Hi guys, this is Fiona from IELTS with Fiona and the Members Academy.
It is Christmas Eve, 24th of December 2023, and I'm a little late, because what I actually wanted to talk about today happened on the 21st of December, which was the shortest day of the year, And it's known as the winter solstice.
I thought there must be an IELTS reading on this.
And here we have it.
It's from book 18.
So it's very recent.
And the good news is that it's a part one academic reading, which means it's not too difficult reading something for you to do during the holidays, and it's a really interesting topic, I think.
The title is Stonehenge.
Now I'm sure you know Stonehenge but if you don't it's one of those images of Britain, England.
It's quite a famous tourist spot.
You know, it's kind of stones in a circle and It has the same kind of status I would say as well, the pyramids.
They're not as amazing as the pyramids, but they have that mystery surrounding them.
And of course, IELTS loves that.
We've got a reading about how the pyramids were built.
We've got another reading about how the Easter Island heads were moved and built.
This is the typical IELTS reading and there's so much language in this particular one.
I really, really strongly recommend that you find it online.
I'll put it on my website.
It's in the Members Academy.
But if you just Google IELTS reading Stonehenge, you'll find it.
So do that and maybe come back to the listening if you want to.
So yeah, it's called stonehenge, and i saw it on the news on the 21st of december, because on the, the solstice, people like to go there to um celebrate uh, the shortest day.
There's also, of course, the summer solstice, which is the longest day the longest day yes, which is in summer and didn't actually know what solstice meant.
I can't believe I didn't know.
So I googled it and I think it's quite important at this time of year.
It's the meaning is to stand still, and it comes from Latin words sol, meaning Sun, and sistere, meaning to stand still.
So it's the point where the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest point in the sky for the year.
And thus ancient astronomers came to know the day as one where the sun appeared to stand still.
So it's full of ancient symbolism and mythology.
And this word ancient is so important for IELTS and a lot of the words connected with that.
I call it Connected with Ancient Civilizations.
That's my vocabulary topic in the Vocabulary Booster course because there are so many texts about it.
And it's perfect for IELTS, because it's one of those texts that asks a question at the start and then gives lots of theories afterwards.
About, you know, how were the pyramids built or how did they move those huge heads in Easter Island?
What happened to Easter Island?
It's exactly the same here.
But it's quite interesting that it's a task one, passage one.
Those kind of passages usually come, well, part two or part three.
Anyway, the title is Stonehenge and Stonehenge.
The first paragraph asks that question.
It says, for centuries, historians and archaeologists have puzzled over the many mysteries of Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument that took an estimated 1500 years to erect.
The other thing about the language here is that it's all of that academic language, the kind of hedging we're not sure it may be.
Probably research has shown, evidence has revealed all of that language as well.
If you're going on to do academic writing at university, this is all essential.
So that first thing said it took an estimated.
1,500 years.
I always think that's interesting because why is it singular, unestimated 1,500 years?
I guess it's considered a group, a time period.
Estimated meaning they can only guess, they're not sure.
So that leads us into some of the theories and I'm going to have a quick check at the questions first,
That's what I always do.
So the first set of questions, the title is Stonehenge.
They divide it into three parts.
Number one, the construction, how it was built, and they divide that into three parts as well.
There's stage one, stage two, stage three.
So that's easy to find in the text.
Then they talk about the builders and then they talk about the purpose.
So basically the three parts, how was it built, who built it and why did they build it?
There are eight gapped sentences there and you're allowed to use two words.
Normally it's one word, but here two words are allowed.
So if we just look at the construction and the first thing it says, stage one it says the ditch and henge henge is a strange word might help if we go and look for that.
They were dug, possibly using tools made from something.
Now, if you listened to my previous podcast, I think, or if you're in the bronze membership, you will see that I did a whole thing about made from and made of.
It comes up so much.
And I think it was a listening about soap and what soap was made of and made from.
And it was essential that you knew these words made from and made of.
Well, here we are again.
And there's a new word and it comes up twice in this listening.
So we need to learn it.
So it says that the ditch and henge were dug possibly using tools made from.
So first of all, your brain should be thinking, well, how did they make tools?
I actually put a few examples in the previous post of common gap fills.
And one of the examples were tools were made from bone, which they were.
So, you know, I'm already thinking, well, how did they make tools?
And when you go to the text, let's have a look.
It says first.
So that's stage one.
Neolithic Britons, don't worry about that, they give you that word, Neolithic.
Actually, let's just scroll, see what it says.
