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Sayar U Yan Naing Soe Nyunt

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These interactive IELTS Academic practice passages, question sets, and exercises are designed for students who want to study in practice mode. Learn to analyze academic text structures, explore high-frequency vocabulary, and reinforce your language through meaningful repetition.

Enjoy your learning journey with practical tools that support both skill-building and test-readiness.

Prepared by Sayar U Yan Naing Soe Nyunt , a major contributor on EFLsite.com.

IELTS Reading Passage 1

IELTS Academic Reading – Passage 1

Time Left: 20:00

The Disappearing Honeybee

(A)

In recent years, beekeepers around the world have reported a dramatic decline in the number of honeybee colonies. This phenomenon, now widely referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), has generated global concern, not only among apiarists but also among farmers, scientists, and environmentalists. The importance of honeybees to agriculture cannot be overstated. They are responsible for pollinating around 70 of the 100 crop species that feed 90% of the world’s population, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

(B)

The first major reports of CCD emerged in the United States in 2006, when beekeepers found that adult bees had seemingly vanished from their hives, leaving behind queens and immature bees. Similar incidents were soon reported in Europe and parts of Asia. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain the disorder, ranging from parasites such as the Varroa mite to bacterial infections, malnutrition, and even electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones. However, no single factor has been universally accepted as the root cause.

(C)

A growing body of research now points to a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. These chemicals, used widely in modern agriculture, are neurotoxic to insects. While they do not necessarily kill bees outright, they can impair the bees’ ability to navigate, forage, and return to their hives. One study conducted in France found that exposure to neonicotinoids reduced the foraging success of bees by more than 50%. Although some countries have imposed temporary bans on these chemicals, others continue to permit their use due to conflicting scientific findings and economic concerns.

(D)

Another important consideration is the modern practice of monoculture farming. Vast expanses of land planted with a single crop offer bees limited nutritional variety and seasonal food shortages. Unlike diverse natural habitats, monoculture fields may provide abundant nectar for only a short period. Once the bloom ends, bees are left with few alternatives. Furthermore, transporting bee colonies long distances for commercial pollination exposes them to additional stress, diseases, and environmental changes.

(E)

In response to the crisis, conservationists and scientists are calling for an integrated approach. This would include stricter regulations on pesticide use, encouragement of organic and sustainable farming practices, improved disease management, and the cultivation of bee-friendly habitats. Urban beekeeping has also gained popularity, with rooftop hives becoming common in cities like London and New York. While these efforts may not fully reverse the trend, they represent hopeful steps toward sustaining a species crucial to our ecosystem and food supply.

Question 1: What is the main concern regarding the decline of honeybee populations?

A. It reduces honey production.
B. It affects global pollination and agriculture.
C. It leads to increased use of pesticides.
Hint: Focus on the introduction and how honeybees support food crops globally.

Question 2: When did large-scale reports of CCD begin?

A. 1990
B. 2000
C. 2006
Hint: Look for a specific year when the problem first received attention in the US.

Question 3: What is unusual about the symptoms of CCD?

A. All bees die inside the hive.
B. Only the queen bee is found outside.
C. Adult bees disappear, leaving behind the queen.
Hint: Look at what beekeepers found left in the hives. What's missing?

Question 4: What effect do neonicotinoids have on bees?

A. They destroy hives instantly.
B. They interfere with bee behavior and navigation.
C. They attract bees away from crops.
Hint: The effect isn’t immediate death—what functions of bees are affected?

Question 5: Why is monoculture problematic for bees?

A. It exposes bees to more predators.
B. It offers poor nutrition and seasonal shortages.
C. It reduces the need for pollination.
Hint: Focus on food variety and how long bees can feed on one crop type.

Question 6: A recent ban has been placed in some regions on harmful chemicals.

Hint: One paragraph discusses neonicotinoids and how some countries responded to their use.

Question 7: A wide range of theories has been suggested to explain a phenomenon.

Hint: One paragraph talks about many possible causes of CCD, from mites to radiation.

Question 8: The role of honeybees in food production is very significant.

Hint: Which paragraph describes how many crops depend on honeybee pollination?

Question 9: Transporting bees may worsen their condition.

Hint: One part discusses stress and disease from moving hives for pollination.

Question 10: All scientists agree that pesticides are the main cause of CCD.

TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
Hint: Does the passage claim there is one universally accepted cause?

Question 11: Some urban areas have adopted beekeeping initiatives.

TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
Hint: Is there any mention of cities and rooftop hives?

Question 12: Bees pollinate more than 90% of all crop species.

TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
Hint: Go back to the first paragraph and carefully compare the percentages.

Question 13: Organic farming methods are part of the proposed solutions.

TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
Hint: Check the final paragraph for suggestions by conservationists and scientists.

Passage 1: The Disappearing Honeybee

Academic Vocabulary:

  • Phenomenon (paragraph A)
    • မြန်မာလို ရှင်းပြရင် "ဖြစ်ရပ်" ဒါမှမဟုတ် "ထူးဆန်းတဲ့ အဖြစ်အပျက်"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a puzzling phenomenon affecting global agriculture."
    • စာရေးသူက ပျား အုပ်စု ပျောက်ကွယ်မှုကို "phenomenon" လို့ သုံးထားပါတယ်။ ဒီလို abstract concept တွေကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့အခါ သုံးတဲ့ အဆင့်မြင့် စကားလုံးဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
  • Cannot be overstated (paragraph A)
    • မြန်မာလို "အလွန်အရေးကြီးသည်" ဒါမှမဟုတ် "အရေးပါမှုကို လုံလောက်စွာ မဖော်ပြနိုင်"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "The importance of education cannot be overstated for national development."
    • ဒီ expression က တစ်ခုခုရဲ့ အရေးပါမှုကို အလွန်အမင်း အလေးပေးချင်တဲ့အခါ သုံးတဲ့ formal expression ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
  • Hypotheses (paragraph B)
    • မြန်မာလို "ယူဆချက်များ" ဒါမှမဟုတ် "သီအိုရီယူဆချက်များ"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Scientists have proposed various hypotheses to explain climate change."
    • "Theory" ထက် ပိုပြီး academic ဖြစ်တဲ့ စကားလုံးဖြစ်ပြီး scientific writing မှာ အများသုံးပါတယ်။
  • Neurotoxic (paragraph C)
    • မြန်မာလို "အာရုံကြောစနစ်ကို အဆိပ်ဖြစ်စေသော"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Some industrial chemicals are neurotoxic and can damage the brain."
    • Technical vocabulary ဖြစ်ပြီး academic လေ့လာမှု တစ်ခုခုရဲ့ specific effect ကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့အခါ သုံးပါတယ်။
  • Integrated approach (paragraph E)
    • မြန်မာလို "ပေါင်းစပ်ချဉ်းကပ်နည်း" ဒါမှမဟုတ် "ဘက်စုံချဉ်းကပ်နည်း"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Solving poverty requires an integrated approach involving education, healthcare, and economic policies."
    • Complex issues တွေကို ဖြေရှင်းဖို့ နည်းလမ်းမျိုးစုံကို တွဲဖက်အသုံးပြုတာကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့ academic expression ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

Academic Structures/Grammar:

