Reading Midterm Revision - Passages
Reading Midterm Revision - Passages
Reading Midterm Revision - Passages
MIDTERM PRACTICE
READING PASSAGE 1: Read the following passage and answer the questions 1-10.
Before the mid-nineteenth century, people in the United States ate most foods only in season. Drying,
smoking, and salting could preserve meat for a short time, but the availability of fresh meat, like that of fresh
milk, was very limited; there was no way to prevent spoilage. But in 1810 a French inventor named Nicolas
Appert developed the cooking-and-sealing process of canning. And in the 1850’s an American named Gail Borden
developed a means of condensing and preserving milk. Canned goods and condensed milk became more common
during the 1860’s, but supplies remained low because cans had to be made by hand. By 1880, however, inventors
had fashioned stamping and soldering machines that mass-produced cans from tinplate. Suddenly all kinds of
food could be preserved and bought at all times of the year.
Other trends and inventions had also helped make it possible for Americans to vary their daily diets.
Growing urban populations created demand that encouraged fruit and vegetable farmers to raise more produce.
Railroad refrigerator cars enabled growers and meat packers to ship perishables great distances and to preserve
them for longer periods. Thus, by the 1890’s, northern city dwellers could enjoy southern and western
strawberries, grapes, and tomatoes, previously available for a month at most, for up to six months of the year. In
addition, increased use of iceboxes enabled families to store perishables. An easy means of producing ice
commercially had been invented in the 1870’s, and by 1900 the nation had more than two thousand commercial
ice plants, most of which made home deliveries. The icebox became a fixture in most homes and remained so
until the mechanized refrigerator replaced it in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Almost everyone now had a more diversified diet. Some people continued to eat mainly foods that were
heavy in starches or carbohydrates, and not everyone could afford meat. Nevertheless, many families could take
advantage of previously unavailable fruits, vegetables, and dairy products to achieve more varied fare.
READING PASSAGE 2: Read the following passage and answer the questions 11-20.
All mammals feed their young. Beluga whale mothers, for example, nurse their calves for some twenty
months, until they are about to give birth again and their young are able to find their own food. The behavior of
feeding of the young is built into the reproductive system. It is a nonelective part of parental care and the
defining feature of a mammal, the most important thing that mammals - whether marsupials, platypuses, spiny
anteaters, or placental mammals - have in common.
But not all animal parents, even those that tend their offspring to the point of hatching or birth, feed their
young. Most egg-guarding fish do not, for the simple reason that their young are so much smaller than the
parents and eat food that is also much smaller than the food eaten by adults. In reptiles, the crocodile mother
protects her young after they have hatched and takes them down to the water, where they will find food, but she
does not actually feed them. Few insects feed their young after hatching, but some make other arrangement,
provisioning their cells and nests with caterpillars and spiders that they have paralyzed with their venom and
stored in a state of suspended animation so that their larvae might have a supply of fresh food when they hatch.
For animals other than mammals, then, feeding is not intrinsic to parental care. Animals add it to their
reproductive strategies to give them an edge in their lifelong quest for descendants. The most vulnerable
moment in any animal’s life is when it first finds itself completely on its own, when it must forage and fend for
itself. Feeding postpones that moment until a young animal has grown to such a size that it is better able to cope.
Young that are fed by their parents become nutritionally independent at a much greater fraction of their full adult
size. And in the meantime, those young are shielded against the vagaries of fluctuating of difficult-to-find
supplies. Once a species does take the step of feeding its young, the young become totally dependent on the
extra effort. If both parents are removed, the young generally do not survive.
READING PASSAGE 3: Read the following passage and answer the questions 21-30.
If food is allowed to stand for some time, it putrefies. When the putrefied material is examined
microscopically, it is found to be teeming with bacteria. Where do these bacteria come from, since they are not
seen in fresh food? Even until the mid-nineteenth century, many people believed that such microorganisms
originated by spontaneous generation, a hypothetical process by which living organisms develop from nonliving
matter.
The most powerful opponent of the theory of spontaneous generation was the French chemist and
microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895). Pasteur showed that structures present in air closely resemble the
microorganisms seen in putrefying materials. He did this by passing air through guncotton filters, the fibers of
which stop solid particles. After the guncotton was dissolved in a mixture of alcohol and ether, the particles that it
had trapped fell to the bottom of the liquid and were examined on a microscope slide. Pasteur found that in
ordinary air these exists a variety of solid structures ranging in size from 0.01 mm to more than 1.0 mm. Many of
these bodies resembled the reproductive structures of common molds, single-celled animals, and various other
microbial cells. As many as 20 to 30 of them were found in fifteen liters of ordinary air, and they could not be
distinguished from the organisms found in much larger numbers in putrefying materials. Pasteur concluded that
the organisms found in putrefying materials originated from the organized bodies present in the air. He
postulated that these bodies are constantly being deposited on all objects.
Pasteur showed that if a nutrient solution was sealed in a glass flask and heated to boiling to destroy all
the living organisms contaminating it, it never putrefied. The proponents of spontaneous generation declared
that fresh air was necessary for spontaneous generation and that the air inside the sealed flask was affected in
some way by heating so that it would no longer support spontaneous generation. Pasteur constructed a swan-
necked flask in which putrefying materials could be heated to boiling, but air could reenter. The bends in the neck
prevented microorganisms from getting in the flask. Material sterilized in such a flask did not putrefy.
READING PASSAGE 4: Read the following passage and answer the questions 21-30.
No student of a foreign language needs to be told that grammar is complex. By changing word sequences
and by adding a range of auxiliary verbs and suffixes, we are able to communicate tiny variations in meaning. We
can turn a statement into a question, state whether an action has taken place or is soon to take place, and
perform many other word tricks to convey subtle differences in meaning. Nor is this complexity inherent to the
English language. All languages, even those of so-called ‘primitive’ tribes have clever grammatical components.
The Cherokee pronoun system, for example, can distinguish between ‘you and I’, ‘several other people and I’ and
‘you, another person and I’. In English, all these meanings are summed up in the one, crude pronoun ‘we’.
Grammar is universal and plays a part in every language, no matter how widespread it is. So the question which
has baffled many linguists is - who created grammar?
At first, it would appear that this question is impossible to answer. To find out how grammar is created,
someone needs to be present at the time of a language’s creation, documenting its emergence. Many historical
linguists are able to trace modern complex languages back to earlier languages, but in order to answer the
question of how complex languages are actually formed, the researcher needs to observe how languages are
started from scratch. Amazingly, however, this is possible.
Some of the most recent languages evolved due to the Atlantic slave trade. At that time, slaves from a
number of different ethnicities were forced to work together under colonizer’s rule. Since they had no
opportunity to learn each other’s languages, they developed a make-shift language called a pidgin. Pidgins are
strings of words copied from the language of the landowner. They have little in the way of grammar, and in many
cases it is difficult for a listener to deduce when an event happened, and who did what to whom. [A] Speakers
need to use circumlocution in order to make their meaning understood. [B] Interestingly, however, all it takes for
a pidgin to become a complex language is for a group of children to be exposed to it at the time when they learn
their mother tongue. [C] Slave children did not simply copy the strings of words uttered by their elders, they
adapted their words to create a new, expressive language. [D] Complex grammar systems which emerge from
pidgins are termed creoles, and they are invented by children.
Further evidence of this can be seen in studying sign languages for the deaf. Sign languages are not simply
a series of gestures; they utilise the same grammatical machinery that is found in spoken languages. Moreover,
there are many different languages used worldwide. The creation of one such language was documented quite
recently in Nicaragua. Previously, all deaf people were isolated from each other, but in 1979 a new government
introduced schools for the deaf. Although children were taught speech and lip reading in the classroom, in the
playgrounds they began to invent their own sign system, using the gestures that they used at home. It was
basically a pidgin. Each child used the signs differently, and there was no consistent grammar. However, children
who joined the school later, when this inventive sign system was already around, developed a quite different sign
language. Although it was based on the signs of the older children, the younger children’s language was more
fluid and compact, and it utilised a large range of grammatical devices to clarify meaning. What is more, all the
children used the signs in the same way. A new creole was born. Some linguists believe that many of the world’s
most established languages were creoles at first. The English past tense – ed ending may have evolved from the
verb ‘do’. ‘It ended’ may once have been ’It enddid’. Therefore, it would appear that even the most widespread
languages were partly created by children. Children appear to have innate grammatical machinery in their brains,
which springs to life when they are first trying to make sense of the world around them. Their minds can serve to
create logical, complex structures, even when there is no grammar present for them to copy.