Ielts reading question-type based tests true false not given matching headings


Q3. it takes decade for the eucalyptus trees to recover after the fire. Q4



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aslanov

Q3.
it takes decade for the eucalyptus trees to recover after the fire.
Q4.
Koalas will fight each other when food becomes scarce.
Q5.
It is not easy to notice that koalas are ill.
Q6.
Koalas are easily infected with human contagious disease via cuddling
Q7.
Koalas like to hold a person's arm when they are embraced.


Welcome to Mr Aslanov’s Lessons 
QUESTION-TYPE BASED TESTS 
FunEnglishwithme +99894 6333230 
TEST 7 - THE ORIGIN OF WRITING 
Writing was first invented by the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia before 3,000 BC. It was also 
independently invented in Meso-America before 600 BC and probably independently invented in China 
before 1,300 BC. It may have been independently invented in Egypt around 3,000 BC although given the 
geographical proximity between Egypt and Mesopotamia the Egyptians may have learnt writing from the 
Sumerians. 
There are three basic types of writing systems. The written signs used by the writing system could 
represent either a whole word, a syllable or an individual sound. Where the written sign represents a word 
the system is known as logographic as it uses logograms which are written signs that represent a word. 
The earliest writing systems such as the Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mayan glyphs are 
predominantly logographics as are modem Chinese and Japanese writing systems. Where the written sign 
represents a syllable the writing system is known as syllabic. Syllabic writing systems were more common 
in the ancient world than they are today. The Linear A and B writing systems of Minoan Crete and 
Mycenaean Greece are syllabic. The most common writing systems today are alphabetical. These involve 
the written sign (a letter) representing a single sound (known as a phoneme). The earliest known 
alphabetical systems were developed by speakers of semetic languages around 1700 BC in the area of 
modem day Israel and Palestine. All written languages will predominately use one or other of the above 
systems. They may however partly use the other systems. No written language is purely alphabetic, syllabic 
or logographic but may use elements from any or all systems. 
Such fully developed writing only emerged after development from simplier systems. Talley sticks 
with notches on them to represent a number of sheep or to record a debt have been used in the past. Knotted 
strings have been used as a form of record keeping particularly in the area around the Pacific rim. They 
reached their greatest development with the Inca quipus where they were used to record payment of tribute 
and to record commercial transactions. A specially trained group of quipu makers and readers managed the 
whole system. The use of pictures for the purpose of communication was used by native Americans and by 
the Ashanti and Ewe people in Africa. Pictures can show qualities and characteristics which can not be 
shown by tally sticks and knot records. They do not however amount to writing as they do not bear a 
conventional relationship to language. 
An alternative idea was that a system by which tokens, which represented objects like sheep, were 
placed in containers and the containers were marked on the outside indicating the number and type of tokens 
within the container gave rise to writing in Mesopotamia. The marks on the outside of the container were a 
direct symbolic representation of the tokens inside the container and an indirect symbolic representation of 
the object the token represented. The marks on the outside of the containers were graphically identical to 
some of the earliest pictograms used in Sumerian cuneiform, the world’s first written language. However, 
cuneiform has approximately 1,500 signs and the marks on the outside of the containers can only explain the 
origins of a few of those signs.
The first written language was the Sumerian cuneiform. Writing mainly consisted of records of 
numbers of sheep, goats and cattle and quantites of grain. Eventually clay tablets were used as a writing 
surface and were marked with a reed stylus to produce the writing. Thousands of such clay tablets have been 
found in the Sumerian city of Uruk. The earliest Sumerian writing consists of pictures of the objects 
mentioned such as sheep or cattle. Eventually the pictures became more abstract and were to consist of 
straight lines that looked like wedges. 
The earliest cuneiform was an accounting system consisting of pictograms representing commodities 
such as sheep and a number. The clay tablets found might for example simply state “ten sheep”. Such 
writing obviously has its limitations and would not be regarded as a complete writing system. A complete 
writing system only developed with the process of phonctization. This occurs when the symbol ceases to 
represent an object and begins to represent a spoken sound, which in early cuneiform would be a word. This 



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