Practice Test Reading Comprehension
Practice Test Reading Comprehension
Direction: Choose the letter of the statement which best answers the question at the end of each
passage.
1. Wages refer to the total earnings of a person for doing a certain kind of work in a given period of
time. They are paid on an hourly basis or a product by piece rate; hence, the pay rate may be based on
time, output, or even a combination of these two. Which may be the best title for this passage?
A. Wages vary C. Types of wages
B. Services are wage-oriented D. Combination of wage is better
2. One chilly autumn morning in 1945, five thousand shoppers crowded the pavement outside Gimbels
Department Store in New York City. The day before, Gimbels had taken out a full-page newspaper
advertisement in New York Times, announcing the sale of the first ballpoint pens in United States. The
new writing instrument was heralded as “fantastic…miraculous…guaranteed to use for two years
without refilling!” Within six hours Gimbels had sold its entire stock of ten thousand ballpoints at $12.50
each – approximately $130 at today’s prices. Which would be the best title for this paragraph?
A. Great Profit for Gimbels C. Big Claims Bring Big Crowds
B. The First to Sell the Ballpoint Pen D. The Making of the First Ballpoint Pen
3. The failed July 27, 2003 mutiny was believed by many as plan by the Magdalo Group to take over the
government. It was viewed as a desperate attempt by the mutineers who were supported by influential
and politically motivated men who financed the mutiny, according to the Feliciano Commission. The
action was found to be unconstitutional as it violated both the article of War and the Revised Penal
Code. Such act can lead to either Court Martial or Civilian Proceedings or even both. Which may be the
best title for this passage?
A. Coup d’ etat C. Failed Mutiny
B. Illegal Soldiers Uprising D. Articles of War and Punishment
4. One such disease, witches broom, devastated the cacao plantations in the Bahia region of Brazil.
Brazil was the third largest producer of cacao beans but in the 1980s their yields fell by 75%. According
to Petithuguenin, ‘if a truly devastating disease like witches broom reached West Africa (the world’s
largest producer), it could be catastrophic. If another producer has the misfortune to falter, the ripples
will be felt the world over. In the United States, for example, imported cacao is the linchpin of an
$8.6 billion domestic chocolate industry that in turn supports the nation’s dairy and nut industries: 20%
of all dairy products in the US go to confectionery. What does the writer imply when he said “the ripples
would be felt the world over”?
A. The possibility of disease spreading to other crops
B. The effects of the economy on world chocolate growers
C. The link between Brazilian and African growers
D. The impact of the collapse in chocolate production could have on other industries
5. One analogy of these results might be the question of who can type a paragraph ‘better’: a 16- year-
old who glides along 60 words per minute but has to double back to correct a number of mistakes or a
70-year-old who strikes keys at only 40 words per minute but spends less time fixing errors? In the end,
if ‘better’ is defined as completing a clean paragraph, both people may end up taking the same amount
of time. What point is the analogy used to illustrate?
A. Accuracy can improve over time.
B. Accuracy is less important than speed.
C. Working faster does not always save time.
D. Working faster id better than working slower.
6. “Necessity is the mother of invention” is an old saying which holds water. A new machine, system or
a device is created when there is a felt need for it. People will buy it especially if it’s reasonably priced.