Neolithic means this era was the Stone Age.
Okay, so Neolithic means the Stone Age people.
And it says Neolithic Britons used primitive tools, primitive keyword, which may have been speculation, guessing which may have been fashioned out of deer antlers.
Fashioned out of deer antlers.
Now, if you don't know fashioned, okay let's learn it today.
Fashioned means you made something.
It's got nothing to do with fashion.
So fashioned out of, you can just use the word out of, because you know made out of.
You know made out of is the synonym for made from.
So, the answer is deer antlers.
Now you might not know what that means, but you'll be able to guess it because of the construction of that sentence out of
And the answer is deer antlers. antlers.
It's an interesting one because it's Christmas, reindeers and things like that.
I just read today that the reindeers must be female, because the male deers actually lose their antlers in wintertime.
So again, reading about things like that.
I saw it on Instagram.
Little things like that, bit by bit, will help you develop your vocabulary.
So the answer for number one is deer antlers.
The second gap.
Something may have been arranged in deep pits inside the circle.
Again, they're guessing.
They don't know.
They may have been arranged.
Well, what?
I'm thinking, well, the stones may have been arranged.
Let's have a look.
It says deep pits, pits dating back to that era and located within the circle, so synonym inside the circle, may have once held a ring of timber posts, may have held a ring of timber posts.
So that is the answer a ring of timber posts.
But we can only choose two words, so the answer is timber meaning wood and posts.
That has come up a fair few times, i'm sure.
All right now they move on.
Um, talking about theories about the transportation.
So how did they move these huge, massive blue stones?
There are two theories archaeological and geological.
So we know the word archaeology is is really important in IELTS and we're looking for yeah, something to do with building, and it says builders used something to make sledges and rollers.
So what did they use to make sledges and rollers to pull these huge stones?
Now i'm already thinking about the reading about easter island.
It's called um yeah, what happened to the civilization of easter island?
I think it's called, and it talks about how they ran out of, uh well, the trees.
They cut the trees down so that they could get the wood to move the stones.
And it's the same here.
Let's have a look.
It says, according to one long standing theory among archaeologists, Stonehenge's builders fashioned again.
Fashioned meaning made sledges and rollers out of tree trunks.
That's it.
Two words tree trunks.
Trunks meaning the wood obviously, of the trees.
So tree trunks, you need those two words i would say.
If you're not sure, just put both of them.
It makes grammatical sense to put tree trunks to make sledges and rollers.
That's number three.
Number four now, another useful word, something pulled them giant baskets.
Now let's have a look.
We're looking for baskets and it says more recent archaeological hypotheses.
Hypotheses is plural of hypothesis, meaning theories.
Keywords here have them transporting the bluestones with super-sized wicker baskets.
So super-sized meaning giant baskets hauled by oxen.
Now hauled is the important word.
I'll tell you why in a minute.
Hauled by oxen, o-x-e-n.
So oxen is Plural, meaning any cattle.
Cattle is a cow over four years of age that has been trained to do work.
So that's something I've learned today.
That's what the difference between an ox or a cow is.
Ox is singular.
Oxen is plural.
And as we know, IELTS loves plural. irregular plurals.
Now if you don't know what oxen is it's a tricky one.
Maybe the word hauled would help you.
Meaning pulled, and the reason why I'm highlighting it here is that I've been working on how to describe a process on the website and I noticed how to make energy from coal used.
Hauled quite a lot because you haul something heavy from the ground, and it's quite a useful word, i think, and it it here.
It's essential to get this one right.
So number four is oxen.
Number five they were brought from wales, my country, wales so they think that they pulled these big giant stones from wales by now.
This is a geological theory, something to do with the geology of the country, and it says in the 1970s, geologists added their voices to the debate over how Stonehenge came into being, challenging the classic image of Industrious builders pushing or hauling or rolling stones from far away Wales.
Some scientists have suggested that it was glaciers, not humans, that carried the blue stones to Salisbury Plain.
Glaciers.
I think there's American and British different pronunciations.
The spelling is G-L-A-C-I-E-R-S.
And that is the answer.
And why do they love it?
We had this a couple of weeks ago with science, because it's one of those words that are quite difficult to spell because of the C-I-E spelling rule.
You know, I before E except after C. which is broken so many times.
Now, of course, you just have to copy it here.
But even in copying something, you can make mistakes.
So that's why they've chosen it.
It's glacier or glacier.
OK, then where are we?
We're on question number six.
Yes.
So question number six is about the builders.
And the heading is builders.
And it says a theory arose in the 17th century that its builders were Celtic something.
Well, we know builders must be people.
So they're obviously Celtic people.
So that's the kind of word I'm looking for.
And I'm going straight to the paragraph which starts with a question and it says But who were the builders of Stonehenge?
In the 17th century, archaeologist John Aubrey made the claim that Stonehenge was the work of Druids.
And that's it.
That's the answer.
I don't know if druid is a familiar word for you, but it explains it.
It says who had important religious, judicial and political roles in Celtic society.
So the Celtic there is quite easy to find because they've put, well, it's got capital letters.
A capital letter for Celtic.
And there are two asterisks to explain Celtic.
The Celts were people who lived in Britain and northwest Europe during the Iron Age.
So easy to find Celtic.
And you have to work out from the sentence that Druids, plural, is the answer.
Finally, the last two gaps are about the purpose and it says many experts agree it has been used as a something site.
Now a little danger here.
I actually read the text out of interest before I looked at the questions.
I don't normally do that.
I go to the questions first, and when I looked at question seven I thought I thought oh, I'm sure I saw something that it was used as a kind of healing site.
And if you scroll right down to the bottom, it says it was considered a place of healing.
And the blue stones were thought to have curative powers, healing powers.
So I thought, oh, that's a bit odd because that's right at the bottom.
And then I went back to the text and the answer is not healing.
So remember, just keep in order.
Don't jump around.
But this one actually is quite difficult to find.
We're looking for something which says many experts agree.
The next paragraph in order says many modern historians and archaeologists now agree that several distinct tribes of people contributed to Stonehenge.
But that's not giving us the answer.
You have to actually read a little bit further on.
And it says in the next paragraph, while there is consensus among the majority of modern scholars.
So consensus means the people agree.
And there's consensus that Stonehenge once served the function of burial ground.
And that is our answer.
It was used as a burial site.
Now, the word site might actually help you because burial site is a collocation.
And again, we had this word exactly the same, exactly the same context in Beyond the Blue Horizon.
It was talking about the Lapitas, I think, a group of people, and they talked about a burial site.
It looks like burial, B-U-R-I-A-L.
And I say burial but if you check it, Pronunciation is burial site and that's important because it comes up in the listening quite a lot.
Anyway, it was a burial site where they buried people and that is answer number seven.
Last one, number eight, starts in the 1960s.
So you can quickly find that, almost the last paragraph.
In the 1960s, it was suggested that it...
Worked as a kind of something.
And this one's pretty easy because of the synonyms.
It says the astronomer Gerald Hawkins suggested that the stones operated as a form of calendar.
Calendar is the word then and you can get that from the synonyms.
Operated as, worked as.
A form of, a kind of and calendar is the answer.
OK, let's move on.
We've basically read most of that text.
The summary is spread out because it's a short, well, shorter kind of text.
It's a passage one.
Then that kind of note form gap fill summary is spread throughout the text.
It still goes in order.
But now you're going to have to go back to look for the true, false, not given questions.
There are signals for you.
There are five questions in total.
Question nine says during the third phase of construction.
So you know you've got to jump back to the bit about the building and one paragraph starts the third phase of construction.
And the question is this.
Sandstone slabs were placed in both the outer areas and the middle of the Stonehenge site.
Now, with true, false, not given questions, people often say, oh, underline the key words.
And the trouble is.
All of these words are key here and I think people miss the real key word.
The real key word, and it stood out for me immediately, is both.
Because the question writers have to choose a word which could be wrong.
How can I explain that?
I mean very often like false questions are about quantity.
So where it says both areas, it's easy to to write a false statement, like you could say oh, only one of the areas.
So i'm looking for something which says that they put these slabs in both outer and inner parts of the site, and then the answer is obvious and it says the slabs were arranged into an outer ring and some were put in the centre, so both areas.
The answer is true, but it's only the word both.
That helped me there, nothing else.
I knew what I was looking for.
Question 10 there is scientific proof that the blue stones stood in the same spot until 1600 BCE.
Now the key words here for me are scientific proof means it's 100, true and the same spot is also a 100 word, meaning the same, exactly the same And it's exactly true.
For me, that is going to be a false answer because it's too strict.
It's too kind of adamant.
And when you look, it says radiocarbon dating.
OK, that's your scientific proof has revealed that work continued until 1600.
So I think great.
But the blue stones were repositioned multiple times.
So they didn't stand in the same spot.
