IELTS Reading Foundation

« BÀI 2: PHÂN TÍCH TỪ KHÓA TRONG CÂU HỎI Phân tích các từ khóa loại 1 và loại 2 trong các câu hỏi dưới đây.

Với các từ khóa loại 2, bạn hãy đưa ra một vài dự đoán về các cách paraphrase trong passage. 1.

There was little improvement in athletic performance before the twentieth century. 2.

Teenagers whose parents smoke are at risk of getting lung cancer at some time during their lives. 3.

Thirty per cent of deaths in the United States are caused by smoking related diseases. 4.

Many people carry out research in a mistaken way. 5.

It is currently possible to measure the pollution coming from individual vehicles whilst they are moving. 6.

Residents of Los Angeles are now tending to reduce the yearly distances they travel by car. 7.

Charging drivers for entering certain parts of the city has been successfully done in Cambridge, England 8.

Archaeologists went back to the site to try and find the missing northern end of the boat. 9.

Evidence found in 2004 suggested that the Bronze-Age Boat had been used for trade. 10.

Shirase's original ambition was to travel to the North Pole. 11.

Some Japanese officials thought Shirase's intention to travel to the South Pole was pointless. 12.

Shirase found it easy to raise the money he needed for his trip to the South Pole. 13.

In the future, farmers are likely to increase their dependency on chemicals. 14.

An important concern for scientists is to ensure that robots do not seem frightening. 15.

It will take considerable time for modern robots to match the ones we have created in films and books. 16.

Our ability to deal with a lot of input materials has improved over time. BÀI 3: TÌM VỊ TRÍ THÔNG TIN TRONG PASSAGE Tìm và gạch chân các đoạn chứa thông tin tương ứng với từng câu hỏi. PASSAGE 1 Insects, birds and fish tend to be the creatures that humans feel furthest from.

Unlike many mammals they do not engage in human-like behaviour.

The way they swarm or flock together does not usually get good press coverage either: marching like worker ants might be a common simile for city commuters, but it's a damning, not positive, image.

Yet a new school of scientific theory suggests that these swarms might have a lot to teach us. American author Peter Miller explains, 'I used to think that individual ants knew where they were going, and what they were supposed to do when they got there.

But Deborah Gordon, a biologist at Stanford University, showed me that nothing an ant does makes any sense except in terms of the whole colony.

Which makes you wonder if, as individuals, we don't serve a similar function for the companies where we work or the communities where we live.' Ants are not intelligent by themselves.

Yet as a colony, they make wise decisions.

And as Gordon discovered during her research, there's no one ant making decisions or giving orders. Take food collecting.

No ant decides, 'There's lots of food around today; lots of ants should go out to collect it.' Instead, some foragers go out, and as soon as they find food, they pick it up and come back to the nest.

At the entrance, they brush past reserve foragers, sending a 'go out' signal.

The faster the foragers come back, the more food there is and the faster other foragers go out, until gradually the amount of food being brought back diminishes.

An organic calculation has been made to answer the question, 'How many foragers does the colony need today?' And if something goes wrong – a hungry lizard prowling around for an ant snack, for instance – then a rush of ants returning without food sends waiting reserves a 'Don't go out' signal. Câu hỏi 1.

Birds and fish's ways of behaving are not similar to those of people. 2.

From her study, Gordon found out that no individual ant has leadership roles. 3.

When forager ants have already located food, they take it and return to where they live. PASSAGE 2 William Henry Perkin was born on March 12, 1838, in London, England.

As a boy, Perkin’s curiosity prompted early interests in the arts, sciences, photography, and engineering.

But it was a chance stumbling upon a run-down.

yet functional, laboratory in his late grandfathers home that solidified the young man`s enthusiasm for chemistry. As a student at the City of London School, Perkin became immersed in the study of chemistry.

His talent and devotion to the subject were perceived by his teacher, Thomas Hall, who encouraged him to attend a series of lectures given by the eminent scientist Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution.

Those speeches tired the young chemist`s enthusiasm further, and he later went on to attend the Royal College of Chemistry, which he succeeded in entering in 1853, at the age of 15. At the time of Perkin’s enrollment the Royal College of Chemistry was headed by the noted German chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann.

Perkin’s scientific gifts soon caught Hofmann’s attention and, within two years, he became Hofmann’s youngest assistant. Not long after that, Perkin made the scientific breakthrough that would bring him both fame and fortune. At the time, quinine was the only viable medical treatment for malaria.

The drug is derived from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America and by 1856 demand for the drug was surpassing the available supply.

Thus, when Hofmann made some passing comments about the desirability of a synthetic substitute for quinine.

it was unsurprising that his star pupil was moved to take up the challenge. During his vacation in 1856, Perkin spent his time in the laboratory on the top floor of his family's house.

He was attempting to manufacture quinine from aniline, an inexpensive and readily available coal tar waste product.

Despite his best efforts, however, he did not end up with quinine.

Instead, he produced a mysterious dark sludge.

Luckily, Perkins scientific training and nature prompted him to investigate the substance further.

Incorporating potassium dichromate and alcohol into the aniline at various stages of the experimental process, he finally produced a deep purple solution. And, proving the truth of the famous scientist Louis Pasteur`s words 'chance favors only the prepared mind'.

Perkin saw the potential of his unexpected find. Historically.

textile dyes were made from such natural sources as plants and animal excretions.

Some of these, such as the glandular mucus of snails, were difficult to obtain and outrageously expensive.

Indeed, the purple colour extracted from a snail was once so costly that in society at the time only the rich could afford it.

Further, natural dyes tended to be muddy in hue and fade quickly.

It was against this backdrop that Perkin‘s discovery- was made. Câu hỏi 1.

Perkin soon developed his passions for several subjects when he was a little child. 2.

Perkin's lecturer was the person who recognised his ability and dedication as a student of chemistry. 3.

Perkin made the discovery that made him rich and famous subsequent to becoming an assistant of Hofmann. 4.

The tree from which quinine is derived grow in South America. 5.

Perkin hoped to produce quinine from a coal tar waste product. 6.

A well-known person claimed that luck only comes to a person who has worked hard. PASSAGE 3 B For the Inuit the problem is urgent.

They live in precarious balance with one of the toughest environments on earth.

Climate change, whatever its causes, is a direct threat to their way of life.

Nobody knows the Arctic as well as the locals, which is why they are not content simply to stand back and let outside experts tell them what's happening.

In Canada, where the Inuit people are jealously guarding their hard-won autonomy in the country's newest territory, Nunavut, they believe their best hope of survival in this changing environment lies in combining their ancestral knowledge with the best of modern science.

This is a challenge in itself. C The Canadian Arctic is a vast, treeless polar desert that's covered with snow for most of the year.

Venture into this terrain and you get some idea of the hardships facing anyone who calls this home.

Farming is out of the question and nature offers meagre pickings.

Humans first settled in the Arctic a mere 4,500 years ago, surviving by exploiting sea mammals and fish.

The environment tested them to the limits: sometimes the colonists were successful, sometimes they failed and vanished.

But around a thousand years ago, one group emerged that was uniquely well adapted to cope with the Arctic environment.

These Thule people moved in from Alaska, bringing kayaks, sleds, dogs, pottery and iron tools.

They are the ancestors of today's Inuit people. D Life for the descendants of the Thule people is still harsh.

Nunavut is 1.9 million square kilometres of rock and ice, and a handful of islands around the North Pole.

It's.... »