IELTS Foundation

True-False-Not Given
Example 1: Do the statements on the left answer the questions on the right? Put a tick when they
do, and write 'not given' if they do not.

Statements Questions NOT GIVEN/TRUE

The report showed changing According to the report, are women

lifestyles and new opportunities for getting chances they did not have
women. before?

The average age at first marriage Does this mean that women often
for women is now two months have more than one marriage?
before their thirtieth birthday.

The proportion of babies born to Does this mean that fewer babies
those under twenty-five has halved are being born?
since 1971.

Women now outnumber men in Do we know if there are more

tertiary education. women than men who continue
their education after high school?

Example 2: Decide whether these statements are TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN.

Mau Piailug, ocean navigator

Mau sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti using traditional methods

In early 1976, Mau Piailug, a fisherman, led an expedition in which he sailed a traditional
Polynesian boat across 2,500 miles of ocean from Hawaii to Tahiti. The Polynesiai Voyaging Society
had organised the expedition. Its purpose was to find out if seafarers in the distant past could have
found their way from one island to the other without navigational instruments, or whether the
islands had been populated by accident. At the time, Mau was the only man alive who knew how
to navigate just by observing the stars, the wind and the sea. He had never before sailed to Tahiti,
which was a long way to the south. However, he understood how the wind and the sea behave
around islands, so he was confident he could find his way. The voyage took him and his crew a
month to complete and he did it without a compass or charts.

His grandfather began the task of teaching him how to navigate when he was still a baby. He
showed him pools of water on the beach to teach him how the behaviour of the waves and wind
changed in different places. Later, Mau used a circle of stones to memorise the positions of the
stars. Each stone was laid out in the sand to represent a star.

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The voyage proved that Hawaii’s first inhabitants came in small boats and navigated by reading
the sea and the stars. Mau himself became a keen teacher, passing on his traditional secrets to
people of other cultures so that his knowledge would not be lost. He explained the positions of the
stars to his students, but he allowed them to write things down because he knew they would
never be able to remember everything as he had done.

1 At the time of his voyage, Mau had unique navigational skills.

2 Mau was familiar with the sea around Tahiti.

3 Mau thought it would be difficult to use a compass and charts.

4 Mau’s grandfather was his only teacher.

5 Mau used stones to learn where each star was situated in the sky.

6 The first inhabitants of Hawaii could read and write.

7 Mau expected his students to memorise the positions of the stars.

Exercise 1: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
During the sixth and seventh centuries, the inhabitants of the modern-day states of Gujarat and
Rajasthan in North-western India developed a method of gaining access to clean, fresh
groundwater during the dry season for drinking, bathing, watering animals and irrigation.
However, the significance of this invention – the stepwell – goes beyond its utilitarian application.
Unique to the region, stepwells are often architecturally complex and vary widely in size and
shape. During their heyday, they were places of gathering, of leisure, of relaxation and of worship
for villagers of all but the lowest castes. Most stepwells are found dotted around the desert areas
of Gujarat (where they are called vav) and Rajasthan (where they are known as baori), while a few
also survive in Delhi. Some were located in or near villages as public spaces for the community;
others were positioned beside roads as resting places for travellers.
As their name suggests, stepwells comprise a series of stone steps descending from ground level
to the water source (normally an underground aquifer) as it recedes following the rains. When the
water level was high, the user needed only to descend a few steps to reach it; when it was low,
several levels would have to be negotiated.

1 Examples of ancient stepwells can be found all over the world.

2 Stepwells had a range of functions, in addition to those related to water collection.
3 The few existing stepwells in Delhi are more attractive than those found elsewhere.
4 It took workers many years to build the stone steps characteristic of stepwells.
5 The number of steps above the water level in a stepwell altered during the course of a year.

