Paragraph Completion Advanced Level Test – Quiz (Online Exercise With Answers) 1

1. The degree to which children feel
more self-confident as they grow
older depends mainly on their relation
with their mothers and fathers.
Children always need to be reassured
by their parents._____ . This kind of
trust is essential in reducing young
children's anxiety.

2. Ocean waves may seem like a fanciful
source of energy._____ . In August, a
750-kilowatt power plant off the coast
of Scotland began delivering ocean -
wave power for the first time to the
local electricity grid. The plant
consists of four linked floating
cylinders which use wave motion to
drive a hydraulic pump and turn a
turbine. This is such an inexpensive
and clean process that engineers are
quite optimistic about its future.

3. It's essential for all creatures to keep
themselves clean and free from
parasites. _____ . Some species are
able to clean themselves. For those
species that are not, it is obviously
vital to find some other animal to
perform this cleaning function.

4. _____ . Within five years, 4,5 million
Americans had taken it at least once.
This was the fastest acceptance ever
for a psychiatric drug. It seemed to go
beyond treating illness and actually
improve people's lives; a sort of
facelift for the character. However,
reports emerged that some patients
actually felt more suicidal on Prozac

5. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was
born in Moscow, which at the time
was not the Capital of Russia.
Dostoevsky's mother died when he
was sixteen and he became a student
in the Military Engineering School in
the then-capital, St. Petersburg. ---------
—. And therefore, resigned his
commission after just over a year. In
later years, he became a radical
socialist and, after having written two
novels and some other shorter works,
was arrested in 1848 and sentenced
to death for his political activities.

6 . A virus can be regarded as a self
replicating program that spreads by
inserting copies of itself into other
executable code or documents in
computer technology. ______. Extending
this comparison, the insertion of the
virus into a program is termed g
“infection”, and the infected document
or code is known as a “host”.

7. _____ . İn Western medicine, all the
ingredients are single compounds,
making it much easier to quality
control, and the mode of function can
be analyzed. In Chinese medicine,
howewer, because it is a mixture that
is used, it is very difficult to
investigate how it works. One of the
ways that pharmaceutical companies
are looking at bringing traditional
Chinese medicine into line with
Western Standards is to identifiy the
active ingredients in the herbs that
are used.

8 . The olive is possibly the most
important fruit of the Mediterranean
and Near Eastern region so much that
according to Greek mythology, it
helped to give Athens its name. This
was because when the gods Poseidon
and Athena clashed over whose name
the city would get, it was decided that
the honour would go to the one who
could offer the most precious gift to
it. _____ . The olive even gets
important mentions in the religious
books of the area. According to the
Bible, after Noah's Ark is left high and
stranded on a mountain, he sent out a
dove, and when it returned with an
olive leaf in its mouth, Noah knew that
God's wrath had passed.

9. Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges
was born in Buenos Aires on 24
August 1899. His father was a lawyer,
a psychology teacher, and an
anarchist who was part of Italian,
Spanish, Portuguese and British,
while his mother was a translator of
Spanish and Catalan descent. At his
home, both Spanish and English were
spoken._____ . And in fact he learned
to read in English before Spanish. He
grew up in a suburb of Buenos Aires
called Palermo, in a large house with
a comprehensive library, for which he
began writing stories at the age of 6 .

10. The author Alfred Jarry is best known
for his play King Ubu, in which the
title character is a gross satire on
bourgeois stupidity and greed. In fact,
the character became so famous at
the time that Jarry himself often
pretended he was Ubu, especially in
his later years. _____ . He was, for
example, the inventor of an
“imaginary science” known as
“pataphysics” and he also wrote an
essay about a time travel machine.

11. Lichen are one of the few kinds of life
that can survive in the mountains of
Antarctica. These tiny plants live in
small holes in the rocks. Outside, the
extreme cold and strong winds do not
allow any life at a il._____ . However,
much of the time they are frozen. This
fact means that the lichen function
very slowly, and live a very long time.

12. Sociologists and psychologists have
argued for centuries about how a
person's character is formed. The
argument has long been known as
“Nature versus Nurture”, for the two
main opposing theories. The first
theory says that character is formed
genetically before birth. _____ . The
other theory says, on the contrary,
that a person's character is formed
after birth.

