In this lesson we're going to look at
IELTS reading true false not given questions. These are some of the
questions that student do find the most difficult when they actually take the
test. Now this reading is actually taken from the British Council website. It's a
practice reading test from there so if you do want to do the reading before we
go through this lesson, there's a link underneath the video so you can
take a look at that. Now in this IELTS true false not given exercise the text
is about chronobiology. You can see that because it actually
talks about it first here and chronobiology
is basically the daily rhythms of time and how they affect flora and fauna.
Flora is plants and fauna refers to animals. Now in truth false not given
questions you're given a set of statements in which this case you're
given seven here. You have to decide if by reading the text whether each statement is true false or not given. If a statement is
true that means it will agree with what
information is in the text. If it's false, the information in the text will contradict
the information. If it is not given, there's no information on this at all. What often
confuses students is the difference between false or not given so we'll look
at that during this lesson. Now the first thing we'll look at is how
to find the information in the text from these statements. Now what we want to do when you're doing this is to underline words that you think will help you find
that information so we call these key words in these statements. So these could be things like nouns, times, dates, those kind of things. So if we take a look at
these questions, these statements. The first one number one "Chronobiology is a
study of how living things have evolved over time" so in this first one I would
underline 'chronobiology'. So that's the word we use to find the answer in the
text. Now for the next ones the number two "The rise and fall of sea levels
affects how sea creatures behave" so here we could look for something like the
'rise and fall of sea levels' 'sea creatures' question three "Most animals
are active during the daytime" so we could look for 'animals' could look
something about 'daytime'. Question four "Circadian rythms identify how we do
things on different days" so here you could look for 'circadian rhythms' maybe
something about 'different things' 'different days'. Statement five "A
'night person'" so we'll try to find this one we want to look for 'night person' and
question six or statement six "New therapies can permanently change
circadian rhythms without causing harm so for this one we can look for new
therapies maybe look for causing harm" so we'll look for something about 'causing harm'. Statement number seven "Naturally produced vegetables have more
nutritional value" so something about 'vegetables' maybe we need to look for 'nutritional value' as well. So if you do this first, go
through some of the questions and underline some of the key words. You can
do this very quickly that I will just help you then go and find the
information in the text so you can then scan through the text to find this information. Now we'll look at starting to
find this information in the text so I want to scan through the text to do this. Now the first question here you can see or the first statement is "Chronobiology
is a study of how things have evolved over time" now this is clearly a
definition of chronobiology. The reading is about chronobiology so you
can probably assume this is probably near the beginning because they're going
to want to get...if it's a definition they're gonna want to do that at the start of
the text because you'd need to know what chronobiology means in order to
understand the text. So we'll highlight these first of all and then
we'll go to the beginning of the text to see if we can find out where this first
one is. So let's look at the first paragraph
that we have here. So this talks about chronobiology it "might sound a little
futuristic like something from a science fiction novel perhaps" and it tells you
what it is it's "a field of study concerning the oldest processes of life on
this planet has ever known - short-term rhythms of time and their
effect on flora and fauna". So this is a definition so this looks like that is
where the first question is. "Chronobiology is a study of how living
things have evolved over time". So now let's look at the next one so the next
when you found the first one you'll know that the other ones are going to follow
in chronological order so they will begin in the next paragraphs so the next
one number two the rise and fall of sea levels affects how sea creatures behave
so we want to go to the next body paragraph to have a look for this one.