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Exercise 2: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
An Introduction to Film Sound
We are probably all familiar with background music in films, which has become so ubiquitous as to
be noticeable or surprising in its absence. We are aware that it is used to add emotion and rhythm.
Usually not meant to be noticeable, it often provides a tone or an emotional attitude toward the
story and/or the characters depicted. In addition, background music often foreshadows a change
in mood. For example, dissonant music may be used in film to indicate an approaching (but not yet
visible) menace or disaster.
Background music may aid viewer understanding by linking scenes. For example, a particular
musical theme associated with an individual character or situation may be repeated at
various points in a film in order to remind the audience of salient motifs or ideas.
Film sound comprises conventions and innovations. We have come to expect an acceleration of
music during car chases and creaky doors in horror films. Yet, it is important to note as well that
sound is often brilliantly conceived. The effects of sound are often largely subtle and often are
noted by only our subconscious minds. We need to foster an awareness of film sound as well as
film space so as to truly appreciate an art form that sprang to life during the twentieth century -
the modern film.

6 Audiences are likely to be surprised if a film lacks background music.

7 Background music may predict a development in a film.
8 Background music has more effect on some people than on others.
9 Background music may help the audience to make certain connections within the film.
10 Audiences tend to be aware of how the background music is affecting them.

Exercise 3: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
The dominant critical approach to appreciating art works is that of the art historian, a specialised
academic approach devoted to ‘discovering the meaning’ of art within the cultural context of its
time. This is in perfect harmony with the museum’s function, since the approach is dedicated to
seeking out and conserving ‘authentic’, original, readings of the exhibits. Again, this seems to put
paid to that spontaneous, participators criticism which can be found in abundance in criticism of
classic works of literature, but is absent from most art history.
The displays of art museums serve as a warning of what critical practices can emerge when
spontaneous criticism is suppressed. The museum public, like any other audience, experience art
more rewardingly when given the confidence to express their views. If appropriate works of fine
art could be rendered permanently accessible to the public by means of high-fidelity
reproductions, as literature and music already are, the public may feel somewhat less in awe of
them. Unfortunately, that may be too much to ask from those who seek to maintain and control
the art establishment.

10 Art history should focus on discovering the meaning of art using a range of media.
11 The approach of art historians conflicts with that of art museums.

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12 People should be encouraged to give their opinions openly on works of art.
13 Reproductions of fine art should only be sold to the public if they are of high quality.
14 In the future, those with power are likely to encourage more people to enjoy art.

Exercise 4: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
The story of silk
The history of the world’s most luxurious fabric, from ancient China to the present day
Silk is a fine, smooth material produced from the cocoons - soft protective shells - that are made
by mulberry silkworms (insect larvae). Legend has it that it was Lei Tzu, wife of the Yellow
Emperor, ruler of China in about 3000 BC, who discovered silkworms. It quickly grew into a symbol
of status, and originally, only royalty were entitled to have clothes made of silk. Government
officials were paid their salary in silk, and farmers paid their taxes in grain and silk. Silk was also
used as diplomatic gifts by the emperor. Fishing lines, bowstrings, musical instruments and paper
were all made using silk.
Demand for this silk eventually created the lucrative trade route now known as the Silk Road,
taking silk westward and bringing gold, silver and wool to the East. It was named the Silk Road
after its most precious commodity, which was considered to be worth more than gold. The Silk
Road stretched over 6,000 kilometres from Eastern China to the Mediterranean Sea. From there,
the merchandise was shipped across the Mediterranean Sea. Few merchants travelled the
entire route; goods were handled mostly by a series of middlemen.
With the mulberry silkworm being native to China, the country was the world’s sole producer of
silk for many hundreds of years. The secret of silk-making eventually reached the rest of the world
via the Byzantine Empire, which ruled over the Mediterranean region of southern Europe, North
Africa and the Middle East during the period 330—1453 AD. According to another legend, monks
working for the Byzantine emperor Justinian smuggle silkworm eggs to Constantinople (Istanbul in
modern-day Turkey) in 550 AD, concealed inside hollow bamboo walking canes. The Byzantines
were as secretive as the Chinese, however, and for many centuries the weaving and trading of silk
fabric was a strict imperial monopoly.

10 Gold was the most valuable material transported along the Silk Road.
11 Most tradesmen only went along certain sections of the Silk Road.
12 The Byzantines spread the practice of silk production across the West.
13 Silk yarn makes up the majority of silk currently exported from China.

