Mock Test: Reading Multiple-choice, Choose Single Answer – 07

In the more progressive schools throughout the world, attempts are being made to synthesize subjects previously taught separately Examples of this are efforts to combine reading with literature and history with geography, In North Amanda and Western Europe, innovation such as team teaching, the use of more teachers aides or clerks~ and the establishment of ungraded school have been tried. Most significant and pervasive, however, has been the widespread and growing acceptance of the principle that elementary educator should focus on activity and experience as well as on subject matter.

Which of the following most accurately summarizes the opinion of the author in the text?

In nearly all human populations a majority of individuals can taste the artificially synthesized chemical phenylthiocarbamide (PTC)~ However, the percentage varies dramatically-from as low as 60% in India to as high as 95% in Africa That this polymorphism Is observed in non-human primates as well indicates a long evolutionary history which, although obviously not acting on PTC, might reflect evolutionary selection for taste discrimination of other, more significant bitter substances, such as certain toxic plants.

Which of the following provides the most reasonable explanation for the assertion in the paragraph that evolutionary history obviously did not act on PTC ?

Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead~ it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave Intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive scientists have described language as a psychological air faculty, a mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module. But I prefer the admittedly quaint term _instinct It conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs, Web-spinning was not invented by some unsung spider genius and does not depend on having had the right education or on having an aptitude for architecture or the construction trades Rather, spiders spin spider webs because they have spider brains which give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed.

According to the passage, which of the following does not stem from popular wisdom on language?

Follow the money and you will end up in space, That's the message from a first-of its-kind forum on mining beyond Earth. Convened in Sydney by the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research the event brought together mining companies, robotics experts, lunar scientists and government agencies that are all working to make space mining a reality The forum comes hot on the heels of the 2012 unveiling of two private asteroid-mining firms. Planetary Resources of Washington says it will launch its first prospection telescopes in two years while Deep Space Industries of Virginia hopes to be ravening  metals from asteroids by 2020. Another commercial venture that sprung up in 2012, Golden Spike of Colorado~ will be offering trips to the moon. including to potential lunar miners.

The author of Passage mentions several companies primarily to....

Every day millions of shoppers hit the stores in full force both online and on foot-searching frantically for the perfect gift. Last year Americans spent over $30 billion at retail stores in the month of December alone Aside from purchasing holiday gifts  most people regularly buy presents for other occasions throughout the year, including weddings  birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and baby showers. This feculent experience of gift-giving can engender ambivalent feelings in gift.

The authors most likely use the examples in the passage to highlight the...