Table of Contents
BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 481
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 481 – PASSAGE – 3
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 481
READING PASSAGE – 3
Where Does a Language Go If it Dies?
A. There are approximately 6,500 languages spoken throughout the world. However, the majority of these are spoken by only a few people each. Papua New Guinea alone, which has fewer than four million citizens, is home to the speakers of an estimated 832 languages, meaning that each language is spoken by an average of only 4,500 people. Around the world there are approximately 2,000 languages that are each spoken by fewer than 1,000 people.
The danger of language extinction is, therefore, imminent and widespread. In fact, over the last one hundred years, about four hundred languages have gone extinct. Many more are endangered, and linguists estimate that by the end of the twenty-first century, over half of the existing languages will be no more. Many linguists and anthropologists, finding the situation dire, have worked to develop ways of preserving the languages at the greatest risk before they are lost to history.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
B. The most well known example of a dead language is, perhaps, Latin. However, there is debate about whether Latin is truly dead, given that it evolved into several other languages, and, technically speaking, it is still learned and spoken by some, particularly scholars and clergy. The reasons Latin is still used are varied. Some Christian churches, for instance, still utilize Latin texts, with the Roman Catholic Church in particular having used Latin as a common language across multiple countries and cultures.
Latin is also one of the languages of science and so is commonly used to christen new discoveries. But perhaps most importantly, Latin in its written form is studied so historians can read ancient texts to better understand Western cultural development from literary, scientific, and political perspectives. Thus, in a sense, Latin may be not a living language, but rather the best documented of those that have died. Currently endangered languages with fewer interested parties may not be so well understood after their demise.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
C. Understanding culture and history are two of the most important aspects of language preservation. Each culture has a unique view of the world. When that view is learned by others, it expands humanity’s understanding of ourselves. When the last living native speaker of a language dies, we lose “literally hundreds of generations of traditional knowledge encoded in these ancestral tongues” according to the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, one of the premiere organizations working on language preservation.
For example, the Native American Cherokee have many concepts that are expressed in their language that have no equivalents in other languages. “Oo-kah-huh-sdee” is a word used for the excitement seeing a particularly cute human baby or baby animal. Likewise, they have no word similar to goodbye, only one conveying the meaning of seeing the other person later. And beyond cultural concepts and ways of being, stories, histories, and scientific knowledge are all lost each time a language dies. An Amazonian tribe’s language can contain centuries of passed-down knowledge about the plants and animals where they live. That information dies when the language does.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
D. A number of organizations besides the Living Tongues Institute work to preserve endangered languages. The primary ones are the Endangered Languages Programme run by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Google’s Endangered Languages Project. These two organizations provide complementary services. UNESCO contributes tools to monitor and assess trends in language diversity and delivers training, policy advice, and technical assistance, while the Endangered Languages Project, which Google formed in collaboration with a number of organizations and language groups interested in preservation, supplies a technological platform to enable language recording, communication between far-flung speakers of an endangered language, and language instruction.
E. These efforts are not in vain. There have been several cases of languages that were on the brink of extinction that have been revitalized. The Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation had only four hundred speakers of their native language when Tom Belt, part of the Oklahoma Band of the nation, arrived on their land. A fluent speaker of Cherokee, he realized that this part of his nation would soon be deprived of its last native speakers.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
He began a project teaching children how to speak Cherokee. Eventually, a Cherokee language immersion program was implemented in the local schools, with core classes such as science and math taught in Cherokee. This practice continues today, and now Cherokee is even taught at the university level.
Questions 27-31
Write down your answers on a piece of paper as you read. Complete each sentence with the correct ending A – J from the box below. Choose the correct letter A – J for questions 27-31.
You may use any letter more than once.
27. Latin
28. An extinct language
29. UNESCO
30. The Endangered Languages Project
31. Tom Belt ANSWER CHOICES
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A. tracks language diversity trends.
B. is widely used in academic and religious circles, so all agree it is not dead.
C. began teaching his native language to part of his own tribe.
D. facilitates communication and language recording.
E. may not be as effective in preserving dying languages as once hoped.
F. feared that the Eastern Band of the Cherokee tribe would disperse.
G. is completely lost to history and can no longer be studied.
H. cannot be classified neatly as either living or dead.
I. can lose its accumulated cultural knowledge to history.
J. taught the Cherokee language since all Cherokee speakers had died.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
Questions 32-40
Write down your answers on a piece of paper as you read. The Reading passage has five sections, A-E. Which section contains the following information? Choose the correct letter, A-E, for questions 32-40. You may use any letter more than once.
32. Modern use of an ancient language for academic and religious purposes
33. A language that nearly perished, but was revived
34. Words and phrases that lack an exact translation in some languages
35. A technology that facilitates language preservation
36. The expected number of languages in the year 2100
37. A small country with a lot of language diversity
38. The intimate connection between language and history
39. Two organizations with distinct services that work together
40. A prediction about endangered languages after they go extinct.
IELTS Academic Reading Test
IELTS Academic Reading Test
ANSWERS
27. H
28. I
29. A
30. D
31. C
32. B
33. E
34. C
35. D
36. A
37. A
38. C
39. D
40. B