PTE Reading : Multiple Choice Choose Single Answer – 03

Now it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad in Dunce of this or that individual writer, But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form~ and so on Indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure~ and then fail all the more completely because he dunks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

The author would most likely agree that

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?

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

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

The railroad 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 Line daybreak and communal festivities have been celebrated, people have been in rough agreement with their neighbors 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 singe 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 modem society would begin to unravel.

What is the main Idea of the passage?

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?

The ground is full of seeds that cannot rise into seed lings ; the seedlings rob one another of air. Light and water, the strongest robber winning the day, and extinguishing his competitors. Year after year, the wild animals with which man never interferes are, on the average, neither more nor less numerous than they were; and yet we know that the annual produce of every pair is from one to perhaps a million young; so that it is mathematically certain that, on the average, as many are killed by natural causes as are born every year, and those only escape which happen to be a little better fitted to resist destruction than those which die, The individuals of a species are like the crew of a foundered ship. and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching the land.

The main point the author conveys is that

Could Washington, Madison, and the other framers of the Federal Constitution revisit the earth in this year 1922,it Is likely that nothing would bewilder them more than the recent Prohibition Amendment Railways~ steamships, the telephone, automobiles, flying machines, submenus all these developments, unknown in their day, would fill them with amazement and admiration. They would marvel at the story of the rise and downfall of the German Empire; at the growth and present greatness of the Republic they  themselves had founded~ None of these things, however~ would seem to them to involve any essential change in the beliefs and purposes of men as they had known them. The Prohibition Amendment, on the contrary, would evidence to their minds the breaking down of a principle of government which they had deemed axiomatic, the abandonment of a
purpose which they had supposed immutable.

It can be inferred that the paragraph is intended as

A few minutes ago, walking back from lunch, I started to cross the street when I heard the sound of a coin dropping, It wasn't much but~ as I turned, my eyes caught the heads of several other people turning too. A woman had dropped what appeared to be a dime. The honking sound of a coin dropping on pavement is an attention-getter. It can be nothing more than a penny, Whatever the com is, no one ignores the sound of it ft got me thinking about sounds again.

The sound of a coin dropping makes people ..,