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

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 true regarding the reasons for progress in genetic engineering?

Yellowstone National Park is the U.S. States of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. It became the first National Park in 1872. There are geysers and hot springs at Yellowstone. There are also many animals at Yellowstone. There are elk, bison, sheep, grizzly, black bears, moose, coyotes, and more.

More than 3 million people visit Yellowstone National Park year. During the winter, visitors can ski or go snowmobiling there. There are also snow coaches that give tours. Visitors can see steam (vapor water) come from the geysers. During other seasons, visitors can go boating or fishing. People can ride horses there. There are nature trails and tours. Most visitors want to see Old Faithful, a very predictable geyser at Yellowstone Visitors can check a schedule to see the exact time that Old Faithful is going to erupt. There are many other geysers and boiling springs in the area. Great Fountain Geyser erupts every 11 hours. Excelsior Geyser produces 4,000 gallons of boiling water each minute! Boiling water is 100 degrees Celsius, or 212 degrees Fahrenheit – that’s very hot! People also like to see the Grand Prismatic Spring. It is the largest hot spring in the park. It has many beautiful colors. The beautiful colors are caused by bacteria in the water. These are forms of life that have only one cell. Different bacteria live in different water temperatures. Visiting Yellowstone National Park can be a week – long vacation or more. It is beautiful and there are activities for everyone.

Old Faithful is a

Lilly loves her town. She loves the mall. She loves the parks. She also loves her school. Most of all, though, Lilly loves the seasons. In her old town, it was hot all of the time.

Sometimes it is cold in Lilly’s new town. The cold season is in winter. Once in a while it snows. Lilly has never seen snow before. So far her, the snow is exciting as well as very beautiful. Lilly has to wear gloves to keep her hands warm. She also wear a scarf around her neck.

In spring, flowers bloom and the trees turn green with new leaves. Pollen falls on the cars and windowsills and makes Lilly sneeze. People work in their yards and mow their grass.

In summer, Lilly wears her old shorts and sandals- the same ones she used to wear in her old town. It is hot outside, and dogs lie in the shade. Lilly and her friends go to a pool or play in the water sprinkler. Her father cooks hamburgers on the grill for dinner.

Lilly’s favorite season is autumn. In autumn, the leaves on the trees turn yellow, gold, red, and orange. Halloween comes in autumn, and this Lilly’s favorite holiday. Every Halloween, Lilly wears a costume. Last year she wore a mouse costume. This year she will wear a fish costume.

One evening in autumn, Lilly and her mom are on sitting together on the porch. Mom tells Lilly that autumn is also called “fall”. This is a good idea, Lilly thinks, because in the fall all of the leaves fall down from the trees.

Based on information in paragraph 5, which of the following costumes is Lilly most likely to wear next year?

Philadelphia is a city known for many things. It is where the Declaration of independence was signed in 1776, and it was also the first capital of the United States. But one fact about Philadelphia is not so well-known: it is home to nearly 3,000 murals painted on the sides of homes and buildings around the city. In fact, it is said that Philadelphia has more murals than any other city in the world, with the exception of Rome. How did this come to be?

More than 20 years ago, a New Jersey artist named Jane Golden started a program pairing troubled youth with artists to paint murals on a few buildings around the city. Form this small project, something magical happened. The young people involved helped to create magnificent pieces of art, but there were other, perhaps more important benefits. The young people learned to collaborate and get along with many different kinds of people during the various steps required to paint and design a mural. They learned to be responsible, because they needed to follow a schedule to make sure the murals were completed. They also learned to take pride in their community. It is hard for any resident to see the spectacular designs and not feel proud to be a part of Philadelphia.

Take a walk around some of the poorest neighborhoods I Philadelphia, neighborhoods full of broken windows and littered front steps, and you will find beautiful works of art on the sides and fronts of buildings. Of course they murals are not just in poor neighborhoods, but more affluent ones as well. Special buses take tourists to different parts of the city to see the various murals, which range from huge portraits of historical heroes, to cityscapes, to scenes depicting the diverse ethnic groups that call Philadelphia home.

As a result of its success, the mural program created by Jane Golden has now become the nation’s largest public art program and a model for to troubled youth.

