COURSE: IELTS Fighter Target 6.

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Reading 2 NEW MEDIA - TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN
LECTURE

I. Vocabulary
1. quantum /ˈkwɒntəm/ (n): a very small quantity of energy
lượng tử
2. keep track of: to have information about what is happening or where somebody/something is
theo dõi
3. collaboration /kəˌlæbəˈreɪʃn/ (n):  the act of working with another person or group of people to create or
produce something
sự hợp tác
4. reviewer /rɪˈvjuːə(r)/(n): a person who examines or considers something carefully, for example to see if any
changes need to be made
người nhận xét
5. incentive /ɪnˈsentɪv/(n): something that encourages you to do something
phúc lợi

EXAMPLES
● 1. Michael Nielsen is an expert on quantum computers.
● 2. Bank statements help you keep track of where your money is going.
● 3. It was a collaboration that produced extremely useful results.
● 4. There is no incentive for people to save fuel.
● 5. The reason for the lack of comments is that potential reviewers lack incentive

II. Content
“True/False/Not Given” is probably the most difficult question type on the IELTS reading paper which requires you
to identify if a number of factual statements given are true or not.

WHAT IS “TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN”

“True/False/Not Given” is probably the most difficult question type on the IELTS reading paper which requires you
to identify if a number of factual statements given are true or not.

The most important thing to remember is what the words ‘true’, ‘false’ and ‘not given’ actually mean and therefore
what IELTS wants you to write.

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● If the text agrees with or confirms the information in the statement, the answer is TRUE
● If the text contradicts or is the opposite to the information in the statement, the answer is FALSE
● If there is no information or it is impossible to know, the answer is NOT GIVEN

STRATEGIES

1. Read all the statements carefully, trying to understand what the whole sentence means rather than simply
highlighting keywords.

2. Match the statement with the correct part of the text.

3. Focus on the statement again and then carefully read the matching part of the text to establish if it is true or
false.

4. Underline the words that give you the answer.

5. If you can’t find the answer, mark it as ‘not given’

6. If you are really unsure or can’t find the answer, mark it as ‘not given’.

III. Practice
The World Wide Web from its origins
Science inspired the World Wide Web, and the Web has responded by changing science.

'Information Management: A Proposal'. That was the bland title of a document written in March 1989 by a then little
known computer scientist called Tim Berners-Lee, who was working at CERN, Europe's particle physics laboratory,
near Geneva. His proposal, modestly called the World Wide Web, has achieved far more than anyone expected at
the time.

In fact, the Web was invented to deal with a specific problem. In the late 1980s, CERN was planning one of the
most ambitious scientific projects ever, the Large Hadron Collider*, or LHC. As the first few lines of the original
proposal put it, 'Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC end with the question "Yes, but how
will we ever keep track of such a large project?" This proposal provides an answer to such questions.'

The Web, as everyone now knows, has many more uses than the original idea of linking electronic documents
about particle physics in laboratories around the world. But among all the changes it has brought about, from
personal social networks to political campaigning, it has also transformed the business of doing science itself, as
the man who invented it hoped it would.

It allows journals to be published online and links to be made from one paper to another. It also permits
professional scientists to recruit thousands of amateurs to give them a hand. One project of this type, called

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GalaxyZoo, used these unpaid workers to classify one million images of galaxies into various types (spiral, elliptical
and irregular). This project, which was intended to help astronomers understand how galaxies evolve, was so
successful that a successor has now been launched, to classify the brightest quarter of a million of them in finer
detail. People working for a more modest project called Herbaria@home examine scanned images of handwritten
notes about old plants stored in British museums. This will allow them to track the changes in the distribution of
species in response to climate change.

Another new scientific application of the Web is to use it as an experimental laboratory. It is allowing social
scientists, in particular, to do things that were previously impossible. In one project, scientists made observations
about the sizes of human social networks using data from Facebook. A second investigation of these networks,
produced by Bernardo Huberman of HP Labs, Hewlett-Packard's research arm in Palo Alto, California, looked at
Twitter, a social networking website that allows people to post short messages to long lists of friends.  

At first glance, the networks seemed enormous - the 300,000 Twitterers sampled had 80 friends each, on average
(those on Facebook had 120), but some listed up to 1,000. Closer statistical inspection, however, revealed that the
majority of the messages were directed at a few specific friends. This showed that an individual's active social
network is far smaller than his 'clan'. Dr Huberman has also helped uncover several laws of web surfing, including
the number of times an average person will go from web page to web page on a given site before giving up, and
the details of the 'winner takes all' phenomenon, whereby a few sites on a given subject attract most of the
attention, and the rest get very little.

Scientists have been good at using the Web to carry out research. However, they have not been so effective at
employing the latest web-based social-networking tools to open up scientific discussion and encourage more
effective collaboration.

Journalists are now used to having their articles commented on by dozens of readers. Indeed, many bloggers
develop and refine their essays as a result of these comments. Yet although people have tried to have scientific
research reviewed in the same way, most researchers only accept reviews from a few anonymous experts. When
Nature, one of the world's most respected scientific journals, experimented with open peer review in 2006, the
results were disappointing. Only 5% of the authors it spoke to agreed to have their article posted for review on the
Web - and their instinct turned out to be right, because almost half of the papers attracted no comments. Michael
Nielsen, an expert on quantum computers, belongs to a new wave of scientist bloggers who want to change this.
He thinks the reason for the lack of comments is that potential reviewers lack incentive.

 adapted from The Economist

*The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest particle

accelerator and collides particle beams. It provides information on

fundamental questions of physics.

Questions 1-6

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Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage?

Write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this  

1. Tim Berners-Lee was famous for his research in physics before he invented the World Wide Web.
2. The original intention of the Web was to help manage one extremely complex project.
3. Tim Berners-Lee has also been active in politics.
4. The Web has allowed professional and amateur scientists to work together.
5. The second galaxy project aims to examine more galaxies than the first.
6. Herbaria@home's work will help to reduce the effects of climate change.

EXPLANATIONS
1. Tim Berners-Lee was famous for his research in physics before he invented the World Wide Web.

It’d be great if you choose Paragraph 1, because there you can find an antonym of “famous”, which is “little known”,
which means before inventing www, Tim was not famous at all.

So statement 1 is FALSE
2. The original intention of the Web was to help manage one extremely complex project.
It is quite obvious to find the information for statement 2 at the beginning of Paragraph 2, where it is stated that
“the Web was invented to deal with a specific problem”, which is “one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever”
Therefore, statement 2 is TRUE
3. Tim Berners-Lee has also been active in politics.
I suggest that you scan the text for the key word POLITICS, yes and you can see it in paragraph 3, right?
4. The Web has allowed professional and amateur scientists to work together.
Luckily we can find “professional scientists”and “amateurs” quite easily in the text, and here it is said that the Web
permits professional scientists to recruit thousands of amateurs to give them a hand.
Then, number 4 is TRUE
5. The second galaxy project aims to examine more galaxies than the first.
It is a hard question as it requires you to understand every single details in this reading section and make a
comparison between 2 projects.
So we can see that the first project classify one million images of galaxies while the second one classify the
brightest quarter of a million of them , that means the first examines more galaxies than the second. So number 5 is
FALSE
6. Herbaria@home's work will help to reduce the effects of climate change.
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Statement 6 is NOT GIVEN because The project tracks changes in the distribution of species in response to
climate change, but no mention is made of reducing its effects

ANSWER KEY
1. FALSE
2. TRUE
3. NOT GIVEN
4. TRUE
5. FALSE
6. NOT GIVEN

HOMEWORK

Exercise 1

Read the text and answer the questions below.

The largest thing in the universe

More than ten years ago, while taking the temperature of the universe, astronomers found something odd. They
discovered that a patch of sky, spanning the width of 20 moons, was unusually cold.

The astronomers were measuring the thermal radiation that bathes the entire universe, a glowing relic of the big
bang. To gaze at this cosmic microwave background, or CMB, is to glimpse the primordial 1 universe, a time when it
was less than 400,000 years old.

The CMB blankets the sky, and looks pretty much the same everywhere, existing at a feebly cold temperature of
2.725 kelvins - just a couple degrees warmer than absolute zero. But armed with the newly launched WMAP
satellite, the astronomers had set out to probe temperature variations as tiny as one part in 100,000. Born from the
quantum froth that was the universe a half-moment after the big bang, those random fluctuations help scientists
understand what the cosmos is made of and how it all came to be.

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And standing out amidst those fluctuations was a cold spot. Over the years, astronomers have come up with all
sorts of ideas to explain it, ranging from instrumental error to parallel universes. But now, they're homing in on a
prime suspect: an enormous cavern of emptiness called a cosmic supervoid, so big that it might be the largest
structure in the universe.

According to theory, such a vast void, in which nary a star or galaxy exists, can leave a frigid imprint on the CMB.
The answer to the mystery, then, might simply be a whole lot of nothing. Yet puzzles remain, and the case is far
from closed.

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?

In boxes 1–5, choose

TRUE                          if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE                        if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN                if there is no information on this

1. Astronomers often find something odd on the sky.                                

2. The CMB is the thermal radiation across the entire universe.                                
3. The CMB varies from extremely low to very high temperatures.                                
4. Investigation of fluctuations of temperature in the space help scientists to understand what the cosmos is
made of.                                
5. The cosmic supervoid is the largest structure in the universe.

Exercise 2

Read the text and answer the questions below.

The hottest month

  According to the Met Office, the UK had its warmest July day ever on July 1, when temperatures hit 36.7 C near
London. There were record heat waves in many countries including Spain, while the African continent had the
second-warmest July on record.

  While the impact of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a key driver of rising temperatures,
another important factor is El Nino. This natural phenomenon, which appears as a large swathe of warm water in
the Pacific every few years, is known to push up global temperatures.

  In recent days there have been reports that this year's El Nino will be particularly intense. As a result, many
experts believe that 2015 will be the warmest year on record by some margin.

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  The seas have also been soaking up a large amount of heat, the NOAA said, with record warming in large
expanses of the Pacific and Indian Oceans

  Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the UK Met Office, said: "A strong El Nino is under way
in the tropical Pacific and this, combined with the long-term global warming trend, means there is the potential to
see some very warm months throughout this year - as the new figures for July appear to show.

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?

In boxes 1-5, choose

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. Africa had the warmest July day ever on July 1.                                

2. The temperature is rising due to the increased level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.                              
3. 2015 might be the hottest year in the history.                                
4. Record warming was recorded in various seas, such as Black and Azov Sea.                  
5. The year 2015 might very well consist of a number of very warm months.  

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 ANSWER KEYS

Exercise 1

1. NG

The first paragraph tells us that astronomers have found something odd on the sky. But is it written anywhere that
they do it often? No. That is why this information is not given in this text.

2. T

It is said in the second paragraph: "The astronomers were measuring the thermal radiation that bathes the entire
universe, a glowing relic of the big bang. To gaze at this cosmic microwave background, or CMB ..."

3. F

It is said in the third paragraph: "The CMB blankets the sky, and looks pretty much the same everywhere, existing at
a feebly cold temperature of 2.725 kelvins". Thus, CBM exists everywhere only at low temperatures.

4. T

It is said in the third paragraph: "....those random fluctuations help scientists understand what the cosmos is made
of...".

5. NG

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The fourth paragraph tells us that cosmic supervoid is so big that it might be the largest structure in the universe. But
is it? This information is not given in this text.

Exercise 2

1. F

The first paragraph tells us that the July 1 was the hottest day in UK and some other countries. Africa had the
second-warmest July.
2. T

It the second paragraph we can read that "...the impact of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a
key driver of rising temperatures...", so statement is true.
3. T

It is said in the third paragraph: "...experts believe that 2015 will be the warmest year...". So, 2015 may be the
hottest year ever.
4. NG

There is no information about these seas in the text.

5. T

In the final paragraph Peter Stott said that "there is the potential to see some very warm months throughout this
year", which means that there will probably be many hot months in 2015