雅思口說考古題分享(26/May)

Part 1
1.你現在是學生還是在工作?
2.為什麼選擇你現在的學校?
3.你喜歡什麼料理?
4.你常常吃港式料理嗎?
5.你覺得小時候吃的食物現在還是一樣的味道嗎？
6.你會煮飯嗎?
7.你父母會教你煮飯嗎?
Part2
請敘述一本平常會閱讀的雜誌
Part3
1.你的同學也會看這份雜誌嗎?
2.為什麼覺得這雜誌對你很有幫助?
3.你覺得當編輯需要什麼樣的技能?
4.你覺得台灣人最愛看什麼雜誌?
5.為什麼台灣人愛看八卦?
6.你覺得為什麼報紙很多人喜歡看報紙?
7.看報紙對你有什麼幫助?

雅思考古題分享 (5/17)

Writing:

Task1:
two maps that depict the changes in a city from 1960 to now.
久違的地圖題…陷阱應該是now
Task2:
It is argued that watching television can be an effective way for children in
the terms of learning so many people have claimed that children should be enco
uraged to watch television regularly at home and at school.
Agree or disagree.
大意是這樣，單字沒很記得

Speaking:
Part 1:
City you live, why you like to live in this city.
Do you know your neighbors?
Is your place a good place for children to live in?
Do you like museums or art gallery?
What museum or art gallery did you visit when you were a child?
Do you think to go to museums can be a good way to teach students?
do you like taking photographs?
what did you do after you take photographs?
would you be interested in learning more skills in taking photos?

Part2:
Describe an indoor activity you played in your childhood.
Who, what, when, how to play, why you enjoyed.

Part3:
What's the popular indoor game to children now?
Do you think video games are harmful?
Do you think there're benefits for playing video games?
Do you think teenagers should do more outdoor activities?

【學員Luke推薦】流利英語學習最有趣

轉眼間我來流利英語學苑也快半年了，還記得我來考入班考試的當天，當我看到老外準備要跟我對話時，我整個人完全呆住了，從以前到現在，我頂多在學校背背英文單字，很少會開口講英文。所以當時我只好硬著頭皮上啦。考完後我發現文法、單字錯的一蹋糊塗，那天我便開始投入IE2 英文密集班初級的課程，第一堂課真可說是一個震撼教育呀，我發現怎麼每個人都說得這麼棒呀!我便下定決心雖然我比別人晚開始，但我要比別人更認真、更努力一定可以超越其他人。還記得當時我的老師是Warwick 他是一個非常親切的老師，不管是一個字還是一句話，他總是不厭其煩地糾正我們的發音、語氣，還記得有一次下課時老師還特別留下來單獨指導我口說，像我這種毛病特別多的學生，一般老師一定都直接略過，但他竟然足足教了我半個小時，也讓我十分感動，也是他讓我有信心開口說英文。到現在我升上了IE3英文密集班中級，和一些外籍老師聊聊天對我來說已經不是一件那麼困難的事了，不久之前我在家附近的早餐店看到一群完全不會講中文的僑生，和一個年紀一大把的老闆娘點餐，我在一旁看著他們比來比去，指來指去，都沒有一個結論，我就上前去充當翻譯員，幫助他們吃到美味的早餐。不只如此，除了口說外此學苑還提共了一整櫃的英文小說，讓每個學生藉此增加自己的單字量，對我來說，學英文的目的不只是為了要應付學校的考試，英文在現今社會已經成為一個非常重要的語言，不管在職場上，還是旅遊上，語言通了，很多事情就可以簡單解決，不妨大家都抽個空來流利英文學院聽聽看，會收到意想不到的效果唷。

學員背景：五專生，去年來學苑參加暑期密集班，中間因為時間無法配合，有試著加入別的補習班課程，最後因為還是最喜歡流利老師的教法，所以今年學校放寒假時跑回來上課，學校開課後改上晚上的課程。
上課期間：2013年7月~8月、2014年1月~迄今。
上課班級：暑期白天密集初中級班、白天密集中級班、聽說讀寫中級班

雅思不懂單字也能閱讀

Reading IELTS articles is hard because there are a lot of complex or unusual phrases.
1. Read the article once. Look at the highlighted words phrases in yellow. Try to match them with the choices under each paragraph. Note: the word form may be different! This is a close meaning to help your reading comprehension.

2. Read the article again. This time try to answer the comprehension questions the end.

3. Exploit the article. Don’t just do the questions and move on! There is a lot of language in an article you can use to develop. Notice how these phrases were used. Write them out again in your own sentences in a summary of the article.

You can print the original article here.

Thaliaceans and the carbon cycle
The jelly cycle
May 21st 2009
From The Economist print edition

A hitherto unknown way of burying carbon at the bottom of the sea

Swim or sink
A
IN 2006 Mario Lebrato and Daniel Jones of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England, were using a remotely operated deep-sea vehicle to study the sea floor near an oil pipeline off Côte d’Ivoire. What they found surprised them. It was a thaliacean graveyard. And its discovery throws into question1 the received wisdom about2 one important aspect of climate change, namely how much carbon from the atmosphere ends up at the bottom of the sea.
1.
A) challenges
B) criticizes
C) changes
2.
A) what people are told
B) what most people believe
C) what wise people think
B
Despite their unfamiliarity to most people, thaliaceans (a colony of which is pictured) are abundant creatures in many parts of the ocean. Their bodies are transparent and gelatinous3, like those of jellyfish. They are not jellyfish, though. They are actually chordates—in other words, part of the same group of animals as humans, even though they do not have backbones. The thaliacean graveyard off Côte d’Ivoire came as a surprise because not much was known at the time about what happens to animals with gelatinous bodies, whether chordates or jellyfish, after they have died. And it set Mr Lebrato and Dr Jones thinking4, because if thaliaceans are falling to the bottom of the sea in large numbers, they might be taking a lot of carbon with them5.
3.
A) solid and rigid
B) milky and firm
C) clear and squishy
4.
A) started … thinking
B) encouraged … to think
C) stopped … from thinking
5.
A) encouraging carbon to move to the sea floor
B) carrying the carbon in their dead bodies to the sea floor
C) preventing the carbon from reaching the sea floor
C
Until then gelatinous animals had largely been ignored by researchers studying the carbon cycle (the way that element moves through land, sea, air and living creatures) because gelatinous bodies were thought to contain a lot of water and thus relatively little carbon6. However, as Mr Lebrato and Dr Jones report in Limnology and Oceanography, when they analysed thaliacean tissues7 they found that the creatures were one-third carbon by weight. That was much more than they expected. Jellyfish, by comparison, are 10% carbon, and diatoms (single-celled algae that are common in plankton) 20%. It also helps explain why thaliaceans are so dense8—and thus sink so quickly after they die.
6.
A) very little carbon
B) a similar amount of carbon as water
C) not much carbon compared to the amount of water
7.
A) bones
B) the liquids in the body
C) skin, flesh etc.
8.
A) heavy
B) firm
C) common
D
Hitherto9 it was assumed that the main way carbon gets from the top to the bottom of the ocean was as part of dead planktonic algae sinking to the seabed. But the discovery of just how carbon-rich10 and prone to11 sinking thaliaceans are may change that assumption. Because they gather by the billion in feeding swarms around the world (they eat single-celled algae), the amount of carbon thaliaceans are taking to the bottom of the sea is by no means trivial12, according to Mr Lebrato. He admits it is difficult to make accurate comparisons, because the research is still in its infancy13. But he estimates that the “jelly pump”, as he refers to it, sinks almost twice as much carbon as algae do.
9.
A) Before this
B) Recently
C) A long time ago
10.
A) no carbon
B) some carbon
C) lots of carbon
11.
A) rarely
B) sometimes
C) tends to
12.
A) it is small
B) it is significant
C) it is large
13.
A) beginning
B) mature
C) old news
E
The question is, does that carbon stay down once it has arrived? That is unclear. The one sure way14 of keeping carbon on the seabed is in the form of calcium carbonate, the main ingredient of most animal shells. But thaliaceans have no shells. Nevertheless, some thaliaceans get buried before they have completely decomposed, and other researchers have found evidence that dead jellyfish sometimes accumulate15 in trenches without much decomposition, so perhaps thaliaceans do, too.
14.
A) One of several methods
B) We can’t be sure which method
C) There is only one 100% method
15.
A) fall apart
B) grow in amount
C) stay in one piece
F
Even if the carbon is not permanently buried, the lack of mixing16 between deep and shallow water in the ocean means that it is likely to stay down there for a long time—something that will have to be added to computer models of how the climate works. The carbon cycle has thus acquired another epicycle, and become even more complicated to understand than it was.
16.
A) it never combines
B) it often mixes
C) it is mostly separate
Copyright © 2009 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Comprehension Questions

Note: These are not IELTS style questions. They are just to check your understanding of each paragraph. Answers are below.