13. Money has not always been made of
metal or paper. In many parts of the
world people have used other
materials. Precious stones, valuable
cloth (silk), and rare spices (saffron)
have all been used as money at times.
But people have also given special
value to other kinds of objects. For
example, in Ethiopia, blocks of salt
have been used as money._____ . In
India and in North America, special
kinds of shells have been used

14._____ . This expression can be true in a
very literal sense. The Luo people from
Kenya often cook and eat the leaves of
a plant called black nightshade. This
plant serves as an effective treatment
for many stomach problems. The Luo
eat it regulary from childhood and do
not suffer any negative effect from it.
However, when one American
researcher ate just a small amount,
she felt quite ill afterwards. In fact the plant contains a substance called solanine that can be poisonous.

15. Supermarket managers have all kinds
of tricks to encourage people to spend
more money. Their aim is to make
customers go more slowly through the
supermarket. _____ . They also make the corridors near the cash registers more narrow. Then customers with
large shopping carts will get stuck or have to slow down. In some
supermarkets, the floor is even slightly
uphill for people going towards the exits.

16. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a basketball
star in the United States. When he was
born in New York City in 1947, his
parents named him Ferdinand Lewis
Alcindor, Jr. He studied at the university
of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in
the late 1960s. At that time, he led the
university's basketball team to three
championships._____. He changed his
name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In 1969,
Kareem began his professional
basketball career as a center on the
Milwaukee Bucks team. Later, in 1975,
he joined the Los Angeles Lakers.

17. Making orange juice concentrate from
fresh oranges is done entirely by
machines. First, oranges are dumped
onto a moving belt They travel into a
machine which washes them with
detergent Next they are rolled into
juicing machines, where seven hundred
oranges per minute are split and
squeezed. Then the rinds are thrown out
the end of a long tube._____. Next, the
juice goes into another machine called
the finisher. And the process is over.

18 ._____ . Some people like to go for long
walks in the forest, where they won't
see anyone for days. Others prefer to
spend their holiday in an exciting city.
There they can visit museums,
theaters, and good restaurants. Still
others enjoy the fresh air at the
seashore. They can spend their days
at the beach and listen to the ocean
waves at night.

19. Scientists believe that the earth's
climate may be warming up. This
trend probably began thousands of
years ago. Many areas of the earth
used to be covered with ice that has
now melted. _____ . Scientists think
that part of the reason for this may be
carbon dioxide pollution from
industry and automobiles. The carbon
dioxide mixes with other gases. This
pollution covers the earth like a
blanket and keeps it warmer. Another
reason for the warming may be the
fact that the earth is losing its forests.

20. The first guitarist to become known
worldwide was Andres Segovia, born
in 1893 in Spain._____ . Most people
thought that the guitar was suitable
only for popular music or folk music.
Few classical composers wrote music
for the guitar, and it was never
included in classical concerts. But
Segovia classical instrument, and he'
was a great musician.

21. Many studies have shown that it is
better to wear your seat belt when you
are traveling in a car. Seat belts
greatly reduce the risk of death or
injury in an accident. This fact is
widely recognized and many
governments have passed laws
requiring seat belt use. _____ .
Researchers have found several
reasons for this. Some people feel
uncomfortable with the seat belt. They
are afraid of being trapped in the car
in an accident. Others do not think
that the seat belt can protect them.
They believe that people have no
power over their fate.

22 ,_____ , The main cause of this is
loneliness. In the past, older people
usually lived with other members of
the family. They usually had
responsibilities around the home. For
example, older women could help
take care of the children. And older
men could help their sons at work.
These days, married children often
prefer to live on their own, sometimes ^
far away from their parents. Thus, m
older people may be cut off from p
family ties. They may feel cut off from g
the world around them.

23. In the past few years, scientists have
found several new fuels to replace
gasoline for automobiles. _____ . It
can be used in many cars in almost
the same way that gasoline is used.
Natural gas is another alternative fuel
for cars. However, cars that burn this
fuel must be equipped with special
tanks of natural gas. A third
alternative, and perhaps the best, is
electricity. Cars fueled by electricity
have no engine at all, though they do
have to carry large batteries.

24. Both New York City and Paris depend
on vast subway lines to transport
their millions of commuters. In both
cities, the subways are often
crowded, especially at rush hours.
Another likeness is the terrible noise
level in the trains. A further similarity
is that two subway systems both
cover a wide area at little expense for
commuters. However, the differences
between the two are quite striking.
_____ . Many of the French stations
are filled with works of art. In Paris,
the subway trains are clean. On the
other hand, New York's trains can
sometimes be less clean.

25. When people move from one city or
country to another, the spread of
diseases may result. People often
bring in germs which may not have
been present there before. These new
germs can spread quickly and cause
previously unknown diseases._____ .
They become ill more easily and die
more often. In turn, newcomers may
catch diseases which were not
present where they came from.