READING

Strategy for TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN or YES / NO / NOT GIVEN

Types of questions
● TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN: Used to evaluate a fact.
● YES / NO / NOT GIVEN: Used to evaluate an opinion.
● In general, the approach to both types is the same.

Steps to Answer TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN and YES/NO/NOT GIVEN Questions:

● Step 1: Identify the keywords in the question. Use the keywords to locate the information in the passage.
● Step 2: Reread the question and read the section of the passage that contains the keywords to determine
whether it provides relevant information.
● Step 3: Read the question carefully and read the relevant passage again. Decide on your answer:
+ TRUE / YES, if the passage confirms that the statement is correct.
+ FALSE / NO, if the passage contradicts the statement. You should be able to use information from
the passage to correct the false detail. The information in the passage and the information in the
question must be comparable (the same aspect)
+ NOT GIVEN, if the passage does not provide enough information to say whether the statement is true
or false. You cannot use the text to confirm or correct the information.The information in the passage
and the information in the question are incomparable (different aspects)

Some Notes When Doing TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN and YES/NO/NOT GIVEN Questions:
● Do not use your background knowledge. You must rely on the information in the passage.
● You often need to read more than one sentence
● Use paraphrasing skills to help decide on the correct answer.

Exercise 1: Read the passage and do the following task:

UNUSUAL SPORTS
A. Do you ever get bored with the same old sports? If you’re tired of tennis, fed up with football or bored of basketball, don’t
worry. There are plenty of new and unusual sports out there for you to try. Many of these are a mix of existing sports,
sometimes with a local element added. Bossaball, for example, is a mix of football and volleyball, played on an inflatable pitch
with a trampoline in the middle. To make it more exciting, it also has elements of Brazilian martial arts!

B. If you are very good at horse riding, you could try the national sport of Afghanistan, buzkashi. Many versions have been
played in the Central Asian region for hundreds of years. The game involves players on horseback trying to get hold of a
dead goat. The Afghan Buzkashi Federation wants the game to spread throughout the world and has finally written down the
rules because they hope to get Olympic status for the sport.

C. A sport that is more likely to become famous is kabaddi. It is popular in India and other parts of South Asia. It is similar in
some ways to the game called ‘tag’ or ‘it’ which schoolchildren play. One person is ‘it’ and has to catch the others. In kabaddi,
a ‘raider’ from one team tries to tag a player from the other team and then return to their own half of the field without getting
caught. In some versions of the game, the raider must chant the word ‘kabaddi’ as he returns to his place. Kabaddi is good
fun, good exercise and doesn’t need any equipment. It is played at the Asian Games.

D. There is an unusual sport which describes itself as a ‘classic mix of brains and brawn’. The game, called ‘chess boxing’,
involves a round of chess and then a round of boxing, then another of chess, and so on. There is one minute between
rounds. The first chess boxing world championship took place in 2003 in Amsterdam and was won by a Dutchman, lepe
Rubingh. Since then, it has become more popular, particularly in Germany, the UK, India and Russia. It is a difficult sport, as
players need to be very good at two very different activities and be able to switch quickly between the two.

E. Finally, an unusual sport that will be familiar to most of us is roshambo, which began in China about 2000 years ago and
spread gradually to the rest of the world. Played by young and old, in the UK it is known as ‘rock-paper-scissors’. It is
surprising that it is called a sport and taken so seriously: there’s a World Rock Paper Scissors Society and a league which
holds championships every year. So, whatever kinds of sport you like, there is something new and interesting for you to try.
Task 1: Quickly scan the text to find the paragraph which contains information about these sports as quickly as you
can.
1. A sport which is trying to get into the Olympic games
2. A sport which has been played for more than a thousand years and is based on an activity most of us know
3. A sport influenced by two very popular sports
4. A sport which may involve repeating a word
5. A sport which involves two activities which are very unlike each other

Task 2: True / False / Not Given

1. Bossaball is played on grass.
2. People play bossaball on a soft surface.
3. Bossaball is only played in Brazil.
4. Buzkashi is sometimes played with a sheep instead of a goat.
5. Buzkashi got written rules long after the game first started.
6. Buzkashi is an Olympic sport.
7. Kabaddi is often played in schools.
8. Kabaddi is only played by men.
9. There are different versions of the game kabaddi.
10. It could be quite expensive to play kabaddi.
11. Chess boxing is played in several different countries.
12. Iepe Rubingh invented chess boxing.
13. Iepe Rubingh is from Germany.
14. Players of chess boxing only need to reach a high level in one of the activities.
15. Roshambo can be played by anyone, even children and the elderly.
16. People consider roshambo a serious sport.
17. The roshambo world champion is from China.

Exercise 2: Decide whether each of the given statement is TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN
1. Japan imports more meat and steel than France.

