1. Citrus greening, the plague that could wipe out
Florida’s $9 billion orange industry, begins with the
touch of a jumpy brown bug on a sun-kissed leaf.
From there, the bacterial disease incubates in the
5 tree’s roots, then moves back up the trunk in full force,
causing nutrient flows to seize up. Leaves tum yellow,
and the oranges, deprived of sugars from the leaves,
remain green, sour, and hard. Many fall before harvest,
brown necrotic flesh ringing failed stems.
10 For the past decade, Florida’s oranges have been
literally starving. Since it first appeared in 2005,
citrus greening, also known by its Chinese name,
huanglongbing, has swept across Florida’s groves
like a flood. With no hills to block it, the Asian citrus
15 psyllid-the invasive aphid relative that carries the
disease-has infected nearly every orchard in the
state. By one estimate, 80 percent of Florida’s citrus
trees are infected and declining.
20 The disease has spread beyond Florida to nearly
every orange-growing region in the United States.

Q-1 The use of the phrases “jumpy brown bug” and “sun-kissed leaf’ in the first sentence establishes a tone that is

2. Chimps do it, birds do it, even you and I do it.
Once you see someone yawn, you are compelled to
do the same. Now it seems that wolves can be added
to the list of animals known to spread yawns like a
5 contagion. Among humans, even thinking about yawning can
trigger the reflex, leading some to suspect that catching
a yawn is linked to our ability to empathize with other
humans. For instance, contagious yawning activates the
10 same parts of the brain that govern empathy and social
know-how. And some studies have shown that humans
with more fine-tuned social skills are more likely to
catch a yawn. Similarly, chimpanzees, baboons and bonobos
15 often yawn when they see other members of their species
yawning. Chimps (Pan troglodytes) can catch yawns
from humans, even virtual ones. At least in primates,
contagious yawning seems to require an emotional
connection and may function as a demonstration of
20 empathy. Beyond primates, though, the trends are less
clear-cut. One study found evidence of contagious
yawning in birds but dido ‘t connect it to empathy.
A 2008 study showed that dogs (Canis lupus familiaris)
could catch yawns from humans, and another showed
25 that dogs were more likely to catch the yawn of a
Despite many generations of breeding by humanity,
no citrus plant resists greening; it afflicts lemons,
grapefruits, and other citrus species as well. Once a
25 tree is infected, it will die. Yet in a few select Floridian
orchards, there are now trees that, thanks to innovative
technology, can fight the greening tide.

Q-1 The author’s attitude toward the possibility that yawning is a sign of empathy in non-primates is best described as one of

Q-2 Which lines provide the best evidence for the answer to the previous question

3. These are stimulating times for anyone interested
in questions of animal consciousness. On what seems
like a monthly basis, scientific teams announce the
results of new experiments, adding to a preponderance
5 of evidence that we’ve been underestimating animal
minds, even those of us who have rated them fairly
highly. New animal behaviors and capacities are
observed in the wild, often involving tool use-or at
least object manipulation-the very kinds of activity
10 that led the distinguished zoologist Donald R . Griffin to
found the field of cognitive ethology (animal thinking)
in 1978: octopuses piling stones in front of their
hideyholes, to name one recent example; or dolphins
fitting marine sponges to their beaks in order to dig for
15 food on the seabed; or wasps using small stones to
smooth the sand around their egg chambers, concealing
them from predators. At the same time neurobiologists
have been finding that the physical structures in our
own brains most commonly held responsible for
20 consciousness are not as rare in the animal kingdom as
had been assumed. Indeed they are common. All of this
work and discovery appeared to reach a kind of
crescendo last summer, when an international group of
prominent neuroscientists meeting at the University of
25 Cambridge issued “The Cambridge Declaration on
Consciousness in Non-Human Animals,” a document
stating that “humans are not unique in possessing the
neurological substrates that generate consciousness.”
It goes further to conclude that numerous documented
30 animal behaviors must be considered “consistent with
experienced feeling states.”

