PTE Read Aloud Practice

While blue is one of the most popular colors, it is one of the least appetizing. Blue food is rare in nature. Food researchers say that when humans searched for food, they learned to avoid toxic or spoiled objects, which were often blue, black, or purple. When food dyed blue is served to study subjects, they lose appetite.

When countries assess their annual carbon emissions, they count their cars and power stations. Still, bushfires are not included presumably because they are considered events beyond human control. In Australia, Victoria alone sees several hundred thousand hectares burned yearly, in 2004 and more recently, the figure has been over 1 million hectares.

Certainly, one of the most important values of literature is that it nourishes our emotional lives. An effective literary work may seem to speak directly to us especially if we are ripe for it. The inner life that good writers reveal in their characters often gives us glimpses of some portion of ourselves.

Before the discovery of Australia, people in the old world were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence. The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists, but that is not where the significance of the story lies.

Teenage girls continue to outperform boys in English, while the gender gap in achievements in math and science has almost disappeared. The figures show that last year, 80% of 14-year-old girls reached at least the expected level 5 in English, compared with 65% of boys. But in math, the girls are just 1% ahead of boys, while the difference is 2% in science.