings up some chicken-or-egg evolutionary questions. It may be that music imitates speech directly, the researchers say, in which case it would seem that language evolved first. It’s also conceivable that music came first and language is in effect an Imitation of a song – that in everyday speech we hit the musical notes we especially like. Alternately, it may be that music imitates the general products of the human sound-making system, which just happens to be mostly speech. “We can’t know this,” says Schwartz. “What we do know is that they both come from the same system, and it is this that shapes our preferences.”
Section D: Schwartz’s study also casts light on the long-running question of whether animals understand or appreciate music. Despite the apparent abundance of “music” in the natural world- birdsong, whalesong, wolf howls, synchronized chimpanzee hooting previous studies have found that many laboratory animals don’t show a great affinity for the human variety of music-making. Marc Hauser and Josh McDermott of Harvard argued in the July issue of Nature Neuroscience that animals don’t create or perceive music the way we do. The act that laboratory monkeys can show recognition of human tunes is evidence, they say, of shared general features of the auditory system, not any specific chimpanzee musical ability. As for birds, those most musical beasts, they generally recognize their own tunes – a narrow repertoire – but don’t generate novel melodies as we do. There are no avian Mozarts.
But what’s been played to the animals, Schwartz notes, is human music. If animals evolve preferences for sound as we do – based upon the soundscape in which they live – then their “music” would be fundamentally different from ours. In the same way, our scales derive from human utterances, a cat’s idea of a good tune would derive from yowls and meows. To demonstrate that animals don’t appreciate sounds the way we do, we’d need evidence that they don’t respond to “music” constructed from their own sound environment.
Section E: No matter how the connection between language and music is parsed, what is apparent is that our sense of music, even our love for it, is as deeply rooted in our biology and in our brains as language is. This is most obvious with babies, says Sandra Trehub at the University of Toronto, who also published a paper in the Nature Neuroscience special issue.
For babies, music and speech are on a continuum. Mothers use musical speech to “regulate infants’ emotional states.” Trehub says. Regardless of what language they speak, the voice all mothers use with babies is the same: “something between speech and song.” This kind of communication “puts the baby in a trance-like state, which may proceed to sleep or extended periods of rapture.” So if the babies of the world could understand the latest research on language and music, they probably wouldn’t be very surprised. The upshot, says Trehub, is that music may be even more of a necessity than we realize.
Question 27 – 31
Reading Passage 3 has five sections A-E. Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below. Write the correct number i-viii in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet. List of Headings
Animals sometimes make music.
Recent research on music
The culture embedded in music
Historical theories review
Communication in music with animals
The contrast between music and language
Questions on a biological link with human and music
Music is good for babies.
Section A
Section B
Section C
Section D
Section E
Questions 32-38 Look at the following people and list of statements below. Match each person with the correct statement. Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 32-38 on your answer sheet.
List of statements
Music exists outside of the world in which it is created
Music has a common feature though cultural influences affect
Humans need music
Music priority connects to the disordered sound around
Discovery of mathematical musical foundation
Music is not treated equally well compared with a language
Humans and monkeys have similar traits in perceiving sound
Steven Pinker
Musicologists
Greek philosopher Pythagoras
Schwartz, Howe, and Purves
Marc Hauser and Josh McDermott
Charles Rosen
Sandra Trehub
Questions 39-40 Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D Write your answers in boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet.
Why was the study of animal music uncertain?
Animals don’t have the same auditory system as humans.
Experiments on animal’s music are limited.
tunes are impossible for the animal to make up.
Animals don’t have the spontaneous ability for the tests.
Advanced Vocabulary List for IELTS learners to Score Band 7.5 or Higher
IELTS vocabulary word list helps you to understand where to use the correct words in the sentence as well as the pronunciation of some difficult words that can be used in your IELTS examination for getting a good band score. In order to crack the IELTS examination knowing vocabulary is very important, you can get 25%-30% of your marks only through vocabulary.
In order to pass your IELTS test with a high score, you need a good grasp of academic vocabulary. The Advanced Vocabulary List is a list of words that you can make use of in your IELTS Speaking & Writing to hike up your IELTS score.
On this page, there are 3 different passages that can be used by the students who are going to take the IELTS examination for practice and also to improve their English speaking skills.
Section 1
Animal Minds: Parrot Alex
In 1977 Irene Pepperberg, a recent graduate of Harvard University did something very bold. At a time when animals still were considered automatons, she set out to find what was on another creature’s mind by talking to it. She brought a one-year-old African gray parrot she named Alex into her lab to teach him to reproduce the sounds of the English language. “I thought if he learned to communicate, I could ask him questions about how he sees the world.”
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When Pepperberg began her dialogue with Alex, who died last September at the age of 31, many scientists believed animals were incapable of any thought. They were simply machines, robots programmed to react to stimuli but lacking the ability to think or feel. Any pet owner would disagree. We see the love in our dogs’ eyes and know that, of course, they have thoughts and emotions. But such claims remain highly controversial. Gut instinct is not science, and it is all too easy to project human thoughts and feelings onto another creature. How, then, does a scientist prove that an animal is capable of thinking – that it is able to acquire information about the world and act on it? “That’s why I started my studies with Alex,” Pepperberg said. They were seated – she at her desk, he on top of his cage – in her lab, a windowless room about the size of a boxcar, at Brandeis University. Newspapers lined the floor; baskets of bright toys were stacked on the shelves. They were clearly a team – and because of their work, the notion that animals can think is no longer so fanciful.
Certain skills are considered key signs of higher mental abilities: good memory, a grasp of grammar and symbols, self-awareness, understanding others’ motives, imitating others, and being creative. Bit by bit, in ingenious experiments, researchers have documented these talents in other species, gradually chipping away at what we thought made human beings distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities came from. Scrub jays know that other jays are thieves and that stashed food can spoil; sheep can recognize faces; chimpanzees use a variety of tools to probe termite mounds and even use weapons to hunt small mammals; dolphins can imitate human postures; the archerfish, which stuns insects with a sudden blast of water, can learn how to aim its squirt simply by watching an experienced fish perform the task and Alex the parrot turned out to be a surprisingly good talker.
Thirty years after the Alex studies began; Pepperberg and a changing collection of assistants were still giving him English lessons. The humans, along with two younger parrots, also served as Alex’s flock, providing the social input all parrots crave. Like any flock, this one – as small as it was – had its share of drama. Alex dominated his fellow parrots, acted huffy at times around Pepperberg, tolerated the other female humans, and fell to pieces over a male assistant who dropped by for a visit. Pepperberg bought Alex in a Chicago pet store where she let the store’s assistant pick him out because she didn’t want other scientists saying later that she’d particularly chosen an especially smart bird for her work. Given that Alex’s brain was the size of a shelled walnut, most researchers thought Pepperberg’s interspecies communication study would be futile.
“Some people actually called me crazy for trying this,” she said. “Scientists thought that chimpanzees were better subjects, although, of course, chimps can’t speak.” Chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas have been taught to use sign language and symbols to communicate with us, often with impressive results. The bonobo Kanzi, for instance, carries his symbol-communication board with him so he can “talk” to his human researchers, and he has invented combinations of symbols to express his thoughts. Nevertheless, this is not the same thing as having an animal look up at you, open his mouth, and speak. Under Pepperberg’s patient tutelage, Alex learned how to use his vocal tract to imitate almost one hundred English words, including the sounds for various foods, although he calls an apple a “beanery.” “Apples taste a little bit like bananas to him, and they look a little bit like cherries, Alex made up that word for them,” Pepperberg said.
It sounded a bit mad, the idea of a bird having lessons to practice, and willingly doing it. But after listening to and observing Alex, it was difficult to argue with Pepperberg’s explanation for his behaviors. She wasn’t handing him treats for the repetitious work or rapping him on the claws to make him say the sounds. “He has to hear the words over and over before he can correctly imitate them,” Pepperberg said, after pronouncing “seven” for Alex a good dozen times in a row. “I’m not trying to see if Alex can learn a human language,” she added. “That’s never been the point. My plan always was to use his imitative skills to get a better understanding of avian cognition.”
In other words, because Alex was able to produce a close approximation of the sounds of some English words, Pepperberg could ask him questions about a bird’s basic understanding of the world. She couldn’t ask him what he was thinking about, but she could ask him about his knowledge of numbers, shapes, and colors. To demonstrate, Pepperberg carried Alex on her arm to a tall wooden perch in the middle of the room. She then retrieved a green key and a small green cup from a basket on a shelf. She held up the two items to Alex’s eye. “What’s the same?” she asked. Without hesitation, Alex’s beak opened: “Color.” “What’s different?” Pepperberg asked. “Shape,” Alex said. His voice had the digitized sound of a cartoon character. Since parrots lack lips (another reason it was difficult for Alex to pronounce some sounds, such as ba), the words seemed to come from the air around him, as if a ventriloquist were speaking. But the words – and what can only be called the thoughts – were entirely his.
For the next 20 minutes, Alex ran through his tests, distinguishing colors, shapes, sizes, and materials (wool versus wood versus metal). He did some simple arithmetic, such as counting the yellow toy blocks among a pile of mixed hues. And, then, as if to offer final proof of the mind inside his bird’s brain, Alex spoke up. “Talk clearly!” he commanded, when one of the younger birds Pepperberg was also teaching talked with wrong pronunciation. “Talk clearly!” “Don’t be a smart aleck,” Pepperberg said, shaking her head at him. “He knows all this, and he gets bored, so he interrupts the others, or he gives the wrong answer just to be obstinate. At this stage, he’s like a teenager; he’s moody, and I’m never sure what he’ll do.”
Questions 1-6
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
Firstly, Alex has grasped quite a lot of vocabulary.
At the beginning of study, Alex felt frightened in the presence of humans.
Previously, many scientists realized that animals possess the ability of thinking.
It has taken a long time before people get to know cognition existing in animals.
As Alex could approximately imitate the sounds of English words, he was capable of roughly answering Irene’s questions regarding the world.
By breaking in other parrots as well as producing the incorrect answers, he tried to be focused.
Questions 7-10
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 7-10 on your answer sheet.
After the training of Irene, Parrot Alex can use his vocal tract to pronounce more than 7……………………, while other scientists believe that animals have no this advanced ability of thinking, they would rather teach 8…………………….. Pepperberg clarified that she wanted to conduct a study concerning 9…………………. but not to teach him to talk. The store’s assistant picked out a bird at random for her for the sake of avoiding other scientists saying that the bird is 10…………………… afterward.
Questions 11-13
Answer the questions 11-13 below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.
What did Alex reply regarding the similarity of the subjects showed to him?
What is the problem of the young parrots except for Alex?
To some extent, through the way, he behaved what we can call him
Section 2
Developing Courtiers
The Ecotourism Society defines ecotourism as “responsible travel to natural areas which conserves the environment and improves the welfare of local people”. It is recognized as being particularly conducive to enriching and enhancing the standing of tourism, on the basis that this form of tourism respects the natural heritage and local populations and are in keeping with the carrying capacity of the sites.
Cuba is undoubtedly an obvious site for ecotourism, with its picturesque beaches, underwater beauty, countryside landscapes, and ecological reserves. An educated population and improved infrastructure of roads and communications add to the mix. In the Caribbean region, Cuba is now the second most popular tourist destination. Ecotourism is also seen as an environmental education opportunity to heighten both visitors’ and residents’ awareness of environmental and conservation issues, and even to inspire conservation action. Ecotourism has also been credited with promoting peace, by providing opportunities for educational and cultural exchange. Tourists’ safety and health are guaranteed. Raul Castro, brother of the Cuban president, started this initiative to rescue the Cuban tradition of herbal medicine and provide natural medicines for its healthcare system. The school at Las Terrazas Eco-Tourism Community teaches herbal healthcare and children learn not only how to use medicinal herbs, but also to grow them in the school garden for teas, tinctures, ointments, and creams. In Cuba, ecotourism has the potential to alleviate poverty by bringing money into the economy and creating jobs. In addition to the environmental impacts of these efforts, the area works on developing community employment opportunities for locals, in conjunction with ecotourism.
In terms of South America, it might be the place which shows the shortcoming of ecotourism. Histoplasma capsulatum, a dimorphic fungus, is the most common endemic mycosis in the United States and is associated with exposure to bat or bird droppings. Most recently, outbreaks have been reported in healthy travelers who returned from Central and South America after engaging in recreational activities associated with spelunking, adventure tourism, and ecotourism. It is quite often to see tourists neglected sanitation while traveling. After engaging in high-risk activities, boots should be hosed off and clothing placed in airtight plastic bags for laundering. HIV-infected travelers should avoid risky behaviors or environments, such as exploring caves, particularly those that contain bat droppings.
Nowhere is the keen eye and intimate knowledge of ecotourism are more amidst this fantastic biodiversity, as we explore remote realms rich in wildlife rather than a nature adventure. A sustainable tour is significant for ecotourism, one in which we can grow hand in hand with nature and our community, respecting everything that makes us privileged. Travelers get great joy from every step that takes forward on this endless but exciting journey towards sustainability. The primary threats to South America’s tropical forests are deforestation caused by agricultural expansion, cattle ranching, fagging, oil extraction and spills, mining, illegal coca farming, and colonization initiatives. Deforestation has shrunk territories belonging to indigenous peoples and wiped out more than 90% of the population. Many are taking leading roles in sustainable tourism even as they introduce protected regions to more travelers.
In East Africa, significantly reducing such illegal hunting and allowing wildlife populations to recover would allow the generation of significant economic benefits through trophy hunting and potentially ecotourism. “Illegal hunting is an extremely inefficient use of wildlife resources because it fails to capture the value of wildlife achievable through alternative forms of use such as trophy hunting and ecotourism,” said Peter Lindsey, author of the new study. Most residents believed that ecotourism could solve this circumstance. They have a passion for local community empowerment, loves photography and writes to laud current local conservation efforts, create environmental awareness and promote ecotourism.
In Indonesia, ecotourism started to become an important concept from 1995, in order to strengthen the domestic traveling movement, the local government targeting the right markets is a prerequisite for successful ecotourism. The market segment for Indonesian ecotourism consists of: (i) “The silent generation”, 55-64-year-old people who are wealthy enough, generally well-educated and have no dependent children, and can travel for four weeks; (ii) “The baby boom generation”, junior successful executives aged 35-54 years, who are likely to be traveling with their family and children (spending 2-3 weeks on travel) – traveling for them is a stress reliever; and (iii) the “X generation”, aged 18-29 years, who love to do ecotours as backpackers – they are generally students who can travel for 3-12 months with a monthly expenditure of US$300-500. It is suggested that the promotion of Indonesian ecotourism products should aim to reach these various cohorts of tourists. The country welcomes diverse levels of travelers.
On the other hand, ecotourism provides as many services as traditional tourism. Nestled between Mexico, Guatemala and the Caribbean Sea is the country of Belize. It is the wonderful place for Hamanasi honeymoon, a bottle of champagne upon arrival, three meals daily, private service on one night of your stay and a choice of adventures depending on the length of your stay. It also offers six-night and seven-night honeymoon packages. A variety of specially tailored tours, including the Brimstone Hill Fortress, and a trip to a neighboring island. Guided tours include rainforest, volcano, and off-road plantation tours. Gregory Pereira, extremely knowledgeable and outgoing hiking and tour guide says the following about his tours: “All of our tours on St. Kitts include transportation by specially modified Land Rovers, a picnic of island pastries and local fruit, fresh tropical juices, CSR, a qualified island guide and a full liability insurance coverage for participants.
Kodai is an ultimate splendor spot for those who love being close to mother nature. They say every bird must sing its own throat while we say every traveler should find his own way out of variegated and unblemished paths of deep valleys and steep mountains. The cheese factory here exports a great quantity of cheese to various countries across the globe. It is located in the center of the forest. Many travelers are attracted by the delicious cheese. Ecotourism is very famous for this different eating experience.
Questions 14-18
Use the information in the passage to match the place (listed A-D) with opinions or deeds below.
Write the appropriate letters, A-D, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
a place to improve local education to help tourists
a place suitable for both rich and poor travelers
a place where could easily get fungus
a place taking a method to stop unlawful poaching
a place where the healthcare system is developed
Cuba
East Africa
South America
Indonesia
Questions 19-22
Use the information in the passage to match the companies (listed A-C) with or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A, B, C or D in boxes 19-22 answer sheet.
Eating the local fruits at the same time
find job opportunities in the community
which is situated on the heart of jungle
with private and comfortable service
Visiting the cheese factory
Enjoying the honeymoon
Having the picnic while
The residents in Cuba could
Questions 23-26
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.
Ecotourism is not nature 23…………………… but a 24…………………… tour. The reason why South America promotes ecotourism is due to the destruction of 25……………………. In addition, East Africa also encourages this kind of tourism for cutting the 26…………………… in order to save wild animals.
Section 3
Ancient Societies Classification
Although humans have established many types of societies throughout history sociologists and anthropologists tend to classify different societies according to the degree to which different groups within a society have unequal access to advantages such as resources, prestige or power, and usually refer to four basic types of societies. From least to most socially complex, they are clans, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.
Clan
These are small-scale societies of hunters and gatherers, generally of fewer than 100 people, who move seasonally to exploit wild (undomesticated) food resources. Most surviving hunter-gatherer groups are of this kind, such as the Hadza of Tanzania or the San of southern Africa. Clan members are generally kinsfolk, related by descent or marriage. Clans lack formal leaders, so there are no marked economic differences or disparities in status among their members.
Because clans are composed of mobile groups of hunter-gatherers, their sites consist mainly of seasonally occupied camps, and other smaller and more specialized sites. Among the latter are kill or butchery sites – locations where large mammals are killed and sometimes butchered – and work sites, where tools are made or other specific activities carried out. The base camp of such a group may give evidence of rather insubstantial dwellings or temporary shelters, along with the debris of residential occupation.
Tribe
These are generally larger than mobile hunter-gatherer groups, but rarely number more than a few thousand, and their diet or subsistence is based largely on cultivated plants and domesticated animals. Typically, they are settled farmers, but they may be nomadic with a very different, mobile economy based on the intensive exploitation of livestock. These are generally multi-community societies, with the individual communities integrated into the large society through kinship ties. Although some tribes have officials and even a “capital” or seat of government, such officials lack the economic base necessary for effective use of power.
The typical settlement pattern for tribes is one of settled agricultural homesteads or villages. Characteristically, no one settlement dominates any of the others in the region. Instead, the archaeologist finds evidence for isolated, permanently occupied houses or for permanent villages. Such villages may be made up of a collection of free-standing houses, like those of the first farms of the Danube valley in Europe. Or they may be clusters of buildings grouped together, for example, the pueblos of the American Southwest, and the early farming village or the small town of Catalhoyuk in modern Turkey.
Chiefdom
These operate on the principle of ranking-differences in social status between people. Different lineages (a lineage is a group claiming descent from a common ancestor) are graded on a scale of prestige, and the senior lineage, and hence the society as a whole, is governed by a chief. Prestige and rank are determined by how closely related one is to the chief, and there is no true stratification into classes. The role of the chief is crucial.
Often, there is local specialization in craft products, and surpluses of these and of foodstuffs are periodically paid as an obligation to the chief. He uses these to maintain his retainers and may use them for redistribution to his subjects. The chiefdom generally has a center of power, often with temples, residences of the chief and his retainers, and craft specialists. Chiefdoms vary greatly in size, but the range is generally between about 5000 and 20,000 persons.
Early State
These preserve many of the features of chiefdoms, but the ruler (perhaps a king or sometimes a queen) has explicit authority to establish laws and also to enforce them by the use of a standing army. Society no longer depends totally upon kin relationships: it is now stratified into different classes. Agricultural workers and the poorer urban dwellers form the lowest classes, with the craft specialists above, and the priests and kinsfolk of the ruler higher still. The functions of the ruler are often separated from those of the priest: the palace is distinguished from the temple. The society is viewed as a territory owned by the ruling lineage and populated by tenants who have an obligation to pay taxes. The central capital houses a bureaucratic administration of officials; one of their principal purposes is to collect revenue (often in the form of taxes and tolls) and distribute it to government, army and craft specialists. Many early states developed complex redistribution systems to support these essential services.
This rather simple social typology, set out by Elman Service and elaborated by William Sanders and Joseph Marino, can be criticized, and it should not be used unthinkingly. Nevertheless, if we are seeking to talk about early societies, we must use words and hence concepts to do so. Service categories provide a good framework to help organize our thoughts.
Questions 27-33
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE
if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN
if there is no information on this
There’s little economic difference between members of a clan.
The farmers of a tribe grow a wide range of plants.
One settlement is more important than any other settlement in a tribe.
A member’s status in a chiefdom is determined by how much land he owns.
There are people who craft goods in chiefdoms.
The king keeps the order of a state by keeping a military.
Bureaucratic officers receive higher salaries than other members.
Questions 34-39
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 34-39 on your answer sheet.
What is made at the clan work sites?
What is the other way of life for tribes besides settled farming?
How are Catalhoyuk’s housing units arranged?
What does a chief give to his subjects as rewards besides crafted goods?
What is the largest possible population of a chiefdom?
Which group of people is at the bottom of an early state but higher than the farmers?
Reading for IELTS is part of the Improve your Skills exam skills series: three preparation books which cover all aspects of the IELTS exam for students aiming for an IELTS band score of 6.0-7.5. This course aims to develop the key reading skills, and language and exam techniques for the IELTS Reading paper.
Descriptions:
The course can be used together with the other books in the series: Writing for IELTS 6.0-7.5 and Listening & Speaking for IELTS 6.0-7.5.
IELTS Reading Recent Actual Tests Jan - May 2020 with Answers
$80 $37
IELTS Reading Actual Tests & Suggested Answers written by IELTS teachers aims to help IELTS candidates perform at their best on the big day.
You can use any of the books in this series either in class or to study on your own. The course will guide you through the activities step by step, so you can use this book with or without a teacher.
If you are studying as part of a class, your teacher will direct you on how to use each activity. Some activities can be treated as discussions, in which case they can be a useful opportunity to share ideas and techniques with other learners.
Contents:
The course is made up of 10 units, each aimed at developing a particular reading skill (e.g., scanning). Every unit is themed around a commonly occurring topic from the IELTS exam.
Each unit consists of:
• Skills development: explanation, examples and tasks to develop and practise relevant reading skills both for general use and the exam. Each skill Ls broken down into simple stages with reference to why each skill is important for IELTS.
• Vocabulary: useful vocabulary for the IELTS exam.
• Exam focus and practice: focus on how each skill relates to the exam, followed by authentic IELTS-style tasks for real exam practice.
There are also Skills tips boxes throughout the book containing useful information and ideas on how to approach the different exam reading skills.
How will Improve your Skillsincrease my chances of exam success?
Skills development
The skills sections form a detailed syllabus of c ore reading skills which are useful both in ihe exam and in everyday life – reading for specific information and understanding attitude and opinion, for example. People often do these things in their own language without noticing, so it can take some practice to perform these actions in another language. learning and understanding vocabulary and grammar can take priority in the classroom, and these very important skills can often get ignored.
Language input
Each unit includes useful vocabulary and phrases for the exam. In Improve Your Skills: Reading for IELTS, you will find a wide range of topic vocabulary and ideas to ensure that you are well prepared when you reach the real exam.
Exam technique
In any exam, it is important to be prepared for the types of tasks you are likely to be given, and to have methods ready to answer any particular question. The Skills tip boxes give short, simple advice about different types of questions, as well as study skills and how to effectively use the skills you have learnt. The course covers every question type that you will face in the IELTS exam.
The three sections will give you an idea as to how to appear for the actual IELTS reading exam. There are also answer keys for which you can refer to. You can give a practice test and check for the answers whether they are proper or no.
SECTION 1
Going Bananas
The world’s favorite fruit could disappear forever in 10 years' time. The banana is among the world's oldest crops. Agricultural scientists believe that the first edible banana was discovered around ten thousand years ago. It has been at an evolutionary standstill ever since it was first propagated in the jungles of South-East Asia at the end of the last ice age. Normally the wild banana, a giant jungle herb called Musa acuminata, contains a mass of hard seeds that make the fruit virtually inedible. But now and then, hunter-gatherers must have discovered rare mutant plants that produced seed-less, edible fruits. Geneticists now know that the vast majority of these soft-fruited plants resulted from genetic accidents that gave their cells three copies of each chromosome instead of the usual two. This imbalance prevents seeds and pollen from developing normally, rendering the mutant plants sterile. And that is why some scientists believe the world’s most popular fruit could be doomed. It lacks the genetic diversity to fight off pests and diseases that are invading the banana plantations of Central America and the small-holdings of Africa and Asia alike.
IELTS Reading Recent Actual Tests Jan - May 2020 with Answers
$80 $37
IELTS Reading Actual Tests & Suggested Answers written by IELTS teachers aims to help IELTS candidates perform at their best on the big day.
In some ways, the banana today resembles the potato before blight brought famine to Ireland a century and a half ago. But “it holds a lesson for other crops, too”, says Emile Frison, top banana at the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain in Montpellier, France. “The state of the banana, ，Frison warns, “can teach a broader lesson the increasing standardization of food crops around the world is threatening their ability to adapt and survive.”
The first Stone Age plant breeders cultivated these sterile freaks by replanting cuttings from their stems. And the descendants of those original cuttings are the bananas we still eat today. Each is a virtual clone, almost devoid of genetic diversity. And that uniformity makes it ripe for a disease like no other crop on Earth. Traditional varieties of sexually reproducing crops have always had a much broader genetic base, and the genes will recombine in new arrangements in each generation. This gives them much greater flexibility in evolving responses to disease – and far more genetic resources to draw on in the face of an attack. But that advantage is fading fast, as growers increasingly plant the same few, high-yielding varieties. Plant breeders work feverishly to maintain resistance in these standardized crops. Should these efforts falter, yields of even the most productive crop could swiftly crash. “When some pest or disease comes along, severe epidemics can occur，,” says Geoff Hawtin, director of the Rome-based International Plant Genetic Resources Institute.
The banana is an excellent case in point. Until the 1950s，one variety, the Gros Michel dominated the world's commercial banana business. Found by French botanists in Asian the 1820s，the Gros Michel was by all accounts a fine banana, richer and sweeter than today’s standard banana and without the latter/s bitter aftertaste when green. But it was vulnerable to a soil fungus that produced wilt known as Panama disease. “Once the fungus gets into the soil it remains there for many years. There is nothing farmers can do. Even chemical spraying won't get rid of it，” says Rodomiro Ortiz, director of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria. So plantation owners played a running game, abandoning infested fields and moving so “clean" land _ until they ran out of clean land in the 1950s and had to abandon the Gros Michel. Its successor, and still the reigning commercial king, is the Cavendish banana, a 19th-century British discovery from southern China. The Cavendish is resistant to Panama disease and, as a result, it literally saved the international banana industry. During the 1960s，it replaced the Gros Michel on supermarket shelves. If you buy a banana today, it is almost certainly a Cavendish. But even so, it is a minority in the world’s banana crop.
Half a billion people in Asia and Africa depend on bananas. Bananas provide the largest source of calories and are eaten daily. Its name is synonymous with food. But the day of reckoning may be coming for the Cavendish and its indigenous kin. Another fungal disease, black Sigatoka, has become a global epidemic since its first appearance in Fiji in 1963. Left to itself, black Sigatoka which causes brown wounds on leaves and premature fruit ripening – cuts fruit yields by 50 to 70 percent and reduces the productive lifetime of banana plants from 30 years to as little as 2 or 3. Commercial growers keep Sigatoka at bay by a massive chemical assault. Forty sprayings of fungicide a year is typical. But despite the fungicides, diseases such as black Sigatoka are getting more and more difficult to control. “As soon as you bring in a new fungicide, they develop resistance，' says Frison."One thing we can be sure of is that the Sigatoka won't lose in this battle.” Poor farmers, who cannot afford chemicals, have it even worse. They can do little more than watch their plants die. “Most of the banana fields in Amazonia have already been destroyed by the disease,” says Luadir Gasparotto, Brazil's leading banana pathologist with the government research agency EMBRAPA. Production is likely to fall by 70 percent as the disease spreads, he predicts. The only option will be to find a new variety.
But how? Almost all edible varieties are susceptible to diseases, so growers cannot simply change to a different banana. With most crops, such a threat would unleash an army of breeders, scouring the world for resistant relatives whose traits they can breed into commercial varieties. Not so with the banana. Because all edible varieties are sterile, bringing in new genetic traits to help cope with pests and diseases is nearly impossible. Nearly, but not totally. Very rarely, a sterile banana will experience a genetic accident that allows an almost normal seed to develop, giving breeders a tiny window for improvement. Breeders at the Honduran Foundation of Agricultural Research have tried to exploit this to create disease-resistant varieties. Further backcrossing with wild bananas yielded a new seedless banana resistant to both black Sigatoka and Panama disease.
Neither Western supermarket consumers nor peasant growers like the new hybrid. Some accuse it of tasting more like an apple than a banana. Not surprisingly, the majority of plant breeders have till now turned their backs on the banana and got to work on easier plants. And commercial banana companies are now washing their hands of the whole breeding effort, preferring to fund a search for new fungicides instead. “We supported a breeding program for 40 years, but it wasn't able to develop an alternative to Cavendish. It was very expensive and we got nothing back,” says Ronald Romero, head of research at Chiquita, one of the Big Three companies that dominate the international banana trade.
Last year, a global consortium of scientists led by Frison announced plans to sequence the banana genome within five years. It would be the first edible fruit to be sequenced. Well, almost edible. The group will actually be sequencing inedible wild bananas from East Asia because many of these are resistant to black Sigatoka. If they can pinpoint the genes that help these wild varieties to resist black Sigatoka, the protective genes could be introduced into laboratory tissue cultures of cells from edible varieties. These could then be propagated into new, resistant plants and passed on to farmers.
It sounds promising, but the big banana companies have, until now, refused to get involved in GM research for fear of alienating their customers. “Biotechnology is extremely expensive and there are serious questions about consumer acceptance,11 says David McLaughlin, Chiquita’s senior director for environmental affairs. With scant funding from the companies, the banana genome researchers are focusing on the other end of the spectrum. Even if they can identify the crucial genes, they will be a long way from developing new varieties that smallholders will find suitable and affordable. But whatever biotechnology's academic interest, it is the only hope for the banana. Without banana production worldwide will head into a tailspin. We may even see the extinction of the banana as both a lifesaver for hungry and impoverished Africans and as the most popular product on the world’s supermarket shelves.
Questions 1-3
Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage.
In boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet, write
Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet
The banana was first eaten as a fruit by humans ……………………………years ago.
The banana was first planted in………………………….
Wild banana's taste is adversely affected by its……………………………….
Questions 4-10
Look at the following statements (Questions 4-10) and the list of people below Match each statement with the correct person, A-I.
Write the correct letter: A-I, in boxes 4-10 On your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
Pest invasion may seriously damage the banana industry.
The effect of fungal infection in the soil is often long-lasting.
A commercial manufacturer gave up on breeding bananas for disease-resistant
The banana disease may develop resistance to chemical sprays.
A banana disease has destroyed a large number of banana plantations.
Consumers would not accept the genetically altered crop.
Lessons can be learned from bananas for other crops.
List of People
Rodomiro
David Maclaughlin
Emile Frison
Ronald Romero
Luadir Gasparotto
Geoff Hawtin
Questions 11-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement is true
FALSE
if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN
if the information is not given in the passage
Banana is the oldest known fruit
Gros Michel is still being used as a commercial product
Banana is the main food in some countries
SECTION 2
Computer Provides More Questions
Than Answers
The island of Antikythera lies 18 miles north of Crete, where the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean. Currents there can make shipping treacherous __ and one ship bound for ancient Rome never made it. The ship that sank there was a giant cargo vessel measuring nearly 500 feet long. It came to rest about 200 feet below the surface, where it stayed for more than 2,000 years until divers looking for sponges discovered the wreck a little more than a century ago.
Inside the hull were a number of bronze and marble statues. From the look of things, the ship seemed to be carrying luxury items, probably made in various Greek islands and bound for wealthy patrons in the growing Roman Empire. The statues were retrieved, along with a lot of other unimportant stuff, and stored. Nine months later, an enterprising archaeologist cleared off a layer of organic material from one of the pieces of junk and found that it looked like a gearwheel. It had inscriptions in Greek characters and seemed to have something to do with astronomy.
That piece of "Junk" went on to become the most celebrated find from the shipwreck; it is displayed at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Research has shown that the wheel was part of a device so sophisticated that its complexity would not be matched for a thousand years — it was also the world’s first known analog computer. The device is so famous that an international conference organized in Athens a couple of weeks ago had only one subject: the Antikythera Mechanism.
Every discovery about the device has raised new questions. Who built the device, and for what purpose? Why did the technology behind it disappear for the next thousand years? What does the device tell us about ancient Greek culture? And does the marvelous construction, and the precise knowledge of the movement of the sun and moon and Earth that it implies, tell us how the ancients grappled with ideas about determinism and human destiny?
“We have gear trains from the 9th century in Baghdad used for simpler displays of the solar and lunar motions relative to one another — they use eight gears,' said Frangois Charette, a historian of science in Germany who wrote an editorial accompanying a new study of the mechanism two weeks ago in the journal Nature. "In this case, we have more than 30 gears. To see it on a computer animation makes it mind-boggling. There is no doubt it was a technological masterpiece.”
The device was probably built between 100 and 140 BC, and the understanding of astronomy it displays seems to have been based on knowledge developed by the Babylonians around 300-700 BC, said Mike Edmunds, a professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University in Britain. He led a research team that reconstructed what the gear mechanism would have looked like by using advanced three- dimensional-imaging technology. The group also decoded a number of the inscriptions. The mechanism explores the relationship between lunar months __ the time it takes for the moon to cycle through its phases, say, full moon to the full moon -and calendar years. The gears had to be cut precisely to reflect this complex relationship; 19 calendar years equal 235 lunar months.
By turning the gear mechanism, which included what Edmunds called a beautiful system of epicyclic gears that factored in the elliptical orbit of the moon, a person could check what the sky would have looked like on a date in the past, or how it would appear in the future. The mechanism was encased in a box with doors in front and back covered with inscriptions — a sort of instruction manual. Inside the front door were pointers indicating the date and the position of the sun, moon, and zodiac, while opening the back door revealed the relationship between calendar years and lunar months, and a mechanism to predict eclipses.
“If they needed to know when eclipses would occur, and this related to the rising and setting of stars and related them to dates and religious experiences, the mechanism would directly help，,” said Yanis Bitsakis, a physicist at the University of Athens who co-wrote the Nature paper. “It is a mechanical computer. You turn the handle and you have a date on the front." Building it would have been expensive and required the interaction of astronomer, engineers, intellectuals, and craftspeople. Charette said the device overturned conventional ideas that the ancient Greeks were primarily ivory tower thinkers who did not deign to muddy their hands with technical stuff. It is a reminder, he said, that while the study of history often focuses on written texts, they can tell us only a fraction of what went on at a particular time.
imagine a future historian encountering philosophy texts written in our time ~ and an aircraft engine. The books would tell that researcher what a few scholars were thinking today, but the engine would give them a far better window into how technology influenced our everyday lives. Charette said it was unlikely that the device was used by practitioners of astrology, then still in its infancy. More likely, he said, it was bound for a mantelpiece in some rich Roman's home. Given that astronomers of the time already knew how to calculate the positions of the sun and the moon and to predict eclipses without the device, it would have been the equivalent of a device built for a planetarium today __ something to spur popular interest or at least claim bragging rights.
Why was the technology that went into the device lost? “The time this was built, the jackboot of Rome was coming through, "Edmunds said. “The Romans were good at town planning and sanitation but were not known for their interest in science." The fact that the device was so complex, and that it was being shipped with a number of other luxury items, tells Edmunds that it is very unlikely to have been the on ever made. Its sophistication “is such that it can't have been the only one，” Edmunds said. “There must have been a tradition of making them. We’re always hopeful a better one will surface.” Indeed, he said, he hopes that his study and the renewed interest in the Antikythera Mechanism will prompt second looks by both amateurs and professionals around the world. “The archaeological world may look in their cupboards and maybe say, That isn't a bit of rusty old metal in the cupboard."
Questions 14-18
The reading Passage has ten paragraphs A- J.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-J, in boxes 14-18 on your answer sheet.
The content inside the wrecked ship
Ancient astronomers and craftsman might involve
The location of the Antikythera Mechanism
Details of how it was found
Appearance and structure of the mechanism
Questions 19-22
Summary
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using no more than two words from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 19-22 on your answer sheet.
An ancient huge sunk _______________ 19______ was found accidentally by sponges searcher. The ship loaded
with ______ 20______ such as bronze and sculptures. However, an archaeologist found a junk similar to a_______ 21______ which has Greek script on it. This inspiring and elaborated device was found to be the first _______22 _______ in the world.
Questions 23-26
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-C) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 23-27 on your answer sheet.
NB you may use any letter more than once
Yanis Bitsakis
Mike Edmunds
Francois Charette
More complicated than the previous device
Anticipate to find more Antikythera Mechanism in the future
Antikythera Mechanism was found related to the moon
Mechanism assisted ancient people to calculate the movement of stars.
SECTION 3
Save Endangered Language
“Obviously we must do some serious rethinking of our priorities, lest linguistics go down in history as the only science that presided obviously over the disappearance of 90 percent of the very field to which it is dedicated.” – Michael Krauss, "The World's Languages in Crisis".
Ten years ago Michael Krauss sent a shudder through the discipline of linguistics with his prediction that half the 6,000 or so languages spoken in the world would cease to be uttered within a century.
Unless scientists and community leaders directed a worldwide effort to stabilize the decline of local languages, he warned, nine-tenths of the linguistic diversity of humankind would probably be doomed to extinction. Krauss's prediction was little more than an educated guess, but other respected linguists had been clanging out similar alarms. Keneth L. Hale of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology noted in the same journal issue that eight languages on which he had done fieldwork had since passed into extinction. A 1990 survey in Australia found that 70 of the 90 surviving Aboriginal languages were no longer used regularly by all age groups. The same was true for all but 20 of the 175 Native American languages spoken or remembered in the US, Krauss told a congressional panel in 1992.
Many experts in the field mourn the loss of rare languages, for several reasons. To start, there is scientific self-interest: some of the most basic questions in linguistics have to do with the limits of human speech, which are far from fully explored. Many researchers would like to know which structural elements of grammar and vocabulary—if anymore truly universal and probably, therefore, hardwired into the human brain. Other scientists try to reconstruct ancient migration patterns by comparing borrowed words that appear in otherwise unrelated languages. In each of these cases, the wider the portfolio of languages you study, the more likely you are to get the right answers.
Despite the near-constant buzz in linguistics about endangered languages over the past 10 years, the field has accomplished depressingly little. "You would think that there would be some organized response to this dire situation，'，some attempt to determine which language can be saved and which should be documented before they disappear, says Sarah G. Thomason, a linguist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "But there isn't any such effort organized in the profession. It is only recently that it has become fashionable enough to work on endangered languages.55 Six years ago, recalls Douglas H. Whalen of Yale University, "when I asked linguists who were raising money to deal with these problems, I mostly got blank stares." So Whalen and a few other linguists founded the Endangered Languages Fund. In the five years to 2001, they were able to collect only $80,000 for research grants. A similar foundation in England, directed by Nicholas Ostler, has raised just $8,000 since 1995.
But there are encouraging signs that the field has turned a comer. The Volkswagen Foundation, a German charity, just issued its second round of grants totaling more than $2 million. It has created a multimedia archive at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands that can house recordings, grammars, dictionaries and other data on endangered languages. To fill the archive, the foundation has dispatched field linguists to document Aweti (100 or so speakers in Brazil) ，Ega (about 300 speakers in Ivory Coast)，Waima? an (a few hundred speakers in East Timor), and a dozen or so other languages unlikely to survive the century. The Ford Foundation has also edged into the arena. Its contributions helped to reinvigorate a master-apprentice program created in 1992 by Leanne Hinton of Berkeley and Native Americans worried about the imminent demise of about 50 indigenous languages in California. Fluent speakers receive $3,000 to teach a younger relative (who is also paid) their native tongue through 360 hours of shared activities, spread over six months. So far about 5 teams have completed the program, Hinton says, transmitting at least some knowledge of 25 languages. "It's too early to call this language revitalization," Hinton admits. "In California, the death rate of elderly speakers will always be greater than the recruitment rate of young speakers. But at least we prolong the survival of the language•" That will give linguists more time to record these tongues before they vanish.
But the master-apprentice approach hasn't caught on outside the U.S., and Hinton's effort is a drop in the sea. At least 440 languages have been reduced to a mere handful of elders, according to the Ethnologue, a catalog of languages produced by the Dallas-based group SIL International that comes closest to global coverage. For the vast majority of these languages, there is little or no record of their grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or use in daily life. Even if a language has been fully documented, all that remains once it vanishes from active use is a fossil skeleton, a scattering of features that the scientist was lucky and astute enough to capture. Linguists may be able to sketch an outline of the forgotten language and fix its place on the evolutionary tree, but little more. "How did people start conversations and talk to babies? How did husbands and wives converse?" Hinton asks. "Those are the first things you want to learn when you want to revitalize the language.
But there is as yet no discipline of "conservation linguistics" as there is for biology. Almost every strategy tried so far has succeeded in some places but failed in others, and there seems to be no way to predict with certainty what will work where. Twenty years ago in New Zealand, Maori speakers set up "language nests, "in which preschoolers were immersed in the native language. Additional Maori-only classes were added as the children progressed through elementary and secondary school. A similar approach was tried in Hawaii, with some success – the number of native speakers has stabilized at 1,000 or so, reports Joseph E. Grimes of SIL International, who is working on Oahu. Students can now get instruction in Hawaiian all the way through university.
One factor that always seems to occur in the demise of a language is that the speakers begin to have collective doubts about the usefulness of language loyalty. Once they start regarding their own language as inferior to the majority language, people stop using it in all situations. Kids pick up on the attitude and prefer the dominant language. In many cases, people don't notice until they suddenly realize that their kids never speak the language, even at home. This is how Cornish and some dialects of Scottish Gaelic is still only rarely used for daily home life in Ireland, 80 years after the republic was founded with Irish as its first official language.
Linguists agree that ultimately, the answer to the problem of language extinction is multilingualism. Even uneducated people can learn several languages, as long as they start as children. Indeed, most people in the world speak more than one tongue, and in places such as Cameroon (279 languages), Papua New Guinea (823) and India (387) it is common to speak three or four distinct languages and a dialect or two as well. Most Americans and Canadians, to the west of Quebec, have a gut reaction that anyone speaking another language in front of them is committing an immoral act. You get the same reaction in Australia and Russia. It is no coincidence that these are the areas where languages are disappearing the fastest. The first step in saving dying languages is to persuade the world's majorities to allow the minorities among them to speak with their own voices.
Questions 27-33
The reading passage has eight paragraphs, A-H
Choose the correct heading for paragraphs A-H from the list below.
Write the correct number, i – xi, in boxes 27-33 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
data consistency needed for language
consensus on an initial recommendation for saving dying out languages
positive gains for protection
the minimum requirement for saving a language
The potential threat to minority language
a period when there was an absence of real effort made.
native language programs launched
Lack of confidence in young speakers as a negative factor
Practice in several developing countries
Value of minority language to linguists.
government participation in the language field
Paragraph A
Paragraph B
Paragraph D
Paragraph E
Paragraph F
Paragraph G
Paragraph H
Example: Paragraph C
Questions 34-38
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-F) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-F in boxes 34-38 on your answer sheet.
Nicholas Ostler
Michael Krauss
Joseph E. Grimes
Sarah G. Thomason
Keneth L. Hale
Douglas H. Whalen
Reported language conservation practice in Hawaii
Predicted that many languages would disappear soon
The experienced process that languages die out personally
Raised language fund in England
Not enough effort on saving until recent work
Questions 39-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 39-40 on your answer sheet.
What is the real result of a master-apprentice program sponsored by The Ford Foundation!
Teach children how to speak
Revive some endangered languages in California
postpone the dying date for some endangered languages
Increase communication between students
What should the majority language speakers do according to the last paragraph?
They should teach their children endangered language in free lessons
They should learn at least four languages
They should show their loyalty to a dying language
They should be more tolerant of the minority language speaker
A The oceans of Earth cover more than 70 percent of the planet's surface, yet, until quite recently, we knew less about their depths than we did about the surface of the Moon. Distant as it is, the Moon has been far more accessible to study because astronomers long have been able to look at its surface, first with the naked eye and then with the telescope-both instruments that focus light. And, with telescopes tuned to different wavelengths of light, modem astronomers can not only analyze Earth's atmosphere, but also determine the temperature and composition of the Sun or other stars many hundreds of light-years away. Until the twentieth century, however, no analogous instruments were available for the study of Earth's oceans: Light, which can travel trillions of miles through the vast vacuum of space, cannot penetrate very far in seawater.
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B Curious investigators long have been fascinated by sound and the way it travels in water. As early as 1490, Leonardo da Vinci observed: "If you cause your ship to stop and place the head of a long tube in the water and place the outer extremity to your ear, you will hear ships at a great distance from you." In 1687, the first mathematical theory of sound propagation was published by Sir Isaac Newton in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Investigators were measuring the speed of sound in air beginning in the mid seventeenth century, but it was not until 1826 that Daniel Colladon, a Swiss physicist, and Charles Sturm, a French mathematician, accurately measured its speed in water. Using a long tube to listen underwater (as da Vinci had suggested), they recorded how fast the sound of a submerged bell traveled across Lake Geneva. Their result-1,435 meters (1,569 yards) per second in water of 1.8 degrees Celsius (35 degrees Fahrenheit)- was only 3 meters per second off from the speed accepted today. What these investigators demonstrated was that water – whether fresh or salt- is an excellent medium for sound, transmitting it almost five times faster than its speed in air
C In 1877 and 1878，the British scientist John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh, published his two-volume seminal work, The Theory of Sound, often regarded as marking the beginning of the modem study of acoustics. The recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904 for his successful isolation of the element argon, Lord Rayleigh made key discoveries in the fields of acoustics and optics that are critical to the theory of wave propagation in fluids. Among other things, Lord Rayleigh was the first to describe a sound wave as a mathematical equation (the basis of all theoretical work on acoustics) and the first to describe how small particles in the atmosphere scatter certain wavelengths of sunlight, a principle that also applies to the behavior of sound waves in water.
D A number of factors influence how far sound travels underwater and how long it lasts. For one, particles in seawater can reflect, scatter, and absorb certain frequencies of sound – just as certain wavelengths of light may be reflected, scattered, and absorbed by specific types of particles in the atmosphere. Seawater absorbs 30 times the amount of sound absorbed by distilled water, with specific chemicals (such as magnesium sulfate and boric acid) damping out certain frequencies of sound. Researchers also learned that low frequency sounds, whose long wavelengths generally pass over tiny particles, tend to travel farther without loss through absorption or scattering. Further work on the effects of salinity, temperature, and pressure on the speed of sound has yielded fascinating insights into the structure of the ocean. Speaking generally, the ocean is divided into horizontal layers in which sound speed is influenced more greatly by temperature in the upper regions and by pressure in the lower depths. At the surface is a sun-warmed upper layer, the actual temperature and thickness of which varies with the season. At mid-latitudes, this layer tends to be isothermal, that is， the temperature tends to be uniform throughout the layer because the water is well mixed by the action of waves, winds, and convection currents; a sound signal moving down through this layer tends to travel at an almost constant speed. Next comes a transitional layer called the thermocline, in which temperature drops steadily with depth; as temperature falls, so does the speed of sound.
E The U.S. Navy was quick to appreciate the usefulness of low-frequency sound and the deep sound channel in extending the range at which it could detect submarines. In great secrecy during the 1950s，the U.S. Navy launched a project that went by the code name Jezebel; it would later come to be known as the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). The system involved arrays of underwater microphones, called hydrophones, that were placed on the ocean bottom and connected by cables to onshore processing centers. With SOSUS deployed in both deep and shallow waters along both coasts of North America and the British West Indies, the U.S. Navy not only could detect submarines in much of the northern hemisphere, it also could distinguish how many propellers a submarine had, whether it was conventional or nuclear, and sometimes even the class of sub.
F The realization that SOSUS could be used to listen to whales also was made by Christopher Clark, a biological acoustician at Cornell University, when he first visited a SOSUS station in 1992. When Clark looked at the graphic representations of sound, scrolling 24 hours day, every day, he saw the voice patterns of blue, finback, minke, and humpback whales. He also could hear the sounds. Using a SOSUS receiver in the West Indies, he could hear whales that were 1,770 kilometers (1,100 miles) away. Whales are the biggest of Earth's creatures. The blue whale, for example, can be 100 feet long and weigh as many tons. Yet these animals also are remarkably elusive. Scientists wish to observe blue time and position them on a map. Moreover, they can track not just one whale at a time, but many creatures simultaneously throughout the North Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific. They also can learn to distinguish whale calls. For example, Fox and colleagues have detected changes in the calls of finback whales during different seasons and have found that blue whales in different regions of the Pacific ocean have different calls. Whales firsthand must wait in their ships for the whales to surface. A few whales have been tracked briefly in the wild this way but not for very great distances, and much about them remains unknown. Using the SOSUS stations, scientists can track the whales in real time and position them on a map. Moreover, they can track not just one whale at a time, but many creatures simultaneously throughout the North Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific. They also can learn to distinguish whale calls. For example, Fox and colleagues have detected changes in the calls of finback whales during different seasons and have found that blue whales in different regions of the Pacific Ocean have different calls.
G SOSUS, with its vast reach, also has proved instrumental in obtaining information crucial to our understanding of Earth's weather and climate. Specifically, the system has enabled researchers to begin making ocean temperature measurements on a global scale – measurements that are keys to puzzling out the workings of heat transfer between the ocean and the atmosphere. The ocean plays an enormous role in determining air temperature the heat capacity in only the upper few meters of ocean is thought to be equal to all of the heat in the entire atmosphere. For sound waves traveling horizontally in the ocean, speed is largely a function of temperature. Thus, the travel time of a wave of sound between two points is a sensitive indicator of the average temperature along its path. Transmitting sound in numerous directions through the deep sound channel can give scientists measurements spanning vast areas of the globe. Thousands of sound paths in the ocean could be pieced together into a map of global ocean temperatures and, by repeating measurements along the same paths over times, scientists could track changes in temperature over months or years.
H Researchers also are using other acoustic techniques to monitor climate. Oceanographer Jeff Nystuen at the University of Washington, for example, has explored the use of sound to measure rainfall over the ocean. Monitoring changing global rainfall patterns undoubtedly will contribute to understanding major climate change as well as the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. Since 1985, Nystuen has used hydrophones to listen to rain over the ocean, acoustically measuring not only the rainfall rate but also the rainfall type, from drizzle to thunderstorms. By using the sound of rain underwater as a "natural" rain gauge, the measurement of rainfall over the oceans will become available to climatologists.
Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE
if the statement is true
FALSE
if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN
if the information is not given in the passage
1. In the past, difficulties of research carried out on Moon were much easier than that of
2. The same light technology used on investigation of moon can be employed in the field of ocean.
3. Research on the depth of ocean by method of sound wave is more time-consuming.
4. Hydrophones technology is able to detect the category of precipitation.
Questions 5-8
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-H.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 5-8 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once
5. Elements affect sound transmission in the ocean.
6. Relationship between global climate and ocean temperature
7. Examples of how sound technology help people research ocean and creatures in it
8. Sound transmission under water is similar to that of light in any condition.
Questions 9-13
Choose the correct letter, A，B，C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.
9. Who of the followings is dedicated to the research of rate of sound?
A Leonardo da Vinci
B Isaac Newton
C John William Strutt
D Charles Sturm
10. Who explained that the theory of light or sound wavelength is significant in water?
A Lord Rayleigh
B John William Strutt
C Charles Sturm
D Christopher Clark
11. According to Fox and colleagues, in what pattern does the change of finback whale calls happen
A Change in various seasons
B Change in various days
C Change in different months
D Change in different years
12. In which way does the SOSUS technology inspect whales?
A Track all kinds of whales in the ocean
B Track bunches of whales at the same time
C Track only finback whale in the ocean
D Track whales by using multiple appliances or devices
13. what could scientists inspect via monitoring along a repeated route ?
A Temperature of the surface passed
B Temperature of the deepest ocean floor
C Variation of temperature
D Fixed data of temperature
SECTION 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27, which are based on Reading Passage 2 on the following pages.
Monkeys and Forests
AS AN EAST WIND blasts through a gap in the Cordillera de Tilaran, , a rugged mountain range that splits northern Costa Rica in half, a female mantled howler monkey moves through the swaying trees of the forest canopy.
A Ken Glander, a primatologist from Duke L University, gazes into the canopy, tracking the female's movements. Holding a dart gun, he waits with infinite patience for the right moment to shoot. With great care, Glander aims and fires. Hit in the rump, the monkey wobbles. This howler belongs to a population that has lived for decades at Hacienda La Pacifica, a working cattle ranch in Guanacaste province. Other native primates — white-faced capuchin monkeys and spider monkeys — once were common in this area, too, but vanished after the Pan-American Highway was built nearby in the 1950s. Most of the surrounding land was clear-cut for pasture.
B Howlers persist at La Pacifica, Glander explains, because they are leaf-eaters. They eat fruit, when it's available but, unlike capuchin and spider monkeys, do not depend on large areas of fruiting trees. "Howlers can survive anyplace you have half a dozen trees, because their eating habits are so flexible" he says. In forests, life is an arms race between trees and the myriad creatures that feed on leaves. Plants have evolved a variety of chemical defenses, ranging from bad-tasting tannins, which bind with plant-produced nutrients, rendering them indigestible, to deadly poisons, such as alkaloids and cyanide.
C All primates, including humans, have some ability to handle plant toxins. "We can detoxify a dangerous poison known as caffeine, which is deadly to a lot of animals:' Glander says. For leaf-eaters, long-term exposure to a specific plant toxin can increase their ability to defuse the poison and absorb the leaf nutrients. The leaves that grow in regenerating forests, like those at La Pacifica, are actually more howler friendly than those produced by the undisturbed, centuries-old trees that survive farther south, in the Amazon Basin. In younger forests, trees put most of their limited energy into growing wood, leaves and fruit, so they produce much lower levels of toxin than do well- established, old-growth trees.
D The value of maturing forests to primates is a subject of study at Santa Rosa National Park, about 35 miles northwest of Hacienda La Pacifica. The park hosts populations not only of mantled howlers but also of white-faced capuchins and spider monkeys. Yet the forests there are young, most of them less than 50 years old. Capuchins were the first to begin using the reborn forests, when the trees were as young as 14 years. Howlers, larger and heavier than capuchins, need somewhat older trees, with limbs that can support their greater body weight. A working ranch at Hacienda La Pacifica also explain their population boom in Santa Rosa. "Howlers are more resilient than capuchins and spider monkeys for several reasons, Fedigan explains. "They can live within a small home range, as long as the trees have the right food for them. Spider monkeys, on the other hand， occupy a huge home range, so they can't make it in fragmented habitat"
E Howlers also reproduce faster than do other monkey species in the area. Capuchins don't bear their first young until about 7 years old, and spider monkeys do so even later, but howlers give birth for the first time at about 3.5 years of age. Also, while a female spider monkey will have a baby about once every four years, well-fed howlers can produce an infant every two years.
F The leaves howlers eat hold plenty of water, so the monkeys can survive away from open streams and water holes. This ability gives them a real advantage over capuchin and spider monkeys, which have suffered during the
long, ongoing drought in Guanacaste.
G Growing human population pressures in Central and South America have led to persistent destruction of forests. During the 1990s, about 1.1 million acres of Central American forest were felled yearly. Alejandro Estrada, an ecologist at Estacion de Biologia Los Tuxtlas in Veracruz, Mexico, has been exploring how monkeys survive in a landscape increasingly shaped by humans. He and his colleagues recently studied the ecology of a groupof mantled howler monkeys that thrive in a habitat completely altered by humans: a cacao plantation in Tabasco, Mexico. Like many varieties of coffee, cacao plants need shade to grow, so 40 years ago the landowners planted fig, monkey pod and other tall trees to form a protective canopy over their crop. The howlers moved in about 25 years ago after nearby forests were cut. This strange habitat, a hodgepodge of cultivated native and exotic plants, seems to support about as many monkeys as would a same-sized patch of wild forest. The howlers eat the leaves and fruit of the shade trees, leaving the valuable cacao pods alone, so the farmers tolerate them
H Estrada believes the monkeys bring underappreciated benefits to such farms, dispersing the seeds of fig and other shade trees and fertilizing the soil with feces. He points out that howler monkeys live in shade coffee and cacao plantations in Nicaragua and Costa Rica as well as in Mexico. Spider monkeys also forage in such plantations, though they need nearby areas of forest to survive in the long term. He hopes that farmers will begin to see the advantages of associating with wild monkeys, which includes potential ecotourism projects.
"Conservation is usually viewed as a conflict between agricultural practices and the need to preserve nature," Estrada says. "We're moving away from that vision and beginning to consider ways in which agricultural activities may become a tool for the conservation of primates in human-modified landscapes."
Questions 14-19
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-I.
Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter U, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
14. a reference of reduction in Forest inhabitant
15. Only one species of monkey survived while other two species were vanished
16. a reason for howler Monkey of choosing new leaves
17. mention to howler Monkey’s nutrient and eating habits
18. a reference of asking farmers’ changing attitude toward wildlife
19. the advantage for howler Monkey’s flexibility living in a segmented habitat
Questions 20-22
Look at the following places and the list of descriptions below.
Match each description with the correct place, A-E.
Write the correct letter, A-E, in boxes 20-22 on your answer sheet.
List of places
A Hacienda La Pacifica
B Santa Rosa National Park
C a cacao plantation in Tabasco, Mexico
D Estacion de Biologia Los Tuxtlas in Veracruz, Mexico
E Amazon Basin
20. howler Monkey’s benefit to the local region’s agriculture
21. Original home for all three native monkeys
22. A place where Capuchins monkey comes for a better habitat
Questions 23-27
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 23-27 on your answer sheet.
The reasons for Howlers monkey survive better
in focal region than other two species
Howlers in La Pacifica since they can feed themselves with leaf when 23………………………is not easily found
Howlers has better ability to alleviate the 24………………………. which old and young trees used to protect themselves)
When compared to that of spider monkeys and capuchin monkeys, the 25 …………….. the rate of Howlers is relatively faster (round for just every 2 years).
The monkeys can survive away from open streams and water holes as the leaves howlers eat hold high content of 26………………………………. which ensure them to resist to continuous 27………………………………………. in Guanacaste
SECTION 3
A While it may not be possible to completely age-proof our brains, a bravenew world of anti-aging research shows that our gray matter may be far more flexible than we thought. So no one, no matter how old, has to lose their mind. The brain has often been called the three-pound universe. It's our most powerful and mysterious organ, the seat of the self, laced with as many billions of neurons as the galaxy has stars. No wonder the mere notion of an aging, failing brain——and the prospect of memory loss, confusion, and the unraveling of our personality——is so terrifying. As Mark Williams, M.D., author of The American Geriatrics Society's Complete Guide to Aging and Health, says, “The fear of dementia is stronger than the fear of death itself." Yet the degeneration of the brain is far from inevitable. ” Its design features are such that it should continue to function for a lifetime," says Zaven Khachaturian, Ph.D., director of the Alzheimer1s Association1s Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute. “There's no reason to expect it to deteriorate with age, even though many of us are living longer lives.” In fact, scientists ' view of the brain1s potential is rapidly changing, according to Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D.
“Thirty-five years ago we thought Alzheimer1 s disease was a dramatic version of normal aging. Now we realize it1s a disease with a distinct pathology. In fact, some people simply don't experience any mental decline, so we've begun to study them.” Antonio Damasio, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa and author of Descartes' Error, concurs. “Older people can continue to have extremely rich and healthy mental lives.'
B The seniors were tested in 1988 and again in 1991. Four factors were found to be related to their mental fitness: levels of education and physical activity, lung function, and feelings of self-efficacy “Each of these elements alters the way our brain functions, “ says Marilyn Albert, Ph.D. , of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues from Yale, Duke, and Brandeis Universities and the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, who hypothesizes that regular exercise may actually stimulate blood flow to the brain and nerve growth, both of which create more densely branched neurons, rendering the neurons stronger and better able to resist disease. Moderate aerobic exercise, including long brisk walks and frequently climbing stairs, will accomplish this.
C Education also seems to enhance brain function. People who have challenged themselves with at least a college education may actually stimulate the neurons in their brains. Moreover, native intelligence may protect our brains. It's possible that smart people begin life with a greater number of neurons, and therefore have a greater reserve to fall back on if some begin to fail. “If you have a lot of neurons and keep them busy, you may be able to tolerate more damage to your brain before it shows,” says Peter Davies, M.D., of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. Early linguistic ability also seems to help our brains later in life. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at 93 elderly nuns and examined the autobiographies they had written 60 years earlier, just as they were joining a convent. The nuns whose essays were complex and dense with ideas remained sharp into their eighties and nineties.
D Finally, personality seems to play an important role in protecting our mental prowess. A sense of self-efficacy may protect our brain, buffeting it from the harmful effects of stress. According to Albert, there' s evidence that elevated levels of stress hormones may harm brain cells and cause the hippocampus——a small seahorse-shaped organ that1s a crucial moderator of memory——to atrophy. A sense that we can effectively chart our own course in the world may retard the release of stress hormones and protect us as we age. "It' s not a matter of whether you experience stress or not, ” Albert concludes , “it's your attitude toward it. ” Reducing stress by meditating on a regular basis may buffer the brain as well. It also increases the activity of the brain' s pineal gland, the source of the antioxidant hormone melatonin, which regulates sleep and may retard the aging process. Studies at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and the University of Western Ontario found that people who meditated regularly had higher levels of melatonin than those who took 5-milligram supplements Another study, conducted jointly by Maharishi international University, Harvard University, and the University of Maryland, found that seniors who meditated for three months experienced dramatic improvements in their psychological well-being, compared to their non-meditative peers.
E Animal studies confirm that both mental and physical activity boost brain fitness. At the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology in Urbana, Illinois， psychologist William Greenough, Ph. D., let some rats play with a profusion of toys. These rodents developed about 25 percent more connections between their neurons than did rats that didn't get any mentally stimulating recreation. In addition, rats that exercised on a treadmill developed more capillaries in specific parts of their brains than did their sedentary counterparts. This increased the blood flow to their brains. “Clearly the message is to do as many different flyings as possible,” Greenough says.
F It's not just scientists who are catching anti-aging fever. Walk into any health food store, and you111 find nutritional formulas ——with names like Brainstorm and Smart ALEC——that claim to sharpen mental ability. The book Smart Drugs & Nutrients, by Ward Dean, M.D., and John Morgenthaler, was self-published in 1990 and has sold over 120,000 copies worldwide. It has also spawned an underground network of people tweaking their own brain chemistry with nutrients and drugs——the latter sometimes obtained from Europe and Mexico. Sales of ginkgo ——an extract from the leaves of the 200-mill ion-year-old ginkgo tree, which has been shown in published studies to increase oxygen in the brain and ameliorate symptoms of Alzheimer‘ s disease——are up by 22 percent in the last six months alone, according to Paddy Spence, president of SPINS, a San Francisco-based market research firm. Indeed, products that increase and preserve mental performance are a small but emerging segment of the supplements industry, says Linda Gilbert, president of Health Focus, a company that researches consumer health trends. While neuroscientists like Khachaturian liken the use of these products to the superstition of tossing salt over your shoulder, the public is nevertheless gobbling up nutrients that promise cognitive enhancement.
Questions 28-31
Choose the Four correct letters among A-G
Write your answers in boxes 28-31 on your answer sheet.
Which of the FOUR situations or conditions assisting the Brains' function?
A Preventive treatment against Alzheimer’s disease
B Doing active aerobic exercise and frequently climbing stairs
C High levels of education
D Early verbal or language competence training
E Having more supplements such as ginkgo tree
F Participate in more physical activity involving in stimulating tasks
G Personality and feelings of self-fulfillment
Questions 32-39
Use the information in the passage to match the people (listed A-G) with opinions or deeds below. Write the appropriate letters A-G in boxes 32-39 on your answer sheet.
NB you may use any latter more than once
A Zaven Khachaturian
B William Greenough
C Marilyn Albert
D Robert Sapolsky
E Linda Gilbert
F Peter Davies
G Paddy Spence
32. Alzheimer's was probably a kind of disease rather than a normal aging process.
33. Keeping neurons busy, people may be able to endure more harm to your brain
34. Regular exercises boost blood flow to the brain and increase anti-disease disability.
35. Significant increase of Sales of ginkgo has been shown.
36. More links between their neurons are found among stimulated animals.
37. Effectiveness of the use of brains supplements products can be of little scientific proof.
38. Heightened levels of stress may damage brain cells and cause part of brain to deteriorate.
39. Products that upgrade and preserve mental competence are still a newly developing industry.
Questions 40
Choose the correct letters among A-D
Write your answers in box 40 on your answer sheet.
According the passage, what is the most appropriate title for this passage?
Top 3 Movies/TV series for IELTS learners (part 1) to improve IELTS Speaking, Pronunciation, Accent, Vocabulary, Listening, etc
Are you tired of your IELTS Listening, Speaking and Pronunciation books and do you really want to find an entertaining way to learn IELTS?
What will you do when you are bored to tears with textbooks, homework or magazine articles?
Well, we have great news for you. Just need to sit back, turn on the below Television Series/Movies and chill out (relax).
Below is a list of series/ movies that have been (or are still) popular recently. Read about them, choose any that you are interested in and start watching, learning IELTS effortlessly, and improve a great number of aspects like vocabulary, pronunciation, accent, flow and even grammar in some cases!
If you find the same books and materials boring to prepare for IELTS Exam you can make use of these TV series which will be interesting and you can practice efficiently. below given are the 3 TV series that you can refer to. These can help to improve all the sections, listening, reading, writing and speaking.
THE BIG BANG THEORY (2011 – now)
The show is an American sitcom (situation comedies) primarily centered on five characters Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Sheldon (Jim Parsons), Penny (Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting), Howard (Simon Helberg) and Raj (Kunal Nayyar). This series premiered from 2011 has been renewed for a tenth season in 2016.
IELTS Speaking Actual tests Jan - May 2020 with suggested answers)
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IELTS Speaking Actual Tests & Suggested Answers written by IELTS teachers aims to help IELTS candidates perform at their best on the big day.
If you are a self-confessed geek, then this series is definitely for you. The geekiness and intellect of the four guys is contrasted for comic effect with Penny’s social skills and common sense. Leonard and Sheldon are two geeks whose life is turned upside down when Penny moves in across the hall. The socially awkward pair are forced to interact with the outside world with hilarious results! Raj and Howard spend their days navigating the complicated social scene including relationship mishaps, not being able to talk to girls and an obsession with comic books.
Why you should watch this series to improve your IELTS skill?
For English learners this is perfect, there are lots of different American accents, everyday slangs in context to learn and study as well as an Indian accentfrom Raj. You also get to see how Raj deals with speaking English as a second language with native speakers! It's such a hilarious sitcom and you don't even need to understand everything that's being said to understand what's going on because the actions are clear.
This is the series that has taken the world by storm and is widely regarded as the Friends of the modern generation.
Friends is an American television sitcom originally aired on NBC from 1994, to 2004, lasting ten seasons. Everybody knows Friends and it definitely couldn't be missed off of this list. It's also an extremely accessible series and can be found on most streaming sites due to its age. It is still as fantastic as ever and very addictive. It is fantastic and will be watched for many years yet!
The show is centered on six friends Ross (David Schwimmer), Chandler (Matthew Perry), Joey (Matt LeBlanc), Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), Monica (Courteney Cox), and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) connected with each other by being blood related, roommates, neighbors and old high school friends and they all find themselves living in the same apartment block.
They all have their own story and battle with tough jobs, complicated relationships and life in the big city. The moral of the show is that they have each other to get through it all, no matter what is thrown at them! In parts of the show there are also British accents to listen to and practice.
Why "Friends" can be a perfect series for IELTS learners?
This is a funny show and the jokes are very obvious which means you don't have to understand English perfectly to get what is being said. The characters of the show are all very different and you can learn some excellent English to help you communicate with your friends.
The language is conversational and you'll also learn how to understand basic humor through the dialogue. The speed of the dialogue also appears to be much slower and clearer than most other sitcoms, which makes it easier for all of you trying to learn English understand more.
Watch Online Top 15 Funniest Moments in “Friends” Watch online
HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER
HIMYM is one of the most successful ongoing sitcoms not only in the United States, but all around the world. This sitcom was originally aired on CBS from September 19, 2005, to March 31, 2014. This is an interesting and funny series and in the beginning it's a little bit difficult to understand because it's set in the future–in the year 2030. However, once you get used to the idea of a show being set so far ahead of time, you'll really enjoy it!
The main character is Ted Mosby, along with his 4 friends (Barney, Robin, Marshall, and Lily ). This sitcom will tell us about their lives in New York city, focusing on their love life, work and of course their favorite free time activity: sitting in their favorite bar.
