IELTS Reading: Why fairy tales are really scary tales 🧚‍♀️👻

I had a special request from Isabella on Instagram today 👋🇧🇷. She asked me to look at a really difficult text (yes, this one's 9/10!).

It's an Academic Passage 3 and it follows the Reading Type 2 structure (discursive) which goes like this -

Title: asks a question (Why? The answer is not what everyone thinks).

1. Old theory: Everyone thinks fairy tales have endured because the STORIES give us WARNINGS about life e.g. Little Red Riding Hood.

2. New theory: Everyone is wrong. There's another reason.

3. Test to prove the old theory is wrong: Is the STORY important? 'NO'. Is the WARNING important? Answer: 'NO'.

4. Results of the test: The reason why fairy tales have endured is just that people enjoy scary stories.

5. Althernative theory (instantly proved wrong): The stories remain relevant because they're about women as victims.

6. Conclusion: Everyone likes scary stories because they build up our resistance to negative emotions, so the first theory is probably right.

You can find similar 'discursive' structures here:

• What destroyed the civilisation of Easter Island?
• Is there anybody out there? The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.
• Autumn Leaves Canadian writer Jay Ingram investigates the mystery of why leaves turn red in the fall.

My updated guide to Time Management in the Reading Test gives you 8 techniques to help you improve your Reading Speed for the #ielts test.