They were repositioned multiple times.
And that's false.
So the opposite of the same spot is no.
They were moved around.
And that really, I could guess that from the question.
Question 11.
It's about John Aubrey.
So you can quickly find his name right in order.
And it says his claim about Stonehenge was supported by 20th century findings.
So basically, this is your academic language.
He claimed something in the 17th century and then in the 20th century they found evidence that supported his claim, that suggested that he was right.
Now this seems to me a very kind of sensible statement.
It's not too extreme, there's not something like numerical a number that's either right or wrong.
So what, what do they say?
Okay, 17th century John Aubrey claimed that Stonehenge was the work of druids.
His theory was popularised.
So I'm thinking, oh, OK, he was right.
And even today, people who call themselves druids go to Stonehenge for the solstice.
So I'm thinking, oh, right, he was right.
However, so there's your answer.
However.
In the mid 20th century, again, radiocarbon dating evidence demonstrated Stonehenge stood for more than 1,000 years before the Celts came to the region.
So Stonehenge was there before the Celts and the Druids.
So actually, John Aubrey was wrong there.
So question 11.
No, it's the opposite of supported.
They found that he was wrong.
So 11 is false.
Question 12.
Objects discovered at Stonehenge.
Seemed to indicate that it was constructed by a number of different groups of people.
Now look at the hedging here.
Seemed to indicate nothing too extreme.
And what would you guess?
Do you think only one group of people built it over thousands of years?
Let's see what it says.
So we're looking for some objects.
And it says next paragraph many modern historians and archaeologists now agree that several distinct tribes of people contributed to Stonehenge.
That's it.
Several tribes of people, distinct synonym for different groups.
And you can see the synonyms are exactly the same.
So then it's going to be true.
It's true.
So far, we've had two trues and two false.
So last one, 13.
Criticism of Gerald Hawkins' theory about Stonehenge has come mainly from other astronomers.
So what do we know about Gerald Hawkins?
He's in the last paragraph.
He is an astronomer and he suggested that, that the stones were a kind of calendar.
So that was his theory and it says while his theory has received a considerable amount of attention over the decades, critics maintain that Stonehenge's builders probably lacked the knowledge necessary to predict such events.
So We know he's got critics.
People criticise his theory, so they think he's probably wrong.
But the question in 13 is where did those critics come from?
The question was, has come mainly from other astronomers?
Well, we don't know if they were astronomers.
Maybe they were, maybe they weren't.
So the answer is for 13, not given.
So I hope from listening to that, you got a kind of feel for this academic language.
I've taken it all out and put it on a document so you can finish here.
Don't listen anymore if you're tired.
But I've put it into groups and one of the groups is assumption.
When you assume something, you have to use evidence and make guesses even though you're not a hundred percent sure.
And look at the language they use.
The tools may have been made out of deer antlers.
The deep pits may have held a ring of timber posts.
According to some scholars, it's all a lot of hedging.
They may have towed each stone.
Towed meaning pulled the stones oh, there are 50 stones now, but it may have contained many more and other things like.
The first stage was achieved by neolithic agrarians who were likely to have been.
It's really complex language.
And later it is believed
All of these, they believe, they think.
And I'm moving now to the language of theories.
Archaeologists believe.
According to some scholars, it is thought according to one long-standing theory.
More recent archaeological hypotheses challenging the classic image of builders, Some scientists have suggested.
Many archaeologists remain sceptical sceptical is a good word having doubts or reservations sceptical about this theory.
John Aubrey made the claim again.
That's his opinion and this theory was popularised, meaning others agreed or spread it, and bones tools, artefacts seem to support this hypothesis.
Some believe they were immigrants, while others maintain they were probably native Britons.
There is consensus among the majority of scholars.
A lot of hedging there.
The astronomer Gerald Hawkins suggested that it was a calendar.
While his theory has received attention, critics maintain maintain means they strongly believe that he's wrong that they probably lacked the knowledge.
This just goes on and on, sorry.
It just goes on and on.
All of this language British archaeologists say speculate, guessing it was a place of healing, perhaps because there is scientific proof.
And finally, john aubrey's claim was supported by 20th century findings findings research, results.
We've we've had that so often.
And the final thing is All about those IELTS words like haul and made of and made from.
OK, that was a long one, but useful, I hope.
And I'd like to wish you a very happy winter break.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for your support during 2023.
And I look forward to working with you again in 2024.
If you have any requests, please let me know.
That's all for now.
Thanks again.
Bye bye.
