Reading

There is clear-cut evidence that, for a period of at least one year, supervision which increases the direct pressure for productivity can achieve significant increases in production. However, such short-term increases are obtained only at a substantial and serious cost to the organisation. To what extent can a manager make an impressive earnings record over …

Measuring Organisational Performance – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A For more than forty years the cost of food has been rising. It has now reached a point where a growing number of people believe that it is far too high, and that bringing it down will be one of the great challenges of the twenty first century. That cost, however, is not in immediate …

True Cost of Food – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A Bullying can take a variety of forms, from the verbal -being taunted or called hurtful names- to the physical- being kicked or shoved- as well as indirect forms, such as being excluded from social groups. A survey I conducted with Irene Whitney found that in British primary schools up to a quarter of pupils reported …

Persistent Bullying – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

Children in developing countries are healthier and more likely to survive past the age of five when their mothers can read and write. Experts in public health accepted this idea decades ago, but until now no one has been able to show that a woman’s ability to read in itself improves her children’s chances of …

Literate women make better mothers? – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A The Lumiere Brothers opened their Cinematographe, at 14 Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, to 100 paying customers over 100 years ago, on December 8, 1 895. Before the eyes of the stunned, thrilled audience, photographs came to life and moved across a flat screen. B So ordinary and routine has this become to us that it …

The power of the big screen – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

A International trade is growing at a startling pace. While the global economy has been expanding at a bit over 3% a year, the volume of trade has been rising at a compound annual rate of about twice that. Foreign products, from meat to machinery, play a more important role in almost every economy in the …

DELIVERING THE GOODS – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

The joke comes over the headphones: ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left.’ No, not funny. Try again. ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The outside.’ Hah! The punchline is silly yet fitting, tempting a smile, even a laugh. Laughter has always struck people as deeply mysterious, perhaps …

John McCrone reviews recent research on humour – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

In 1907, Leo Hendrick Baekeland, a Belgian scientist working in New York, discovered and patented a revolutionary new synthetic material. His invention, which he named ‘Bakelite’, was of enormous technological importance, and effectively launched the modern plastics industry. The term ‘plastic’ comes from the Greek plassein, meaning ‘to mould’. Some plastics are derived from natural …

BAKELITE – The birth of modern plastics – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

Since the early years of the twentieth century, when the International Athletic Federation began keeping records, there has been a steady improvement in how fast athletes run, how high they jump and how far they are able to hurl massive objects, themselves included, through space. For the so-called power events –that require a relatively brief, …

How much higher? How much faster? – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »

When you think about it, kissing is strange and a bit icky. You share saliva with someone, sometimes for a prolonged period of time. One kiss could pass on 80 million bacteria, not all of them good. Yet everyone surely remembers their first kiss, in all its embarrassing or delightful detail, and kissing continues to …

Half of Human Cultures – IELTS Academic Reading Passage Read More »