  • Passive Voice (paragraph A)
    • "This phenomenon, now widely referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), has generated global concern..."
    • ဒီမှာ passive voice ကို သုံးထားတာက action ထက် phenomenon ကိုယ်တိုင်ကို ပိုပြီး focus ပေးထားပါတယ်။ Academic writing မှာ အရေးကြီးတဲ့ structure ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
  • Complex Sentence with Concession (paragraph C)
    • "While they do not necessarily kill bees outright, they can impair the bees' ability to navigate..."
    • "While" conjunction ကို သုံးပြီး contrast ဖြစ်စေတဲ့ complex sentence structure ဖြစ်ပါတယ်། Ideas နှစ်ခုကြား ဆက်စပ်မှုကို academic style နဲ့ ပြသပါတယ်။
  • Non-finite Clause (paragraph D)
    • "...transporting bee colonies long distances for commercial pollination exposes them to additional stress..."
    • "Transporting" ဆိုတဲ့ gerund clause က subject အဖြစ် အသုံးပြုထားပါတယ်။ ဒီလို condensed grammar forms က academic writing မှာ အရေးကြီးပါတယ်။
  • Comparisons using "Unlike" (paragraph D)
    • "Unlike diverse natural habitats, monoculture fields may provide abundant nectar for only a short period."
    • မတူညီတဲ့ အရာနှစ်ခုကို direct comparison လုပ်ထားတဲ့ structure ဖြစ်ပြီး academic writing မှာ idea နှစ်ခုကို နှိုင်းယှဉ်ဖို့ အသုံးများပါတယ်။
  • Modal Verbs for Hedging (paragraphs C & D)
    • "...monoculture fields may provide abundant nectar for only a short period."
    • "These efforts may not fully reverse the trend..."
    • "may" လို modal verb တွေက uncertain statements တွေကို soften လုပ်ဖို့ အသုံးပြုပါတယ်။ Academic writing မှာ categorical statements တွေ မလုပ်ဖို့ အရေးကြီးပါတယ်။


Passage 1: The Disappearing Honeybee

Academic Vocabulary Simple English Burmese
Phenomenon Strange event or occurrence ထူးခြားဖြစ်စဉ်၊ ထူးဆန်းသည့်အဖြစ်အပျက်
Cannot be overstated Very important, extremely significant အလွန်အရေးကြီးသည်၊ အလွန်အမင်း အရေးပါသည်
Hypotheses Possible explanations or theories ယူဆချက်များ၊ သီအိုရီယူဆချက်များ
Neurotoxic Poisons nerves အာရုံကြောစနစ်ကို အဆိပ်ဖြစ်စေသော
Integrated approach Combined methods ပေါင်းစပ်ချဉ်းကပ်နည်း၊ ဘက်စုံချဉ်းကပ်နည်း
Apiarists Beekeepers ပျားမွေးသူများ
Forage Search for food အစားအစာရှာဖွေခြင်း
Pollination The transfer of pollen ဝတ်မှုန်ကူးခြင်း
Conducted Carried out လုပ်ဆောင်ခဲ့သော
Conservationists People who protect nature သဘာဝ ထိန်းသိမ်းစောင့်ရှောက်သူများ

Fill in the Blanks

Word Bank: phenomenon, cannot be overstated, hypotheses, neurotoxic, integrated approach

1. The importance of regular exercise for maintaining good health .
2. Climate change is a global that requires international cooperation to address effectively.
3. Scientists have proposed several to explain why dinosaurs became extinct, but none has been conclusively proven.
4. Many pesticides contain chemicals that can damage the nervous systems of insects and potentially harm humans.
5. Solving urban poverty requires an involving education, healthcare, housing policy, and employment opportunities.

Multiple Choice

6. Which phrase best describes something that happens unexpectedly and cannot be easily explained?



7. In academic writing, if you want to express that the significance of something is extremely important, you could write:



8. When scientists propose possible explanations that need to be tested, they are presenting:



9. The researchers found that the chemical was ____________ to small organisms.



10. To address complex environmental issues, experts recommend:



IELTS Academic Reading – Passage 2

The Science of Sleep

(A)

Sleep is a biological necessity, yet the precise function of sleep remains one of the most elusive questions in neuroscience. For centuries, philosophers and scientists have speculated on why humans and animals need sleep. While some theories highlight its role in memory consolidation, others focus on its function in physical restoration and metabolic regulation.

