The Goldfinch - Academic Reading for GMAT/IELTS/ SAT

Not the most sullen sky nor the bitterest cold seems to discourage Goldfinches. They are always cheerful and affectionate, keeping together for the greater part of the year in larger or smaller flocks, which call to each other, if separated, by notes as sweet as those of a Canary. In summer, Goldfinches find an abundance of food in the seeds of many species of plants, but in winter also many remain even in the Northern States, searching cheerfully among the dry weeds and grasses, and uttering their sweet notes. Many people, however, do not notice them at this season, for when winter comes the head and body of the males of this species, as of many others, lose the bright black and yellow which marks them so distinctly in summer, and are clothed in dull brownish shades. About the first of April, one notices here and there in a flock a male that shows a few bright yellow feathers, and by another month, they have moulted their winter dress and are as gay as ever.

In the spring and early summer, the Goldfinches are extremely musical, spending hours in uttering a simple but pleasing song. Several males now engage in what seems to be a musical contest, flying out from a tree and circling about with set wings, all the time keeping up a continual strain. When flying through the air at a considerable height, they go in long curves, and utter during each undulation three or four simple notes. As they seem constantly to have business in one part or other of the country, the wave-like flight and characteristic notes become a common feature of the summer landscape.

Though the Goldfinches are here all winter, they delay nesting till very much later than the other resident birds; the Chickadees have their first brood already out in the world by the time the Goldfinches determine on building. The female is a modest-colored little body, as is often the case where the male is bright. The pair generally builds in July, and chooses some thick leafy tree, often a maple or poplar, and there, on a limb at a considerable height from the ground, construct a very neat nest, deep and cup-shaped, built of fine materials and lined with down from plants like the thistle. Here five or six bluish white eggs are laid, and when in another month the young Goldfinches begin to fly, it is at once evident from their sharp, insistent crying. As the calling of the young Orioles is a mark of late June, so the notes of the young Goldfinches become associated with August.

Goldfinches are very fond of the seeds of many kinds of composite flowers; they bite holes in unripe dandelion heads and take out the seeds; thistles are another favorite food, and a row of sunflowers planted in the garden will not fail to attract them. In winter, besides the seeds of weeds, they feed on birch seeds, scattering the scales over the snow, and they even pull out the seeds of the pitch pine, when the scales begin to loosen toward spring.

No bird has livelier, more cheerful ways than our Goldfinch, and none becomes a greater favorite. People are often at considerable pains to remove the dandelion plants from their lawns; if the gay flowers themselves do not repay one for their presence, many would certainly allow them to remain in order to have the pleasant spectacle, in summer, of a flock of yellow Goldfinches scattered about the grass and feeding on the seeds.

CHANGES IN ENVIRONMENT - Academic Reading for GMAT/SAT/IELTS

The earth probably hasn’t changed much in the last 5,000 years (250 generations). Men have built things on its surface and dug into it and drawn boundaries on maps of it, but the places where rivers, lakes, seas, and mountains now stand have changed very little.

In earlier times the earth looked very different. Geologists call the last great geological period the Pleistocene. It began somewhere between a half million and a million years ago, and was a time of great changes. Sometimes we call it the Ice Age, for in the Pleistocene there were at least three or four times when large areas of earth were covered with glaciers. The reason for my uncertainty is that while there seem to have been four major mountains or alpine phases of glaciation, there may only have been three general continental phases in the Old World.

Both the alpine and the continental ice sheets seem to have had minor fluctuations during their main phases, and the advances of the later phases destroyed many of the traces of the earlier phases. The general textbooks have tended to follow the names and numbers established for the Alps early in this century by two German geologists.

 It is the second of these alpine phases which seems to fit the traces of the earliest of the great continental glaciations. In this article, the four-part system will be used, since it is the most familiar, but will add the word alpine so you may remember to make the transition to the continental system if you wish to do so.

Glaciers are great sheets of ice, sometimes over a thousand feet thick, which are now known only in Greenland and Antarctica and in high mountains. During several of the glacial periods in the Ice Age, the glaciers covered most of Canada and the northern United States and reached down to southern England and France in Europe. Smaller ice sheets sat like caps on the Rockies, the Alps, and the Himalayas. The continental glaciation only happened north of the equator, however, so remember that “Ice Age” is only half true.

As you know, the amount of water on and about the earth does not vary. These large glaciers contained millions of tons of water frozen into ice. Because so much water was frozen and contained in the glaciers, the water level of lakes and oceans was lowered. Flooded areas were drained and appeared as dry land. There were times in the Ice Age when there was no English Channel, so that England was not an island, and a land bridge at the Dardanelles probably divided the Mediterranean from the Black Sea.

