IELTS reading · Reading Test 27

Sleepy Students Perform Worse

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Section 1

Reading Passage 1

Sleepy Students Perform Worse

Preview
Staying up an hour or two past bedtime makes it far harder for kids to learn, say scientists who deprived youngsters of sleep and tested whether their teachers could tell the difference. They could. If parents want their children to thrive academically, “Getting them to sleep on time is as important as getting them to school on time," said psychologist Gahan Fallone, who conducted the research at Brown Medical School. The study, unveiled Thursday at an American Medical Association (AMA) science writers meeting, was conducted on healthy children who had no evidence of sleep- or learning-related disorders. Difficulty paying attention was among the problems the sleepy youngsters faced - raising the question of whether sleep deprivation could prove even worse for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Fallone now is studying that question, and suspects that sleep problems “could hit children with ADHD as a double whammy”. Sleep experts have long warned that Americans of all ages do not get enough shuteye. Sleep is important for health, bringing a range of benefits that, as Shakespeare put it, “knits up the ravelled sleave of care”. Not getting enough is linked to a host of problems, from car crashes as drivers doze off to crippled memory and inhibited creativity. Exactly how much sleep correlates with school performance is hard to prove. So, Brown researchers set out to test whether teachers could detect problems with attention and learning when children stayed up late - even if the teachers had no idea how much sleep their students actually got.…

Questions 1–4

The text has 7 paragraphs (A - G). Which paragraph contains each of the following pieces of information?

1.Traffic accidents are sometimes caused by lack of sleep.

2.The number of children included in the study

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Answers & explanations

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13 answers3 explanations open
  1. 1

    C

    The keywords concerned in Q1 must be "traffic accidents" and "lack of sleep". In this question, we have to find out the paragraph which shows that one of the reasons of traffic accidents is lack of sleep. First, we will need to scan the passage and figure out which paragraph discuss about the disadvantages of not sleeping enough. At the paragraph C, they claim "Not getting enough is linked to a host of problems." Thanks to the words "problems" and the phrase "not getting enough" which mentions about lack of sleep, we can guess that C is the paragraph we need to find out. And after that, they give out some examples such as car crashes, crippled memory or inhibited creativity. Because car crashes is the other expression of traffic accidents, we can be sure that paragraph C is the correct one.

  2. 2

    D

    The keywords of Q2 are "The number of children" and "the study". In this question, we have to find out the paragraph which contains the number of children in the study. At the beginning of paragraph D, we can see that they write "They recruited seventy-four 6- to 12-year-olds from Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts for the three-week study". From this information, we can conclude that their study was conducted among 74 children from 6 to 12 years old.

  3. 3

    F

    The keywords of Q3 are "two schools" and "deal with the problem". In this question, we have to find out the paragraph containing the ways of two schools to solve their problem. Because the school name "Potter-Burns Elementary School" and the phrase "another school" at 3 first sentences of paragraph F are suitable with the key "two schools", we can guess that this paragraph may be the right one that we need to find out. In these above-mentioned sentences, we can also get the information about what two schools do to solve the problem about students' sleep. In particular, they will send notes to parents or include it in the monthly newsletters. From these clues, we can be sure that this paragraph is the correct answer.

  4. 4

    E

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  5. 5

    ADHD

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  6. 6

    wrist monitors

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  7. 7

    paying attention

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  8. 8

    tough

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  9. 9

    FALSE

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  10. 10

    FALSE

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  11. 11

    TRUE

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  12. 12

    NOT GIVEN

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  13. 13

    NOT GIVEN

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Understand why, not only what.

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