Table of Contents
BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 457
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 457 – PASSAGE – 1
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 457 – PASSAGE – 1
READING PASSAGE – 1
The end of the email?
More than 107 trillion emails are sent every year but its grip on your lives is loosening …
[A] For several years students of the internet have noticed that young people are abandoning email in favour of alternative electronic ways of staying in touch. A leading US internet research firm, ComScore, recently reported a 59% decline in the use of internet-based email services by 12 to 17 year-olds, an 18% decline among 25 to 35 year-olds, and an 8% fall among 35 to 44 year-olds. There are even signs that email is beginning to lose favour in the workplace too.
[B] Europe’s largest IT company, Atos Origin, intends to scrap internal emails altogether. Its staff will still use email to correspond with clients and other businesses but to talk among themselves they will adopt a variety of newer services such as instant messaging services and older methods – namely talking face to face.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
The company’s chairman prompted headlines around the world when he mentioned he had not sent an email in more than three years. But in fact, a number of companies have been quietly moving away from using email as the primary way of communicating within the company. Intel, for example, has been experimenting with ‘no-email Fridays’ encouraging its engineers to solve problems by phone or face to face instead.
[C] The move, in part, reflects the preferences of its workers, many of whom are under the age of 30. However, it is also happening because the volume of emails is becoming unsustainable. Employees who usually get 200 emails a day, spend between five and 20 hours a week just clearing their inboxes. The distraction and time-wasting of email have been a regular part of office life for more than a decade.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
More than 107 trillion are now sent each year, of which half are spam. The rest are a mix of round robins, personal messages and badly written memos that pile up in archives and do little to boost productivity. Research shows that it takes 64 seconds to regain concentration after reading an email and when you consider that US office workers have been measured checking their emails and swapping windows on their computer screens an average of 37 times an hour, that adds up to major distraction.
[D] Employees will be expected to use collaboration and social media tools instead of email to communicate with co-workers. In English, that means newer types of electronic messaging services. One such service is instant messaging. Devised in the 1990s by people playing games on the net, instant messaging or IM is much simpler and more responsive than email. IM users can see when colleagues are online and then communicate in small, continuous trails of dialogues on their screens, much more like a phone call.
These messages tend to be deleted as they go, thus avoiding clogged up email inboxes and archives. Less formal than email, they are also a far more efficient way of, for example, trying to arrange a meeting. lM or ‘chat’ facilities often form part of larger social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
[E] The immediacy of these synchronous messaging systems enable people to stay in touch and broadcast information to each other – their location, activities, plans and daily schedules without the need for constant emailing. ‘Status updates’ in which users post a simple message that can be read by all their contacts, enable people to see and share information that might not be worth an email but can be useful nonetheless. All such ‘easy chat’ services were born of engagement with the internet that just didn’t exist when email overtook the world of communication in the early 1990s.
[F] Until about a decade ago, most neuroscientists thought the brain stopped developing after childhood. But the constant distraction and torrent of information that we subject ourselves to – via email, surfing the web, TY, multi-tasking – is now thought to alter the way we think. The new technology is, in effect, rewiring our brains. Scientists have drawn parallels between the use of electronic communication and addiction to food stimulants that release small amounts of dopamine in the brain.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
We feel a buzz of excitement when a message arrives, which then fades, leaving us feeling flat and bored until the next one comes. But whether this makes us less productive is open to question. Research has found that people work better in bursts of concentration interrupted by breaks even for pointless emails – than long sustained spells.
[G] There are still an estimated three billion email accounts in the world, a figure that dwarfs any other form of communication. Email also retains several distinguishing qualities. Unlike the galaxy of social networks and IM services on the internet – all requiring different accounts and often their own software – email systems are all fundamentally compatible. It doesn’t matter which program you send it from.
And even its annoyances contain advantages: email archives have proved to be hugely valuable, and because it is an asynchronous medium (the recipients choose when to open their messages) this means we can try and preserve some control over our time. This is not the end of the email – it will remain a bedrock of businesses for some time to come. It’s simply the end of its monopoly.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Questions 1-6
The reading passage has seven paragraphs labelled A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
[1] reasons for the appeal of social networking tools over email
[2] a description of alternatives to email as a form of communication in the workplace
[3] a reference to why one business plans to reduce its flow of internal email
[4] a brief conclusion of findings on the effects technology has on our attention span
[5] Evidence of a decline in the popularity of email
[6] a reference to some positive features of email as a form of communication
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Questions 7-10
Write your answers in boxes 7-10 of your answer sheet.
List FOUR examples of information that can be communicated using the medium of Instant Messaging.
[7] ………………..
[8] ………………..
[9] ………………..
[10] ………………
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Questions 11-13
Use NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.
[11 Young people use social networking tools that provide the level of ……………….. they want.
[12] The advantage of social networking is that it puts people in control of the ……………….. they see.
[13] Email is an……………….. , so you don’t know if someone has read your message.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
IELTS Academic Reading Test
ANSWERS
1. E
2. D
3. C
4. F
5. A
6. G
7. LOCATION
8. ACTIVITIES
9. PLANS
10. DAILY SCHEDULE (STATUS UPDATES)
11. IMMEDIACY
12. INFORMATION
13. ASYNCHRONOUS MEDIUM