reading-comprehension

Reading Comprehension

Reading Comprehension: English Reading Comprehension Exercises with Answers, Sample Passages for Reading Comprehension Test for GRE, CAT, IELTS preparation

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English Reading Comprehension Test Questions and Answers. Improve your ability to read and comprehend English Passages

Q261. > A Marxist sociologist has argued that racism stems from the class > struggle that is unique to the capitalist system – that racial > prejudice is generated by capitalists as a means of controlling > workers. His thesis works relatively well when applied to > discrimination against Blacks in the United States, but his definition > of racial prejudice as “radically-based negative prejudgments against > a group generally accepted as a race in any given region of ethnic > competition,” can be interpreted as also including hostility towards > such ethnic groups as the Chinese in California and the Jews in > medieval Europe. However, since prejudice against these latter peoples > was not inspired by capitalists, he has no reason that such > antagonisms were not really based on race. He disposes thusly (albeit > unconvincingly) of both the intolerance faced by Jews before the rise > of capitalism and the early twentieth-century discrimination against > Oriental people in California, which, inconveniently, was instigated > by workers. The author considers the Marxist sociologist’s thesis about the origins of racial prejudice to be:

  1.  Unoriginal
  2.  Unpersuasive
  3.  Offensive
  4.  Obscure
  5.  aboriginal

Solution : Unpersuasive
Q262. > A Marxist sociologist has argued that racism stems from the class > struggle that is unique to the capitalist system – that racial > prejudice is generated by capitalists as a means of controlling > workers. His thesis works relatively well when applied to > discrimination against Blacks in the United States, but his definition > of racial prejudice as “radically-based negative prejudgments against > a group generally accepted as a race in any given region of ethnic > competition,” can be interpreted as also including hostility towards > such ethnic groups as the Chinese in California and the Jews in > medieval Europe. However, since prejudice against these latter peoples > was not inspired by capitalists, he has no reason that such > antagonisms were not really based on race. He disposes thusly (albeit > unconvincingly) of both the intolerance faced by Jews before the rise > of capitalism and the early twentieth-century discrimination against > Oriental people in California, which, inconveniently, was instigated > by workers. In can be inferred from the passage that the Marxist sociologist would argue that in a noncapitalist society racial prejudice would be:

  1.  Pervasive
  2.  Tolerated
  3.  Nonexistent
  4.  Forbidden
  5.  impunity

Solution : Nonexistent
Q263. > A Marxist sociologist has argued that racism stems from the class > struggle that is unique to the capitalist system – that racial > prejudice is generated by capitalists as a means of controlling > workers. His thesis works relatively well when applied to > discrimination against Blacks in the United States, but his definition > of racial prejudice as “radically-based negative prejudgments against > a group generally accepted as a race in any given region of ethnic > competition,” can be interpreted as also including hostility towards > such ethnic groups as the Chinese in California and the Jews in > medieval Europe. However, since prejudice against these latter peoples > was not inspired by capitalists, he has no reason that such > antagonisms were not really based on race. He disposes thusly (albeit > unconvincingly) of both the intolerance faced by Jews before the rise > of capitalism and the early twentieth-century discrimination against > Oriental people in California, which, inconveniently, was instigated > by workers. According to the passage, the Marxist sociologist’s chain of reasoning him to assert that prejudice toward Oriental people in California was

  1.  non-racial in character.
  2.  similar in origin to prejudice against the Jews.
  3.  understood by Oriental people as ethnic competition.
  4.  provoked by workers.
  5.  estimated by workers

Solution : provoked by workers.
Q264. > By 1950, the results of attempts relate brain processes to mental > experience appeared rather discouraging. Such variations in size, > shape, chemistry, conduction speed, excitation threshold, and the like > as had been demonstrated in nerve cells remained negligible in > significance for any possible correlation with the manifold dimensions > of mental experience. Near the turn of the century, it had been > suggested by Hering that different modes of sensation, such as pain, > taste, and colour, might be correlated with the discharge of specific > kinds of nervous energy. However, subsequently developed methods of > recording and analyzing nerve potentials failed to reveal any such > qualitative diversity. It was possible to demonstrate by other methods > refined structural differences among neuron types; however, proof was > lacking that the quality of the impulse or its conduction was > influenced by these differences, which seemed instead to influence the > developmental patterning of the neural circuits. Although qualitative > variance among nerve energies was never rigidly disproved, the > doctrine was generally abandoned in favour of the opposing view, > namely, that nerve impulses are essentially homogeneous in quality and > are transmitted as “common currency” throughout the nervous system. > According to this, it is not the quality of the sensory nerve impulses > that determines the diverse conscious sensations they produce, but > rather the different areas of the brain into which they discharge, and > there is some evidence for this view. In one experiment, when an > electric stimulus was applied to a given sensory field of the cerebral > cortex of a conscious human subject, it produced a sensation of the > appropriate modality for that particular locus, that is, a visual > sensation from the auditory cortex, and so on. Other experiments > revealed slight variations in the size, number, arrangement, and > interconnection of the nerve cells, but as far as psycho neural > correlations were concerned, the obvious similarities of these sensory > fields to each other seemed much more remarkable than any of the > minute differences. However, cortical locus, in itself, turned out to > have little explanatory value. Studies showed that sensations as > diverse as those of red, black, green, and white, or touch, cold, > warmth, movement, pain, posture, and pressure apparently may arise > through activation of the same cortical areas. What seemed to remain > was some kind of differential patterning effects in the brain > excitation: it is the difference in the central distribution of > impulses that counts. In short, brain theory suggested a correlation > between mental experience and the activity of relatively homogeneous > nerve-cell units conducting essentially homogeneous impulses through > homogeneous cerebral tissue. To match the multiple dimensions of > mental experience, psychologists could only point to a limitless > variation in the spatio-temporal patterning of nerve impulses. The author suggests that, by 1950, attempts to correlate mental experience with brain processes would probably have been viewed with:

  1.  Indignation
  2.  Impatience
  3.  Pessimism
  4.  Defiance
  5.  definite

Solution : Pessimism

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Q265. > By 1950, the results of attempts relate brain processes to mental > experience appeared rather discouraging. Such variations in size, > shape, chemistry, conduction speed, excitation threshold, and the like > as had been demonstrated in nerve cells remained negligible in > significance for any possible correlation with the manifold dimensions > of mental experience. Near the turn of the century, it had been > suggested by Hering that different modes of sensation, such as pain, > taste, and colour, might be correlated with the discharge of specific > kinds of nervous energy. However, subsequently developed methods of > recording and analyzing nerve potentials failed to reveal any such > qualitative diversity. It was possible to demonstrate by other methods > refined structural differences among neuron types; however, proof was > lacking that the quality of the impulse or its conduction was > influenced by these differences, which seemed instead to influence the > developmental patterning of the neural circuits. Although qualitative > variance among nerve energies was never rigidly disproved, the > doctrine was generally abandoned in favour of the opposing view, > namely, that nerve impulses are essentially homogeneous in quality and > are transmitted as “common currency” throughout the nervous system. > According to this, it is not the quality of the sensory nerve impulses > that determines the diverse conscious sensations they produce, but > rather the different areas of the brain into which they discharge, and > there is some evidence for this view. In one experiment, when an > electric stimulus was applied to a given sensory field of the cerebral > cortex of a conscious human subject, it produced a sensation of the > appropriate modality for that particular locus, that is, a visual > sensation from the auditory cortex, and so on. Other experiments > revealed slight variations in the size, number, arrangement, and > interconnection of the nerve cells, but as far as psycho neural > correlations were concerned, the obvious similarities of these sensory > fields to each other seemed much more remarkable than any of the > minute differences. However, cortical locus, in itself, turned out to > have little explanatory value. Studies showed that sensations as > diverse as those of red, black, green, and white, or touch, cold, > warmth, movement, pain, posture, and pressure apparently may arise > through activation of the same cortical areas. What seemed to remain > was some kind of differential patterning effects in the brain > excitation: it is the difference in the central distribution of > impulses that counts. In short, brain theory suggested a correlation > between mental experience and the activity of relatively homogeneous > nerve-cell units conducting essentially homogeneous impulses through > homogeneous cerebral tissue. To match the multiple dimensions of > mental experience, psychologists could only point to a limitless > variation in the spatio-temporal patterning of nerve impulses. The author mentions “common currency” primarily in order to emphasize the

  1.  lack of differentiation among nerve impulses in human beings.
  2.  similarities in the views of scientists who have studied the human nervous system.
  3.  continuous passage of nerve impulses through nervous system.
  4.  Which groups are not in ethnic competition with each other in the United States?
  5.  similarities of the sensations that all human beings experience.

Solution : lack of differentiation among nerve impulses in human beings.
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