Now here 'sea creatures' so if we read, 'marine life' so that looks like the
information could be here. "The rise and fall of sea levels" "marine life example
that is influenced by tidal patterns" so that information looks like it's there. The
next one 'most animals' so we can look for 'animals' and 'daytime'. Now here we are
"animals tend to be active or in- active depending on the position of the
sun or the moon" it talks about coming out during the hours of sunlight so
that's it looks like that's where that information is. The next one we're
looking for 'circadian rhythms'. There doesn't seem to be anything in this paragraph
about 'circadian rhythms' so it looks like we're going down to the next body paragraph. So circadian rhythms: "When it comes to
humans chronobiologists are interested in what is known as the circadian rhythms". So it looks like that's where this is. It says it identifies how we do
different things and explains here what it is "complete cycle of our bodies"
so that looks like that's where that information is. Now the next one we're
looking for a 'night person' so scan quickly through the text. Ah, 'night people' so that looks like that is where
that information is. "Can have a healthy circadian rhythm". Next we're looking for
"New therapies can permanently change..." so if we go down there's nothing about new
therapies here so we'll copy and paste that and look at the next paragraph. So
'new therapies'... "Scientists have limited ability to create durable modifications" and "Recent therapeutic developments for humans" so new therapies therapeutic
development recent so that means the same thing. We're talking about "causing harm" so if we go through..it talks here about "health suffering" so that looks like
where that one is. And the next one number seven. "Naturally produced vegetables have more traditional values" so we are looking for 'vegetables'
so if we keep going down the paragraph we can see 'vegetables' here "grown
in season and ripened on the tree... higher in essential nutrients"
'nutritional value' so that looks like where that question is. So the important thing that you should
have seen from when we did that exercise is just showing you that when you find
that you should underline key words and users key words to scan the text to find
out where the answers will be and once you found the first answer, you know
that you know that the other answers will follow that first one because they're in
chronological order. So they will only refer to a few paragraphs in the reading. It's not likely they'll refer to the whole reading. So in this case you've got
statement one refers to the first body paragraph, statement two and three, in
the second body paragraph, statements four and five are in the third body
paragraph and statement six and seven are in the fourth body paragraph. So what
this means you can actually ignore the paragraphs after this for the purposes
of answering these IELTS reading true false not given questions so all of
these paragraphs that follow so they are all not relevant to the
question so we're just focusing on this section of the reading. Now something important you should have noticed as we've been doing this IELTS reading true false not given exercise is
the importance of synonyms. Synonyms are words or phrases that have the same meaning exactly the same meaning or similar meaning to another word or phrase. Now
those are very important in order to find where the answer is in the text or
just to answer some of the questions so just to take an example if you look at
statement two here we can see when we try to find the answer so we had "The rise
and fall of sea levels" however it didn't say that in the text. It said 'tidal
patterns' which means obviously the same thing or in the statement we have 'sea
creatures' but in the text it says 'marine life' . So it's very important in IELTS
reading true false not given questions to make sure you're aware of synonyms
but this is actually the case with all of the IELTS reading for any type of
questions. Often the questions will use synonyms rather than the actual words
that are in the text. Now the next thing we can look at is how
to answer these IELTS reading true false not given questions. So we'll look at the first one the first statement is "Chronobiology is the study of how living things have
evolved over time" and we've worked out that the answer is in this paragraph. Now
what you need to do, you scanned the paragraph to find the information
quickly but now you need to read very carefully to try and find out if the
information is true, false, or not given. Now we can see that if we read through
the paragraph we can see it's "a field of study that concerns one of the oldest
processes life on this planet has ever known" and the definition is here: "Short-
term rhythms of time and effect on flora and fauna. Well this is a "study of living
things" so that seems true so far but it's the "short term rhythms of time" here
we have "evolved over time" now to me those don't mean the same things because evolved over time is suggesting long term changes however this is discussing
short term rhythms so it looks like this one is probably false. So we write the answer this for this one
as false. Okay now let's look at question two for this IELTS reading true false
not given exercise. "The rise and fall of sea levels affects
how sea creatures behave". Now we've seen that the answer is here "marine life for
example is influenced by tidal patterns." Now this the answer to this one is true
but that's because these two sentences are saying exactly the same thing. What's
actually been done is the information has just been turned around the other
way. You can see that if we place that here these are saying exactly the same
thing but in a different pattern so for example we could say if we take this one
here we could say "How sea creatures behave is..." so
we've just changed that information round you can see they're saying exactly
the same thing: "Marine life is influenced by tidal patterns' / "How sea creatures
behave is influenced by the rise the fall of sea levels". So they are saying
exactly the same thing so this question the answer / the statement is true. OK so
now we look at question three. "Most animals are active during the daytime".
Now the answer we can see is here where it talks about "animals" who are "active or
inactive depending on the position of the sun or the moon" so "Numerous
creatures humans included a largely diurnal", so that means they come out
during the day. Other animals are "nocturnal" which means they prefer to
come out during the night however are "MOST" animals
"active during the daytime". With this question this is one where it's very
tempting to put true as the answer because it says "NUMEROUS creatures,
humans included, are largely diurnal" however "NUMEROUS" is not the same as "MOST". "Numerous" is just like saying "many" creatures like to come out during the
hours of sunlight however if you look at the reading here it does not tell us
actually whether "most" animals are active during the daytime we don't
actually know that information we don't know whether MORE animals are active at
night or during the day just that MANY are active during the day. We could maybe assume more are active during the day but we don't actually have the answer. It's not in the text. So in that case this one is not given. It's these questions that can be very confusing to students but if you look
closely the answer is not actually there. So that question three highlights
another tip to be aware of in these IELTS reading true false not given
questions and that is to think about quantifiers. Quantifiers are things in
English that are used to talk about quantity. So you have things like "most, some, all, many, a few, numerous" so all those words are quantifiers but
they all obviously have different meanings so you have to be very careful
with those. They will sometimes be used in some of the questions and it could
easily trick you into getting the wrong answer but here "numerous"
means "many" but "most" equals the "majority" so that's not the same thing. Now we'll look at question four: "Circadian rhythms identify how we do different things on different
days". Now the answer to this is again giving a definition of circadian
rhythms and we can see the definition is here: This is the complete cycle our bodies are naturally geared to undergo
within the passage of a 24-hour day" so that is the answer to this question.
We should read any more information in case this is connected
"Aside from sleeping at night and walking during the day each cycle involves many
other factors such as changes in blood pressure and body temperature". Well
that's not really connected with this. "Not everyone has an identical circadian
rhythm" so people have different circadian rhythms. That could make you
think that's this but this is not to do with different people having different
circadian rhythms it's how we do different things on different
days so this...have to be careful this is not connected but it might make you
think it's connected to being different. So the answer is in this part here which
is the definition so it's "the complete cycle our bodies are naturally geared to
undergo within the passage of twenty over twenty four-hour-a-day". However this is not the same as what we
have here "circadian rhythms identify how we do different things on different days".
It's not about doing different things and on different days it's what we do
every day or the cycle our bodies have within within each 24-hour day which
will probably be repeated every day rather than actually being different. So
in this case then this one is false. It's not the same. In other words the
information contradicts what is said in the text. Now we'll look at statement five:
"The night person can still have a healthy circadian rhythm". Now we can see this is where we need to look at for answering the questions so we need to
read this carefully to find out if this part of the text contradicts the statement,
supports it, or it's not given. "Night people for example often describe how
they find it very hard to operate during the morning but become alert and focused by the evening". Now it could be tempting for this question too but not given by
reading that because that tells us...we talk about a 'morning person' or an
'evening person' - somebody who can work better in the evening or work better in
the morning but that doesn't tell us whether they
have a healthy circadian rhythm at all so it could be tempting to put not given.
However if we look a bit further: "This is a benign variation within circadian
rhythms known as a chronotype". Now this shows you the importance of having a
good knowledge of vocabulary in order to successfully
complete the IELTS reading test. "Benign" actually means something that's not
harmful so this is telling you that this variation between people - whether they're
night or morning people - it's not is not a harmful variation, so that means a
night person can still have a healthy circadian rhythm because it's not a
problem. So the answer for this one is true. So that question highlights another important tip for IELTS reading truth false not given
questions or actually for just doing the reading test generally - it's very
important to get a high level of vocabulary knowledge in order to successfully
complete the IELTS reading test. So learning new vocabulary is probably one
of the most important things in order to do well in the reading. If you don't have
a good knowledge of vocabulary, you're going to struggle to understand a lot of
the reading and possibly misunderstand some of the questions. Now we'll look at
statement six: "New therapies can permanently change circadian rhythms
without causing harm". Now we know already it's in this paragraph here - it starts
talking about plants and vegetables which is statement seven so we're
focusing on this part here: "Scientists have limited abilities to
create durable modifications of Crono biological demands". "Limited abilities"
means it's difficult so they can't do much. "Limited abilities to create durable
modifications" so that means it's difficult to create long term changes of
chronobiological demands. Here they're saying "New therapies CAN
permanently change circadian rhythms". Here they seem to be saying it's
difficult to change them, but we haven't seen anything about harm yet so we need
to read a bit further. "Recent therapeutic developments for humans such as
artificial light machines and melatonin administration can reset our circadian
rhythms". So they can change it. "For example but our bodies can tell the difference
and health suffers when we breach these natural rhythms for extended periods of
time". So when we do try to change them our "health suffers" so new therapies can
permanently change circadian rhythms without causing harm. Well that's
actually wrong new therapies can change them they can reset them however it does
cause harm. This is "without causing harm" so that means the information in the
paragraph contradicts what is in this statement because it
does cause harm. So the answer is false. What looking at that question
highlights again with regards to IELTS reading true false not given questions
or any reading questions is the importance of synonyms. We can see by
looking at the statement the different words or phrases are actually used in
the text. So here we have "new therapies" but in the text they have "recent
therapeutic developments" we have "permanently change" in the reading we
have "durable modifications". "Causing harm" "health suffers". So you can say is very
important they'll always use different language in the statement to what you
actually see in the reading which obviously makes it more difficult to
find the answers so you have to be careful with and look for synonyms or words that are similar or have different phrases. Now we'll look at the final one, seven: "Naturally produced
vegetables have more nutritional value". Now we know the answer to that one is
here plants appear no more malleable in this respect. "Malleable" means
something can be influenced or changed so that doesn't appear...there's nothing
about change here so it doesn't appear connected to that so it looks like it
could be here: "Studies demonstrate the vegetables grown in season and ripened on the tree are far higher in essential nutrients than
those grown in greenhouses and ripened by laser". So "vegetables grown in season and ripened on the tree" so that's gonna be "naturally produced vegetables" here
it's saying they have "more nutritional value" they're saying "vegetables grown
and ripened on the tree" so "naturally produce vegetables are far higher in
essential nutrients than those grown in greenhouses and
ripened by laser". So that means the artificially grown ones because in
greenhouses or using lasers so that means this does agree with this
statement because naturally produced vegetables have higher nutritional value
than those that are grown artificially so the answer to this one is true. So
finally this is some key things that we've learned from looking at these
IELTS reading true false not given questions. The first one is underline
keywords in the statements to find where the answers are when you start and then
when you've done that you can scan the reading to find the answers so
you're then scanning for those keywords that you've picked out. Remember that the
answers will follow in chronological order so they follow the
same order as the text. Also remember as we looked in that reading the answers
were only in four or five paragraphs of the text so they will appear in a part
of the reading not the whole reading. When you find where the answer is you
have to read the text very carefully to find out and make a decision if it's
true, false, or not given so for some reading questions you can scan and skim
the text but you have to read very carefully where you find where the answer
is. Remember to be aware of synonyms or different phrases that are used in the
statement and the reading. Also be aware of quantifiers because they can actually
change the meaning so member quantifies or things like "most" "all" "some" "a few". If
you can't find the answer and it's not in the text then it's not given. And
finally you have to improve your knowledge of vocabulary in order to do
well in the IELTS reading test because there are a lot of complicated words in
there.