Paragraph A
Q1. How has the discovery changed scientists’ theories on climate change?

Paragraph B
Q2. How are thaliaceans different from Jellyfish?
Q3. Before the discovery of the graveyard, what did scientists probably believe about the numbers of thaliaceans?

Paragraph C
Q4. Why hadn’t climate change scientists previously thought about thaliaceans?

Paragraph D
Q5. How did scientists used to believe carbon was transported to the bottom of the sea?
Q6. Compared to algae, to what extent do thaliaceans affect the carbon cycle?

Paragraph E
Q7. Is there evidence that the carbon from thaliaceans remains on the sea floor?

Paragraph F
Q8. Why is it clear that more carbon is stored in the ocean than previously thought?
Q9. After this discovery, what do scientists know about the carbon cycle?


Vocabulary Guessing Answers
1 A
2 B
3 C
4 A
5 B
6 C
7 C
8 A
9 A
10 C
11 C
12 B
13 A
14 C
15 B
16 C


Reading comprehension answers
1 They have to re-calculate how much carbon from the atmosphere is stored on the sea floor.
2 They have backbones.
3 That their numbers were small.
4 That their bodies contained mainly water and very little carbon.
5 That it was carried down to the sea floor by the bodies of dead planktonic algae.
6 They affect it twice as much because they carry twice as much carbon to the bottom of the sea.
7 No. But scientists guess that it does because they have found the buried bodies of jellyfish, which still haven’t decomposed.          
8 Because even if the bodes of thaliaceans do decompose in the water. Deep water usually stays separate from shallow water, and therefore it is not released into the atmosphere.
9 It is more than they previously thought.

I hope this helps!
Please let me know what you think of this exercise. Email me or comment.

雅思寫作示範： Map – LA Freeways

IELTS Task 1 Writing – Los Angeles’ Freeways
Map
Comparing two past times
Comparing visual information
Before You Read
What kind of overview could you include?
What tenses will you need to use?
The development of freeways in and around Los Angeles from 1995 to 2005
Sample Answer

The two figures show the change in highway development in the Los Angeles area between 1955 and 2005. It can clearly be seen that while in general more freeways were constructed throughout the city of Los Angeles, the largest proportion were built to the South East of the city.

In 1955, there were few highways in the area. The longest ran from Hollywood, to the center of the metropolitan area, and on to the South East. Smaller roads also ran out from the city center to Pasadena, and Alhambra. However, most of the city itself was not connected. Another important point is that at this time the freeway to Long Beach was only half completed. Moreover, the entire route to San Pedro was still under construction.

In contrast, by 2005 there had been a dramatic expansion in the freeway network. Not only had all the previously unfinished roads been completed, but hundreds of additional kilometers had been built, connecting all of the smaller townships, now 15, with the exception of Redondo Beach. It was now possible to travel along the freeway from East to West and North to South.

Answers – Before You Read

The number of freeways increased. The extent of the network grew. More towns were connected. Where most of the freeways tended to be.

Past perfect is useful because you are talking about a time before a time in the past. And past simple.

【學員Kevin鄭推薦】重拾英文的信心

對你來說，英文是什麼？你對英文的第一印象是甚麼？你有想過嗎!他對你未來的影響!來學英文到底是有用還是沒用？你會想說：「它有什麼用處!他並不會給我任何的改變。｣但如果你是擁有偉大的理想與抱負、你是個有夢的人，那為何不築夢踏實呢？為什麼不實現你那崇高的鴻鵠之志呢!
在這之前，你要了解你的未來，時間如金錢，但光陰卻似箭，一去不復返，何不把握住現有的時光，擴充你的腦容量，增廣見聞，提升自己的能力，造就出夢想的未來。
現在的社會其實非常現實，國際通用語言就是英文，在國外，語言不通也是用英文，你會想說：「為什麼不是中文？｣但現實就是如此，與其怨天尤人，不如為未來出幾分力。
而我為什麼選擇流利，因為它提供一個很好的學習環境，不僅有上課活潑的外國老師，也可以交到許多好朋友，在這裡上課真的沒有壓力，老師上課也不會很嚴肅，就像在聊天一樣，真的很好。
我在流利已經一年了，有時回想起之前的補習班，因為怕犯錯還有跟不上進度，使我對英文沒有了信心，之後上了國中，從好友那了解英文的重要性，建議我來流利看看，一開始並沒有太大的期待，但經過試聽後才發現，英文也可以這麼有趣，使我再度燃起了信心，要把英文學好，當然，也希望大家也能把英文重視，了解它的重要性。