Read to improve
Articles
Real reading passages to practise on. Select any word while reading to save it to your word bank.
350 articles · page 14 of 15
The significant role of mother tongue language in education
A. One consequence of population mobility is an increasing diversity within schools. To illustrate, in the city of Toronto in Canada, 58% of kindergarten pupils come from…
Theories of planet formation questioned
A. The traditional view of astronomy has been that planets form slowly as material congeals within the disk of gas, dust and ice known to surround young stars. First, gra…
Thomas Harriot: The Discovery of Refraction
Thomas Harriot: The Discovery of Refraction How an English mathematician beat Snell and Descartes to one of optics' most fundamental laws — and was forgotten for centurie…
Toddlers Bond With Robot
A. Will the robot revolution begin in nursery school? Researchers introduced a state-of-the-art social robot into a classroom of 18- to 24-month-olds for five months as a…
Toxic Stress: A Slow Wear and Tear
Toxic Stress: A Slow Wear and Tear How prolonged exposure to psychological stress damages the body -- and what can be done about it A Stress is a normal and necessary fea…
Traditional Farming in Zambia's Luapula Province
A. By tradition, land in Luapula Province is not owned by individuals but, as in many other parts of Africa, is allocated by the headman or headwoman of a village to peop…
Traditional Maori Medicine
A. The Maori are the indigenous people of the islands of New Zealand. Their traditional medicine, which is believed to date back as far as the 13th century, was a system …
Traditional Mori Medicines
Traditional Mori Medicines How indigenous New Zealand healing practices are being examined through the lens of modern science A The Mori people of New Zealand developed a…
Translating: a key to international understanding?
A. The term 'translation' is used for all cases where the meaning of expressions in one language (the 'source' language) is turned into the meaning in another (the target…
Twin Study: Two of a Kind
A. THE scientific study of twins goes back to the late 19th century, when Francis Galton, an early geneticist, realized that they came in two varieties: identical twins b…
Understanding Symbols
Judy DeLoache describes her research into the difficulties children experience with symbols A. About 20 years ago I had one of those wonderful moments when research takes…
Violins and Very Cold Weather
Lloyd Burckle and Henri D Grissino-Mayer suggest a link between the great Italian violin-makers and a mini ice-age 300 years ago A. There is considerable controversy surr…
Voyage of going: beyond the blue line 2 — The Voyage of the Muntjac
A. One feels a certain sympathy for Captain James Cook on the day in 1778 that he "discovered" Hawaii. Then on his third expedition to the Pacific, the British navigator …
Warning: Mondays Are Bad for Your Heart
Warning: Mondays Are Bad for Your Heart The science behind the Monday morning cardiac risk spike — and what it tells us about stress, biology, and the working week he ide…
We Have Star Performers!
A. The difference between companies is people. With capital and technology in plentiful supply, the critical resource for companies in the knowledge era will be human tal…
Western Immigration of Canada
1 A. By the mid-1870s Canada wanted an immigrant population of agricultural settlers established in the West. No urban centres existed on the prairies in the 1870s, and r…
Whale Culture
Whale Culture Social learning and cultural transmission in cetaceans — what whale behaviour reveals about the origins of culture ulture — the social transmission of learn…
Whale Culture
A. Most social scientists stubbornly resist the idea that animals have culture. Even such advanced cetacean mammals as whales and dolphins clearly don't have art, literat…
What Is the Secret of a Long Life?
What Is the Secret of a Long Life? F or the first time in recorded history, the number of people aged over sixty-five in many developed nations now exceeds the number und…
What Lucy Taught Us
A scientific finding in east Africa has changed our understanding of how humans have developed On a Sunday morning in late November 1974, a team of scientists were diggin…
What Makes a Musical Expert?
What Makes a Musical Expert? The psychology of musical expertise — from prodigy to master performer A. Musical expertise is among the most extensively studied forms of sk…
What Should Companies Do to Survive?
A. In the world of business, where today's fashionable management theory soon becomes a stale cliché or a quaint archaism, it is essential to have a clear idea about the …
What is an unfair advantage in sport?
A. What happened to the Australian athlete Ron Clarke in the 10,000 metres at the Mexico City Olympics of 1968 is now virtually forgotten, though at the time it was headl…
When Maps were Made for the Public
A. Since the art of map-making began, maps have largely been made for explorers, academics and rulers. It was not until the 19th century that the general public began to …