IELTS Updates

Right and left-handedness in humans 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 enable us to categorise phenomena that are essentially ambiguous.’ Research has shown that there is a genetic or inherited element to handedness. But while left-handedness tends to run in families, neither left nor right-handers wil...

HARD DISK DRIVE TECHNOLOGY A few years ago, a query about the health of a person's hard disk drive would have been met with a blank stare. Nowadays, almost everyone is aware of this remarkable electronic storage medium that is part of every modern computer, even though most users remain ignorant of the complexity of hard drive technology. In the early days of computing, an information record of a computer' s memory content was kept on punched cards similar to the way in which an automated piano stores the keynote sequences on a piano roll. Later, magnetic tape was used to store electronic signals and is still the favoured means of economically backing up the contents of hard drives. However, accessing information sequentially stored on tape is slow since the electronic data must be input through a fixed head in a single pass. Hard disk drives solve this problem by incorporating a spinning platter on which magnetic data can be made accessible via a moving head that re...

Grimm’s Fairy Tales The Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, named their story collection Children’s and Household Tales and published the first of its seven editions in Germany in 1812. The table of contents reads like an A-list of fairy-tale celebrities: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, the Frog King. Drawn mostly from oral narratives, the 210 stories in die Grimm’s’ collection represent an anthology of fairy tales, animal fables, rustic farces, and religious allegories that remain unrivalled to this day. Such lasting fame would have shocked the humble Grimms. During their lifetimes the collection sold modestly in Germany, at first only a few hundred copies a year. The early editions were not even aimed at children. The brothers initially refused to consider illustrations, and scholarly footnotes took up almost as much space as the talcs themselves. Jacob and Wilhelm viewed themselves as patriotic fo...

Twist in the Tale Fears that television and computers would kill children’s desire to read couldn’t have been more wrong. With sales roaring, a new generation of authors are publishing’s newest and unlikeliest literary stars A)   Less than three years ago, doom merchants were predicting that the growth in video games and the rise of the Internet would sound the death knell for children’s literature. But contrary to popular myth, children are reading more books than ever. A recent survey by Books Marketing found that children up to the age of 11 read on average for four hours a week, particularly girls. B)   Moreover, the children’s book market, which traditionally was seen as a poor cousin to the more lucrative and successful adult market, has come into its own. Publishing houses are now making considerable profits on the back of new children’s books and children’s authors can now command significant advances. ‘Children’s books are going through an incredibly fe...

READING PASSAGE -1 Skara Brae Off the Northern tip of Scotland, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the North Sea, lies a group of 70 or so islands called the Orkneys. These largely treeless isles are frequently battered by Atlantic storms, gales and rain. It was during one such storm in the winter of 1850, when the combination of wind and high tides stripped away the grass from the top of a small hill called Skerrabra on the west side of the largest island known simply as ‘The Mainland’. This revealed a number of stone dwellings. The local landowner started excavations on the site, and within twenty years the remains of four ancient houses were unearthed. However, work was later abandoned until 1925 when another storm damaged some of the excavated buildings. A sea wall was proposed to protect the site, and, during construction, yet more buildings were discovered. It was first believed that the village was an Iron Age settlement, dating from around 1500 years ago. Ho...

Instructions Passage Questions Answers You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14. which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. Reading Passage 1  You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14. Twist in the Tale Fears that television and computers would kill children’s desire to read couldn’t have been more wrong. With sales roaring, a new generation of authors are publishing’s newest and unlikeliest literary stars A Less than three years ago, doom merchants were predicting that the growth in video games and the rise of the Internet would sound the death knell for children’s literature. But contrary to popular myth, children are reading more books than ever. A recent survey by Books Marketing found that children up to the age of 11 read on average for four hours a week, particularly girls. B Moreover, the children’s book market, which traditionally was seen as a poor cousin to the more lucrative and successful ...