A very important thing for people living during the time of a glaciation was the region adjacent to the glacier. They could not, of course, live on the ice itself. The questions would be how close could they live to it, and how would they have had to change their way of life to do so.

Can you give the title to the text below?

Bob-white, unlike the majority of our birds, does not migrate southward in winter; the whole covey, unless they are killed, spend the whole year near the spot where they were born, feeding on the fallen grain, seeds, and various kinds of fruit. In hard winters, they become very tame, and if fed regularly, come to the barnyard almost like poultry. Most people are only too familiar with this bird, but not as he looks in life. Then he is full of energy and spirit; his pure white throat shows against the black of his head, and his rich reddish brown wings are ready to carry him off with a whirr that startles one. For one that we see alive, we see a thousand hanging, bloody and bedraggled, in the markets. Few people who become really acquainted with Bob-white, who see him sitting on a stone wall calling his name, or see his mate hurrying her little ones over the road into the blackberry vines, will care to make another meal off his little body. We must consider not only the wrong, if we acknowledge it to be one, done to the individual quail whose life has been taken, but the danger that threatens his whole race. The cheerful Bob-white is already a much rarer sound than it used to be, and the bird has many other dangers to contend against besides the pot-hunter's gun.

The greatest peril that besets quail in the North is the occasional midwinter blizzard, followed by intense cold. The quail at night huddle close together on the ground, their tails touching and their heads pointing out in a circle. After a great storm in a recent winter, melting snow exposed a circle of quail, surprised and buried by the snow, like the people of Pompeii buried under the falling ashes.

In May, the male begins to whistle the two or three clear notes which have been translated into "Bob-white," or "More wet." This call is not only a summons to the female, but also a challenge to other males; if one hides nearby and imitates the whistle accurately enough, a sudden flight will sometimes bring the angry bird directly to the spot. The surprise of the visitor is then amusing enough. Stone walls, fences, the low limbs of trees are favorite perches for the male, and his cheerful call has long been a familiar sound in farming country, from Massachusetts southward.

The nest is placed in some tangle of blackberry vines, along the edge of a field, and is a sight worth a long journey to see. The pure white eggs, often as many as fifteen, are laid close together in such a manner that the little body of the female may cover and warm them all. When the young are hatched, they are covered with down, and run at once, like chickens, and unlike the little blind naked young which we see in the nests of song birds. They follow their mother through the tangled grass or low bushes, feeding on fruit and insects, and later on the grain in the stubble fields. The whole family keep together, even when the young are able to care for themselves. When they hear any danger approaching, they keep close to the ground, relying on their brown coloring to conceal them. If the danger comes too near, they are off in half a dozen directions, over walls and bushes, coming quickly to earth again when they see some sheltering covert. Then, after an interval, one hears a note something like a guinea hen's, issuing from different parts of the field. Guided by these sounds, the whole covey reassemble.

Vocabulary Practice for IELTS/SAT/GMAT

auburn	A pig in a poke	brow	coy	deftly
flippant	aver	leeway	prolific	rufous

1.     By the sweat of your _____ you will eat your food.

2.     His white breast is heavily spotted with black, his head, back, and tail are of a bright ______ shade.

3.     Claudia’s tone was not altogether ______, and that pleased him.

4.     Her smile was ______ and slyly questioning.

5.     A tall, slim girl with serious grey eyes and hair which her friends called _____.

6.     Had it been any other man in Avonlea she, _____ putting this and that together, might have given a good guess.

7.     Allow some _____ when peer reviewing.

8.     He is also a _____ journalist.

9.     John mournfully _____ that he would have starved to death.

10.                        He didn’t believe in buying ______.

Conundrums

1.     Why cannot a deaf man be legally convicted? – Because it is unlawful to condemn a man without a hearing.

2.     What is that which you can keep after giving to someone else? – Your word.

3.     Why are teeth like verbs? – Because they are regular, irregular, and defective.

4.     Why is a plum pudding like the ocean? – Because it contains many currants.

5.     What part of a fish is like the end of a book? – The fin is.

6.     When may a man be said to breakfast before he gets up? – When he takes a roll in bed.

7.     Why would it be impossible to starve in the desert of Sahara? – Because of the sand which is (sandwiches) there.

8.     What table has no legs to stand upon? – The multiplication table.

9.     Why is a dog biting his tail like a good manager? – Because he makes both ends meet.

10.                        What kind of cat do we usually find in a large library? – A cat alogue.