Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension
- There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Her nonprofit, Archeologia Arborea, is helping farmers and governments around the world preserve and even bring back into cultivation all manner of forgotten fruits.
Paragraph: _(1)_. Dalla Ragione has spent more than a decade scouring the masterpieces of 15th- and 16th-century art for answers to one of the great questions of Italian agriculture: Whatever happened to the boisterous selection of fruits that, for centuries, were a celebrated part of Italian cuisine and culture? _(2)_. Slowly and indefatigably, she has been rediscovering those fruits, first in archives and paintings and then, incredibly, in small forgotten plots across Italy. (3) . In the process, Dalla Ragione has become a globally renowned fruit detective, by recognizing in her country’s Renaissance artworks not only exceptional examples of cultural patrimony but also hidden messages from a bygone era of genetic abundance that can offer clues about how to recover what was seemingly lost. _(4)_.
- Option 4
- Option 3
- Option 1
- Option 2
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There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: When he finally does, the humans he meets flee from him, screaming, and then he looks into a mirror to see a hideous monster.
Paragraph: For Poe’s contemporary, Nathaniel Hawthorne, by contrast, the wilderness offered characters like Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl, a place to live authentically, in a state of nature, away from the unjust constraints of Puritan society. _(1)_ This individualistic fantasy of getting away from it all, of being unfettered by the corrupting demands and restrictions of community, still runs strong through American culture. Like Huck Finn, we long to escape our messes by lighting out for the territory. _(2)_. Poe was a stranger to this dream. His characters get stuck, rot, and go mad. Or worse. (3)_. Poe’s literary heir, H.P. Lovecraft, once wrote a story, “The Outsider,” whose narrator struggles mightily to get out of the dismal castle where he has lived alone for as long as he can remember. (4) .
- Option 4
- Option 3
- Option 1
- Option 2
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Sentence: The locus of offense shifted from the honor of the deity to the honor of His followers.
Paragraph: _(1)_. Though it may appear anachronistic in a secular democracy, Western liberalism has for much of its history preserved the concept of blasphemy, albeit with significant modifications.
_(2)_.Leviticus forbids it not because of how it made the Israelites feel but because of how it made God feel. _(3)_. But in America, England, and other modern nations, blasphemy came to be seen as legally culpable because it could wound religious feelings, and in so doing provoke tumults and even killings.
_(4)_. Keeping the peace provided a legal warrant for restricting irreligious speech: blaspheme the name of the Lord, and the congregation might riot.
- Option 2
- Option 1
- Option 3
- Option 4
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Sentence: He’s a master of the first person in both its singular and plural variants, and he knows just where to insert an apt example or a suggestive aphorism.
Paragraph: Much of the interest of reading the exchange, two decades on, is in watching each writer illustrate his propositions with his prose (1) . Mulhern’s characteristic mode is the Olympian abstraction, in keeping with his insistence on a philosophical perspective. “Culture,” he asserts, “is no less but also no more than the instance of meaning in social relations.” (2) . Collini, by contrast, favors a more intimate tone. _(3)_. There’s a telling moment when Mulhern dismisses a comment of Collini’s as too localized and specific, remarking, “This is criticism as home truths. Home truths have force but little scope.” “But surely,” Collini retorts, “the point about ‘home truths’ is that they have precisely the scope that is appropriate to the occasion: that is what makes them effective.” _(4)_. That’s their difference in a nutshell.
- Option 2
- Option 1
- Option 3
- Option 4
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Sentence: CU traits—a lack of empathy and generally low emotional response—can be caused or exacerbated by child abuse or neglect, but genetic predispositions alone can also spur their development.
Paragraph: _(1)_. Conduct disorder is characterized by defiance of rules, aggression toward people or animals, and ongoing cruelty such as bullying. It affects between 2 and 5 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 12 and up to 9 percent of teenagers. _(2)_. The type that Alex turned out to have comes with so-called callous-unemotional (CU) traits and is seen in up to 2 percent of children. _(3)_. When they appear as early as they did in Alex’s case, they are overwhelmingly driven by genetics and more likely to develop into adult psychopathy. (At least one relative on each side of Alex’s biological family seems to have some of these traits.). _(4)_.
- Option 3
- Option 1
- Option 2
- Option 4
Answers And Explanations:
Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension
Q.1) B
Explanation:
The sentence fits best at blank 3 because “helping farmers and governments around the world” links directly to the next sentence, which calls her a “globally renowned fruit detective.” Placing it here creates a seamless connection between her international work and her global reputation.
Q.2) A
Explanation:
The sentence describes the narrator finally escaping, only to be seen as a monster. This fits best at blank 4 because it completes Lovecraft’s story example, which was introduced just before.
Q.3) D
Explanation:
The sentence fits best at blank 4 because it directly follows the shift described in the previous sentence — from blasphemy being about God’s honor to being about His followers’ honor. This then leads naturally into the final sentence about keeping the peace and preventing riots.
Q.4) C
Explanation:
The sentence describes a writer who is a master of the first person and knows how to use apt examples and aphorisms. This fits blank 3 because it directly follows the mention of Collini’s “more intimate tone” and precedes the specific exchange that illustrates this mastery.
Q.5) A
Explanation: