Here is an IELTS reading passage. Remember that the IELTS reading test is a test of reading speed. It is important to time yourself when you do a reading passage. You should be able to complete a passage within 20 minutes. LEGUMES A The health benefit of legumes has been widely known for centuries. Also known as pulses or, more commonly, beans, they belong to an extremely large category of vegetables containing over 13,000 species. Only grains supply more calories and protein to the world’s population. Today, agricultural researchers and scientists are experimenting with varieties of legumes that are easier to harvest, more resistant to disease and yield better crops. B Beans are often referred to as to ‘the poor person’s meat but this label is unfair-considering the health benefits of legumes, they should really be called ‘the healthy alternative to meat’. Beans contain a rich and varied supply of nutritional substances, which are vital for keeping in good health....
Most IELTS reading tests your extensive or global reading skills: you are given quite difficult texts on unfamiliar subjects. You are not expected to understand every word that you come across. However, you are expected to have the ability to work out and guess the approximate meanings of words. An understanding of how words are constructed with various affixes will help you do this. Affixes are group of letters which can be added to a word to create a new word with a different meaning or word class. Prefixes are added at the beginning of a word. Task 1: Look at this list of general meaning s of prefixes. a. again b. against c. before d. between e. extreme f. self g. too little ...