A There are reasons you feel so good when you wake up from a long, restful sleep, but for many people getting enough sleep can be difficult. So what is happening when you sleep? Why is it important? And what can you do to ensure you get enough?
B There are five stages of sleep: when you fall asleep, you go into stage 1, which is light sleep and quite easy to be woken up from, then you move into stage 2, 3, and then 4, with each stage getting progressively deeper. After about 1.5 hours you go into another stage called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which is when most dreaming happens. This cycle happens around 5 times per night.
C If we take eight hours per night as the average amount of sleep, it means most people will spend a third of their lives sleeping. And it’s not just people; almost all animals sleep and have been doing so for over half a billion years. And considering that evolution has preserved it during this time, sleep must have an important function.
D The main purpose of sleep seems to be to restore energy. According to the National Sleep Foundation, it regulates your immune system, your temperature and your hormone levels, and gives you more energy for the next day. Sleep scientist Matthew Walker adds that sleep is also very important for learning: we need sleep before learning to prepare our brains to learn, and sleep after learning is essential for storing new memories. One of the reasons memory tends to get worse with age might be because people sleep less as they get older, Walker says.
E In his book, Why We Sleep, Walker also says that night owls and early birds may have evolved to be this way. He explains that many years ago when we lived in hunter-gatherer tribes, having a mix of night owls and early birds meant that more people would have been awake more of the time to protect the group, and therefore the tribe would have been more likely to survive. Our sleep cycles do change with age, however. The natural cycle of teenagers is to go to bed later and wake up later, and then, as we get older, this cycle gets earlier and earlier. Given how important sleep is, Walker suggests that perhaps schools and employers should consider these facts when designing schedules.
F Most people need 7-9 hours’ sleep per night, according to Walker. Others say 6-8 is enough. However, many people get less than this, and there is a price to pay for this sleep deprivation, Walker says. If you don’t get enough sleep, you will be more forgetful and have problems learning new things, and a constant lack of sleep increases the risk of developing diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Walker considers sleep to be so important that he has started requesting that doctors prescribe it to patients.
G So how do you ensure that you get a good night’s sleep? Walker is against the use of sleeping tablets or alcohol, but at the back of his book he offers 12 tips for sleeping better. These include going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, sleeping in a cool room, doing regular exercise (but not before bed), spending some time outside in natural sunlight each day, and avoiding caffeine in the afternoon or evening as it can take a long time for the effects of that cup of coffee to wear off.
H If your mind is still very active around bedtime, sleep scientist Cheri Mah recommends spending ten minutes stretching or doing deep breathing exercises as a way to relax before you get into bed. Alternatively, you could write a to-do list or a journal, she says. Walker also supports the journaling idea for when you have worries on your mind that might keep you awake, though he recommends doing it one or two hours before going to bed. Taking a few minutes to write down your worries can help get them out of your mind so that you can fall asleep more easily, he says.
I Counting sheep may not be as effective for falling asleep as once thought, however, according to research by Professor Allison Harvey. This might be because it’s too simple and boring to distract your mind from the thinking or worries that are keeping you awake. Harvey found that visualising a relaxing scene such as a beach or a waterfall was more effective. And Walker suggests taking yourself on a mental walk – visualise yourself walking in a place you know well, such as in nature or in your town to help you drift off to sleep.
Sleep well!
IELTS Reading Questions:
Matching Information & Summary Completion.
What Next?
Watch a short video about tips for better sleep.
Click the picture to open the YouTube video from Ideas in English.
Sources and links from Sleep
– Article by The National Sleep Foundation about the purpose and benefits of sleep.
– Matthew Walker’s website. Most of the information in this article came from his book Why We Sleep.
– Matthew Walker on the Huberman Lab podcast (YouTube link). This is where he talks about worry journals and not counting sheep (about 2:40).
– Matthew Walker’s TED talk about sleep.
– Cheri Mah talks about techniques to fall asleep on The Diary of a CEO podcast (around 34 minutes in).
– New Scientist article about Allison Harvey’s research.
– Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
This Post Has 57 Comments
Good read! I really enjoyed this article. I personally like reading but find that at night time it puts me to sleep. So whenever I can’t sleep, I just pick up a book and start reading. 🙂
Hi Nart. Glad you liked it.
Good tip for getting to sleep.
Great resource for learning English.
Thanks Selim. Glad you like it.
keep it up
Great information. Thanks
well done, a good effort I really like it.
Thanks. Glad you liked it.
Great job
I find this article informative and fascinating😊
It communicates in such an effective language which encourages me to be a constant fan of this website.
Hi Arezoo.
Thanks for your kind comment.
Hope you enjoy some more of the articles on here.
Great writing on the topic… God bless you. I got 9/10!
Thanks Ugonna, and well done!
Amazing tutor
Thankyou….for your article….
I am doing your counting method and it really works. It takes a few seconds now I can sleep on time thanks for your brilliant ARTICLE.
Thanks for your comment.
Great that it worked for you.
I really enjoyed this type of short article. I was studying then living in an English-speaking country. I tended to lose interests in reading English news or browsing social media posts. From today I decide to read from your website to broaden my vocabulary as well as pick up a good habit. Thank you so much for designing such a lovely website!
Hi Xue.
Thanks for your nice feedback – glad you like the site.
I generally do not read but your article is very short and fascinating. I really liked it.
Thanks
Glad you enjoyed it.
Article was good and giving an IELTS practice together is a good idea .
