IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2025 - Q1 Test 1 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Luyện tập đề IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2025 - Q1 Test 1 được lấy từ cuốn sách Forcast Test 2025 - Q1 với trải nghiệm thi IELTS trên máy và giải thích đáp án chi tiết bằng Linearthinking, kèm answer key và list từ vựng IELTS cần học trong bài đọc.
IELTS Forcast Reading Test 2025 - Q1 Test 1 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 1
Question 1 - 6
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G.
1
A new approach carried out in the UK.
2
Reasons why twisty path and dykes failed.
3
Illustration of an alternative plan in LA which seems much unrealistic.
4
Traditional way of tackling flood.
5
Effort made in the Netherlands and Germany.
6
One project on a river that benefits three nations.
Question 7 - 11
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers on your answer sheet.
Summary
Flood makes river shorter than it used to be, which means faster speed and more damage to constructions on flood plain. Not only European river poses such a threat but the same thing happens to the powerful in the US.
In Europe, one innovative approach carried out by the UK's Environment Agency, for example, a wetland instead of concrete walls is generated not far from the city of to protect it from flooding.
In 1995, Rhine flooded again, and thousands of people left the country of . A league of engineers suggested that cities should be porous, and set a good example for others.
Another city devastated by heavy storms casually is though its government pours billions of dollars each year in order to solve the problem.
Question 12 - 13
Choose TWO correct letters, and write your answers on your answer sheet.
What TWO benefits will the new approach in the UK and Austria bring to us according to this passage?
A
We can prepare before the flood comes
B
It may stop the flood involving the whole area
C
Decrease strong rainfalls around the Alps simply by engineering constructions
D
Reserve water to protect downstream towns
E
Store tons of water in a downstream area
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 2
Question 14 - 19
Choose
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
14
Ripe coffee fruits are called cherries because of their colour.
15
The modern ‘wet method’ of curing is more efficient than the old ‘dry method’.
16
Green beans are usually roasted before being exported.
17
The roasting process improves both the smell and the taste of coffee.
18
Arabica coffee is harder to grow than robusta coffee.
19
The best instant coffee is a mix of arabica and robusta coffee.
Question 20 - 26
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
The history of coffee
coffee originally came from the area around the Red Sea
early suggest that coffee was grown in Yemen
Europeans first heard about coffee from
coffee drinking became a in Europe only after Pope Clement VIII drank some of it
people such as painters and began to get together in cafes in major European cities
today coffee is grown only in tropical regions to avoid damage caused by
in coffee cultivation, the is generally done manually
Decaffeinated coffee
most people like the fact that coffee contains a stimulant, but this leads to problems for others
using carbon dioxide is the ideal way of removing caffeine because it maintains the of the coffee
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 3
Question 27 - 33
The reading passage has seven paragraphs, A-G
Choose the correct heading for paragraph A-G from the list below.
Write the correct number, i-xi on your answer sheet.
NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them
List of Headings
I
The famous moai
II
The status represented symbols of combined purposes
III
The ancient spots that indicates scientific application
IV
The story of the name
V
Early immigrants, rise and prosperity
VI
The geology of Easter Island
VII
The countering explanation to the misconceptions politically manipulated
VIII
Damage done by the Europeans
IX
Symbols of authority and power
X
The Navel of the World
XI
The Norwegian Invaders' legacy
27
Paragraph A
28
Paragraph B
29
Paragraph C
30
Paragraph D
31
Paragraph E
32
Paragraph F
33
Paragraph G
Question 34 - 37
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In following statements below, choose
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
34
The first inhabitants of Easter Island were Polynesians, from the Marquesas or Society islands.
35
Most archeologists recognized the religious and astronomical functions for an ancient society
36
The structures on Easter Island work as an astronomical outpost for extraterrestrial visitors.
37
The theory that depleted natural resources led to the fail of Easter Island actually has a distorted perspective
Question 38 - 40
Complete the following summary of the paragraphs of Reading Passage, using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the Reading Passage for each answer. Write your answers on your answer sheet.
Many theories speculated that Easter Island fall around the era of the initial European contact. Some say the resources are depleted by a; The erroneous theories began with a root of the racist assumptions advanced by some scholars. Early writers did not have adequate understandings to comprehend the true nature of events on the island. The social devastation was in fact a direct result of of the first European settlers.
DOL IELTS Đình Lực
05/05/2026
📖 Bài đọc passage 1
Can We Hold Back the Flood?
A
A. Last winter's floods on the rivers of central Europe were among the worst since the Middle Ages, and as winter storms return, the specter of floods is returning too. Just weeks ago, the river Rhone in south-east France burst its banks, driving 15,000 people from their homes, and worse could be on the way. Traditionally, river engineers have gone for Plan A: get rid of the water fast, draining it off the land and down to the sea in tall-sided rivers re-engineered as high-performance drains. But however big they dig city drains, however wide and straight they make the rivers, and however high they build the banks, the floods keep coming back to taunt them, from the Mississippi to the Danube. And when the floods come, they seem to be worse than ever.
B
No wonder engineers are turning to Plan B: sap the water's destructive strength by dispersing it into fields, forgotten lakes, flood plains, and aquifers. Back in the days when rivers took a more tortuous path to the sea, floodplains and aquifers. Back in the days when rivers took a more tortuous path to the sea, flood waters lost impetus and volume while meandering across flood plains and idling through wetlands and inland deltas. But today the water tends to have an unimpeded journey to the sea. And this means that when it rains in the uplands, the water comes down all at once. Worse, whenever we close off more floodplains, the river's flow farther downstream becomes more violent and uncontrollable. Dykes are only as good as their weakest link-and the water will unerringly find it.
C
Today, the river has lost 7 percent of its original length and runs up to a third faster. When it rains hard in the Alps, the peak flows from several tributaries coincide in the main river, where once they arrived separately. And with four-fifths of the lower Rhine's flood plain barricaded off, the waters rise ever higher. The result is more frequent flooding that does ever-greater damage to the homes, offices, and roads that sit on the floodplain. Much the same has happened in the US on the mighty Mississippi, which drains the world's second largest river catchment into the Gulf of Mexico.
D
The European Union is trying to improve rain forecasts and more accurately model how intense rains swell rivers. That may help cities prepare, but it won’t stop the floods. To do that, say hydrologists, you need a new approach to engineering, not just rivers, but the whole landscape. The UK’s Environment Agency -which has been granted an extra £150 million a year to spend in the wake of floods in 2000 that cost the country £1 billion- puts it like this: “The focus is now on working with the forces of nature. Towering concrete walls are out, and new wetlands are in." To help keep London’s feet dry, the agency is breaking the Thames’s banks upstream and reflooding 10 square kilometres of ancient flood plain at Otmoor outside Oxford. Nearer to London it has spent £100 million creating new wetlands and a relief channel across 16 kilometres of flood plain to protect the town of Maidenhead, as well as the ancient playing fields of Eton College. And near the south coast, the agency is digging out channels to reconnect old meanders on the river Cuckmere in East Sussex that were cut off by flood banks 150 years ago.
E
The same is taking place on a much grander scale in Austria, in one of Europe's largest river restorations to date. Engineers are regenerating flood plains along 60 kilometers of the river Drava as it exits the Alps. They are also widening the river bed and channeling it back into abandoned meanders, oxbow lakes, and backwaters overhung with willows. The engineers calculate that the restored flood plain can now store up to 10 million cubic meters of flood waters and slow storm surges coming out of the Alps by more than an hour, protecting towns as far downstream as Slovenia and Croatia.
F
"Rivers have to be allowed to take more space. They have to be turned from flood-chutes into flood-foilers," says Nienhuis. And the Dutch, for whom preventing floods is a matter of survival, have gone furthest. A nation built largely on drained marshes and seabed had the fright of its life in 1993 when the Rhine almost overwhelmed it. The same happened again in 1995 when a quarter of a million people were evacuated from the Netherlands. But a new breed of "soft engineers" wants our cities to become porous, and Berlin is the governed by tough new rules to prevent its drains from becoming overloaded after heavy rains. Harald Kraft, an architect working in the city, says: "We now see rainwater as giant Potsdamer Platz, a huge new commercial redevelopment by DaimlerChrysler in the heart of the city.
