Direction: In the following questions, you have brief passages with 5/10 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
The world’s largest living organism is not the blue whale which still is the world’s largest living animal-but Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one of the country’s prime living animals and ‘prime tourist attraction. Sadly, size notwithstanding, it is slowly succumbing to the Killer ‘white syndrome’, a bleaching disease which has invaded 33 of its 48 reefs. Otherwise brilliantly multicoloured and teeming with a Kaleidoscope of life, the affected reefs have acquired a deathly white pallor, the result of dying tissues. The bleaching of the reef happened following the recording of the warmest ever sea water temperature in the area here. Scientists fear that the naturally gorgeous reef-are endangered and the as yet undiscovered animal and plant species would soon suffer irreplaceable damage. This is only because of the rising of water temperature.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) succumbing (V.) : not to be able to fight an attack
(2) teeming with (Phr. V.) : to be full of people, animals, etc. moving around
(3) Kaleidoscope (N.) : a situation, pattern, etc. containing a lot of different parts that are always changing
(4) pallor (N.) : pale colouring of the face, especially because of illness/fear
(5) endangered (Adj.) : at risk of no longer existing
(6) hues (N.) : shades (colour)