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Verbal Ability Test

Questions 1 to 6: Please select the most appropriate option from the choices given. Please note
that each blank should have a single correct answer.

1. The stock character known as Harlequin in commedia dellarte invariably appeared in a


diamond- patterned suit; a half-mask and a ruff were other unmistakable parts of his ______
dress.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.

Inventive
Flamboyant
Signature
Unusual
Disturbing

2. Architects and sound engineers routinely use sound-absorbing materials on ceilings and walls.

In addition, they have sometimes tried to create optimal acoustics by building the ceilings and
walls of concert halls with rippled or (i) ______ surfaces, so that the sound is reflected and (ii)
______ at many angles.
Blank (i)
A. Invariably rigid
B. Highly polished
C. Slightly undulating

Blank (ii)
D. Distorted
E. Diffused
F. Auditory

3. The investigative panel was nothing short of outraged by the bus drivers negligence and lack

of remorse. It determined that the driver had failed to follow the established (i) _______. As a
result, she had compromised the safety of the passengers. More fundamentally, however, she
had actually and effectively (ii) ______ at least two of her riders rights.
Blank (i)
A. code of conduct
B. rules of engagement
C. terms of use

Blank (ii)
D. abrogated
E. renounced
F. negated

4. In part by personifying them, and in larger part through a selection of detail, childrens books

do nothing less than (i) ______ cars and trucks. The trucks are big, mighty, fearless, and friendly
behemoths that happily get the job done. Cars are speedy, bright, often open conveyances that
delight their drivers and passengers on similarly open roads without traffic, congestion, or
exhaust fumes. Such storybook portrayals begin the process of (ii) ______ that preserves and
protects the (iii) ______ of the automobile in American culture.
Blank (i)
A. extol
B. infantilize
C. venerate

Blank (ii)
D. indoctrination
E. validation
F. vindication

Blank (iii)
G. desultory consequences
H. eternal aggrandizement
I. unquestioned dominance

5. The peasants portrayed in Pieter Brueghel the Elders renowned paintings performed physical

labor from sunup to sundown and lived grim, short lives. In The Wedding Dance, Pieter
Brueghel depicts a nearly frenzied release from that daily round of (i) ______ and (ii) ______
in which peasants dance and (iii) ______ to the music of the bagpipes.

Blank (i)
A. employment
B. privation
C. mediocrity

Blank (ii)
D. inanity
E. woe
F. striving

Blank (iii)
G. unwind
H. carouse
I. sing

6. Is the most spineless method of delivering the news of a breakup by means of a text message?

A recent survey based on Facebook data found that 14% of those born after 1984 are likely to
choose this most expedient of methods. Of course, expedience alone may not explain this
choice, but the study offers no other explanation for why respondents act in such a (i) ______
manner. Readers of the study are left to infer why the perpetrators of such spineless behavior
(ii) ______ the more dignified, if not relatively (iii) _______, face-to-face meeting.
Blank (i)
A. muted
B. unreliable
C. craven

Blank (ii)
D. disavow
E. eschew
F. denounce

Blank (ii)
G. decorous
H. imposing
I. outdated

Questions 7 to 16 are based on the on the different passages below. Choose one answer
choice unless otherwise directed.
Question 7 is based on the following passage:
Prosopagnosia, or face blindness, was lately given a boost in long-overdue recognition as a genetic
disorder when the distinguished professor of neurology and best-selling author Oliver Sacks described
his own affliction with the disease. Like other proposagnosiacs, Sacks has a fundamental inability to
recognize faces, and not just the faces of random strangers or people he met for the first time last week.
One index to the profundity of Sackss problem is reflected in a study that found that proposagnosiacs
who looked at photos of their own family members were unable to recognize 30% of the faces. Sacks
himself admits that he often does not recognize a person whom he has met just five minutes before.
7. The passage achieves all of the following purposes EXCEPT
(A) explain why prosopagnosia was given recognition as a genetic disorder.
(B) tell or imply how prosopagnosia manifests itself.
(C) cite research that helps define the challenges faced by prosopagnosiacs.
(D) personalize and humanize the disorder known as prosopagnosia.
(E) imply the severity of the challenges faced by prosopagnosiacs.

