IELTS Preparation online free

  READING PASSAGE 1 - Right and left-handedness in humans IELTS READING You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-12 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. Why do humans, virtually alone among all animal species, display a distinct left or right-handedness? Not even our closest relatives among the apes possess such decided lateral asymmetry, as psychologists call it. Yet about 90 percent of every human population that has ever lived appears to have been right-handed. Professor Bryan Turner at Deakin University has studied the research literature on left-handedness and found that handedness goes with sidedness. So, nine out of ten people are right-handed and eight are right-footed. He noted that this distinctive asymmetry in the human population is itself systematic. “Humans think in categories: black and white, up and down, left and right. It’s a system of signs that enables us to categorize phenomena that are essentially ambiguous.’  Research has s...

  Reading Passage 3 -ARCHITECTURE- Reaching THE SKY IELTS Architecture is the art and science of designing buildings and structures. A building reflects the scientific and technological achievements of the age as well as the ideas and aspirations of the designer and client. The appearance of individual buildings, however, is often controversial.  The use of an architectural style cannot be said to start or finish on a specific date. Neither is it possible to say exactly what characterises a particular movement. But the origins of what is now generally known as modern architecture can be traced back to the social and technological changes of the 18th and 19th centuries. Instead of using timber, stone and traditional building techniques, architects began to explore ways of creating buildings by using the latest technology and materials such as steel, glass and concrete strengthened steel bars, known as reinforced concrete. Technological advances also helped bring about ...

 Zoo conservation programmes IELTS Reading READING PASSAGE 2 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 16-28 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below . One of London Zoo’s recent advertisements caused me some irritation, so patently did it distort reality. Headlined “Without zoos, you might as well tell these animals to get stuffed”, it was bordered with illustrations of several endangered species and went on to extol the myth that without zoos like London Zoo these animals “will almost certainly disappear forever”. With the zoo world’s rather mediocre record on conservation, one might be forgiven for being slightly skeptical about such an advertisement. Zoos were originally created as places of entertainment, and their suggested involvement with conservation didn’t seriously arise until about 30 years ago when the Zoological Society of London held the first formal international meeting on the subject. Eight years later, a series of world conferences took place, en...

  READING PASSAGE 3- EDUCATING PSYCHE IELTS Reading You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below. Educating Psyche by Bernie Neville is a book which looks at radical new approaches to learning, describing the effects of emotion, imagination and the unconscious on learning. One theory discussed in the book is that proposed by George Lozanov, which focuses on the power of suggestion. Lozanov's instructional technique is based on the evidence that the connections made in the brain through unconscious processing (which he calls non-specific mental reactivity) are more durable than those made through conscious processing. Besides the laboratory evidence for this, we know from our experience that we often remember what we have perceived peripherally, long after we have forgotten what we set out to learn. If we think of a book we studied months or years ago, we will find it easier to recall peripheral details – the colour, ...

  PASSAGE-BENEATH THE CANOPY IELTS READING 1.  The world’s tropical rainforests comprise some 6% of the Earth’s land area and contain more than half of all known life forms or a conservative estimate of about 30 million species of plants and animals. Some experts estimate there could be two or even three times as many species hidden within these complex and fast- disappearing ecosystems, scientists will probably never know for certain, so vast is the amount of study required.  2.  Time is running out for biological research. Commercial development is responsible for the loss of about 17 million hectares of virgin rainforest each year – a figure approximating 1% of what remains of the world’s rainforests. 3.  The current devastation of once impenetrable rainforest is of particular concern because, although new tree growth may in time repopulate felled areas, the biologically diverse storehouse of flora and fauna is gone forever. Losing this bountiful inheritance,...

  Passage- It Has Been Called The Holy Grail of Modern Biology. It has been called the Holy Grail of modem biology. Costing more than £2 billion, it is the most ambitious •scientific project since the Apollo programme that landed a man on the moon. And it will take longer to accomplish than the lunar missions, for it will not be complete until early next century. Even before it is finished, according to those involved, this project should open up new understanding of and new treatments fee, many of the ailments that afflict humanity. As a result of the Human Genome Project, there will be new hope of liberation from the shadows of cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, and some psychiatric illnesses. The objective of the Human Genome Project is simple to state but audacious in scope: to map and analyse every single gene within the double helix of humanity’s DNA . The project will reveal a new human anatomy — not the bones, muscles, and sinews, but t...