Academic/General Training Module by Adam Smith First Published in 2015

 
 

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 IELTS
 JOURNAL 
 
106 
Exercise 45: IELTS Reading: gap-fill summary 
Read the following passage about the discovery of penicillin.
The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming. 
Fleming recounted that the date of his breakthrough was on the morning of 
September 28, 1928. It was a lucky accident: in his laboratory in the basement of 
St. Mary's Hospital in London, Fleming noticed a petri dish containing 
Staphylococcus culture that he had mistakenly left open. The culture had 
become contaminated by blue-green mould, and there was a halo of inhibited 
bacterial growth around the mould. Fleming concluded that the mould was 
releasing a substance that was repressing the growth of the bacteria. He grew a 
pure culture and discovered that it was a Penicillium mould, now known to be 
Penicillium notatum. Fleming coined the term "penicillin" to describe the filtrate 
of a broth culture of the Penicillium mould. 
Fill the gaps in the summary below using words from the passage. 
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by ___1___ on September 28, 1928. He found 
that the growth of bacteria on a petri dish was ___2___ by a blue-green mould that 
had contaminated the culture. He realised that the mould was producing a substance 
that was responsible for ___3___ bacterial growth. 
 
 

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 IELTS
 JOURNAL 
 
107 
Exercise 46: True, False, Not Given 
Read the following passage from a text about linguistics.
Before the twentieth century, the term "philology" was commonly used to refer 
to the science of language, which was then predominantly historical in focus. 
However, this focus has shifted and the term "philology" is now generally used 
for the "study of a language's grammar, history and literary tradition", especially 
in the United States. The term "linguistics" is now the usual academic term in 
English for the scientific study of language. 
Linguistics concerns itself with describing and explaining the nature of human 
language. Relevant to this are the questions of what is universal to language, 
how language can vary, and how human beings come to know languages. 
Humans achieve competence in whatever language is spoken around them 
when growing up, with apparently little need for explicit conscious instruction. 
Linguists assume that the ability to acquire and use language is an innate, 
biologically-based potential of human beings, similar to the ability to walk. It is 
generally agreed that there are no strong genetic differences underlying the 
differences between languages: an individual will acquire whatever language(s) 
he or she is exposed to as a child, regardless of parentage or ethnic origin.