Reading
UNIT
1
9 What is the writers' purpose in the first paragraph?
10 Is there a sentence that best summarises the main idea in this first paragraph?
These are the types of questions that you can ask yourself when you first read
a text. They form part of our reading strategies.
Read this title and
sub-heading and discuss
Questions 6-8 above with
a partner:
*a person who manages something (like a park or property)
• Now read the first two paragraphs of the article:
Soil, air and water are the three essentials for life on land. But
environmental policies have often taken soil for granted. Soil is of vital
importance because we use it to produce our food. It is also an
integral part of the landscapes and habitats we value so highly in the
countryside,
We published our report, Sustainable Use of Soil, this week, In it,
the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution set out to establish
what the effects would be if current human activities that affect soils,
and present trends, continued unchanged for the next 100 years.
11 What do you learn about the writer and his purpose in the second paragraph?
12 How do you expect the article to continue?
13 How do you think the style of this article may be different from 'The Dynamic
Continent'?
It is important to gradually build on your understanding of the information that
is provided in each paragraph of a text. If you begin your reading by asking the
type of questions you have met in this unit, you will begin to interact with the
text immediately and you will be off to a good start.
For more practice in reading titles and sub-headings, do Exercise A in the

dolphins that live in the ocean or,
in the case of a few species,
muddy rivers and estuaries, the
darkness is unimportant. What is
crucial to them is sound.
Sound is an efficient way to
transmit and sense information,
especially as it travels five times
faster through water than through
air. If humans shout to someone,
it is unlikely that they will be heard
a kilometre away. But if a whale
'shouts' in an ocean channel,
another whale may hear it tens, if
not hundreds of kilometres away.
Whales and dolphins use sound
in two ways: for communication
and for echolocation. Dolphins,
porpoises and toothed whales
communicate through a wide
variety of high-frequency sounds
- pure tone whistles, pulsed
squeals, screams or barks -
generally at frequencies of
5OOHz to 20kHz (where a
hertz is a cycle per second and a
kilohertz a thousand).
But as well as using sounds to
communicate, toothed whales
and dolphins also rely on

to skim through the text fairly quickly, scanning for clues as to where the information might be
found. This means you will need to read faster than your normal pace. There are a variety of IELTS
question types that test your ability to extract specific information or details from a text. In nearly
all cases, the information required is factual.
SHORT-ANSWER QUESTIONS
In this type of task, the questions test your ability to locate the right information
in an article or passage. When you meet a set of short-answer questions in
IELTS, you should read them carefully, before you go back to the text. In this way,
you will know what you are looking for.
• Read through the following set of questions which are based on an article about
sand. Underline the key words in each question.
1 What TWO substances made, by humans are mentioned in the text?
2 Which part of a grain of sand have scientists measured?
3 What TWO factors determine the shape of a piece of sand?
4 How was the beach on Kamoama Island created?
5 Where, according to the text, can fine sandy beaches be found?
6 Who argues that sand is more efficient than coastal technology?
• Discuss what you have underlined in class.
7 Which answer do you think will be quickest to find in the text? Why?
8 Which answer(s) do you think will be hardest to locate in the text? Why?
• Read the article on the following page and underline the answers to Questions 1-6.
Do this in ten minutes if you can.
Reading UNIT 2
Sifting
through
the Sands
of Time
When you're on the
beach, you're stepping
on ancient mountains,

from crystalline quartz rocks or from gypsum, like the white
sands of New Mexico. On Pacific Islands jet black sands form
from volcanic minerals. Other black beaches are magnetic.
Some sand is very recent indeed, as is the case on the island
of Kamoama in Hawaii, where a beach was created after a
volcanic
eruption
in
1990, Motten
lava
spilled into
the sea and
exploded in glassy droplets.
Usually, the older the granules, the finer they are and the
smoother their edges. The fine, white beaches of northern
Scotland, for instance, are recycled from sandstone several
hundred million years old. Perhaps they will be stone once
more, in another few hundred million.
Sand is an irreplaceable industrial ingredient whose uses
are legion: but ft has one vital function you might never even
notice. Sand cushions our land from the sea's impact, and
geologists say it often does a better job of protecting our
shores than the most advanced coastal technology.
Discuss your answers to the six questions as a class. What sort of answers would
lose marks?
What other factual information could be tested in this passage?
Reading
UNIT2
LABELLING A DIAGRAM
This type of task often makes scanning easier because the information is located

building was the marvel of its
day. It was more than 400ft
high in a colonnaded court
and was equipped with a
hydraulic lift to raise fuel to
the roof. Its lantern, probably
magnified by a reflecting
Underwater archaeologists
search the waters for Egyptian
relics, Christopher Walker writes
device, could be seen over a
radius of 34 miles. Within its
square base were up to 300
rooms designed to house
mechanics and operators;
above were an octagonal
storey and a circular storey,
topped by a lantern with a
beacon, the exact workings of
which are still a mystery.
Although the lantern
collapsed as early as the
eighth century, the lighthouse
served for 1,400 years as the
symbol of Alexandria and a
beacon for ships, until
devastating earthquakes in
1100 and 1307 brought it
tumbling down, presumably
sending much of the debris

"We are making an
identification of the blocks,
studying the inscriptions and
choosing some to be taken
out," Cortegiani said. "We
cannot take all the blocks out,
but maybe we can have
something like an underwater
archaeological park."
Complete the following IELTS task in ten minutes.