PTE Academic reading multiple choice multiple answers practice 3

reading

PTE Academic reading multiple choice multiple answers exercise

 

Read the text and answer the question by selecting all the correct responses. More than one response is correct.

1.Examinations

Despite all the new thinking, there is still no acceptable alternative to the examination. Whether it be at the end of term, or the year, or at the end of a school course or for the purpose of choosing candidates for a course of study and training, the only practicable way of measuring a student’s performance or of assessing his potential is by an examination, supplemented where necessary, by recommendation, interview and other devices.

Means to Pass

The most unfortunate by-product of the examination system has been the proliferation of study notes, guides to passing examination, model answers, hints for writing essays and similar travesties of education. There is no need to engage on the unethical nature of these publications. From the student’s point of view a rigorous censorship of this kind of publication would be a great advantage. For one thing these ‘notes’ promote the habit of rote learning. For the other, they are priced more highly than the poems of Wordsworth or the plays of Shakespeare, although they are not worth the paper they are printed on. The sooner we find a way to dispense with these, the better it is for the student community and the system at large.

Which of the following statements in respect of education and examination system are true as per the text?

1.Examinations are meant to analyze the process of learning.

2.There are serious problems in assessing a student’s progress through examinations.

3.The study notes and guides hinder the true process of study.

4.Examinations recognize a student’s difficulties and overcome them.

5.There are no alternatives, better or worse, to the examination system.

2.Books of travel are of all kinds, from the dry records of laborious statisticians to the trivial diaries of globe-trotters. Explorers, seamen, archaeologists, naturalists, dreamers, what type of man or woman has not written a book of travel? They are read, they are forgotten and ninety-nine out of every hundred pass away into oblivion. Yet there are others. Alas! There aren’t many.

Great books are rare, same as the people of genius and character are. To write a book of travel appeals irresistibly to large numbers of persons who have no creative power, whose books are the mere reflection of a shallow curiosity and of a foolish egotism. These mediocre works, though they spread a sort of suburban light upon the beautiful and wild places of earth, pale into trivialities on comparison with the achievement of the true travellers who by reason of their fortitude, their imagination, their insight and their ability to evoke the atmosphere and colour of the world, have produced books that rank as literature and last for centuries.

Which of the following statements about books of travel can be supported from the text?

1.The urge to write demands creativity on part of the writer.

2.Classics on travel and exploration have survived for centuries and will do so in future.

3.Courage is needed for travel and exploration, not so much for recounting the experiences.

4.Even the books that are not so imaginative could have nuggets of important information about people and places.

5.Books may exhibit writer’s self-centeredness

PTE Academic reading multiple choice multiple answers practice

3.Observe the dilemma of the fungus: it is a plant, but it possesses no chlorophyll. While all other plants put the sun’s energy to work for them combining the nutrients of ground and air into the body structure, the fungus must look elsewhere for energy supply. It finds it in those other plants which, having received their energy free from the sun, relinquish it at some point in their cycle either to animals (like us humans) or to the fungi.

In this search for energy the fungus has become the earth’s major source of rot and decay. Wherever you see mould forming on a piece of bread, or a pile of leaves turning to compost, or a blown-down tree becoming pulp on the ground, you are watching a fungus eating. Without fungus action the earth would be piled high with the dead plant life of past centuries. In fact, certain plants which contain resins that are toxic to fungi will last indefinitely; specimens of the redwood, for instance, can still be found resting on the forest floor centuries after having been blown down.

Which of the following statements in respect of the fungus cannot be derived from the text?

  1. Fungus cleans up the planet for us.
  2. Fungus is a non-parasitic plant.
  3. Mould is a representation of fungus.
  4. Fungus cannot eat some types of dead matter.
  5. Fungus cannot source energy at its own.

 

4.It is necessary to have a standard of education. We can set two sorts of standards there. First, a minimum standard below which no one is allowed to fall, in the shape of so many years of elementary education in such and such subjects. And secondly, and in a way even more important, a standard of equal opportunity for all, to ensure that no boy or girl is deprived of the chance of climbing to the top of the educational ladder through poverty or the accidents of birth. There are also standards of economic security. During the recent past, the sense of insecurity has been the single greatest cause, both of individual anxiety and frustration, and of social instability and unrest. A state must see to it that it gives to all its citizens minimum standards of security against ill health, against unemployment, against widowhood, against old age.

Issues of social security are, therefore, interlinked, irrespective of whether they are in the field of basic education, basic health, employment or even protection against economic needs arising out of old age, disability etc. The state expenditure on social security is bound to fall upon the shoulders of the society at large. A society that cannot take due care of such basic needs of each and every of its members is not fit to be called in the true sense of the term.

Which of the following statements in respect of education and social security are true as per the text?

  1. Equality of opportunity is a cornerstone of the standard of education.
  2. The state is obligated to cater to the basic needs of its citizens.
  3. A socially insecure person depends on the state to find a secure job.
  4. It is not possible to take the issues of health and education in isolation.
  5. Every citizen has an inherent right to climb to the top of the educational ladder.

PTE Academic multiple choice multiple answers questions

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9 thoughts on “PTE Academic reading multiple choice multiple answers practice 3

  1. hi there, could you explain the following questions for me?
    1. for the second question, why choose the 5th option and why not choose the first one
    2. for the third question, why choose the 5th option? (“the fungus must look elsewhere for energy supply.”)
    3. for the fourth question, why not choose the 5th option (“to ensure that no boy or girl is deprived of the chance of climbing to the top of the educational ladder through poverty or the accidents of birth”) and why choose the second option?

    thanks!

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