Direction: In the following questions, you have a brief passage with 5 questions following the passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
Antarctica is shedding 160 billion tonnes a year of ice into the ocean, twice the amount of a few years ago, according to new satellite observations. The ice loss is adding to the rising sea levels driven by climate change and even east Antarctica is now losing ice. The new revelations follows the recent announcement that the collapse of the western Antarctica ice sheet has already begun and is unstoppable, although it may take many centuries to complete. Global warming is pushing up sea level by melting the world’s major ice caps and by warming and expanding oceans waters. The loss of the entire western Antarctica ice sheet would eventually cause up to 4 metres (13ft) of sea-level rise, devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world. The new data, published in journal Geophysical Research Letters, comes from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 satellite, which was launched in 2010. It shows that the western Antarctica ice sheet is where 87% of the lost ice is being shed, with the east Antarctic and the Antarctic peninsula shedding the rest. The data collected from 2010-2013 was compared to that from 20052010. The satellite measures changes in the height of the ice and covers virtually the whole of the frozen continent, far more of than previous altimeter missions. CryoSat-2 collected five times more data than before in the crucial coastal regions where ice losses are concentrated and found key glaciers were losing many metres in height every year. The Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith Glaciers in west Antarctica were losing between 4m and 8m annually.

Direction: Read the following passage carefully and answer the given questions.
PASSAGE
Emily Dickinson, who was born nearly 200 years ago, has long been an enigma. She was so reclusive that the townsfolk of Amherst, Massachusetts, where she spent her life, called her “the myth”, as if her very existence were in question. Few got so much as a glimpse of her white dress— as an adult she only wore white—and only ten of her poems were published in her lifetime. After her death in 1886, hundreds of others were discovered in a wooden chest, and a new legend grew up, sweet with pathos, of a woman too delicate for this world, disappointed in love. Emily Dickinson lived with her unmarried sister Lavinia in an elegant house called The Homestead. Next door, at Evergreens, was the family home of her brother Austin; his wife, Sue, was Emily’s intimate, and she addressed much of her poetry to her. But their comparative Eden was shattered by the arrival in Amherst of Mabel Loomis Todd, a young faculty wife. Musical, artistic and ambitious, the ruthless Mabel insinuated herself into the Dickinsons’ lives. In 1882 she embarked on an affair with Emily’s brother Austin, who ensured Mr Todd’s compliance by promoting his academic career. The lovers thought their passion was so special that normal rules did not apply. The spurned wife, Sue, was devastated, and the resulting family feud would echo down the generations. Mabel effectively destroyed the Dickinson family. The irony is, however, that she was one of the only people to recognise Emily’s originality and brilliance in her lifetime. After Emily died, Mabel determined that the public should read the poetry, and devoted herself to editing, publishing and promoting it. In doing so, she suppressed some of its originality, conventionalising Emily’s odd punctuation. She also constructed the sentimental view of the mythic poetess and her milieu which Ms Gordon’s biography has now so effectively dispelled.
MEANINGS OF DIFFICULT WORDS/PHRASES
(1) enigma (N.) : mystery
(2) reclusive (Adj.) : seeking solitude
(3) pathos (N.) : a style that has the power to evoke feelings
(4) insinuated (V.) : give to understand
(5) embarked (V.) :proceed some where despite the risk of possible dangers
(6) compliance (N.) : surrendering power to another
(7) spurned (Adj.) : rejected by a lover without warning
(8) devastated (V.) : to make somebody feel extremely shocked and sad
(9) feud (N.) : a bitter quarrel between two parties
(10) irony (N.) : the amusing/strange aspect of a situation that is very different from what you expect
(11) conventionalising (V.) : normalising
(12) mythic (Adj.) : that has become very famous, like somebody/something in a myth
(13) dispelled (V.) : to make something, especially a feeling/belief, go away/disappear