Question 1
Question
Ryan did his best to cheer his sister up and ________ her guilt after she inadvertently spilled coffee on their parents' expensive new carpet.
Select the word that best completes the sentence.
Answer
-
lull
-
assuage
-
exacerbate
-
aggravate
-
propitiate
Question 2
Question
PASSAGE 1
1 A meticulous actor, a connoisseur of everything you
2 ever wanted to be, and more, John spoke like Picasso
3 made art, and shared the latter's imagination (some-
4 times enough to get himself into desperate trouble).
5 He was a businessman, a doctor, or a lawyer; per-
6 haps some combination of the three, always walking in
7 uninvited, smiling from ear-to-ear, athletic, confident,
8 intriguing (on the surface). His relationships were as
9 real as a politician's promise for the future (though
10 even they sometimes hold true), and he felt every
11 burning prickle of his own falsehood.
12 What was he to do?
13 Born to a magical father blessed with invisibility and
14 raised by a working mother gifted with naiveté, John
15 crafted his own self-made brilliance, a sparkling blend
16 of a near-orphan's rugged individualism and the
17 learned street-skills of a poor boy. I envied him, in a
18 way, but not enough to wish his life upon my own: I only
19 wanted the girls, the grace, the benefits of not having
20 been indulged; I wanted masochism, selfish greed.
PASSAGE 2
21 In England, I felt like they were teasing me. They must
22 have known from my dress, my accent, my occasional
23 Kansas slang. Did the upper-class become upper
24 from feeding off everyone else? But surely a family
25 rich as this couldn't be so desperate. I wasn't likeable,
26 either, not at all, not by their standards, at least. An
27 innocuous, fortuitous meeting in the middle of an un-
28 known street leads to a three week stay in a British
29 castle, all because they wanted to hear about my re-
30 search into the North American tropical system. I had
31 never learned so much meteorology before in my life.
32 My self-satisfaction wasn't coming from my inherent
33 ability to fool them, but from how their wealth of money
34 was no comparison to my dearth supply. Did it make
35 them any happier? They hadn't seen the real world,
36 what it was like to wake up one morning and not know
37 who you are, or where you came from--simply inviting
38 strangers met on a Sunday afternoon downtown into
39 their home for entertainment. Who knew a high school
40 drop-out, former criminal and current thief, could
41 be such a lovely addition to the Parsley family?
QUESTION: Which of the following would the narrator of Passage 2 probably consider to be one of the "benefits of not having been indulged" (lines 19-20)?
Answer
-
He has had to make his own way through the world.
-
He never has to pretend to be anything he's not.
-
He is always learning about new subjects as he takes on new roles.
-
He isn't held back from pursuing his own desires by the expectations of his family.
-
He has greater compassion for others who were raised in poverty.
Question 3
Question
The following two passages discuss the amount of homework assigned to U.S. students.
PASSAGE 1
1 Sarah Lam, an eighth-grader at Presidio Middle
2 School in San Francisco, has learned to manage her
3 time better since sixth grade, when she spent three to
4 four hours toiling over nightly assignments, she said.
5 But her schedule these days--which includes orches-
6 tra, working as a tutor, plus two to three hours of
7 homework--is packed. Her father has occasionally
8 had to use college texts to help her answer science
9 homework questions.
10 Yet there's no evidence that lobbing on the home-
11 work in elementary grades boosts test scores later,
12 according to Harris Cooper, a psychology professor
13 at University of Missouri, who reviewed dozens of
14 studies and concluded homework may begin to pay
15 off in junior high. Cooper said giving large amounts of
16 homework in elementary school may have "negative
17 benefits" such as frustration, negative self-image and
18 not enough time to do other important activities. The
19 National Parent Teacher Association has
20 recommended 10 minutes per grade level, but
21 acknowledges that some kids have less and some
22 have a lot more. So why are schools doing it?
23 "There seem to be two sources," said Cooper. "Some
24 of the pressure is coming from parents who are
25 highly achievement-oriented. The other source is new
26 state standards, which are requiring teachers to
27 teach more, while at the same time requiring more
28 non-academic activities. In my district, for example,
29 fourth-graders learn swimming." There are parents
30 who protest, but principals and teachers say just as
31 many ask for more homework. Many believe that
32 heavy homework, while stressful, is a necessary bur-
33 den in a world that's increasingly competitive. They
34 assist when they can. Some hire homework coaches
35 to help their kids keep up and relieve the stress that
36 arguing over doing it can cause. Others sign up their
37 kids for test-taking classes or enrichment courses.
38 Businesses like Kumon and Score--which give kids
39 test practice--and the Report Card in San Rafael,
40 which sells educational materials and offers both
41 regular tutoring and enrichment classes, have
42 sprouted around the Bay area.
43 "The amount of homework kids are getting is out-
44 rageous," said Donna Gray, a tutor who offers not
45 only remedial help to students, but also enrichment
46 work some parents feel is necessary for their kids to
47 stay competitive. "If you don't develop physically,
48 emotionally and socially as well, it's not good . . ."
49 said Gray, a retired teacher who has a waiting list of
50 clients in Tiburon. "It's society today. I believe that
51 teachers today wouldn't give homework like this if it
52 weren't for the parents. The young teachers here
53 worry about the parents. They're smart, high-
54 achieving. It's hard for them to live up to what the
55 parents expect."
56 Now that homework appears to be at a peak, the
57 pendulum is bound to swing in the other direction,
58 said Gill, who believes reasonable amounts of home-
59 work can be a useful learning tool and give parents
60 "a window into the classroom." There already may be
61 a modest backlash brewing. Take, for example, Gill's
62 research colleague Steven Schlossman, head of the
63 history department at Carnegie Mellon University. He
64 said he had pulled his ninth-grade son out of private
65 school near Pittsburgh because of the unwieldy
66 amount of homework. One week, as an experiment,
67 Schlossman did the homework himself. It took him 35
68 hours. "That's what stimulated my interest in the
69 subject of homework," he said. "This is one of the
70 dramas going on throughout middle class America
71 that very few people want to talk about. They fear if
72 their child can't do it, he's destined to failure. But the
73 amount of trauma, if anyone wants to measure it, I'll
74 venture is extraordinary."
PASSAGE 2
75 A comprehensive review of academic performance
76 around the world gives bad marks to excessive
77 homework. Teachers in Japan, the Czech Republic
78 and Denmark assign relatively little homework, yet
79 students there score well, researchers said this week.
80 "At the other end of the spectrum, countries with very
81 low average scores--Thailand, Greece, Iran--have
82 teachers who assign a great deal of homework," says
83 Penn State researcher David Baker. "American stu-
84 dents appear to do as much homework as their peers
85 overseas--if not more--but still only score around the
86 international average," said co-researcher Gerald
87 LeTendre. Baker and LeTendre examined the Third
88 International Study of Mathematics and Sciences
89 (TIMSS), which in 1994 collected data from schools
90 in 41 nations on performance in grades 4, 8 and 12.
91 Additional similar data from 1999 was factored in.
92 The homework burden is especially problematic in
93 poorer households, where parents may not have the
94 time or inclination to provide an environment condu-
95 cive to good study habits, the researchers conclude.
96 In particular, drills designed to improve memorization
97 may not be suited to many homes.
98 "An unintended consequence may be that those chil-
99 dren who need extra work and drill the most are the
100 ones least likely to get it," Baker said. "Increasing
101 homework loads is likely to aggravate tensions within
102 the family, thereby generating more inequality and
103 eroding the quality of overall education."
