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English Test 24

Directions for Questions from 1 to 4:

Given below is a passage consisting of four paragraphs. In each of the following paragraphs unjumble the highlighted line in the passage and
answer the questions that follow.

1. As capitalism has transformed throughout the ages, so too have its virtues. In the early stages of modernity, where bucks could be made only
outside the stifling constraints of feudal society, the money-maker was a roamer and a chancer: he travelled in search of his fortune, swindling and
pursuing madcap schemes. With the development of capitalist societies, money was better made at home. The ideal money-maker was now a
prudent bookkeeper, who wasted nothing and ploughed his profits back into the business, renouncing his own consumption and frowning on
sensual pleasure. The model bookkeeper was the eighteenth-century American, Benjamin Franklin, (A) for his with of austere celebration
recommendations productive virtues, and getting up early, saving one’s pennies and not eating too much at lunch.
If the sentence (A) is rearranged, the FIFTH word from the start is
 

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j for
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j recommendations
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j his
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j austere
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i Skip this question
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2. The capitalist bookkeepers’ theoretician was German sociologist Max Weber, whose 1910 book
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argued that the key feature of capitalism was that
making money becomes ‘a calling’, an end in itself. The bourgeois (B) for the worked sake, denying of
work himself the fruits of the pre-modern. His labour man would have been flummoxed by this, says
Weber: what is the point of this, ‘to sink into the grave weighed down with a great material load of
money and goods’?
If the sentence (B) is rearranged, the SEVENTH word from the start is
 

j of
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j the
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j labour
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j denying
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j worked
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i Skip this question
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3. The protestant ethic didn’t hold sway for long, though; even in Weber’s time, it was on the wane. With
the growth of mass consumerism and radical politics in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the new generation damned the
traditional bourgeois work ethic as stuffy and restrictive. Benjamin Franklin’s aphorisms – (C) time is now ringing hollow money; a heavy heart
the light purse means– were by. While Franklin’s prime concern was to be ‘useful’, the French poet Charles Baudelaire judged that: ‘To be a useful
man has always appeared to me as something quite hideous.’
If the sentence (C) is rearranged, the FIFTH word from the start is
 

j light
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j were
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j means
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j money
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j purse
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i Skip this question
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4. A new ethic was replacing Franklin’s religion of work, and this was analysed in Daniel Bell’s 1976
book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Bell identified a new countercultural ethic, based not
on production but on consumption: the virtue was not public duty but the celebration of sensual
enjoyment, the exploration and liberation of the self. Rather than saving every penny and denying
oneself, there was now a revelling in abundance and in sensation. Not working to work, but enjoying to enjoy. In the 1920s, and then again in the
1960s, this countercultural wave rose up with particular
force, shaking the work ethic to its foundations.
(D) Capitalism is one of twenty-first century ethic of what is the question contemporary the, of the most pressing of our times. US political
theorist Benjamin Barber’s new book, Consumed, is an interesting contribution to this question.
If the sentence (D) is rearranged, the NINTH word from the start is
 

j what
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j is
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j century
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j ethic
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 j what
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j is
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j century
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j ethic
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j contemporary
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Directions for Questions from 5 to 7:

The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.

PASSAGE

In his 1992 book A History of the Mind, Humphrey argued that consciousness is grounded in bodily sensation rather than thought, and proposed a
speculative evolutionary account of the emergence of sentience. Seeing Red is a refinement and extension of those ideas. Put simply, we don’t so
much have sensations as do them. Sensation is “on the production side of the mind rather than the reception side.” When the spiky-haired cartoon
character is looking at the red screen, he is doing red. He is redding. The evolutionary history of sensory enactments like redding (or hotting and so
on) can be traced to the bodily reactions of primitive organisms responding to different environmental stimuli, noxious and nutritive. Imagine an
“amoeba–like” creature floating in the ancient seas. Like all other organisms, it has a structural boundary, which is the frontier between “self” and
“other.” The animal’s survival depends on cross border exchanges of material, energy and information, and, as it moves around, some events at the
border are going to be “good” for it and some “bad.” It must have the ability to respond appropriately-as Humphrey puts it, “reacting to this
stimulus with an ouch! To that with a whoopee!” At first the responses are localised to the site of stimulation, but evolution
endows more specialised sensory zones, this for chemicals, that for light–and a central control system, a proto-brain, which allows for co-ordinated
responses to specific stimuli: “Thus, when, say, salt arrives at its skin, the animal detects it and makes a characteristic wriggle of activity–it wriggles
‘saltily.’ When red light falls on it, it makes a different kind of wriggle–it wriggles ‘redly.’” These are the prototypes of human sensation. With the
march of evolutionary history, life gets more complex for the animal and it becomes advantageous for it to have an inner representation of events
happening at the surface of its body. One way of accomplishing this is to plug into those systems already in place for identifying and reacting to
stimulation. The animal’s representation of “what’s going on?” (and what it “feels” about it) is achieved by monitoring what it is doing about it.
“Thus… to sense the presence of salt at a certain location the animal monitors its own command signals for wriggling saltily… to sense the presence
of red light, it monitors its signals for wriggling redly.” Such self-monitoring by the subject is the prototype of “feeling sensation.”

Evolution then takes the animal to another level at which it comes to care about the world just beyond its body, so that, for example, it becomes
sensitive to the chemical and air pressure signals of the proximity of predator or prey. This requires quite another style of information processing.
   
“When the question is ‘What is happening to me?’ the answer that is wanted is qualitative, present-tense, transient, and subjective. When the
question is ‘What is happening out there in the world?’ the answer that is wanted is quantitative, analytical, permanent, and objective.” The old
sensory channels continue to provide a body-centred picture of what the stimulation is doing to the animal, but a second system is set up “to
provide a more neutral, abstract, body– independent representation of the outside world.” This is the prototype of perception. At this stage the
animal
is still responding to stimulation with overt bodily activity, but eventually it achieves a degree of independence and is no longer bound by rigid
stimulus-response rules. It still needs to know what’s going on in the world, so the old sensory systems stay in service, and it still learns about
what is happening to it by monitoring the command signals for its own responses. But now it can issue virtual commands, which don’t result in overt
action. In other words, it no longer wriggles. Rather than going all the way out to the surface of the body, the commands are short-circuited,
reaching only to a point on the incoming sensory pathway. Over evolutionary time the target of the command retreats further from the periphery
until “the whole process becomes closed off from the outside world in an internal loop within the brain.” Sensory activity has become “privatised.”

5. Which is the thematic highlight of this passage?

 

j That all perception is unconscious.

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j That selfhood and consciousness are entwined “in-the-moment”.
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j That sensation and perception are separable.
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j That the sensory systems underlie conscious awareness.
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j That the perceptual awareness underlies conscious awareness
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6. Which of the following would have been true if the prototype of perception preceded sensation?
 

j The goal of the authority would have moved away additionally from the fringe.
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j The body would not have been bound by a stiff stimulus-response system.
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j The being would have been taken to another level beyond its body.
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j The evolution of consciousness would have been ultimately doomed.
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j The reconciling of brain function and consciousness would have been faster.
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7. According to the passage, the term “privatised” refers to:

 

j The target-command process getting perceptive and recognizing emotions.

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j The target-command process gaining evidence through varied actions.
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j The target-command process receiving recognition by the brain.
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j The target-command process getting entwined in the system.
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j The target-command process getting individualized.
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Directions for Questions from 8 to 10:

In each question, there are five sentences or parts of sentences that form
a paragraph. Identify the sentence(s) or part(s) of sentence(s) that is/are correct in terms of grammar and usage. Then, choose the most
appropriate option.
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8. A. A Farewell to Arms is a very dramatic book.

 In each question, there are five sentences or parts of sentences that form
a paragraph. Identify the sentence(s) or part(s) of sentence(s) that is/are correct in terms of grammar and usage. Then, choose the most
appropriate option.

8. A. A Farewell to Arms is a very dramatic book.

B. Many scholars, such as Ray B. West, Jr., have compared its five-book structure to the traditional English five-act play.
C. There are similarities to be drawn among the structure of the novel and tragic drama.
D. The first book, like the first act in a play, introduces the characters and the situation of the story, and in the second book the romantic plot is
developed.
E. Book III provides climactic turning point: Frederic’s desertion of his post in the army and his decision to return to Catherine.

j D&E
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j B only
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j A & D only
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9. A. Development is a process whereby insignificant and imperceptible

B. quantitative change lead to fundamental, qualitative changes.
C. The latter occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, in the form of a leap from one state to
another.
D. A simple example from the physical world might be the heating of water: a one-degree increase in
temperature is a quantitative change,
E. but on 100 degrees there is a qualitative change-water to steam.
 

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j A&D
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j C only
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10. A. The next steps towards globalisation comes from an unexpected quarter–global farmlands.
B. Stung by growing food shortages, the Chinese government is encouraging
C. its agricultural firms to buy or lease farmlands in Africa
D. and South America to bolster food security back home. The new government policy comes in the
wake of higher income levels that encourage
E. spending away from staple rice diets and towards increasing consumption for meat.
 

j C&E
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j A&C
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j B, C & D
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j A only
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j B&D
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