Vocabulary, Sentence completion, reading comprehension, Grammar and essay

Group 1 Tangible can be touched

Abhor hate Group 4

Bigot narrow-minded, prejudiced
person Abrogate cancel; deny; repeal
Counterfeit fake; false Blasphemy speech which offends
Enfranchise give voting rights religious sentiments
Hamper hinder; obstruct Credible believable
Kindle to start a fire Enigma puzzle; mystery
Noxious harmful; poisonous; lethal Harbingers indicators; bringers of
Placid calm; peaceful warnings
Remuneratio payment for work done Labyrinthine complicated; highly
n convoluted
Talisman lucky charm Nuzzle cuddle; snuggle
Plaudit statement giving strong
Group 2 praise
Reprehensible shameful; very bad
Abrasive rough; coarse; harsh Tardy slow; late; overdue;
Bilk cheat; defraud delayed
Covert hidden; undercover
Engender cause Group 5
Hangar storage area (like garage) for a
plane Absolution forgiveness; pardon; release
Knotty complex; difficult to solve Blatant obvious
Nuance something subtle; a fine shade Creditable praiseworthy
of meaning Ensconce establish firmly in a position
Plagiarism taking credit for someone Hasten hurry; accelerate; rush
else's writing or ideas Laceration a cut
Renown fame Obdurate stubborn
Tangent going off the main subject Plausible can be believed; reasonable
Reprieve a respite; postponement of a
Group 3 sentence
Tawdry of little value; gaudy
Abasement humiliation; degradation
Billowing swelling; fluttering; waving Group 6
Cower recoil in fear or servility;
shrink away from Abstain desist; go without;
Enhance improve; make better or withdraw
clearer Blighted damaged; destroyed; ruined
Harangue noisy, attacking speech Credulous gullible; ready to believe
Labyrinth a maze anything
Nullify to counter; make unimportant Enshroud cover
Plaintiff petitioner (in court of law) Haughtiness arrogance; pride
Replete full Lachrymose tearful; sad
 Vocabulary, Sentence completion, reading comprehension, Grammar and essay
Obfuscate deliberately make something 4. ____ by nature, Jones spoke very little
difficult to understand even to his own family members.
Plethora an excess
Repudiate shun; eschew
A. garrulous
Tedium boredom
B. equivocal
1. Today Wegener's theory is ____ ; C. taciturn
however, he died an outsider treated with
____ by the scientific establishment. D. arrogant
E. gregarious
A. unsupported - approval
5. Biological clocks are of such ____
B. dismissed - contempt adaptive value to living organisms, that we
C. accepted - approbation would expect most organisms to ____ them.
D. unchallenged - disdain
A. clear - avoid
E. unrivalled - reverence
B. meager - evolve
2. The revolution in art has not lost its C. significant - eschew
steam; it ____ on as fiercely as ever.
D. obvious - possess
A. trudges E. ambivalent - develop
B. meanders 6. The peasants were the least ____ of all
C. edges people, bound by tradition and ____ by
superstitions.
D. ambles
E. rages A. free - fettered
3. Each occupation has its own ____ ; B. enfranchised - rejected
bankers, lawyers and computer C. enthralled - tied
professionals, for example, all use among
themselves language which outsiders have D. pinioned - limited
difficulty following. E. conventional - encumbered

A. merits 7. Many people at that time believed that

spices help preserve food; however, Hall
B. disadvantages found that many marketed spices were ____
C. rewards bacteria, moulds and yeasts.
D. jargon
A. devoid of
E. problems
B. teeming with
 Vocabulary, Sentence completion, reading comprehension, Grammar and essay
11. The conclusion of his argument, while
C. improved by
____ , is far from ____ .
D. destroyed by
E. active against A. stimulating - interesting
B. worthwhile - valueless
8. If there is nothing to absorb the energy of
sound waves, they travel on ____ , but their C. esoteric - obscure
intensity ____ as they travel further from
D. germane - relevant
their source.
E. abstruse - incomprehensible
A. erratically - mitigates
12. In the Middle Ages, the ____ of the
B. eternally - alleviates great cathedrals did not enter into the
architects' plans; almost invariably a
C. forever - increases
cathedral was positioned haphazardly in
D. steadily - stabilizes ____ surroundings.
E. indefinitely - diminishes
A. situation - incongruous
9. The two artists differed markedly in their
B. location - apt
temperaments; Palmer was reserved and
courteous, Frazer ____ and boastful. C. ambience - salubrious
D. durability - convenient
A. phlegmatic
E. majesty - grandiose
B. choleric
C. constrained
D. tractable
E. stoic

10. The intellectual flexibility inherent in a

multicultural nation has been ____ in
classrooms where emphasis on British-
American literature has not reflected the
cultural ____ of our country.

A. eradicated - unanimity
B. encouraged - aspirations
C. stifled - diversity
D. thwarted - uniformity
E. inculcated - divide
 Vocabulary, Sentence completion, reading comprehension, Grammar and essay
The extract is taken from a book written
sixty years ago by a British scientist in
which he considers the relationship between
science and society.
The pioneers of the teaching of science
imagined that its
introduction into education would remove
the conventionality,
artificiality, and backward-lookingness
which were characteristic;
of classical studies, but they were gravely
disappointed. So, too, in
5 their time had the humanists thought that
the study of the classical
authors in the original would banish at
once the dull pedantry and
superstition of mediaeval scholasticism.
The professional
schoolmaster was a match for both of
them, and has almost
managed to make the understanding of
chemical reactions as dull
10 and as dogmatic an affair as the reading
of Virgil's Aeneid.
The chief claim for the use of science in
education is that it
teaches a child something about the actual
universe in which he is
living, in making him acquainted with the
results of scientific
15 discovery, and at the same time teaches
him how to think logically
and inductively by studying scientific
method. A certain limited
success has been reached in the first of
these aims, but practically
none at all in the second. Those privileged
members of the
community who have been through a
secondary or public school
20 education may be expected to know
something about the
elementary physics and chemistry of a
hundred years ago, but they
probably know hardly more than any
bright boy can pick up from
an interest in wireless or scientific
hobbies out of school hours.
As to the learning of scientific method,
the whole thing is palpably
25 a farce. Actually, for the convenience of
teachers and the
requirements of the examination system,
it is necessary that the
pupils not only do not learn scientific
method but learn precisely
the reverse, that is, to believe exactly
what they are told and to
reproduce it when asked, whether it seems
nonsense to them or
30 not. The way in which educated people
respond to such quackeries
as spiritualism or astrology, not to say
more dangerous ones such
as racial theories or currency myths,
shows that fifty years of
education in the method of science in
Britain or Germany has
produced no visible effect whatever. The
only way of learning the
35 method of science is the long and bitter
way of personal
experience, and, until the educational or
social systems are altered
to make this possible, the best we can
expect is the production of a
 Vocabulary, Sentence completion, reading comprehension, Grammar and essay
minority of people who are able to 4. The author blames all of the following for
acquire some of the techniques the failure to impart scientific method
of science and a still smaller minority through the education system except
who are able to use and
40 develop them.
A. poor teaching
1. The author implies that the 'professional B. examination methods
schoolmaster' (line 7) has
C. lack of direct experience
D. the social and education systems
A. no interest in teaching science
E. lack of interest on the part of students
B. thwarted attempts to enliven
education
5. If the author were to study current
C. aided true learning education in science to see how things have
changed since he wrote the piece, he would
D. supported the humanists
probably be most interested in the answer to
E. been a pioneer in both science and which of the following questions?
humanities.
A. Do students know more about the
2. The author’s attitude to secondary and
world about them?
public school education in the sciences is
B. Do students spend more time in
laboratories?
A. ambivalent
C. Can students apply their knowledge
B. neutral
logically?
C. supportive
D. Have textbooks improved?
D. satirical
E. Do they respect their teachers?
E. contemptuous
6. Astrology (line 31) is mentioned as an
3. The word ‘palpably’ (line 24) most nearly example of
means
A. a science that needs to be better
A. empirically understood
B. obviously B. a belief which no educated people
hold
C. tentatively
C. something unsupportable to those
D. markedly
who have absorbed the methods of science
E. ridiculously
D. the gravest danger to society
E. an acknowledged failure of science
 Vocabulary, Sentence completion, reading comprehension, Grammar and essay
7. All of the following can be inferred from 3. If you are sure that A you are in the right, B
the text except you would not C mind an independent
examination of D the case. No error E.
A. at the time of writing, not all children
received a secondary school education A.
B. the author finds chemical reactions B.
interesting
C.
C. science teaching has imparted some
D.
knowledge of facts to some children
E.
D. the author believes that many
teachers are authoritarian
4. The union insisted A on an increase in
E. it is relatively easy to learn scientific their B members’ C starting pay, and
method. threatened to call a strike if the company
refused to D meet the demand. No error E.
1. Illiteracy is an enormous problem, A it
affects B millions of people worldwide, C and
A.
is an impediment to D social progress. No
error E. B.
C.
A.
D.
B.
E.
C.
5. Television viewers claim that A the
D.
number of scenes depicting B alcohol
E. consumption have C increased dramatically
over D the last decade. No error E.
2. The company president has taken A steps
to ensure that she B can handle the pressure
A.
and anxiety associated with C the job,
including D joining a yoga class and enlisting B.
the support of a network of friends. No error
C.
E.
D.
A. E.
B.
6. Employees with less A personal problems
C. are B likely C to be more D productive. No
error E.
D.
E.
 Vocabulary, Sentence completion, reading comprehension, Grammar and essay
A. D.
B. E.
C.
10. The rhododendron, which A ornaments
D. so many B English gardens, is C not native to
D Europe. No error E.
E.