Exercise 5: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
Tea and the Industrial Revolution
A Alan Macfarlane, professor of anthropological science at King’s College, Cambridge has, like
other historians, spent decades wrestling with the enigma of the Industrial Revolution. Why did
this particular Big Bang – the world-changing birth of industry – happen in Britain? And why did it
strike at the end of the 18th century?

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B One of the factors, he proposes, are to be found in almost even kitchen cupboard. Tea and beer,
two of the nation’s favourite drinks, fuelled the revolution. The antiseptic properties of tannin, the
active ingredient in tea and of hops in beer – plus the fact that both are made with boiled water –
allowed urban communities to flourish at close quarters without succumbing to water-borne
diseases such as dysentery. The theory sounds eccentric but once he starts to explain the
detective work that went into his deduction, the scepticism gives way to wary admiration.
Macfarlanes case has been strengthened by support from notable quarters – Roy Porter, the
distinguished medical historian, recently wrote a favourable appraisal of his research.
C Macfarlane had wondered for a long time how the Industrial Revolution came about. Historians
had alighted on one interesting factor around the mid-18th century that required explanation.
Between about 1650 and 1740，the population in Britain was static. But then there was a burst in
population growth. Macfarlane says: ‘The infant mortality rate halved in the space of 20 years, and
this happened in both rural areas and cities, and across all classes. People suggested four possible
causes. Was there a sudden change in the viruses and bacteria around? Unlikely. Was there a
revolution in medical science? But this was a century before Lister’s revolution. Was there a
change in environmental conditions? There were improvements in agriculture that wiped out
malaria, but these were small gains. Sanitation did not become widespread until the 19th century.
The only option left is food. But the height and weight statistics show a decline. So the food must
have got worse. Efforts to explain this sudden reduction in child deaths appeared to draw a blank.’
D This population burst seemed to happen at just the right time to provide labour for the
Industrial Revolution. ‘When you start moving towards an industrial revolution, it is economically
efficient to have people living close together,’ says Macfarlane. ‘But then you get disease,
particularly from human waste.’ Some digging around in historical records revealed that there was
a change in the incidence of water-borne disease at that time, especially dysentery. Macfarlane
deduced that whatever the British were drinking must have been important in regulating disease.
He says, ‘We drank beer. For a long time, the English were protected by the strong antibacterial
agent in hops, which were added to help preserve the beer. But in the late 17th century a tax was
introduced on malt, the basic ingredient of beer. The poor turned to water and gin and in the
1720s the mortality rate began to rise again.

8 China’s transport system was not suitable for industry in the 18th century.
9 Tea and beer both helped to prevent dysentery in Britain.
10 Roy Porter disagrees with Professor Macfarlane’s findings.
11 After 1740，there was a reduction in population in Britain.
12 People in Britain used to make beer at home.
13 The tax on malt indirectly caused a rise in the death rate.

Exercise 6: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
Crop-growing skyscrapers
By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the Earth’s population will live in urban centres. An estimated 109
hectares of new land (about 20% larger than Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed
them. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in

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use. Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste due to poor management practices by
humans. What can be done to ensure enough food for the world’s population to live on?
Many believe an entirely new approach to indoor farming is required, employing cutting-edge
technologies. One such proposal is for the ‘Vertical Farm’. The concept is of multi-storey buildings
in which food crops are grown in environmentally controlled conditions. Situated in the heart of
urban centres, they would drastically reduce the amount of transportation required to bring food
to consumers. Vertical farms would need to be efficient, cheap to construct and safe to operate. If
successfully implemented, proponents claim, vertical farms offer the promise of urban renewal,
sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (through year-round production of all
crops), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.
It took humans 10,000 years to learn how to grow most of the crops we now take for granted.
Along the way, we despoiled most of the land we worked, often turning verdant, natural ecozones
into semi-arid deserts. Within that same time frame, we evolved into an urban species, in which
60% of the human population now lives vertically in cities. This means that, for the majority, we
humans have shelter from the elements, yet we subject our food-bearing plants to the rigours of
the great outdoors and can do no more than hope for a good weather year. However, more often
than not now, due to a rapidly changing climate, that is not what happens. Massive floods, long
droughts, hurricanes and severe monsoons take their toll each year, destroying millions of tons of
valuable crops.
The supporters of vertical farming claim many potential advantages for the system. For instance,
crops would be produced all year round, as they would be kept in artificially controlled, optimum
growing conditions. There would be no weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods or
pests. All the food could be grown organically, eliminating the need for herbicides, pesticides and
fertilisers. There would be a decreasing incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired
at the agricultural interface.