Hence, there is a potential market for it. Consequently, more developed countries spend so much to
discover solutions to man’s insatiable quest for something. Ironically inventions are given impetus when
the inventor no longer exists. However, it’s now gratifying to know that more attention is given to
inventions that benefits humanity the most. The paragraph stresses that__________
A. People who need products
B. A new device creates new invention
C. The product is an important commodity
D. A market demand for a product creates its invention and production
7. Credit and collection letter are written with the sensitive feeling of the costumers in mind. When a
costumer fails to pay his debt promptly, a simple form of collection letter is written as a reminder that
payment is overdue. If no response is received, then a formal one is written, followed by a legal action as
the last remedy. The paragraph tells about ______________
A. The costumer who fails to remit payments
B. How not to be sued for non-payment of credits
C. The need for writing credit and collection letter
D. How and when credit and collections are made
8. The main difficulty faced by the research group was to find an agronomist who could grow the perfect
crop of sunflowers. The sunflower canopy had to be complete, with no visible soil, so that the
thermometers would only measure the temperature of the plants and not the surrounding
environment. Eight varieties of sunflower were examined. The data collected by the robot was used by
the research team to determine which variety has the highest transpiration efficiency. The paragraph
tells about ____________
A. How to grow the perfect crop of sunflowers
B. The precise growing conditions required to allow the experiment to work
C. How to measure the temperature of plants and not the surrounding environment
D. The difficulty of looking for an agronomist who could grow the perfect crop of sunflowers
9. However, in conditions of drought, the plants that can use the available water efficiency and lose less
to the environment will be more likely to thrive and, in a commercial sense become more profitable.
These plants are classified as having high transpiration efficiency. When plants transpire, the leaves
become cooler due to evaporation. Therefore, by measuring the temperature of the leaves, scientists
can determine how much water being lost due to transpiration. What is the paragraph about?
A. Profitability of plants that thrive in drought
B. Plants that use available water during drought
C. The purpose of taking the temperature of the plants
D. Transpiration efficiency of plants and the profit they bring
10. Computerized tests support the notion that accuracy can offset speed. In one so-called distraction
exercise, subjects were told to look at a screen, wait for an arrow that pointed in a direction to appear,
and then use the mouse to click on the arrow as soon as it appeared on the screen. Just before the
correct symbol appeared, however, the computer displayed numerous other arrows aimed in various
other directions. Although younger subjects cut through the confusion faster when the correct arrow
suddenly pops up, they more frequently clicked on the incorrect arrows in their haste. In the tests, the
subjects were asked to __________?
A. Type a text as quickly as possible
B. React to a particular symbol on screen
C. Click on every arrow that appeared on the screen
D. Move an arrow in different directions on screen
11. For a stalking predator, the element of surprise is crucial. And for jumping spiders that sneak onto
other spiders’ webs to prey on the owners, it can be the difference between having lunch and becoming
it. Now, zoologist have discovered the secret of these spiders’ tactics: creeping forward when their
prey’s web is vibrating. Which one of the following information may be found in this paragraph?
A. Reasons for preying on other spiders
B. Zoologists who have discovered the secret
C. Difference between predator and prey
D. Reasons why concealment is important to preying spiders.
12. Namsangol Traditional Folk Village is a museum in Korea that is located just north of Namsan Park.
This recreation of a small village depicts the architecture and gardens of the Chosun Dynasty (1393-
1910). There are five restored traditional houses from that era. A large pavilion overlooks a beautiful
pond and an outdoor theater hosts dance and drama performances on weekends. There is also a hall
displaying traditional handicrafts and a kiosk selling souvenirs. Recently, a time capsule containing 600
representing the lifestyle of modern-day people of Seoul was buried to celebrate the city’s 600 th
anniversary. Which of the following statement is true about the paragraph?
A. This museum is the only one of its kind in Korea.
B. This museum is where most people of Korea watch plays.
C. The museum also functions as an occasional venue for performing arts.
D. This is the only museum that displays traditional handicrafts and souvenir items.
13. Established in 1988, the Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art is located on the former site of
Kyonghee-gong palace. There are four floors with six exhibition halls. The collections include more than
170 Korean paintings, Western painting and prints. Spend a peaceful and relaxing day amidst beautiful
works of art. If you are an art enthusiast and would like to learn, the museum offers art courses every
Friday. Which of the following idea is found in this passage?
A. You can learn about natural history in this museum
B. A historical building once stood where this museum stands today.
C. This is a high rise museum with many exhibition halls and innumerable collections.
D. This museum also offers a place where one can stay, have peace and find relaxation.
14. People who are clearly successful in their place of work do badly in standard IQ (academic
intelligence) tests. Entrepreneurs and those who have built large business from scratch are frequently
found out to be high school or college drop outs. IQ as a concept is more than 100 years old. It was
supposed to explain why some people excelled at a wide variety of intellectual tasks. But IQ ran into
trouble when it became apparent that some people with high IQ scores failed to achieve in real life what
was predicted by their tests. Emotional intelligence (EQ), which emerged a decade ago, was supposed to
explain its deficit. It suggested that to succeed in real life, people need both emotional and intellectual
skills. What is the ‘deficit’ referred in the paragraph?
