ECAT Pre Computer Science MCQ Test With Answer for English Chapter 8 (Comprehension)

The history of literature really began was the earliest of the arts. Man danced for joy round his primitive camp fire after the defeat and slaughter of his enemy. He yelled and shouted as he danced and gradually the yells and shouts became coherent and caught the measure of the coherent and caught the measure of the dance and thus the first war song was sung. As the idea of God developed prayers were framed. The songs and prayers became traditional and were repeated from one generation to another, each generation adding something of its own. As man slowly grew more civilized, he was compelled to invent some method of writing by three urgent necessities. There were certain things that it was dangerous to forget and which, therefore, had to be recorded. It was often necessary to communicate with person who were some distance away and it was necessary to protect one’s property by making tools, cattle and so on, in some distinctive manner. So man taught himself to write and having learned to write purely for utilitarian reasons he used this new method for preserving his war songs and his prayers. Of course, among these ancient peoples, There were only a very few individuals who learned to write, and only a few could read what was written.

Before man invented writing

Right now, I am looking at a shelf full or relics, a collection of has-beens, old-timers, antiques, fossils. Right now I am lolling at a shelf full of books. Yes that’s right. If you have some spare cash (the doing rate is about $89) and are looking to enhance your reading experience, then I highly suggest you consider purchasing an e-reader. E-readers are replacing the books of old, and I welcome them with open arms (as you should).

If you haven’t heard of an e-reader and don’t know what it is, then please permit the following explanation. An e-reader is a device that allows you to read e-books. An e-book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary or English defines the e-book as “an electronic version of a printed book, “but e-book can and do exist without any printed equivalent.

So now you know what an e-reader is. But you still may be wondering why they put printed books to shame. E-readers are superior to printed books because they save space, are environmentally friendly, and provide helpful reading tips and tools that printed books do not.

E-readers are superior to printed books because they save space. The average e-reader can store thousands of digital book, providing a veritable library at your fingertips. What is more, being the size and weight of a thin hardback, the e-reader itself is relatively petite. It is easy to hold and can fit in a pocketbook or briefcase easily. This makes handling ponderous behemoths such as War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Les Miserables a breeze. Perhaps the only drawback to the space-saving aspect of an e-reader is that it requires you to find new things to put on your shelves.

In addition, e-readers are superior to books because they are environmentally friendly. The average novel is about 300 pages long. So, if a novel is printed 1000 times, it will use 300,000 pieces of paper. That’s a lot of paper! If there are about 80,000 pieces of paper in a tree, this means it takes almost 4 trees to make these 1000 books. Now, we know that the average bestseller sells about 20,000 copies per week. That means that it takes over 300 trees each month to sustain this rate. And for the super bestsellers, these figures increase dramatically. For example, the Harry Potter book series has sold over 450 million copies. That’s about 2 million trees! Upon viewing these figures, it is not hard to grasp the severe impact of printed books on the environment. Since e-reader use no trees, they represent a significant amount of preservation in terms of the environment and its resources.

Finally, e-reader are superior to books because they provide helpful reading tips and tolls that printed books do not. The typical e-reader allows its user to customize letter size, font, and line spacing. It also allows highlighting and electronic bookmarking. Furthermore, it grants users the ability to get an overview of a book and then jump to a specific electronic bookmarking. Furthermore, it grants users the ability to get an overview of a book and then jump to a specific location based on that overview. While these are all nice features, perhaps the most helpful of all is the ability to get dictionary definitions at the touch of a finger. On even the most basic e-reader, users can conjure instant definitions without having to hunt through a physical dictionary.

It can be seen that e-readers are superior to printed books. They save space, are environmentally friendly, and provide helpful reading tips and tools that printed books do not. So what good are printed books? Well, they certainly make nice decorations.

As used in paragraph 3, which of the following describes something that has been “put to shame”?

Chocolate – there’s nothing quite like it, is there? Chocolate is simply delicious. What is chocolate? Where does it come from?

Christopher Columbus was probably the first to take cacao beans from the New World to Europe in around 1502. But the history of chocolate goes back at least 4,000 years! The Aztecs, who lived in America, through that their bitter cacao drink was a divine gift from heaven. In fact, the scientist Carolus Linnaeus named the plant Theobroma, which means “food of the gods”

The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortex went to America in 1519. He visited the Mexican emperor Montezuma. He saw that Montezuma drank cacao mixed with vanilla and spices. Cortez took some cacao home as a gift to the Spanish King Charles. In Spain, people began to drink Cortez’s chocolate in drink with chili peppers. However, the natural taste of cacao was too bitter for most people. To sweeten the drink, Europeans added sugar to the cacao drink. As a sweet drink, it became more popular. By the 17^th century, rich people in Europe were drinking it.

Later, people started using chocolate in pastries, like pies and cakes. In 1828, Dutch chocolate makers started using a new process for removing the fat from cacao beans, and getting to the center of the cacao bean. The Dutch chocolate maker Conrad J. Van Houten made a machine that pressed the fat from the bean. The resulting powder mixed better with water than cacao did. Now, some call van Houten’s chocolate “Dutch chocolate.”

It was easy to mix Dutuch chocolate powder with sugar. So other chocolate makers started trying new recipes that used powdered chocolate. People started mixing sweetened chocolate with cocoa butter to make solid chocolate bars. In 1849, an English chocolate maker made the first chocolate bar. In the 19^th century, the Swiss started making milk chocolate by mixing powdered milk with sweetened chocolate. Milk chocolate has not changed much since this process was invented.

