Questions

Read the following passage carefully and choose the most appropriate answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

When I think of my family's history on the land. I experience a pang of regret. Unlike much of the arid West, where the land has gone virtually unchanged for centuries, my place of origin, western Kansas, has been torn up by agriculture. The flat plains, excellent soil, and sparse but just adequate rainfall permitted farming; therefore farming prevailed, and a good 90% of the original sod prairie is gone. The consequence, in human terms, is that our relationship to our place has always felt primarily mercantile. We used the land and denied, or held at bay, its effect on us. Yet from my earliest childhood, when the most of the Kansas prairie was still intact, I 've known that the land also had a romantic quality. I've felt moved by the expanse of it , enthralled by size. I take pride in my identity as a plains daughter.

From the passage, it may be determined that the word "mercantile" has something to do with

Read the following passage carefully and choose the most appropriate answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

In short, to write a good letter you must approach the job in the lightest and most casual way. You must be personal, not abstract. You must not say, 'This is too small a thing to put down'. You must say, 'This is just the sort of small thing we talk about at home. If I tell them this they will see me, as it were they'll hear my voice, they'll know what I'm talking about'. That is the purpose of a letter. Carlyle had the trick to perfection. He is writing from Scotsbrig to his brother Alec in Canada and he begins talking about his mother. Good old Mother, he says, 'she is even now sitting at my back, trying at another table to write you a small word with her own hand; the first time she has tried such a thing for a year past. It is Saturday night, after dark; we are in the east room in a hard, dry evening with a bright fire to our two selves; Jenny and her Barns are 'scouring up things' in the other end of the house; and below stairs the winter operations of the farm go on, in a subdued tone; you can conceive the scene! How simple it is and yet how perfect. Can not you see Alec reading it in his far-off home and his eyes moistening at the picture of his old mother sitting and writing her last message to him on earth?

'Scouring up things' means ________.

The sentences given with blanks are to be filled with an appropriate word(s). Four alternatives are suggested for each question. For each question, choose the correct alternative and click the button corresponding to it.

An animal species becomes _____ when its last existing member dies.

A sentence/a part of the sentence is underlined. Four alternatives are given to the underlined part which will improve the sentence. Choose the correct alternative and click the button corresponding to it. In case no improvement is needed, click the button corresponding to "No improvement".

Jane had told me that she hasn't done her homework.

In the following question, the sentence given with blank to be filled in with an appropriate word. Select the correct alternative out of the four and indicate it by selecting the appropriate option.

Even if two horses may look ____________, they may not be of the same age.

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

To burn the midnight oil

In the following question, a sentence / a part of sentence is underlined. Below are given alternatives to the underlined part which may improve the sentence. Choose the correct alternative. In case no improvement is required, choose "No Improvement" option.

Your father is among the other things a private person.

In the following passage some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

The generation gap is another of those characteristic features that set Homo sapiens apart from other animals. It is ______ if ever the most intelligent of apes ever blamed its juniors for their ______ ways! Over the years people have tried to analyse it, explain it, understand it, even ignore it, but it remains, ready to ______ each generation as it tries to ______ its own ______ about life and living.

it tries to ______ its