According to the passage, the murals in Philadelphia

I draw tourists who want to see them

II instill responsibility and pride in the people who paint them

III are solely designed by the youth who paint them

When we are young, we learn that tigers and sharks are dangerous animals. We might be scared of them because they are big and powerful. As we get older, however, we learn that sometimes the most dangerous animals are also the smallest animals. In fact, the animal that kills the most people every year is one that you have probably killed yourself many times: the mosquito.

While it may seem that all mosquitoes are biters, this is not actually the case. Male mosquitoes eat plant nectar. One the other hand, female mosquitoes feed on animal blood. They need this blood to live and produce eggs. When a female mosquito bites a human being, it transmits a small amount of saliva into the blood. The saliva may or may not contain a deadly disease. The result of the bite can be as minor as an itchy bump or as serious as death.

Because a mosquito can bite many people in the course of its life, it can carry diseases from one person to another very easily. Two of the most deadly diseases carried by mosquitoes are malaria and yellow fever. More than 700 million people become sick from these diseases every year. At least 2 million of these people will die from these diseases.

Many scientists are working on safer and better ways to kill mosquitoes, but so far, there is no sure way to protect everyone in the world from their deadly bites. Mosquito nests can be placed over beds to protect people against being bitten. These nets help people stay safe at night, but they do not kill any mosquitoes. Mosquitoes have many natural enemies like bats, birds, dragonflies, and certain kinds of fish. Bringing more of these animals into places where mosquitoes live might help to cut down the amount of mosquitoes in that area. This is a natural solution, but is does not always work very well. Mosquitoes can also be killed with poisons or sprays. Even though these sprays kill mosquitoes, they may also harm other plants or animals.

Although mosquitoes may not seem as scary as larger, more powerful animals, they are far more dangerous to human beings. But things are changing. It is highly likely that one day scientists will find a way to keep everyone safe from mosquitoes and the diseases they carry.

Based on information in paragraph 3, it can be understood that if you get sick with malaria or yellow fever, your chances of survival are

In the early 1920's, settlers came to Alaska looking for gold. They traveled by boat to the coastal towns of Seward and Knik, and from there by land into the gold fields. The trail they used to travel inland is known today as the lditarod Trail, one of the National Historic Trails designated by the congress of the United States. The Iditarod Trail quickly became a major thoroughfare in Alaska, as the mail and supplies were carried across this trail. People also used it to get from place to place, including the priests, ministers, and judges who had to travel between villages down this trail was via god sled. Once the gold rush ended, many gold-seekers went back to where they had come from, and suddenly there was much less travel on the lditarod Trail. The introduction of the airplane in the late 1920's meant dog teams were mode of transportation, of course airplane carrying the mail and supplies, there was less need for land travel in general. The final blow to the use of the dog teams was the appearance of snowmoniles. By the mid 1960's most Alasknas didn't even know the lditarod Trail existed, or that dos teens had played a crucial role in Alaska's early settlements. Dorothy G.Page, a self-made historian, recognized how few people knew about the former use of sled dogs as working animals and about the Iditarod Trail's role in Alaska's colorful history. To she came up with the idea to have a god sled race over the Iditarod Trail. She presented her idea to an enthusiastic musher, as dog sled drivers are known, named Joe Redington, Sr. Soon the pages and the Redintons were working together to promote the idea of the Iditarod race. Many people worked to make the first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race a reality in 1967. The Aurora Dog Mushers Club, along with men from the Adult Camp in Sutton, helped clear years of overgrowth from the first nine miles of the Iditarod Trail. To raise interest in the race, a $25,000 purse was offered, with Joe Redington donating one acre of his land to help raise the funds. The short race, approximately 27 miles long, was put on a second time in 1969. After these first two successful races, the goal was to lengthen the race a little further to the ghost town of Iditarod by 1973. However in 1972, the U.S. Army reopened the trail as a winter exercise, and so in 1973, the decision was made to take the race all the way to the city of Nome-over 1,000 miles. There were who believed it could bot be done and that it wad crazy to send a bunch out into vast, uninhabited Alaskan wilderness. But the race went! 22 mushers finished that year, and to date over 400 people have completed it.

