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)

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
At low tide he walked over the sands to the headland and round the corner to the little bay facing the open sea. It was inaccessible by boat, because seams of rock jutted out and currents swirled round them treacherously. But you could walk there if you chose one of the lowest ebb tides that receded a very long way. You could not linger on the expedition, for once the tide was on the turn, it came in rapidly. For this reason very few people cared to explore the little bay fresh and unlittered, as it was completely covered by the sea at high tide. The cave inviting, looked mysteriously dark, cool and inviting, and he penetrated to the farthest corner where he discoveredawide crack, rather like a chimney. He peered up and thought he could see a patch of daylight.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
(1) headland (N.) : a narrow piece of high land that sticks out from the coast into the sea
(2) bay (N.) : a part of the sea/a lake, partly surrounded by a wide curve of the land
(3) inaccessible (Adj.) : difficult/impossible to reach/ get
(4) treacherously (Adv.) : in a dangerous way
(5)ebb tide (N.) : the period of time when the sea flows away from the land
(6) receded (V.) : to gradually move away
(7) linger (V.) : to continue to exist for longer than expected
(8) expedition (N.) : an organized journey
(9) unlittered (Adj.) : tidy
(10) high tide (N.) : the time when the sea has risen to its highest level
(11) sprightly (Adj.) : in a lively, animated manner