Test Level 2: Main Idea - CAT MCQ

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
The Antarctic is the vast source of cold on our planet, just as the sun is the source of our heat, and it exerts tremendous control on our climate, [Jacques] Cousteau told the camera The cold ocean water around Antarctica flows north to mix with warmer water from the tropics, and its upwelling help to cool both the surface water and our atmosphere. Yet the fragility of this regulating system is now threatened by human activity.
What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
The tides are enormously more complicated than all this would suggest. The influence of sun and moon is constantly changing, varying with the phases of the moon, with the distance of moon and sun from the earth, and with the position of each to north or south of the equator. They are complicated further by the fact that every body of water, whether natural or artificial, has its own period of oscillation. Disturb its waters and they will move with a seesaw or rocking motion, with the most pronounced movement at the ends of the container, the least motion at the centre. Tidal scientists now believe that the ocean contains a number of 'basins', each with its own period of oscillation determined by its length and depth. The disturbance that sets the water in motion is the attracting force of the moon and sun. But the kind of motion, that is, the period of the swing of the water, depends upon the physical dimensions of the basin.
What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
The Human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers upon earth, “Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites,” flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born degraded. “He shall serve his brethren.” There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of the other.
What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
The government is reportedly reviewing the subsidy on postal services. The decision has come not a day too soon. With the position of the fiscal becoming more precarious by the day, the Finance Minister urgently needs to seek avenues where he can cut expenditure. Unfortunately, his choices are limited. Interest payments, defence expenditure and wages and salaries of government staff together account for more than 50% of government revenue and can't be touched. Cutting back on food subsidies is politically a tough act to follow.
What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Secondly, science by accelerating man's speed of movement has made the world into a single whole. Hence, any war which broke out anywhere will destroy the whole of civilization and not merely some part of it, the part affected by the war, as has been the case in the past. That is why the new powers conferred upon men by science increasingly demand a world government, if they are not to result in man's destruction.
What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
The collapse of the USSR has led many to wonder whether Marxism too may come to the end of its tether. But Marxism, as we have seen, is essentially an interpretation of capitalism in which socialism and its final stage, communism, emerge as the still-unrealized potential within capitalism itself, as a way of resolving the main problems created by capitalism using means that have themselves come into existence during the capitalist era. What failed in the Soviet Union, then, Marxists will argue, is not Marxism but an effort to build socialism without any of the preconditions, such as developed industry, material plenty, democratic institutions, and a literate public, that arise with capitalism and which Marx considered absolutely necessary to the success of this effort.
What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Firefox is a classic overnight success, many years in the making. Published by the Mozilla Foundation, Firefox is a Web browser that is fast and filled with features that Microsoft's stodgy Internet Explorer lacks. Firefox installs in a snap, and it is free. Microsoft has always viewed Internet Explorer's tight integra`ion with Windows to be an attractive feature. That, h`wever, was before security became the unmet need of the day. Firefox sits lightly on top of Windows, in a separation from the underlying operating system that the Mozilla Foundation's president, Mitchell Baker, calls a natural defense.
What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Most people do not know that Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts of America, was deaf. She began to lose her hearing when she was 17, and became almost totally deaf in her adulthood. Juliette married William Mackay Low and they went to England to live. Juliette became interested in the Girl Guides Association there. Juliette organized several Girl Guides troops in both England and Scotland. Since she could not do all the work herself, she had to ask other women to help her. Sometimes the women were reluctant to give their time due to family responsibilities. However, Juliette was a very determined woman. When the women refused, she would pretend that she didn't understand what they said. As a result, the women helped her in spite of being busy. When Juliette came back to America for a visit, she started the first Girl Guides troop in the country in her home town, Savannah. By the time she went back to England six months later, there were six Girl Guide troops in Savannah. At that time, the girls made their own uniforms. In 1913, the Girl Guides changed its name to the Girl Scouts. Juliette Low came back to Savannah that same year.
The main idea of this passage can best be stated as

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
If we are right in what we have been saying, most of the greatest men, other than artists, have been actuated in their important activities by motives unconnected with sex. If such activities are to persist, and are, in their humbler forms, to become common, it is necessary that sex should not over-shadow the remainder of a man's emotional and passionate nature. The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress. It may be that too complete a happiness would cause the impulses to knowledge and reform to fade.
What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
There are two distinct vantage points from which a piece of work may be evaluated: according to the aesthetics of its medium, or according to its popularity in the market.That these distinctions are rarely made explicit causes no small mischief. As the economy grows more fiercely competitive, commercial evaluation ("Two thumbs up!") can all but silence aesthetic criticism. Several decades ago, before competition began to intensify, there were arbiters of taste - art critics, reviewers, essayists, educators, and graybeards - within the professions who continually passed judgment on the quality of work being done. They presided over a continuing discussion about standards, which reminded society about the difference between the good and the popular. But in a world of intensifying competition in which consumers can get exactly what they want - where software can even analyse their past purchases and advise them on what else they will enjoy or find interesting - such standard-bearers seem increasingly irrelevant.
What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Many of us use Grand Goals to deny our own freedom. We allow ourselves to become the slaves of our Goals. You know the story. Get up in the morning. Go to work. You confront the tasks in front of you. You experience each moment as a means to the next. One job leads to another. You become the tool of your tasks. This is slavery, not freedom. Slaves are chained to the goals of their masters. Many of us think we are free because we are not, technically speaking, slaves. We have not been bought on the slave trader`s block. We are free to run away any time we want. Or are we? We do not run away. What holds us? Our Goals. However exhilarating freedom can be, we are afraid to surrender those navigational aids that could steer us out of Dante`s dark wood. Goals and purposes are so good for giving a direction to life. They are such good organizers of actions. Single-mindedness, for what it`s worth, becomes possible.
What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
From the wealth of science we have selected certain parts. And our choice has in no way been influenced by a consideration of the higher interests of humanity. It has simply followed the direction of our natural tendencies. The principles of the greatest convenience and of the least effort, the pleasure procured by speed, change, and comfort, and also the need of escaping from ourselves, are the determining factors in the success of new inventions. But no one has ever asked himself how we would stand the enormous acceleration of the rhythm of life resulting from rapid transportation, telegraph, telephone, modern business methods, machines that write and calculate, and those that do all the housekeeping drudgery of former times. The tendency responsible for the universal adoption of the airplane, the automobile, the cinema, the telephone, the radio, and, in the near future, of television, is as natural as that which, in the night of the ages, led our ancestors to drink alcohol. Steam-heated houses, electric lighting, elevators, biological morals, and chemical adulteration of foodstuffs have been accepted solely because those innovations were agreeable and convenient. But no account whatever has been taken of their probable effect on human beings.
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