When the last stranded whale of a group eventually dies, the story does not end there. A team of researchers begins to investigate, collecting skin samples for instance, recording anything that could help them answer the crucial question: why? Theories abound, some more convincing than others. In recent years, navy sonar has been accused of …
Whale Strandings – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
A Big trees are incredibly important ecologically. For a start, they sustain countless other species. They provide shelter for many animals, and their trunks and branches can become gardens, hung with green ferns, orchids and bromeliads, coated with mosses and draped with vines. With their tall canopies* basking in the sun, they capture vast amounts of …
Trees in trouble – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
A Until the last tick of history’s clock, cultural transmission meant oral transmission and poetry, passed from mouth to ear, was the principal medium of moving information across space and from one generation to the next. Oral poetry was not simply a way of telling lovely or important stories, or of flexing the imagination. It was, …
Homer’s Literary Legacy – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
The next time you stand at the supermarket checkout, spare a thought for the farmers who helped fill your shopping basket as life is hard for them right now. This, in turn, inevitably means bigger grocery bills for consumers, and greater hardship for the millions in countries where food shortages are a matter of life …
The rise of agribots – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
FOR a few weeks in January 1912, Antarctica was full of explorers. Norwegian Roald Amundsen had reached the South Pole on 14 December and was speeding back to the coast. On 17 January, Robert Scott and the men of the British Antarctic expedition had arrived at the pole to find they had been beaten to …
South pole adventurer – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
We spend a large part of our daily life talking with other people and, consequently, we are very accustomed to the art of conversing. But why do we feel comfortable in conversations that have flow, but get nervous and distressed when a conversation is interrupted by unexpected silences? To answer this question we will first …
When Conversations Flow – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
A Zhang Yue is founder and chairman of Broad Sustainable Building (otherwise known as ‘Broad’) who, on 1 January, 2012, released a time-lapse video of its 30-story achievement. It shows construction workers buzzing around like gnats while a clock in the corner of the screen marks the time. In just 360 hours, a 100-metre-tall tower called …
High Speed, High Rise – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
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, …
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We are constantly required to process a wide range of information to make decisions. Sometimes, these decisions are trivial, such as what marmalade to buy. At other times, the stakes are higher, such as deciding which symptoms to report to the doctor. However, the fact that we are accustomed to processing large amounts of information …
It’s Your Choice – Or Is It Really? – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »
A At first sight it looked like a typical suburban road accident. A Land Rover approached a Chevy Tahoe estate car that had stopped at a kerb; the Land Rover pulled out and tried to pass the Tahoe just as it started off again. There was a crack of fenders and the sound of paintwork being …
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