Hi guys, this is Fiona from IELTS with Fiona and the Members Academy.
A very happy new year to you.
I haven't done a podcast for a long time because I spent all of 2025 remaking all of my IELTS courses.
So they have been there a while for about 10 years and there are about 800 lessons.
So it did take me a long time to modernize them and make them relevant and as useful as possible for you.
So that's taken a long time, but now i'm back.
So today i'm choosing a topic that i've noticed comes up a lot.
So, as I've been going through all of my materials, it's given me a real insight into the most recent topics, topics that are popular and come up a lot.
So I've created a lot of lessons on my website which are based around topics.
And for each topic there'll be a reading, a listening speaking, writing and all the vocabulary that you need to go with that topic.
So this one is about age and ageing.
And in my vocabulary course, I had a lesson called time and free time.
Because the topic of time comes up like that.
It's either all of the things related to what you do in your free time how should you spend your free time or it's about growing older, basically.
There are lots of Task 2 questions related to this.
They're all now in my Ideas for IELTS Task 2 course.
So, for example, the number of old people is increasing in many countries.
Some people think this causes problems.
Others think old people play an important role.
That's one question.
Then there's a question about older people themselves.
In the past, older people spent time with others and exercise daily.
Nowadays, many of them suffer from loneliness and health problems.
What are the reasons for this?
What can be done to improve the situation?
So a kind of problem solution essay there.
And finally This one some people think that in the modern world, getting old is entirely bad.
However, other people believe that the life of old people is much better now than it was in the past.
So all of those topics relating to ageing, to being old, it's one that you have to revise.
And I noticed also there are lots of readings and listenings related to this.
For example, there's one about chronobiology, your body clock.
And there's a general training one.
How does the biological clock tick?
Then there's listening examples.
They seem to be very similar to this reading.
They're based on what we can learn from studying animals.
So there's a listening about something called tardigrades, and the one we're doing today is about ants.
So it's this idea of learning from animals and how we can apply that research to humans.
Other readings quite similar are this one how animals keep fit, and there's another sim similar one called Lessons from the Ant, which is all about architecture and how we can learn building skills from ants.
So you can see the same vocabulary coming up again and again, and I'll go through that at the end of this podcast.
Of course, in Academic Task 1 you get a lot of those graphs relating to age groups and you have to compare and contrast the different trends according to the ages.
So that too, I've included in my full lesson on this topic, which is in the Bronze Academy, on my website.
So let's get started with this topic.
It's called The Secret of Staying Young.
It's a passage one academic.
So that means it's also useful for general training.
But what's interesting about this one is normally academic part one is a factual text.
This one refers a lot to research, and specifically one person's research.
Isabel Giraldo decided to study these ants called Phidola dentatae ants.
Don't worry about that.
And they seem to defy age.
They don't get old and sick.
They keep active up until the time that they die.
So she decided to study these ants and look at their brains and the chemicals in their brains and try to discover things that might help scientists understand ageing in humans.
And by the way, ageing can be spelt two ways and both of them are actually in this text.
So, I spell ageing with an E-A-G-E-I-N-G.
But you can drop the E. There are two sets of questions in this text.
The first one is a gap fill, one word only.
And the second set is true, false, not given.
So I'm going to go straight into the gap fill because I think with the text one, you can do that.
You don't need to skim the text too much.
The first paragraph simply introduces what we just said about why she decided to study these particular ants.
And there's a little bit of background.
It says that this kind of animal is rare, although there is another example a rat which can live long for 30 years and stay fit for their entire lives.
But the vast majority of animals deteriorate, meaning they get worse with age, just like people do.
There's a kind of overall observation that social creatures, creatures which socialise or live in groups, tend to live longer than animals who live more isolated lives.
So that's now where the research aspect comes in.
It's paragraph three that I'm looking at and it says in the lab.
So this tells us lab is short for laboratory.
This tells us where the research starts.
And if you look at the gap fill, the first thing it says, Isabel Geraldo's research is the title.
And gap number one says she focused on a total of something different age groups.
So how many age groups did she focus on?
The word total gives us a clue there that we're looking for a number.
And when you go to the text, it says she focused on ants at four age ranges.
So that's very easy.
It's even got the same word focused on.
And the answer is four.
So you can write four as a word f-o-u-r.
But they also accept the number four because it's correct, so don't worry too much about that.
Now the second part of the summary is divided into two aspects.
One is behavior and the other is brains.
So later on we will look for that topic of brains, so we know where it starts.
But at the moment we're just looking at the topic of behaviour.
So this is paragraph four and the paragraph starts Giraldo watched how well the ants took care of the young of the colony.
So this is their behaviour, and indeed it is the first gap fill, how well ants looked after their something.
Now you might need to know a little bit of grammar here if you're not sure.
It says the young, which of course means the young ants, but it's a kind of collective term.
You can say the young.
So that's the answer, but you're only allowed one word.
So how they looked after their and young is the answer.
Y-O-U-N-G.
Number three, let's try to guess the gaps a little bit.
We're looking for their ability to locate, meaning to find something, using a scent trail.
Well, all animals are looking for one thing in my head and that one thing is food.
So let's look for that in the text.
And it says um, the ants followed the scent, so we've got the same word scent, that the insects usually leave to mark a trail That's in there trail to food.
And there is your answer, food, F-O-O-D, uncountable, no S. Number four, she wanted to look at the effect that something had on them.
So let's just read ahead.
She tested how ants responded to light.
That's it.
That's your answer.
The effect that light had on them.
So how they responded to light, L-I-G-H-T, uncountable again.
Now, the last one I think is quite tricky.
The gap is this, how something they attacked prey.
