Part 1 Vocabulary

Directions: Choose the answer that can best complete the sentence.

1. Arthur made the _____ decision to drink plenty of water at the very beginning of the day-long hike, and thus was able to avoid dehydration.

A. canny

B. irrevocable

C. irreverent

D. irresistible

2. The scientist’s ____ was finally criticized when researchers showed that the new census data contradicted his original findings.

A. proposal

B. argument

C. hypothesis

D. presence

3. To say that a soldier fought in battle like a lion may be a descriptive _____ , but it does not mean that he was on all fours, roaring and wagging his tail!

A. anode

B. analogue

C. analytic

D. analogy

4. Since our research so far has not produced any answers to this problem, we need adopt a different_____ to it.

A. way

B. approach

C. method

D. means

5. The art of Milet Andrejevic often presents us with an idyllic vision that is subtly invaded by more evil elements, as if suggesting the______ beauty of our surroundings.

A. destined

B. vague

C. flawed

D. bland

6. Some diseases are easy to _____ because their visible effects are characteristic and can be recognized immediately.

A. digest

B. diagnose

C. designate

D. denote

7. In the newer and flatter organization where there is little opportunity for promotion, how does a(n) _____ employee advance?

A. enterprising

B. conceited

C. anxious

D. concerned

8. The Fairley family considered that they dealt with their tragedy very well because both children afterwards showed no signs of _____.

A. acme

B. fever

C. mentality

D. trauma

9. With the spread of science, people nowadays are ______ about ghosts and witches.

A. incredulous

B. incredible

C. imaginary

D. imaginative

10. He ______ the camera on the tripod to follow her as she crossed the yard.

A. plucked

B. swiveled

C. coveted

D. minced

Part II Correctness and Effectiveness of Expression

Directions: Choose the answer that can replace the underlined part.

1.The novelist Graham Greene is one of Britain’s finest authors and the most important collection of his manuscripts is located in Texas, not in England.

A. Although the novelist Graham Greene is one of Britain’s finest authors, and the most important

B. Although the novelist Graham Greene is one of Britain’s finest authors, the most important

C. The novelist Graham Greene being one of Britain’s fines authors and the most important

D. The novelist Graham Greene is one of Britain’s finest authors; furthermore, the most important

2. Initiated in 1975,sandhill cranes must unwillingly cooperate in the conservationists’ project to raiseendangered whooping crane chicks.

A. the conservationists’ project requires the unwitting cooperation of sandhill cranes in raising

B. the conservationists require sandhill cranes to cooperate unwittingly in their project to raise

C. the conservationists require that sandhill cranes unwittingly cooperate in their project of raising

D. sandhill cranes’ unwitting cooperation is required in the conservationists’ project to raise

3. Jame’s ambition wasnot only to study but also masteringthe craft of journalism.

A. not only studying but to try and master

B. not studying only, but also mastering

C. to study and as well to master

D. not only to study but also to master

4.Amelia Earhart was born in Kansas the first person to fly from Hawaii to California.

A. Amelia Earhart was the first person to fly from Hawaii to California and was born in Kansas.

B. Amelia Earhart, who was born in Kansas, was the first person to fly from Hawaii to California.

C. Being the first person to fly from Hawaii to California, Amelia Earhart was born in Kansas.

D. Amelia Earhart being the first person to fly from Hawaii to California and was born in Kansas.

5. Only infrequently did James laugh at the jokes that the comedian has been telling; James simply did not find the comedian’s punch lines, none of which seemed original, to be funny.

A. has been told

B. is telling

C. told

D. has told

Part III Reading Comprehension

Directions: Read the following two passages and choose the answer that can best answer the question.

Passage 1

In 1964, while I was studying the evolution of birds on the tropical Pacific Island of New Guinea, I happened to set up camp among a tribe known as the Fore. I soon found my attention drawn away from birds to a human tragedy that was taking place around me. Many of the tribal people, children as well as adults, were limping on crutches, or unable to control their facial muscles, or lying semi-paralyzed in their huts. When I asked what was wrong, their healthy relatives answered with the single word “kuru,” as if no further explanation were needed. Kuru, the Fore way of death, is now internationally notorious as a neurological disease always fatal, and limited to the tribe of a few thousand people living in a group of mountain valleys only a few thousand people living in a group of mountain valleys only a few hundred square miles in extent.

As I proceeded through the New Guinea highlands in search of birds, every ten or twenty miles I passed into the territory of a different tribe, each with its own language, its own culture-and its own disease or genetic anomaly. The second tribe that I encountered had many albino; the third, the world’s highest incidence of leprosy; and others had high frequencies of deformities in male sexual organs, or of a disorder making the skin resemble that of a crocodile, or of misshapen blood cells. Scientists have learned that each such local condition stems from various combinations of local infectious agents, adaptations, and genes.

While these pathologies may at first seem to be nothing more than exotic diseases confined to faraway peoples, they have proved to be enormously influential in the development of medical science. For two reasons: first, for physicians, New Guinea’s mountain valleys harbor so many locally distinct human populations that the resulting range of well-established diseases rivals that of Europe and the United States, with their much larger but far more homogeneous human populations. Some of those diseases first recognized in New Guinea turned out to provide decisive insights into more widespread conditions-above all kuru, which has been the best model for understanding Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the “mad cow disease” now causing so much concern in Europe, and possibly Alzheimer’s disease. Second, for evolutionary biologists, New Guinea’s human populations allow us to study the processes of evolution and genetic change under conditions much more relevant to ourselves than the usual animal population studies cited in any textbook of biology.

Kuru now proves to be a human analog of those diseases previously known only in animals that involve the degeneration of the nervous system after a long period in which nothing seems to be happening that would arouse suspicion. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is another kuru-like human disease that is widespread throughout the world but rare everywhere. Hence, the Fore kuru epidemic may well derive from just one original case of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which would have immediately died out elsewhere but was transmitted among the Fore.

1. All of the following would have been typical physical signs of kuru among the Fore in 1964 EXCEPT ______.

A. awkwardness in walking

B. difficulty digesting food

C. trouble moving limbs

D. trouble preventing their faces from moving in odd ways

2. According to the author, the highlands of New Guinea are characterized by______.

A. a great range of geographically limited health problemsv

B. a wide range of skin diseases in the human population

C. an impressive diversity of bird species

D. an amazing range of languages, though not of cultures

3. According to the passage, doctors and medical researchers are interested in New Guinea’s highland region because ______.

A characteristic diseases are more likely to attack the highlanders than Europeans and Americans

B. there are as many well-known diseases among the highlanders as among Europeans and Americans

C. the population is much more homogeneous than in Europe or the U.S.

D. the local human populations are dissimilar

4. According to the author, biologists find the conditions in New Guinea______.

A. appropriate for the design of text material to be used in up-to-date biology textbooks

B. ideal for studying the evolutionary processes of animal populations

C. better for investigating long-term changes in human populations than studying animal populations and applying conclusions drawn from them to humans

D. especially useful because people there are willing to participate in their studies, above all in surveys of epidemic diseases

5. The word “analog” in the last paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.

A. imitation

B. heredity

C. analysis

D. similarity

Passage 1

If the new art is not accessible to everyone, which certainly seems to be the case, this implies that its impulses are not of a generically human kind. It is an art not for people in general but for a special class who may not be better but who are evidently different.

Before we go further, one point must be clarified. What is it that the majority of people call aesthetic pleasure? What happens in their minds when they “like” a work of art; for example, a play? The answer is easy. They like a play when they become interested in the human destinies that are represented, when the love and hatred, the joys and sorrows of the dramatic personages so move them that they participate in it all as though it were happening in real life. And they call a work “good” if it succeeds in creating the illusion necessary to make the imaginary personages appear like living persons. In poetry the majority of people seek the passion and pain of the human being behind the poet. Paintings attract them if they find in them figures of men or women it would be interesting to meet.

It thus appears that to the majority of people aesthetic pleasure means a state of mind that is essentially indistinguishable from their ordinary behavior. It differs merely in accidental qualities, being perhaps less utilitarian, more intense, and free from painful consequences. But the object toward which their attention and, consequently, all their other mental activities are directed is the same as in daily life: people and passions. When forced to consider artistic forms proper-for example, in some surrealistic or abstract art-most people will only tolerate them if they do not interfere with their perception of human forms and fates. As soon as purely aesthetic elements predominate and the story of John and Susie grows elusive, most people feel out of their depth and are at a loss as to what to make of the scene, the book, or the painting. A work of art vanishes from sight for a beholder who seeks in that work of art nothing but the moving fate of John and Susie or Tristan and Isolde. Unaccustomed to behaving in any mode except the practical one in which feelings are aroused and emotional involvement ensues, most people are unsure how to respond to a work that does not invite sentimental intervention.

Now this is a point that has to be made perfectly clear. Neither grieving nor rejoicing at such human destinies as those presented by a work of art begins to define true artistic pleasure; indeed, preoccupation with the human content of the work is in principle incompatible with aesthetic enjoyment proper.

1. The passage primarily talks about _____.

A. nature of the pleasure that most people find in a work of art

B. wide variety of responses that audiences have to different works of art

C. lives artists lead as opposed to the ones they imagine

D. emotional impact of a painting’s subject matter

2. The word “figures” in the last sentence of Paragraph 2 most nearly means_____.

A. crude images

B. famous persons

C. representations

D. abstractions

3. The author suggests that the majority of people resist modern art because they _____.

A. find it too difficult to understand the artist’s real intention

B. find in it little of human interest to engage them

C. consider modern artists to be elitist

D. are too influenced by critics to view the art on its own merits

4. The author conveys the information in the final paragraph that_____.

A. responses to a work of art vary and cannot be easily defined

B. aesthetic enjoyment of a work of art must focus on the artist’s intentions as much as on the artist’s actual accomplishments

C. the majority of people trying to interpret a work of art will concentrate on the artistic technique

D. aesthetic pleasure is a response to the purely artistic elements in a work of art

5. It can be inferred from the passage that _____.

A. not all the people are able to understand the meaning of aesthetic pleasure

B. different people from different backgrounds have different opinions about a work of art

C. people can find aesthetic pleasure in a work of art which depicts the moral conventions of the artist’s society

D. aesthetic pleasure is something that only artists themselves can feel