TOEFL iBT Integrated Speaking Task

Reading passage
The  phrase 'as dead as a dodo' is a commonly used idiomatic expression meaning totally and without question dead. To 'go the way of the dodo' means to disappear completely or to become a thing of the past. These expressions come from the bird of the same name which became extinct in the mid 17th century. The dodo was a flightless bird which formerly lived on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. It was a large creature, up to a meter tall and sometimes weighing as much as 20 kilograms. Ironically it was the extinction of the dodo that made its name a household word. Living on an uninhabited island with no natural predators, the dodo had no fear of human beings and this fearlessness has long been regarded as the cause of its destruction. Most people believe that when European sailors arrived in Mauritius in the 16th and 17th centuries, they found a creature that made no attempt to avoid them and was thus easy to catch for food. After a century of such hunting, by the end of the 17th century, the dodo had become extinct.  (209)


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