Reading Passages Advanced Level Test – Quiz (Online Exercise With Answers) 1

Many countries in the world are faced with the appalling connected problems of increasing population and a shortage of food. It has been estimated that by the year 2010 the world’s population will have risen to about ten thousand million. It, therefore, seems that more countries could find themselves in this situation in the future. There are a number of possible solutions to the problem, but none of them is easy. Firstly, the governments in such countries could discourage people from having large families. Secondly, the people ought to bring new agricultural machinery, modernise their farming methods and develop more land so as to produce enough food to satisfy the needs of the people. And finally, countries with a food shortage should try to import some of the food they need from other countries by exporting their oil, wood, iron or whatever they have. All of these possible solutions (and there are of course many more) simplify the problem. However, they show that, if people mean to solve the problems of increasing population and food shortages, there are means of doing so.

The passage is mainly concerned with ______.

Many countries in the world are faced with the appalling connected problems of increasing population and a shortage of food. It has been estimated that by the year 2010 the world’s population will have risen to about ten thousand million. It, therefore, seems that more countries could find themselves in this situation in the future. There are a number of possible solutions to the problem, but none of them is easy. Firstly, the governments in such countries could discourage people from having large families. Secondly, the people ought to bring new agricultural machinery, modernise their farming methods and develop more land so as to produce enough food to satisfy the needs of the people. And finally, countries with a food shortage should try to import some of the food they need from other countries by exporting their oil, wood, iron or whatever they have. All of these possible solutions (and there are of course many more) simplify the problem. However, they show that, if people mean to solve the problems of increasing population and food shortages, there are means of doing so.

We may infer from the passage that ______.

Many countries in the world are faced with the appalling connected problems of increasing population and a shortage of food. It has been estimated that by the year 2010 the world’s population will have risen to about ten thousand million. It, therefore, seems that more countries could find themselves in this situation in the future. There are a number of possible solutions to the problem, but none of them is easy. Firstly, the governments in such countries could discourage people from having large families. Secondly, the people ought to bring new agricultural machinery, modernise their farming methods and develop more land so as to produce enough food to satisfy the needs of the people. And finally, countries with a food shortage should try to import some of the food they need from other countries by exporting their oil, wood, iron or whatever they have. All of these possible solutions (and there are of course many more) simplify the problem. However, they show that, if people mean to solve the problems of increasing population and food shortages, there are means of doing so.

As included in the passage, mentioning the problems of the increasing world population and a shortage of food as well as several solutions, the writer tries to warn us _____.

Oscar Niemeyer was a Brazilian architect and the greatest South American exponent of modern architecture. He was fortunate to work in a country relatively unhampered by traditional forms and wealthy enough to finance large projects. Shortly after graduating, he joined the team of designers of the new Ministry of Education and Health building in Rio de Janerio. Le Corbusier went over to Brazil for a time in 1936 to work on the same project, and Niemeyer was very much influenced by the established master. Over the next few years, his own idiom developed rapidly: the debt to Corbusier remained but was modified increasingly by Niemeyer’s own fertile and lyrical imagination. Curved forms, curves cut by verticals or horizontals, and the expressive power of low, long and uniform facades became the hallmarks of his style. He has been associated with four great schemes in Brazil. The first of them was a group of buildings near the airport in Belo Horizonte in the early 1940s, and there he displayed that wide variety of structures that were already to be his speciality. His greatest opportunity came with the decision to found a new capital in Brazilia, and between 1950 and 1960 Niemeyer was engaged in the design of the public buildings. One of these included the President's Palace with its elegant curving concrete forms supporting the overhang of the roof and the daring design for the cathedral.

According to the passage, Niemeyer was lucky in where he worked because _____.

