“This inhuman place makes human monsters,” wrote Stephen King in his novel The Shining. Many academics agree that monsters lurk in the deepest recesses, they prowl through our ancestral minds appearing in the half-light, under the bed – or at the bottom of the sea. “They don’t really exist, but they play a huge role …
What is it that draws us to these creatures? – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
A. There is no single pivotal moment that could be separated out from any other as the conception of the suburban lifestyle; from the early 1800s, various types of suburban development have sprung up and evolved in their own localised ways, from the streetcar suburbs of New York to the dormitory towns outside of London. …
The Birth of Suburbia – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
Mineral, vitamin, and antioxidant health supplements make up a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States alone, but do they really work? Evidence suggests supplementation is clearly indicated in special circumstances, but can actually be harmful in others. For the general population, however, supplements have negligible or no impact on the prevention of common cancers, cardiovascular …
Vitamins – To supplement or not? – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
For millennia, humans have been intrigued by what lies beneath the sea and although submarine travel was attempted from time to time, it did not become commonplace until the middle of last century. Several clever and innovative people had experimented with designs for submersible boats before then, but there was much loss of life and …
The Development of Travel under the Ocean – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
Shortly after World War II, ‘development’ as we now understand it was set in motion. Western governments and donors poured money into new agencies that set about trying to stimulate the economies of underdeveloped countries. Because of this emphasis, it is now widely regarded as the Growth Model. Although we might expect poverty reduction to …
A. From indigenous myths to John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids and the off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors, the idea of cerebral, carnivorous flora has spooked audiences and readers for centuries. While shrubs and shoots have yet to uproot themselves or show any interest in human beings, however, for some of earth’s smaller inhabitants …
A. It is sometimes said that men and women communicate in different languages. For hundreds of years in the Jiangyong County of Hunan Province, China, this was quite literally the case. Sometime between 400 and 1,000 years ago, women defied the patriarchal norms of the time that forbade them to read or write and conceived …
Nushu – A Secret Language – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
The title of Fats, Shoots and Leaves refers to a famously misplaced comma in a wildlife manual that ended up suggesting a panda rather violently “eats, shoots and leaves” instead of eating shoots and leaves. The author of this book, journalist Lynne Truss, is something akin to a militant linguist, dedicating this “zero tolerance” manifesto …
EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES A Book Review – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
A. The pressures on women to look slender, youthful, and attractive have been extensively documented, but changing expectations for women’s bodies have varied widely. From voluptuous and curvy in the days of Marilyn Monroe to slender and androgynous when Twiggy hit the London scene in the mid-1960s, and then on to the towering Amazonian models …
CHANGES IN MALE BODY IMAGE – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
A. In the pitch-black waters of the ocean’s aphotic zone – depths from 1,000m to the sea floor – Rood eyesight does not count for very much on its own. Caves, in addition, frequently present a similar problem: the complete absence of natural light at any time of the day. This has not stopped some …
Bioluminescence – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