(B)

The average adult needs about seven to nine hours of sleep per night, although this can vary widely depending on genetic and environmental factors. Sleep is not a passive state; rather, it is composed of complex stages. The most well-known division is between REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and non-REM sleep. Non-REM sleep includes deep sleep, during which the body undergoes tissue repair and growth. REM sleep, on the other hand, is associated with intense brain activity, vivid dreaming, and memory processing.

(C)

Disruptions in sleep can have profound consequences. Chronic sleep deprivation is linked to a range of physical and mental health problems, including obesity, heart disease, depression, and weakened immune function. Studies show that even a single night of poor sleep can impair cognitive performance and decision-making. For shift workers and individuals with sleep disorders, the health implications can be severe.

(D)

In recent years, researchers have explored the connection between sleep and learning. Experiments have revealed that people who sleep after acquiring new knowledge tend to retain the information better. During sleep, the brain seems to replay recent experiences, solidifying them into long-term memory. This has implications for education, leading to recommendations for adequate sleep among students.

(E)

However, modern lifestyles often interfere with natural sleep patterns. Exposure to artificial light, especially from screens, suppresses melatonin production—the hormone that regulates sleep. Urban noise, stress, and irregular schedules further exacerbate the problem. As a result, sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleep apnea are on the rise.

(F)

To counter this, sleep hygiene practices are recommended: maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, reducing screen time before bed, avoiding caffeine in the evening, and creating a restful sleeping environment. Although these measures may not resolve all sleep problems, they form the foundation for healthy sleep habits.


Passage 2
Time Left: 20:00

Question 14: What is the main idea of paragraph A?

A. Bees produce more honey
B. Bees are vital to agriculture
C. Bees attack crops
Hint: Paragraph A focuses on the global impact of bees on food crops.

Question 15: When did large-scale reports of CCD begin?

A. 1990
B. 2000
C. 2006
Hint: Paragraph B mentions the year the issue was first recognized in the U.S.

Question 16: What is the effect of neonicotinoids?

Hint: These chemicals impact how bees behave, not just survival.

Question 17: Which paragraph mentions urban beekeeping?

Hint: Look for references to rooftops and city initiatives.

Question 18: What happens after monoculture crops finish blooming?

A. Bees are well-fed
B. Bees are transported to other areas
C. Bees struggle to find food
Hint: Paragraph D explains the limitations monoculture causes after blooming ends.

Question 19: All scientists agree on the cause of CCD.

TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
Hint: Paragraph B discusses varying theories and no universal agreement.

Question 20: Urban areas are unsuitable for beekeeping.

TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
Hint: Paragraph E gives a positive outlook on rooftop hives.

Question 21: Some countries banned neonicotinoids.

TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
Hint: Paragraph C mentions bans and conflicting findings.

Question 22: CCD was first discovered in Asia.

TRUE
FALSE
NOT GIVEN
Hint: Which country had the first reports according to the passage?

Question 23: Select the paragraph that discusses transport stress for bees.

Hint: Look for moving hives and related challenges.

Question 24: Bees are responsible for pollinating:

A. 10 crop species
B. 70 crop species
C. 90 crop species
Hint: Refer to the specific statistic in paragraph A.

Question 25: Which pesticide class is linked to bee disorientation?

Hint: The name of this chemical class starts with "N".

Question 26: Bees play a role in pollinating crops that feed how much of the global population?

Hint: This stat is directly mentioned in the intro.
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Passage 2: The Science of Sleep

Academic Vocabulary:

  • Elusive (paragraph A)
    • မြန်မာလို "ဖမ်းဆုပ်ရန်ခက်ခဲသော" ဒါမှမဟုတ် "ရှာဖွေရန် ခက်ခဲသော"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Success remained elusive despite years of effort."
    • Abstract concept တစ်ခုက ဖော်ထုတ်ရန် ခက်ခဲတာကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့ sophisticated vocabulary ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
  • Metabolic regulation (paragraph A)
    • မြန်မာလို "ဇီဝဖြစ်စဉ်ထိန်းညှိမှု"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Exercise improves metabolic regulation and helps prevent diabetes."
    • Technical scientific phrase ဖြစ်ပြီး ခန္ဓာကိုယ်ရဲ့ ဇီဝဖြစ်စဉ်တွေကို ထိန်းညှိတာကို ပြောပါတယ်။
  • Profound consequences (paragraph C)
    • မြန်မာလို "ကြီးမားသော အကျိုးဆက်များ"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Climate change will have profound consequences for agriculture."
    • Impact တစ်ခုရဲ့ depth နဲ့ significance ကို အလေးအနက် ဖော်ပြချင်တဲ့အခါ သုံးပါတယ်။
  • Exacerbate (paragraph E)
    • မြန်မာလို "ပိုဆိုးစေသည်" ဒါမှမဟုတ် "ပိုမိုဆိုးရွားစေသည်"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Poor infrastructure exacerbates transportation problems during monsoon season."
    • "Make worse" ထက် ပိုပြီး formal ဖြစ်တဲ့ verb ဖြစ်ပြီး academic writing မှာ အသုံးများပါတယ်။
  • Melatonin production (paragraph E)
    • မြန်မာလို "မယ်လာတိုနင် ထုတ်လုပ်မှု"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Darkness stimulates melatonin production, helping us fall asleep."
    • Scientific vocabulary ဖြစ်ပြီး academic context မှာ specific biological processes တွေကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့အခါ သုံးပါတယ်။

Academic Structures/Grammar:

  • Appositive Phrases (paragraph B)
    • "...REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and non-REM sleep."
    • Appositive phrases က noun တစ်ခုကို ရှင်းပြဖို့ additional information ပေးပါတယ်။ Academic writing မှာ technical terms တွေကို introduce လုပ်တဲ့အခါ အသုံးများပါတယ်။
  • Past Participle Clause (paragraph D)
    • "...people who sleep after acquiring new knowledge tend to retain the information better."
    • "Acquiring" ဆိုတဲ့ participle clause က time relationship ကို ဖော်ပြထားပါတယ်။ Academic writing မှာ ideas တွေကို condense လုပ်ဖို့ အသုံးများပါတယ်။
  • Complex Causal Relationships (paragraph C)
    • "Chronic sleep deprivation is linked to a range of physical and mental health problems, including obesity, heart disease, depression, and weakened immune function."
    • "Including" နဲ့ examples တွေကို list လုပ်ထားတာက academic writing မှာ အသုံးများတဲ့ technique ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
  • Impersonal Constructions (paragraph D)
    • "In recent years, researchers have explored the connection between sleep and learning."
    • Third person perspective ကို သုံးတာက academic writing ရဲ့ objectivity ကို မြှင့်တင်ပေးပါတယ်။
  • Present Perfect for Research (paragraph D)
    • "Experiments have revealed that people who sleep..."
    • Research findings တွေကို ဖော်ပြဖို့ present perfect tense ကို သုံးတာက academic writing မှာ အသုံးများပါတယ်။ Research က အတိတ်မှာ လုပ်ခဲ့ပေမယ့် အခုထိ relevant ဖြစ်တာကို ပြပါတယ်။

Passage 2: The Science of Sleep

Academic Vocabulary Simple English Burmese
Elusive Hard to find or explain ဖမ်းဆုပ်ရန်ခက်ခဲသော၊ ရှာဖွေရန်ခက်ခဲသော
Metabolic regulation Control of body processes ဇီဝဖြစ်စဉ်ထိန်းညှိမှု
Profound consequences Major effects ကြီးမားသော အကျိုးဆက်များ
Exacerbate Make worse ပိုဆိုးစေသည်၊ ပိုမိုဆိုးရွားစေသည်
Melatonin production Making of sleep hormone မယ်လာတိုနင် ထုတ်လုပ်မှု
Speculated Guessed or theorized ကောက်ချက်ချခဲ့ကြသည်၊ သုံးသပ်ခဲ့ကြသည်
Consolidation Strengthening or combining တည်ငြိမ်စေခြင်း၊ ခိုင်မာစေခြင်း
Deprivation Lack of something needed ချို့တဲ့ခြင်း၊ လိုအပ်သည့်အရာ မရရှိခြင်း
Suppress Stop or reduce ဖိနှိပ်သည်၊ လျှော့ချသည်
Cognitive Related to thinking အသိဉာဏ်ဆိုင်ရာ

