Jk Spoken English

READING PASSAGE 1 Listening In Noisy world SECTION A DECIBEL HELL: It’s not difficult for a person to encounter sound at levels that can cause adverse health effects. During a single day, people living in a typical urban environment can experience a wide range of sounds in many locations, even once-quiet locales have become polluted with noise. In fact, it’s difficult today to escape sound completely. In its 1999 Guidelines for Community Noise, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared, “Worldwide, noise-induced hearing impairment is the most prevalent irreversible occupational hazard, and it is estimated that 120 million people worldwide have disabling hearing difficulties.” Growing evidence also points to many other health effects of too much volume.jk Mark Stephenson, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based senior research audiologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), says his agency’s definition of hazardous noise is sound that exceeds the time-weighted aver...

 16 October Real Exam Reading Passage TASMANIAN TIGER A Although it was called tiger, it looked like a clog with black stripes on its hack and it was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modem times. Yet, despite its fame for being one of the most fabled animals in the world, it is one of the least understood of Tasmania’s native animals. The scientific name for the Tasmanian tiger is Thylacine and it is believed that they have become extinct in the 20th century. B Fossils of thylacines dating from about almost 12 million years ago have been dug up at various places in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. They were widespread in Australia 7,000 years ago, but have probably been extinct on the continent for 2,000 years ago. This is believed to be because of the introduction of dingoes around 8,000 years ago. Because of disease, thylacine numbers may have been declining in Tasmania at the time of European settlement 200 years ago, but the decline was certainly accel...

16 October Acual Exam Reading  The History of Woodlands in Britain The climate in Britain has been arctic for the last several million years, punctuated by relatively warm timespans, or interglacials of thousands of years, one of which we are in as of now. Since the last glaciation, British woodland history is considered quite short in terms of geological time spans, and is also closely related to the human civilization developing. At the peak of the last glaciation (100,000 – 12,000 BC), the majority of Britain would have had no trees. Birch and willow scrub may have grown along the lower reaches of the ice, with pine in some areas. It’s possible that remnants of pre-glacial flora were sheltered along the western bays of Great Britain and Ireland’s coasts, but as far as the southern parts of England, the ice kept any land barren. Information regarding the development of Britain’s flora following glaciation can be found by studying the deposits of pollen and seed in peat, as well a...

  Ahead of its Time A chance discovery in New Zealand has challenged the country’s recorded history One October afternoon, a young New Zealander, Sam Tobin, called his dogs and went for a walk down to the nearby Ruamahanga River. Having been very high for days, the river had at last fallen, and Tobin was eager to see what changes the floods had brought. The family farm borders the river and a four-metre-high flood bank testifies to its natural tendency to flood. Tobin stepped out onto a broad shoulder of river sand, where he noticed what he initially took to be a whitish rock, lit by the sun. Then, getting closer, he realised it was a bone. Such a thing was not uncommon in these parts-he had often come across bone fragments, or even whole skeletons, of cows and sheep. But as he scraped aside the stones he realised it was a human bone, something quite new in his experience. As he picked it up, he saw it was a skull, discoloured with age. Tobin replaced the skull and hurried hime to ...

 IELTS Reading Sample-  GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES I A.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. B.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 vie...