The primary purpose of this passage is to

Each nation has its own peculiar character which distinguishes it from others. But the people of the world have more points in which they are all like each other than points in which they are different. One type of person that is common in every country is the one who always tried to do as little as he possibly can and to get as much in return as he can. His opposite, the man who is in the habit of doing more than is strictly necessary and is ready to accept what is offered in return, is rare everywhere.

Both these types are usually unconscious of their character. The man who avoids effort is always talking about his ‘rights’; he appears to think that society owes him a pleasant easy life. The man who is always doing more than his sheer talks of ‘duties’ feels that the individual is in debt to society, and not society to the individual. As a result of their view, neither of these men thinks that he behaves at all strangely.

The man who talks about his ‘rights’:

When her grandmother’s health began to deteriorate in the fall of 1994, Mary would make the drive from Washington, DC to Winchester every few days.

She hated highway driving, finding it ugly and monotonous. She preferred to take meandering back roads to her grandmother’s hospital. When she drove through the rocky town of Harpers Ferry, the beauty of the rough waters churning at the intersection of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers always captivated her.

Toward the end of her journey, Mary had to get on highway 81. It was here that she discovered a surprising bit of beauty during one of her trips. Along the median of the highway, there was a long stretch of wildflowers. They were thin and delicate and purple, and swayed in the wind as if whispering poems to each other.

The first time she saw the flowers, Mary was seized by an uncontrollable urge to pull over on the highway and yank a bunch from the soil. She carried them into her grandmother’s room when she arrived at the hospital and placed them in a water pitcher by her bed. For a moment her grandmother seemed more lucid than usual. She thanked Mary for the flowers, commented on their beauty and asked where she had gotten them. Mary was overjoyed by the ability of the flowers to wake something up inside her ailing grandmother.

Afterwards, Mary began carrying scissors in the car during her trips to visit her grandmother. She would quickly glide onto the shoulder, jump out of the car, and clip a bunch of flowers. Each time Mary placed the flowers in the pitcher, her grandmother’s eyes would light up and they would have a splendid conversation.

One morning in late October, Mary got a call that her grandmother had taken a turn for the worse. Mary was in such a hurry to get to her grandmother that she sped past her flower spot. She decided to turn around head several miles back, and cut a bunch. Mary arrived at the hospital to find her grandmother very weak and unresponsive. She placed flowers in the pitcher and sat down. She felt a squeeze on her fingers. It was the last conversation they had.

What do the flowers come to signify most for Mary?

Arrowheads, which are ancient hunting tools, are often themselves ‘hunted’ for their interesting value both as artifacts and as art. Some of the oldest arrowheads in the United States date back 12,000 years. They are not very difficult to find. You need only to walk with downcast eyes in a field that has been recently tilled for the spring planting season, and you might find one.

Arrowheads are tiny stones or pieces of wood, bone, or metal which have been sharpened in order to create a tipped weapon used in hunting. The material is honed to an edge, usually in a triangular fashion, and is brought to a deadly tip. On the edge opposite the tip is a flared tail. Though designs vary depending on the region, purpose, and era of the arrowhead’s origin, the tails serve the same purpose. The tail of the arrowhead is meant to be strapped onto a shaft, which is a straight wooden piece such as a spear or an arrow. When combined, the arrowhead point and the shaft become a lethal projectile weapon to be thrown by arm or shot with a bow at prey.

Indian arrowheads are important artifacts that give archeologists (scientists who study past human societies) clues about the lives of Native Americans. By analyzing an arrowhead’s shape, they can determine the advancement of tool technologies among certain Native American groups. By determining the origin of the arrowhead material (bone, rock, wood, or metal), they can trace the patterns of travel and trade of the hunters. By examine the location of the arrowheads, archeologists can map out hunting grounds and other social patterns.

Arrowheads are commonly found along riverbanks or near creek beds because animals drawn to natural water sources to sustain life were regularly found drinking along the banks. For this reason, riverbeds were a prime hunting ground for the Native Americans. Now, dry and active riverbeds are prime hunting grounds for arrowhead collectors.

Indian arrowheads are tiny pieces of history that fit in the palm of your hand. They are diary entries in the life of a hunter. They are museum pieces that hide in the dirt. They are symbolic of the eternal struggle between life and death.

Which of the following best summarizes the main idea of paragraph 3?