The actual Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension section from CAT 2024, Slot 3 — 24 questions in original paper order, each with a full worked solution. Tap an option (or type your answer) to check yourself before reading the solution.
24 questions22 MCQ · 2 TITA40 min section0/24 attempted
Passage · History & Culture
Languages become endangered and die out for many reasons. Sadly, the physical annihilation of communities of native speakers of a language is all too often the cause of language extinction. In North America, European colonists brought death and destruction to many Native American communities. This was followed by US federal policies restricting the use of indigenous languages, including the removal of native children from their communities to federal boarding schools where native languages and cultural practices were prohibited. As many as 75 percent of the languages spoken in the territories that became the United States have gone extinct, with slightly better language survival rates in Central and South America ...
Even without physical annihilation and prohibitions against language use, the language of the "dominant" cultures may drive other languages into extinction; young people see education, jobs, culture and technology associated with the dominant language and focus their attention on that language. The largest language "killers" are English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Hindi, and Chinese, all of which have privileged status as dominant languages threatening minority languages.
When we lose a language, we lose the worldview, culture and knowledge of the people who spoke it, constituting a loss to all humanity. People around the world live in direct contact with their native environment, their habitat. When the language they speak goes extinct, the rest of humanity loses their knowledge of that environment, their wisdom about the relationship between local plants and illness, their philosophical and religious beliefs, as well as their native cultural expression (in music, visual art and poetry) that has enriched both the speakers of that language and others who would have encountered that culture ...
As educators deeply immersed in the liberal arts, we believe that educating students broadly in all facets of language and culture ... yields immense rewards. Some individuals educated in the liberal arts tradition will pursue advanced study in linguistics and become actively engaged in language preservation, setting out for the Amazon, for example, with video recording equipment to interview the last surviving elders in a community to record and document a language spoken by no children.
Certainly, though, the vast majority of students will not pursue this kind of activity. For these students, a liberal arts education is absolutely critical from the twin perspectives of language extinction and global citizenship. When students study languages other than their own, they are sensitized to the existence of different cultural perspectives and practices. With such an education, students are more likely to be able to articulate insights into their own cultural biases, be more empathetic to individuals of other cultures, communicate successfully across linguistic and cultural differences, consider and resolve questions in a way that reflects multiple cultural perspectives, and, ultimately extend support to people, programs, practices, and policies that support the preservation of endangered languages.
There is ample evidence that such preservation can work in languages spiraling toward extinction. For example, Navajo, Cree, and Inuit communities have established schools in which these languages are the language of instruction, and the number of speakers of each has increased.
Q1Reading ComprehensionMCQ
In the context of the passage, which one of the following hypothetical scenarios, if true, is NOT an example of the kind of loss that occurs when a language becomes extinct?
Show solution
Correct answer: B
This is an EXCEPT question: three options are genuine examples of what is lost when a language dies, and one is not. So first fix what the passage says is lost, then test each scenario against it.
The passage is explicit: when a language dies, "we lose the worldview, culture and knowledge of the people who spoke it" — especially their knowledge of the natural environment (the link between local plants and illness), their philosophical and religious beliefs, and their cultural expression in music, art and poetry.
Testing the options
Nicobarese — 20 words for the ocean's moods, forgotten: loss of environmental knowledge. A real example.
Andamanese — a word for someone who has lost a step-sister, and the emotion it carries: loss of cultural and conceptual knowledge. A real example.
Inuit — 35 words for the texture of snow, and that understanding of nature: loss of environmental knowledge. A real example.
Lamkang — the tribe drops off "the government list of indigenous tribes": this is an administrative, list-keeping outcome, not a loss of worldview, knowledge or cultural expression. A dying language does not, in the passage's terms, erase a group from a government register.
Only the Lamkang case falls outside the kind of loss the passage describes.
Which one of the following hypothetical scenarios, if true, would most strongly undermine the central ideas of the passage?
Show solution
Correct answer: B
The question asks which scenario would most strongly undermine the passage. So identify the passage's core claims and look for the option that strikes directly at one of them.
The passage rests on two pillars: (1) dominant languages are driving minority languages extinct, so preservation matters; and (2) studying languages other than one's own makes students culturally sensitive and moves them to support the preservation of endangered languages.
Why B is the strongest blow
The passage itself names the biggest "language killers" — English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Hindi and Chinese — which are precisely the world's most-spoken tongues. Option B says a liberal-arts education would require fluency in "two of the top five most spoken languages globally." That would push students straight toward the dominant languages that kill minority ones — the exact opposite of pillar (2). It turns the proposed cure into part of the disease, so it undermines the argument most directly.
Why the others barely scratch it
Most students go into publishing/HR, not linguistics: the passage already concedes "the vast majority of students will not pursue this kind of activity," so this agrees with it.
Schools preserve a language for only a generation: partial preservation is still preservation.
Recording freezes a language: this hits only one method, while the passage's flagship examples are living schools (Navajo, Cree, Inuit).
It can be inferred from the passage that it is likely South America had a slightly better language survival rate than North America for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:
Show solution
Correct answer: D
An EXCEPT/inference question: three options are plausible reasons South America kept more of its languages than North America; one is not. Anchor on why North America lost so many, then flip it.
The passage blames North America's high extinction on three things: physical annihilation by colonists; federal bans on indigenous languages; and removing native children to boarding schools that forbade their languages. Better survival elsewhere would come from the opposite conditions.
Three options correctly invert those causes
Colonists let native children stay home with their families — undoes the boarding-school policy.
The colonial government could not mainstream the locals — blocks assimilation into the dominant language.
Few native speakers were killed — less physical annihilation.
Why D is the exception
Locals were given jobs in the colonial administration would hurt language survival, not help it. The passage says young people abandon their language because they "see education, jobs, culture and technology associated with the dominant language." Colonial-administration jobs run on the dominant language, so funnelling locals into them accelerates the shift away from their mother tongue — the opposite of better survival.
The author believes that a liberal arts education combined with participation in language preservation empower students in all of the following ways EXCEPT that they will
Show solution
Correct answer: C
Another EXCEPT question: three options are ways the passage says a liberal-arts education empowers the student; one is not a student outcome at all. List what the passage credits to such an education, then match.
The passage says students so educated are "sensitized to... different cultural perspectives," able to "articulate insights into their own cultural biases," "more empathetic," able to "communicate successfully across linguistic and cultural differences," and moved to "extend support to... policies that support the preservation of endangered languages."
Matching the options
Overcome cultural barriers to communication = "communicate successfully across linguistic and cultural differences."
Learn different languages = "study languages other than their own."
Better understanding of their own culture = "articulate insights into their own cultural biases."
Why C is the exception
Establishing schools to preserve dying languages is not something the passage says the student is empowered to do. It is the passage's example of preservation working — "Navajo, Cree, and Inuit communities have established schools." That is an action of whole communities, not a personal capacity the liberal-arts student gains.
There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: This reality is putting stress on employees who have to pay for transport, desk lunches, more childcare, clothing and that after-work socialisation - costs they haven’t incurred for nearly two years.
Paragraph: ___(1)___. Prices are rising at their fastest rate in 40 years; consequently, return-to-office-related costs have shot up - think petrol and food, for instance.___(2)___. Yet wages haven’t kept up with inflation - even despite the salary growth many workers have enjoyed during a favourable pandemic labour market. ___(3)___.This is especially jarring for workers who were able to save during remote work, when these expenditures weren’t a factor. ___(4)___. In April 2022, Umus, a London university lecturer, told BBC Worklife that they were spending nearly a quarter of what they made every day on return-to-work costs.
Show solution
Correct answer: B
This is a sentence-insertion question. The missing sentence is: "This reality is putting stress on employees who have to pay for transport, desk lunches, more childcare, clothing and that after-work socialisation — costs they haven't incurred for nearly two years." Two signals fix its place.
"This reality" needs something already established to point back to. By slot 3 the paragraph has stacked two facts — return-to-office costs have shot up and wages haven't kept up with inflation. So "this reality" naturally refers to that whole squeeze. Slot 1 has nothing before it; slot 2 can only point at the single "costs shot up" line.
The line just after slot 3 says "when these expenditures weren't a factor." That phrase, "these expenditures," must follow a list of expenditures — and the only sentence listing them (transport, lunches, childcare, clothing, socialisation) is the missing one. So it has to sit immediately before that line, i.e. at slot 3.
The paragraph then flows cleanly: facts established → stress on employees → especially jarring for those who saved while remote → concrete example (Umus). Slot 4 would strand this general statement after a specific case.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Lyric poetry is a genre of private meditation rather than public commitment. The impulse in Marxism toward changing a society deemed unacceptable in its basic design would seem to place demands on lyric poetry that such poetry, with its tendency toward the personal, the small scale, and the idiosyncratic, could never answer. There is within Marxism, however, also a strand of thought that would locate in lyric poetry alternative modes of perception and description that call forth a vision of worlds at odds with a repressive reality or that draw attention to the workings of ideology within the hegemonic culture. The poetic imagination may indeed deflect larger social concerns, but it may also be implicitly critical and utopian.
Show solution
Correct answer: C
A para-summary question. The whole paragraph turns on one hinge word — "however" — so the summary must reproduce that turn.
First half: lyric poetry is personal, small-scale and idiosyncratic, which seems incompatible with Marxism's drive to change society. Then "however": a strand of Marxism finds in lyric poetry "alternative modes of perception... a vision of worlds at odds with a repressive reality," so poetry can be "implicitly critical and utopian." Essence: apparent incompatibility, yet poetry can serve as resistance against an oppressive culture.
