Reading

Many people who spend a lot of time playing video games insist that they have helped them in areas like confidence-building, presentation skills and debating. Yet this way of thinking about video games can be found almost nowhere within the mainstream media, which still tend to treat games as an odd mix of the slightly …

Is there more to video games than people realize? – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A Shelves bend under their weight of cookery books. Even a medium-sized bookshop contains many more recipes than one person could hope to took in a lifetime. Although the recipes in one book are often similar to those in another, their presentation varies wildly, from an array of vegetarian cookbooks to instructions on cooking the food …

WHAT COOKBOOKS REALLY TEACH US – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

Fiona Harvey paid a visit to a building whose contents are very precious. About 1,000 km from the North Pole, Svalbard is one of the most remote places on earth. For this reason, it is the site of a vault that will safeguard a priceless component of our common heritage – the seeds of our …

Seed vault guards resources for the future – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

The purpose of international commerce is to buy things from and sell things to people in other countries. Hundreds, and indeed thousands, of years ago, this actually worked quite well. People who travelled to foreign lands, often by ship, would take with them items for trade. Agricultural countries would, for example, trade olive oil or …

Changes in International Commerce How ethics and fair trade can make a difference – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A Close up, plastic packaging can be a marvellous thing. Those who make a living from it call it a forgotten infrastructure that allows modem urban life to exist. Plastics have helped society defy natural limits such as the seasons, the rotting of food and the distance most of us live from where our food is …

Is It Time To Halt The Rising Tide Of Plastic Packaging? – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

Prime among basic numerical faculties is the ability to distinguish between a larger and a smaller number, says psychologist Elizabeth Brannon. Humans can do this with ease – providing the ratio is big enough – but do other animals share this ability? In one experiment, rhesus monkeys and university students examined two sets of geometrical …

Can Animals Count? – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A To detectives, the answers lie at the end of our fingers. Fingerprinting offers an accurate and infallible means of personal identification. The ability to identify a person from a mere fingerprint is a powerful tool in the fight against crime. It is the most commonly used forensic evidence, often outperforming other methods of identification. These …

A History Of Fingerprinting – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

Technology is moving at such a breakneck speed that it is enough to make your head spin. It can be difficult to keep up. However, with each new technological marvel come consequences. Much of the research conducted has shown the extent of the damage being done to our health by technology. It is a scary …

Is Technology Harming Our Children’s Health? – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

No one likes to feel left out, ignored by colleagues at meetings or not be invited to the big party that everyone is talking about Imagine not being part of a joke, or worse still, if the joke is on you. For most people, living the life of an outsider can have a negative effect …

The Need To Belong – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

Back in early 1961, few outside the corridors of dwindling British power had heard of the archipelago centred on the main island of Tristan da Cunha, from which the scattered islands that make up the group took their name. It would take a dramatic volcanic eruption, and an emergency evacuation that would grab the attention …

Coming into the World A little-known island community comes in from the cold – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »