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IELTS READING – “JUST DO IT!” Or – the subtle art of procrastination S52AT2

 IELTS Reading “JUST DO IT!” Or – the subtle art of procrastination reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to Human Behaviour & Self-management subject..

Procrastination, a kind of chronic time-wasting, has long been dismissed as an innocuous human foible. Q14 Researchers are now beginning a more sober examination of this practice, however, and there may be good reason for doing so: twenty percent of Americans now admit to suffering from procrastination, a fifteen percent jump from 1970. Researchers are bemused as to Q15 what explains this sharp rise in the figures, but there is no doubt that procrastination is wreaking havoc on people’s lives. One side effect is perhaps the most predictable: procrastination hampers academic and work commitments as sufferers fail to meet deadlines or achieve their goals. But there are other costs too. In shifting burdens of responsibility onto others and reneging on their promises, procrastinators undermine relationships both in the workplace and in their private lives, all of which takes a toll on their well-being. Q17 In one study, over the course of a semester, procrastinating university students were noted to be suffering from notably weaker immune systems, more gastrointestinal problems, and higher occurrences of insomnia than their nonprocrastinating peers.

 

 Is there hope for procrastinators? Everyone admits it’s a difficult demon to beat, but a few selfstyled procrastination coaches have developed strategies to that end. Although evidence for their efficacy is largely anecdotal at this stage, some of these strategies at least offer promising avenues for future research. Career counsellor Q20&25 Amy Sykes focuses on the basics. Firstly, she says, embrace peer pressure. Many weight loss and self-help groups encourage individuals to hold themselves accountable to a wider circle of their peers, and Sykes believes this social safety net can be harnessed just as successfully by procrastinators. A change in perspective is also considered vital. ‘When we want people to do something for us, we really sell it to them,’ Sykes observes. ‘But when we need to do it ourselves, we focus on all the reasons we don’t want to.’ Instead, she argues, we should pique our own interest and Q22 find ways to make our important projects more attractive – by turning them into little competitions or fact-finding missions, for example. If all else fails, Sykes believes we must recompense ourselves for our troubles, ideally with little treats upon finishing a task. ‘It doesn’t need to be big,’ she says. ‘Pancakes, a hot bath, or an episode of your favourite television show could all do the trick.’

 Though these tips may be a little too garden-variety 1 for some, others have thought up more cunning twists on the human psyche. One such approach was developed by the crime writer Q19&24 Raymond Chandler, who built his strategy on a basic yet critical observation: procrastinators rarely sit about completely inactively, but rather tend to engage themselves in useful but less pressing tasks: vacuuming behind the bed, cleaning out the fridge, washing the windows and so on. The result is that they ‘cheat’ themselves into experiencing feelings of productivity and satisfaction that offer further distraction from the original project. Chandler’s method, which he successfully used to help himself write detective stories, involves setting aside a period of time in which the procrastinator may do one of two things: absolutely nothing or work on the project that he or she wishes to complete. Sitting still, without the satisfaction of busying himself with less urgent tasks, Chandler slowly felt the itch of tedious monotony sink in. Within five or ten minutes, this itch had become intolerable, and he felt compelled to begin writing his stories.

 Another procrastinator, professor of philosophy John Perry, developed his strategy against procrastination based on essentially the same insight as Chandler’s – that procrastinators are actually quite good at doing ‘marginally useful’ tasks, just not the tasks they really ought to be doing. He thus surmised that the enemy of successful task completion is not, in fact, that great engine of productive activity – procrastination itself – but rather how we order our projects in the hierarchy of urgency. If a procrastinator needs to finish an assignment before 8 o’clock the following morning, for instance, he is likely to find himself sharpening pencils instead. ‘But if all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils,’ Perry observes, ‘no force on earth could get him to do it.’ Q21 The key to this approach is to rank one’s priorities, then bump the most urgent tasks a little further down and place at the top some potentially daunting and important-sounding-projects which are ultimately not all that essential. If the student with the essay deadline can convince himself he absolutely must reorganise his email box, or finish reading that old, dusty novel he only got halfway through, then suddenly the essay deadline is going to seem a far superior option.

 If the Ancient Greeks struggled with it, and all the life coaches, counsellors, and motivational speakers in the modern world are unable to erase it from our existence either, it seems unlikely that procrastination will ever truly be put to rest. As these procrastination gurus have shown, however, the right strategies have the potential to minimise its impact – if you ever get around to using them.

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IELTS READING – KNIGHTHOODS – An ancient tradition S52AT1

 IELTS Reading KNIGHTHOODS – An ancient tradition reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to Culture & Traditions  subject..

Q1 Knighthoods are one of the oldest and most prestigious forms of honouring individual citizens in the United Kingdom. Although initially conferred upon members of the armed forces solely on the basis of their performance in combat, the award now recognises all contributions to national life. Some of the most notable knighthoods of recent times have been bestowed on musicians or entertainers such as Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney, and the fields of finance, industry and education are also represented. Q3 Citizens of non-Common wealth 1 countries are eligible for an ‘honorary’ knighthood for which they are not permitted to use the titles ‘Sir’ or ‘Dame’.

 

Q4 Perceived to be a British tradition, the legacy of knighthoods actually dates back to ancient Rome, from where it spread throughout a number of European countries in the Middle Ages and acquired certain features. A would-be knight had to undergo strict military instruction from Q7 a young age, which included spending time as an assistant (known as an esquire) to an existing knight, and participating in battle. He had to learn how to equip his knight for battle, and to help him with putting on the heavy and cumbersome armour of the time. He was responsible for keeping this armour in good condition, polishing and cleaning it. He also had to demonstrate chivalrous behaviour such as generosity, selflessness, fearlessness and skill in battle. Finally, Q6 the potential knight also required the financial means to purchase horses, weapons and armour for himself, and then make himself available to serve the Q8 ruling monarch for a minimum period each year.

In modern times, the process is very different. Instead of relying on formalised military training or political patronage, Q9 a nominations system is used. Q11 This way, a person’s name can be put forward for a knighthood by any institution such as a school or business, or even just a fellow member of society. After this, Q10 an advisory panel, acting on behalf of the sovereign, deliberates and selects the future knights and dames from the pool of applications. Those selected are contacted discreetly before announcements are made to ensure that they wish to accept the honour.

In rare cases, knighthoods can be revoked through a process known as forfeiture. This most often occurs when the recipient is convicted of a criminal offense. Q12 Terry Lewis, a police officer in Queensland, Australia, was stripped of his knighthood after being implicated in a string of illegal activities that included accepting $700,000 worth of bribes from bookmakers and casinos and forging the signature of an Australian politician on a police document in 1981. Lewis has repeatedly protested his innocence and suggested that he was falsely accused of these crimes, but his appeals failed in court. Q13 In a more serious incident, British art historian and intelligence officer Anthony Blunt lost his knighthood after it was discovered that he was working as a double agent and handing confidential material over to the Soviet Union.

Knighthoods have also been forfeited for reasons of incompetence rather than outright illegality or treason. Having been knighted for ‘services to banking’ in 2004, CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland Fred Goodwin presided over a 24-billion-pound loss at the bank just four years later. Although retaining a 16 Million pound pension, to which he was legally entitled, Goodwin had his knighthood annulled as the Queen’s advisory panel deemed him ‘the chief decision maker at the time’. Scandals such as these have contributed to spirited debates regarding the role and relevance of knighthoods in 21st-century society.

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IELTS READING – HIGHS AND LOWS S51AT3

IELTS Reading HIGHS AND LOWS reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to Psychology & Mental Health subject..

Hormone levels – and hence our moods -may be affected by the weather. Gloomy weather can cause depression, but sunshine appears to raise the spirits. In Britain, for example, the dull weather of winter drastically cuts down the amount of sunlight that is experienced which strongly affects some people. They become so depressed and lacking in energy that their work and social life are affected. This condition has been given the name SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Sufferers can fight back by making the most of any sunlight in winter and by spending a few hours each day under special, full-spectrum lamps. These provide more ultraviolet and blue-green light than ordinary fluorescent and tungsten lights. Some Russian scientists claim that children learn better after being exposed to ultraviolet light. In warm countries, hours of work are often arranged so that workers can take a break, or even a siesta, during the hottest part of the day. Scientists are working to discover the links between the weather and human beings’ moods and performance.

It is generally believed that tempers grow shorter in hot, muggy weather. There is no doubt that ‘crimes against the person’ rise in the summer, when the weather is hotter and fall in the winter when the weather is colder. Research in the United States has shown a relationship between temperature and street riots. The frequency of riots rises dramatically as the Q38 weather gets warmer, hitting a peak around 27-30°C. But is this effect really due to a mood change caused by the heat? Some scientists argue that trouble starts more often in hot weather merely because there are more people in the street when the weather is good.

Psychologists have also studied how being cold affects performance. Researchers compared divers working in icy cold water at 5°C with others in water at 20°C (about swimming pool temperature). The colder water made the divers worse at simple arithmetic and other mental tasks. But significantly, their performance was impaired as soon as they were put into the cold water – before their bodies had time to cool down. This suggests that the low temperature did not slow down mental functioning directly, Q26 but the feeling of cold distracted the divers from their tasks.

Psychologists have conducted studies showing that people become less sceptical and more optimistic when Q37 the weather is sunny However, this apparently does not just depend on the temperature. An American psychologist studied customers in a temperature-controlled restaurant. They gave bigger tips when the sun was shining and smaller tips when it wasn’t, even though the temperature in the restaurant was the same. Q31 A link between weather and mood is made believable by the evidence for a connection between behaviour and the length of the daylight hours. This in turn might involve the level of a hormone called melatonin, produced in the pineal gland in the brain. Q33 The amount of melatonin falls with greater exposure to daylight. Research shows that melatonin plays an important part in the Q27 seasonal behaviour of certain animals. For example, food consumption of stags increases during the winter, reaching a peak in February/ March. It falls again to a low point in May, then rises to a peak in September, before dropping to another minimum in November. These changes seem to be triggered by varying melatonin levels.

In the laboratory, hamsters put on more weight when the nights are getting shorter and their melatonin levels are falling. On the other hand, if they are given injections of melatonin, they will stop eating altogether. It seems that Q40 time cues provided by the changing lengths of day and night trigger changes in animals’ behaviour – changes that are needed to cope with the cycle of the seasons. People’s moods too, have been shown to react to the length of the Q39 daylight hours. Sceptics might say that longer exposure to sunshine puts people in a better mood because they associate it with the happy feelings of holidays and freedom from responsibility. Q28&32 However, the belief that Q35 rain and murky weather make people more unhappy is borne out by a study in Belgium, which showed that a telephone counselling service gets more telephone calls from people with suicidal feelings when it rains.

When there is a thunderstorm brewing, some people complain of the air being ‘heavy’ and of feeling irritable, moody and on edge. They may be reacting to the fact that the air can become slightly positively charged when large thunderclouds are generating the intense electrical fields that cause lightning flashes. The positive charge increases the levels of serotonin (a chemical involved in sending signals in the nervous system). Q30&36 High levels of serotonin in certain areas of the nervous system make people more active and reactive and, possibly, more aggressive. When certain winds are blowing, such as the Mistral in southern France and the Fohn in southern Germany, mood can be affected – and the number of traffic accidents rises. It may be significant that the concentration of positively charged particles is greater than normal in these winds. In the United Kingdom, 400,000 ionizers are sold every year. These small machines raise the number of negative ions in the air in a room. Many people claim they feel better in negatively charged air.

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IELTS READING – Secrets of the Forest S51AT2

IELTS Reading Secrets of the Forest reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to Environment & Ecology  subject..

A. In 1942 Allan R Holmberg, a doctoral student in anthropology from Yale University, USA, ventured deep into Q13 the jungle of Bolivian Amazonia, and searched out an isolated band of Siriono Indians. Q22 The Siriono, Holmberg later wrote, led a “strikingly backward” existence. Their villages were little more than clusters of thatched huts. Life itself was a perpetual and punishing search for food: some families grew manioc and other starchy crops in small garden plots cleared from the forest, while other members of the tribe scoured the country for small game and promising fish holes. When local resources became depleted, the tribe moved on. As for technology, Holmberg noted, the Siriono “may be classified among the most handicapped peoples of the world”. Other than bows, arrows, and crude digging sticks, the only tools the Siriono seemed to possess were “two machetes worn to the size of pocket- knives”.

B. Although the lives of the Siriono have changed in the intervening decades, the image of them as Stone Age relics has endured. Indeed, in many respects the Siriono epitomize the popular conception of life in Amazonia. Q16 To casual observers, as well as to influential natural scientists and regional planners, the luxuriant forests of Amazonia seem ageless, unconquerable, a habitat totally hostile to human civilization. The apparent simplicity of Indian ways of life has been judged an evolutionary adaptation to forest ecology, living proof that Q14 Amazonia could not – and cannot – sustain a more complex society. Archaeological traces of far more elaborate cultures have been dismissed as the ruins of invaders from outside the region, abandoned to decay in the uncompromising tropical environment.

C. The popular conception of Amazonia and its native residents would be enormously consequential if it were true. But the human history of Amazonia in the past 11,000 years betrays that view as myth. Evidence gathered in recent years from anthropology and archaeology indicates that Q21&23 the region has supported a series of indigenous cultures for eleven thousand years; an extensive network of complex societies – some with populations perhaps as large as 100,000 – thrived there for more than 1,000 years before the arrival of Europeans. (Indeed, some contemporary tribes, including the Siriono, still live among the earthworks of earlier cultures.) Far from being evolutionarily retarded, Q25 prehistoric Amazonian people developed technologies and cultures that were advanced for their time. If the lives of Indians today seem “primitive”, the appearance is not the result of some environmental adaptation or ecological barrier; rather it is a comparatively recent adaptation to centuries of economic and political pressure. Investigators who argue otherwise have unwittingly projected the present onto the past.

D. The evidence for a revised view of Amazonia will take many people by surprise. Q24 Ecologists have assumed that tropical ecosystems were shaped entirely by natural forces and they have focused their research on habitats they believe have escaped human influence. But as the University of Florida ecologist, Peter Feinsinger, has noted, an approach that leaves people out of the equation is no longer tenable. The archaeological evidence shows that Q15 the natural history of Amazonia is to a surprising extent tied to the activities of its prehistoric inhabitants.

E. The realization comes none too soon. In June 1992 political and environmental leaders from across the world met in Rio de Janeiro to discuss how developing countries can advance their economies without destroying their natural resources. Q19 The challenge is especially difficult in Amazonia. Because the tropical forest has been depicted as ecologically unfit for large-scale human occupation, some environmentalists have opposed development of any kind. Ironically, one major casualty of that extreme position has been the environment itself. While policy makers struggle to define and implement appropriate legislation, development of the most destructive kind has continued apace over vast areas.

F. The other major casualty of the “naturalism” of environmental scientists has been Q20 the indigenous Amazonians, whose habits of hunting, fishing, and slash-and-burn cultivation often have been represented as harmful to the habitat. In the clash between environmentalists and developers, Q17 the Indians, whose presence is in fact crucial to the survival of the forest, have suffered the most. The new understanding of the pre-history of Amazonia, however, points toward a middle ground. Archaeology makes clear that with judicious management selected parts of the region could support more people than anyone thought before. The long-buried past, it seems, offers hope for the future.

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