104 In the early 1980s, U.S. teachers began assigning
105 more homework, the researchers say. The shift was
106 in response to mediocre performance in comparison
107 to Japanese students. At the same time, the trend
108 was going the other way in Japanese schools. The
109 new study found U.S. math teachers assigned more
110 than two hours of homework a week in 1994-95,
111 while in Japan the figure was about one hour per
112 week. "Undue focus on homework as a national
113 quick-fix, rather than a focus on issues of instruc-
114 tional quality and equity of access to opportunity to
115 learn, may lead a country into wasted expenditures of
116 time and energy," LeTendre says. The homework
117 burden might also affect performance among children
118 of higher-income parents. "Parents are extremely
119 busy with work and household chores, not to mention
120 chauffeuring young people to various extracurricular
121 activities, athletic and otherwise," LeTendre said.
122 "Parents might sometimes see exercises in drill and
123 memorization as intrusions into time."
QUESTION: Passage 1 and Passage 2 both support which of the following generalizations about homework?
Answer
-
Doing large amounts of homework prepares students for the realities of adult life.
-
Teachers give large amounts of homework because they feel pressure from the government to improve students' test scores.
-
The amount of homework assigned by U.S. teachers is grueling.
-
The amount of homework assigned in the U.S. has been increasing steadily since the early 1980s.
-
Students in the U.S. do more homework than students in any other country.
Question 4
Question
1 He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour
2 before. From what had it proceeded? From his
3 aunt's supper, from his own foolish speech, from the
4 wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying
5 good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along
6 the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She would
7 soon be a shade. He had caught that haggard look
8 upon her face for a moment when she was singing
9 "Arrayed for the Bridal." Soon, perhaps, he would
10 be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in
11 black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be
12 drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside
13 him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how
14 Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for
15 some words that might console her, and would find
16 only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would
17 happen very soon.
QUESTION: Which of the following most accurately explains the narrator's "riot of emotions" (line 1)?
Answer
-
the depression he feels as a result of seeing his aunt looking so haggard
-
the emotions relating to the pleasurable experiences of the evening in combination with those relating to the image of his Aunt Julia
-
his conflicting feelings regarding his aunt's soon-to-be death
-
the embarrassment he feels after giving a foolish speech
-
the mix of emotions resulting from the change of setting from the drawing- room to the riverside
Question 5
Question
The engineer was concerned that her ________ with her supervisor might have repercussions, but she felt that it was necessary to be forthright.
Select the word that best completes the sentence.
Answer
-
generosity
-
predictability
-
acrimony
-
candor
-
empathy
Question 6
Question
________ the monarch had abdicated the throne, his younger brother was then named his ________ .
Select the words that best complete the sentence.
Answer
-
After . . successor
-
Because . . predecessor
-
Once . . antecedent
-
Although . . confidant
-
Since . . oppressor
Question 7
Question
1 They often tell me that So-and-so has no sense of
2 humor. Lack of this sense is everywhere held to be
3 be a horrid disgrace, nullify any number of delightful
4 qualities. Perhaps the most effective means of dis-
5 paraging an enemy is to lay stress on his integrity, his
6 erudition, his courage, the fineness of his head, the
7 grace of his figure, his strength of purpose, which has
8 overleaped all obstacles, his goodness to his parents,
9 the kind word that he has for every one, his musical
10 voice, his freedom from aught that in human nature
11 is base; and then to say what a pity it is that he has no
12 sense of humor. Perfection is not loved in this im-
13 perfect world; so that the more highly you extol any
14 one, the more eagerly will your audience accept any-
15 thing you have to say against him. And what could
16 match for deadliness the imputation of being without
17 sense of humor? To convict a man of that lack is to
18 strike him with one blow to a level with the beasts of
19 the field--to kick him, once and for all, outside the
20 human pale. What is it that mainly distinguishes us
21 from the brute creation? That we walk erect? Some
22 brutes are bipeds. That we do not slay one another?
23 We do. That we build houses? So, again, do they.
24 That we converse? They are chatterboxes, whose
25 lingo we are not sharp enough to master. On no
26 possible point of superiority can we preen ourselves,
27 save this: that we can laugh, and that they, with
28 one notable exception, cannot.
29 Belief in the general humorousness of the human
30 race is more deep-rooted for that every man is certain
31 that he himself is not without sense of humor. A man
32 will admit cheerfully that he does not know one tune
33 from another, or that he cannot discriminate the
34 vintages of wines. The blind beggar does not seek to
35 benumb sympathy by telling his patrons how well
36 they are looking. The deaf and dumb do not scruple
37 to converse in signals. "Have you no sense of beauty?"
38 I said to a friend who in the Academia of Florence
39 suggested that we had stood long enough in front of
40 the "Primavera." "No!" was his simple, straight-
41 forward, quite unanswerable answer. But I have never
42 heard a man assert that he had no sense of humor.
43 And I take it that no such assertion ever was made.
44 Moreover, were it made it would be a lie. Every man
45 laughs. Frequently or infrequently, the corners of his
46 mouth are drawn up into his cheeks, and through his
47 parted lips comes his own particular variety, soft or
48 loud, of that noise which is called laughter. Frequently
49 or infrequently, every man is amused by something.
50 Every man has a sense of humor, but not every man
51 has the same sense. A may be incapable of smiling at
52 what has convulsed B, and B may stare blankly when
53 he hears what has rolled A off his chair. Jokes are so
54 diverse that no one man can see them all. The very
55 fact that he can see one kind is proof positive that
56 certain other kinds will be invisible to him. And so
57 egoistic in his judgment is the average man that he
58 is apt to suspect of being humorless any one whose
59 sense of humor squares not with his own. But the
60 suspicion is always false, incomparably useful though
61 it is in the form of an accusation.
62 I have said that not every man has the same sense of
63 of humor. I might have said truly that no two men have
64 the same sense of humor, for that no two men have
65 the same brain and heart and experience, by which
66 things the sense of humor is formed and directed. One
67 joke may go round the world tickling myriads, but
68 no two persons will be tickled in precisely the same
69 way, to precisely the same degree. If the vibrations
70 of inward or outward laughter could be scientifically
71 registered, differences between them all would be
72 made apparent to us. "Oh," is your cry whenever you
73 hear something that especially amuses you. "I must
74 tell that to" whomever you credit with a sense of humor
75 most akin to your own. And the chances are that you
76 will be disappointed by his reception of the joke.
77 Either he will laugh less loudly than you hoped, or
78 he will say something which reveals to you that it
79 amuses him and you not in quite the same way. Or
80 perhaps he will laugh so long and loudly that you are
81 irritated by the suspicion that you have not yourself
82 gauged the full beauty of it.
QUESTION: According to this passage, which human attribute does the author espouse as a rationale for the differentiation among individuals' sense of humor?
Answer
-
egoistic differences
-
their varied levels of brutality
-
differences in brain and heart
-
their ability to perceive beauty in the same way
-
the sound of their laughter
Question 8
Question
1 They often tell me that So-and-so has no sense of
2 humor. Lack of this sense is everywhere held to be
3 be a horrid disgrace, nullify any number of delightful
4 qualities. Perhaps the most effective means of dis-
5 paraging an enemy is to lay stress on his integrity, his
6 erudition, his courage, the fineness of his head, the
7 grace of his figure, his strength of purpose, which has
8 overleaped all obstacles, his goodness to his parents,
9 the kind word that he has for every one, his musical
10 voice, his freedom from aught that in human nature
11 is base; and then to say what a pity it is that he has no
12 sense of humor. Perfection is not loved in this im-
13 perfect world; so that the more highly you extol any
14 one, the more eagerly will your audience accept any-
15 thing you have to say against him. And what could
16 match for deadliness the imputation of being without
17 sense of humor? To convict a man of that lack is to
18 strike him with one blow to a level with the beasts of
19 the field--to kick him, once and for all, outside the
20 human pale. What is it that mainly distinguishes us
21 from the brute creation? That we walk erect? Some
22 brutes are bipeds. That we do not slay one another?
23 We do. That we build houses? So, again, do they.
24 That we converse? They are chatterboxes, whose
25 lingo we are not sharp enough to master. On no
26 possible point of superiority can we preen ourselves,
27 save this: that we can laugh, and that they, with
28 one notable exception, cannot.
29 Belief in the general humorousness of the human
30 race is more deep-rooted for that every man is certain
31 that he himself is not without sense of humor. A man
32 will admit cheerfully that he does not know one tune
33 from another, or that he cannot discriminate the
34 vintages of wines. The blind beggar does not seek to
35 benumb sympathy by telling his patrons how well
36 they are looking. The deaf and dumb do not scruple
37 to converse in signals. "Have you no sense of beauty?"
38 I said to a friend who in the Academia of Florence
39 suggested that we had stood long enough in front of
40 the "Primavera." "No!" was his simple, straight-
41 forward, quite unanswerable answer. But I have never
42 heard a man assert that he had no sense of humor.
43 And I take it that no such assertion ever was made.
44 Moreover, were it made it would be a lie. Every man
45 laughs. Frequently or infrequently, the corners of his
46 mouth are drawn up into his cheeks, and through his
47 parted lips comes his own particular variety, soft or
48 loud, of that noise which is called laughter. Frequently
49 or infrequently, every man is amused by something.
50 Every man has a sense of humor, but not every man
51 has the same sense. A may be incapable of smiling at
52 what has convulsed B, and B may stare blankly when
53 he hears what has rolled A off his chair. Jokes are so
54 diverse that no one man can see them all. The very
55 fact that he can see one kind is proof positive that
56 certain other kinds will be invisible to him. And so
57 egoistic in his judgment is the average man that he
58 is apt to suspect of being humorless any one whose
59 sense of humor squares not with his own. But the
60 suspicion is always false, incomparably useful though
61 it is in the form of an accusation.
62 I have said that not every man has the same sense of
63 of humor. I might have said truly that no two men have
64 the same sense of humor, for that no two men have
65 the same brain and heart and experience, by which
66 things the sense of humor is formed and directed. One
67 joke may go round the world tickling myriads, but
68 no two persons will be tickled in precisely the same
69 way, to precisely the same degree. If the vibrations
70 of inward or outward laughter could be scientifically
71 registered, differences between them all would be
72 made apparent to us. "Oh," is your cry whenever you
73 hear something that especially amuses you. "I must
74 tell that to" whomever you credit with a sense of humor
75 most akin to your own. And the chances are that you
76 will be disappointed by his reception of the joke.
77 Either he will laugh less loudly than you hoped, or
78 he will say something which reveals to you that it
79 amuses him and you not in quite the same way. Or
80 perhaps he will laugh so long and loudly that you are
81 irritated by the suspicion that you have not yourself
82 gauged the full beauty of it.
QUESTION: This passage best falls into which of the following categories of writing?
Answer
-
intuitive
-
argumentative
-
dialectic
-
descriptive
-
metaphorical
Question 9
Question
1 We shall not understand what a book is, and why a
2 book has the value many persons have, and is even
3 less replaceable than a person, if we forget how
4 important to it is its body, the building that has been
5 built to hold its line of language safely together
6 through many adventures and a long time. Words on
7 a screen have visual qualities, to be sure, and these
8 darkly limn their shape, but they have no materiality,
9 they are only shadows, and when the light shifts they'll
10 be gone. Off the screen they do not exist as words.
11 They do not wait to be reseen, reread; they only wait
12 to be remade, relit. I cannot carry them beneath a tree
13 or onto a side porch; I cannot argue in their margins;
14 I cannot enjoy the memory of my dismay when,
15 perhaps after years, I return to my treasured copy of
16 Treasure Island to find the jam I inadvertently smeared
17 there still spotting a page precisely at the place where
18 Billy Bones chases Black Dog out of the Admiral
19 Benbow with a volley of oaths and where his cutlass
20 misses its mark to notch the inn's wide sign instead.
