Comprehensive guide covering essential IELTS preparation strategies and techniques to help you achieve your target band score.
Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on the reading passage below.
The Dover Bronze-Age Boat
A beautifully preserved boat, made around 3,000 years ago and discovered by chance in a muddy hole, has had a profound impact on archaeological research.
It was 1992. In England, workmen were building a new road through the heart of Dover, to connect the ancient port and the Channel Tunnel, which, when it opened just two years later, was to be the first land link between Britain and Europe for over 10,000 years. A small team from the Canterbury Archaeological Trust (CAT) worked alongside the workmen, recording new discoveries bought to light by the machines.
At the base of the deep shaft six meters below the modern streets, a wooden structure was revealed. Cleaning away the waterlogged site overlying the timbers, archaeologists realized its true nature. They had found a prehistoric boat, preserved by the type of sediment in which it was buried. It was then named by Dover Bronze- Age Boat.
About nine meters of the boat’s length was recovered; one end lay beyond the excavation and had to be left. What survived consisted essentially of four intricately carved oak planks: two on the bottom, joined along a central seam by a complicated system of wedges and stitched to the others. The seams had been made watertight by pads of moss, fixed by wedges and yew stitches.
The timbers that closed the recovered end of the boat had been removed in antiquity when it was abandoned, but much about its original shape could be deduced. There was also evidence for missing upper side planks. The boat was not a wreck, but had been deliberately discarded, dismantled and broken. Perhaps it had been “ritually killed” at the end of its life, like other Bronze-Age objects.
With hindsight, it was significant that the boat was found and studied by mainstream archaeologists who naturally focused on its cultural context. At the time, ancient boats were often considered only from a narrower technological perspective, but news about the Dover boat reached a broad audience. In 2002, on the tenth anniversary of the discovery, the Dover Bronze-Age Boat Trust hosted a conference, where this meeting of different traditions became apparent. Alongside technical papers about the boat, other speakers explored its social and economic contexts, and the religious perceptions of boats in Bronze- Age societies. Many speakers came from overseas, and debate about cultural connections was renewed.
Within seven years of excavation, the Dover boat had been conserved and displayed, but it was apparent that there were issues that could not be resolved simply by studying the old wood. Experimental archaeology seemed to be the solution: a boat reconstruction, half-scale or full-sized, would permit assessment of the different hypotheses regarding its build and the missing end. The possibility of returning to Dover to search for a boat’s unexcavated northern end was explored, but practical and financial difficulties were insurmountable- and there was no guarantee that the timbers had survived the previous decade in the changed environment.
Detailed proposals to reconstruct the boat were drawn up in 2004. Archaeological evidence was beginning to suggest a Bronze- Age community straddling the Channel, brought together by the sea, rather than separated by it. In a region today divided by languages and borders, archaeologists had a duty to inform the general public about their common cultural heritage.
The boat project began in England but it was conceived from the start as a European collaboration. Reconstruction was only part of a scheme that would include a major exhibition and an extensive educational and outreach programme. Discussions began early in 2005 with archaeological bodies, universities and heritage organizations either side of the Channel. There was much enthusiasm and support, and an official launch of the project was held at an international seminar in France in 2007. Financial support was confirmed in 2008 and the project then named BOAT 1550BC got under way in June 2011.
A small team began to make the boat at the start of 2012 on the Roman Lawn outside Dover museum. A full- scale reconstruction of a mid-section had been made in 1996, primarily to see how Bronze- Age replica tools performed. In 2012, however, the hull shape was at the centre of the work, so modern power tools were used to carve the oak planks, before turning to prehistoric tools for finishing. It was decided to make the replica haft-scale for reasons of cost and time, any synthetic materials were used for the stitching, owing to doubts about the scaling and tight timetable.
Meanwhile, the exhibition was being prepared ready for opening in July 2012 at the Castle Museum in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Entitled ‘Beyond the Horizon: Societies of the Channel & North Sea 3,500 years ago’ it brought together for the first time a remarkable collection of Bronze- Age objects, including many new discoveries for commercial archaeology and some of the great treasure of the past. The reconstructed boat, as a symbol of the maritime connections that bound together the communities either side of the Channel, was the centrepiece.
Questions 1-5
Complete the chart below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the text for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
Key events
1992- the boat was discovered during the construction of a 1……………
2002-an international 2…………… was held to gather information
2004- 3……………. for the reconstruction were produced
2007- the 4…………… Of BOAT 1550BC took place
2012- the Bronze-Age 5…………… featured the boat and other objects
Questions 6-9
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text?
In boxes 6-9 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
6. Archaeologists realized that the boat had been damaged on purpose. 7. Initially, only the technological aspects of the boat were examined. 8. Archaeologists went back to the site to try and find the missing northern. 9. Evidence found in 2004 suggested that the Bronze-Age Boat had been used for trade.
Questions 10-13
Answer the questions below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the text for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 10-13 on your answer sheet.
10. How far under the ground was the boat found? 11. What natural material had been secured to the boat to prevent water entering? 12. What aspect of the boat was the focus of the 2012 reconstruction? 13. Which two factors influenced the decision not to make a full-scale reconstruction of the boat?
Click the button to Show/ Hide Answers.
Answer: 1. road 2. conference 3. proposals 4. launch 5. exhibition 6. TRUE 7. FALSE 8. FALSE 9. NOT GIVEN 10. 6/six meters/meters/m 11. (pads of) moss 12. (the) hull (shape) 13. cost and time
Comprehensive guide covering essential IELTS preparation strategies and techniques to help you achieve your target band score.
Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1- 13, which are based on Passage 31 below.
Going Bananas
The world’s favourite fruit could disappear forever in 10 years’ time
The banana is among the world’s oldest crops. Agricultural scientists believe that the first edible banana was discovered around ten thousand years ago. It has been at an evolutionary standstill ever since it was first propagated in the jungles of South-East Asia at the end of the last ice age. Normally the wild banana, a giant jungle herb called Musa acuminata, contains a mass of hard seeds that make the fruit virtually inedible. But now and then, hunter- gatherers must have discovered rare mutant plants that produced seedless, edible fruits. Geneticists now know that the vast majority of these soft-fruited I plants resulted from genetic accidents that gave their cells three copies of each chromosome instead of the usual two. This imbalance prevents seeds and pollen from developing normally, rendering the mutant plants sterile. And that is why some scientists believe the world’s most popular fruit could be doomed. It lacks the genetic diversity to fight off pests and diseases that are invading the banana plantations of Central America and the smallholdings of Africa and Asia alike.
In some ways, the banana today resembles the potato before blight brought famine to Ireland a century and a half ago. But “it holds a lesson for other crops, too,” says Emile Frison, top banana at the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain in Montpellier, France. “The state of the banana,” Frison warns, “can teach a broader lesson: the increasing standardisation of food crops round the world is threatening their ability to adapt and survive.”
The first Stone Age plant breeders cultivated these sterile freaks by replanting cuttings from their stems. And the descendants of those original cuttings are the bananas we still eat today. Each is a virtual clone, almost devoid of genetic diversity. And that uniformity makes it ripe for diseases like no other crop on Earth. Traditional varieties of sexually reproducing crops have always had a much broader genetic base, and the genes will recombine in new arrangements in each generation. This gives them much greater flexibility in evolving responses to disease – and far more genetic resources to draw on in the face of an attack. But that advantage is fading fast, as growers increasingly plant the same few, high-yielding varieties. Plant breeders work feverishly to maintain resistance in these standardised crops. Should these efforts falter, yields of even the most productive crop could swiftly crash. “When some pest or disease comes along, severe epidemics can occur,” says Geoff Hawtin, director of the Rome-based International Plant Genetic Resources Institute.
The banana is an excellent case in point. Until the 1950s, one variety, the Gros Michel, dominated the world’s commercial banana business. Found by French botanists in Asia in the 1820s, the Gros Michel was by all accounts a fine banana, richer and sweeter than today’s standard banana and without the latter’s bitter aftertaste when green. But it was vulnerable to a soil fungus that produced a wilt known as Panama disease. “Once the fungus gets into the soil, it remains there for many years. There is nothing farmers can do. Even chemical spraying won’t get rid of it,” says Rodomiro Ortiz, director of the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria. So plantation owners played a running game, abandoning infested fields and moving to “clean” land – until they ran out of clean land in the 1950s and had to abandon the Gros Michel. Its successor, and still the reigning commercial king, is the Cavendish banana, a 19th-century British discovery from southern China. The Cavendish is resistant to Panama disease and, as a result, it literally saved the international banana industry. During the 1960s, it replaced the Gros Michel on supermarket shelves. If you buy a banana today, it is almost certainly a Cavendish. But even so, it is a minority in the world’s banana crop.