8 Methods for predicting the Earth’s population have recently changed.

9 Human beings are responsible for some of the destruction to food-producing land.
10 The crops produced in vertical farms will depend on the season.
11 Some damage to food crops is caused by climate change.
12 No fertilisers will be needed for certain crops in vertical farms.
13 Vertical farming will make plants less likely to be affected by infectious diseases.

Exercise 7: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
Research using twins
To biomedical researchers all over the world, twins offer a precious opportunity to untangle the
influence of genes and the environment - of nature and nurture. Because identical twins come
from a single fertilized egg that splits into two, they share virtually the same genetic code. Any
differences between them - one twin having younger looking skin, for example - must be due to
environmental factors such as less time spent in the sun.
The idea of using twins to measure the influence of heredity dates back to 1875, when the English
scientist Francis Galton first suggested the approach (and coined the phrase 'nature and nurture').

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But twin studies took a surprising twist in the 1980s, with the arrival of studies into identical twins
who had been separated at birth and reunited as adults. Over two decades 137 sets of twins
eventually visited Thomas Bouchard's lab in what became known as the Minnesota Study of Twins
Reared Apart. Numerous tests were carried out on the twins, and they were each asked more than
15,000 questions.
Twin studies have helped lead scientists to a radical new conclusion: that nature and nurture are
not the only elemental forces at work. According to a recent field called epigenetics, there is
another different factor also in play, one that in some cases serves as a bridge between
the environment and our genes, and in others operates on its own to shape who we are.

1 There may be genetic causes for the differences in how young the skin of identical twins looks.
2 Twins are at greater risk of developing certain illnesses than non-twins.
3 Bouchard advertised in newspapers for twins who had been separated at birth.
4 Epigenetic processes are different from both genetic and environmental processes.

Exercise 8: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
The coconut palm
For millennia, the coconut has been central to the lives of Polynesian and Asian peoples. In the
western world, on the other hand, coconuts have always been exotic and unusual, sometimes
rare. The Italian merchant traveller Marco Polo apparently saw coconuts in South Asia in the late
13th century, and among the mid-14th-century travel writings of Sir John Mandeville there is
mention of ‘great Notes of Ynde’ (great Nuts of India). Today, images of palm-fringed tropical
beaches are clichés in the west to sell holidays, chocolate bars, fizzy drinks and even romance.
Coconut’s biology would appear to make coconuts the great maritime voyagers and coastal
colonizers of the plant world. The large, energy-rich fruits are able to float in water and tolerate
salt, but cannot remain viable indefinitely; studies suggest after about 110 days at sea they are no
longer able to germinate. Literally cast onto desert island shores, with little more than sand to
grow in and exposed to the full glare of the tropical sun, coconut seeds are able to germinate and
root. The air pocket in the seed, created as the endosperm solidifies, protects the embryo. In
addition, the fibrous fruit wall that helped it to float during the voyage stores moisture that can be
taken up by the roots of the coconut seedling as it starts to grow.
There have been centuries of academic debate over the origins of the coconut. There were no
coconut palms in West Africa, the Caribbean or the east coast of the Americans before the
voyages of the European explorers Vasco da Gama and Columbus in the late 15th and early 16th
centuries. 16th century trade and human migration patterns reveal that Arab traders and
European sailors are likely to have moved coconuts from South and Southeast Asia to Africa and
then across the Atlantic to the east coast of America. But the origin of coconuts discovered along
the west coast of America by 16th century sailors has been the subject of centuries of discussion.
Two diametrically opposed origins have been proposed: that they came from Asia, or that they
were native to America. Both suggestions have problems. In Asia, there is a large degree of
coconut diversity and evidence of millennia of human use – but there are no relatives growing in
the wild. In America, there are close coconut relatives, but no evidence that coconuts are

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indigenous. These problems have led to the intriguing suggestion that coconuts originated on coral
islands in the Pacific and were dispersed from there.

