Reading Passages Advanced Level Test – Quiz (Online Exercise With Answers) 4

(Please note: The following questions are related to a specific reading passage, which is available solely before the first question. Remember, it may be helpful to refer back to the reading text while answering the questions to ensure accuracy.)

He may not inherit everything from his father. But King George Tupou V, Tonga’s new monarch, who has been sworn in, but not formally crowned, following the death of the battleship-sized King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV on September 10th, already has a picturesque palace, the royal title and a good deal of respect from his 110.000 subjects in Tonga. The big question is whether he will bow to the pleas of the country’s growing pro-democracy movement, and limit his throne’s huge powers.

It is understood from the passage that King George Tupou V _____.

One may infer from the passage that in Tonga _____.

As concluded in the passage that the monarch in Tonga _____.

Peter Yellowlees, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, has been teaching about schizophrenia for 20 years but says that he was never really able to explain to his students just how their patients suffer. So he went online, downloaded some free software and entered Second Life. This is a "meta-verse" (i.e., metaphysical universe), a three-dimensional world whose users, or "residents", can create and be anything they want. Mr Yellowless created hallucinations. A resident might walk through a virtual hospital ward, and a picture on the wall would suddenly flash the word “shit face”. The floor might fall away, leaving the person to walk on stepping stones above the clouds. An in-world television set would change from showing an actual speech by Bob Hawke, Australia’s former prime minister, into Mr Hawke shouting, “Go and kill yourself, you wretch!” A reflection in a mirror might have bleeding eyes and die. When Mr Yellowless invited, as part of a trial, Second Life’s public into the ward and 73% of the visitors said afterwards that it “improved (their) understanding of schizophrenia.”

According to the passage, Second Life _____.

It is stated in the passage that by means of Second Life, Peter Yellowlees _____.

One may infer from the passage that patients who suffer from schizophrenia _____.

Lame from birth, yet with a talent for landing on his feet, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was a natural subject for cartoonists. As a statesman and diplomat, he was always at or never far from the center of power through every upheaval that shook France—and Europe—between the fall of the Bastille and the collapse of the restored Bourbon monarchy in 1830.

The 'prince with six heads', as one caricature nicely pictured him, was a bishop in the ancien régime, a revolutionist in 1789, a diplomat for Napoleon, a minister to Louis XVIII, and lastly—by which time he was already in his late 70s—an ambassador in London for Louis Philippe, the 'citizen king'. Such frequent shifts inevitably earned him many enemies. But with each turn of the carousel, former foes would become friends again. Talleyrand rose late, dressed slowly, and played a lot of whist. He took a similar approach to politics, using time and delay to his advantage.

One may infer from the passage that as a politician, Talleyrand _____.

It can be understood from the passage, Talleyrand _____.

As is stated in the passage, Talleyrand _____.

The impact of the American periodical press also has been technological and social. The large, mass-circulation magazines have influenced the smaller magazines, which in many instances seek to imitate their appearance and to emulate the high quality of their printing, layout, and make-up. They also have influenced magazines around the world. Europe, for example, is given to publishing magazines resembling “Life" and “Look”, and almost no heavily industrialized country is without its imitator of “Time”. An example of this is “Der Spiegel” in Germany, The social effect has to do with the discharge or failure to discharge its social responsibilities. These include the obligation to provide the people with a fair presentation of facts, honestly held opinions and truthful advertising.

It’s understood from the passage that news magazines like “Life, Look, and Time”______.

According to the passage _____.

As concluded in the passage, magazines ____.

A team of astronomers from the Institute of Technology, led by Djorgovski, may have glimpsed the dawn of our universe. In 2001, this team reported that it had spotted the "cosmic renaissance,” the era when the first starlight shone through the cosmos. Just days earlier, a team from the Sloan Sky Survey had announced finding evidence of the cosmic “dark ages”— the period of about half a billion years after the Big Bang when dark fog filled the newly created space of our universe. The cosmic renaissance brought an end to the dark ages, as the first galaxies and quasars burned through the murky cosmos, making it transparent. The teams used data collected with powerful telescopes to observe the light emissions of quasars, the most distant known objects in the universe. Quasars, which are amazingly bright, can essentially offer snapshots of the universe from hundreds of millions of years ago.

The latter team aforementioned has declared that _____.

What do the two teams have in common?

We can infer from the passage that quasars _____.

For those of us without a family crest and signet ring, there is a place a few inches above the finger where social standing can still be displayed - the wrist. With its ticking heartbeat, the mechanical wristwatch is alive and never felt better. And for most people, the very definition of a luxury watch is a Rolex. It has a mystical aura of high fashion, high quality and high price. It's the most popular watch, with an estimated 750,000 sold annually and even more changing hands each year in the second-hand market. The reason for Rolex's stunning success is the firm's genius at marketing to people who aspire to own and can afford to buy, the accoutrements of popular culture's nobility. The typical Rolex buyer is seeking to have something their neighbours and friends either have or wish they had. Rolex has struck a balance between making a product that is just expensive enough so not everyone will own one, but just affordable enough for it to be within the reach of many.

One point emphasized in the passage is that _____.

The author relates the success of Rolex _____.

One conclusion we can draw from the passage is that _____.

Some modern anthropologists hold that biological evolution has shaped not only human morphology but also human behaviour. The role those anthropologists ascribe to evolution is not of dictating the details of human behaviour but one of imposing, constraints - ways of feeling, thinking, and acting that "come naturally" in archetypal situations in any culture. Our "frailties" emotions and motives such as rage, fear, greed, gluttony, joy, lust, and love- may be a very mixed assortment quality: we are, as we say, "in the grip" of them. And thus they give us our sense of constraints. Unhappily, some of those frailties and our need for ever-increasing security among them are presently maladaptive. Yet beneath the overlay of cultural detail, they, too, are said to be biological in direction, and therefore as natural to us as are our appendixes. We would need to comprehend thoroughly their adaptive origins in order to understand how badly they guide us now. And we might then begin to resist their pressure.

The author implies that control to any extent over the "frailties" that constrain our behaviour is thought to presuppose _____.

It can be inferred that in his discussion of maladaptive frailties, the author assumes that _____.

Which of the following most probably provides an appropriate analogy from human morphology for the "details" versus "constraints" distinction made in the passage in relation to human behaviour?

For most modern airports, the major design problem is scale - how to allow adequate space on the ground for manoeuvring widebody jets while permitting convenient and rapid movement of passengers departing, arriving, or transferring from one flight to another. Most designs for airport terminals take one of three approaches. In the linear plan, the building may be straight or curved. The passengers board the aircraft parked next to the terminal. This plan works well for small airports that need to provide boarding areas for only a few aircraft at a time. In the satellite plan, passengers board aircraft from small terminals that are separated from the main terminals. Passengers reach the satellites by way of shuttle trains or underground passageways that have shuttle trains or moving sidewalks. The transporter plan employs some system of transport to move passengers from the terminal building to the aircraft. If buses are used, the passengers must climb a flight of stairs to board the aircraft. If mobile lounges are used, they can link up directly with the aircraft and protect passengers from the weather.

We may infer from the passage that scale would not pose a major design problem at airports if _____.

According to the passage, the linear plan would probably be best at _____.

It's implied in the passage that the term “satellite plan” is used because ______.