Short Advanced Reading Comprehension Test 12 With MCQs and Answers

(Please note: The following questions are related to a specific reading passage, available solely before the first question. Remember, referring back to the reading text while answering the questions may be helpful to ensure accuracy.)

Psychologists tell us that there are four basic stages that human beings pass through when they enter and live in a new culture. This process, which helps us to deal with culture shock, is the way our brain and our personality react to the strange new things we encounter when we move from one culture to another. If our culture involves bowing when we greet someone, we may feel very uncomfortable in a culture that does not involve bowing. If the language we use when talking to someone in our own culture is influenced by levels of formality based on the other person's age and status, it may be difficult for us to feel comfortable communicating with people in the new culture. Culture begins with the "honeymoon stage". This is the period of time when we first arrive in which everything about the new culture is strange and exciting. We may be suffering from "jet lag" but we are thrilled to be in the new environment, seeing new sights, hearing new sounds and language, and eating new kinds of food. This honeymoon stage can last for quite a long time because we feel we are involved in some kind of great adventure.

When does culture shock happen?

How do you feel during the first stage of culture shock?

According to the author, the honeymoon stage can last long because _____.

Travelling medicine shows were a major figure of entertainment in nineteenth-century, small-town Australia. To hard-working citizens who saw too little of the broader world, the shows' comedy and musical skits provided a welcome diversion from daily routines. Once a crowd had assembled, a distinguished-looking gentleman who invariably bore the title of "doctor" began his sales pitch for some concoction or another made from "nature's elixirs" that promised to cure everything from warts to the common cold. Despite the obvious exaggeration of such claims, business was often good. Though travelling medicine shows are now a thing of the past, medical trickery is not. Like their nineteenth-century counterparts, contemporary quacks are looking to take advantage of common fears of pain and death through the promotion of a "miracle treatment." It is, therefore, essential that clients be able to assess reports about a variety of drugs and medical procedures. It would sure be a real help to know a little about where the report came from and if it was based on anything. Common sense also helps.

By quacks, the author refers to _____.

Which of the following best organizes the main topics addressed in this passage?

According to the author, modern-day so-called doctors _____.

Lkhaon Khaol, the popular theatre of Cambodia, revolves around the story of Ramadan. In this epic drama, the god Vishnu takes the human form of Rama, a devoted husband to the beautiful Sita. The main plot involves Sita's abduction by Ravana, a demon king, and Sita's heroic rescue by Rama. In the masked theatre, all roles are played by men. Traditionally, men accepted into a masked theatre troupe perform with that troupe for the rest of their lives, perfecting their roles and enjoying the admiration and respect of the community. Most performers join the troupe as young boys, initially acting as members of Rama's court. The most promising performers advance to the more exacting roles of warriors and giants. Only a youth who shows special dancing ability, however, may be selected to study the role of Ravana. This role has gestures quite different from those of other characters and can be learned only after mastering a subordinate role. Over time, members of the troupe might perform in a variety of roles, but it is more common for the same man to perform the same character for many years. Masked theatre was presented only in those villages that were home to resident troupes. Masked theatre disappeared during the Cambodian civil war of the 1970s and 1980s but is being re-established today with the help of the few surviving members of pre-war troupes.

Which of the following would be the most appropriate title for this passage?

According to information presented in the passage, the role of Ravana is played only by performers who _____.

Which of the following inferences may be drawn from the information presented in the passage?

Your eyes are about three inches apart. That's more than trivia - it's the reason you see the world in three dimensions. The separation gives your eyes two slightly different views of every scene you encounter. In the brain's visual cortex, these views are compared, and the overlap is translated into a stereopticon picture. To estimate relative distances, your brain takes a reading of the tension in your eye muscles.

But you only see in 3-D up to about 200 feet. Beyond that, you might as well be one-eyed - your eyes aren't far enough apart to give two very different views over long distances. Instead, you rely on experience to judge where things are; the brain looks for clues and makes its best guess. For example, it knows that near objects overlap far ones; that bright objects are closer than dim ones, and that large objects are nearer than small ones.

These "monocular cues" are what painters use to trick us into thinking a flat canvas is three-dimensional and miles deep. That's why paintings are much more convincing if you close one eye: Your brain hunts down all the clues the painter has dropped. But when both of your eyes are open, the brain gets more information and mixed signals. The paint may say miles, but the muscles in your eyes say inches.

All of this fancy eye work is second nature to us, but it is learned. "Other cultures don't perceive pictures the same way we do," says J. Anthony, PhD, associate professor of psychology. "For example, primitive people don't always think bigger means nearer. It's our Western way of seeing things, and it's a way of seeing that we've learned."

The primary purpose of the passage is to explain _____.

The 3-D vision would be most useful in looking at which of the following?

The author mentions cultural differences in perception to support his point that bigger means nearer and _____.