A. EQ tests were unable to predict success at work.
B. High IQ scores did not always lead to personal success.
C. People with high EQ scores could not cope well with real life.
D. People with high IQ scores could not score well in EQ tests.
15. The Maya and Aztecs revered this chocolate, which they frothed up with water and spices to make
bracing concoctions. It was an edible treasure, offered up to their gods, used as money and hoarded like
gold. Long after Spanish explorers introduced the beverage in the sixteenth century. Chocolates retain
the aura of aristocratic luxury. In 1753, the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus gave the cacao tree genus
name Theobroma, which means “food of the gods.” Which of the following may be found in this
paragraph?
A. Origin of the chocolate drink
B. Preparing the chocolate drink
C. Sacredness of the chocolate drink
D. Details of an ancient chocolate drink
16. Today 70%of all chocolate beans come from West Africa and Central Africa. In many parts, growers
practice so called pioneer farming. They strip patches of forest of all but the tallest canopy trees and
then they put in cacao, using temporary plantings of banana to shade the cacao while it’s young. With
luck, groves like this may produce annual yields of 50-60 pods per tree for 25-30 years. But eventually,
pests, pathogens and soil exhaustion take their toil and yields diminish. Then the growers move on and
clear a new forest patch- unless farmers of other crops get there first. Which of the following details can
be found in this paragraph?
A. All the countries that grow cacao
B. How to yield sufficient cacao produce
C. The typical lifespan and crop size of a cacao plantation
D. Quality of soil appropriate for planting cacao in tropical countries
17. In the last 200 years, the bean has been thoroughly democratized- transformed from an elite drink
into ubiquitous candy bars, cocoa powders and confections. Today chocolate is becoming more popular
worldwide, with new markets opening up in Eastern Europe and Asia. This is both good news and bad
because, although farmers are producing record numbers of cacao bean, this is not enough, some
researchers worry, to keep pace with global demand. Cacao is also facing some alarming problems.
Which of the following ideas may be found in this paragraph?
A. The number of farmers producing cacao beans worldwide
B. How candy bars, cocoa powders and confections are made
C. How farmers are able to keep pace with the global demand for chocolate
D. A brief summary of how the chocolate industry has changed in modern times
18. In order to track temporal hours during the day, inventors created sundials, which indicate time by
the length of the sun’s shadow. The sundial’s counterpart, the water clock, was designed to measure
temporal hours at night. One of the first water clocks was a basin with a small hole near the bottom
through which the water dripped out. The falling water level denoted the passing hour as it dipped
below hour lines inscribed on the inner surface. Although these devices performed satisfactorily around
the Mediterranean, they could not always be depended on in the cloudy and often freezing weather of
northern Europe. Which of the following best presents the main idea of this paragraph?
A. A description of how the earliest people kept time
B. A description of the origin of the earliest time keeping device
C. A description of how the early time keeping devices were made and kept
D. A description of an early time keeping invention affected by cold temperatures
19. The advent of the mechanical clock meant that although it could be adjusted to maintain temporal
hours, it was naturally suited keeping equal ones. With these, however, arose the question of when to
begin counting, and so, in the early 14 th century, a number of systems evolved. The schemes that divided
the day into 24 equal parts varied according to the start of the count. Italian hours began at sunset,
Babylonian hours at sunrise, astronomical hours at midday and “great clock” hours, used for some large
public clocks in Germany, at midnight. Eventually, these were superseded by “small clock” or French
hours which splits the day into 12-hour periods commencing at midnight. Which idea is found in this
paragraph?
