IELTS Academic and General Training Review

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers key scientific terms, historical figures, and academic concepts mentioned across multiple IELTS listening and reading practice tests, including environmental science, astronomy, chemistry, business, and psychology.

Mass strandings

Situations where groups of marine animals, such as whales and dolphins, swim onto the beach and die.

Saxitoxin

A poison found in tuna that was linked to the death of fourteen humpback whales in Cape Code in $1988$.

William Henry Perkin

The chemist who, at age $15$, enrolled in the Royal College of Chemistry and later discovered the first synthetic dye, mauve, while trying to manufacture quinine.

Quinine

The only viable medical treatment for malaria in the mid-$19th$ century, originally derived from the bark of the cinchona tree native to South America.

Aniline

An inexpensive coal tar waste product used by Perkin in his attempts to manufacture a synthetic substitute for quinine.

Mauve

The name given to the first synthetic dye, originally called Tyrian Purple, derived from the French word for the plant used to make the color violet.

SETI

An acronym for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, which involves searching for radio signals from other intelligent civilizations.

Astronomical unit (AU)

A fundamental astronomical measurement representing the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

Parallax angle

The apparent difference in position of an astronomical body due to a difference in the observer’s position, used to calculate the distance of the Earth from the Sun.

Black drop effect

An optical phenomenon where the planet Venus appears smeared rather than circular as it begins to cross the Sun's disc, caused by the diffraction of light.

Proganochelys quenstedti

One of two key fossils dating from early dinosaur times that are considered close to the ancestry of all modern turtles and tortoises.

Power culture

A type of business culture typically found in small organizations that orients around a central source of power with few formal rules or procedures.

Role culture

A business culture found in large organizations with separate specialized departments where jobs are controlled by sets of rules and formal job descriptions.

Auditory function deficit

A range of hearing and processing impairments in children, including hearing loss, autistic spectrum disorders ($ASD$), and attention deficit disorders ($ADD/ADHD$).

Iconoclast

A person who does something that others say cannot be done, distinguished by specific brain functions in perception, fear response, and social intelligence.

Neuroeconomics

A field of study that examines how the physical workings of the brain and its firing patterns of neurons place limitations on how humans make economic decisions.

Cavitation

A technical difficulty in tidal power turbines where low pressure behind a turning blade causes air bubbles, potentially leading to vibration and blade damage.

Claude Shannon

The American communications engineer at Bell Laboratories who developed Information Theory in the $1940s$ and identified the 'bit' as the fundamental unit of information.

Bit

A binary unit of information that captures a true or false state as a $1$ or a $0$.

Bandwidth

The information-carrying capacity of a communication system, which limits the rate at which data can pass while remaining error-free.

Radioactivity

A phenomenon discovered by Henri Becquerel in $1896$ involving the emission of radiation from elements such as uranium and thorium.

Polonium

A new radioactive element discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie during their research into the mineral pitchblende.

Self-as-subject

A feature of self-identity involving the recognition of one's own existence, agency, and distinctiveness from other people.

Self-as-object

A feature of self-identity where children define themselves through social roles and characteristics derived from interaction with others.

Looking-glass self

A term coined by Cooley to describe how people build their sense of identity based on the reactions of others and how they believe others view them.

Prescriptivism

The view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value than others and should be imposed on the whole speech community.

Descriptivism

An approach to grammar concerned with recording the facts of linguistic usage and diversity rather than imposing evaluations or halting language change.