IELTS Academic Reading Practice Test 65

Chess is widely regarded as the world's most successful board game, played by hundreds of millions of people in clubs, schools and online. Yet the game has travelled a long road from its origins in northern India, where it arose in the sixth century. Early Indian sources describe a game called chaturanga, a Sanskrit word meaning 'having four parts', which referred to the four divisions of an army: infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots. From India the game passed into Persia, where it was adopted at the royal court and given the name shatranj.

In Persia shatranj became a pastime of the educated and the courtly. After the Islamic conquests of the seventh century, the game travelled quickly across the Middle East and North Africa, eventually reaching the Iberian Peninsula. Arab scholars wrote the earliest known manuals analysing openings, composed problems and classified players according to skill. The pieces retained their military character: the king, the counsellor (later the queen), the elephant (the predecessor of the bishop), the horse, the chariot (later the rook) and foot-soldiers. The counsellor and elephant moved only in limited diagonal steps, so play was slow and often revolved around promoting a pawn.

Chess entered Christian Europe by several routes, including trade with the Byzantine Empire and the Arab kingdoms of Spain and Sicily. By the early eleventh century it was known across much of the continent, although the names and forms of the pieces varied. In medieval Europe the counsellor became the queen, the elephant became the bishop, and the chariot became the rook, while the horse remained the knight. Sets were often richly carved, and chess was included among the skills expected of a knight. The Church sometimes disapproved of the game's gambling associations, but aristocratic and royal patrons continued to play. Throughout the medieval period the rules remained close to those of shatranj, but gradual changes, such as allowing the pawn an initial double step, began to appear.

The most decisive transformation came in the late fifteenth century, almost certainly in Spain or Italy. The queen, previously a weak piece, was given the combined powers of the rook and bishop, allowing it to sweep across the board in any direction. The bishop also gained its modern long diagonal range. These changes, together with the two-square pawn advance and early forms of castling, turned a slow positional game into a far more dynamic contest. The new rules, sometimes called 'mad queen' chess, quickly won acceptance because they produced shorter and more exciting games. The centre of chess activity shifted to southern Europe, and the first printed chess books helped standardise the modern moves.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, chess became an international intellectual pursuit. Coffee houses in London and Paris were famous venues for matches between leading players, and opening theory flourished. In 1851 London hosted the first international chess tournament, won by the German schoolteacher Adolf Anderssen, whose attacking style epitomised the romantic era. Many of the combinations played in this period are still studied for their bold sacrifices. At the same time, pressure grew to establish a formal world championship. After various unofficial claimants, the first generally recognised world championship match was held in 1886 between Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort, with Steinitz emerging victorious.

The twentieth century saw chess organised on a global scale. In 1924, at a meeting in Paris, the Fédération Internationale des Échecs, known as FIDE, was founded as the sport's international federation. It began to oversee world championship competitions and, from 1950, awarded official titles such as grandmaster. After the Second World War, players from the Soviet Union dominated the game, a dominance often explained by state support, systematic training and the enormous popularity of chess in Soviet society. The 1972 world championship match in Reykjavík, in which the American Bobby Fischer defeated the Soviet champion Boris Spassky, was followed around the world and turned chess into a symbol of Cold War rivalry.

Alongside this growth, attempts were made to measure playing strength objectively. In the 1960s the Hungarian-American physicist Arpad Elo devised the rating system that now bears his name, in which players gain and lose points according to the strength of their opponents. Elo ratings gave chess a universal language of ability and were later adopted by many other games and sports. International tournaments multiplied, and chess became a fixture in schools in several countries. The game also produced prodigies: players who achieved grandmaster status in their early teens, a phenomenon that became more common as training methods and databases improved.

Computers changed chess in ways few could have predicted. As early as the 1950s researchers wrote simple programs capable of playing legal moves, but for decades human masters dismissed their strategic understanding. In 1997 the IBM computer Deep Blue defeated the reigning world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match, a result that marked the end of unquestioned human superiority. Today ordinary chess software running on a mobile phone is stronger than any human player, and players at every level use programs to analyse games and prepare openings. Online platforms allow opponents on different continents to play one another instantly, and chess has enjoyed renewed popularity through live-streamed tournaments and puzzle-solving apps.

This long history has given chess a unique place among games. Its rules have remained essentially stable for more than five centuries, yet its complexity continues to attract scientific research and artistic expression. Museums preserve carved ivory sets from medieval courts, and players still study games recorded a hundred years ago. From an Indian army game to a global digital pastime, chess has repeatedly adapted to new cultures and technologies without losing its identity.

Tidal energy is often described as the great untapped resource of the renewable sector. Unlike wind and solar power, which fluctuate with the weather and the time of day, the tides follow the gravitational pull of the moon and sun and can be predicted years in advance. This predictability makes tidal energy attractive to grid operators, who need to balance supply and demand. The resource is also widely distributed: many coastal nations have strong tidal currents or large tidal ranges that could, in principle, be converted into electricity. Yet development has been slow, owing to the high cost of building in the sea and the demanding conditions that marine structures must endure.

The oldest approach is the tidal barrage, a dam-like structure built across an estuary or bay. Barrages exploit the difference in water level between high and low tide. As the tide rises, sluice gates are opened to allow water to fill the basin; at high tide the gates are closed, and the trapped water is then released through turbines, generating electricity as it flows back to the sea. Some designs also generate on the rising tide. The best-known example is the La Rance power station in France, which opened in 1966 and has been operating reliably for more than half a century, producing enough electricity for a city of several hundred thousand people. Barrages are technically mature, but they require large civil engineering works and alter the very environment they occupy.

Those environmental changes have proved controversial. By blocking an estuary, a barrage reduces the natural exchange of water and sediment between the river and the sea. This can change salinity levels, affect the movement of fish that migrate between fresh and salt water, and cause sediment to accumulate on one side of the barrage while the other side is scoured. Intertidal habitats, which support wading birds and other wildlife, may be flooded or starved of water for longer than they would be under natural tidal cycles. Although modern designs incorporate fish passes and adjustable gates, environmental groups argue that the damage to estuaries, already among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth, is difficult to justify.

A more recent technology, tidal stream generation, attempts to avoid many of these impacts. Tidal stream devices are essentially underwater turbines that capture energy from moving water, much as wind turbines capture energy from moving air. They are installed in areas with fast currents, often in channels between islands, and are normally placed below the surface where they pose less visual disturbance. Because they do not require a permanent barrier, their effects on sediment and fish migration are generally smaller, although the rotating blades can still injure marine animals and the devices must withstand powerful forces. Several pilot arrays have been tested in Scottish waters, and a number of commercial projects are now supplying electricity to local grids.

A third concept, the tidal lagoon, occupies a middle ground. A lagoon is an artificial basin enclosed by a breakwater or wall, usually built offshore in shallow water, which can be filled and emptied through turbines. Proponents argue that lagoons can generate large amounts of power while avoiding the need to dam an entire estuary, and that their walls can be used for recreation or aquaculture. The most prominent proposal was for a lagoon in Swansea Bay in Wales, which received government support in principle but was eventually rejected after officials judged its electricity too expensive. Although no full-scale tidal lagoon has yet been built, developers continue to promote the technology in several countries.

The challenges facing tidal energy are as much economic as technical. The marine environment is corrosive and biologically active, so equipment must be built to survive salt water, storms and fouling by barnacles and algae. Installation often requires specialised vessels and divers, and undersea cables must be laid to carry power to shore. As a result, the capital costs are high, and the amount of electricity generated, though reliable, is not always sufficient to repay the investment at current market prices. Tidal projects also face long planning and licensing processes, because their effects on shipping, fishing and coastal ecology must be assessed. These obstacles help explain why, despite decades of research, tidal power remains a small contributor to electricity generation.

Nevertheless, there are signs of progress. South Korea's Sihwa Lake tidal power station, completed in 2011, is now the largest in the world and supplies electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes. Canada, France and the United Kingdom have supported new tidal arrays, and advances in materials and underwater robotics are reducing maintenance costs. Some countries with strong tidal resources are revising their marine planning rules to identify suitable zones for tidal energy while protecting sensitive habitats. Research into turbine design has also led to larger units that can operate in slower currents, widening the range of viable sites.

Most analysts expect tidal energy to play a niche role in the future energy mix. It will not replace wind or solar on a large scale, but it can provide a valuable complement by generating power at times when the sun is not shining or the wind is calm. The predictability of the tides, combined with improvements in technology, may justify its higher cost in coastal regions that lack other renewable options. For a world seeking reliable low-carbon electricity, the sea's rhythm remains an invitation that has not yet been fully accepted.

For decades, visitors to rural Japan have admired its terraced rice fields, wooden farmhouses and village festivals. Behind this picturesque surface lies a profound demographic crisis. Villages are losing younger residents, schools are closing for lack of children, and houses are being abandoned to rain and forest. The Japanese countryside is not simply declining; in many places it is emptying, and the process has continued for so long that it now shapes almost every debate about the nation's future.

The roots of rural depopulation go back to the rapid economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s, when industry and service employment became concentrated in the urban belts around Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. Young people left agricultural communities to take jobs in factories and offices, and many never returned. As rural populations aged, birth rates fell further, while the children who remained were likely to leave for higher education. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: a shrinking, older population supports fewer shops, schools and medical facilities, which in turn makes the village less attractive to the young.

National demographic trends have intensified the problem. Japan's overall population began to decline after peaking in the late 2000s, and some prefectures have lost more than a tenth of their residents in a single generation. The median age in many rural municipalities is now over sixty, and in a growing number of settlements the only inhabitants are elderly. Abandoned houses, known as akiya, have become a defining feature; millions are thought to exist nationwide. Fields once planted with rice have returned to scrub and woodland, and wildlife such as deer and boar has moved closer to villages, damaging the gardens and crops that remain.

Successive governments have responded with revitalisation programmes. Public money has been spent on roads, bridges, community halls and other infrastructure intended to stimulate local economies and attract businesses. Subsidies have been offered to companies willing to relocate, and tax incentives have been created to encourage urban residents to buy or renovate old houses. The national government has also merged small municipalities in order to reduce administrative costs. Yet, by almost every measure, these policies have failed to reverse the underlying flow of people. New roads and buildings do not create jobs by themselves, and when schools and clinics close, even modern facilities stand empty.

In my view, a major flaw in these policies is their refusal to accept the scale of change. Many planners still speak as if rural depopulation is a temporary problem that can be solved with enough investment. They point to villages where newcomers have arrived and argue that any community can be revived if it tries hard enough. But the national statistics are overwhelming. The forces drawing people to the cities are structural, not cosmetic: they include the concentration of higher education, specialist medicine and knowledge-based employment. No amount of decorative spending on a village hall will alter those facts.

The government's hometown tax programme, introduced in 2008, is often presented as a success because it allows taxpayers to direct a portion of their payments to rural municipalities in exchange for local produce. In practice, it functions less as a demographic policy than as a gift market: municipalities compete by offering ever more attractive boxes of fruit, meat or rice, while the actual number of residents changes little. The programme illustrates the wider tendency to confuse economic activity with population restoration.

Some local administrations have tried more imaginative approaches. A number of villages offer abandoned houses for almost nothing, provided the new owners live in them and repair them. Others have created schemes to attract teleworkers, taking advantage of improved broadband to market themselves as quiet places to work from home. A few have invited artists, farmers and entrepreneurs from abroad. These projects often attract media attention, and a handful have brought a dozen or more new families to a depopulated district. But their overall effect is tiny; for every village that gains a newcomer, many more continue to shrink. Remote work, moreover, has not spread widely enough among Japanese companies to become a rural lifeline.

The alternative, which I believe deserves more serious debate, is to plan for a smaller countryside rather than fight against it. This means consolidating public services in central villages that still have a viable population, and ensuring that remaining residents can reach them by bus or telemedicine. It means spending money on maintaining essential roads and water systems rather than building new ones that few people will use. It also means letting some farmland return to nature and using it for flood control, carbon storage or recreation. Such a policy accepts loss, but it offers those who remain a better quality of life than a policy that chases an impossible return to the past.

Japan is not alone in facing rural decline, but the speed and scale of its demographic change make it an important test case. The choices made over the next two decades will determine whether the countryside becomes a depopulated wilderness punctuated by empty public works, or a smaller but habitable landscape where communities are compact and sustainable. My own conclusion is that the question is no longer how to bring people back, but how to care well for the places and people that remain.