Thanks Kunal.
Could you explain please explain more about the question 3 I am not get it
Hi Dd. Okay.
The information can be found at the end of paragraph E:
‘Walker suggests that perhaps schools and employers should consider these facts when designing schedules.’
’employers’ = companies
‘these facts’ = the information that came before in the paragrpah: some people are night owls and some are early birds, sleep cycles changes with age (this information shows that people have different sleep cycles; people are not the same).
This equals a suggestion that companies should consider individual differences.
Hope that helps
Really great article that it helped to improve my vocabulary list and also IELTS questions absolutely fantastic.
Thanks Srikanth. Very nice feedback.
There are quite a few more articles to read; if you liked this one, you might also enjoy the one about dreams.
Thanks for this article I have been having difficulty in sleeping for almost 2 months
Now I am gonna follow the methods you have suggested
And also I didn’t knew about the drawbacks of deficiency in sleeping as I know now I will try my best to sleep regularly
Thanks for your comment, Anes.
Most of the ideas here came from Matthew Walker’s book. Also, his TED talk is really good – you can practise listening and learn more about sleep:
https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_walker_sleep_is_your_superpower?language=en
it is good website to improve reading part of IELTS.
Thanks, Shailendra
Hi, Could you please explain question 4 ?? Both C and E explain this.
Hi Agadhaa.
Good question – that one is a bit tricky.
The question is looking for evidence from nature about the importance of sleep.
Paragraph C is the correct answer because it has the information that ‘evolution has preserved sleep’; that is the evidence from nature that sleep is important.
While the final sentence in paragraph E does mention ‘the importance of sleep’, it doesn’t give any evidence about the importance (‘given the importance of sleep’ is a reference to the information that has come before). Also, although in paragraph E there is some (possible) evidence from nature, it’s evidence that people being night owls or early birds might have come from nature; it’s not evidence of the importance of sleep.
Hope that helps.
Hi,
Could you explain question 5 and how does it match B
Hi Anila.
Sure. Maybe there are a couple of words in the question that need to be understood.
breakdown = (from Cambridge) ‘a division of something into smaller parts’
cycle = ‘a group of events that happen again and again in the same order’.
The sleep cycle is the different parts of sleep that happen in the same order and are repeated through the night.
The question is: Which paragraph contains a breakdown of the sleep cycle?
Paragraph B describes the different parts of the sleep cycle (it is a breakdown); it tells you about the different stages of sleep (within the cycle), and it tells you that this cycle (repeats) happens around 5 times per night.
Hope that helps.
hello,
is this test a little bit easier than the actual exam or are they the same?
’cause I’ve got the best score in reading so far 🙂
Hi Ahmet.
Well done.
But yes, the articles here are designed to be easier than the real test.
There is more information about that here: https://ideasinenglish.com/about-the-site/
They’re good for practising your skills, but if your test is coming soon, and / or you want to get an idea of your score, you should try doing some real tests. You can get the test books from Cambridge with real past exam papers.
Thank u for this website, it helped me to improve my reading!!!
You’re welcome. Glad you found it useful.
—
“Nice article! I got a lot of information about sleep. I also understood how important it is to get at least 8 hours of sleep every day. Many people, especially the younger generation, stay up late and wake up early because of excessive mobile phone use, especially at night.”It’s very useful for this generation. If anyone reads the article, they should follow it as the article suggests.”
Hi Mayalekshmi.
Thanks very much for the nice comment.
Glad you enjoyed the article. Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker is a really good book to read if you want to find out more about this topic.
hi dear, I read and answered the questions, but the late three questions, their answers should be ‘word’.
oh i got it, they were matching type questions. but i have a question, above the answers there are about 10 words> could you respond? and finally i should say thankyou for these good texts….
Hi Ali.
Yes, for these questions you choose the correct words from the list (the list of 10 above) to complete the summary.
So, let’s look at question 6 as an example:
Matthew Walker believes that having a regular 6.__________ is important for sleeping well.
The correct answer is ‘sleep pattern’. In the list of 10 words, you can see ‘J sleep pattern’, so the answer you write is ‘J’.
Hope that helps.
Glad you you like the articles.
Thank you
it is very useful my words bank because this articles consist of lots of useful word
Glad you found it useful.
Thanks for the nice feedback.
hi and I have a question, why is answer B for 5th question. there is not any breakdown of the sleep cycle I think, it is given that information about 5stages of sleep
Hi Asal.
The sleep cycle = the different stages of sleep that we go through each night.
Hope that helps.
thanks for this interesting article i find answer for my problems
You’re welcome.
Glad that you found it useful.
hi dear, i really loved the topic with beautiful and wide explanation, thank you for sharing such beneficial articles
Hi Kamola.
Thanks for the nice comment. Glad you’re enjoying the articles.
I like this kind of articles to read. Also, I always try to sleep well because sleep is one of the most important factor in our live. I guess this topic was useful for all people.
Hi Bibigul.
I agree that sleep is really important for living and feeling good.
Glad you liked the article.
We need more articles, these articles are very interesting. I have been waiting for almost 2 months for new articles. Please upload some new articles as soon as possible. We are always with your website,
Hi Shihab.
Thanks for the comment – really nice to read ‘We are always with your website.’
I’ve been working on videos more recently (you can check them out here: https://www.youtube.com/@IdeasinEnglish), and I’ve been quite busy teaching. I will hopefully get back to writing soon.