New GRE Reading Comprehension Difficult Practice Questions
Evolutionary psychology takes as its starting point the
uncontroversial assertion that the anatomical and
physiological features of the human brain have arisen
as a result of adaptations to the demands of the
5 environment over the millennia. However, from this
reasonable point of departure, these psychologists make
unreasonable extrapolations. They claim that the behavior
of contemporary man (in almost all its aspects) is a
reflection of features of the brain that acquired their
10 present characteristics during those earliest days of our
species when early man struggled to survive and multiply.
This unwarranted assumption leads, for example, to
suggestions that modern sexual behavior is dictated by
realities of Pleistocene life. These suggestions have a
15 ready audience, and the idea that Stone Age man is alive
in our genome and dictating aspects of our behavior has
gained ground in the popular imagination. The tabloids
repeatedly run articles about “discoveries” relating to
“genes” for aggression, depression, repression, and
20 anything for which we need a readymade excuse. Such
insistence on a genetic basis for behavior negates the
cultural influences and the social realities that
separate us from our ancestors.
The difficulty with pseudo science of this nature is just
25 this popular appeal. People are eager to accept what is
printed as incontrovertible, assuming quite without foundation,
that anything printed has bona fide antecedents. We would do
well to remember that the phrenologists of the nineteenth
century held sway for a considerable time in the absence of
30 any evidence that behavioral tendencies could be deduced from
the shape of the skull. The phrenologists are no more, but
their genes would seem to be thriving.
Q 1. The author’s primary purpose in the passage is to
A. argue for the superiority of a particular viewpoint
B. attack the popular press
C. ridicule a particular branch of science
D. highlight an apparently erroneous tendency in an area of social science
E. evaluate a particular theory of human behavior in all its ramifications
Q 2. The author mentions phrenologists as
A. pseudo scientists who are the logical antecedents of evolutionary psychologists
B. a group with inherent appeal to the followers of evolutionary psychologists
C. a warning against blind acceptance of ideas
D. scientists with whom evolutionary psychologists share common assumptions
E. behavioral scientists who have spawned a variety of wrong ideas
Q 3. The author apparently believes that the journalists writing for the tabloids
A. are more concerned with popular appeal than with authenticity
B. believe that human behavior has a genetic basis
C. run the same articles over and over again
D. are victims of the human desire to excuse inexcusable behavior
E. are highly irresponsible in their efforts to pander to the public
Replies
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Ankita Katdare
The pioneers of the teaching of science imagined that its introduction into education would remove the conventionality,
1. The author implies that the ‘professional schoolmaster’ (line 7) has
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
minority of people who are able to acquire some of the techniques
of science and a still smaller minority who are able to use and
40 develop them.
A. no interest in teaching science
B. thwarted attempts to enliven education
C. aided true learning
D. supported the humanists
E. been a pioneer in both science and humanities.
2. The author’s apparently believes that secondary and public school education in the sciences is
A. severely limited in its benefits
B. worse than that in the classics
C. grossly incompetent
D. a stimulus to critical thinking
E. deliberately obscurantist
3. If the author were to study current education in science to see how things have changed since he wrote the piece, he would probably be most interested in the answer to which of the following questions?
A. Do students know more about the world about them?
B. Do students spend more time in laboratories?
C. Can students apply their knowledge logically?
D. Have textbooks improved?
E. Do they respect their teachers?
4. All of the following can be inferred from the text except
A. at the time of writing, not all children received a secondary school education
B. the author finds chemical reactions interesting
C. science teaching has imparted some knowledge of facts to some children
D. the author believes that many teachers are authoritarian
E. it is relatively easy to learn scientific method -
Ankita Katdare
On the basis of the Big Bang theory scientists predicted levels of Helium-3 in the universe that are ten times greater than the levels actually observed. According to the original model, Helium-3 is produced when low-mass stars burn up hydrogen and become ‘red giants’, as well as being produced in the Big Bang itself. Researchers have now produced a new model in which the Helium-3 produced by a red giant is pushed to the star’s interior and burnt up. Hence the Big Bang theory is no longer undermined by Helium-3 data.
The two portions in bold-face are related to each other in which of the following ways?
A. The first highlights an observation that tends to undermine a particular theory. The second is that theory.
B. The first is a fact that undermines a theory. The second is context for accepting that theory.
C. The first points to an inconsistency in a particular model; the second is the author’s main conclusion.
D. The first is a challenge to a classic theory; the second resolves that challenge.
E. The first is a position that the author does not accept; the second is the author’s position.
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Ankita Katdare
In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities:
1. The author would be most likely to agree that propaganda
the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did
not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our
5 Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast
mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither
with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more
or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take
into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.
10 In the past most people never got a chance of fully
satisfying this appetite. They might long for distractions,
but the distractions were not provided. Christmas came but
once a year, feasts were "solemn and rare," there were few
readers and very little to read, and the nearest approach
15 to a neighborhood movie theater was the parish church, where
the performances, though infrequent, were somewhat monotonous.