Passage 2: The Science of Sleep

Fill in the Blanks:

  1. The true nature of consciousness remains despite decades of scientific research.
  2. Poor sleep habits can disrupt and lead to weight gain and other health problems.
  3. Long-term sleep deprivation can have for both physical and mental health.
  4. Using electronic devices before bedtime can sleep problems by reducing natural .
  5. Exposure to bright light in the evening can interfere with , making it difficult to fall asleep.

Multiple Choice:

  1. When something is difficult to define, understand, or achieve, it can be described as:



  2. The body's control of energy use and biochemical processes is called:



  3. When something has major, significant effects, it can be said to have:



  4. Which term means "to make a problem worse"?



  5. The hormone that helps regulate sleep-wake cycles is produced through:



IELTS Academic Reading – Passage 3

The Role of Failure in Scientific Progress

In the public imagination, scientific discovery is often seen as a steady accumulation of facts, a linear journey from ignorance to knowledge. Yet, historians of science have long pointed out that real progress in science is often anything but smooth. It is riddled with failed experiments, abandoned theories, and serendipitous accidents. Thomas Kuhn, in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, argued that science advances not just by the steady accumulation of data, but through paradigm shifts—radical changes in the conceptual frameworks that define a scientific field.

One of the most notable examples is the shift from Newtonian mechanics to Einstein's theory of relativity. For centuries, Newton’s laws were considered the ultimate description of the physical world. But as anomalies accumulated—such as the unexplained orbit of Mercury—scientists were forced to question long-standing assumptions. Einstein’s new model not only resolved these inconsistencies but also redefined concepts of space and time.

Failure in science is not only inevitable but essential. Without failed experiments, scientists would not learn the limits of existing theories. The scientific method itself is designed to test hypotheses in a way that may lead to their rejection. Karl Popper famously emphasized falsifiability as the hallmark of a scientific theory: a claim must be testable and potentially disprovable.

Still, in modern academic culture, failure is often stigmatized. High-impact journals tend to publish only successful outcomes, creating a publication bias. Young researchers, in particular, may be discouraged from pursuing risky or unconventional ideas that might fail. This aversion to failure could ultimately hinder innovation, as some of the most transformative discoveries emerged from unexpected results.

There is a growing movement to address this issue. Open science platforms now encourage the publication of negative results, and research institutions are reevaluating metrics that reward only high citation counts. Embracing failure, some argue, may not only improve transparency but also accelerate the pace of discovery.

Passage 3
Time Left: 20:00

Questions 27–31: Matching People with Ideas

Match each statement with the correct person (A–E). Just type the letter.

  1. A. Thomas Kuhn
  2. B. Albert Einstein
  3. C. Karl Popper
  4. D. Historians of science
  5. E. Young researchers

27. Science advances through major shifts in how we understand the world. Hint: Who introduced the idea of paradigm shifts?

28. Science progresses through repeated unsuccessful attempts as well as breakthroughs. Hint: Whose view of science includes trial and error?

29. Some are hesitant to pursue bold ideas due to fear of failure. Hint: Who feels pressure to avoid failure in academic culture?

30. A good theory is one that could be proven wrong. Hint: Whose philosophy was based on falsifiability?

31. A new model helped explain previously puzzling phenomena. Hint: Whose theory explained Mercury’s orbit?

Questions 32–36: Choose the Correct Letter A, B, C or D

32. What is the main idea of the passage?





Hint: Think about the overall message of the passage.

33. Why did Newtonian physics come under scrutiny?





Hint: Refer to the problem of Mercury’s orbit.

34. What concern is raised about modern academic culture?





Hint: Look at the part discussing journals and what they avoid publishing.

35. What is the purpose of the open science movement?





Hint: What do open science platforms promote?

36. What does the author suggest about embracing failure?





Hint: Final paragraph discusses the benefits.

Questions 37–40: Summary Completion

Complete the summary using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage.

Scientific advancement is often seen as a straightforward journey of acquiring knowledge. However, it actually includes many , incorrect assumptions, and even chance events. According to Thomas Kuhn, major progress occurs during , when the entire structure of understanding changes. Although failure is part of the , modern research culture tends to hide it. Fortunately, a movement is growing to support the publication of , helping science become more open and efficient.


Passage 3: The Role of Failure in Scientific Progress

Academic Vocabulary:

  • Serendipitous (paragraph 1)
    • မြန်မာလို "မမျှော်လင့်ဘဲ တွေ့ရှိသော" ဒါမှမဟုတ် "ကံကောင်းစွာ တွေ့ရှိသော"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Penicillin was discovered through a serendipitous accident."
    • ကံကောင်းထောက်မမှုကြောင့် ဖြစ်ပေါ်လာတဲ့ တွေ့ရှိမှုကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့ sophisticated vocabulary ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
  • Paradigm shifts (paragraph 1)
    • မြန်မာလို "အတွေးအခေါ်ပုံစံ ပြောင်းလဲမှုများ"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "The internet created a paradigm shift in how businesses operate."
    • Thomas Kuhn ရဲ့ သိပ္ပံနည်းကျ တိုးတက်မှုဆိုင်ရာ theory မှာ အရေးကြီးတဲ့ term ဖြစ်ပြီး academic context မှာ အသုံးများပါတယ်။
  • Falsifiability (paragraph 3)
    • မြန်မာလို "မှားယွင်းမှု သက်သေပြနိုင်စွမ်း"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Falsifiability is an essential characteristic of scientific theories."
    • Karl Popper ရဲ့ scientific principle တစ်ခုဖြစ်ပြီး theory တစ်ခုကို test လုပ်နိုင်ပြီး disprove လုပ်နိုင်တဲ့ အခြေအနေကို ဆိုလိုပါတယ်။
  • Stigmatized (paragraph 4)
    • မြန်မာလို "အရှက်တကွဲဖြစ်စေသော" ဒါမှမဟုတ် "အထင်သေးခံရသော"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Mental illness remains stigmatized in many communities."
    • Social attitudes တွေရဲ့ negative impact ကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့ formal, academic term ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
  • Publication bias (paragraph 4)
    • မြန်မာလို "ထုတ်ဝေရေးဘက်လိုက်မှု"
    • အသုံးပြုပုံ: "Publication bias can distort our understanding of research effectiveness."
    • Academic research မှာ ဖြစ်ပေါ်တဲ့ systematic problem တစ်ခုကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့ technical term ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

Academic Structures/Grammar:

  • Participle Phrase as Sentence Opener (paragraph 1)
    • "Yet, historians of science have long pointed out that real progress in science is often anything but smooth."
    • Contrast ကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့ connector နဲ့ စထားပြီး sophisticated sentence structure ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
  • Passive Voice in Academic Context (paragraph 3)
    • "Without failed experiments, scientists would not learn the limits of existing theories."
    • Academic writing မှာ passive voice က objectivity ကို မြှင့်တင်ပေးပြီး process ကို အလေးပေးပါတယ်။
  • Complex Sentence with Embedded Clause (paragraph 2)
    • "For centuries, Newton's laws were considered the ultimate description of the physical world. But as anomalies accumulated—such as the unexplained orbit of Mercury—scientists were forced to question long-standing assumptions."
    • Main clause နဲ့ embedded clause ပါတဲ့ complex sentence က academic writing မှာ ideas တွေကို logically relate လုပ်ဖို့ အသုံးပြုပါတယ်။
  • Concessive Clauses (paragraph 4)
    • "This aversion to failure could ultimately hinder innovation, as some of the most transformative discoveries emerged from unexpected results."
    • "As" ကို causality ကို ဖော်ပြဖို့ သုံးထားပြီး logical relationships တွေကို ဖော်ပြတဲ့ complex structure ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
  • Impersonal Expressions (paragraph 5)
    • "There is a growing movement to address this issue."
    • "There is/are" structure က topic ကို impersonal way နဲ့ introduce လုပ်ပါတယ်။ Academic writing မှာ အသုံးများပြီး objectivity ကို ပြသပါတယ်။