Q-1 The use of the phrases “stimulating times” (line 1), “what seems like a monthly basis” (lines 2-3), and “preponderanceo f evidence” (lines 4-5) in the first two sentences establish a tone that is

4. Every time a car drives through a major intersection,
it becomes a data point. Magnetic coils of wire lie just
beneath the pavement, registering each passing car. This
starts a cascade of information: Computers tally the
5 number and speed of cars, shoot the data through
underground cables to a command center and finally
translate it into the colors red, yellow and green. On the
seventh floor of Boston City Hall, the three colors
splash like paint across a wall-sized map.
10 To drivers, the color red means stop, but on the map
it tells traffic engineers to leap into action. Traffic control
centers like this one-a room cluttered with computer
terminals and live video feeds of urban intersections- represent
the brain of a traffic system. The city’s network
15 of sensors, cables and signals are the nerves connected to
the rest of the body. “Most people don’t think there are
eyes and ears keeping track of all this stuff,” says John
DeBenedictis, the center’s engineering director. But in
reality, engineers literally watch our every move,
20 making subtle changes that relieve and redirect traffic.
The tactics and aims of traffic management are
modest but powerful. Most intersections rely on a
combination of pre-set timing and computer adaptation.
For example, where a busy main road intersects with
25 a quiet residential street, the traffic signal might give
70 percent of “green time” to the main road, and
30 percent to the residential road. (Green lights last
between a few seconds and a couple minutes, and tend
to shorten at rush hour to help the traffic move
30 continuously.) But when traffic overwhelms the pre-set
timing, engineers override the system and make changes.

Q-1 What effect does the quotation by John DeBenedictis in lines 16-17h ave on the tone of the passage?

5. To understand what the new software-that is,
analytics-can do that’s different from more familiar
software like spreadsheets, word processing, and
graphics, consider the lowly photograph. Here the
5 relevant facts aren’t how many bytes constitute a digital
photograph, or a billion of them. That’s about as
instructive as counting the silver halide molecules used
to form a single old-fashioned print photo. The important
feature of a digital image’s bytes is that, unlike
10 crystalline molecules, they are uniquely easy to store,
transport, and manipulate with software. In the first era
of digital images, people were fascinated by the
convenience and malleability (think PhotoShop) of
capturing, storing, and sharing pictures. Now, instead of
15 using software to manage photos, we can mine features
of the bytes that make up the digital image. Facebook
can, without privacy invasion, track where and when,
for example, vacationing is trending, since digital images
reveal at least that much. But more importantly, those
20 data can be cross-correlated, even in real time, with
seemingly unrelated data such as local weather, interest
rates, crime figures, and so on. Such correlations
associated with just one photograph aren’t revealing.
But imagine looking at billions of photos over weeks,
25 months, years, then correlating them with dozens of
directly related data sets (vacation bookings, air traffic),
tangential information (weather, interest rates,
unemployment), or orthogonal information (social or
political trends). With essentially free super-computing,
30 we can mine and usefully associate massive, formerly
unrelated data sets and unveil all manner of economic,
cultural, and social realities.For science fiction aficionados,
Isaac Asimov anticipated the idea of using massive data sets to predict
35 human behavior, coining it “psychohistory” in his 1951
Foundation trilogy. The bigger the data set, Asimov said
then, the more predictable the future. With big-data
analytics, one can finally see the forest, instead of just
the capillaries in the tree leaves. Or to put it in more
40 accurate terms, one can see beyond the apparently
random motion of a few thousand molecules of air inside
a balloon; one can see the balloon itself, and beyond that,
that it is inflating, that it is yellow, and that it is part of a
bunch of balloons en route to a birthday party. The
45 data/software world has, until now, been largely about
looking at the molecules inside one balloon.

Q-1 What effect does the word “imagine” (line 24) have on the tone of the passage?

6. The following passage is adapted from Jane Austen,
Northanger Abbey, originally published in 1817.
No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in
her infancy would have supposed her born to be an
heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father
and mother, her own person and disposition, were all
5 equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being
neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though
his name was Richard-and he had never been
handsome. He had a considerable independence besides
10 two good livings-and he was not in the least addicted
to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman
of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is
more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had
three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of
15 dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody
might expect, she still lived on-lived to have six
children more-to see them growing up around her,
and to enjoy excellent health herself. A family of ten
children will be always called a fine family, where there
20 are heads and arms and legs enough for the number;
but the Morlands had little other right to the word, for
they were in general very plain, and Catherine, for
many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin
awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank
25 hair, and strong features-so much for her person; and
not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind.
She was fond of all boy’s plays, and greatly preferred
cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic
enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a
30 canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had
no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all,
it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief-at least so
it was conjectured from her always preferring those
which she was forbidden to take. Such were her
35 propensities-her abilities were quite as extraordinary.
She never could learn or understand anything before
she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for
she was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid.
Her mother was three months in teaching her only
40 to repeat the “Beggar’s Petition”; and after all, her
next sister, Sally, could say it better than she did.
Not that Catherine was always stupid-by no means;
she learnt the fable of “The Hare and Many Friends” as
quickly as any girl in England. Her mother wished her
45 to learn music; and Catherine was sure she should like it,
for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old
forlorn spinner; so, at eight years old she began. She
learnt a year, and could not bear it; and Mrs. Morland,
who did not insist on her daughters being accomplished
50 in spite of incapacity or distaste, allowed her to leave
off. The day which dismissed the music-master was
one of the happiest of Catherine’s life. Her taste for
drawing was not superior; though whenever she could
obtain the outside of a letter from her mother or seize
55 upon any other odd piece of paper, she did what she
could in that way, by drawing houses and trees, hens
and chickens, all very much like one another. Writing
and accounts she was taught by her father; French
by her mother: her proficiency in either was not
60 remarkable, and she shirked her lessons in both
whenever she could. What a strange, unaccountable
character!-for with all these symptoms of profligacy
at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad
temper, was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever
65 quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with
few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy
and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and
loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the
green slope at the back of the house.

Q-1 What effect does the phrase “What a strange, unaccountable character!” (lines 61-62) have on the tone of the passage?

7. This passage is adapted from Jamaica Kincaid,
Annie John, © 1985 Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The protagonist is a girl growing up in the Caribbean.
It was the first day of a new term, Miss Nelson
said, so we would not be attending to any of our usual
subjects; instead, we were to spend the morning in
contemplation and reflection and writing something she
5 described as an “autobiographical essay.” In the
afternoon, we would read aloud to each other our
auto-biographical essays. (I knew quite well about
“autobiography” and “essay,” but reflection and
contemplation! A day at school spent in such a way!
lO Of course, in most books all the good people were
always contemplating and reflecting before they did
anything. Perhaps in her mind’s eye she could see our
future and, against all prediction, we turned out to be
good people.) On hearing this, a huge sigh went up
15 from the girls. Half the sighs were in happiness at
the thought of sitting and gazing off into clear space,
the other half in unhappiness at the misdeeds that would
have to go unaccomplished. I joined the happy half, because I
20 knew it would please Miss Nelson, and, my own
selfish interest aside, I liked so much the way she wore
her ironed hair and her long-sleeved blouse and box-
pleated skirt that I wanted to please her.
The morning was uneventful enough: a girl
25 spilled ink from her inkwell all over her uniform; a
girl broke her pen nib and then made a big to-do about
replacing it; girls twisted and turned in their seats and
pinched each other’s bottoms; girls passed notes to
each other. All this Miss Nelson must have seen and
30 heard, but she didn’t say anything-only kept reading
her book: an elaborately illustrated edition of The
Tempest, as later, passing by her desk, I saw. Midway
in the morning, we were told to go out and stretch
our legs and breathe some fresh air for a few minutes;
35 when we returned, we were given glasses of cold
lemonade and a slice of bun to refresh us.
As soon as the sun stood in the middle of the sky,
we were sent home for lunch. The earth may have
grown an inch or two larger between the time I had
40 walked to school that morning and the time I went
home to lunch, for some girls made a small space for
me in their little band. But I couldn’t pay much attention
to them; my mind was on my new surroundings, my
new teacher, what I had written in my nice new
45 notebook with its black-all-mixed-up-with-white cover
and smooth lined pages (so glad was I to get rid of my
old notebooks, which had on their covers a picture of a
wrinkled-up woman wearing a crown on her head and a
neckful and armfuls of diamonds and pearls-their
50 pages so coarse, as if they were made of cornmeal).
I flew home. I must have eaten my food. By half past
one, we were sitting under a flamboyant tree in a
secluded part of our schoolyard, our auto-biographical
essays in hand. We were about to read aloud what
55 we had written during our morning of contemplation
and reflection. In response to Miss Nelson, each girl
stood up and read her composition. One girl told of a
much revered and loved aunt who now lived in
England and of how much she looked forward to
60 one day moving to England to live with her aunt; one
girl told of her brother studying medicine in Canada
and the life she imagined he lived there (it seemed
quite odd to me); one girl told of the fright she bad_
when she dreamed she was dead, and of the matching
65 fright she had when she woke and found that she
wasn’t (everyone laughed at this, and Miss Nelson
had to call us to order over and over); one girl told of
how her oldest sister’s best friend’s cousin’s best friend
(it was a real rigmarole) had gone on a Girl Guide
70 jamboree held in Trinidad and met someone who
millions of years ago had taken tea with Lady Baden-
Powell; one girl told of an excursion she and her
father had made to Redonda, and of how they had
seen some booby birds tending their chicks. Things
75 went on in that way, all so playful, all so imaginative.
I began to wonder about what I had written, for it was
the opposite of playful and it was the opposite of
imaginative. What I had written was heartfelt, and,
except for the very end, it was all too true.

Q-1 Over the course of the passage, the narrator’s attitude shifts from

Q-2 Which lines provide the best evidence for the answer to the previous question?

8. This passage is adapted from Barry Schwartz, “More
Isn’t Always Better,” 2006 by Harvard Business Review.
Marketers assume that the more choices they offer,
the more likely customers will be able to find just the
right thing. They assume, for instance, that offering 50
styles of jeans instead of two increases the chances that
5 shoppers will find a pair they really like. Nevertheless,
research now shows that there can be too much ch01ce;
when there is, consumers are less likely to buy anything
at all, and if they do buy, they are less satisfied with their selection.
10 It all began with jam. In 2000, psychologists Sheena
Iyengar and Mark Lepper published a remarkable study.
On one day, shoppers at an upscale food market saw a
display table with 24 varieties of gourmet jam. Those
who sampled the spreads received a coupon for $1 off
15 any jam. On another day, shoppers saw a similar table,
except that only six varieties of the jam were on display.
The large display attracted more interest than the small
one. But when the time came to purchase, people who
saw the large display were one-tenth as likely to buy as
20 people who saw the small display. Other studies have
confirmed this result that more choice is not always better.
As the variety of snacks, soft drinks, and beers offered at
convenience stores increases, for instance, sales volume and customer
25 satisfaction decrease. Moreover, as the number of
retirement investment options available to employees
increases, the chance that they will choose any
decreases. These studies and others have shown not
only that excessive choice can produce “choice
30 paralysis,” but also that it can reduce people’s
satisfaction with their decisions, even if they made
good ones. My colleagues and I have found that
increased choice decreases satisfaction with matters as
trivial as ice cream flavors and as significant as jobs.
35 These results challenge what we think we know
about human nature and the determinants of well-being.
Both psychology and business have operated on the
assumption that the relationship between choice and
well-being is straightforward: The more choices people
40 have, the better off they are. In psychology, the benefits
of choice have been tied to autonomy and control. In
business, the benefits of choice have been tied to the
benefits of free markets more generally. Added options
make no one worse off, and they are bound to make
45 someone better off. Choice is good for us, but its relationship to
satisfaction appears to be more complicated than we
had assumed. There is diminishing marginal utility in
having alternatives; each new option subtracts a little
50 from the feeling of well-being, until the marginal
benefits of added choice level off. What’s more,
psychologists and business academics alike have
largely ignored another outcome of choice: More of it
requires increased time and effort and can lead to
55 anxiety, regret, excessively high expectations, and
self-blame if the choices don’t work out. When the
number of available options is small, these costs
are negligible, but the costs grow with the number of
options. Eventually, each new option makes us feel
60 worse off than we did before.
Without a doubt, having more options enables us,
most of the time, to achieve better objective outcomes.
Again, having 50 styles of jeans as opposed to two.
increases the likelihood that customers will find a pair
65 that fits. But the subjective outcome may be that
shoppers will feel overwhelmed and dissatisfied. This
dissociation between objective and subjective results
creates a significant challenge for retailers and
marketers that look to choice as a way to enhance the
70 perceived value of their goods and services.
Choice can no longer be used to justify a marketing
strategy in and of itself. More isn’t always better,
either for the customer or for the retailer.
Discovering how much assortment is warranted is a
75 considerable empirical challenge. But companies that
get the balance right will be amply rewarded.

Q-1 What effect does the author’s reference to “My colleagues and I” (line 32) have on the tone of the passage?

Q-2 The author’s attitude toward Iyengar and Lepper’s research is best described as one of

Q-3 Which lines provide the best evidence for the answer to the previous question?

Q-4 The author would most likely consider the viewpoint in Jines 39-40 (“The more … are”)

Q-5 Which lines provide the best evidence for the answer to the previous question?