Hi there, this is Fiona from IELTS with Fiona and the Members Academy.
Today we're going to go through reading passage three from an academic text and the title is The Unselfish Gene.
Now, I've chosen this reading because it ties in with the topic of my most recent lesson, which is family life personality.
Now, that's a simple way of addressing a more complex topic that comes up in IELTS and it often comes up as nature versus nurture.
So the meaning of that is nature being what we are born with our genes, our genetics, and then compare that with our genes surroundings.
That's called nurture, the way that we are brought up.
And the question comes up quite a lot in IELTS about which one has the most influence.
Are we stuck with our personalities because that's what we were born with?
The question about birth order.
I've got a listening on that if you're the first child or the middle child or a only child.
Are we stuck with that personality because of how we were brought up or is it built in?
Is it innate?
That's a keyword.
And let's just quickly go through some of these keywords.
So when you hear about nature, you might think about the environment in terms of nature.
The trees and animals, wildlife and so on.
But nature has this second meaning and it means the traits that we are born with.
That's another keyword.
The traits, meaning the characteristics, the features, the personality, even that we are born with.
That is our nature.
Now it's funny that there's a similar word nurture, which again has a second meaning, because to nurture something means to look after something.
You might nurture a plant in your house back to health, for example, but it's got that meaning of looking after or bringing somebody up, bringing up a child, and it means the experiences that we go through in life and that is our environment, our surroundings.
Another word for this is our upbringing possibly the way that parents raise a child and the experiences they have while they are growing up.
So this is all on my keyword list, and the debate centres around.
Nature versus nurture is where the personality is mainly shaped by our genetics or by experience.
I've tried to simplify that.
I'm not a psychologist.
There's a lot more to this, but that's all you need to know for IELTS.
Maybe synonyms that you'll come across are inherited behaviour.
So again, things that we have inherited from our parents and our ancestors.
Compare this with learned behaviour and the environmental influences that shape us.
Two other words before we start and they are quite similar characteristics.
So the typical features or qualities of a person and then personality traits we mentioned before.
Again, specific qualities that form our personality.
So those are quite advanced words.
Of course, in the speaking test, you'll get simpler versions of these questions.
You might be asked to talk about your family.
Are you from a large or small family?
And what activities do you enjoy doing together?
That could be a part one question.
Part two might be asking you to talk about a character trait, a feature that you admire in somebody or that is important to you.
You might choose one such as patience, for example.
I've got a model answer there for you.
And then the speaking part three might follow up and get a bit more difficult.
It might ask you questions such as do you think personality is mostly influenced by nature or nurture, and things like that.
Talking about personalities,
That comes up in the writing task two as well.
This question here.
For example, research indicates that the characteristics we are born with have much more influence on our personality and development than any experience we may have in life.
That's a part two question.
And then there's a listening here about how your birth order determines your personality and whether that is right, a truth or a myth.
And finally I've got an actual reading text which is called Nature or Nurture, And I'm doing an extra reading text today.
As I mentioned at the start, I think it's called The Unselfish Gene.
And The subtitle is A Psychologist Gives His View on How Humans Became Self-Centered.
Now, I did say this was a difficult text.
It's a passage three, so that is the most difficult one in academic reading.
So again, we're going to go through it and try to make it a little easier for you to deal with in 20 minutes.
Remember, with academic texts they are often trying to prove Something is wrong.
In terms of research.
Maybe there's a belief we always thought was true, but these articles are designed to challenge our beliefs.
That's what academic writing is all about and this text does exactly that.
I do have a summary for you.
I'm going to read it to help you get ready for this text.
So the summary is this.
The text discusses the idea that humans may not be naturally selfish.
The writer challenges the theory that competition and aggression developed through evolution, arguing that prehistoric hunter-gatherers often lived cooperatively and shared resources equally.
So there was a book called The Selfish Gene.
And at the start of this text, the writer mentions this book.
So the writer says that nowadays we assume that human beings are basically selfish and that if we do nice things it's usually because we want something.
And this idea became popular in a 1976 book called The Selfish Gene.
And at that time, it seemed to fit in very well with the way we were living.
But our writer challenges this and he says that this need to be competitive and aggressive only actually developed much later in our history.
He argues that when we were hunter-gatherers living in caves, we used to help each other to survive.
That's what the text is about.
And there are three sets of questions.
Multiple choice, gap fill and yes, no, not given.
So let's jump to the multiple choice questions, because they actually tell us where to look in the text.
Question 27 says, what is the writer doing in the first paragraph?
So in the first paragraph he starts by saying there has long been a general assumption that human beings are essentially selfish.
So in that first line, this general assumption assumption is a really important word in IELTS and in academic writing because it means the things that we assume to be right.
We don't question them even though there's no evidence.
And this gives us the answer.
The writer is describing a commonly held belief about people's behaviour.
A commonly held belief is a synonym for a general assumption.
So he says, we tend to believe that humans are selfish.
So the answer there was 27C.
If you have this text, just Google it.
It's online for free.
You can go through this with me.
So remember, you don't need to read everything.
Just jump to the key information and I'll show you how to do that.
In question 28, for example, He says what point is made about Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene.
So this is easy to find in paragraph two.
You've got capital letters there and italics for it, the selfish gene.
So what point does he make about this book?
And when he first mentions this book, he says it became popular because it fitted so well with the competitive and individualistic ethos that was so prevalent in late 20th century societies.
We mentioned that before.
It became popular because In late 20th century societies people seem to be showing these elements the competitive nature and so on.
So the answer is C. This book presented a view that was in line with the attitudes of its time.
29. tells you to go to the fourth paragraph.
It says, what does the writer suggest about the prehistoric era in the fourth paragraph?
So remember, he is trying to disprove this idea.
He's saying that we're not essentially selfish.
And in the fourth paragraph he says it's important to remember that in the prehistoric era the world was very sparsely populated.
If you're not sure about that word sparsely, don't worry.
Read the next line.
He explains it.
He says, in the whole world, there were only about half a million people.
So this idea that we were all fighting for food is wrong, according to him.
He says, with such small population densities it seems unlikely that prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups had to compete against each other for resources.
So the answer here, the question was, what does he suggest about this era?
And the answer is, supplies of natural resources were probably relatively plentiful.
Plentiful, meaning there was plenty of food for everybody.
We didn't need to fight or become competitive or go to war, he says.
Now he mentions a writer, bruce.
I don't know how to pronounce that.
And question 30 takes you straight to this writer.
Question 30 says, the writer refers to Bruce Knauft. his work as support for the idea that, and you have to finish the question.
So when he mentions the anthropologists Bruce Knauft, he says that nowadays, whenever you find modern hunter-gatherer groups and they do exist It's noticeable that they are characterised by extreme egalitarianism.
So egalitarianism meaning everybody is equal.
Men and women are equal in their societies and there's not much fighting.
They share everything and that's an important part of their society.
So he refers to this work to support the idea that selfishness is a relatively recent development in human societies, because if you look at hunter-gatherer groups, they are not selfish and we have evidence of that.
So the next set of questions is gapful and it looks more closely at Bruce Kauft's research, and that again, is a quick and easy way to find it in the text.
The title is Contemporary Hunter Gatherer Societies.
And remember that term.
Hunter gatherer means simply that we hunt for animals and we gather food, like berries.
And that's what we used to do.
We were hunter gatherers.
So, in the gap fill.
Bruce Kauft's research shows that contemporary hunter-gatherer societies tend to exhibit a high level of something in all areas of life.
Well, we just answered that, the word egalitarianism. high level and the synonym is extreme.
You just follow the text in order and the gaps go in the same order.
Remember you don't have to understand everything to pick out the right word.
Next gap fill.
These societies employ strategies to prevent differences in something occurring.
So we had the word strategies, and in the text it says they have methods of preserving egalitarianism by ensuring that differences of status don't arise.
So status or status, however you pronounce it, The synonym is differences and disparities.
So they try to prevent differences in status occurring.
There's an example of the Cwm tribe, who follow a custom whereby the credit for one person's success at something given to another member of the group.
So if you're good at something, you give that credit to another member.
And it says in the text the Kung people of Southern Africa swap arrows before going hunting.
And when an animal is killed, then the credit goes to the person who owned the arrow.
So this is when they go hunting and that is the answer.
One person's success at hunting is given to another member of the group.
Next, individuals who behave in a something manner are punished by being excluded from the group.
So we're looking for a negative adjective and why they might be punished for showing this behaviour.
And it says if a person becomes too domineering, that's a negative adjective.
The other members of the group exile them, push them out of the society.
So The answer is individuals who behave in a domineering manner.
Domineering means you take too much control, too controlling finally, gap 35.
Women have a considerable amount of something in choices regarding work and marriage, so women have uh, what does it say?
Women Benefit from a high level of autonomy.
Autonomy is the answer.
Again, it means independence.
These are difficult words.
They are high level words and the best you can do is have a guess.
Women are given a lot of something.
I would say freedom.
So I'm looking for something like freedom, a noun, and also follow the synonyms.
A high level of autonomy is a synonym for a considerable amount of.
And those little words that come before the gap are often synonyms.
In fact, I can see this one in 31 again.
It says a high level of egalitarianism.
And the answer is extreme.
That's a high level of.
That's a synonym.
So look for the synonyms that come just before the gap fill.
Now, finally, yes, no, not given.
There are four of these and I hope you can maybe now guess these.
So the first one some anthropologists are mistaken.
They are wrong about the point when the number of societies such as the Kung began to decline.
This is just not given.
There's no discussion of the time, the point when these societies began to decline.
It simply says these societies were normal until a few thousand years ago.
But it doesn't say that people are wrong about this.
So it's not given.
Thirty-seven.
Now think about this.
Is this true, false or not given?
Humans who developed war-like traits prehistory had an advantage over those who did not.
So remember what he said about these people in prehistory.
Remember he said actually they were not war like they didn't fight.
And in the text it says this would have been of little benefit in the prehistoric era.
They would be less likely to survive if they behaved selfishly, because they would have been pushed out of the group easily.
So, no, being war-like was not an advantage.
So, question 37 is no.
Question 38 says, Being peaceful and cooperative is a natural way for people to behave.
I hope you can guess that now.
And he says in paragraph eight it makes more sense to see traits such as cooperation and peacefulness as innate characteristics of human beings.
Innate characteristics.
So that word innate we had at the start.
It's a keyword, it's built in, it's natural.
So yes, being peaceful and cooperative is a natural way for people to behave.
39.
There's a comparison here.
You know what i always say about comparisons they are usually not given and it says negative traits are more apparent in some modern cultures than in others.
Immediately, this is not given.
There's no comparison about the different cultures and how selfish we are.
Finally, question 40.
We didn't mention this, so I'm going to read the text.
It says, animal research has failed to reveal a link between changes in the environment and the emergence of aggressive tendencies.
Now a lot of hard vocabulary there, but the key word, I think, is research has failed to show a link between environmental changes and being aggressive.
And it says, research has shown repeatedly that when the natural habits of primates such as apes and gorillas are disrupted, they tend to become more violent and hierarchical.
When we disrupt the natural habits, the environment of gorillas, they do become more violent.
Synonym for aggressive.
So, question 40.
Research has failed to reveal a link?
No, opposite.
Research has shown repeatedly that there is a link between them.
So this is a text that's absolutely full of the language that we're focusing on today, related to nature and nurture.
I would 100 recommend that you look at this text and you review these ideas and this vocabulary if it is new for you.
There's a whole lot of vocabulary related to behaviour personality, society relationships, evolution and population and ways of living, and there's quite a lot of academic vocabulary in this text as well.
Do go through it again.
Listen to the podcast again if you want to.
And I hope that will help you deal with this very difficult topic.
It's on my website.
You do have to be a member, but just one month will give you access to about 240 of my lessons and this could be enough in one month for you to improve your score.
It also gives you benefits and discounts on my materials and all my courses if you're planning in the long term.
Do let me know if you have any questions, and thank you ever so much for listening to this very difficult podcast.
I appreciate you and I salute you for getting to the end.
OK, bye bye.