Passage 3: The Role of Failure in Scientific Progress

Academic Vocabulary Simple English Burmese
Serendipitous Lucky discoveries မမျှော်လင့်ဘဲ တွေ့ရှိသော၊ ကံကောင်းစွာ တွေ့ရှိသော
Paradigm shifts Major changes in thinking အတွေးအခေါ်ပုံစံ ပြောင်းလဲမှုများ
Falsifiability Can be proven wrong မှားယွင်းမှု သက်သေပြနိုင်စွမ်း
Stigmatized Treated as shameful အရှက်တကွဲဖြစ်စေသော၊ အထင်သေးခံရသော
Publication bias Publishing preference ထုတ်ဝေရေးဘက်လိုက်မှု
Anomalies Things that don't fit patterns ပုံမှန်မဟုတ်သောအရာများ၊ ထူးခြားချက်များ
Inevitable Cannot be avoided မလွှဲမရှောင်သာ
Transformative Causing big changes ကြီးမားစွာ ပြောင်းလဲစေသော
Accumulated Built up over time စုဆောင်းလာသော
Transparency Openness ပွင့်လင်းမြင်သာမှု

Additional Academic Language Features

Grammar Structure Simple English Burmese
Passive voice Being done by someone ခံရသောပုံစံ
Complex sentence with concession Statement with "although" or "while" ဆန့်ကျင်အကြောင်းပြချက်ပါ စကားစု
Non-finite clause Verb form as subject or object ကြိယာကို အခြားအစိတ်အပိုင်းအဖြစ်သုံးသည့်ဝါကျ
Comparisons using "unlike" Showing differences directly "မတူဘဲ" သုံး၍ နှိုင်းယှဉ်ခြင်း
Modal verbs for hedging Using "may," "might," "could" ဖြစ်နိုင်ခြေပြ ကြိယာများသုံး၍ သေချာရန်ရှောင်ခြင်း
Participle phrase Using "-ing" or "-ed" words "-သော" စကားလုံးများသုံးသည့် စကားစု
Impersonal expressions Avoiding "I" and "you" "ကျွန်ုပ်" နှင့် "သင်" ရှောင်သော ဖော်ပြချက်များ
Present perfect for research "Have/has" with research findings သုတေသနရလဒ်များကို "ပြီးခဲ့သည်" ပုံစံဖြင့်ဖော်ပြခြင်း
Appositive phrases Extra information about nouns နာမ်အကြောင်း ထပ်ဆောင်းအချက်အလက်
Concessive clauses Using "although," "despite," etc. "သော်လည်း၊" "သော်ငြားလည်း" စသည်သုံးသည့်ဝါကျ

Fill in the Blanks:

  1. The discovery of penicillin was largely , as Alexander Fleming noticed the effects of mold on bacteria by chance.
  2. Scientific revolutions often involve that completely change how researchers understand fundamental concepts.
  3. According to Karl Popper, is an essential characteristic of any scientific theory – it must be possible to test and potentially disprove it.
  4. Mental illness continues to be in many societies, preventing people from seeking help.
  5. in academic journals can distort scientific understanding because negative results are less likely to be published.

Multiple Choice:

  1. A discovery that happens by accident or good fortune is called:



  2. Major changes in how scientists understand and approach their field are known as:



  3. The principle that a scientific theory must be able to be proven wrong is called:



  4. When something is treated as shameful or disrespectful, it is:



  5. When journals prefer to publish only positive results, this creates: