IELTS BOOTCAMP DAY 10
Sentence completion
Sentence completion questions also test your ability to find specific details or information in the passage. You must fill in the gaps in the sentences with appropriate words from the passage. The sentences will paraphrase the words and ideas. They also contain details that help you find the part you need to read in detail.
1. Spend 30 seconds skim reading the next part of the Reading passage to get the general meaning.
The Blombos Cave discovery is the earliest-known example of a pigment- or paint-producing workshop.
All of the materials were discovered at the same site, and they included an array of raw materials including samples of bone and charcoal, as well as pigment-producing equipment such as grindstones and hammerstones. Judging by the equipment, which shows signs of wear, Henshilwood and his team were able to deduce the process used to produce the ochre mixture.
First, the pieces of ochre were rubbed on quartzite slabs and crushed to produce a red powder. This was combined with ground-up mammal bone, the traces of which show signs that it was heated before being ground. The ochre powder and the bone pieces were mixed with charcoal, stone chips, quartz grains and a liquid (perhaps water) and was then transferred to abalone shells to be gently stirred before being ready for application.
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Flow-chart
A flow chart is a diagram that shows the sequence of events in a process. In flow-chart completion questions, the information may not be presented in the same order as in the passage.
Ochre find reveals ancient knowledge of chemistry
The oldest ochre processing toolkits and workshop ever found have been unearthed, indicating that as far back as 100,000 years ago, banians had an understanding of chemistry.
South Africa’s Blombos Cave lies within a limestone cliff on the southern Cape coast, 300 km east of Cape Town. Its known for its 75,000-year-old rich deposits of artefacts such as heads, bone tools and ochre engravings. Some engravings date as far back as 100,000 years.
Archaeologist Christophers. Hinshelwood from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and University of Bergen, Norway has been excavating at the site since 1992, and has reported the discovery of a mixture, rich in ochre, stored in two abalone shells. It dates back to the Middle Stone Age – 100,000 years ago. Ochre is a term used to describe a piece of earth or rock containing red or yellow oxides or hydroxides of iron. It can be used to make pigments, or paints, ranging from golden-yellow and light yellow-brown to a rich red. Its use spans the history of humans from those living more than *200,000* years ago, to modern indigenous communities.
Made from an array of materials, this mixture, which could have functioned as wall, object and skin decoration or skin protection (acting in a similar way to modern-day sunscreen), indicates the early developments that occurred in the people who originally used the site.
“(Judging from) the complexity of the material that has been collected from different parts of the landscape and brought to the site, they [the people] must have had an elementary knowledge of chemistry to be able to combine these materials to produce this form. It’s not a straightforward process,” said Hinshelwood.
Study the flow-chart completion task below. For Questions 1-6, decide what type of information you need to find.
Spend 30 seconds skim reading the next part of the Reading passage to get the general meaning.
The Blombos Cave discovery is the earliest-known example of a pigment- or paint-producing workshop.
All of the materials were discovered at the same site, and they included an array of raw materials including samples of bone and charcoal, as well as pigment-producing equipment such as grindstones and hammerstones. Judging by the equipment, which shows signs of wear, Henshilwood and his team were able to deduce the process used to produce the ochre mixture.
First, the pieces of ochre were rubbed on quartzite slabs and crushed to produce a red powder. This was combined with ground-up mammal bone, the traces of which show signs that it was heated before being ground. The ochre powder and the bone pieces were mixed with charcoal, stone chips, quartz grains and a liquid (perhaps water) and was then transferred to abalone shells to be gently stirred before being ready for application.