Half a billion people in Asia and Africa depend on bananas. Bananas provide the largest source of calories and are eaten daily. Its name is synonymous with food. But the day of reckoning may be coming for the Cavendish and its indigenous kin. Another fungal disease, black Sigatoka, has become a global epidemic since its first appearance in Fiji in 1963. Left to itself, black Sigatoka – which causes brown wounds on leaves and premature fruit ripening – cuts fruit yields by 50 to 70 per cent and reduces the productive lifetime of banana plants from 30 years to as little as 2 or 3. Commercial growers keep black Sigatoka at bay by a massive chemical assault. Forty sprayings of fungicide a year is typical. But despite the fungicides, diseases such as black Sigatoka are getting more and more difficult to control. “As soon as you bring in a new fungicide, they develop resistance,” says Frison. “One thing we can be sure of is that black Sigatoka won’t lose in this battle.” Poor farmers, who cannot afford chemicals, have it even worse. They can do little more than watching their plants die. “Most of the banana fields in Amazonia have already been destroyed by the disease,” says Luadir Gasparotto, Brazil’s leading banana pathologist with the government research agency EMBRAPA. Production is likely to fall by 70 per cent as the disease spreads, he predicts. The only option will be to find a new variety.
But how? Almost all edible varieties are susceptible to the diseases, so growers cannot simply change to a different banana. With most crops, such a threat would unleash an army of breeders, scouring the world for resistant relatives whose traits they can breed into commercial varieties. Not so with the banana. Because all edible varieties are sterile, bringing in new genetic traits to help cope with pests and diseases is nearly impossible. Nearly, but not totally. Very rarely, a sterile banana will experience a genetic accident that allows an almost normal seed to develop, giving breeders a tiny window for improvement. Breeders at the Honduran Foundation of Agricultural Research have tried to exploit this to create disease-resistant varieties. Further back-crossing with wild bananas yielded a new seedless banana resistant to both black Sigatoka and Panama disease.
Neither Western supermarket consumers nor peasant growers like the new hybrid. Some accuse it of tasting more like an apple than a banana. Not surprisingly, the majority of plant breeders have till now turned their backs on the banana and got to work on easier plants. And commercial banana companies are now washing their hands of the whole breeding effort, preferring to fund a search for new fungicides instead. “We supported a breeding programme for 40 years, but it wasn’t able to develop an alternative to the Cavendish. It was very expensive and we got nothing back,” says Ronald Romero, head of research at Chiquita, one of the Big Three companies that dominate the international banana trade.
Last year, a global consortium of scientists led by Frison announced plans to sequence the banana genome within five years. It would be the first edible fruit to be sequenced. Well, almost edible. The group will actually be sequencing inedible wild bananas from East Asia because many of these are resistant to black Sigatoka. If they can pinpoint the genes that help these wild varieties to resist black Sigatoka, the protective genes could be introduced into laboratory tissue cultures of cells from edible varieties. These could then be propagated into new disease-resistant plants and passed on to farmers.
It sounds promising, but the big banana companies have, until now, refused to get involved in GM research for fear of alienating their customers. “Biotechnology is extremely expensive and there are serious questions about consumer acceptance,” says David McLaughlin, Chiquita’s senior director for environ- mental affairs. With scant funding from the companies, the banana genome researchers are focusing on the other end of the spectrum. Even if they can identify the crucial genes, they will be a long way from developing new varieties that smallholders will find suitable and affordable. But whatever biotechnology’s academic interest, it is the only hope for the banana. Without it, banana production worldwide will head into a tailspin. We may even see the extinction of the banana as both a lifesaver for hungry and impoverished Africans and the most popular product on the world’s supermarket shelves.
Questions 1-3
Complete the sentences below with NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-3 on your answer sheet.
1. Banana was first eaten as a fruit by humans almost ……………………… years ago. 2. Banana was first planted in ……………………… 3. Wild banana’s taste is adversely affected by its ………………………
Questions 4-10
Look at the statements (Questions 4-10) and the list of people. Match each statement with the correct person A-F.
Write the correct letter A-F in boxes 4-10 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
4. A pest invasion may seriously damage banana industry. 5. The effect of fungal infection in soil is often long-lasting. 6. A commercial manufacturer gave up on breeding bananas for disease-resistant 7. Banana disease may develop resistance to chemical sprays. 8. A banana disease has destroyed a large number of banana plantations. 9. Consumers would not accept genetically altered crops. 10. Lessons can be learned from bananas for other crops.
List of People
A. Rodomiro Ortiz B. David McLaughlin C. Emile Frison D. Ronald Romero E. Luadir Gasparotto F. Geoff Hawtin
Questions 11-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 31? In boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
11. Banana is the oldest known fruit. 12. Gros Michel is still being used as a commercial product. 13. Banana is the main food in some countries.
Answer: 1. ten thousand 2. South-East Asia 3. hard seeds 4. F 5. A 6. D 7. C 8. E 9. B 10. C 11. NOT GIVEN 12. FALSE 13. TRUE
Comprehensive guide covering essential IELTS preparation strategies and techniques to help you achieve your target band score.
Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
Spider silk 2
A strong, light bio-material made by genes from spiders could transform construction and industry
A. Scientists have succeeded in copying the silk-producing genes of the Golden Orb Weaver spider and are using them to create a synthetic material which they believe is the model for a new generation of advanced bio-materials. The new material, biosilk, which has been spun for the first time by researchers at DuPont, has an enormous range of potential uses in construction and manufacturing.
B. The attraction of the silk spun by the spider is a combination of great strength and enormous elasticity, which man-made fibres have been unable to replicate. On an equal-weight basis, spider silk is far stronger than steel and it is estimated that if a single strand could be made about 10m in diameter, it would be strong enough to stop a jumbo jet in flight. A third important factor is that it is extremely light. Army scientists are already looking at the possibilities of using it for lightweight, bulletproof vests and parachutes.
C. For some time, biochemists have been trying to synthesise the drag-line silk of the Golden Orb Weaver. The drag-line silk, which forms the radial arms of the web, is stronger than the other parts of the web and some biochemists believe a synthetic version could prove to be as important a material as nylon, which has been around for 50 years, since the discoveries of Wallace Carothers and his team ushered in the age of polymers.
D. To recreate the material, scientists, including Randolph Lewis at the University of Wyoming, first examined the silk-producing gland of the spider. ‘We took out the glands that produce the silk and looked at the coding for the protein material they make, which is spun into a web. We then went looking for clones with the right DNA,’ he says.
E. At DuPont, researchers have used both yeast and bacteria as hosts to grow the raw material, which they have spun into fibres. Robert Dorsch, DuPont’s director of biochemical development, says the globules of protein, comparable with marbles in an egg, are harvested and processed. ‘We break open the bacteria, separate out the globules of protein and use them as the raw starting material. With yeast, the gene system can be designed so that the material excretes the protein outside the yeast for better access,’ he says.
F. ‘The bacteria and the yeast produce the same protein, equivalent to that which the spider uses in the draglines of the web. The spider mixes the protein into a water-based solution and then spins it into a solid fibre in one go. Since we are not as clever as the spider and we are not using such sophisticated organisms, we substituted man-made approaches and dissolved the protein in chemical solvents, which are then spun to push the material through small holes to form the solid fibre.’
G. Researchers at DuPont say they envisage many possible uses for a new biosilk material. They say that earthquake-resistant suspension bridges hung from cables of synthetic spider silk fibres may become a reality. Stronger ropes, safer seat belts, shoe soles that do not wear out so quickly and tough new clothing are among the other applications. Biochemists such as Lewis see the potential range of uses of biosilk as almost limitless. ‘It is very strong and retains elasticity: there are no man-made materials that can mimic both these properties. It is also a biological material with all the advantages that have over petrochemicals,’ he says.
H. At DuPont’s laboratories, Dorsch is excited by the prospect of new super-strong materials but he warns they are many years away. ‘We are at an early stage but theoretical predictions are that we will wind up with a very strong, tough material, with an ability to absorb shock, which is stronger and tougher than the man-made materials that are conventionally available to us,’ he says.
I. The spider is not the only creature that has aroused the interest of material scientists. They have also become envious of the natural adhesive secreted by the sea mussel. It produces a protein adhesive to attach itself to rocks. It is tedious and expensive to extract the protein from the mussel, so researchers have already produced a synthetic gene for use in surrogate bacteria.
Questions 1-5
Reading Passage 1 has nine paragraphs, A-I
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.
1 a comparison of the ways two materials are used to replace silk-producing glands
2 predictions regarding the availability of the synthetic silk
3 ongoing research into other synthetic materials
4 the research into the part of the spider that manufactures silk
5 the possible application of the silk in civil engineering
Questions 6-10
Complete the flow-chart below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet.
Synthetic gene grown in 6 ……………… or 7…………………..
↓
globules of 8 ……………….
↓
dissolved in 9 ………………..
↓
passed through 10 …………………
↓
to produce a solid fibre
Questions 11-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOTGIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
11 Biosilk has already replaced nylon in parachute manufacture.
12 The spider produces silk of varying strengths.
13 Lewis and Dorsch co-operated in the synthetic production of silk
Essential strategies and practice techniques for this IELTS Reading question type. Learn how to manage time and improve accuracy.
Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on the Reading Passage below.
Therapeutic Jurisprudence Reading Answers
A Therapeutic jurisprudence is the study of the role of the law as a therapeutic agent. It examines the law’s impact on emotional life and on psychological well-being, and the therapeutic and anti-therapeutic consequences of the law. It is most applicable to the fields of mental health law, criminal law, juvenile law and family law.