Questions 8 and 9 are based on the following passage:


Does a double standard dictate the average American response to breaches of privacy? Of course, few
Americans maintain much, if any illusion, about the degree of privacy they actually enjoy, especially if
they frequently use search engines, shop online, or belong to social networks. As the well-known saying
goes, when a product is freesuch as a free gmail account, a free Facebook membership, or a
free Bing Internet searchyou are actually the product. With every keystroke you make, your data
is being lifted, charted, analyzed, and redirected. Yet, despite our glib acceptance of website terms of
agreement, often at the rate of many websites per day, and all the personal data we willingly unleash in
that way, revelations that surfaced in 2013 about the kinds and scope of data about individuals collected
by the National Security Agency (NSA) brought serious and sustained outcries.
For many citizens for whom it was and remains absolutely acceptable for an Internet company to gather
information from their every e-mail and Internet search, the same was not true for the U.S. government.
No matter, it seems, that the search engines motive appears to be, elementally, corporate millions and

the governments appears to be, fundamentally, preventing acts of terrorism, Americans were and are
outraged. Of course, unlike many Internet companies (which are essentially surveillance groups), the
NSA never requested permission or revealed its operations or scope. The NSA, unlike the online giants
whose trespasses we forgive daily, seems to have indulged in the ridiculous notion that, for the success
of its mission, secrecy was important.
Why do we constantly forgive the participants of the new California Gold Rush, whose actions include
not only infringement of our most basic rights, but also the creation of a new class of super-rich that
undermines our democracy just as certainly as any practice on Wall Street does? In part, this
phenomenon derives from the fact that we actually trust our government to do the right thing, at least
eventually, while we actually expect corporations to achieve their goals at our expense.
8.Which is the first sentence in this passage to clearly reflect the authors perspective on a question
posed earlier in the passage? Indicate all that apply.
(A) Sentence 3 (As the well-known . . . the product.)
(B) Sentence 6 (For many citizens . . . U.S. government.)
(C) Sentence 9 (The NSA . . . secrecy was important.)

9.In this passage, glib (line 7) most nearly means


(A) spoken sarcastically or with a bitter tone.
(B) performed with a natural ease or grace.
(C) accomplished too easily or carelessly.
(D) characterized by agility or spryness.
(E) marked by insincerity or superficiality.

Questions 10 and 11 are based on the following passage:


The levels of dissolved oxygen in the worlds ocean waters are declining precipitously. Just like
humans, fish need oxygen to survive, and so in ocean areas experiencing significant levels of oxygen
scarcity, or hypoxia, fish populations are plummeting. Although some hypoxic areas, called dead
zones, occur naturally, hypoxia in coastal areas and inland waters is caused mainly by agricultural runoff and by discharge of industrial waste waters. More than one-hundred permanent dead zones, many
covering thousands of square miles, exist worldwide today.
Since reproductive success is the most critical factor in the sustainability of any species, the extent of
this threat to marine life and genetic diversity can hardly be overstated. After several months in hypoxic
waters, female fish produce fewer eggs. Moreover, hypoxic conditions serve to alter the normal ratio
between two particular hormones manufactured during the embryonic stage when a fishs gender is
determined. During gestation and under these conditions, the mother produces more testosterone (and
less estradiol), which inhibits the development of female reproductive organs and other female
characteristics in the embryo, while promoting the development of male traits.
10. The author would probably view the developments discussed in the passage as
(A) alarming
(B) puzzling
(C) unsurprising
(D) encouraging
(E) unexpected
11. Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
(A)Why are Fish Gender Ratios Changing so Rapidly?

(B) The Dangers of Industrial Waste-water Runoff


(C) A Prescription for Reversing Hypoxia Levels
(D) What Causes Birth Defects in Salt-water Fish?
(E) Dead Zones: Their Causes and Consequences
Questions 12 to 14 are based on the following passage:
Billie Holiday died a few weeks ago. I have been unable until now to write about her, but since she will
survive many who receive longer obituaries, a short delay in one small appreciation will not harm her
or us. When she died we - the musicians, critics, all who were ever transfixed by the most heart-rending
voice of the past generation - grieved bitterly. There was no reason to. Few people pursued selfdestruction more whole-heartedly than she, and when the pursuit was at an end, at the age of forty-four,
she had turned herself into a physical and artistic wreck. Some of us tried gallantly to pretend otherwise,
taking comfort in the occasional moments when she still sounded like a ravaged echo of her greatness.
Others had not even the heart to see and listen any more. We preferred to stay home and, if old and
lucky enough to own the incomparable records of her heyday from 1937 to 1946, many of which are
not even available on British LP, to recreate those coarse-textured, sinuous, sensual and unbearable sad
noises which gave her a sure corner of immortality. Her physical death called, if anything, for relief
rather than sorrow. What sort of middle age would she have faced without the voice to earn money for
her drinks and fixes, without the looks 'and in her day she was hauntingly beautiful' to attract the men
she needed, without business sense, without anything but the disinterested worship of ageing men who
had heard and seen her in her glory?
And yet, irrational though it is, our grief expressed Billie Holiday's art, that of a woman for whom one
must be sorry. The great blues singers, to whom she may be justly compared, played their game from
strength. Lionesses, though often wounded or at bay (did not Bessie Smith call herself 'a tiger, ready to
jump'?) their tragic equivalents were Cleopatra and Phaedra; Holiday's was an embittered Ophelia. She
was the Puccini heroine among blues singers, or rather among jazz singers, for though she sang a cabaret
version of the blues incomparably, her natural idiom was the pop song. Her unique achievement was to
have twisted this into a genuine expression of the major passions by means of a total disregard of its
sugary tunes, or indeed of any tune other than her own few delicately crying elongated notes, phrased
like Bessie Smith or Louis Armstrong in sung in a thin, gritty, haunting voice whose natural mood was
an unresigned and voluptuous welcome for the pains of love. Nobody has sung, or will sing, Bess's
songs from Porgy as she did. It was this combination of bitterness and physical submission, as of
someone lying still while watching his legs amputated which gives such a blood-curding quality to her
song, Strange Fruit, the anti-lynching poem which she turned into an unforgettable art song. Suffering
was her profession; but she did not accept it.
Little need be said about her horrifying life, which she described with emotional, though hardly with
factual, truth in her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues. After an adolescence in which self-respect
was measured by a girl's insistence on picking up the coins thrown to her by clients with her hands, she
was plainly beyond help. She did not lack it, for she had the flair and scrupulous honesty of John
Hammond to launch her, the best musicians of the 1930s to accompany her, notably Teddy Wilson,
Frankie Newton and Lester Young, the boundless devotion of all serious connoisseurs, and much public
success. It was too late to arrest a career of systematic embittered self-immolation. To be born with both
beauty and self-respect in the Negro ghetto of Baltimore in 1951 was too much of a handicap, even
without rape at the age of ten and drug-addiction in her teens. But, while she destroyed herself, she
sang, unmelodious, profound and heartbreaking. It is impossible not to weep for her, or not to hate the
world which made her what she was.
12. What is the main focus of the passage?
(A) To find the reasons behind Billie Holiday's death.
(B) The passage tells how Billie Holiday's death is not grieved by anyone.
(C) The passage is an appreciation of Billie Holliday's life and achievements as a singer.

(D) To give an account of her struggle as a singer.


(E) To describe Billie Holiday's wrecked life, by giving an account of her rise as well as her destruction.
13. What according to the writer was the cause of her death?
(A) She died by committing suicide since she was not happy with her downfall as a singer.
(B) She was forced to death by other singers.
(C) She indulged in ruining her life by giving herself up to drugs and drinks when her career as a singer
was on a decline.
(D) She had an overdose of drugs, which became toxic.
(E) She was suffering from some illness.
14. What cannot be understood from the last paragraph of the passage?
(A) Her career was launched by reliable and accomplished producers.
(B) She was praised for her art equally by expert judges as well as people.
(C) In her autobiography, she described her life with sentimental and passionate truth.
(D) She was gifted with good looks.
(E) Her style of music was different from others in terms of the treatment of tunes.
15. Which of the following statements is beyond the scope of the passage?
(A) Billie Holiday would be remembered more than other persons who have long obituaries written
about them.
(B) Pain, bitterness and surrender were reflected in Billie's voice.
(C) Billie did not have the money to buy her drinks, which led her to depression and isolation.
(D) Billie had not accepted pain, sorrow and suffering present in her profession.
(E) Billie had lost her money as well as looks.
16. According to the writer, why is her death a comfort more than a grievance?
(A) Because she was an intolerable singer.
(B) Because otherwise she would have had a miserable and ruined life.
(C) Because she was a failure in life.
(D) Because she was a competition for other singers.
(E) Because she had no one to mourn her death.

For questions 17 to 20, choose the two answers that best fit the meaning of the sentence
as a whole and result in two completed sentences that are alike in meaning
17. After hours of acrimonious arguments the negotiations reached a(n) _____ ; neither side was willing
to compromise.
A. solution
B. impasse
C. conclusion
D. end
E. deadlock
F. resolution
18. This new staging of King Lear is not a production in which every aspect falls neatly into place
throughout; however, the drama does ____ at certain points to give the audience memorable and
thought-provoking moments.
A. coalesce
B. crystallize
C. triumph
D. flower
E. dissolve
F. transcend

19. The teachers mercurial mood changes and ____ approach to grading made the students uneasy;
they never knew what would please him or what would earn good marks.
A. tardy
B. authoritarian
C. strict
D. ambivalent
E. whimsical
F. hidebound
20. The book is an attempt on the part of the eminent scholar to reconcile the ____ experience and
theoretical underpinnings of certain everyday phenomena.
A. philosophical
B. empirical
C. arcane
D. practical
E. superficial
F. obtuse

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