Coming of Age IELTS Reading: Vocabulary & Answer Key Breakdown

For decades, the global economy has been dominated by developed Western nations. However, the strong rise of emerging economies like China, India, and Eastern Europe has been creating the biggest geopolitical and economic shift in over a century. The reading passage Coming of Age offers a comprehensive look at this phenomenon: from record growth indicators and the reasons behind the rapid breakthrough of developing countries, to the dual impact of globalization on income and the workforce in wealthy nations.

For IELTS test-takers, the reading passage Coming of Age is a classic text on the topic of Economics & Globalisation. The passage features rigorous logical reasoning, advanced academic vocabulary, and a diverse range of question types, including Matching Information, Sentence Completion, and True/False/Not Given. Below, ECE Language Center provides a detailed translation, a list of core vocabulary, and a keyword-based answer analysis to help you study effectively.

Reading Passage Content

Coming of Age

[Paragraph A] Three striking facts highlight the dramatic shift in recent years in the relative economic balance of “first-world” and “third-world” economies. Last year, according to our estimates, emerging economies produced slightly more than half of world output measured at purchasing-power parity. Second, they also accounted for more than half of the increase in global GDP in current-dollar terms. And third, perhaps most striking of all, the 32 biggest emerging economies grew in both 2004 and 2005. Every previous year during the past three decades saw at least one country in recession – if not a deep crisis. Some economies will inevitably stumble over the coming years, but, thanks to sounder policies, most can look forward to rapid long-term growth. The young emerging economies have grown up in more ways than one.

[Paragraph B] Such happenings are part of the biggest shift in economic strength since the emergence of the United States more than a century ago. As developing countries and the former Soviet bloc have embraced market-friendly economic reforms and opened their borders to trade and investment, more countries are industrialising than ever before and more quickly. During their industrial revolutions, America and Britain took 50 years to double their real incomes per head; today China is achieving that in a single decade. In an open world, it is much easier to catch up by adopting advanced countries’ technology than it is to be an economic leader that has to invent new technologies in order to keep growing. The shift in economic power towards emerging economies is therefore likely to continue. This is returning the world to the sort of state that endured throughout most of its history. People forget that, until the late 19th century, China and India were the world’s two biggest economies and today’s “emerging economies” accounted for the bulk of world production.

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