A. The difference of the length of days in different countries of the world
B. The importance of mechanical clocks as compared with Asian time keeping devices
C. Details of simultaneous efforts of different societies to calculate time using uniform hours
D. Details of the counting system of various countries in ancient times and their mechanical
clocks
20. In the 1940s, ATC centers could and did take advantage of the newly developed radar and improve
radio communication brought about by the Second World War, but the system remain rudimentary. It
was only after the creation of the FAA that full scale regulation of America’s airspace took place, and this
was fortuitous, for the advent of the jet engine suddenly resulted in a large number of very fast planes,
reducing pilots margin of error and practically demanding some set of rules to keep everyone well
separated and operating safely in the air. Which is the best heading for this passage?
A. First Step towards ATC
B. Aviation disaster prompt action
C. Two coincidental development
D. Setting rules to weather conditions
21. Rudimentary air traffic control (ATC) existed well before the Grand Canyon disaster. As early as the
1920s, the earliest traffic controllers manually guided aircraft in the vicinity of the airports, using lights
and flags, while beacons and flashing lights were placed along cross-country routes to establish the
earliest airways. However, their purely visual system was useless in bad weather, and by the 1930s radio
communication was coming into use for ATC. The first region to have something approximately todays
ATC was New York City, with other major metropolitan areas following soon after. Which is the best
heading for this passage?
A. What is ATC?
B. First steps towards ATC
C. The first country to have ATC
D. How to make use of ATC
22. Many people think that ATC consists of a row of controllers sitting in front of their radar screen at
the nation’s airports, telling arriving and departing what to do. This is a very incomplete part of the
picture. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) realized that the airspace over the United States
would at any time have many kinds of planes flying for many different purposes, in a variety of weather
conditions, and the same kind of structure was needed to accommodate all of them. Which heading
would best fit in this passage?
A. FAA Regulations
B. First Steps to ATC
C. The ATC and the FAA
D. An Oversimplified View
23.This book is a narrative history of climatic shifts during the past ten centuries, and some of the ways
in which people in Europe adapted to them. Part 1 describes the Medieval Warm Period, roughly 900 to
1200. During these three centuries, Norse voyagers from Northern Europe explored northern seas,
settled Greenland and visited North America. It was not a time of uniform warmth, for then as always
since the Great Ice Age, there were constant shifts in rainfall and temperature. Mean European
temperatures were about the same as today perhaps slightly cooler. Which heading would best fit this
passage?
A. Study of Climatic Shifts
B. Narrative History of Climatic Shifts
C. A Study Covering a Thousand Years
D. Climatic shifts in different countries of the world
24. Odors are also essential cues in social bonding. One of the respondents to the survey believed that
there is no true emotional bonding without touching and smelling a loved one. In fact, infants recognize
the odors of their mothers soon after birth and adults can often identify their children or spouses by
scent. In one well-known test, women and men are able to distinguish by smell alone clothing worn by
their marriage partners from similar clothing worn by other people. Most of the subjects probably never
have given much thought to odor as cue for identifying family members before being involved in the
test, but as the experiment revealed, even when not consciously considered, smells register. Which
heading best fits this passage?
A. The Interpretation of Smells
B. The Effects of Smell in People
C. The Importance of the Sense of Smell
D. The Role of Smell in Personal Relationship
25.The soldiers were relieved to find a figure wearing the same uniform come out of the hole. It had
been more than a month since they’ve met another friendly face. They greeted him and he greeted
them back. It was at that point that they knew they were saved.
Who did the soldiers see come out of the hole?
A. A fellow soldier C. . An insurgent
B. An Enemy D. A civilian
For items 27-29, Read the selection below then answer the questions that follow.
With the game tied, Jeremy perfectly read the pass and took the ball from midair. In just a
second or two, he already dribbled it to the middle of the court. When he got there, he found that all
defenders were behind him and he had a clear path to the basket. Knowing that the game is tied, he did
not need to look back to know that they were running after him. He knew he could run from half-court
to the hoop in less than five steps. He ran as fast as he could knowing that his fast break could give his
team the lead. He did not care about the time. He has done this a thousand times before and one more
layup could win his team and his school the state championship.
