Short Advanced Reading Comprehension Test 13 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.)

Although the interpretation of traffic signals may seem highly standardized, close observation reveals regional variations across this country, distinguishing the East Coast from Central Canada and the West as surely as dominant dialects or political inclinations. In Montreal, a flashing red traffic light instructs drivers to careen even more wildly through intersections heavily populated with pedestrians and oncoming vehicles. In startling contrast, an amber light in Calgary warns drivers to scream to a halt on the off chance that there might be a pedestrian within 600 meters who might consider crossing at some unspecified time within the current day. In my hometown in New Brunswick, finally, traffic lights do not apply to tractors, all-terrain vehicles, or pickup trucks, which together account for most vehicles on the road. In fact, were any observant Canadian dropped from an alien space vessel at an unspecified intersection anywhere in this vast land, he or she could almost certainly orient him or herself according to the surrounding traffic patterns.

What we can infer from the passage is that _____.

As understood from the passage, distinctive characteristics among the East Coast, Central Canada and the West include _____.

According to the passage, any alert Canadian could _____.

There are two main types of concrete dams: arch dams and gravity dams. Arch dams are tall, curved shells of concrete that can be as little as 3 meters thick. Their arched shape gives them great strength. Large gravity dams are also made of concrete, but it is their vast weight that prevents them from bursting. The largest dams are embankment dams, which are made by piling up a huge barrier of earth and rock. A core of clay or concrete in the middle keeps water from seeping through the dam. The side is covered with stones to protect it from water. Rogunsky Dam in the Soviet Union is the world's highest dam. It. is 326 meters high. Hoover Dam, one of the world's highest concrete dams, measures 223 meters in height. It is an arch dam that spans the Colorado River and supplies water for irrigation and electricity to California, Arizona and Nevada.

It can be understood from the passage that gravity dams differ from arch dams in that gravity dams are _____.

According to the passage, the water supplied from Hoover Dam is used for _____.

According to the passage, the core of clay in the centre of an embankment dam serves which purpose?

The Railway was not the first institution to impose regularity on society or to draw attention to the importance of precise timekeeping. For as long as merchants have set out their wares at daybreak and communal festivities have been celebrated, people have been in rough agreement with their neighbours as to the time of day. The value of this tradition is today more apparent than ever. Were it not for public acceptance of a single yardstick of time, social life would be unbearably chaotic: the massive daily transfers of goods, services, and information would proceed in fits and starts; the very fabric of modern society would begin to unravel.

The passage is written to _____.

What is the main idea of the passage?

In the passage, the tradition of punctuality in the society emphasized _____.

The way emperor penguins care for and protect their unhatched eggs is one of the wonders of nature. The only land creatures able to survive the Antarctic winter, these birds must care for their young while withstanding 24-hour darkness, gale-strength winds, and temperatures of 85 to 95 degrees below zero. Each year, at the start of the Antarctic autumn, female emperor penguins each lay a single egg on bare ice. Then, after transferring care of the eggs to their mates, they take off across the open ice for the nearest fishing site. The males spend the next 65 days with neither food nor light, living off their considerable body fat and balancing the eggs on their feet under a protective flap of skin. During this time, they adapt to the brutal temperatures by huddling together in flocks of hundreds. Although penguins are unable to fly, they are superb swimmers. If all goes well, the females return from the sea with a meal of fish just as the eggs are hatching.

Which of the following best summarizes the main points of the passage?

According to information presented in the passage, the relationship between male and female emperor penguins is best characterized by _____.

The author calls emperor penguins wonderful animals because _____.

Although Dorothy Wordsworth was convinced that her journal entries were not literature, they were seamlessly incorporated by her brother William into some of his most famous poems, altered only by his use of the first-person pronoun, the "I."

The important question concerning the relationship between Dorothy and William, however, is not whether William's borrowings constituted exploitation, but rather how the relationship contributed to Dorothy's inability to conceive of herself as a writer.

Traditionally in literature, the authorial self, the "I," is identifiably masculine. The dominated "other" is feminine. In William's poems, the "other" is usually Nature, often personified as Dorothy.

While these literary roles helped to sustain the close relationship between the two in real life, they also reinforced Dorothy's acceptance of the norms, which defined her as "other." Thus, her access to authorial self-consciousness was blocked not just by the fact of her gender, but also by her accepted role in her brother's life and poetry.

The passage is primarily about answering which of the following questions?

It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes which of the following about Dorothy Wordsworth's journal entries?

Which of the following best captures the meaning of the word "self-consciousness" as it is used in the final sentence of the passage?

The arrival in a new location of a non-original plant or animal species may be either intentional or unintentional. Rates of species movement driven by human transformations of natural environments as well as by human mobility through commerce, tourism, and travel- dwarf natural rates by comparison.

While geographic distributions of species naturally expand or contract over historical time intervals (tens to hundreds of years), species' ranges rarely expand thousands of miles or across physical barriers such as oceans or mountains.

A number of factors confound the quantitative evaluation of the relative importance of various entry pathways. Time lags often occur between the establishment of non-indigenous species and their detection, and tracing the pathway for a long-established species is difficult. Experts estimate that non-indigenous weeds are usually detected only after having been in the country for thirty years or having spread to at least ten thousand acres.

In addition, federal port inspection, although a major source of information on non-indigenous species pathways, especially for agricultural pests, provides data only when such species enter via scrutinized routes. Finally, some comparisons between pathways defy quantitative analysis. For example, which is more "important": the entry pathway of one very harmful species or one by which many but less harmful species enter the country?

Which of the following statements about species movement is best supported by the information in the passage?

Which of the following best expresses the author's primary concern in the second paragraph?

Based upon the information in the passage, whether the entry pathway for a particular non-indigenous species can be determined is least likely to depend upon which of the following?

Those who criticize the United Kingdom government today for not providing health care to all citizens equate health care provision with medical insurance coverage. By this standard, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Australia lacked any significant conception of the public health law.

However, despite the general paucity of bureaucratic organization in pre-industrial Australia, the vast extent of health regulation and provision stands out as remarkable. Of course, the public role in the protection and regulation of eighteenth-century health was carried out in ways quite different from those today.

Organizations responsible for health regulation were less stable than modern bureaucracies, tending to appear in crises and wither away in periods of calm. The focus was on epidemics that were seen as unnatural and warranting a response, not to the many endemic and chronic conditions which were accepted as part and parcel of daily life.

Additionally, the religious influence was significant, especially in the seventeenth century. Finally, in an era that lacked sharp demarcations between private and governmental bodies, many public responsibilities were carried out by what we would now consider private associations. Nevertheless, the extent of public health regulation long before the dawn of the welfare state is remarkable and suggests that the founding generation's assumptions about the relationship between government and health were more complex than is commonly assumed.

Among the following statements about the United Kingdom government's role in the provision of health care, which finds the least support in the passage?

Which of the following best expresses the author's point of contention with "those who criticize the United Kingdom government for not providing health care to all citizens"?

Which of the following best expresses the main point of the passage?

One of the strange natural phenomena that disappeared as the size of Australian forests decreased was the occasional mass emigration of the grey squirrel. Caused by an excessive build-up of their populations, these movements involved millions of the animals, a half-billion were estimated to have migrated across southern Wisconsin, in 1843. Moving in hordes, they devoured crops and even managed to struggle across such mighty rivers as the Ohio thousands drowning in the effort. Currently, the squirrel population, although smaller, is on the increase; emigrations still occur but they are not often noticeable.

Gray squirrels usually emigrate because of _____.

Why do grey squirrels emigrate less frequently now than they used to?

According to the passage, the squirrel emigrations have caused problems for people because of _____.