Why "How I Met Your Mother" is a great sitcom to improve IELTS speaking, listening and pronunciation?
Despite the complex time issue, this is a very easy series to understand once you understand the idea of it. There's a narrator throughout the series (Ted) and this helps explain what's going on.
Besides that, it is a hilarious sitcom. It's an entertaining one and uses a lot of modern American expressions and humor/everyday language/slang such as "high five," "legendary". This is also a great series to watch in order to understand American culture regarding dating and romance.
Tips to boost your IELTS score with movies:
Make the most out of the movies you watch by following the following steps:
Watch the film all the way through in English only (no subtitles).
Watch it again in (scene by scene) in English with English subtitles. Repeat scenes as necessary to improve your speaking and pronunciation
If you’re still struggling to understand the gist of the film, watch it again (scene by scene) in English with your language as sub-titles. Repeat scenes as necessary.
As a last resort, watch it again in your language all the way through with English subtitles.
If you aren’t bored to death of it, please watch it again in English all the way through with no sub-titles. Remember to rewind and pause whenever you can’t catch the words. This can be annoying at first, but once you get used to the language you will be able to follow the show much more easily.
Watch this with friends is much more fun
Choose a role and act the whole thing out (mimic his/her accent, intonation while the film is playing)
Record yourselves doing some short scenes to compare your voice recording to the actors' pronunciation. ( You can stick it on YouTube and set private or public 🙂
Bear in mind that you should keep a notebook next to you to make note of any new vocabulary, idioms, everyday language, phrases, new expressions for the IELTS speaking test.
The root of successful language learning is undoubtedly motivation. If you are motivated, determined and have a clear aim, success is almost guaranteed. Of course, it will take you lots of time, focus and practice. Let’s choose any sitcom/show/movies from different worlds of TV series that interests you to escape into to learn IELTS and improve Vocabulary, Pronunciation, Intonation, IELTS Speaking in the most enjoyable and effective way.
The next 3 movies/TV series will be published on our website on 20th June. Stay tuned 🙂
The spring festival of Passover commemorates the emancipation of the ancient Israelites from slavery. The celebration is a joyous occasion in the Jewish religion.[1] If you have Jewish friends or family, you can impress them and earn a reputation as a real mensch by learning to say "Happy Passover" in the Hebrew language.
Say "Sameach" for "happy." In Hebrew, the idea of happiness is expressed with the word "Simcha." To say "happy" as an adjective, we use "sameach," which is derived from the noun.
This word is pronounced "sah-MEY-akh." Use a hard "k" sound with a raspy quality from the back of the throat. Don't use an English "ch" sound.[2]
Use "Pesach" for "Passover." This is the traditional Hebrew name for the holiday.
"Pesach" is pronounced "PAY-sock." It's pronounced almost exactly like these two English words. Again, end the word with a hard, raspy "kh" sound, not a "ch" sound.
Flip the order of the words. In Hebrew phrases, the words in a sentence aren't always in the same order that they are in English.[3] In this case, the adjective comes after the noun, so "Happy Passover" is actually "Pesach Sameach".
To pronounce the whole phrase, just put the pronunciations above together: "PAY-sock sah-MEY-akh." Congratulate yourself for learning a new Hebrew phrase!
Optionally, put "chag" at the start of "Pesach sameach." "Chag" is the traditional Hebrew word for "festival" from scripture.[4] Saying "chag Pesach sameach" is basically like saying, "Happy Passover Festival!" This isn't really any better or worse than the basic phrase above — just different.
"Chag" is pronounced "KHAHG." It's similar to the English word "cog," with the same breathy, raspy sound described above used for the c.
Some sources suggest that "chag" is used especially by Sephardic Jews.[5]
Drop "Pesach" for "Chag Sameach." Literally, this means "Happy festival." It's a little like saying "Happy holidays" in English.
You can use this for most Jewish holidays, but it's best of all for Passover, Sukkot, and Shavu'ot, which are technically the only religious festivals.[6] Chanukah and other days of celebration are technically holidays.
Use "Chag kasher v'sameach" to impress. This is a somewhat fancy way of wishing someone a happy holiday. The rough meaning is, "Have a happy and kosher holiday." Here, you're referencing the Jewish concept of Kashrut (religious dietary laws).
This phrase is pronounced "KHAGH kah-SHEHR vuh-sah-MEY-akh." "Chag" and "sameach" are pronounced the same as above. "Kasher" uses a light r sound pronounced at the very back of the mouth — almost like a French r. Don't forget to add a very quick v sound before "sameach."
Try "Chag Kashruth Pesach" for a Passover-specific greeting. The meaning here is similar to the phrase above: "Have a happy kosher Passover." The difference is that this phrase specifically mentions Passover, while the one above is used for many holidays.
You can pronounce "kashruth" as "kash-ROOT" or "kash-RUTH" — both are acceptable.[7] In either case, use the tip of your tongue to make a light r sound. This is quite similar to the Spanish r sound.
Use "Happy Pesach" if you want to cheat. Can't handle the tricky Hebrew pronunciations in this article? Try this "Henglish" alternative. Though it's not exactly a traditional holiday greeting, many English-speaking Jews use this as a convenient "shortcut" during Passover.
The breathy "kh" sound used in these phrases can be especially tough for English speakers to manage. Try these pronunciation examples to hear native Hebrew speakers use it.[8]
This page has an audio clip of "kasher" which illustrates the difficult r sound at the end of the word.[9]
Determining whether the moon is waxing or waning can tell you a lot about what phase it's in, how the tides will move, and where the moon is in relation to the Earth and the sun. It's also helpful to know where the moon rises and sets during its different phases, in case you want to see it on a particular night. A waxing moon is in the process of increasing how much of it is lit (as observed night to night). i.e., it's headed toward being a full moon. Waning is the opposite. There are a couple ways to figure out whether the moon is waxing or waning. Although the details are slightly different depending on where you are in the world, the bulk of the method is the same.
Learn the names of the phases. The moon revolves around the Earth, and as it does, we see different angles of the moon's illuminated surface. The moon doesn't create its own light, but rather shines when it reflects the sun's light. [1] As the moon transitions from new to full and back to new again, it goes through several phases, marked by its recognizable crescent and gibbous ("bulging") shapes, which are created by the moon's own shadow.[2] The moon phases are:
Learn what the phases mean. The moon travels the same path around the Earth every month, so it goes through the same monthly phases. The phases exist because from our perspective on Earth, we observe the illuminated portion of the moon differently as it makes its way around us. Remember that half the moon is always illuminated by the sun: it's our vantage point on Earth that changes and determines what phase we see.[4]
During the new moon, the moon is between the Earth and the sun, and is therefore not illuminated at all from our perspective. At this time, the moon's illuminated side completely faces the sun, and we see the side that's in full shadow.
During the first quarter, we see half of the moon's illuminated side and half of the moon's shadowed side. The same is true in the third quarter, except the sides we see are reversed.[5]
When the moon appears full, we see its full illuminated half, while the side that's in complete shadow faces out into space.
After the full moon, the moon continues its journey back to its original position between the Earth and the sun, which is another new moon.
It takes the moon a little over 27.32 days to complete one full revolution around the Earth. However, a full lunar month (from new moon to new moon) is 29.5 days, because that's how long it takes the moon to return to its position between the sun and Earth.[6]
Learn why the moon waxes and wanes. On the moon's journey from new moon to full moon, we see a growing portion of its illuminated half, and this is called the waxing phase (waxing means growing or increasing). As the moon then goes from full to new again, we see a diminishing portion of its illuminated half, and this is called waning, which means decreasing in strength or intensity.
The moon's phases always look the same, so although the moon itself may appear in different locations and orientations in the sky, you'll always be able to identify what phase it's in if you know what to look for.
[Edit]Determining Moon Phases in the Northern Hemisphere
Recognize that the moon waxes and wanes from right to left. Different parts of the moon are illuminated during waxing and waning. In the Northern Hemisphere, the part of the moon that is illuminated will appear to grow from right to left until it's full, and it will then diminish from right to left.
A waxing moon will be illuminated on the right side, and a waning moon will be illuminated on the left side.[7]
Hold out your right hand with your thumb out, palm facing the sky. The thumb and forefingers make a curve like a backward C. If the moon fits in this curve, it's a waxing moon (increasing). If you do the same with your left hand and the moon fits in the "C" curve then it is waning (decreasing).
Remember D, O, C. Since the moon always follows the same illumination pattern, you can use the shape of the letters D, O, and C to determine if the moon is waxing or waning. During the first quarter, the moon will look like a D. When it's full, it will look like an O. And when it's in the third quarter, it will look like a C.
A crescent moon in the shape of a backwards C is waxing
A half or gibbous moon in the shape of a D is waxing.
A half or gibbous moon in the shape of a backwards D is waning.
A crescent moon in the shape of a C is waning.
Learn when the moon rises and sets. The moon doesn't always rise and set at the same time, but changes depending on what phase it's in. This means you can use the time of moonrise and moonset to determine if the moon is waxing or waning.
You can't see a new moon because it isn't illuminated by the sun, and because it rises and sets at the same time as the sun.
As the waxing moon moves into its first quarter, it will rise in the morning, reach its height around dusk, and set around midnight.
Full moons come up when the sun goes down and set when the sun comes up.
As the waning moon moves into its third quarter, it will rise at midnight and set in the morning.[8]
[Edit]Determining Moon Phases in the Southern Hemisphere
Learn which part of the moon is illuminated during waxing and waning. In opposition to the moon in the Northern Hemisphere, the moon in the Southern Hemisphere will illuminate from left to right, become full, and then diminish from left to right.
A moon that's illuminated on the left side is waxing, while a moon that's illuminated on the right side is waning.[9]
Hold out your right hand with your thumb out, palm facing the sky. The thumb and forefingers make a curve like a backward C. If the moon fits in this curve, it's a waning moon (decreasing). If you do the same with your left hand and the moon fits in the "C" curve then it is waxing (increasing).
Remember C, O, D. The moon goes through all the same phases in the Southern Hemisphere, but the shapes of the letters that indicate waxing and waning are reversed from the Northern Hemisphere.
A crescent moon in the shape of a C is waxing
A half or gibbous moon in the shape of a backwards D is waxing.
A moon in the shape of an O is full.
A half or gibbous moon in the shape of a D is waning.
A crescent moon in the shape of a backwards C is waning.
Learn when the moon rises and sets. Although the moon may illuminate in the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere versus the Northern, it will still rise and set at the same times during the same phases.
The first-quarter moon will rise in the morning and set around midnight.
The full moon rises and sets when the sun sets and rises.
The third-quarter moon will rise at midnight and set in the morning.[10]
Space, especially closet space, is a premium. Many people simply don't have the room to keep their entire wardrobe in their closets and dressers year round. Storing your winter wardrobe in bins and garment bags frees up space for your spring and summer apparel and accessories. It provides you the opportunity to wash, fix, recycle, and organize your cold weather clothing.
[Edit]Cleaning, Repairing, and Recycling Your Winter Wardrobe
Machine wash or dry clean all of your winter items. When stored for long periods of time, dirty clothing attracts pests and can also produce unwanted odors, mold, or mildew. Unclean items that contain perfumes, lotions, oils, and/or perspiration can also cause fabric to stain and yellow. Before you pack up your winter wardrobe for several months, you should properly launder each article of clothing.
Machine wash all of your non-delicate winter items.
Dry clean any winter items made from natural materials, like silk, wool, and cashmere. Do not store these items in a plastic garment bag.[1]
Wipe down and polish your shoes. Winter shoes come into contact with harsh salts and dirt. Prior to storing these items, thoroughly clean each pair. Remove built up salt and grime with a cotton cloth or shoe brush. Don't forget to polish and condition your leather boots.
