Your English Test guide

The Story of the Monkeys and the Ladder A well-known story often used in business and management training involves a group of monkeys, a ladder and a bunch of bananas. In the story, several monkeys are placed in a cage. Bananas are hung above a ladder, encouraging the monkeys to climb up and collect them. However, whenever a monkey climbs the ladder, cold water is sprayed over all the animals in the cage. After a while, the monkeys begin to associate climbing the ladder with the unpleasant experience of being sprayed. If one monkey attempts to climb, the others stop it. Eventually, the monkeys no longer try to reach the bananas at all. The story becomes more interesting when the monkeys are gradually replaced with new ones. Each new monkey sees the bananas and naturally tries to climb the ladder. However, the other monkeys prevent it from doing so. Over time, all of the original monkeys are replaced, yet the group continues to stop anyone from climbing the ladder, even though no water is being sprayed anymore. The story is often used to illustrate how groups can continue following rules long after the original reason has disappeared. Although researchers have questioned whether the experiment actually took place in the way it is commonly described, the story remains popular because it highlights how habits and behaviours can be passed from one generation to the next. Now answer the MCQ below👇

National Watch Day👈 is celebrated on 19 June, but Hilda and Maude have noticed something strange: many people no longer wear watches. Instead, they check the time on their phones. However, if someone asks, "What time is it?", many people still point to their wrist — even when there is no watch there! This week's cartoon looks at old words and gestures that have stayed with us even though the world has changed. Look at the picture behind Maude. How many of the gestures can you recognise? • Pointing to your wrist for the time⌚️ • Making a telephone shape with your hand☎️ • Pretending to take a photograph📷 • Turning an old-fashioned car window handle🚙 The things behind these gestures have changed a lot over the years. Most people now use smartphones for calls, photos and checking the time. Most cars also have electric windows. Even so, the old gestures are still easy to understand. English has many examples like this. We still dial a number, hang up a phone, rewind a video and wind down a window, even though the original technology has almost disappeared. Language often keeps old habits alive. The world changes, but some words and gestures stay with us for a very long time. Linguists sometimes call these language fossils because they continue to exist even after the original technology has disappeared. Today's IELTS reading challenge below looks at a famous story about monkeys, bananas and why people continue doing things long after they have forgotten the original reason. Read the article and answer six IELTS-style multiple-choice questions to test your reading skills. Good Luck🤞 . #NationalWatchDay #LanguageFossils #IELTSReading

🥦 Today is National Eat Your Vegetables Day👈 (click to read more) in the United States. Do you remember the viral "Eat Your Vegetables!" meme from five years ago that seemed to be everywhere on TikTok? Well, whether you've been following that advice or not, today's celebration gives us a good excuse to look at an interesting feature of English. Native speakers don't always say "vegetables". In everyday conversation, many people are more likely to say: "Can I have some veggies?" The word veggie belongs to a group of words known as hypocoristics. A hypocoristic is a shorter, friendlier, more informal version of a word. These forms often end in -y or -ie and help make English sound warmer and more conversational. Some common examples include: • sunnies = sunglasses😎 • prezzie = present🎁 • footy = football🆗 • barbie = barbecue🍵 • mozzie = mosquito😡 Australians are famous for creating hypocoristics, but native speakers throughout the English-speaking world use them every day. 🎯 DET-Style Vocabulary Challenge The Duolingo English Test (DET💥) is a high-stakes English exam accepted by thousands of universities and institutions around the world.👩‍🎓 One of the first tasks in the test asks candidates to identify whether words are genuine English words or not. Some are real words. Others are invented words or contain spelling errors. This is important because the DET is a 💻computer-adaptive test. Your performance in these early questions❔ helps the system establish an initial benchmark for your English level, which then helps determine the difficulty of the questions that follow. To give you a flavour of this type of challenge, we've created a short quiz based on today's language point. Below this post, you'll find 10 possible hypocoristics. For each word, simply answer: ✅ Yes = this is a genuine English word ❌ No = this is not a genuine English word Good luck!🤞 #DuolingoEnglishTest #EnglishVocabularyChallenge #Hypocoristics Want more DET practice? Try our free DET Speaking Bot here: 👉@LittleDET_bot👈