21 My copy, which I still possess, was of the cheapest.
22 Published by M. A. Donohue & Co. of Chicago, it bears
23 no date, and its coarse pages are jaundiced and brit-
24 tle, yet they've outlived their manufacturer; they will out-
25 live their reader--always comforting yet a bit sad. The
26 pages, in fact, smell their age, their decrepitude, and
27 the jam smear is like an ancient bruise; but like a scar
28 recalling its accident, I remember the pounding in my
29 chest when the black spot was pressed into Billy
30 Bones's palm and Blind Pew appeared on the road
31 in a passage that I knew even then was a piece of
32 exemplary prose.
33 That book and I loved each other, and I don't mean
34 just its text: that book, which then was new, its cover
35 slick and shiny, its paper agleam with the tossing sea
36 and armed, as Long John Silver was, for a fight, its
37 binding tight as the elastic of new underwear, not
38 slack as it is now, after so many openings and clos-
39 ings, so many dry years; that book would be borne off
40 to my room, where it lived through my high school
41 miseries in a dime-store bookcase, and it would
42 accompany me to college too, and be packed in the
43 duffel bag I carried as a sailor.
44 Should we put these feelings for the object and its
45 vicissitudes down to simple sentimental nostalgia?
46 I think not; but even as a stimulus for reminiscence,
47 a treasure more important than a dance card, or the
48 photo that freezes you in at the edge of the Grand
49 Canyon, because such a book can be a significant
50 event in the history of your reading, and your reading
51 (provided you are significant) should be an essential
52 segment of your character and your life. Unlike the
53 the love we've made or meals we've eaten, books
54 congregate to form a record around us of what they've
55 fed our stomachs or our brains. These are not a
56 hunter's trophies but the living animals themselves.
57 In the ideal logotopia, every person would possess
58 his own library and add at least weekly if not daily to it.
59 The walls of each home would seem made of books;
60 wherever one looked one would only see spines;
61 because every real book (as opposed to dictionaries,
62 almanacs, and other compilations) is a mind, an
63 imagination, a consciousness. Together they com-
64 pose a civilization, or even several.
65
A few of us are fortunate enough to live in Logotopia,
66 to own our own library, but for many this is not possi-
67 ble, and for them we need a free and open public
68 institution with a balanced collection of books that it
69 cares for and loans, with stacks where a visitor may
70 wander, browse, and make discoveries; such an insti-
71 tution empowers its public as few do. In fact, it has no
72 rival, for the books in the public library are the books
73 that may take temporary residence in yours or mine.
74 We share their wealth the way we share the space of a
75 public park. My high school had no library worthy of
76 the name "book," so I would walk about a mile down-
77 town to the public one to borrow, in almost every case,
78 a new world. That's what a library does for its patrons.
79 It extends the self. It is pure empowerment.
80 The sciences, it is alleged, no longer use books;
81 neither do the professions, since what everyone
82 needs is data, data day and night, because data, like
83 drugs, soothe the senses and encourage us to think
84 we are, when at the peak of their heap, on top of the
85 world. Of course, libraries contain books, and books
86 contain information, but information has always been
87 of minor importance, except to minor minds. What
88 matters is how the information is arranged, how it is
89 understood, and to what uses it is put. In short, what
90 matters is the book the data's in.
91
Frequently, one comes across comparisons of the
92 electronic revolution with that of writing and printing,
93 and these are usually accompanied by warnings to
94 those suspicious of technology that objections to these
95 forward marches are both fuddy-duddy and futile. But
96 Plato's worries that writing would not reveal the writer
97 the way the soul of a speaker was exposed; that
98 spontaneity would be compromised; that words would
99 be stolen, and words would be put in other mouths
100 than those of their authors; that writing does not hear
101 its reader's response; that lying, hypocrisy, false
102 borrowing, ghostwriting, would increase so that the
103 hollow heads of state would echo with hired words;
104 and that, oddly, the advantages and powers of the book
105 would give power and advantage to the rich, who would
106 learn to read and would have the funds to acquire
107 and keep such precious volumes safe: these fears
108 were overwhelmingly realized.