Today, two countries – Brazil and Ivory Coast – account for almost half the world’s chocolate. The United States imports most of the chocolate in the world, but the Swiss eat the most chocolate per person. The most chocolate eaten today is sweet milk chocolate, but people also eat white chocolate and dark chocolate.

Cocoa and dark chocolate are believed to help prevent heart attacks, or help keep from happening. They are supposed to be good for the circulatory system. On the other hand, the high fat content of chocolate can cause weight gain, which is not good for people’s health. Other health claims for chocolate have not been proven, but some research shows that chocolate could be good for the brain.

Chocolate is a popular holiday gift. A popular Valentine’s Day gift is a box of chocolate candies with a card and flowers. Chocolate is sometimes given for Christmas and birthdays. Chocolate eggs are sometimes given at Easter.

Chocolate is toxic to some animals. An ingredient in chocolate is poisonous to dogs, cats, parrots, small rodents, and some livestock. Their bodies cannot process some if the chemicals found in chocolate. Therefore, they should never be fed chocolate.

Why did Linnaeus name the plant Theobroma?

The history of civilization shows how man always has to choose between making the right and wrong use of the discoveries science. This has never been more true than in our own age. In a brief period amazing discoveries have been made and applied to practical purpose.

It would be ungrateful not to recognized how immense are the boons which science has given to mankind. It has brought within the reach of multitudes benefits and advantages which only a short time ago were the privilege of the few. It has shown how malnutrition, hunger and disease can be overcome. It has not only lengthened life but it has depended its quality. Fields of the work of science the ordinary and fuller life than was ever possible to his grandparents.

What on the whole, has science doe mankind?

What are good parts of our civilization? First and fore-most there are order and safety. If today I have a quarrel with another man, I do not get beaten merely because I am physically weaker and he can knock me down. I go to law and the law will decide as fairly as it can between the two of us. Thus in disputes between man and man. Right has taken the place might. More-over, the law protects me from robbery and violence. Nobody may came and break into my house, steal my books or run off with my children. Of course, there are burglars, but they are very rare and the law punishes them whenever it catches them.

It is difficult for us to realize how much this safety means. Without safety those higher activates of mankind which make up civilization could not go on. The inventor could not invent, the scientist find out or the artist make beautiful things. Hence, order and safety, although they are not themselves civilization, are things without which civilization could be impossible. They are as necessary to our civilization as the air we breathe is to us; and we have grown so used to them that we do not notice them any more than we notice the air.

In disputes between man and man:

It is easy to make delicious-looking hamburger at home. But would this hamburger still look delicious after it sat on your kitchen table under very bright lights for six or seven hours? if someone took a picture or made a video of this hamburger after the seventh hour, would anyone want to eat it? More importantly, do you think you could get millions of people to pay money for this hamburger? These are the questions that fast food companies worry about when they produce commercials or print ads for their products. Video and photo shoots often last many hours. The lights that the photographers use can be extremely hot. These conditions can cause the food to look quite unappealing to potential consumers. Because of this, the menu items that you see in fast food commercials are probably not actually edible.Let's use the hamburger as an example. The first step towards building the commercial hamburger is the bun. The food stylist--a person employed by the company to make sure the products look perfect--sorts through hundreds of buns until he or she finds one with no wrinkles. Next, the stylist carefully rearranges the sesame seeds on the bun using glue and tweezers for maximum visual appeal. The bun is then sprayed with a waterproofing solution so that it will no get soggy from contact with other ingredients, the lights, or the humidity in the room.Next, the food stylist shapes a meat patty into a perfect circle. Only the outside of the meat gets cooked-the inside is left raw so that the meat remains moist. The food stylist then paints the outside of the meat patty with a mixture of oil, molasses, and brown food coloring. Grill marks are either painted on or seared into the meat using hot metal skewers.Finally, the food stylist searches through dozens of tomatoes and heads of lettuce to find the best-looking produce.One leaf of the crispest lettuce and one center slice of the reddest tomato are selected and then sprayed with glycerin to keep them looking fresh. So the next time you see a delectable hamburger in a fast food commercial, remember: you are actually looking at glue, paint, raw meat , and glycerin. Are you still hungry?

Question:

Based on information in the passage, it is most important for the lettuce and tomato used in a fast food hamburger commercial to

Recent advances in science and technology have made it possible for geneticists to find out abnormalities in the unborn foetus and take remedial action to rectify some defects which would otherwise prove to be fatal to the child. Though genetic engineering is still at its infancy, scientists can now predict with greater accuracy a genetic disorder. It is not yet an exact science since they are not in a position to predict when exactly a genetic disorder will set in. While they have not yet been able to change the genetic order of the gene in germs, they are optimistic and are holding out that in the near future they might be successful in achieving this feat. They have, however, acquired the ability in manipulating tissue cells. However, genetic mis-information can sometimes be damaging for it may adversely affect people psychologically. Genetic information may lead to a tendency to brand some people as inferiors. Genetic information can therefore be abused and its application in deciding the sex of the foetus and its subsequent abortion is now hotly debated on ethical lines. But on this issue geneticists cannot be squarely blamed though this charge has often been leveled at them. It is mainly a societal problem. At present genetic engineering is a costly process of detecting disorders but scientists hope to reduce the costs when technology becomes more advanced. This is why much progress in this area has been possible in scientifically advanced and rich countries like the U.S.A., U.K. and Japan. It remains to be seen if in the future this science will lead to the development of a race of supermen or will be able to obliterate disease from this world.

Which of the following is the same in meaning as the phrase ‘holding out’ as used in the passage?