👩‍🏫 For the teacher

Use this 15-minute activity in class to test reading speed and IELTS question skills.

Check answers together at the end by looking at the exact words in the text.

🧑‍🎓 For the learner

First, read paragraphs A to D once in three minutes without using a dictionary.

Next, answer the eight questions below and look back to underline clues in the text.

IELTS Reading • Academic Module

Paragraph A

In October 1958, the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US held its annual Visitors' Day. A man called William Higinbotham, who worked at the lab, showed a tennis game there to entertain the crowd. It ran on an analog computer and showed the game on a small 5.5-inch screen called an oscilloscope. The Strong National Museum of Play says that this was most likely the first time that the general public could play a video game.

Paragraph B

Higinbotham did not work alone; he made the game with two technicians, David Potter and Robert Dvorak. In 1959 the lab made a bigger version called Computer Tennis, and then it took the game apart. For many years, people almost forgot the game, and in 1997 people at the lab built it again.

Paragraph C

The Computer History Museum says that Steve Russell, Martin Graetz and Wayne Wiitanen came up with the idea for Spacewar! in 1961. Russell wrote the first version on a PDP-1 computer at MIT. In spring 1962 Peter Samson, Dan Edwards and Graetz made big improvements to it.

Paragraph D

The museum says that Spacewar! needed over 100,000 calculations every second to work out how the ships moved and how gravity pulled on them. Players used game controllers, and soon after that a joystick from a jet fighter.

____ TRUE ____ FALSE ____ NOT GIVEN

____ TRUE ____ FALSE ____ NOT GIVEN

____ A. It was permanently placed in a national museum exhibition. ____ B. It was taken apart and later rebuilt by laboratory workers. ____ C. It was moved to MIT so students could write new code. ____ D. It was sold directly to the general public.

____ A. It was too simple to show realistic movement. ____ B. It required a very large number of calculations to simulate motion and gravity. ____ C. It used an analog computer instead of a digital machine. ____ D. It could not be played without military aircraft parts.

____ Paragraph A ____ Paragraph B ____ Paragraph C ____ Paragraph D

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