9 Coconut seeds need shade in order to germinate.

10 Coconuts were probably transported to Asia from America in the 16th century.
11 Coconuts found on the west coast of America were a different type from those found on the
east coast.
12 Most of the coconuts found in Asia are cultivated varieties.
13 Coconuts are supposed by some to be distributed from its origin in the Pacific.

Exercise 9: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
Cutty Sark: the fastest sailing ship of all time
The nineteenth century was a period of great technological development in Britain, and for
shipping the major changes were from wind to steam power, and from wood to iron and steel.
The fastest commercial sailing vessels of all time were clippers, three-masted ships built to
transport goods around the world, although some also took passengers. From the 1840s until
1869, when the Suez Canal opened and steam propulsion was replacing sail, clippers dominated
world trade. Although many were built, only one has survived more or less intact: Cutty Sark, now
on display in Greenwich, southeast London.
Cutty Sark’s unusual name comes from the poem Tam O’Shanter by the Scottish poet Robert
Burns. Tam, a farmer, is chased by a witch called Nannie, who is wearing a ‘cutty sark’ – an old
Scottish name for a short nightdress. The witch is depicted in Cutty Sark’s figurehead – the carving
of a woman typically at the front of old sailing ships. In legend, and in Burns’s poem, witches
cannot cross water, so this was a rather strange choice of name for a ship.
Cutty Sark was built in Dumbarton, Scotland, in 1869, for a shipping company owned by John
Willis. To carry out construction, Willis chose a new shipbuilding firm, Scott & Linton, and ensured
that the contract with them put him in a very strong position. In the end, the firm was forced out
of business, and the ship was finished by a competitor.
Willis’s company was active in the tea trade between China and Britain, where speed could bring
shipowners both profits and prestige, so Cutty Sark was designed to make the journey more
quickly than any other ship. On her maiden voyage, in 1870, she set sail from London, carrying
large amounts of goods to China. She returned laden with tea, making the journey back to London
in four months. However, Cutty Sark never lived up to the high expectations of her owner, as a
result of bad winds and various misfortunes. On one occasion, in 1872, the ship and a rival
clipper, Thermopylae, left port in China on the same day. Crossing the Indian Ocean, Cutty
Sark gained a lead of over 400 miles, but then her rudder was severely damaged in stormy seas,
making her impossible to steer. The ship’s crew had the daunting task of repairing the rudder at
sea, and only succeeded at the second attempt. Cutty Sark reached London a week
after Thermopylae.
Steam ships posed a growing threat to clippers, as their speed and cargo capacity increased. In
addition, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the same year that Cutty Sark was launched, had a
serious impact. While steam ships could make use of the quick, direct route between the

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Mediterranean and the Red Sea, the canal was of no use to sailing ships, which needed the much
stronger winds of the oceans, and so had to sail a far greater distance. Steam ships reduced the
journey time between Britain and China by approximately two months.
By 1878, tea traders weren’t interested in Cutty Sark, and instead, she took on the much less
prestigious work of carrying any cargo between any two ports in the world. In 1880, violence
aboard the ship led ultimately to the replacement of the captain with an incompetent drunkard
who stole the crew’s wages. He was suspended from service, and a new captain appointed. This
marked a turnaround and the beginning of the most successful period in Cutty Sark’s working life,
transporting wool from Australia to Britain. One such journey took just under 12 weeks, beating
every other ship sailing that year by around a month.
The ship’s next captain, Richard Woodget, was an excellent navigator, who got the best out of
both his ship and his crew. As a sailing ship, Cutty Sark depended on the strong trade winds of the
southern hemisphere, and Woodget took her further south than any previous captain, bringing
her dangerously close to icebergs off the southern tip of South America. His gamble paid off,
though, and the ship was the fastest vessel in the wool trade for ten years.