Passage:
At the turn of the 20th century, agriculture and manufacturing were the two most important sectors almost everywhere,
accounting for about 70% of total output in Germany, Italy and France, and 40-50% in America, Britain and Japan.
International commerce was therefore dominated by raw materials, such as wheat, wood and iron ore, or processed
commodities such as meat and steel.

Paraphrase

2. In experiments, rats who ate what they wanted led shorter lives than rats on a low-calorie diet.

Passage:
Scientists first recognized the value of the practice more than 60 years ago, when they found that rats fed a low-calorie diet
lived longer on average than free-feeding rats and also had a reduced incidence of conditions that become increasingly
common in old age.

Paraphrase

3. There is a wider range of achievement amongst English pupils studying maths than amongst their Japanese
counterparts.

Passage:
Large sample international comparisons of pupils attainments (achievement) in maths since the 1960s have established that
not only did Japanese pupils at age 13 have better scores of average attainment, but there was also a larger proportion of
'low' attainers in England, where, incidentally, the variation in attainment scores was much greater.

Paraphrase

4. Private schools in Japan are more modern and spacious than state-run lower secondary.

Passage:
Lower secondary schools in Japan cover three school years, from the seventh grade (age 13) to the ninth grade (age 15).
Virtually all pupils at this stage attend state schools: only 3 per cent are in the private sector. Schools are usually modern in
design, set well back from the road and spacious inside.

Paraphrase

5. International trade is increasing at a greater rate than the world economy.

Passage:
International trade is growing at a startling pace. While the global economy has been expanding at a bit over 3% a year, the
volume of trade has been rising at a compound annual rate of about twice that.

Paraphrase

6. Polar bears suffer from various health problems due to the build-up of fat under their skin.
Passage:
Polar bears have up to 11 centimetres of fat underneath their skin. Humans with comparative levels of adipose tissue would
be considered obese and would be likely to suffer from diabetes and heart disease. Yet the polar bear experiences no such
consequences.

Paraphrase

7. The study done by Liu and his colleagues compared different groups of polar bears.
Passage:
A 2014 study by Shi Ping Liu and colleagues sheds light on this mystery. They compared the genetic structure of polar bears
with that of their closest relatives from a warmer climate, the brown bears.

Paraphrase

8. Liu and colleagues were the first researchers to compare polar bears and brown bears genetically.
Passage:
A 2014 study by Shi Ping Liu and colleagues sheds light on this mystery. They compared the genetic structure of polar bears
with that of their closest relatives from a warmer climate, the brown bears. This allowed them to determine the genes that
have allowed polar bears to survive in one of the toughest environments on Earth.

Paraphrase
9. Polar bears are able to control their levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol by genetic means.
Passage:
Liu and his colleagues found the polar bears had a gene known as APoB, which reduces levels of low-density lipoproteins
(LDLs) – a form of ‘bad’ cholesterol. In humans, mutations of this gene are associated with increased risk of heart disease.
Polar bears may therefore be an important study model to understand heart disease in humans.

Paraphrase
10. Female polar bears are able to survive for about six months without food.
Passage:
Female polar bears, however, undergo extreme conditions during every pregnancy. Once autumn comes around, these
females will dig maternity dens in the snow and will remain there throughout the winter, both before and after the birth of their
cubs. This process results in about six months of fasting, where the female bears have to keep themselves and their cubs
alive, depleting their own calcium and calorie reserves. Despite this, their bones remain strong and dense.

Paraphrase

Exercise 3: Simplify the sentences in the following paragraphs:

To simplify a sentence, you need to

1. Think about the sentence structure
2. Look for the main components (omit number / relative clauses / adverb clauses / modal verbs / Adverbs of manner)
3. Shorten the verb phrase (Use Verb Pattern)

Original sentence Sentence Structure Simplified sentence

These developments have confirmed
sport as a business with professional
management structures, marketing
processes, and development
strategies in place.
They have indicated new and
developing career paths for graduates
of human movement science, sport
science, exercise science and related
degrees.
Graduates can now visualise career
paths extending into such diverse
domains as sport management, sport
marketing, event and facility
management, government policy
development pertaining to sport, sport
journalism, sport psychology, and
sport or athletic coaching.
The increasing demand for
government expenditure within health
budgets is reaching the stage where
most governments are simply unable
to function in a manner that is
satisfying their constituents.
It is these graduates who already
have the skills, knowledge and
understanding to initiate community
health education programmes to
reduce cardio-vascular disease, to
reduce medical dependency upon
diabetes, to improve workplace health
leading to increased productivity, to
initiate and promote programmes of
activity for the elderly that reduce
medical dependency, and to maintain
an active lifestyle for the unemployed
and disadvantaged groups in society.