Reading Lesson — Study

Paper is so common today that we rarely think about where it came from. Before paper, people wrote on many different materials. In ancient Egypt, people used papyrus, made from a river plant. In other places, writers used clay tablets, animal skins and thin pieces of wood. These materials were heavy, expensive or difficult to store.

Paper as we know it was first made in China. Historians usually credit a court official named Cai Lun, who in 105 CE described a method of making paper from plant fibres, old cloth and water. The fibres were beaten, mixed with water, spread on a flat frame and dried. This produced a light, smooth sheet that was cheaper than silk and easier to carry than bamboo strips.

From China, the knowledge of paper-making spread slowly. It reached Central Asia and the Islamic world, where makers improved the process and built paper mills in cities such as Baghdad and later in Spain. Traders and travellers carried both paper and the skills to make it. By the twelfth century, paper was being made in parts of Europe.

In Europe, early paper was made mainly from old linen and cotton cloth. As demand for books grew, especially after the invention of printing with movable type in the fifteenth century, paper makers needed more raw material. In the nineteenth century, factories began to make paper from wood pulp, which was plentiful and cheap. This change made newspapers, books and notebooks available to far more people.

Today, paper is still widely used, even in a digital age. It is used for packaging, tissues, money and art, as well as for books. Recycling now plays a major role in the industry, and many factories use recovered paper to reduce the number of trees that must be cut down.

Paragraph A Almost everyone dreams, even if they do not remember their dreams in the morning. Dreams happen most often during a stage of sleep called rapid eye movement sleep, when the brain is quite active but the body is mostly still. A single night may include several dreams, and the longest dreams usually come towards morning.

Paragraph B One idea is that dreams help the brain organise memories. During the day, we take in a huge amount of information. While we sleep, the brain may sort this information, keeping what is important and letting go of what is not needed. Some studies show that people remember a new skill better after a night of sleep, which supports this idea.

Paragraph C Another view is that dreams help us deal with feelings. A worrying event in the day may appear in a dream in a different form, and working through it during sleep may make it feel less strong the next day. People who are under stress often report more intense dreams, and the content of those dreams often reflects their concerns.

Paragraph D Some scientists argue that dreams have no special purpose at all. They suggest that dreams are simply the result of random brain activity during sleep, and that the mind tries to make a story out of that activity when we wake. In this view, looking for deep meaning in every dream is a mistake.

Paragraph E Whatever the explanation, dreams remain a useful window into sleep itself. Doctors and researchers study dreams to understand sleep disorders and to learn how the brain works at night. For most of us, however, dreams are simply a normal and healthy part of a good night of rest.