G
Los Angeles has spent billions of dollars digging huge drains and concreting river beds to carry away the water from occasional intense storms. "In LA we receive half the water we need in rainfall, and we throw it away. Then we spend hundreds of millions to import water," says Andy Lipkis, an LA environmentalist who kick-started the idea of the porous city by showing it could work on one house. Lipkis LA, wants to beat the urban flood hazard and fill the taps by holding onto the city's flood water. And it's not just a pipe dream. The authorities this year launched a $100 million scheme to road-test the porous city in one flood-hit community in Sun Valley. The plan is to catch the rain that falls on thousands of driveways, parking lots, and rooftops in the valley. Trees will soak up water from parking lots. Homes and public buildings will capture roof water to irrigate gardens and parks. And road drains will empty into old gravel pits and other leaky places that should recharge the city's underground water reserves. Result: less flooding and more water for the city. Plan B says every city should be left to build its own defenses. It sounds expensive and utopian until you realise how much we spend trying to drain cities and protect our watery margins-and how bad we are at it.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 1
1
D
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Matching Information
📌 Dạng Matching Information chúng ta nên làm cuối cùng, sau khi đã làm các dạng câu hỏi khác nhé DOLBIES, bởi vì lúc này mình đã đọc và hiểu nội dung của bài rồi, cộng thêm nghệ thuật Specify của Linearthinking → sẽ nhanh chóng tìm được vị trí đáp án hơn!!
-------
Step 01: Read the question to predict
Hiểu câu hỏi: A new approach carried out in the UK
Specify & Predict: Tìm đoạn văn nói về một phương pháp hoặc chiến lược mới trong việc quản lý nước/lũ lụt và phải có địa danh cụ thể là nước Anh, ví dụ: thay đổi tư duy kỹ thuật, các dự án của tổ chức tại UK...
-------
Step 02: Khoanh vùng đoạn văn
🔍 Từ khóa: “A new approach", "carried out", "the UK"
→ Dựa vào các từ khoá trên, có thể khoanh vùng được đoạn D vì có xuất hiện các cụm như: "new approach to engineering" (cách tiếp cận kỹ thuật mới) & "creating new wetlands" (tạo ra vùng đất ngập nước mới); và ta thấy dự án triển khai ở Anh: "The UK’s Environment Agency" (Cơ quan Môi trường của Vương quốc Anh) & London -> Đây là ví dụ cụ thể cho "A new approach carried out in the UK".
Coffee originated around the Red Sea, most probably in Africa, and there are records of coffee cultivation in Yemen as early as the 6th century. By the 13th century, the growing, roasting and grinding of coffee to make a strong-flavoured infusion was widespread throughout the Arab world. News of the drink was bought to Europe by traders, but people there were at first wary of the new drink. However, Pope Clement the Eighth gave the drink his seal of approval after trying a cup for himself, and the trend quickly caught on. The 17th century saw the spread of coffee drinking throughout Europe. Coffee houses opened in Vienna, Pahs and London, and they soon became the favourite meeting places of politicians, and were also known to attract artists of all kinds. By the 18th century, coffee production was well established in Java in Indonesia and also throughout the Caribbean. Coffee drinking continued to grow in popularity; one of the repercussions of the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773 was that the USA adopted coffee as its national beverage. Today, coffee is drunk around the world, though each nation has its own ways of preparing and serving it.
Coffee is now grown in more than 50 countries, although production is not at all straightforward. Because it is vulnerable to frost, coffee can only be grown successfully between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. In addition, crop maintenance is labour intensive. The plants require constant care and attention, and in most areas the picking is carried out by hand.
The ripe berry-like fruits which are harvested are called ‘cherries’. These ripen over a period of six to eight months and turn a deep red when ripe, which explains their name. Inside there are two green beans that have to be separated from the pulp and the skin, and dried. This process is known as curing, and it can be done by one of two methods. For the traditional ‘dry method’ of curing, the cherries are laid out in the sun until completely dry, and then the dried skins and pulp are removed from the beans. The ‘wet method’ is a more recent development and it is employed for high-quality hand-picked cherries. The outer, fleshy layer is removed, then the cherries are soaked and fermented, followed by washing and drying. Finally, the skins are removed by a machine, revealing the green beans.
In both cases, the green beans are sorted, graded and packed for export. Roasting tends to be done in the country of import. The roasting process is necessary to reduce the acidity of the beans and to develop the aromatic oils, which give the coffee its aroma and flavour. Finally, grinding exposes a larger surface area to the water, ensuring optimum contact between the ground beans and the water, resulting in a more satisfying cup of coffee.
The flavour, character and quality of coffee varies tremendouslv - not only between countries, but also between estates within the same country. The soil, altitude and climate are all factors that contribute to the character of the bean, thereby affecting the final taste. There are four varieties of coffee plant, but only two are sold on any commercial scale. The most important of these is coffee arabica, which grows on steep mountain slopes at high altitudes. The arabica bean produces coffee that is rich, aromatic and full of flavor, and it accounts for 70% of world coffee production. Coffee experts agree that the arabica bean is far superior in flavour to other types. The other main variety, coffee canephora, produces the coffee bean known as robusta. Grown on the lower slopes, where cultivation is easier, robusta beans have a higher caffeine content than arabica beans, and a rougher, almost earthy flavour that lacks delicacy and subtlety. It costs about half the price of arabica and is used in the cheaper blends of both fresh and instant coffee.
There are three types of instant coffee. The cheapest is made from robusta beans that have been brewed into a concentrate. This is sprayed into a stream of hot air that instantly evaporates all moisture, leaving a fine powder. Some of the spray-dried powders undergo further heating to produce granular coffees; the better ones include some arabica beans. The best instant coffees are freeze-dried. For these, an arabica coffee concentrate is frozen and processed in a vacuum to produce crisp, dry particles of coffee.
Caffeine is a stimulant that is present in coffee. It makes the nervous system more active, which is usually the desired effect. However, it can cause sleeplessness and therefore some consumers prefer to buy coffee without caffeine. Decaffeinated coffee is available in all the regular coffee forms: whole beans, ground or instant. Caffeine is removed by soaking the beans in water, or by the use of solvents or carbon dioxide. The latter is thought to be the best method as it does not affect the flavour and there is no residue. To qualify as decaffeinated, coffee must contain less than 0.9% caffeine.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 2
14
True
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài True / False / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified: Ripe coffee fruits are called "cherries" because of their colour
-----------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
Từ khoá: "Ripe coffee fruits", "cherries", "colour"
-> Dựa vào các từ khoá trên có thể xác định đoạn 3 là đoạn cần đọc.
-----------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: “The ripe berry-like fruits which are harvested are called ‘cherries’. These … turn a deep red when ripe, which explains their name.”
Simplified: These (ripe fruits) are called ‘cherries’ + turn deep red
→ This explains their name
Main idea: Quả chuyển sang màu đỏ đậm → màu đó giải thích cho tên gọi “anh đào”.
-----------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Quả cà phê chín chuyển sang màu đỏ thẫm; màu đỏ này giải thích vì sao chúng được gọi là “cherries”.
Trong câu hỏi: Quả cà phê chín được gọi là cherries vì màu sắc của chúng.
⇒ Hai ý khớp nhau -> ✅ Chọn: TRUE
-----------
Lưu ý chung:
Nếu câu hỏi nói “được gọi là cherries vì mùi vị” → mâu thuẫn với bài đọc -> FALSE.
Nếu bài đọc không nêu lý do về màu sắc mà chỉ nói “gọi là cherries” mà thôi → thông tin không đủ -> NOT GIVEN.
A. One of the world's most famous yet least visited archaeological sites, Easter Island is a small, hilly, now treeless island of volcanic origin. Located in the Pacific Ocean at 27 degrees south of the equator and some 2200 miles (3600 kilometers) off the coast of Chile, it is considered to be the world's most remote inhabited island. The island is, technically speaking, a single massive volcano rising over ten thousand feet from the Pacific Ocean floor. The island received its most well-known current name, Easter Island, from the Dutch sea captain Jacob Roggeveen who became the first European to visit Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722.
B
"In the early 1950s, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl popularized the idea that the island had been originally settled by advanced societies of Indians from the coast of South America. Extensive archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic research has conclusively shown this hypothesis to be inaccurate. It is now recognized that the original inhabitants of Easter Island are of Polynesian) stock (DNA extracts from skeletons have confirmed this), that they most probably came from the Marquesas or Society islands, and that they arrived as early as 318 AD (carbon dating of reeds from a grave confirms this). At the time of their arrival, much of the island was forested, was teeming with land birds, and was perhaps the most productive breeding site for seabirds in the Polynesia region. Because of the plentiful bird, fish, and plant food sources, the human population grew and gave rise to a rich religious and artistic culture.
C
That culture's most famous features are its enormous stone statues called moai, at least 288 of which once stood upon massive stone platforms called ahu. There are some 250 of these ahu platforms spaced approximately one-half mile apart creating an almost unbroken line around the perimeter of the island. Another 600 moai statues, in various stages of completion, are scattered around the island, either in quarries or along ancient roads between the quarries and the coastal areas where the statues were most often erected. Nearly all the moai are carved from the tough stone of the Rano Raraku volcano. The average statue is 14 feet and 6 inches tall and weighs 14 tons. Some moai were as large as 33 feet and weighed more than 80 tons. Depending upon the size of the statues, it has been estimated that between 50 and 150 people were needed to drag them across the countryside on sleds and rollers made from the island's trees.
D
Scholars are unable to definitively explain the function and use of the moai statues. It is assumed that their carving and erection derived from an idea rooted in similar practices found elsewhere in Polynesia but which evolved in a unique way on Easter Island. Archaeological and iconographic analysis indicates that the statue cult was based on an ideology of male, lineage-based authority incorporating anthropomorphic symbolism. The statues were thus symbols of authority and power, both religious and political. But they were not only symbols. To the people who erected and used them, they were actual repositories of sacred spirit. Carved stone and wooden objects in ancient Polynesian religions, when properly fashioned and ritually prepared, were believed to be charged by a magical spiritual essence called mana. The ahu platforms of Easter Island were the sanctuaries of the people, and the moai statues were the ritually charged sacred objects of those sanctuaries.
E
Besides its more well-known name, Easter Island is also known as Te-Pito-O-Te-Henua, meaning 'The Navel of the World', and as Mata-Ki-Te-Rani, meaning 'Eyes Looking at Heaven'. These ancient names and a host of mythological details ignored by mainstream archaeologists point to the possibility that the remote island may once have been a geodetic marker and the site of an astronomical observatory of a long-forgotten civilization.
In his book, Heaven's Mirror, Graham Hancock suggests that Easter Island may once have been a significant scientific outpost of this antediluvian civilization and that its location had extreme importance in a planet-spanning, mathematically precise grid of sacred sites. Two other alternative scholars, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, have extensively studied the location and possible function of these geodetic markers. In their fascinating book, Uriel's Machine, they suggest that one purpose of the geodetic markers was as part of the global network of sophisticated astronomical observatories dedicated to predicting and preparing for future commentary impacts and crystal displacement cataclysms.
F
In the latter years of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century, various writers and scientists have advanced theories regarding the rapid decline of Easter Island's magnificent civilization around the time of the first European contact. Principal among these theories, and now shown to be inaccurate, is that postulated by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. Basically, these theories state that a few centuries after Easter Island's initial colonization the resource needs of the growing population had begun to outpace the island's capacity to renew itself ecologically. By the 1400s the forests had been entirely cut, the rich ground cover had eroded away, the springs had dried up, and the vast flocks of birds coming to roost on the island had disappeared. With no logs to build canoes for offshore fishing, depleted bird and wildlife food sources, and with declining crop yields because of the erosion of good soil, the nutritional intake of the people plummeted. First famine, then cannibalism (MT), set it. Because the island could no longer feed the chiets, bureaucrats and priests who kept the complex society running, the resulting chaos triggered a social and cultural collapse. By 1700 the population dropped to between one-quarter and one-tenth of its former number, and many of the statues were toppled during supposed "clan wars" of the 1600s and 1700s.
G
The faulty notions presented in these theories began with the racist assumptions of Thor Heyerdahl and have been perpetuated by writers, such as Jared Diamond, who do not have sufficient archaeological and historical understanding of the actual events that occurred on Easter Island. The real truth regarding the tremendous social devastation which occurred on Easter Island is that it was a direct consequence of the inhumane behavior of many of the first European visitors, particularly the slavers who raped and murdered the islanders, introduced small pox and other diseases, and brutally removed the natives to mainland South America.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 3
27
IV
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Matching Headings
Step 01: Read to understand main idea
Dựa vào phần Simplify & Connection ở trên, ta có thể rút ra main idea như sau:
Phần đầu đoạn văn cung cấp thông tin nền về Easter Island: vị trí biệt lập, địa hình núi lửa, đặc điểm không còn cây cối.
Phía sau giới thiệu nguồn gốc tên gọi “Easter Island” – một sự kiện lịch sử cụ thể: đảo được đặt tên bởi nhà thám hiểm Hà Lan Jacob Roggeveen vào đúng ngày lễ Phục Sinh.
⇒ Nội dung đoạn tập trung vào việc cung cấp bối cảnh địa lý và lịch sử tên gọi của đảo.
------------------------
Step 02: Compare meaning with meaning
Đại ý của đoạn: Mô tả vị trí địa lý, nguồn gốc núi lửa và lý do đảo có tên là “Easter Island”.
So sánh với các tiêu đề: Đáp án D. The story of the name là lựa chọn chính xác vì khớp hoàn toàn với nội dung câu 5 – chi tiết then chốt tạo nên chủ đề của cả đoạn.
B. No wonder engineers are turning to Plan B: sap the water's destructive strength by dispersing it into fields, forgotten lakes, flood plains, and aquifers. Back in the days when rivers took a more tortuous path to the sea, floodplains and aquifers. Back in the days when rivers took a more tortuous path to the sea, flood waters lost impetus and volume while meandering across flood plains and idling through wetlands and inland deltas. But today the water tends to have an unimpeded journey to the sea. And this means that when it rains in the uplands, the water comes down all at once. Worse, whenever we close off more floodplains, the river's flow farther downstream becomes more violent and uncontrollable. Dykes are only as good as their weakest link-and the water will unerringly find it.
C. Today, the river has lost 7 percent of its original length and runs up to a third faster. When it rains hard in the Alps, the peak flows from several tributaries coincide in the main river, where once they arrived separately. And with four-fifths of the lower Rhine's flood plain barricaded off, the waters rise ever higher. The result is more frequent flooding that does ever-greater damage to the homes, offices, and roads that sit on the floodplain. Much the same has happened in the US on the mighty Mississippi, which drains the world's second largest river catchment into the Gulf of Mexico.
D. The European Union is trying to improve rain forecasts and more accurately model how intense rains swell rivers. That may help cities prepare, but it won’t stop the floods. To do that, say hydrologists, you need a new approach to engineering, not just rivers, but the whole landscape. The UK’s Environment Agency -which has been granted an extra £150 million a year to spend in the wake of floods in 2000 that cost the country £1 billion- puts it like this: “The focus is now on working with the forces of nature. Towering concrete walls are out, and new wetlands are in." To help keep London’s feet dry, the agency is breaking the Thames’s banks upstream and reflooding 10 square kilometres of ancient flood plain at Otmoor outside Oxford. Nearer to London it has spent £100 million creating new wetlands and a relief channel across 16 kilometres of flood plain to protect the town of Maidenhead, as well as the ancient playing fields of Eton College. And near the south coast, the agency is digging out channels to reconnect old meanders on the river Cuckmere in East Sussex that were cut off by flood banks 150 years ago.
E. The same is taking place on a much grander scale in Austria, in one of Europe's largest river restorations to date. Engineers are regenerating flood plains along 60 kilometers of the river Drava as it exits the Alps. They are also widening the river bed and channeling it back into abandoned meanders, oxbow lakes, and backwaters overhung with willows. The engineers calculate that the restored flood plain can now store up to 10 million cubic meters of flood waters and slow storm surges coming out of the Alps by more than an hour, protecting towns as far downstream as Slovenia and Croatia.
F. "Rivers have to be allowed to take more space. They have to be turned from flood-chutes into flood-foilers," says Nienhuis. And the Dutch, for whom preventing floods is a matter of survival, have gone furthest. A nation built largely on drained marshes and seabed had the fright of its life in 1993 when the Rhine almost overwhelmed it. The same happened again in 1995 when a quarter of a million people were evacuated from the Netherlands. But a new breed of "soft engineers" wants our cities to become porous, and Berlin is the governed by tough new rules to prevent its drains from becoming overloaded after heavy rains. Harald Kraft, an architect working in the city, says: "We now see rainwater as giant Potsdamer Platz, a huge new commercial redevelopment by DaimlerChrysler in the heart of the city.
G. Los Angeles has spent billions of dollars digging huge drains and concreting river beds to carry away the water from occasional intense storms. "In LA we receive half the water we need in rainfall, and we throw it away. Then we spend hundreds of millions to import water," says Andy Lipkis, an LA environmentalist who kick-started the idea of the porous city by showing it could work on one house. Lipkis LA, wants to beat the urban flood hazard and fill the taps by holding onto the city's flood water. And it's not just a pipe dream. The authorities this year launched a $100 million scheme to road-test the porous city in one flood-hit community in Sun Valley. The plan is to catch the rain that falls on thousands of driveways, parking lots, and rooftops in the valley. Trees will soak up water from parking lots. Homes and public buildings will capture roof water to irrigate gardens and parks. And road drains will empty into old gravel pits and other leaky places that should recharge the city's underground water reserves. Result: less flooding and more water for the city. Plan B says every city should be left to build its own defenses. It sounds expensive and utopian until you realise how much we spend trying to drain cities and protect our watery margins-and how bad we are at it.
Coffee originated around the Red Sea, most probably in Africa, and there are records of coffee cultivation in Yemen as early as the 6th century. By the 13th century, the growing, roasting and grinding of coffee to make a strong-flavoured infusion was widespread throughout the Arab world. News of the drink was bought to Europe by traders, but people there were at first wary of the new drink. However, Pope Clement the Eighth gave the drink his seal of approval after trying a cup for himself, and the trend quickly caught on. The 17th century saw the spread of coffee drinking throughout Europe. Coffee houses opened in Vienna, Pahs and London, and they soon became the favourite meeting places of politicians, and were also known to attract artists of all kinds. By the 18th century, coffee production was well established in Java in Indonesia and also throughout the Caribbean. Coffee drinking continued to grow in popularity; one of the repercussions of the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773 was that the USA adopted coffee as its national beverage. Today, coffee is drunk around the world, though each nation has its own ways of preparing and serving it.
Coffee is now grown in more than 50 countries, although production is not at all straightforward. Because it is vulnerable to frost, coffee can only be grown successfully between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. In addition, crop maintenance is labour intensive. The plants require constant care and attention, and in most areas the picking is carried out by hand.
The ripe berry-like fruits which are harvested are called ‘cherries’. These ripen over a period of six to eight months and turn a deep red when ripe, which explains their name. Inside there are two green beans that have to be separated from the pulp and the skin, and dried. This process is known as curing, and it can be done by one of two methods. For the traditional ‘dry method’ of curing, the cherries are laid out in the sun until completely dry, and then the dried skins and pulp are removed from the beans. The ‘wet method’ is a more recent development and it is employed for high-quality hand-picked cherries. The outer, fleshy layer is removed, then the cherries are soaked and fermented, followed by washing and drying. Finally, the skins are removed by a machine, revealing the green beans.
In both cases, the green beans are sorted, graded and packed for export. Roasting tends to be done in the country of import. The roasting process is necessary to reduce the acidity of the beans and to develop the aromatic oils, which give the coffee its aroma and flavour. Finally, grinding exposes a larger surface area to the water, ensuring optimum contact between the ground beans and the water, resulting in a more satisfying cup of coffee.
The flavour, character and quality of coffee varies tremendouslv - not only between countries, but also between estates within the same country. The soil, altitude and climate are all factors that contribute to the character of the bean, thereby affecting the final taste. There are four varieties of coffee plant, but only two are sold on any commercial scale. The most important of these is coffee arabica, which grows on steep mountain slopes at high altitudes. The arabica bean produces coffee that is rich, aromatic and full of flavor, and it accounts for 70% of world coffee production. Coffee experts agree that the arabica bean is far superior in flavour to other types. The other main variety, coffee canephora, produces the coffee bean known as robusta. Grown on the lower slopes, where cultivation is easier, robusta beans have a higher caffeine content than arabica beans, and a rougher, almost earthy flavour that lacks delicacy and subtlety. It costs about half the price of arabica and is used in the cheaper blends of both fresh and instant coffee.
There are three types of instant coffee. The cheapest is made from robusta beans that have been brewed into a concentrate. This is sprayed into a stream of hot air that instantly evaporates all moisture, leaving a fine powder. Some of the spray-dried powders undergo further heating to produce granular coffees; the better ones include some arabica beans. The best instant coffees are freeze-dried. For these, an arabica coffee concentrate is frozen and processed in a vacuum to produce crisp, dry particles of coffee.
Caffeine is a stimulant that is present in coffee. It makes the nervous system more active, which is usually the desired effect. However, it can cause sleeplessness and therefore some consumers prefer to buy coffee without caffeine. Decaffeinated coffee is available in all the regular coffee forms: whole beans, ground or instant. Caffeine is removed by soaking the beans in water, or by the use of solvents or carbon dioxide. The latter is thought to be the best method as it does not affect the flavour and there is no residue. To qualify as decaffeinated, coffee must contain less than 0.9% caffeine.
are called ‘cherries’
turn deep red
This explains
their name
Main idea: Quả chuyển sang màu đỏ đậm → màu đó giải thích cho tên gọi “anh đào”.
B. "In the early 1950s, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl popularized the idea that the island had been originally settled by advanced societies of Indians from the coast of South America. Extensive archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic research has conclusively shown this hypothesis to be inaccurate. It is now recognized that the original inhabitants of Easter Island are of Polynesian) stock (DNA extracts from skeletons have confirmed this), that they most probably came from the Marquesas or Society islands, and that they arrived as early as 318 AD (carbon dating of reeds from a grave confirms this). At the time of their arrival, much of the island was forested, was teeming with land birds, and was perhaps the most productive breeding site for seabirds in the Polynesia region. Because of the plentiful bird, fish, and plant food sources, the human population grew and gave rise to a rich religious and artistic culture.
C. That culture's most famous features are its enormous stone statues called moai, at least 288 of which once stood upon massive stone platforms called ahu. There are some 250 of these ahu platforms spaced approximately one-half mile apart creating an almost unbroken line around the perimeter of the island. Another 600 moai statues, in various stages of completion, are scattered around the island, either in quarries or along ancient roads between the quarries and the coastal areas where the statues were most often erected. Nearly all the moai are carved from the tough stone of the Rano Raraku volcano. The average statue is 14 feet and 6 inches tall and weighs 14 tons. Some moai were as large as 33 feet and weighed more than 80 tons. Depending upon the size of the statues, it has been estimated that between 50 and 150 people were needed to drag them across the countryside on sleds and rollers made from the island's trees.
D. Scholars are unable to definitively explain the function and use of the moai statues. It is assumed that their carving and erection derived from an idea rooted in similar practices found elsewhere in Polynesia but which evolved in a unique way on Easter Island. Archaeological and iconographic analysis indicates that the statue cult was based on an ideology of male, lineage-based authority incorporating anthropomorphic symbolism. The statues were thus symbols of authority and power, both religious and political. But they were not only symbols. To the people who erected and used them, they were actual repositories of sacred spirit. Carved stone and wooden objects in ancient Polynesian religions, when properly fashioned and ritually prepared, were believed to be charged by a magical spiritual essence called mana. The ahu platforms of Easter Island were the sanctuaries of the people, and the moai statues were the ritually charged sacred objects of those sanctuaries.
E. Besides its more well-known name, Easter Island is also known as Te-Pito-O-Te-Henua, meaning 'The Navel of the World', and as Mata-Ki-Te-Rani, meaning 'Eyes Looking at Heaven'. These ancient names and a host of mythological details ignored by mainstream archaeologists point to the possibility that the remote island may once have been a geodetic marker and the site of an astronomical observatory of a long-forgotten civilization.
In his book, Heaven's Mirror, Graham Hancock suggests that Easter Island may once have been a significant scientific outpost of this antediluvian civilization and that its location had extreme importance in a planet-spanning, mathematically precise grid of sacred sites. Two other alternative scholars, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, have extensively studied the location and possible function of these geodetic markers. In their fascinating book, Uriel's Machine, they suggest that one purpose of the geodetic markers was as part of the global network of sophisticated astronomical observatories dedicated to predicting and preparing for future commentary impacts and crystal displacement cataclysms.
F. In the latter years of the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century, various writers and scientists have advanced theories regarding the rapid decline of Easter Island's magnificent civilization around the time of the first European contact. Principal among these theories, and now shown to be inaccurate, is that postulated by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. Basically, these theories state that a few centuries after Easter Island's initial colonization the resource needs of the growing population had begun to outpace the island's capacity to renew itself ecologically. By the 1400s the forests had been entirely cut, the rich ground cover had eroded away, the springs had dried up, and the vast flocks of birds coming to roost on the island had disappeared. With no logs to build canoes for offshore fishing, depleted bird and wildlife food sources, and with declining crop yields because of the erosion of good soil, the nutritional intake of the people plummeted. First famine, then cannibalism (MT), set it. Because the island could no longer feed the chiets, bureaucrats and priests who kept the complex society running, the resulting chaos triggered a social and cultural collapse. By 1700 the population dropped to between one-quarter and one-tenth of its former number, and many of the statues were toppled during supposed "clan wars" of the 1600s and 1700s.
G. The faulty notions presented in these theories began with the racist assumptions of Thor Heyerdahl and have been perpetuated by writers, such as Jared Diamond, who do not have sufficient archaeological and historical understanding of the actual events that occurred on Easter Island. The real truth regarding the tremendous social devastation which occurred on Easter Island is that it was a direct consequence of the inhumane behavior of many of the first European visitors, particularly the slavers who raped and murdered the islanders, introduced small pox and other diseases, and brutally removed the natives to mainland South America.
