Direction: In the following questions, read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
A small band of biologists share a dream – to find species of sea or land animals hitherto completely unknown or to discover living examples of animals thought to have died out ages ago. Finds made in this century encourage these dreamers, whose field is aptly named cryptozoology–literally, the science of hidden animals. Size and habitat are often responsible for an animal’s having been overlooked. Not surprisingly, a bumblebee size bat that lives in caves in Thailand eluded detection until 1973. But larger animals in less remote sites have also remained hidden. Herds of a species of peccary supposedly extinct since the last ice age, for instance, were found in Paraguay in 1975. Native people sometimes offer scientists useful clues. An unusual feather in a local’s hat sparked the discovery of a showy African peacock in 1936, and accounts of giant lizards on the Indonesian island of Komodo proved not to be mere myth when naturalist P.A.Ouwens identified four of the creatures captured in 1912. As cryptozoologists follow such leads into little-explored areas, they remain optimistic that it is not too late to uncover sensational surprises.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) hitherto (Adv.) : until now
(2) aptly (Adv.) : in a way that is suitable/appropriate in the circumstances
(3) eluded (V.) : to manage to escape
(4) detection (N.) : the fact of being discovered
(5) peccary (N.) : an animal like a pig (Southern US, Mexico, Central and S. America)
(6) myth (N.) : a story from ancient times ; legend
(7) optimistic (Adj.) : expecting good things to happen

Direction: In the following questions, read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
The recent change to all-volunteer armed forces in the United States will eventually produce a gradual increase in the proportion of women in the armed forces and in the variety of women’s assignments, but probably not the dramatic gains for women that might have been expected. This is so even though the armed forces operate in an ethos of institutional change oriented toward occupational equality and under the federal sanction of equal pay for equal work. The difficulty is that women are unlikely to be trained for any direct combat operations. A significant portion of the larger society remains uncomfortable as yet with extending equality in this direction. Therefore, for women in the military, the search for equality will still be based on functional equivalence, not identity or even similarity of task. Opportunities seem certain to arise. The growing emphasis on deterrence is bound to offer increasing scope for women to become involved in novel types of noncombat military assignments.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) ethos (N.) : the moral ideas and attitudes that belong to a particular group/society
(2) deterrence (N.) : the fact of somebody less likely to do something
(3)combat (N.) : fighting/a fight, especially during a time of war

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 Wright brothers did not have to look far for ideas when building their airplane, they studied birds. The act of copying from nature to address a design problem is not new, but over the last decade the practice has moved from obscure scientific journals to the mainstream. The term ‘biomimicry’, popularized by American natural-sciences writer Janine Benyus in the late 1990s, refers to innovation that take their inspiration from flora and fauna. Biomimicry advocates argue that with 3.8 billion years of research and development, evolution has already solved many of the challenges humans now encounter. Although we often see nature as something we mine for resources, biomimicry views nature as a mentor. From all around the globe, there are countless instances where natural sources have served as inspiration for inventions that promise to transform every sector of society. One such instance occurred in 1941 when Swiss engineer, George de Mestral was out hunting with his dog one day when he noticed sticky burrs, with their hundreds tiny hooks, had attached themselves to his pants and his dog’s fur. These were his inspiration for Velcro.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) obscure (Adj.) : not well-known
(2) burrs (N.) : the seed container of some plants which is covered in very small hooks that stick to clothes/ fur