For conditions even remotely comparable to those now prevailing
we must return to imperial Rome, where the populace was kept
in good humor by frequent, gratuitous doses of many kinds of
20 entertainment - from poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights,
from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts
to military reviews and public executions. But even in Rome
there was nothing like the non-stop distraction now provided
by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the
25 cinema. In Brave New World non-stop distractions of the most
fascinating nature (the feelies, orgy-porgy, centrifugal
bumblepuppy) are deliberately used as instruments of policy,
for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much
attention to the realities of the social and political
30 situation. The other world of religion is different from
the other world of entertainment; but they resemble one
another in being most decidedly "not of this world." Both
are distractions and, if lived in too continuously, both
can become, in Marx's phrase, "the opium of the people"
35 and so a threat to freedom. Only the vigilant can maintain
their liberties, and only those who are constantly and
intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves
effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of
whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the
40 spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but
somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and
soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find
it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would
manipulate and control it.
45 In their propaganda today's dictators rely for the most
part on repetition, suppression and rationalization - the
repetition of catchwords which they wish to be accepted as
true, the suppression of facts which they wish to be ignored,
the arousal and rationalization of passions which may be
50 used in the interests of the Party or the State. As the art
and science of manipulation come to be better understood,
the dictators of the future will doubtless learn to combine
these techniques with the non-stop distractions which, in
the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of
55 irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to the
maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of
democratic institutions.
A. can serve a vital function in democracy
B. is concerned mainly with the irrelevant
C. is now combined with entertainment
D. is universally recognized as a danger
E. needs constant vigilance to avoid
2. The “early advocates of universal literacy” (line 1) are mentioned as
A. advocates of propaganda
B. opponents of an idea that the author thinks is correct
C. proponents of an idea that the author wishes to counter
D. people who made wrong predictions about freedom of the press
E. social commentators unaware of man’s appetite for distractions
3. The author refers to “Brave New World” as a fictional example of a society in which
A. non-stop distractions are the main instrument of government policy
B. people are totally unaware of political realities
C. entertainment is used to keep people from full awareness of social realities
D. entertainment resembles religion in its effects on the masses
E. non-stop entertainment is provided as it was in Rome
4. By “intelligently on the spot” (line 37) the author apparently means
A. alert to the dangers of propaganda
B. in a particular society at a particular time
C. in a specific time and place
D. conscious of political and social realities
E. deeply aware of current trends -
anujd1488answers for 1st passage 1)d 2)d 3)c
-
anujd1488pls post the correct answers as early as possible \
-
anujd1488answers for 2nd passage might be 1)c 2)a 3)c 4)b
-
Ankita Katdare
Correct answers are:AbraKaDabra
Q 1. The author’s primary purpose in the passage is to
A. argue for the superiority of a particular viewpoint
B. attack the popular press
C. ridicule a particular branch of science
D. highlight an apparently erroneous tendency in an area of social science
E. evaluate a particular theory of human behavior in all its ramifications
Q 2. The author mentions phrenologists as
A. pseudo scientists who are the logical antecedents of evolutionary psychologists
B. a group with inherent appeal to the followers of evolutionary psychologists
C. a warning against blind acceptance of ideas
D. scientists with whom evolutionary psychologists share common assumptions
E. behavioral scientists who have spawned a variety of wrong ideas
Q 3. The author apparently believes that the journalists writing for the tabloids
A. are more concerned with popular appeal than with authenticity
B. believe that human behavior has a genetic basis
C. run the same articles over and over again
D. are victims of the human desire to excuse inexcusable behavior
E. are highly irresponsible in their efforts to pander to the public
1. D
2. C
3. A
1. The author implies that the ‘professional schoolmaster’ (line 7) has
A. no interest in teaching science
B. thwarted attempts to enliven education
C. aided true learning
D. supported the humanists
E. been a pioneer in both science and humanities.
2. The author’s apparently believes that secondary and public school education in the sciences is
A. severely limited in its benefits
B. worse than that in the classics
C. grossly incompetent
D. a stimulus to critical thinking
E. deliberately obscurantist
3. If the author were to study current education in science to see how things have changed since he wrote the piece, he would probably be most interested in the answer to which of the following questions?
A. Do students know more about the world about them?
B. Do students spend more time in laboratories?
C. Can students apply their knowledge logically?
D. Have textbooks improved?
E. Do they respect their teachers?
4. All of the following can be inferred from the text except
A. at the time of writing, not all children received a secondary school education
B. the author finds chemical reactions interesting
C. science teaching has imparted some knowledge of facts to some children
D. the author believes that many teachers are authoritarian
E. it is relatively easy to learn scientific method
Correct answers are:
1. B
2. A
3. C
4. E
The two portions in bold-face are related to each other in which of the following ways?
A. The first highlights an observation that tends to undermine a particular theory. The second is that theory.
B. The first is a fact that undermines a theory. The second is context for accepting that theory.
C. The first points to an inconsistency in a particular model; the second is the author’s main conclusion.
D. The first is a challenge to a classic theory; the second resolves that challenge.
E. The first is a position that the author does not accept; the second is the author’s position
Correct answer is: C
Let me know if you need an explanation of any of the answers.
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anujd1488can u pls explain me the 2nd passage 4th answer" it is retalively easy to learn scientific method"
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