B The general aim of therapeutic jurisprudence is the humanizing of the law and addressing the human, emotional and psychological side of the legal process. It promotes the perspective that the law is a social force that produces behaviours and consequences. Therapeutic jurisprudence strives to have laws made or applied in a more therapeutic way so long as other values, such as justice and due process, can be fully respected. It is important to recognise that therapeutic jurisprudence does not itself suggest that therapeutic goals should trump other goals. It does not support paternalism or coercion by any means. It is simply a way of looking at the law in a richer way and then bringing to the table some areas and issues that previously have gone unnoticed. Therapeutic jurisprudence simply suggests that we think about the therapeutic consequences of law and see if they can be factored into the processes of law-making, lawyering, and judging.
C The law can be divided into the following categories: (1) legal rules, (2) legal procedures, such as hearings and trials and (3) the roles of legal actors – the behaviour of judges, lawyers, and of therapists acting in a legal context. Much of what legal actors do has an impact on the psychological well-being or emotional life of persons affected by the law, for example, in the dialogues that judges have with defendants or that lawyers have with clients. Therefore, therapeutic jurisprudence is especially applicable to this third category.
D Therapeutic jurisprudence is a relatively new phenomenon. In the early days of the law, attitudes were very different and efforts were focused primarily on what was wrong with various sorts of testimony. While there were good reasons for that early emphasis, an exclusive focus on what is wrong, rather than also looking at what is right and how these aspects could be further developed, is seriously shortsighted. Therapeutic jurisprudence focuses attention on this previously under-appreciated aspect, encouraging us to look very hard for promising development and to borrow from the behavioural science literature, even when this literature has nothing obviously to do with the law. It encourages people to think creatively about how promising developments from other fields might be brought into the legal system.
E Recently, as a result of this multidisciplinary approach, certain kinds of rehabilitative programmes have begun to emerge that look rather promising. One type of cognitive behavioural treatment encourages offenders to prepare relapse prevention plans which require them to think through the chain of events that lead to criminality. These reasoning and rehabilitation-type programmes teach offenders cognitive self-change, to stop and think and figure out consequences, to anticipate high-risk situations, and to learn to avoid or cope with them. These programmes, so far, seem to be reasonably successful.
F From a therapeutic jurisprudence standpoint, the question is how these programmes might be brought into the law. In one obvious sense, these problem-solving, reasoning and rehabilitation-type programmes can be made widely available in correctional and community settings. A way of linking them even more to the law, of course, would be to make them part of the legal process itself. The suggestion here is that if a judge or parole board becomes familiar with these techniques and is about to consider someone for probation, the judge might say. ‘I’m going to consider you but I want you to come up with a preliminary relapse prevention plan that we will use as a basis for discussion. I want you to figure out why I should grant you probation and why I should be comfortable that you’re going to succeed. In order for me to feel comfortable, I need to know what you regard to be high-risk situations and how you’re going to avoid them or cope with them!
G If that approach is followed, courts will be promoting cognitive self-change as part and parcel of the sentencing process itself. The process may operate this way; an offender would make a statement like ‘I realise I mess up on Friday nights; therefore, I propose that I will stay at home on Friday nights. Suddenly, it is not a judge imposing something on the offender. It’s something that the offender has come up with him or herself, so he or she should think it is fair. If a person has a voice in his rehabilitation, then he is more likely to feel a commitment to it, and with that commitment, presumably, compliance will increase dramatically.
Questions 14-20
Complete the notes below.
Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.
NOTES: Therapeutic Jurisprudence
Therapeutic Jurisprudence:
study of the law as a therapeutic 14……………. and the therapeutic and 15………….. consequences of the law.
Goal:
the 16 ………… of the law, but NOT at the expense of 17…………….. and due
process.
Applicable to:
especially applicable to the role of legal 18………………… such as judges and lawyers
Therapeutic jurisprudence = new attitude
1. It asks people to seek out 19………………… developments, not problems.
2. It urges people to think 20……………… and borrow from other fields.
Questions 21-23
Complete the sentences.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
21 One aspect of cognitive behavioural treatment includes the preparation of ……………. by offenders.
22 The treatment requires offenders to consider the……………. that lead to a crime being committed.
23 Treatment programmes encourage offenders to recognise… ……………. before they happen, and know what to do in case they do happen.
Questions 24-26
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
In boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
24 The use of rehabilitative programmes has been proved to greatly reduce the chance of a criminal re-offending.
25 Therapeutic jurisprudence aims to make cognitive behavioural treatment a part of the legal process itself.
26 Offenders might be encouraged by judges to take part in deciding what their punishment should be.
Essential strategies and practice techniques for this IELTS Reading question type. Learn how to manage time and improve accuracy.
Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14, which are based on the Reading Passage below.
Stainless Steel Reading Answers
Uses
A In any ordinary kitchen, there are numerous items made from stainless steel, including cutlery, utensils, and appliances. ‘Inox’ or ‘18/10’ may be stamped on the base of a good stainless steel pot: ‘Inox’ is short for the French inoxydable; while 18 refers to the percentage of chromium in the stainless steel, and 10 to its nickel content.
B In hospitals, laboratories and factories, stainless steel is used for many instruments and pieces of equipment because it can easily be sterilised, and it remains relatively bacteria-free, thus improving hygiene. Since it is mostly rust-free, stainless steel also does not need painting, so proves cost-effective.
C As a decorative element, stainless steel has been incorporated into skyscrapers, like the Chrysler Building in New York, and the Jin Mao Building in Shanghai, the latter considered one of the most stunning contemporary structures in China. Bridges, monuments, and sculptures are often stainless steel; and, cars, trains, and aircraft contain stainless steel parts.
Recent alloys
D As most pure metals serve little practical purpose, they are often combined or alloyed. Some examples of ancient alloys are bronze (copper + tin) and brass (copper + zinc). Carbon steel (iron + carbon), first made in small quantities in China in the sixth century AD, was produced industrially only in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. Stainless steel, which retains the strength of carbon steel with some added benefits, consists of iron, carbon, chromium, and nickel, and may contain trace elements. Stainless steel is a new invention – Austenitic stainless steel was patented by German engineers in 1912, the same year that Americans created ferritic stainless steel, while Martensitic stainless steel was patented as late as 1919.
Properties
E The name, stainless steel, is misleading since, where there is very little oxygen or a great amount of salt, the alloy will, indeed, stain. In addition, stainless steel parts should not be joined together with stainless steel nuts or bolts as friction damages the elements; another alloy, like bronze, or pure aluminium or titanium must be used.
F In general, stainless steel does not deteriorate as ordinary carbon steel does, which rusts in air and water. Rust is a layer of iron oxide that forms when oxygen reacts with the iron in carbon steel. Because iron oxide molecules are larger than those of iron alone, they wear down the steel, causing it to flake and eventually snap. Stainless steel, however, contains between 13-26% chromium, and, with exposure to oxygen, forms chromium oxide, which has molecules the same size as the iron ones beneath, meaning they bond strongly to form an invisible film that prevents oxygen or water from penetrating.
As a result, the surface of stainless steel neither rusts nor corrodes. Furthermore, if scratched, the protective chromium-oxide layer of stainless steel repairs itself in a process known as passivation, which also occurs with aluminium, titanium, and zinc.
Varieties
G There are over 150 grades of stainless steel with various properties, each distinguished by its crystalline structure. Austenitic stainless steel, comprising 70% of global production, is barely magnetic, but ferritic and Martensitic stainless steel function as magnets because they contain more nickel or manganese. Ferritic stainless steel – soft and slightly corrosive – is cheap to produce, and has many applications, while Martensitic stainless steel, with more carbon than the other types, is incredibly strong, so it is used in fighter jet bodies but is also the costliest to produce.
Recyclability
H Stainless steel can be recycled completely, and these days, the average stainless steel object comprises around 60% of recycled material.
Cutting-edge application
I In the last few years, 3D printers have become widespread, and stainless steel infused with bronze is the hardest material that a 3D printer can currently use.
J In 3D printing, an inkjet head deposits alternate layers of stainless steel powder and organic binder into a build box. After each layer of binder is spread, overhead heaters dry the object before another layer of powder is added. Upon completion of printing, the whole object, still in its build box, is sintered in an oven, which means the object is heated to just below the melting point, so the binder evaporates. Next, the porous object is placed in a furnace so that molten bronze can replace the binder. To finish, the object is blasted with tiny beads that smooth the surface.
Appraisal
K In less than a century, stainless steel has become essential due to its relatively cheap production cost, its durability, and its renewability. Used in the new manufacturing process of 3D printing, its future looks bright.
Questions 1-4
Choose the correct letter A, B,C, or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet.
1 A stainless steel pot with “18/10” stamped on it contains
A 18% carbon and 10% iron.
B 18%ironand 10% carbon.
C 18% chromium and 10% nickel.
D 18% nickel and 10% chromium.
2 Hospitals and laboratories use stainless steel equipment because it
A is easy to clean.
B is inexpensive.
C is not disturbed by magnets.
D withstands high temperatures.
3 Stainless steel has been used in some famous buildings for its
A durability.
B beauty.
C modernity.
D reflective quality.
4 The first type of stainless steel was patented in
A China in 1912.
B Germany in 1912.
C the UK in 1919.
D the US in 1919.
Questions 5-11
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage?
In boxes 5-11 on your answer sheet, write:
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information.
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information.
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this.
5 Stainless steel does not stain.
6 Carbon steel rusts as its surface molecules are smaller than those of iron oxide.
7 Passivation is unique to stainless steel.
8 Austenitic stainless steel is the most commonly produced type.
9 These days, Martensitic stainless steel is mainly produced in China.
10 Currently, the recycling of stainless steel takes place in many countries.
11 Close to two-thirds of a stainless steel object is made up of recycled metal.
Questions 12-14
Label the diagrams below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 12-14 on your answer sheet.
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Originally published April 2023. Last reviewed 3 July 2026.
How Bacteria Invented Gene Editing
A This week the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority okayed a proposal to modify human embryos through gene editing. The research, which will be carried out at the Francis Crick Institute in London, should improve our understanding of human development. It will also undoubtedly attract controversy – particularly with claims that manipulating embryonic genomes is a first step towards designer babies. Those concerns shouldn’t be ignored. After all, gene editing of the kind that will soon be undertaken at the Francis Crick Institute doesn’t occur naturally in humans or other animals.
B It is, however, a lot more common in nature than you might think, and it’s been going on for a surprisingly long time – revelations that have challenged what biologists thought they knew about the way evolution works. We’re talking here about one particular gene editing technique called CRISPR-Cas, or just CRISPR. It’s relatively fast, cheap and easy to edit genes with CRISPR – factors that explain why the technique has exploded in popularity in the last few years. But CRISPR wasn’t dreamed up from scratch in a laboratory. This gene editing tool actually evolved in single-celled microbes.
C CRISPR went unnoticed by biologists for decades. It was only at the tail end of the 1980s that researchers studying Escherichia coli noticed that there were some odd repetitive sequences at the end of one of the bacterial genes. Later, these sequences would be named Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats – CRISPRs. For several years the significance of these CRISPRs was a mystery, even when researchers noticed that they were always separated from one another by equally odd ‘spacer’ gene sequences.
D Then, a little over a decade ago, scientists made an important discovery. Those ‘spacer’ sequences look odd because they aren’t bacterial in origin. Many are actually snippets of DNA from viruses that are known to attack bacteria. In 2005, three research groups independently reached the same conclusion: CRISPR and its associated genetic sequences were acting as a bacterial immune system. In simple terms, this is how it works. A bacterial cell generates special proteins from genes associated with the CRISPR repeats (these are called CRISPR associated – Cas – proteins). If a virus invades the cell, these Cas proteins bind to the viral DNA and help cut out a chunk. Then, that chunk of viral DNA gets carried back to the bacterial cell’s genome where it is inserted – becoming a spacer. From now on, the bacterial cell can use the spacer to recognise that particular virus and attack it more effectively.
E These findings were a revelation. Geneticists quickly realised that the CRISPR system effectively involves microbes deliberately editing their own genomes – suggesting the system could form the basis of a brand new type of genetic engineering technology. They worked out the mechanics of the CRISPR system and got it working in their lab experiments. It was a breakthrough that paved the way for this week’s announcement by the HFEA. Exactly who took the key steps to turn CRISPR into a useful genetic tool is, however, the subject of a huge controversy. Perhaps that’s inevitable – credit for developing CRISPR gene editing will probably guarantee both scientific fame and financial wealth.
F Beyond these very important practical applications, though, there’s another CRISPR story. It’s the account of how the discovery of CRISPR has influenced evolutionary biology. Sometimes overlooked is the fact that it wasn’t just geneticists who were excited by CRISPR’s discovery – so too were biologists. They realised CRISPR was evidence of a completely unexpected parallel between the way humans and bacteria fight infections. We’ve known for a long time that part of our immune system “learns” about the pathogens it has seen before so it can adapt and fight infections better in future. Vertebrate animals were thought to be the only organisms with such a sophisticated adaptive immune system. In light of the discovery of CRISPR, it seemed some bacteria had their own version. In fact, it turned out that lots of bacteria have their own version. At the last count, the CRISPR adaptive immune system was estimated to be present in about 40% of bacteria. Among the other major group of single-celled microbes – the archaea – CRISPR is even more common. It’s seen in about 90% of them. If it’s that common today, CRISPR must have a history stretching back over millions – possibly even billions – of years. “It’s clearly been around for a while,” says Darren Griffin at the University of Kent.
G The animal adaptive immune system, then, isn’t nearly as unique as we thought. And there’s one feature of CRISPR that makes it arguably even better than our adaptive immune system: CRISPR is heritable. When we are infected by a pathogen, our adaptive immune system learns from the experience, making our next encounter with that pathogen less of an ordeal. This is why vaccination is so effective: it involves priming us with a weakened version of a pathogen to train our adaptive immune system. Your children, though, won’t benefit from the wealth of experience locked away in your adaptive immune system. They have to experience an infection – or be vaccinated – first hand before they can learn to deal with a given pathogen.
H CRISPR is different. When a microbe with CRISPR is attacked by a virus, the record of the encounter is hardwired into the microbe’s DNA as a new spacer. This is then automatically passed on when the cell divides into daughter cells, which means those daughter cells know how to fight the virus even before they’ve seen it. We don’t know for sure why the CRISPR adaptive immune system works in a way that seems, at least superficially, superior to ours. But perhaps our biological complexity is the problem, says Griffin. “In complex organisms any minor [genetic] changes cause profound effects on the organism,” he says. Microbes might be sturdy enough to constantly edit their genomes during their lives and cope with the consequences – but animals probably aren’t. The discovery of this heritable immune system was, however, a biologically astonishing one. It means that some microbes write their lifetime experiences of their environment into their genome and then pass the information to their offspring – and that is something that evolutionary biologists did not think happened.
I Darwin’s theory of evolution is based on the idea that natural selection acts on the naturally occurring random variation in a population. Some organisms are better adapted to the environment than others, and more likely to survive and reproduce, but this is largely because they just happened to be born that way. But before Darwin, other scientists had suggested different mechanisms through which evolution might work. One of the most famous ideas was proposed by a French scientist called Jean-Bapteste Lamarck. He thought organisms actually changed during their life, acquiring useful new adaptations non-randomly in response to their environmental experiences. They then passed on these changes to their offspring.
J People often use giraffes to illustrate Lamarck’s hypothesis. The idea is that even deep in prehistory, the giraffe’s ancestor had a penchant for leaves at the top of trees. This early giraffe had a relatively short neck, but during its life it spent so much time stretching to reach leaves that its neck lengthened slightly. The crucial point, said Lamarck, was that this slightly longer neck was somehow inherited by the giraffe’s offspring. These giraffes also stretched to reach high leaves during their lives, meaning their necks lengthened just a little bit more, and so on. Once Darwin’s ideas gained traction, Lamarck’s ideas became deeply unpopular. But the CRISPR immune system – in which specific lifetime experiences of the environment are passed on to the next generation – is one of a tiny handful of natural phenomena that arguably obeys Lamarckian principles.
K “The realisation that Lamarckian type of evolution does occur and is common enough, was as startling to biologists as it seems to a layperson,” says Eugene Koonin at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, who explored the idea with his colleagues in 2009, and does so again in a paper due to be published later this year. This isn’t to say that all of Lamarck’s thoughts on evolution are back in vogue. “Lamarck had additional ideas that were important to him, such as the inherent drive to perfection that to him was a key feature of evolution,” says Koonin. No modern evolutionary biologist goes along with that idea. But the discovery of the CRISPR system still implies that evolution isn’t purely the result of Darwinian random natural selection. It can sometimes involve elements of non-random Lamarckism too – a “continuum”, as Koonin puts it. In other words, the CRISPR story has had a profound scientific impact far beyond the doors of the genetic engineering lab. It truly was a transformative discovery.
Questions 1–5
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1–5 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1 The research carried out at the Francis Crick Institute in London is likely to be controversial.
2 Gene editing, like the one in the upcoming research, can happen naturally in humans or other animals.
3 CRISPR-Cas is a gene editing technique.
4 CRISPR was noticed when the researchers saw some odd repetitive sequences at the ends of all bacterial genes.
5 A group of American researchers made an important revelation about the CRISPR.
Questions 6–9
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 6–9 on your answer sheet.
6 ‘Spacer’ sequences look odd because:
A they are a bacterial immune system
B they are DNA from viruses
C they aren’t bacterial in origin
D all of the above
7 The ones, who were excited about the CRISPR’s discovery, were:
A biologists
B geneticists
C physicists
D A and B
8 Word “learns” in the line 44, 6th paragraph means:
A determines
B gains awareness
C adapts
D studies
9 What makes CRISPR better than even our adaptive immune system?
A long history of existence
B immortality
C heritability
D adaptiveness
Questions 10–16
Complete the sentences below.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 10–16 on your answer sheet.
10 Vaccination is so effective, because it involves ………….. with a weakened version of a pathogen.
11 CRISPR adaptive immune system works in a way that seems, at least superficially, superior to ours. But perhaps our ………….. is the problem, according to Griffin.
12 Some microbes write their experience into the genome and pass the information to their ……………..
13 Before Darwin, one of the most famous ideas was proposed by a ………………… scientist, Lamarck.
14 ………………… are often used to demonstrate Lamarck’s hypothesis.
15 Lamarck’s ideas became deeply unpopular as soon as Darwin’s ideas ……………………. .
16 No ……………… biologist agrees with Lamarck’s idea that inherent drive to perfection is the key feature of evolution.