Option C reproduces both the tension and the turn: "the focus of lyric poetry as personal may not seem compatible with Marxism. However, it is possible to envisage lyric poetry as a symbol of resistance against an oppressive culture."
Why the others fail
The "unless the difference is resolved, poetry will remain largely utopian" option invents a condition the passage never states.
The "Marxism has internal contradictions / one strand sees no merit" option overstates — the passage never calls it a contradiction, nor says a strand sees no merit.
The "merits largely ignored by Marxism" option contradicts the passage, which says a strand of Marxism does value lyric poetry.
Five jumbled-up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. To create a synapse, the neuron has specialized structures, often seen as tiny swellings, at its terminal end of the axon where it stores the chemicals that are emitted to transmit a signal to the next neuron.
2. This fetal warm-up act—the soldering of neural connections before the eyes actually function—is crucial to the performance of the visual system.
3. The reasons for this paring back of synapses is a mystery, but synaptic pruning is thought to sharpen and reinforce the “correct” synapses, while removing the weak and unnecessary ones.
4. Neural connections between the eyes and the brain are formed long before birth, establishing the wiring and the circuitry that allow a child to begin visualizing the world the minute she emerges from the womb.
5. During this rehearsal period, synapses—points of chemical connection—between nerve cells are generated in great excess, only to be pruned back during later development.
Show solution
Correct answer: 1
An odd-sentence-out set. Four sentences tell one developmental story; one is a stray definition.
The story — how the eye-brain wiring forms before birth:
S4 opens with no back-reference: eye-brain connections form "long before birth," building the wiring that lets a newborn see.
S5 follows on "this rehearsal period" (= that fetal wiring): synapses are "generated in great excess, only to be pruned back."
S3 picks up "this paring back of synapses" (= "pruned back"): pruning sharpens the right synapses and removes weak ones.
S2 closes, calling the whole thing "this fetal warm-up act" and looping back to vision — it is "crucial to the performance of the visual system."
Order 4 → 5 → 3 → 2 is coherent, and every "this X" pointer resolves cleanly.
Why S1 is the odd one: it is a static, anatomical definition of how a single neuron builds a synapse ("specialized structures... at its terminal end of the axon"). That micro-level tangent does not belong to the fetal-wiring-and-vision arc, and dropping it in anywhere breaks the "this X" chain.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
When the tradwife puts on that georgic, pinstriped dress, she is not just admiring the visual cues of a fantastical past. She takes these dreams of storybook bliss literally, tracing them backward in time until she reaches a logical conclusion that satisfies her. And by doing so, she ends up delivering an unhappy reminder of just how much our lives consist of artifice and playacting. The tradwife outrages people because of her deliberately regressive ideals. And yet her behaviour is, on some level, indistinguishable from the non-tradwife’s. The tradwife’s trollish genius is to beat us at our own dress-up game. By insisting that the idyllic cottage daydream should be real, right down to the primitive gender roles, she leaves others feeling hollow, cheated. The hullabaloo and headaches she causes may be the price we pay for taking too many things at face value: our just deserts, served Instagram-perfect by a manicured hand on a gorgeous ceramic dish, with fat, mouthwatering maraschino cherries on top.
Show solution
Correct answer: C
A para-summary question. First state the paragraph's point in full, then pick the option that carries all of it with the right emphasis.
The paragraph makes a two-part claim about the "tradwife": by literally enacting an idealised past (vintage dress, "primitive gender roles"), she (1) exposes the artifice and superficiality of modern life ("our lives consist of artifice and playacting," "our own dress-up game") and (2) outrages / challenges current norms ("outrages people because of her deliberately regressive ideals"). A correct summary must keep both halves.
Option C does: "vintage dress and traditional roles" (her presentation), "highlights the superficiality of modern life" (the artifice she exposes), and "challenges current societal norms" (the outrage).
Why the others miss
The "critiques the superficiality of today's ideals" option is too mild ("critiques") and drops the "challenges norms" half.
The "mocks societal norms" option misreads her — she is sincere ("takes these dreams... literally"), not mocking, and "promoting" overstates her stance.
The "reveal the artificial nature of modern life and its superficial values" option is redundant ("artificial" ~ "superficial") and again omits the challenge to norms.
There is a group in the space community who view the solar system not as an opportunity to expand human potential but as a nature preserve, forever the provenance of an elite group of scientists and their sanitary robotic probes. These planetary protection advocates [call] for avoiding “harmful contamination” of celestial bodies. Under this regime, NASA incurs great expense sterilizing robotic probes in order to prevent the contamination of entirely theoretical biospheres ...
Transporting bacteria would matter if Mars were the vital world once imagined by astronomers who mistook optical illusions for canals. Nobody wants to expose Martians to measles, but sadly, robotic exploration reveals a bleak, rusted landscape, lacking oxygen and flooded with radiation ready to sterilize any Earthly microbes. Simple life might exist underground, or down at the bottom of a deep canyon, but it has been very hard to find with robots. . . . The upsides from human exploration and development of Mars clearly outweigh the welfare of purely speculative Martian fungi ...
The other likely targets of human exploration, development, and settlement, our moon and the asteroids, exist in a desiccated, radiation-soaked realm of hard vacuum and extreme temperature variations that would kill nearly anything. It’s also important to note that many international competitors will ignore the demands of these protection extremists in any case. For example, China recently sent a terrarium to the moon and germinated a plant seed—with, unsurprisingly, no protest from its own scientific community. In contrast, when it was recently revealed that a researcher had surreptitiously smuggled super- resilient microscopic tardigrades aboard the ill-fated Israeli Beresheet lunar probe, a firestorm was unleashed within the space community ...
NASA’s previous human exploration efforts made no serious attempt at sterility, with little notice. As the Mars expert Robert Zubrin noted in the National Review, U.S. lunar landings did not leave the campsites cleaner than they found it. Apollo’s bacteria-infested litter included bags of feces. Forcing NASA’s proposed Mars exploration to do better, scrubbing everything and hauling out all the trash, would destroy NASA’s human exploration budget and encroach on the agency’s other directorates, too. Getting future astronauts off Mars is enough of a challenge, without trying to tote weeks of waste along as well.
A reasonable compromise is to continue on the course laid out by the U.S. government and the National Research Council, which proposed a system of zones on Mars, some for science only, some for habitation, and some for resource exploitation. This approach minimizes contamination, maximizes scientific exploration ... Mars presents a stark choice of diverging human futures. We can turn inward, pursuing ever more limited futures while we await whichever natural or manmade disaster will eradicate our species and life on Earth. Alternatively, we can choose to propel our biosphere further into the solar system, simultaneously protecting our home planet and providing a backup plan for the only life we know exists in the universe. Are the lives on Earth worth less than some hypothetical microbe lurking under Martian rocks?
Q9Reading ComprehensionMCQ
The author is unlikely to disagree with any of the following EXCEPT:
Show solution
Correct answer: C
Read the phrasing carefully: "unlikely to disagree with any of the following EXCEPT." That means the author agrees with three statements, and you must find the one he would actually disagree with. The author is pro-development and openly scorns over-sterilisation of space.
The three he agrees with
Zonal segregation of Mars — he calls it "a reasonable compromise... a system of zones on Mars, some for science only, some for habitation, and some for resource exploitation."
Earlier missions weren't ideal but did no grave damage — he notes Apollo made "no serious attempt at sterility, with little notice."
The cost of keeping space pristine is unsustainable — sterilising everything "would destroy NASA's human exploration budget."
Why C is the odd one
"Space contamination should be minimised until the possibility of life... is ruled out" is exactly the planetary-protection position the whole passage attacks. The author argues Mars is effectively lifeless and that waiting to "rule out life" first is excessive. He would reject this precondition — so this is the statement he disagrees with.
The author mentions all of the following reasons to dismiss concerns about contaminating Mars EXCEPT:
Show solution
Correct answer: C
An EXCEPT question: three options are reasons the author actually gives for dismissing worries about contaminating Mars; one is not in the passage. Collect his stated reasons first.
The reasons he does give
No evidence of life — Mars is "a bleak, rusted landscape... flooded with radiation," and life is "very hard to find," so earthly microbes are a moot point.
Competitors ignore the rules — China germinated a seed on the moon, so containment efforts get "derailed."
Earlier missions already left contamination — Apollo "did not leave the campsites cleaner," its "litter included bags of feces," so the "pristine" argument is already void.
Why C is the exception
The author never argues that probes "have had little effect on the environment." His lunar point is the reverse in spirit: the environment is so hostile it "would kill nearly anything," and Apollo did leave litter. "Little environmental effect from probes" is the option's own invention, not a reason he offers.
The author’s overall tone in the first paragraph can be described as
Show solution
Correct answer: A
A tone question focused on the first paragraph. Attend to the author's diction, because word choice carries attitude.
Paragraph 1 caricatures the planetary-protection camp. The solar system is held "forever the provenance of an elite group of scientists and their sanitary robotic probes," and NASA "incurs great expense sterilizing robotic probes in order to prevent the contamination of entirely theoretical biospheres." Words like "elite," "sanitary" and "entirely theoretical" drip with doubt about spending huge effort to sanitise worlds where life is unproven. That is a sceptical stance toward excessive sanitisation — option A.
Why the others misread the register
Equivocal means hedging or ambiguous — but the author is pointedly not hedging.
Indifferent means he does not care — yet he cares enough to mock the expense.
Approving of the money NASA spends is the exact reverse of his view; he treats the expense as waste.
The contrasting reactions to the Chinese and Israeli “contaminations” of lunar space
Show solution
Correct answer: C
The question asks what the contrast between the Chinese and Israeli episodes is meant to show. Start from how the passage frames the two reactions.
China germinated a seed on the moon "with, unsurprisingly, no protest from its own scientific community," whereas smuggled tardigrades on the Israeli probe "unleashed a firestorm... within the space community." The author's telling phrase is "its own scientific community" — he is pointing out that different national scientific communities react differently to biosphere-protection questions. That inference is option C.
Why the others overreach
Animal contamination is worse than plant contamination: the passage never makes this comparison as a justification.
Evidence of China's reasonable approach: the silence is explained by national affiliation, not praised as reasonable.
Global biases against particular countries: a possible subtext, but the passage frames the gap as differing sensitivities among scientists, not anti-country prejudice.
Moutai has been the global booze sensation of the decade. A bottle of its Flying Fairy, which sold in the 1980s for the equivalent of a dollar, now retails for $400. Moutai’s listed shares have soared by almost 600% in the past five years, outpacing the likes of Amazon ...
It does this while disregarding every Western marketing mantra. It is not global, has meagre digital sales and does not appeal to millennials. It scores pitifully on environmental, social and government measures. In the Boy Scout world of Western business, it would leave a bad taste in more ways than one.
Moutai owes its intoxicating success to three factors—not all of them easy to emulate. First, it profits from Chinese nationalism. Moutai is known as the “national liquor”. It was used to raise spirits and disinfect wounds in Mao’s Long March. It was Premier Zhou Enlai’s favourite tipple, shared with Richard Nixon in 1972. Its centuries-old craftsmanship—it is distilled eight times and stored for years in earthenware jars—is a source of national pride. It also claims to be hangover-proof, which would make it an invention to rival gunpowder ...
Second, it chose to serve China’s super-rich rather than its middle class. Markets are littered with the corpses of firms that could not compete in the cut-throat battle for Chinese middle-class wallets. And the country’s premium market is massive—at 73m-strong, bigger than the population of France, notes Euan McLeish of Bernstein, an investment firm, and still less crowded with prestige brands than advanced economies. Moutai is to these well-heeled drinkers what vintage champagne is to the rest of the world ...
Third, Moutai looks beyond affluent millennials and digital natives. The elderly and the middle-aged, it found, can be just as lucrative. Its biggest market now is (male) drinkers in their mid-30s. Many have no siblings, thanks to four decades of China’s one-child policy—which also means their elderly parents can splash out on weddings and banquets. Moutai is often a guest of honour.
Moutai has succeeded thanks to nationalism, elitism and ageism, in other words—not in spite of this unholy trinity. But it faces risks. The government is its largest shareholder—and a meddlesome one. It appears to want prices to remain stable. Exorbitantly priced booze is at odds with its professed socialist ideals. Yet minority investors—including many foreign funds—lament that Moutai’s wholesale price is a third of what it sells for in shops. Raising it could boost the company’s profits further. Instead, in what some see as a travesty of corporate governance, its majority owner has plans to set up its own sales channel ...
In the long run, its biggest risk may be millennials. As they grow older, health concerns, work-life balance and the desire for more wholesome pursuits than binge-drinking may curb the“Ganbei!” toasting culture [heavy drinking] on which so much of the demand for Moutai rests. For the time being, though, the party goes on.
Q13Reading ComprehensionMCQ
The phrase “would make it an invention to rival gunpowder” has been used in the passage in a sense that is
Show solution
Correct answer: C
To judge how a phrase is used, read it in its sentence and ask whether it is meant literally or figuratively.
The line is: "It also claims to be hangover-proof, which would make it an invention to rival gunpowder." Gunpowder is the classic Chinese world-changing invention; the writer is playfully elevating a (dubious) hangover-proof claim to that legendary status. Moutai is obviously not literally an invention on gunpowder's level — the comparison is figurative.
Why C (metaphorical). The phrase draws a figurative comparison for effect, not a literal equivalence.
Why the others fail:
Literal — Moutai is not literally comparable to gunpowder.
Substantive — "of real substance" does not describe a playful figure of speech.
Synonymical — Moutai and gunpowder are not synonyms.
Which one of the following is both a reason for Moutai’s success as well as a possible threat to that success?
Show solution
Correct answer: D
Find the single factor the passage puts on both sides of the ledger — helping Moutai now, but also endangering it later.
Moutai's three success drivers are nationalism, elitism (serving the super-rich), and appeal to older/middle-aged drinkers — its biggest market being men in their mid-30s, sustained by the heavy-drinking "Ganbei!" toasting culture.
That same age-based appeal is then flagged as the danger: "In the long run, its biggest risk may be millennials. As they grow older, health concerns, work-life balance and the desire for more wholesome pursuits than binge-drinking may curb the 'Ganbei!' toasting culture... on which so much of the demand for Moutai rests." So the appeal to an older, hard-drinking cohort is both a strength and a looming weakness.
Why the others are one-sided:
Appeal to the rich is a success factor, never flagged as a threat.
Government involvement is flagged only as a threat, not among the success drivers.
Chinese love of liquor-filled celebration is background, not one of the three named drivers nor a named risk.
In the context of the passage, it is most likely that the author refers to Moutai’s marketing strategy as “the unholy trinity” because
Show solution
Correct answer: C
For a phrase-in-context question, use the author's own setup around the phrase.
The author defines the trinity himself: "Moutai has succeeded thanks to nationalism, elitism and ageism... not in spite of this unholy trinity." And the opening explains why it is "unholy": Moutai wins "while disregarding every Western marketing mantra" — it is not global, shuns millennials, and scores poorly on ESG. Nationalism, elitism and ageism are the very opposite of orthodox Western marketing (go global, chase the young, be egalitarian and ESG-minded).
Why C. The trinity is "unholy" because it flouts Western marketing orthodoxy — and still succeeds.
Why the others fail:
"Nothing holy about liquor marketing" is a surface pun, not the contextual meaning.
"Profits from nationalism" names only one of the three, so it cannot explain a trinity.
"Exposes the firm to long-term risks" — the risks are discussed separately; "unholy trinity" describes the success formula, not the risk profile.
In the context of the passage, we can infer that to succeed in the liquor industry in China, a marketing firm must consider all of the following factors affecting the Chinese liquor market EXCEPT that
Show solution
Correct answer: A
Three options are factors the passage tells a would-be marketer to weigh; one is the opposite of what it advises. Find it.
Drawn straight from the passage:
Government may control pricing — "The government is its largest shareholder — and a meddlesome one. It appears to want prices to remain stable."
Few competitors at the high end — "the country's premium market is massive... still less crowded with prestige brands than advanced economies."
Stiff competition for the middle class — "Markets are littered with the corpses of firms that could not compete in the cut-throat battle for Chinese middle-class wallets."
Why A is the exception. "There is money to be made from marketing to the middle class" is the opposite of the passage's lesson: the middle-class market is a "cut-throat battle" full of "corpses," and Moutai thrived precisely by choosing the super-rich instead. That is the trap the passage warns against, not a factor to bank on.
Fears of artificial intelligence (AI) have haunted humanity since the very beginning of the computer age. Hitherto, these fears focused on machines using physical means to kill, enslave or replace people. But over the past couple of years, new AI tools have emerged that threaten the survival of human civilisation from an unexpected direction. AI has gained some remarkable abilities to manipulate and generate language, whether with words, sounds or images. AI has thereby hacked the operating system of our civilisation.
Language is the stuff almost all human culture is made of. Human rights, for example, aren’t inscribed in our DNA. Rather, they are cultural artefacts we created by telling stories and writing laws. Gods aren’t physical realities. Rather, they are cultural artefacts we created by inventing myths and writing scriptures….What would happen once a non-human intelligence becomes better than the average human at telling stories, composing melodies, drawing images, and writing laws and scriptures? When people think about Chatgpt and other new AI tools, they are often drawn to examples like schoolchildren using AI to write their essays. What will happen to the school system when kids do that? But this kind of question misses the big picture. Forget about school essays. Think of the next American presidential race in 2024, and try to imagine the impact of AI tools that can be made to mass-produce political content, fake news stories and scriptures for new cults…
Through its mastery of language, AI could even form intimate relationships with people, and use the power of intimacy to change our opinions and worldviews. Although there is no indication that AI has any consciousness or feelings of its own, to foster fake intimacy with humans, it is enough if the AI can make them feel emotionally attached to it….
What will happen to the course of history when AI takes over culture, and begins producing stories, melodies, laws and religions? Previous tools like the printing press and radio helped spread the cultural ideas of humans, but they never created new cultural ideas of their own. AI is fundamentally different. AI can create completely new ideas, completely new culture….Of course, the new power of AI could be used for good purposes as well. I won’t dwell on this because the people who develop AI talk about it enough….
We can still regulate the new AI tools, but we must act quickly. Whereas nukes cannot invent more powerful nukes, AI can make exponentially more powerful AI.… Unregulated AI deployments would create social chaos, which would benefit autocrats and ruin democracies. Democracy is a conversation, and conversations rely on language. When AI hacks language, it could destroy our ability to have meaningful conversations, thereby destroying democracy …. And the first regulation I would suggest is to make it mandatory for AI to disclose that it is an AI. If I am having a conversation with someone, and I cannot tell whether it is a human or an AI—that’s the end of democracy. This text has been generated by a human. Or has it?
Q17Reading ComprehensionMCQ
The author identifies all of the following as dire outcomes of the capture of language by AI EXCEPT that it could
Show solution
Correct answer: D
Three of the four options are harms the author states outright; one stitches together a link he never makes. Find it.
Stated harms:
"AI can create completely new ideas, completely new culture" → spawning a whole new culture.
AI could become "better than the average human at telling stories, composing melodies, drawing images, and writing laws" → out-stripping human creativity in art, music and law.
AI could "mass-produce political content, fake news stories" and thereby "ruin democracies" → subverting democratic processes with fake content.
Why D is the exception. The author does say AI can fake intimacy ("form intimate relationships... use the power of intimacy to change our opinions and worldviews") and, separately, that it can flood politics with fake content. But he never joins intimacy to political polarisation. Option D welds those two ideas into a causal chain the passage does not draw — the intimacy point is about shifting worldviews broadly, not hardening opposing political camps.
The author terms language “the operating system of our civilization” for all the following reasons EXCEPT that it
Show solution
Correct answer: B
The "operating system" image is about language being the substrate civilisation runs on. Find the option that does not fit that idea.
The author's reasons: "Language is the stuff almost all human culture is made of"; rights and gods are "cultural artefacts we created by telling stories and writing laws." So language being fundamental to human values and culture (option 3), and the foundation of cultural artefacts through storytelling and writing (option 4), both fit — as does its power to sway opinion through emotional ties (option 1), since AI uses "the power of intimacy to change our opinions and worldviews."
Why B is the exception. "It is the basis of AI tools like ChatGPT which can be used to generate academic content and opinion" does not explain the metaphor: the operating system is civilisation, not AI software. And the author actually brushes the academic-content angle aside — "this kind of question misses the big picture... Forget about school essays." So B neither supports the image nor matches his emphasis.
We can infer that the author is most likely to agree with which of the following statements?
Show solution
Correct answer: D
Pick the statement that lines up with the passage's central warning.
The core warning: unregulated AI "would create social chaos, which would benefit autocrats and ruin democracies. Democracy is a conversation, and conversations rely on language. When AI hacks language, it could destroy our ability to have meaningful conversations, thereby destroying democracy."
Why D. "One of the biggest casualties from the spread of unregulated AI is likely to be the democratic process" is almost a direct restatement of that.
Why the others fail:
A says fears about students using ChatGPT are "unfounded" — but the author calls that worry a distraction that "misses the big picture," not baseless.
B says the fear AI will fatally harm humans is unfounded — the author redirects the fear to language rather than dismissing it.
C credits AI with boosting technological and industrial advance — the author nods at "good purposes" only in passing and never makes this claim.
The tone of the passage could best be described as
Show solution
Correct answer: A
Tone comes from the author's purpose. Ask what he is trying to do with the harms he lists.
The passage methodically lays out dangers — fake political content, fake intimacy, "destroying democracy" — and ends by urging action: "We can still regulate the new AI tools, but we must act quickly." Cataloguing dangers in order to warn and press for action is cautionary.
Why A (cautionary). It names both the content (adverse effects of unregulated AI) and the purpose (a warning).
Why the others fail:
Prescient is too neutral — this is not detached forecasting, it is a warning with a concrete regulatory proposal.
Alarmist implies exaggeration or panic, which undersells the reasoned, evidence-led caution.
Quizzical fixes on the rhetorical questions and the closing "Or has it?", but those are devices inside the warning, not the governing mood.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Humans have managed to tweak the underlying biology of various plants and animals to produce high-tech crops and microbes. But regulating these entities is complicated, as the framework of policies and procedures are outdated and not flexible enough to adapt to emerging technology. The question is whether regulation will ever be able to keep up with human innovation, to regulate living things, which are apt to be unpredictable and unique; to capture all the potential risks when new biological entities are introduced, or when they pass on variations of their genes?
Show solution
Correct answer: C
A para-summary question. Notice that the paragraph ends not with an answer but with an open question — the summary must preserve that.
The paragraph says current biotech rules are "outdated and not flexible enough," then asks "whether regulation will ever be able to keep up with human innovation," given that living things are "unpredictable and unique" and pass on gene variations. Essence: the rules are outdated, but it is debatable whether any flexible framework can cover all contingencies in this fast-changing field.
Option C carries exactly this: "current regulation... is outdated, but it is debatable if we can create a framework, imaginative and flexible, to cover all contingencies in this fast-changing area."
Why the others overshoot
The "scientists should shape the regulations, with regular calibration" option adds a prescription the passage never makes.
The "a new framework is urgently needed, to keep up" option asserts a confident fix, contradicting the passage's sceptical "whether regulation will ever be able to keep up."
The "it is impossible to imagine the outcomes/risks" option is too absolute — the passage raises a doubt, not a verdict of impossibility.
There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Taken outside the village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972, the picture captured the trauma and indiscriminate violence of a conflict that claimed, by some estimates, a million or more civilian lives.
Paragraph: The horrifying photograph of children fleeing a deadly napalm attack has become a defining image not only of the Vietnam War but the 20th century. ___(1)___. Dark smoke billowing behind them, the young subjects’ faces are painted with a mixture of terror, pain and confusion. ___(2)___. Soldiers from the South Vietnamese Army’s 25th Division follow helplessly behind. ___(3)___. The picture was officially titled “The Terror of War,” but the photo is better known by the nickname given to the naked 9-year-old at its centre: “Napalm Girl”. ___(4)___.
Show solution
Correct answer: C
A sentence-insertion question. The missing sentence is: "Taken outside the village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972, the picture captured the trauma and indiscriminate violence of a conflict that claimed, by some estimates, a million or more civilian lives." Look for the tight verbal echo.
The sentence after slot 3 reads: "The picture was officially titled 'The Terror of War'..." The missing sentence says the photo "captured the trauma and indiscriminate violence of a conflict" — and the very next beat names it "The Terror of War." That close echo of trauma → terror only works if the missing sentence sits immediately before it, at slot 3.
The paragraph then reads as significance → visual contents → captured meaning → the naming ("Napalm Girl").
Why not slot 1: placing it there would stack two significance statements back to back ("defining image" + "captured the trauma... million lives"), and it would separate the "trauma" line from its "Terror of War" echo by the whole visual description.
There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Many have had to leave their homes behind, with more than 1.3 million people being displaced due to the drought.
Passage: Somalia has been dealing with an enormous humanitarian catastrophe, driven by the longest and most severe drought the country has experienced in at least 40 years. ___(1)___. Five consecutive rainy seasons have failed, causing more than 8 million people - almost half of the country’s population - to experience acute food insecurity. ___(2)___. More than 43,000 people are believed to have lost their lives, with half of the lives lost likely being children under five. The damage the drought has caused is far-reaching. ___(3)___. Farmers have lost all their agricultural income, while pastoralists have lost more than 3 million livestock, impoverishing entire communities, and leaving them on the brink of famine. ___(4)___. Some, like the pastoralists, may never be able to go back as their livelihoods have been irreversibly wiped out.
Show solution
Correct answer: A
A sentence-insertion question. The missing sentence is: "Many have had to leave their homes behind, with more than 1.3 million people being displaced due to the drought." Find the line whose meaning depends on it.
The decisive clue is the sentence after slot 4: "Some, like the pastoralists, may never be able to go back..." The idea of going "back" only makes sense if people have just been described as having left their homes / been displaced — which is exactly what the missing sentence supplies. So it belongs at slot 4, right before "Some... may never be able to go back."
Why the other slots fail
Slot 1 interrupts before the cause (five failed rainy seasons) is even given.
Slots 2 and 3 sit among death tolls and livestock/income losses, where "leaving homes" has no natural tie — and they leave the later "go back" with nothing to refer to.
Five jumbled-up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. Part of the appeal of forecasting is not just that it seems to work, but that you don’t seem to need specialized expertise to succeed at it.
2. The tight connection between forecasting and building a model of the world helps explain why so much of the early interest in the idea came from the intelligence community.
3. This was true even though the latter had access to classified intelligence.
4. One frequently cited study found that accurate forecasters’ predictions of geopolitical events, when aggregated using standard scientific methods, were more accurate than the forecasts of members of the US intelligence community who answered the same questions in a confidential prediction market.
5. The aggregated opinions of non-experts doing forecasting have proven to be a better guide to the future than the aggregated opinions of experts.
Show solution
Correct answer: 2
This is an odd-sentence-out set. Four sentences share one idea; find the fifth that belongs to a different thread.
The unifying idea: non-experts can out-forecast experts.
S1 states the appeal — forecasting seems to work without specialised expertise.
S4 gives the evidence — aggregated accurate forecasters beat the US intelligence community in a confidential prediction market.
S3 sharpens S4 — "this was true even though the latter [the intelligence community] had access to classified intelligence."
Read 1 → 5 → 4 → 3, they form a clean claim → conclusion → evidence → elaboration paragraph, and "the latter" in S3 locks onto "US intelligence community" in S4.
Why S2 is the odd one: it is about why the intelligence community first became interested in forecasting (its link to "building a model of the world"). That is a different topic — the origin of interest — and it has no place in the non-expert-beats-expert thread.