entire test ...Academic Reading section....

Each passage will be followed by

questions.. passage After you read through each passage, choose the best
answer to each question.
Choose your answer based on information that is either stated or implied in
the passage
You can refer to the passage as you answer each question.
For each question there is a single correct answer.
Reading Passage 1

Read the passage and answer questions 1-7. You should spend about ten
minutes on it.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was one of England's greatest poets, and the pre-eminent
writer in English before Shakespeare. His definitive work is the linked
collection of stories known as the Canterbury Tales, but he also produced a
large and varied volume of poetry. The work of Chaucer, popular among the
English upper class and possibly the royal families of his time, was both
psychologically complex and entertaining. It survives today as one of the
cornerstones of English literature.

Chaucer was born in the early 1340s to a middle-class family made

prosperous by the sale of wine and leather. His family managed to secure
employment for him with the Countess of Ulster, and he would later become
a civil servant, a diplomat, and a courtier. He played a modest but important
role in the affairs of state for the kings Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV, by
carrying out diplomatic missions between England, France, and Spain.

It was in the employment of John of Gaunt that he produced his first

important work, an elegy for John's late wife Blanche. This work, entitled The
Book of the Duchesse was in the form of the dream poem, made popular by
an influential French work known as the Roman de la rose. Chaucer's poem

surpassed the original in several ways, including its melding of the elegy with
the love poem, its use of a first-person narrator, its realistic characters, and
its ability to capture the rhythms of natural speech within a poetic framework.
These are also the characteristics that would distinguish Chaucer's future
works.

His later works included more dream poetry; adaptations and translations of
literary, historical, and religious works; and his major work, Troilus and
Criseyde. This 8,000-line poem was based on an ancient Greek myth and
adapted from work of the Italian poet Boccaccio. Its complexity and depth
continue to impress literary critics, and some even consider Troilus and
Criseyde to be the first modern novel.

It is in the Canterbury Tales, however, that Chaucer's influences and talents

combined to produce what is considered to be one of the greatest poetic
works in English. Written in his early forties and left unfinished at his death,
the book portrays a diverse group of pilgrims' travels from London to
Canterbury to visit the shrine of Thomas Becket. On the way they agree to
have a storytelling contest, and these stories make up the majority of the
text. This device allowed Chaucer to explore the viewpoints of a group
encompassing all the social levels of his society, and to create stories within a
broad range of literary genres. Six hundred years later, these brilliant stories
continue to influence and inspire readers and writers of the English language.