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About the Making Time for Science Reading Passage
This passage traces how eminent scientists, including Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, and Richard Feynman, deliberately carved out protected time for research and creative thinking. It argues that the capacity to guard one's working hours from distraction is a key condition of scientific progress. The Cambridge source for this passage is a practice IELTS Academic Reading test.
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1–13, which are based on the passage below.
The passage contains two question types: True/False/Not Given (Questions 1–7) and Summary Completion (Questions 8–13).
Making Time for Science : Full Reading Passage
Paragraph A
It is a common complaint among researchers that they cannot find enough time to do science. Surveys show that academics spend increasing proportions of their working weeks on administration, teaching preparation, grant writing, and committee work. This leaves a shrinking share of time for the activity that most drew them to the profession: conducting and thinking about research. The situation is not new. Throughout history, many of the most productive scientists have described the difficulty of protecting research time and have developed strategies to do so.
Paragraph B
Charles Darwin is one of the best-documented examples. Darwin maintained a remarkably regular daily routine throughout his adult life. He rose early, took a short walk, and then worked on science for approximately ninety minutes before breakfast. After breakfast, he returned to work for another ninety-minute block, after which he considered his "serious" work for the day done. He read his letters, rested, went for a walk, and then completed lighter tasks in the afternoon. Darwin's approach was not laziness. He recognised that a small number of regular, concentrated hours produced more than long, unstructured days. He never broke this routine without reason.
Paragraph C
Michael Faraday, the nineteenth-century physicist, took a different approach. He was acutely aware that visitors, correspondence, and requests from the public and from industry constantly threatened to consume his time. He solved this by keeping a strict boundary between the days he spent on his own research and the days he gave to other obligations. His research notes reveal that he restricted most of his original laboratory observations to set days of the week, treating them as fixed appointments that he did not move. This structure was not rigid for its own sake but because Faraday believed that interrupted scientific thinking was essentially wasted thinking.
Paragraph D
Richard Feynman, the American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in 1965, described his time-management strategy with characteristic frankness. After a period of feeling overwhelmed by administrative duties at Caltech, he decided to protect a block of his day by announcing to colleagues and students that he was "irresponsible", by which he meant he was reserving the right to decline requests, meetings, and obligations that did not serve his research. He described this decision as among the most creative choices he ever made. Colleagues initially found this approach selfish, but Feynman argued that a scientist's primary obligation is to produce good science, and that this is impossible without sustained, uninterrupted time for thought.
Paragraph E
The problem of time is not confined to individual researchers. Studies of research teams show that groups also struggle with the competing demands of management and inquiry. Team leaders, in particular, tend to be drawn progressively away from research as their administrative responsibilities increase. One study of laboratory directors found that those who spent fewer than twenty per cent of their working hours on direct research activity reported significantly lower creative output over a five-year period than those who maintained a higher research share. The relationship was not simply about hours worked in total; it was specifically about the ratio of research time to management time.
Paragraph F
Some institutions have responded to this pressure by introducing what they call "protected time" schemes. These require researchers to formally schedule research hours in the same way they schedule meetings, and to treat those hours as unbreakable commitments. Early results from universities that have adopted such schemes suggest that structured, pre-committed research time leads to higher rates of publication and reported job satisfaction among academic staff. The schemes work best when participation is voluntary, when the protected hours are taken seriously by line managers, and when researchers are not penalised for declining other commitments during those periods.
Paragraph G
The lesson from both individual scientists and institutional experiments appears consistent: scientific thinking requires protection, not just allocation. It is not enough to say that research is a priority if every urgent request is allowed to displace it. The scientists who have produced the most durable work seem to share a willingness to disappoint colleagues in the short term to protect the conditions that make sustained thinking possible. Whether managed through personal routine, formal scheduling, or institutional policy, the underlying principle is the same creative scientific work cannot survive in time that is merely left over after everything else is done. It must be deliberately and actively protected.
Making Time for Science Reading Questions and Answers
True/False/Not Given : Questions 1–7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage? In boxes 1–7 on your answer sheet, write: TRUE if the statement agrees with the information, FALSE if the statement contradicts the information, NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this in the passage.
1. Darwin worked on science for a total of approximately three hours each morning.
2. Darwin's daily routine was influenced by advice from other scientists of his time.
3. Faraday restricted original laboratory observations to fixed days because he found it difficult to organise his notes otherwise.
4. Feynman described protecting his time as one of his most creative decisions.
5. Feynman's students found his approach more acceptable than his colleagues did.
6. Laboratory directors who dedicated fewer than twenty per cent of their time to management reported lower creative output.
7. Institutional protected-time schemes produce better results when researchers can choose whether to participate.
Summary Completion : Questions 8–13
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 8–13 on your answer sheet.
How Scientists Have Protected Their Research Time
Darwin's method was built on an (8) .................... daily routine. Faraday kept to specific days for his laboratory (9) ...................., treating them as fixed appointments. Feynman considered his decision to decline non-research obligations one of his most (10) .................... choices. Research shows that team leaders suffer when the ratio of (11) .................... time to research time grows too large. Institutional schemes that introduce (12) .................... research hours have produced better publication rates. The core principle, supported by both individual scientists and institutions, is that research time must be actively (13) ...................., not merely what remains after other duties are complete.