I was trying to guess, maybe how often because of the word how, but I looked further and found the sentence right at the end of that paragraph about how they react to prey.
And it says the older ants attacked the fruit fly just as aggressively as the young ones did.
So aggressively is the answer here.
How aggressively they attacked prey.
I do think that's a tricky one.
Now, the next heading was brains.
So let's look for a signal to move on.
The signal is here.
Then.
Then Giraldo compared the brains.
So that tells us these answers, six, seven and eight are in this paragraph.
So Giraldo compared the brains of 20 day old and 95 day old ants.
And we're looking for number six a comparison between age and the something dying cells in the brains of ants, the something of dying cells.
So I'm really looking for dying cells and I can see it here right in order, and it says the location of the dying cells and that's the answer location, where to find these cells.
And you want to just go back a little bit, there was a difference.
She was looking for a difference in the location of the cells and that's the comparison between age and the location.
Now a few tricks here.
In number seven, the language is getting a little complicated.
Lot of these words.
I don't know what they mean, but I'm guessing from the punctuation clues in the text.
So I can see synaptic complexes.
I don't know what that means, but when I go to the text I can see synaptic complexes and there's a dash.
Now that explains the word for me.
So a dash in the text gives you a definition.
And this is exactly what we're looking for in the summary, because it's asking in brackets what these synaptic complex are.
It says areas in which something meet.
So I'm looking at that dash and it says regions.
Aha, I'm thinking areas is the same.
Where neurons come together.
Come together, synonym meet.
So the answer is neurons.
And that is plural with an S.
Finally, number eight, level of two somethings in the brain associated with aging.
So I'm looking for a plural, the level of two somethings in the brain which are somehow related to aging.
Now, I'm guessing it's something like chemicals or hormones in the brain.
Let's have a look.
Again, we've got this Dash, the punctuation in the text, and it says brain chemicals.
What are brain chemicals?
Chemicals in the brain.
That's the answer, chemicals, whose decline often coincides with ageing.
So coincides associated with ageing.
So that's the gap fill.
It's not too bad.
It's a part one, so nothing's too difficult.
It's all located in the first two or three paragraphs there.
Now I would like to say that the true, false not given are in the other paragraphs and that we can forget this first half.
But unfortunately that doesn't always happen in the shorter paragraphs, part one passages true false, not given are often spread throughout the whole passage, because it's just a shorter passage and this is what happens here.
So the first true false, not given says that these ants are the only known animals which remain active for almost their whole lives.
Now That keyword only is a red flag for me.
I usually think, well, that word is carefully chosen.
Are they the only animal or is there another animal which does this?
And of course we saw right at the start that there are also rats, which also remain active for almost 30 years, nearly their entire lives.
All of the language is there, nearly almost.
So the ants are not the only known animals.
So that answer is false.
Now the same red flag word here says that isabel giraldo was the first person to study.
Now, Normally that first is like again, it's like the only person, because it's almost absolute.
It's extreme.
So you've got to find information.
Either somebody did this before her or that she is the only person.
And you have to go down a bit for that.
She says quite close to the end.
This is the first time anyone has looked at these changes so thoroughly.
Now, thoroughly meaning using very precise data.
And that's exactly what this is.
Isabel Geraldo was the first person to study them using precise data.
So that answer is true.
We've got false, true, what you think about 11.
The ants in Geraldo's experiments behaved as she had predicted they would.
Now, a bit of grammar here, I guess.
There's a past perfect.
She had predicted this.
We have to go back again to find this and look.
I found this one quite tough to find quickly.
It's in the middle of a paragraph where she says Giraldo expected the older ants to perform poorly in all these tasks, but and then the elderly insects acted differently.
So the but really tells you they acted differently from what she had predicted before.
So 11 is false again.
So I'm waiting for the where is the not given.
Well, in 12, there's a mention of bees.
And it says that this study of bees used different methods of measuring age related declines.
So remember that paragraph where she says she was the first person to look at ants?
She said scientists have looked at similar aspects in bees, but the results were mixed.
Now, that's all it says.
It doesn't say they used different methods or similar methods.
It says it looked at similar aspects b's.
But ask yourself the question what methods did they use?
That's what the question says, and there's no mention of methods that they used in the research, so that 12 is not given.
Finally, I think you could probably guess 13.
It says that the answer kept in laboratory conditions tend to live longer lives.
Now, your general knowledge background might help you with this.
We've covered it in the topic of zoos.
Animals kept in zoos in captivity do tend to live longer because they're well looked after.
That's the argument anyway, and you might expect the same for ants, and it does say that.
It says in the wild.
So the opposite of in captivity, the ants probably don't live for this full 140 days thanks to predators, disease and an environment that's harsher than the comforts the lab.
So ants kept in lab conditions tend to live longer lives.
The answer is absolutely true.
So what have we learnt from this one?
Well, the topic of aging is important.
We've looked at some language for research, with experiments and the importance of being social and staying fit.
Those are some of the easier words.
The medium, more difficult words were things about prey and predator.
So how they hunt, how they live in a colony, how they behave and reproduce.
And finally, The difficult vocabulary, which is useful, is all about declining with old age deteriorating and how some of these animals seem to be immortal means they live forever.
And remember that this research focused on behavioural aspects.
That's an adjective from behaviour and neural aspects, which relates to the brain or the nervous system.
All right, so that reading is called The Secret of Staying Young.
You can find it easily for free online.
If you'd like all of my notes to go with it on the topic of ageing, with all of the model essays and the model answers for the speaking section, then they are all in the Bruns Academy on my website.
All right, thanks for listening.
Do let me know if you have any requests bye.