7. The three richest men in America have A A.

assets worth more than B the combined
B.
assets C of the sixty poorest countries of D
the world. No error E. C.
D.
A.
E.
B.
11. The farmer should not have been A so
C.
careless as B to leave the door of the house
D. unbolted when C he had gone D to bed. No
error E.
E.

8. Shipwrecked A on a desert island, A.

coconuts and other B fruits formed C the
B.
basis of the sailor’s D diet. No error D.
C.
A. D.
B. E.
C.
12. A census A of the island revealed B a
D. population of only C 10,000 people D. No
error E.
E.

9. Fifty percent of the people alive today A.

have A never made a phone call, but B thirty
B.
percent still C have no electricity connections
to their D homes. No error E. C.
D.
A.
E.
B.
13. The engineer, who is renowned for his
C.
ingenuity A, has designed B a very unique C
 Vocabulary, Sentence completion, reading comprehension, Grammar and essay
cooling system for our new plant in D Spain.
No error E.
Time has a doomsday book, on whose pages
he is continually recording illustrious
A.
names. But as often as a new name is
B. written there, an old one disappears. Only a
few stand in illuminated characters never to
C.
be effaced.
D. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
E.
Underneath the prompt is the assignment
– a statement that clarifies what you are
14. Shoes of those A kind are B bad for the
supposed to do.
feet; C low heels are D better. No error E.
For example, after the issue given in the
A. prompt above, you might see:
B.
Assignment:
C. Are there some heroes who will be
D. remembered forever? Or are all heroes
doomed to be forgotten one day? Plan your
E. response, and then write an essay to explain
your views on this issue. Be sure to support
15. My father saw how much A Uncle Tom your position with specific points and
was enjoying B his early retirement, and C so examples. (You may use personal examples
he decided to do the same D. No error E. or examples from your reading,
observations, or, knowledge of subjects such
as history, literature, science.)
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.