1. 1. Read the passage and answer the following question.

The American people have an incorrect understanding of what it means to be at war. At least so argues T.H. Pickett in his conservative interpretation of American military history.

Pickett does present a wealth of examples along with a refreshing candid argument that America often goes to war for an abstract ideal such as the democratization of societies, would peace, liberty, or freedom. For instance, the Spanish – American War of 1898 was ostensibly a consequence of national enthusiasm for the cause of Cuban liberty. And, more obviously, America’s entry into World War I stemmed from a desire to “make the world safe for democracy.”

Although these observations are supportable, Pickett overstates the cause typically lead to a war hysteria in which American leadership can no longer enforce any measured policies.

Ques 1. Which of the following best states the author’s main point?

2. In linguistics, a corpus (plural corpora) is a large and structured set of texts (now usually electronically stored and processed). A corpus may be used to help linguists to analyse a language, or for the purpose of dictionary writing or language teaching. The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100-million-word text corpus of samples of written and spoken English from a wide range of sources. The corpus covers British English of the late twentieth century from a wide variety of genres with the intention that it be a representative sample of spoken and written British English of that time.

What is a corpus according to text?

3. or many years, most physicists supported one of two cosmological theories: the steady-state universe, , and the Big Bang. The theory of the steady-state universe states that the universe has always existed exactly as we observe it at present, whereas the Big Bang theory postulates that the universe was conceived from a singularity in space-time that has expanded into current universe. The validity of either theory was not tested until 19 when Edwin Hubble famously discovered what is now known as Hubble’s Law.Hubble’s experiment is now a famous benchmark in modern physics. Hubble, using the Mount Wilson Observatory, observed a class of stars known as Cepheid variables, luminous stars that blink and flicker with a rate that depends on their distance from the observer.

Using this relation and years of observing, Hubble calculated the distance to many of these variable stars. Milton Humason, a fellow astronomer, helped Hubble to calculate the stars’ relative velocities to Earth. When Hubble combined the two data sets he found an interesting relationship: all the stars appeared to be moving away from us! In fact, the speed at which they were moving increased with an increasing distance from Earth.Hubble realized, from this small set of data, that the earth was a part of the expanding universe.

As the universe expands outward in all directions, any observer from a fixed vantage point will look out and see everything running away from them. The further away any two points are, the more the expansion affects them, and the faster they appear to be moving away from each other. Hubble’s result was the first experimental proof that we do not live in a steady-state universe, but rather a dynamic and expanding one.

Ques 2. Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the passage?

4. A new survey reveals that a family sit-down at dinnertime may reduce a teenager’s risk of trying or using alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. The study surveyed more than 1,000 teens and found that those who dined with their families five to seven times a week were four times less likely to use alcohol, tobacco or marijuana than those who ate with their families fewer than three times a week.

A recent UK survey also found that dining together as a family is a key ingredient in ensuring a child’s happiness. Children in the survey reported higher levels of happiness when they dined together with their families at least three times a week. “Contrary to the popular belief that children only want to spend time playing video games or watching TV,” said researcher Dr. Maris Bivouac of the University of Essex, “we found that they were most happy when interacting with their parents or siblings.”

what would be the best title for the given text?

5. Stars create energy through the process of fusion. When a star explodes—a phenomenon called a supernova—so much energy is released that heavy metals such as iron and gold are formed, seeding surrounding hydrogen clouds. Newer stars therefore contain more heavy elements in their atmospheres. Heavy elements form the materials that make up our planet (and even human bodies). It is believed that for a system of planets such as our solar system to form around a star during cloud contraction, the presence of these heavy elements in the cloud is a necessity.

A molecular cloud can become unstable and collapse by the force of gravity, overcoming outward thermal pressure of the constituent gases. At a given temperature and density, two critical measures of size, Jeans mass and Jeans length, can be calculated. If the size of the cloud exceeds either of these critical values, gravity will ultimately win, and the probability of eventual cloud contraction is high. However, some outside influence is still evidently required for a theoretically unstable cloud to initiate collapse.

The natural rotation of a galaxy can slowly alter the structure of a cloud, for instance. Surrounding supernovae can generate shock-waves powerful enough to affect the debris in other clouds, forcing the debris inward and possibly causing contraction to begin. One theory states that density waves propagating through spiral structures can also sufficiently stimulate clouds to cause contraction.

Ques 1. Which of the following inferences about our solar system is best supported by the passage?

6. For the first time, dictionary publishers are incorporating real, spoken English into their data. It gives lexicographers (people who write dictionaries) access to a more vibrant, up-to-date vernacular language which has never really been studied before. In one project, 150 volunteers each agreed to discreetly tie a Walkman recorder to their waist and leave it running for anything up to two weeks. Every conversation they had was recorded. When the data was collected, the length of tapes was 35 times the depth of the Atlantic Ocean. Teams of audio typists transcribed the tapes to produce a computerised database of ten million words.

Which would be most suitable heading for the paragraph?