1 Clippers were originally intended to be used as passenger ships.

2 Cutty Sark was given the name of a character in a poem.
3 The contract between John Willis and Scott & Linton put Willis at a disadvantage.
4 John Willis wanted Cutty Sark to be the fastest tea clipper travelling between the UK and China.
5 Despite storm damage, Cutty Sark lost to Thermopylae.
6 The opening of the Suez Canal meant that steam ships could travel between Britain and China
faster than clippers.
7 Steam ships sometimes used the ocean route to travel between London and China.
8 Captain Woodget made Cutty Sark hit an iceberg.

Exercise 10: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
The Falkirk Wheel
A unique engineering achievement
The Falkirk Wheel in Scotland is the world's first and only rotating boat lift. Opened in 2002, it is
central to the ambitious £84.5m Millennium Link project to restore navigability across Scotland by
reconnecting the historic waterways of the Forth & Clyde and Union Canals.
The major challenge of the project lays in the fact that the Forth & Clyde Canal is situated 35
metres below the level of the Union Canal. Historically, the two canals had been joined near the
town of Falkirk by a sequence of 11 locks - enclosed sections of canal in which the water level
could be raised or lowered - that stepped down across a distance of 1.5 km. This had been
dismantled in 1933, thereby breaking the link. When the project was launched in 1994, the British
Waterways authority were keen to create a dramatic twenty-first-century landmark which would
not only be a fitting commemoration of the Millennium, but also a lasting symbol of the economic
regeneration of the region.

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Numerous ideas were submitted for the project, including concepts ranging from rolling eggs to
tilting tanks, from giant seesaws to overhead monorails. The eventual winner was a plan for the
huge rotating steel boat lift which was to become The Falkirk Wheel. The unique shape of the
structure is claimed to have been inspired by various sources, both manmade and natural, most
notably a Celtic double headed axe, but also the vast turning propeller of a ship, the ribcage of a
whale or the spine of a fish.
The various parts of The Falkirk Wheel were all constructed and assembled, like one giant toy
building set, at Butterley Engineering's Steelworks in Derbyshire, some 400 km from Falkirk. A
team there carefully assembled the 1,200 tonnes of steel, painstakingly fitting the pieces together
to an accuracy of just 10 mm to ensure a perfect final fit. In the summer of 2001, the structure was
then dismantled and transported on 35 lorries to Falkirk, before all being bolted back together
again on the ground, and finally lifted into position in five large sections by crane.
Two diametrically opposed water-filled 'gondolas', each with a capacity of 360,000 litres, are fitted
between the ends of the arms. These gondolas always weigh the same, whether or not they are
carrying boats. This is because, according to Archimedes' principle of displacement, floating
objects displace their own weight in water. The Wheel could not be constructed to elevate boats
over the full 35-metre difference between the two canals, owing to the presence of the historically
important Antonine Wall, which was built by the Romans in the second century AD. Boats travel
under this wall via a tunnel, then through the locks, and finally on to the Union Canal.

1 The Falkirk Wheel has linked the Forth & Clyde Canal with the Union Canal for the first time in
their history.
2 There was some opposition to the design of the Falkirk Wheel at first.
3 The Falkirk Wheel was initially put together at the location where its components were
manufactured.
4 The Falkirk Wheel is the only boat lift in the world which has steel sections bolted together by
hand.
5 The weight of the gondolas varies according to the size of boat being carried.
6 The construction of the Falkirk Wheel site required the demolition of a nearby ancient
monument.

Exercise 11: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
Great Migrations
Animal migration, however it is defined, is far more than just the movement of animals. It can
loosely be described as travel that takes place at regular intervals - often in an annual cycle - that
may involve many members of a species, and is rewarded only after a long journey. It suggests
inherited instinct.
An arctic tern, on its 20,000 km flight from the extreme south of South America to the Arctic circle,
will take no notice of a nice smelly herring offered from a bird-watcher's boat along the way
while local gulls will dive voraciously for such handouts, the tern flies on. Why? The arctic tern
resists distraction because it is driven at that moment by an instinctive sense of something we
humans find admirable: larger purpose. In other words, it is determined to reach its destination.