Jeremy knew the motion, with two more steps left, he took the ball and held it with both hands.
One step, two step and jump, he was almost there. As he laid the ball ever so delicately to hit the
backboard, a shadow swiftly passed through and a hand entered his field of vision. It took him a
moment to realize that it was an arm aiming to block the shot. “Can he reach it?” Jeremy thought. The
defender almost had it, but his fingers were just less than a centimeter short.
In later life, Joseph Pulitzer collapsed from overwork, and lost his sight. He became dedicated to
improving the quality of journalism in America, and donated $1 million to Columbia University to found
a school of journalism. However, his most significant contribution was the establishment of the Pulitzer
prizes in his will.
These prizes for excellence in journalism have been given every year since 1917 by Columbia
University. Since 1942 there have been extra categories for press photography, and later still for
criticism, feature writing and commentary. The prize was originally for $500, but today the winners of
the prize receive a gold medal. However, the real value of the prize is that it confirms that the journalist
who has received the award is the best American journalist of the year - a fact that is worth much more
than $500 to the journalist and to the newspaper that employs him or her.
Croatia dominated the game early on and frequently threatened to score first. However, France
got a free kick after 18 minutes on the edge of Croatia's penalty area. The kick was deflected in for an
own goal by the Croatian forward Mario Mandzukic. Croatia deservedly equalized with a beautiful piece
of control and a quality shot from Ivan Perisic. France restored its lead from the penalty spot after the
referee reviewed the video evidence of a handball, which many pundits say was not handball. Two shots
from outside Croatia's penalty area from Paul Pogba and Mbappe extended France's lead. An error from
France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris in the 69th minute gave Croatia hope, but France held on for victory.
Questions 43-46
43. Which of the following statements best describes the central theme of the poem?
A. Love is unconditional and eternal.
B. Love requires many sacrifices.
C. You give up everything for the person you love.
D. True freedom comes from freedom of the soul.
44. The narrator describes her soul…
A. stretching and becoming thinner and weaker.
B. searching for her loved one’s soul.
C. searching for a divine presence and a greater meaning to life
D. stretching to its greatest capacity to show how much she loves “thee”.
45. Which of the following is NOT a statement the narrator in the poem would likely agree with?
A. Her love is limitless and impossible to measure.
B. Her love is pure, strong, and unconditional.
C. Her love stems from childhood grief and thus is flawed.
D. She will never stop loving “thee” even in the afterlife.
46. Which of the following best summarizes how the speaker quantifies her love?
A. The speaker quantifies her love in specific numbers and instances.
B. The speaker refuses to quantify her love, which is uncountable.
C. The speaker compares her love to great distances, grand ideas, strong emotions, etc.
D. The speaker talks about her love only in terms of religious ideas like the soul.
47. What do the lines 13-14 “If God Choose/I shall but love thee better afterlife” reveal about the
narrator’s perspective or beliefs?
A. The narrator believes she and her loved one shall be together in the after life.
B. The narrator fears she will be separated from her loved one after death.
C. The narrator believes her love is so strong that it will not fade even in death but grow
stronger.
D. The narrator believes and destiny and that love conquers all.
Questions 48-50
Invictus
William Ernest Henley - 1849-1903
48. Which of the following best describes a central theme of the text?
A. Identity is important to building self-confidence.
B. Independence means refusing to follow anyone else’s rules or laws.
C. Resilience is the ability to keep going and to refuse to give up.
D. Sacrifice is necessary to make someone a hero.
49. Given the context of the poem, what does the title word “Invictus” most likely mean?
A. careless C. lucky
B. undefeated D. unfortunate
50. Which of the following best describes the speaker in the poem of Invictus?
A. A happy person who has just received good news
B. An angry person who has experienced hard time
C. A resilient person who has overcome difficult situations.
D. A mean person who is not interested in the lives of others.
51. What is the meaning of the word menace as it is used in the poem?
A. love C. threat
B. help D. happiness
Prepared by: