Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 34 to 38. Psychologists have long known that having a set of cherished companions is crucial to mental well-being. A recent study by Australian investigators concluded that our friends even help to prolong our lives. The study concentrated (34) ______ the social environment, general health, and lifestyle of 1,477 persons older than 70 years. The participants were asked how (35)______ contact they had with friends, children, relatives and acquaintances. Researchers were surprised to learn that friendships increased life (36) ______ to a far greater extent than frequent contact with children and other relatives. This benefit held true even after these friends had moved away to another city and was independent of factors such as socioeconomic status, health, and way of life. According to scientists, the ability to have relationships with people to (37) ______ one is important has a positive effect on physical and mental health. Stress and tendency towards depression are reduced, and behaviours that are damaging to health, such as smoking and drinking, occur less frequently. (38)_______, our support networks, in times of calamity in particular, can raise our moods and feelings of self-worth and offer helpful strategies for dealing with difficult personal challenges. (Source: Academic Vocabulary in Use by Michael McCarthy and Felicity O’Dell)
Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 39 to 43.
Successful students often do the followings while studying. First, they have an overview before reading. Next, they look for important information and pay greater attention to it (which often needs jumping forward or backward to process information). They also relate important points to one another. Also, they activate and use their prior knowledge. When they realize that their understanding is not good, they do not wait to change strategies. Last, they can monitor understanding and take action to correct or “fix up” mistakes in comprehension. Conversely, students with low academic achievement often demonstrate ineffective study skills. They tend to assume a passive role, in learning and rely on others (e.g., teachers, parents) to monitor their studying, for example, low-achieving students often do not monitor their understanding of content; they may not be aware of the purpose of studying; and they show little evidence of looking back, or employing “fix-up” strategies to fix understanding problems. Students who struggle with learning new information seem to be unaware that they must extent effort beyond simply reading the content to understand and remember it. Children with learning disabilities do not plan and judge the quality of their studying. Their studying may be disorganized. Students with learning problems face challenges with personal organization as well. They often have difficulty keeping track of materials and assignments, following directions, and completing work on time. Unlike good studiers who employ a variety of study skills in a flexible yet purposeful manner, low-achieving students use a restricted range of study skills. They cannot explain why good study strategies are important for learning; and they tend to use the same, often ineffective study approach for all learning tasks, ignoring task content, structure or difficulty. (Source: Adapted from Study Skills: Managing Your Learning — NUI Galway)
Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 44 to 50
We get great pleasure from reading. The more advanced a man is, the greater delight he will find in reading. The ordinary man may think that subjects like philosophy or science are very difficult and that if philosophers and scientists read these subjects, it is not for pleasure. But this is not true. The mathematician finds the same pleasure in his mathematics as the school boy in an adventure story. For both, it is a play of the imagination, a mental recreation and exercise. The pleasure derived from this activity is common to all kinds of reading. But different types of books give us different types of pleasure. First in order of popularity is novel-reading. Novels contain pictures of imaginary people in imaginary situations, and give us an opportunity of escaping into a new world very much like our world and yet different from it. Here we seem to live a new life, and the experience of this new life gives us a thrill of pleasure. Next in order of popularity are travel books, biographies and memoirs. These tell us tales of places we have not seen and of great men in whom we are interested. Some of these books are as wonderful as novels, and they have an added value that they are true. Such books give us knowledge, and we also find immense pleasure in knowing details of lands we have not seen and of great men we have only heard of. Reading is one of the greatest enjoyments of life. To book-lovers, nothing is more fascinating than a favorite book. And, the ordinary educated man who is interested and absorbed in his daily occupation wants to occasionally escape from his drudgery into the wonderland of books for recreation and refreshment. (Source: http://www.importantindia.com)