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The bird senses that it can eat, rest and mate later. Right now it is totally focused on the journey;
its undivided intent is arrival.
Reaching some gravelly coastline in the Arctic, upon which other arctic terns have converged, will
serve its larger purpose as shaped by evolution: finding a place, a time, and a set of circumstances
in which it can successfully hatch and rear offspring.
But migration is a complex issue, and biologists define it differently, depending in part on what
sorts of animals they study. Joel Berger, of the University of Montana, who works on the American
pronghorn and other large terrestrial mammals, prefers what he calls a simple, practical
definition suited to his beasts: 'movements from a seasonal home area away to another home
area and back again'. Generally the reason for such seasonal back-and-forth movement is to seek
resources that aren't available within a single area year-round.
But daily vertical movements by zooplankton in the ocean - upward by night to seek food,
downward by day to escape predators - can also be considered migration. So can the movement
of aphids when, having depleted the young leaves on one food plant, their offspring then fly
onward to a different host plant, with no one aphid ever returning to where it started.
Dingle is an evolutionary biologist who studies insects. His definition is more intricate than
Berger's because it mentions five features that distinguish migration from other forms of
movement. They allow for the fact that, for example, aphids will become sensitive to blue light
(from the sky) when it's time for takeoff on their big journey, and sensitive to yellow
light (reflected from tender young leaves) when it's appropriate to land. Birds will
fatten themselves with heavy feeding in advance of a long migrational flight. The value of
his definition, Dingle argues, is that it focuses attention on what the phenomenon of wildebeest
migration shares with the phenomenon of the aphids, and therefore helps guide researchers
towards understanding how evolution has produced them all.

1 Local gulls and migrating arctic terns behave in the same way when offered food.
2 Experts’ definitions of migration are fixed regardless of areas of study.
3 Very few experts agree that the movement of aphids can be considered migration.
4 Aphids’ journeys are affected by changes in the light that they perceive.
5 Dingle’s aim is to distinguish between the migratory behaviours of different species.

Exercise 12: Do the following statements agree with the information in Reading Passage?
Neuroaesthetics
Alex Forsythe of the University of Liverpool analysed the visual intricacy of different pieces of art,
and her results suggest that many artists use a key level of detail to please the brain. Too little and
the work is boring, but too much results in a kind of 'perceptual overload', according to Forsythe.
What's more, appealing pieces both abstract and representational, show signs of 'fractals' -
repeated motifs recurring in different scales, fractals are common throughout nature, for example
in the shapes of mountain peaks or the branches of trees. It is possible that our visual system,
which evolved in the great outdoors, finds it easier to process such patterns.
It is also intriguing that the brain appears to process movement when we see a handwritten letter,
as if we are replaying the writer's moment of creation. This has led some to wonder whether

Nguyen Van Thang

 IELTS Foundation
Pollock's works feel so dynamic because the brain reconstructs the energetic actions the artist
used as he painted. This may be down to our brain's 'mirror neurons', which are known to mimic
others' actions. The hypothesis will need to be thoroughly tested, however. It might even be the
case that we could use neuroaesthetic studies to understand the longevity of some pieces of
artwork. While the fashions of the time might shape what is currently popular, works that are best
adapted to our visual system may be the most likely to linger once the trends of previous
generations have been forgotten.
It's still early days for the field of neuroaesthetics - and these studies are probably only a taste of
what is to come. It would, however, be foolish to reduce art appreciation to a set of scientific laws.
We shouldn't underestimate the importance of the style of a particular artist, their place in history
and the artistic environment of their time. Abstract art offers both a challenge and the freedom to
play with different interpretations. In some ways, it's not so different to science, where we are
constantly looking for systems and decoding meaning so that we can view and appreciate the
world in a new way.

8 Forsythe’s findings contradicted previous beliefs on the function of ‘fractals’ in art.

9 Certain ideas regarding the link between ‘mirror neurons’ and art appreciation do not need
further verification.
10 People’s taste in paintings depends entirely on the current artistic trends of the period.
11 Scientists should seek to define the precise rules which govern people’s reactions to works of
art.
12 Art appreciation should not involve taking into consideration the cultural context in which an
artist worked.
13 It is easier to find meaning in the field of science than in that of art.

Nguyen Van Thang