If your winter shoes are badly stained, consider having them professionally cleaned.
To prolong the life of your winter shoes, clean them frequently throughout the winter too.[2]
Send out items for repair. As you wash, dry clean, and clean your winter items, set aside any pieces that appear damaged or broken. This might include coats with missing buttons, clothing with minor rips or stains, and/or shoes in need of new soles. Bring the items you are interested in fixing to a reputable seamstress or shoe repair professionals.[3]
If you don't have an interest in fixing the item, find a way to recycle it.
Donate items you will no longer wear. While you sort through your clean winter apparel and accessories, set pieces aside to donate. These items may include garments that no longer fit you and/or items you didn't wear at all last season. There are several ways to recycle these items.
Ask friends if they are interested in taking any of the pieces.
Donate the items to a person in need.
Bring the items to a donation center and ask for a tax deduction form.
Place your non-delicate items into plastic bins. Plastic containers are ideal for seasonal storage of your non-delicate clothing. Fold and place the heaviest items, like jeans and sweatshirts, in the bottom of the plastic bin. Place neatly folded shirts, skirts, and tights on top of the bulky bottom layer.
While vacuum bags help you save space, they do not allow your garments to breath.[5]
Plastic bins are great for short term storage. If you need to store clothing for more than a season or two, place the garments in a cotton storage bag or box.
Instead of mothballs, consider using lavender sachets or cedar balls to keep your clothes smelling fresh and pest free.[6]
Wrap your delicate items in tissue paper. Storing your delicates requires a bit more finesse. When your delicates return from the dry cleaner, remove them from the plastic garment bag. Carefully fold each item, wrap it in acid-free tissue paper, and then place it into a cotton storage bin.
Plastic garment bags do not allow your natural fiber clothing to breathe properly.[7]
Fold your sweaters. Sweaters and hangers don't mix—when you hang up a sweater, the garment becomes misshapen. Instead of hanging up sweaters, fold them neatly. Place your heaviest sweaters at the bottom of your plastic storage bin or cotton garment bag. The lightest sweaters should lay on top of your heavier articles.
Do not over stuff your storage bins. Instead, loosely pack your sweaters so that they can breathe.[8]
Fold and store your winter coats. Once the seasons turn from winter to spring, it is tempting to hang up your bulky winter coats in the back of your closet. However, allowing your coats to hang throughout the spring and summer may distort their shape. The best method for storing coats is to fold them up and place them inside a plastic bin.
Remove all of the items from your coat pockets.
Wash or dry clean your coats.
Fold up your coats and place them into a plastic or cotton storage bin. Do not over stuff the bin.[9]
Hang up your furs and dresses. Furs and dresses are the only fall/winter items that should remain on a hanger. Hang up these items and then place them inside a cotton garment bag.
If your dresses are not made out of delicate, natural materials, you can fold these items and place them inside a plastic storage bin.
You may want to have your real furs professionally stored in a temperature controlled building throughout the spring and summer.[10]
Store your bins, cotton garment bags, and cotton garment boxes. Once you have packed up all of your winter wardrobe in bins, boxes, and bags, you need to find a place to store these containers. Ideally, you should always store clothing in a cool, clean, dark, and dry environment. It is especially important to store your furs in a cool place—the skins will crack if they are too hot.
Bright environments will cause your clothing to fade.
Damp and hot environments may cause your clothing to become mildewy.
Dusty storage spaces will cause your clean clothing to become dirty.[11]
Fill your tall winter boots with boot trees and store. When tall boots are shoved in the back of a closet or haphazardly thrown into a box, they tend to lose their shape. To prevent this from occurring, insert a boot form or tree into each boot. Once your boots are thoroughly cleaned, polished, and conditioned, stand them up in a closet side-by-side.
If you don't have space in a closet, you may store your boots in a plastic bin. Lay a pair of boots on their side in the bin. Place a cotton t-shirt of muslin shoe bag over the boots. Continue to fill the bin with alternating layers of boots and cotton t-shirts/muslin shoe bags. Store the closed bin in a cool, dark, dry, and clean space.[12]
Stuff your non-boots with tissue paper and store. If stored improperly, your ankle boots, winter loafers, and pumps will also become misshapen over time. To help your winter shoes keep their shape, fill each shoe with loosely packed tissue paper. Once filled, carefully stack the shoes in a storage container, such as a plastic bin or basket, your closet, or a designated shoe organizer.
Use new tissue paper.
Don't forget to wipe down, polish, and condition your short winter shoes.[13]
Pack up your winter accessories. At the close of the winter season, you should sort through and clean all of your winter accessories. This may include, hats, gloves, scarves. You can place all of these items into a storage bin, cotton storage box, or a basket.
If you have room in your dresser, you can also store winter accessories in a drawer.
Learning more about a piece of famous art is easy, but identifying an unknown or obscure painting can be kind of tricky. There are so many paintings in existence that the odds of finding information about a specific image can feel insurmountable. Luckily, you can dramatically narrow down your search by assessing the composition, subject matter, and style. Start by using an image recognition app and reverse image search. Museums and art historians are in a perpetual effort to upload and catalogue paintings and artists online, so it may be easier than you think to find the information you're looking for!
Use an image recognition app to identify the painting immediately. If you're struggling to remember an artist's name or you want additional information on a particular painting, download an image recognition app designed specifically for art. There are several apps for both Android and iPhone that allow you to snap a photo of a painting to search through museum catalogues, university databases, and art history texts. This is the easiest way to find a specific painting.[1]
The two most popular apps for recognizing artwork are Smartify and Magnus. Both of these apps will pull up information about the work's artist, as well as interesting facts and background information about the composition.
These apps only have access to paintings that have been well-documented and catalogued by curators, professors, historians, and other artists. If the painting is made by a more obscure artist, these apps may not work.
Run a reverse image search if you have a digital copy of the painting. If you're looking at a painting on your computer or phone, run a reverse image search. Copy and paste the image's URL into the search engine. Run the search to pull up other websites displaying the painting. This will give you access to a variety of websites that will tell you everything you need to know about the painting.[2]
If you're using Google Chrome, you can right click an image and select "Search Google for this image" to search the web.
You can download an image and upload it to the engine instead of copying and pasting the URL if you prefer.
The most popular reverse image search is TinEye, but there are several options available online.
Use the signature or monogram to dig online and find the image. Look in the corners of the painting to see if there is a signature or monogram. If the name is easy to read, simply search the artist's name up online to find the painting. If it's harder to read, look carefully to see if you can break down the letters and read them. This will let you narrow down the search and figure out who the artist is, which can make it easier to find your specific painting.[3]
A monogram refers to a 2- to 3-letter design containing the artist's initials. Monograms tend to be more popular among painters working after the 1800s.
Signatures were almost never used before the Renaissance, which began around 1300. Even if you can't identify a signature, at least you have a baseline for your search![4]
You have to sign up for a free account to use it, but you can use https://artistssignatures.com/ to reverse search for an artist's signature. This is useful if you think you can read the signature but want to double-check to make sure you aren't misreading it.
Ask an expert to identify the era, style, or painter of an image. Email or visit a museum curator, art history professor, or gallery owner to ask if they can take a look at the image. An expert in the field of art will be able to offer insights about the period, style, and give you a better sense for where to look. They may even know who the artist is as soon as they take a look at it![5]
If you're contacting a gallery owner, try to find a gallery that specializes in the type of art you're trying to identify. For example, a contemporary abstract piece is going to be easier to identify if the gallery owner mainly focuses on newer artists.
Use obvious clues in the subject matter to narrow down the date. Contemporary painters may paint people or objects from the past, but they can't time travel! If there's a train, company logo, digital clock, or some other time-specific component of the painting, this is a great way to set a baseline for your search. You can get a good overall sense for when a painting may have been made simply by asking yourself when an artist would have painted their subject.
For example, there aren't many painters alive today painting portraits of Spanish aristocrats from the 1600s, and absolutely nobody was painting images of Elvis Presley before 1954!
For example, if there is a small airplane in the background of the painting, you know that the painting must have been made after 1903, since that's when Wilbur and Orville Wright first successfully flew a plane.
Identify the artistic movement by assessing the style of the painting. There are various artistic movements throughout history that share similar qualities. Determining the movement associated with an image is a great way to quickly narrow down your search since historians group artists from the same movement together.[6]
There are hundreds of movements; if you can't figure out the movement at first glance, look through museum catalogues and online collections to find similar paintings.
Determine if the artist used acrylic paint to see if it was made after 1940. Get as close as you possibly can to the image. If the color looks flat and the darker colors don't reflect light, it's probably oil paint. If the color is reflective, shiny, and looks kind of plastic, it is likely acrylic paint. Acrylic paint wasn't used in art until 1940, so you have a much smaller period to search through.[7]
If more than one medium was used to produce a work, it is highly-likely that the image was created after 1900. It was fairly rare before this period to combine multiple materials to produce a painting.
This is a lot harder to do if you're looking at a digital image, but if the colors are almost supernaturally bright or neon, the painting was probably made with acrylic.
Assess the quality of the canvas or paper to determine the date. If the canvas is stapled into the frame uniformly, it is unlikely to have been made before 1900, which is when canvases were first mass produced. You can also assume the painting is relatively newer if it's is on paper and there's no tearing, damage, or general wear and tear. Paper is relatively fragile, and it's unlikely that a fresh piece of paper is particularly old.[8]
If the canvas is hanging loosely on the frame, the painting may have been made prior to 1600. Before 1600, most artists weren't particularly good at stretching the fabric tight against the frame.
Search through websites and catalogues after narrowing the search. If you know you're looking for art from a specific time period or movement, go online and search through galleries and websites related to this type of art. Look for paintings that are similar in style, color, and composition. You can also go through museum databases and encyclopedias to find your image to do this as well. With enough luck, you'll find the artist![9]
Almost every major museum has an online dataset that you can search. Search through these catalogues to find similar pieces that may belong to your artist.
Once you have the artist, finding the specific painting is fairly easy. Museums and universities often catalogue and document the entire body of work for well-known painters, so you should be able to find the specific painting just by poking around online.
Inspect the back of the painting to find notes from previous owners. If you really can't find anything about an image in your possession using traditional search methods, flip the canvas over and look at the back. If the image is a print or reproduction, it may be listed on the back. If the painting is a family heirloom or was bought at a thrift shop, there may be a handwritten note describing where the painting is from.[10]
Use the other steps in this method first before looking for lesser known details. It's possible that the painting is a reproduction, print, or mass-produced version of a popular painting.
If you see 2-3 numbers listed in a corner, the painting was probably purchased at a thrift shop or resale store. The employees of these stores often write the price on a back of a work. You're unlikely to be able to identify the artist or image in this case.
Check the frame to see if you can find a manufacturer. Inspect the frame on the back and look for an imprint, or label. Frame manufacturers often print a company name on the back. If there is a name, contact the manufacturer to learn more about the frame itself. This can drastically narrow down the region and time period where a painting was produced.[11]
If you only have the canvas and there is no frame, check the wood portion of the canvas on the back. Prior to 1900, most artists stretched their own canvases. If there is a signature on the wood frame, it's probably the artist's.
This isn't really a helpful option if the painting is well known or really old, since it was likely re-framed at some point.
Take a large collection from an unknown painter to an art dealer. If you stumble on a large number of paintings and you can't find a single thing about the artist online or through close inspection, contact an art dealer. Many lifelong artists paint simply because they enjoy it, and it's possible that you may have stumbled on to a unique collection from a totally unknown artist![12]
If you want to figure out if a painting in your possession is worth anything, contact an appraisal service. That's really the only way to authentically confirm whether your painting is worth anything or not.[13]
For many paintings, it will impossible to say definitively who painted the work or when it was made. You may be able to make an educated guess about the era or artist's background, though!
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