Oscar Niemeyer was a Brazilian architect and the greatest South American exponent of modern architecture. He was fortunate to work in a country relatively unhampered by traditional forms and wealthy enough to finance large projects. Shortly after graduating, he joined the team of designers of the new Ministry of Education and Health building in Rio de Janerio. Le Corbusier went over to Brazil for a time in 1936 to work on the same project, and Niemeyer was very much influenced by the established master. Over the next few years, his own idiom developed rapidly: the debt to Corbusier remained but was modified increasingly by Niemeyer’s own fertile and lyrical imagination. Curved forms, curves cut by verticals or horizontals, and the expressive power of low, long and uniform facades became the hallmarks of his style. He has been associated with four great schemes in Brazil. The first of them was a group of buildings near the airport in Belo Horizonte in the early 1940s, and there he displayed that wide variety of structures that were already to be his speciality. His greatest opportunity came with the decision to found a new capital in Brazilia, and between 1950 and 1960 Niemeyer was engaged in the design of the public buildings. One of these included the President's Palace with its elegant curving concrete forms supporting the overhang of the roof and the daring design for the cathedral.

As is mentioned in the passage, Le Corbusier was _____.

Oscar Niemeyer was a Brazilian architect and the greatest South American exponent of modern architecture. He was fortunate to work in a country relatively unhampered by traditional forms and wealthy enough to finance large projects. Shortly after graduating, he joined the team of designers of the new Ministry of Education and Health building in Rio de Janerio. Le Corbusier went over to Brazil for a time in 1936 to work on the same project, and Niemeyer was very much influenced by the established master. Over the next few years, his own idiom developed rapidly: the debt to Corbusier remained but was modified increasingly by Niemeyer’s own fertile and lyrical imagination. Curved forms, curves cut by verticals or horizontals, and the expressive power of low, long and uniform facades became the hallmarks of his style. He has been associated with four great schemes in Brazil. The first of them was a group of buildings near the airport in Belo Horizonte in the early 1940s, and there he displayed that wide variety of structures that were already to be his speciality. His greatest opportunity came with the decision to found a new capital in Brazilia, and between 1950 and 1960 Niemeyer was engaged in the design of the public buildings. One of these included the President's Palace with its elegant curving concrete forms supporting the overhang of the roof and the daring design for the cathedral.

As concluded in the passage, Niemeyer _____.

FUBU started in 1992 when Daymond John decided to try and make some money by designing and selling the kind of hats he wanted to wear himself but could never find. Daymond turned half of his home in Queens, New York into a factory and the other half into a living space for the 'Team!' The “Team consisted of a group of neighbourhood friends, all of whom are an integral part of the company. By 1995 FUBU was making shirts, rugby shirts, sweatshirts, denim, underwear, outerwear, boots and shoes with raw materials from around the world. Today FUBU make women's and children's clothes as well. The collection is also sold internationally in France, Japan, Germany and Australia. Top musical artists such as Mariah Carey and Snoop Doggy Dog have given FUBU their stamp of approval.

The passage is mainly concerned with ______.

FUBU started in 1992 when Daymond John decided to try and make some money by designing and selling the kind of hats he wanted to wear himself but could never find. Daymond turned half of his home in Queens, New York into a factory and the other half into a living space for the 'Team!' The “Team consisted of a group of neighbourhood friends, all of whom are an integral part of the company. By 1995 FUBU was making shirts, rugby shirts, sweatshirts, denim, underwear, outerwear, boots and shoes with raw materials from around the world. Today FUBU make women's and children's clothes as well. The collection is also sold internationally in France, Japan, Germany and Australia. Top musical artists such as Mariah Carey and Snoop Doggy Dog have given FUBU their stamp of approval.

It's understood from the passage that ______.

FUBU started in 1992 when Daymond John decided to try and make some money by designing and selling the kind of hats he wanted to wear himself but could never find. Daymond turned half of his home in Queens, New York into a factory and the other half into a living space for the 'Team!' The “Team consisted of a group of neighbourhood friends, all of whom are an integral part of the company. By 1995 FUBU was making shirts, rugby shirts, sweatshirts, denim, underwear, outerwear, boots and shoes with raw materials from around the world. Today FUBU make women's and children's clothes as well. The collection is also sold internationally in France, Japan, Germany and Australia. Top musical artists such as Mariah Carey and Snoop Doggy Dog have given FUBU their stamp of approval.

One may conclude from the passage that _____.

Hilaria Supa wears ancestral clothing and a round hat typical of peasant women from her village near Cusco, the former Inca capital in Peru. She also speaks Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire, which is still used widely in Peruvian Andes. She claims that she has no real need for Spanish because her neighbours all speak Quechua. But that doesn’t go for other members of Peru’s Congress, to which Ms Supa has just been elected. Along with a colleague, Ms Supa, who speaks fluent Spanish, has insisted on speaking to the legislature in her first language. This, she says, will increase respect for Andean Indian culture and help the language to survive. It has forced Congress to hire translators. Although Quechua . has long been in slow-decline, chiefly because the children of migrants to the cities rarely speak it, it is now getting a lot more attention, as a result of Ms Supa’s struggles.

It is implied in the passage that Hilaria Supa _____.

Hilaria Supa wears ancestral clothing and a round hat typical of peasant women from her village near Cusco, the former Inca capital in Peru. She also speaks Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire, which is still used widely in Peruvian Andes. She claims that she has no real need for Spanish because her neighbours all speak Quechua. But that doesn’t go for other members of Peru’s Congress, to which Ms Supa has just been elected. Along with a colleague, Ms Supa, who speaks fluent Spanish, has insisted on speaking to the legislature in her first language. This, she says, will increase respect for Andean Indian culture and help the language to survive. It has forced Congress to hire translators. Although Quechua . has long been in slow-decline, chiefly because the children of migrants to the cities rarely speak it, it is now getting a lot more attention, as a result of Ms Supa’s struggles.

We can understand from the passage that in some parts of Peru _____.

Hilaria Supa wears ancestral clothing and a round hat typical of peasant women from her village near Cusco, the former Inca capital in Peru. She also speaks Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire, which is still used widely in Peruvian Andes. She claims that she has no real need for Spanish because her neighbours all speak Quechua. But that doesn’t go for other members of Peru’s Congress, to which Ms Supa has just been elected. Along with a colleague, Ms Supa, who speaks fluent Spanish, has insisted on speaking to the legislature in her first language. This, she says, will increase respect for Andean Indian culture and help the language to survive. It has forced Congress to hire translators. Although Quechua . has long been in slow-decline, chiefly because the children of migrants to the cities rarely speak it, it is now getting a lot more attention, as a result of Ms Supa’s struggles.

It is clear in the passage that the main reason why Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire, has long been in slow decline is that _____.

Do you sudoku? Even if you don’t have any chance to do it, you absolutely know somebody who does. Once little-known outside Japan, this addictive brainteaser has become a staple of newspaper puzzle pages the world over. Sudoku’s dazzling success owes much to its simplicity requiring neither mathematical ability nor general knowledge and with just a sentence or two of the instructions - the puzzle is absurdly easy to learn yet hard to master. “All you need is the ability to recognise the difference between nine different symbols that don’t even have to be numeric,” explains Michael Mepham, a veteran puzzler and sudoku compiler. Some clever marketing has helped. Western newspapers were quick to identify sudoku as a circulation, booster and worked hard at promoting the puzzle. “Without this, ” says Mr Mepham, “it would not have taken off."

We may infer from the passage that thanks to Sudoku, _____.

Do you sudoku? Even if you don’t have any chance to do it, you absolutely know somebody who does. Once little-known outside Japan, this addictive brainteaser has become a staple of newspaper puzzle pages the world over. Sudoku’s dazzling success owes much to its simplicity requiring neither mathematical ability nor general knowledge and with just a sentence or two of the instructions - the puzzle is absurdly easy to learn yet hard to master. “All you need is the ability to recognise the difference between nine different symbols that don’t even have to be numeric,” explains Michael Mepham, a veteran puzzler and sudoku compiler. Some clever marketing has helped. Western newspapers were quick to identify sudoku as a circulation, booster and worked hard at promoting the puzzle. “Without this, ” says Mr Mepham, “it would not have taken off."

As is stated in the passage, Sudoku’s achievement mostly results from ______.

Do you sudoku? Even if you don’t have any chance to do it, you absolutely know somebody who does. Once little-known outside Japan, this addictive brainteaser has become a staple of newspaper puzzle pages the world over. Sudoku’s dazzling success owes much to its simplicity requiring neither mathematical ability nor general knowledge and with just a sentence or two of the instructions - the puzzle is absurdly easy to learn yet hard to master. “All you need is the ability to recognise the difference between nine different symbols that don’t even have to be numeric,” explains Michael Mepham, a veteran puzzler and sudoku compiler. Some clever marketing has helped. Western newspapers were quick to identify sudoku as a circulation, booster and worked hard at promoting the puzzle. “Without this, ” says Mr Mepham, “it would not have taken off."

As concluded in the passage, Sudoku took off because _____.

Photography often blurs the distinction between art and reality. Modern technology has made that blurring easier. In the digital darkroom, photographers can manipulate images and threaten the integrity of endeavours that rely on them. Several journalists have been fired for such activity in recent months, including one from Reuters for faking pictures in Lebanon. Earlier this year, the investigation into Hwang Woosuk showed the South Korean scientist had changed images purporting to show cloning. In an effort to real in photography, camera makers are making it more obvious when images have been altered by using several coding systems.

The passage mainly explains that ______.

Photography often blurs the distinction between art and reality. Modern technology has made that blurring easier. In the digital darkroom, photographers can manipulate images and threaten the integrity of endeavours that rely on them. Several journalists have been fired for such activity in recent months, including one from Reuters for faking pictures in Lebanon. Earlier this year, the investigation into Hwang Woosuk showed the South Korean scientist had changed images purporting to show cloning. In an effort to real in photography, camera makers are making it more obvious when images have been altered by using several coding systems.

One point made in the passage that ______.

Photography often blurs the distinction between art and reality. Modern technology has made that blurring easier. In the digital darkroom, photographers can manipulate images and threaten the integrity of endeavours that rely on them. Several journalists have been fired for such activity in recent months, including one from Reuters for faking pictures in Lebanon. Earlier this year, the investigation into Hwang Woosuk showed the South Korean scientist had changed images purporting to show cloning. In an effort to real in photography, camera makers are making it more obvious when images have been altered by using several coding systems.

It can be inferred from the passage that _____.

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854, to parents who were both prominent citizens. In her youth, Wilde’s mother had achieved a transatlantic reputation as the author of inspiring nationalistic poetry, published under the name of “Speranza". Wilde's father, William, knighted by the British queen in 1864, was a medical specialist in complaints of the eye, who, although a staunch Protestant, showed his nationalism in collecting and preparing for print tales of Irish folklore. Oscar Wilde attended public school at Portora Royal School and gained undergraduate degrees in the classic at Dublin’s Trinity College and Oxford's Magdalen College. As a student, he showed promise not simply as a linguist, but as a witty exponent of the ideas and philosophy of life which he found in the writings of the ancients. One day, at the university, when challenged about his ambitions in life, Wilde replied prophetically: “I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist, somehow or other. I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.” When I read about Oscar Wilde's life in detail, you will notice that he achieved all his ambitions about which he had dreamed in his university years successfully.

It is stated in the passage that Oscar Wilde was the son of parents _____.

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854, to parents who were both prominent citizens. In her youth, Wilde’s mother had achieved a transatlantic reputation as the author of inspiring nationalistic poetry, published under the name of “Speranza". Wilde's father, William, knighted by the British queen in 1864, was a medical specialist in complaints of the eye, who, although a staunch Protestant, showed his nationalism in collecting and preparing for print tales of Irish folklore. Oscar Wilde attended public school at Portora Royal School and gained undergraduate degrees in the classic at Dublin’s Trinity College and Oxford's Magdalen College. As a student, he showed promise not simply as a linguist, but as a witty exponent of the ideas and philosophy of life which he found in the writings of the ancients. One day, at the university, when challenged about his ambitions in life, Wilde replied prophetically: “I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist, somehow or other. I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.” When I read about Oscar Wilde's life in detail, you will notice that he achieved all his ambitions about which he had dreamed in his university years successfully.

From the information given in the passage, we can infer that Oscar Wilde _____.

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854, to parents who were both prominent citizens. In her youth, Wilde’s mother had achieved a transatlantic reputation as the author of inspiring nationalistic poetry, published under the name of “Speranza". Wilde's father, William, knighted by the British queen in 1864, was a medical specialist in complaints of the eye, who, although a staunch Protestant, showed his nationalism in collecting and preparing for print tales of Irish folklore. Oscar Wilde attended public school at Portora Royal School and gained undergraduate degrees in the classic at Dublin’s Trinity College and Oxford's Magdalen College. As a student, he showed promise not simply as a linguist, but as a witty exponent of the ideas and philosophy of life which he found in the writings of the ancients. One day, at the university, when challenged about his ambitions in life, Wilde replied prophetically: “I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist, somehow or other. I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.” When I read about Oscar Wilde's life in detail, you will notice that he achieved all his ambitions about which he had dreamed in his university years successfully.

One may conclude from the passage that Oscar Wilde _____.

Although most things in Darien are cheap, travel is not. One needs substantial amounts of time or money, preferably both. For two reasons: it is not easy to get around, and it is not safe. It is not easy because, south of Yaviza, there are no roads. It is unsafe because of the Colombian civil war. Neither the Panamanian nor do the Colombian governments have control over the border, so guerrillas, paramilitaries and bandits freely cross back and forth. Despite their lack of control over the border area, Panama’s police force is reasonably professional and not particularly corrupt. Unfortunately, for most visitors, this only makes travel more difficult, as the police periodically close regions of Darien to foreigners. Knowing they have no control over certain regions, they’d rather foreign travellers did not go at all to avoid the chance of kidnappings.

It may be understood from the passage that _____.

Although most things in Darien are cheap, travel is not. One needs substantial amounts of time or money, preferably both. For two reasons: it is not easy to get around, and it is not safe. It is not easy because, south of Yaviza, there are no roads. It is unsafe because of the Colombian civil war. Neither the Panamanian nor do the Colombian governments have control over the border, so guerrillas, paramilitaries and bandits freely cross back and forth. Despite their lack of control over the border area, Panama’s police force is reasonably professional and not particularly corrupt. Unfortunately, for most visitors, this only makes travel more difficult, as the police periodically close regions of Darien to foreigners. Knowing they have no control over certain regions, they’d rather foreign travellers did not go at all to avoid the chance of kidnappings.

According to the passage _____.

Although most things in Darien are cheap, travel is not. One needs substantial amounts of time or money, preferably both. For two reasons: it is not easy to get around, and it is not safe. It is not easy because, south of Yaviza, there are no roads. It is unsafe because of the Colombian civil war. Neither the Panamanian nor do the Colombian governments have control over the border, so guerrillas, paramilitaries and bandits freely cross back and forth. Despite their lack of control over the border area, Panama’s police force is reasonably professional and not particularly corrupt. Unfortunately, for most visitors, this only makes travel more difficult, as the police periodically close regions of Darien to foreigners. Knowing they have no control over certain regions, they’d rather foreign travellers did not go at all to avoid the chance of kidnappings.

As it is suggested in the passage, visitors wanting to travel in Darien need time and money because _____.