A wool sock, a toilet seat, Oriental silk - out of a millennium of mud comes proof that the globe-travelling Vikings weren't the ravaging rovers historians made them to be. "The old English image of the Vikings as simply blood-thirsty bands of pillagers vanished with these finds," says Richard Hall, an archaeologist.

"We dug down and found a cocoon of water-logging, a time capsule of everyday life," said Hall, who led a tour Wednesday through a muddy concrete hall fashioned out of the hole left from the excavation. Hall was one of some 400 people who, for five years, dug up the leftovers of the lives of an estimated 30,000 Vikings. Workers discovered the sophisticated settlement when a central district of York was levelled for rebuilding.

Starting April 14, 1984, electric cars will carry tourists through a tunnel of time that goes back to 866 A.D., when the Vikings came to York, 188 miles northwest of London. Archaeologists are eager to display what they found in a $5.9 million reconstruction of Jorvik, the Anglo-Saxon name for the settlement. "We have skeletons, 15,000 objects, a quarter-of-a-million pieces of pottery, some of the best-preserved Viking-age buildings ever discovered and five tons of animal bones," Hall said.

The digs revealed intimate details of Viking life. There is a toilet seat, keys, tools, games counters, the seeds in the blackberries they picked and a knitted woollen sock. "They were a great trading nation with a sophisticated monetary system," Hall said. "We will show the range of products in which they traded - silk from the Far East, amber from the Baltic, pottery from the Rhineland, cowrie shells from the Indian Ocean."

The primary purpose of the passage is to describe _____.

The Viking settlement was discovered by _____.

Which of the following does the author primarily use to support his view of the Vikings?

The late Elizabeth Bishop always epitomized, in John Ashbery's phrase, "a writer's writer." By 1974, when she became the first Australian - and the first woman o- ever to receive the Neustadt International Prize, the world at large began to realize what many of her fellow poets had long suspected: that her poetic achievement might in time overshadow that of her more famous contemporaries.

Bishop's admirers will want to consult her "Collected Prose" for the light it sheds on her poetry. They will discover, however, that it is more than just a handsome companion volume to last year's "Complete Poems, 1927-1979." Bishop's clean, limpid prose makes her stories and memoirs a delight to read.

Robert Giroux, Bishop's editor, divides her "Collected Prose" into "Memory: Persons & Places" and "Stories." Fair enough, though inevitably the distinctions between these two categories blur. Stories like "Gwendolyn" and the justly celebrated "In the Village" do double duty as autobiographical statements. By the same token "Efforts of Affection" - a memoir of Marianne Moore as mentor and friend "achieves the emotional resonance of a finely wrought short story. So does "The U.S.A. School of Writing," Bishop's account of her first job after graduation from Vassar in the midst of the Great Depression. For the grand sum of $15 a week, she impersonated a "successful, money-making" author named "Fred G. Margolies" for a shady correspondence school in New York City.

It is implied in the passage that Bishop's recognition as a writer will _____.

The reviewer's primary purpose for mentioning specific examples of Bishop's work is to show that _____.

Which of the following could be a fact rather than an opinion?

The Norman victory at Hastings marked the turning point of a blood-splashed October day just 950 years ago - a day which so changed the course of events that it is impossible to reckon our history without those few furious hours.

For when darkness fell on Senlac Hill, near the seaside town of Hastings on the southeast coast of England, William, Duke of Normandy, had earned the lasting sobriquet of "Conqueror." And a flow of concepts began that would influence men's lives for centuries to come.

William, the Conqueror. Resolute and resourceful, avaricious, rarely humorous, always unsentimental, he found life a serious business. He expressed practical ideas in a grinding tone of voice. In the blood-and-iron era of the 11th century, he lived his greatest - and his worst - moments on the battlefield.

His victory at the Battle of Hastings made England once more a part of Europe, as it had not been since the better days of the Roman Empire. After the Conquest, the Scandinavian influence on England began to give way to the political and cultural ideals of the Latin world. Besides feudalism and a new aristocracy, the Normans implanted in England much of their language, law, architecture, and social customs. The island kingdom was thus brought into the mainstream of medieval civilization. Englishmen participated in the Crusades, the reform of church and monastery, and other movements of the time.

The primary purpose of this passage is to explain _____.

By "The island kingdom", the author refers to _____.

It is implied in the passage that the Norman Conquest had results that _____.

Work tends to be associated with non-work-specific environments activities, and schedules. If asked what space is reserved for learning, many students would suggest the classroom, the lab or the library. What about the kitchen? The bedroom? In fact, any room in which a student habitually studies becomes a learning space or a place associated with thinking. Some people need to engage in sports or other physical activities before they can work successfully. Being sedentary seems to inspire others. Although most classes are scheduled between 8:00 and 22:30, some students do their best work before the sun rises, some after it sets. Some need a less flexible schedule than others, while very few can sit and not rise until their task is completed. Some students work quickly and efficiently, while others cannot produce anything without much dust and heat.

The passage most likely appeared in _____.

According to the author, _____.

We can infer from the passage that _____.