Throughout this course, you will learn skills to help you read academic texts quickly and effectively and understand speech. You will learn how to use these skills for note taking, writing and speaking in your chosen area of study. Let’s start looking at some of these strategies.
The following text is the first paragraph of a text from an IELTS practice exam. Read it and answer the questions that follow. I’ll be back afterwards.
Task 1: Sample Text Review
Making time for science
Chronobiology might sound a little futuristic – like something from a science fiction novel, perhaps – but it’s actually a field of study that concerns one of the oldest processes life on this planet has ever known: short-term rhythms of time and their effect on flora and fauna.
This can take many forms. Marine life, for example, is influenced by tidal patterns. Animals tend to be active or inactive depending on the position of the sun or moon. Numerous creatures, humans included, are largely diurnal – that is, they like to come out during the hours of sunlight. Nocturnal animals, such as bats and possums, prefer to forage by night. A third group are known as crepuscular: they thrive in the low-light of dawn and dusk and remain inactive at other hours.