109 The advent of printing was opposed (as writing was)
110 for a number of mean and self-serving reasons, but
111 the fear that it would lead to the making of a million
112 half-baked brains, and cause the illicit turning of a
113 multitude of untrained heads, as a consequence of the
114 unhindered spread of nonsense was a fear that was
115 also well founded. The boast that the placement of
116 books in many hands would finally overthrow supersti-
117 tion was not entirely a hollow hope, however. The gift
118 gave a million minds a chance at independence.
QUESTION: How does the simile in line 27 relate to the author's overall purpose in the passage?
Answer
-
It points out the damage that can result when the public does not truly value books for the wisdom they can offer.
-
It emphasizes the importance of Treasure Island in the classic canon of literature.
-
It emphasizes both the longevity of books and their ability to inspire reminiscence.
-
It provides support for the author's argument for the proliferation of libraries.
-
It illustrates the fact that the author's copy of Treasure Island is older than its manufacturer.
Question 10
Question
The politician's ________ bothered me; I wanted an ________ answer.
Select the words that best complete the sentence.
Answer
-
veracity . . amorphous
-
ineffectiveness . . equitable
-
equivocation . . unambiguous
-
restraint . . impassive
-
prevarication . . enigmatic
Question 11
Question
1 Talk to the handful of "doughboys" who are still alive
2 today--the youngest of which is 105 years old, having
3 lied about his age in order to enlist as an ambulance
4 corpsman in 1917 and they still cannot bring them-
5 selves to discuss the brutal horror that was trench
6 warfare. "I don't want to think about it," one veteran
7 said, though he added that he thinks about his fallen
8 comrades every day of his unnaturally-long life.
9 The experience of any warfare, from our American
10 Civil War to the present conflicts in Iraq and
11 Afghanistan, often leaves veterans dumb, but there
12 was something exponentially more terrible, indeed
13 unspeakable, about the mass slaughter that marked
14 "The War to End All Wars," so named because it was
15 (to that point) that bloodiest conflict known to man.
16 Nearly 10 million soldiers died, and more than 20
17 million were wounded in four years of fighting. It made
18 folks so sick of war that they hoped against hope no
19 new war would ever erupt again.
20 The lethal drones and computerized smart-bombs of
21 today, the napalm and jungle warfare of Vietnam, the
22 frozen tundra and stalemate of the Korean peninsula,
23 or the aerial fire-bombing of The Second World War--
24 for all their selective butchery, they are pale in com-
25 parison with the impassable mud, denuded land-
26 scapes, endless barbed wire and infected vermin, the
27 the mustard gas and killing field in between enemy
28 trenches forever known as "No-Man's Land" that
29 marked this particular conflict as the worst hardship
30 that soldiers ever had to endure. "All this madness,"
31 the British philosopher Bertrand Russell once said,
32 "all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization
33 and our hopes, has been brought about because a
34 set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly
35 stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have
36 chosen that it should occur rather than that any one
37 of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his
38 country's pride."
39 Of course World War I did not "end all wars," but it did
40 awaken nations to unite initially as the League of
41 Nations and later as the United Nations in order to
42 take steps to correct some of the worst outrages of that
43 barbaric conflict, such as trench warfare, and in that
44 sense endures as the crucible of man's inhumanity to
45 man.
QUESTION: What is it that "endures as the crucible of man's inhumanity to man" (lines 44-45)?
Answer
-
United Nations (line 41)
-
sense (line 44)
-
conflict (line 43)
-
trench warfare (line 43)
-
World War I (line 39)
Question 12
Question
Although the parents tried to ________ the situation, the vendor was too ________ to accept their apologies because the child had ruined the expensive painting.
Select the words that best complete the sentence.
Answer
-
assuage . . incensed
-
prevent . . hurried
-
uncover . . weary
-
dispel . . important
-
disclose . . proud
Question 13
Question
The soldiers came home to a hero's welcome. Everyone in town seemed to ________ them.
Select the word that best completes the sentence.
Answer
-
revolt
-
Despise
-
revere
-
revenue
-
repulse
Question 14
Question
1 Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has argued that all
2 organized groups "from people to animals" are shaped
3 by a collective memory from their predecessors. The
4 process by which this information moves from past to
5 present to influence like upon like is called "morphic
6 resonance." As a result of this process, patterns of
7 development and behavior become habitual through
8 repetition. This repetition shapes the group and helps
9 it to learn and evolve. In his book Dogs That Know
10 When Their Owners are Coming Home, Sheldrake
11 discusses how horses seemed to have learned to
12 avoid running into barbed wire fences and potentially
13 injuring themselves. This behavior cannot simply be
14 explained as mothers teaching their colts to avoid
15 them, he argues. Young horses immediately seem to
16 have some knowledge that these fences offer them
17 potential harm, something colts a century ago did not
18 possess. Similarly, ranchers in the West have begun
19 using fake cattle guards (lines painted across a road)
20 instead of real cattle guards (a series of metal tubs
21 and rails). Cattle are just as unwilling to cross the fake
22 guards as the real ones, according to studies done.
QUESTION: Which of the following best reflects the pattern of development used in the passage?
Answer
-
a series of cause-effect relationships
-
a chronology of collective memory
-
a series of rhetorical situations
-
a series of comparisons
-
a series of case studies
Question 15
Question
The stilted silence that ________ on the roomful of new acquaintances seemed as ________ as the loudest siren.
Select the words that best complete the sentence.
Answer
-
descended . . deafening
-
permeated . . resounding
-
subsided . . vociferous
-
declined . . blatant
-
alighted . . sonorous
Question 16
Question
Paul Gray, a book critic at Life magazine, initially lauded Philip Roth's novel, The Counterlife, as an "exquisite metaphysical thriller steeped in hilarious invention," but later ________ his praise by saying Roth was completely overrated.
Select the word that best completes the sentence.
Answer
-
rescinded
-
refined
-
diluted
-
extended
-
enhanced
Question 17
Question
Sandra is a born ________; her witty stories could amuse anyone.
Select the word that best completes the sentence.
Answer
-
braggart
-
raconteur
-
prevaricator
-
vaunter
-
fabricator
Question 18
Question
1 Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has argued that all
2 organized groups "from people to animals" are shaped
3 by a collective memory from their predecessors. The
4 process by which this information moves from past to
5 present to influence like upon like is called "morphic
6 resonance." As a result of this process, patterns of
7 development and behavior become habitual through
8 repetition. This repetition shapes the group and helps
9 it to learn and evolve. In his book Dogs That Know
10 When Their Owners are Coming Home, Sheldrake
11 discusses how horses seemed to have learned to
12 avoid running into barbed wire fences and potentially
13 injuring themselves. This behavior cannot simply be
14 explained as mothers teaching their colts to avoid
15 them, he argues. Young horses immediately seem to
16 have some knowledge that these fences offer them
17 potential harm, something colts a century ago did not
18 possess. Similarly, ranchers in the West have begun
19 using fake cattle guards (lines painted across a road)
20 instead of real cattle guards (a series of metal tubs
21 and rails). Cattle are just as unwilling to cross the fake
22 guards as the real ones, according to studies done.
QUESTION: Based on how the words are used in the passage, all of the following pairs contain words that express similar meanings or serve as parallels to each other except:
Answer
-
like (line 5) and predecessors (line 3).
-
horses (line 11) and Cattle (line 21).
-
habitual (line 7) and resonance (line 6).
-
repetition (line 8) and habitual (line 7).
-
mothers (line 14) and ranchers (line 18).
Question 19
Question
Instead of being thrilled by the surprise her parents had promised, Rachel found the sudden appearance of the new pony to be rather ________ .
Select the word that best completes the sentence.
Answer
-
solipsistic
-
grandiloquent
-
quotidian
-
archetypal
-
sacrosanct
Question 20
Question
After years of paying close attention to market trends, talented brokers often display true ________ when predicting stock prices.
Select the word that best completes the sentence.
Answer
-
acknowledgment
-
perplexity
-
integrity
-
prescience
-
dauntlessness