Reading Comprehension Test 9
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| Number of Questions: 25 | |
| Created by: Rani Rajan | |
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The actual attraction of any beautiful object is _________.
In the Reserve I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.
Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was laying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all color died out of him as in one long sigh and by the time and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.
Often since I have, in some sort, shot an Iguana, and I have remembered the one of the Reserve. Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and embroidered all over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied a little in colour and played in green, light blue and ultramarine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and made Farah buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my own arm than it gave up the ghost? It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colours, the hue between the turquoise and the negre, that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native's skin that had created the life of the bracelet
In the Zoological Museum of Pietermaritzburg, I have seen, in a stuffed deep-water fish in a showcase, the same combination of colouring, which there had survived death; it made me wonder what life can well be like, on the bottom of the sea, to send up something so live and airy. I stood in Meru and looked at my pale hand and at the dead bracelet, it was as if an injustice had been done to a noble thing, as if truth had been suppressed. So sad did it seem that I remembered the saying of the hero in a book that I had read as a child: I have conquered them all, but I am standing amongst graves.
In a foreign country and with foreign species of life one should take measures to find out whether things will be keeping their value when dead. To the settlers of East Africa I gi the advice : For the sake of your own eyes and heart, shoot not the Iguana.
With which of the following statements the author is most likely to agree?
In the Reserve I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.
Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was laying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all color died out of him as in one long sigh and by the time and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.
Often since I have, in some sort, shot an Iguana, and I have remembered the one of the Reserve. Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and embroidered all over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied a little in colour and played in green, light blue and ultramarine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and made Farah buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my own arm than it gave up the ghost? It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colours, the hue between the turquoise and the negre, that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native's skin that had created the life of the bracelet
In the Zoological Museum of Pietermaritzburg, I have seen, in a stuffed deep-water fish in a showcase, the same combination of colouring, which there had survived death; it made me wonder what life can well be like, on the bottom of the sea, to send up something so live and airy. I stood in Meru and looked at my pale hand and at the dead bracelet, it was as if an injustice had been done to a noble thing, as if truth had been suppressed. So sad did it seem that I remembered the saying of the hero in a book that I had read as a child: I have conquered them all, but I am standing amongst graves.
In a foreign country and with foreign species of life one should take measures to find out whether things will be keeping their value when dead. To the settlers of East Africa I gi the advice : For the sake of your own eyes and heart, shoot not the Iguana.
'Farah' seems to be the author's ______.
In the Reserve I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.
Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was laying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all color died out of him as in one long sigh and by the time and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.
Often since I have, in some sort, shot an Iguana, and I have remembered the one of the Reserve. Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and embroidered all over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied a little in colour and played in green, light blue and ultramarine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and made Farah buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my own arm than it gave up the ghost? It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colours, the hue between the turquoise and the negre, that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native's skin that had created the life of the bracelet
In the Zoological Museum of Pietermaritzburg, I have seen, in a stuffed deep-water fish in a showcase, the same combination of colouring, which there had survived death; it made me wonder what life can well be like, on the bottom of the sea, to send up something so live and airy. I stood in Meru and looked at my pale hand and at the dead bracelet, it was as if an injustice had been done to a noble thing, as if truth had been suppressed. So sad did it seem that I remembered the saying of the hero in a book that I had read as a child: I have conquered them all, but I am standing amongst graves.
In a foreign country and with foreign species of life one should take measures to find out whether things will be keeping their value when dead. To the settlers of East Africa I gi the advice : For the sake of your own eyes and heart, shoot not the Iguana.
What should be the title of the passage?
In the Reserve I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.
Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was laying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all color died out of him as in one long sigh and by the time and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.
Often since I have, in some sort, shot an Iguana, and I have remembered the one of the Reserve. Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and embroidered all over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied a little in colour and played in green, light blue and ultramarine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and made Farah buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my own arm than it gave up the ghost? It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colours, the hue between the turquoise and the negre, that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native's skin that had created the life of the bracelet
In the Zoological Museum of Pietermaritzburg, I have seen, in a stuffed deep-water fish in a showcase, the same combination of colouring, which there had survived death; it made me wonder what life can well be like, on the bottom of the sea, to send up something so live and airy. I stood in Meru and looked at my pale hand and at the dead bracelet, it was as if an injustice had been done to a noble thing, as if truth had been suppressed. So sad did it seem that I remembered the saying of the hero in a book that I had read as a child: I have conquered them all, but I am standing amongst graves.
In a foreign country and with foreign species of life one should take measures to find out whether things will be keeping their value when dead. To the settlers of East Africa I gi the advice : For the sake of your own eyes and heart, shoot not the Iguana.
The zoological museum mentioned in the passage is at _________.
In the Reserve I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.
Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was laying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all color died out of him as in one long sigh and by the time and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.
Often since I have, in some sort, shot an Iguana, and I have remembered the one of the Reserve. Up at Meru I saw a young Native girl with a bracelet on, a leather strap two inches wide, and embroidered all over with very small turquoise-coloured beads which varied a little in colour and played in green, light blue and ultramarine. It was an extraordinarily live thing; it seemed to draw breath on her arm, so that I wanted it for myself, and made Farah buy it from her. No sooner had it come upon my own arm than it gave up the ghost? It was nothing now, a small, cheap, purchased article of finery. It had been the play of colours, the hue between the turquoise and the negre, that quick, sweet, brownish black, like peat and black pottery, of the Native's skin that had created the life of the bracelet
In the Zoological Museum of Pietermaritzburg, I have seen, in a stuffed deep-water fish in a showcase, the same combination of colouring, which there had survived death; it made me wonder what life can well be like, on the bottom of the sea, to send up something so live and airy. I stood in Meru and looked at my pale hand and at the dead bracelet, it was as if an injustice had been done to a noble thing, as if truth had been suppressed. So sad did it seem that I remembered the saying of the hero in a book that I had read as a child: I have conquered them all, but I am standing amongst graves.
In a foreign country and with foreign species of life one should take measures to find out whether things will be keeping their value when dead. To the settlers of East Africa I gi the advice : For the sake of your own eyes and heart, shoot not the Iguana.
What is tone of the poem?
YOU, YOU, YOU
You dole your fickle favors out
With frugal grudging hand;
You gird your smile with irony
Suggesting reprimand.
You slice away propriety,
Maintaining that your view
Is sacrosanct and that all truth
Is known alone to you.
You skirt the rim of courtesy,
Leave all your friends dismayed;
Around you blossoms can but wilt
And dreams so quickly fade.
Successful accusation of witchcraft can prove to be disastrous on reputation when ___________.
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
This explanatory function of witchcraft is widespread. So too are some of the details of the witch's believed habits and techniques, suc h as operating at night flying through the air on broomsticks or saucer shaped winnowing baskets; employing animal familiar, such as cats, dogs, and weasels in Europe, dogs and foxes in Japan, hyenas, owls, and baboons in Africa stealing or destroying property; injuring people in a variety of ways; eating them while they are still alive or killing them first and exhuming their corpses for ghoulish feasts by the local witches.
Beliefs in witchcraft provide the mystical medium in which deep–lying structural conflicts, especially those not susceptible of rational adjustment by social intervention and arbitration, may be expressed and in some measure discharged. The inherent disharmonies in the social system are thus cloaked under an insistence that there is harmony in the values of the society, and the surface disturbances that they cause are attributed to the wickedness of individuals. This is why the witch and sorcerer become the villains of the society's morality plays, the ones to whom the most inhuman crimes and characteristics are attributed. So numerous and so revolting are the believed practices of witches that to accuse anyone of witchcraft is a condensed way of charging him with a long list of the foulest crimes – and much the same may be said of sorcery, except that the alleged sorcerer might find some room for defense in the ambiguity as to when the use of destructive magic is legitimate and when it is to be regarded as sorcery.
Because accusations of witchcraft, if they are successful, are devastating attacks on reputation, they punctuate the micro political processes relating to many forms of competition for some scarce status, power, resource, or personal affiliation. Thus, among the matrilineal Cewa of east central Africa, the generally accepted succession rule states that a headman's office should pass to his younger brothers in turn, followed by the eldest son of their eldest sister. In practice, however, the Cewa take personal qualifications into account and would not permit the succession of the genealogically rightful heir if his competence as a headman were seriously challenged by a convincing accusation of sorcery. The believed victim of witchcraft or sorcery may also sometimes be regarded as getting his just deserts if he has, by tactless folly, incurred the wrath of dangerous, powerful persons in the community.
Because in such belief systems the transgressors of a society's ideals are depicted with dramatic disapproval, witchcraft and sorcery are usually powerful brakes upon social change. In many preliterate societies in modern times it is often those who have progressed economically and educationally who are most obsessed by fears of attack by witches and sorcerers or of accusation of employing witchcraft or sorcery. This is because they find themselves either out of line in social orders that economically at least are equalitarian or with a new–found status that lacks a niche in the traditional hierarchy; and their fears of the consequences of their eccentricity are expressed in belief that witches and sorcerers in the community will take their revenge or that they themselves will be accused of advancing their interests through mystical means at the cost of their kinsmen and neighbours.
On the other hand, belief in witchcraft may, under certain circumstances, have the effect of accelerating social change; e.g., by facilitating the rupture of close relationships that have become redundant but are difficult to break off. In such a situation an accusation of witchcraft has the effect of making a public issue out of what started as a private quarrel.
How would you describe the poet?
YOU, YOU, YOU
You dole your fickle favors out
With frugal grudging hand;
You gird your smile with irony
Suggesting reprimand.
You slice away propriety,
Maintaining that your view
Is sacrosanct and that all truth
Is known alone to you.
You skirt the rim of courtesy,
Leave all your friends dismayed;
Around you blossoms can but wilt
And dreams so quickly fade.
All of the following are true, except _________.
YOU, YOU, YOU
You dole your fickle favors out
With frugal grudging hand;
You gird your smile with irony
Suggesting reprimand.
You slice away propriety,
Maintaining that your view
Is sacrosanct and that all truth
Is known alone to you.
You skirt the rim of courtesy,
Leave all your friends dismayed;
Around you blossoms can but wilt
And dreams so quickly fade.
Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE in the context of the passage?
There is nothing in the arguments of those who say that old age takes no part in public business. They are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship, because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression of opinion. Of these old age is not only deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree. . .
It is generally agreed that a number of factors affect achievement in later years and that age is by no means the sole determinant. The first of these is the original level of intelligence. Vernon gives evidence that the rate of decline is slowest among those whose original score was high. There is therefore an accentuation of individual differences.
The second factor is stimulation and use of intellectual ability. A number of studies suggest a slow decline among those who make the greatest use of their intellectual ability and a more rapid decline in intelligence among those who do not. It is also possible that stimulation may have physical consequences for the brain. Evidence from animal studies shows that the weight of cerebral cortex is affected by stimulation from the environment. Evidence was found by Vogt of slower deterioration in brain cells of those whose level of intellectual activity had been high.
Old men retain their intellects well enough, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed. Neither is that the case only with men of high position and great office: it applies equally to private life and peaceful pursuits. Sophocles composed tragedies to extreme old age; and being believed to neglect the care of his property owing to his devotion to his art, his sons brought him into court to get a judicial decision depriving him of the management of his property on the ground of weak intellect – just as in our law it is customary to deprive a paterfamilias of the management of his property if he is squandering it.
A third factor is education and training. Wellford suggests that the manipulative, occupational, mental and social skills acquired through experience help to offset a decline in abilities as a result of the ageing process. Other important factors are state of health and motivation.
Our knowledge of the ageing process is imperfect, but there are a number of important implications for the trainer. Demographic trends indicate the availability of fewer young people in the workforce and an increasing dependence upon the services of older people. By 2006 the number of people aged 35–54 is projected to rise by 2.6 million, and there will be extra 0.9 million people aged over 55. There may have been a time when people of 50 and over were deemed to be unsuitable for job change and retraining but organizations of the future are unlikely to be able to take this view. In fact one supermarket has opened a store staffed entirely by people over 50; there is evidence that employees in their late 40s and early 50s tend to stay with the organization much longer than those in their early 20s, that they lower absenteeism and accident rates, often have greater spirit and reliability, and may already possess useful skills. Fears of difficulties in training should not therefore be used as a barrier of discriminatory factor in recruiting more mature workers.
If people are at their most receptive to learning in youth, and in later years draw upon their attainments, it is essential that the young are given every opportunity to learn. If those with lower cognitive ability are likely to show greater deterioration than those with above average potential, it is extremely important that a broad–based training is given to young people so that through vertical transfer they may find it easier to learn a variety of skills when they are older.
Rigid notions of age and aging limit the mind and imprison the spirit. Like all stereotypes, they evaporate on closer examination. Only by teasing apart the stereotypes can we truly see the individual members of the invisible old and the unheard young. As former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey said, the true test of a society is how it treats those in the dawn of life—its children, and the twilight of life—its elders.
State of individual's health and motivation _____________.
There is nothing in the arguments of those who say that old age takes no part in public business. They are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship, because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression of opinion. Of these old age is not only deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree. . .
It is generally agreed that a number of factors affect achievement in later years and that age is by no means the sole determinant. The first of these is the original level of intelligence. Vernon gives evidence that the rate of decline is slowest among those whose original score was high. There is therefore an accentuation of individual differences.
The second factor is stimulation and use of intellectual ability. A number of studies suggest a slow decline among those who make the greatest use of their intellectual ability and a more rapid decline in intelligence among those who do not. It is also possible that stimulation may have physical consequences for the brain. Evidence from animal studies shows that the weight of cerebral cortex is affected by stimulation from the environment. Evidence was found by Vogt of slower deterioration in brain cells of those whose level of intellectual activity had been high.
Old men retain their intellects well enough, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed. Neither is that the case only with men of high position and great office: it applies equally to private life and peaceful pursuits. Sophocles composed tragedies to extreme old age; and being believed to neglect the care of his property owing to his devotion to his art, his sons brought him into court to get a judicial decision depriving him of the management of his property on the ground of weak intellect – just as in our law it is customary to deprive a paterfamilias of the management of his property if he is squandering it.
A third factor is education and training. Wellford suggests that the manipulative, occupational, mental and social skills acquired through experience help to offset a decline in abilities as a result of the ageing process. Other important factors are state of health and motivation.
Our knowledge of the ageing process is imperfect, but there are a number of important implications for the trainer. Demographic trends indicate the availability of fewer young people in the workforce and an increasing dependence upon the services of older people. By 2006 the number of people aged 35–54 is projected to rise by 2.6 million, and there will be extra 0.9 million people aged over 55. There may have been a time when people of 50 and over were deemed to be unsuitable for job change and retraining but organizations of the future are unlikely to be able to take this view. In fact one supermarket has opened a store staffed entirely by people over 50; there is evidence that employees in their late 40s and early 50s tend to stay with the organization much longer than those in their early 20s, that they lower absenteeism and accident rates, often have greater spirit and reliability, and may already possess useful skills. Fears of difficulties in training should not therefore be used as a barrier of discriminatory factor in recruiting more mature workers.
If people are at their most receptive to learning in youth, and in later years draw upon their attainments, it is essential that the young are given every opportunity to learn. If those with lower cognitive ability are likely to show greater deterioration than those with above average potential, it is extremely important that a broad–based training is given to young people so that through vertical transfer they may find it easier to learn a variety of skills when they are older.
Rigid notions of age and aging limit the mind and imprison the spirit. Like all stereotypes, they evaporate on closer examination. Only by teasing apart the stereotypes can we truly see the individual members of the invisible old and the unheard young. As former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey said, the true test of a society is how it treats those in the dawn of life—its children, and the twilight of life—its elders.
Which of the following can arrest the decline of the ageing process?
There is nothing in the arguments of those who say that old age takes no part in public business. They are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship, because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression of opinion. Of these old age is not only deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree. . .
It is generally agreed that a number of factors affect achievement in later years and that age is by no means the sole determinant. The first of these is the original level of intelligence. Vernon gives evidence that the rate of decline is slowest among those whose original score was high. There is therefore an accentuation of individual differences.
The second factor is stimulation and use of intellectual ability. A number of studies suggest a slow decline among those who make the greatest use of their intellectual ability and a more rapid decline in intelligence among those who do not. It is also possible that stimulation may have physical consequences for the brain. Evidence from animal studies shows that the weight of cerebral cortex is affected by stimulation from the environment. Evidence was found by Vogt of slower deterioration in brain cells of those whose level of intellectual activity had been high.
Old men retain their intellects well enough, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed. Neither is that the case only with men of high position and great office: it applies equally to private life and peaceful pursuits. Sophocles composed tragedies to extreme old age; and being believed to neglect the care of his property owing to his devotion to his art, his sons brought him into court to get a judicial decision depriving him of the management of his property on the ground of weak intellect – just as in our law it is customary to deprive a paterfamilias of the management of his property if he is squandering it.
A third factor is education and training. Wellford suggests that the manipulative, occupational, mental and social skills acquired through experience help to offset a decline in abilities as a result of the ageing process. Other important factors are state of health and motivation.
Our knowledge of the ageing process is imperfect, but there are a number of important implications for the trainer. Demographic trends indicate the availability of fewer young people in the workforce and an increasing dependence upon the services of older people. By 2006 the number of people aged 35–54 is projected to rise by 2.6 million, and there will be extra 0.9 million people aged over 55. There may have been a time when people of 50 and over were deemed to be unsuitable for job change and retraining but organizations of the future are unlikely to be able to take this view. In fact one supermarket has opened a store staffed entirely by people over 50; there is evidence that employees in their late 40s and early 50s tend to stay with the organization much longer than those in their early 20s, that they lower absenteeism and accident rates, often have greater spirit and reliability, and may already possess useful skills. Fears of difficulties in training should not therefore be used as a barrier of discriminatory factor in recruiting more mature workers.
If people are at their most receptive to learning in youth, and in later years draw upon their attainments, it is essential that the young are given every opportunity to learn. If those with lower cognitive ability are likely to show greater deterioration than those with above average potential, it is extremely important that a broad–based training is given to young people so that through vertical transfer they may find it easier to learn a variety of skills when they are older.
Rigid notions of age and aging limit the mind and imprison the spirit. Like all stereotypes, they evaporate on closer examination. Only by teasing apart the stereotypes can we truly see the individual members of the invisible old and the unheard young. As former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey said, the true test of a society is how it treats those in the dawn of life—its children, and the twilight of life—its elders.
Dogs and foxes are supposed be used as assistants to witches in ______.
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
This explanatory function of witchcraft is widespread. So too are some of the details of the witch's believed habits and techniques, suc h as operating at night flying through the air on broomsticks or saucer shaped winnowing baskets; employing animal familiar, such as cats, dogs, and weasels in Europe, dogs and foxes in Japan, hyenas, owls, and baboons in Africa stealing or destroying property; injuring people in a variety of ways; eating them while they are still alive or killing them first and exhuming their corpses for ghoulish feasts by the local witches.
Beliefs in witchcraft provide the mystical medium in which deep–lying structural conflicts, especially those not susceptible of rational adjustment by social intervention and arbitration, may be expressed and in some measure discharged. The inherent disharmonies in the social system are thus cloaked under an insistence that there is harmony in the values of the society, and the surface disturbances that they cause are attributed to the wickedness of individuals. This is why the witch and sorcerer become the villains of the society's morality plays, the ones to whom the most inhuman crimes and characteristics are attributed. So numerous and so revolting are the believed practices of witches that to accuse anyone of witchcraft is a condensed way of charging him with a long list of the foulest crimes – and much the same may be said of sorcery, except that the alleged sorcerer might find some room for defense in the ambiguity as to when the use of destructive magic is legitimate and when it is to be regarded as sorcery.
Because accusations of witchcraft, if they are successful, are devastating attacks on reputation, they punctuate the micro political processes relating to many forms of competition for some scarce status, power, resource, or personal affiliation. Thus, among the matrilineal Cewa of east central Africa, the generally accepted succession rule states that a headman's office should pass to his younger brothers in turn, followed by the eldest son of their eldest sister. In practice, however, the Cewa take personal qualifications into account and would not permit the succession of the genealogically rightful heir if his competence as a headman were seriously challenged by a convincing accusation of sorcery. The believed victim of witchcraft or sorcery may also sometimes be regarded as getting his just deserts if he has, by tactless folly, incurred the wrath of dangerous, powerful persons in the community.
Because in such belief systems the transgressors of a society's ideals are depicted with dramatic disapproval, witchcraft and sorcery are usually powerful brakes upon social change. In many preliterate societies in modern times it is often those who have progressed economically and educationally who are most obsessed by fears of attack by witches and sorcerers or of accusation of employing witchcraft or sorcery. This is because they find themselves either out of line in social orders that economically at least are equalitarian or with a new–found status that lacks a niche in the traditional hierarchy; and their fears of the consequences of their eccentricity are expressed in belief that witches and sorcerers in the community will take their revenge or that they themselves will be accused of advancing their interests through mystical means at the cost of their kinsmen and neighbours.
On the other hand, belief in witchcraft may, under certain circumstances, have the effect of accelerating social change; e.g., by facilitating the rupture of close relationships that have become redundant but are difficult to break off. In such a situation an accusation of witchcraft has the effect of making a public issue out of what started as a private quarrel.
Witches are believed to do all, except ___________.
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
This explanatory function of witchcraft is widespread. So too are some of the details of the witch's believed habits and techniques, suc h as operating at night flying through the air on broomsticks or saucer shaped winnowing baskets; employing animal familiar, such as cats, dogs, and weasels in Europe, dogs and foxes in Japan, hyenas, owls, and baboons in Africa stealing or destroying property; injuring people in a variety of ways; eating them while they are still alive or killing them first and exhuming their corpses for ghoulish feasts by the local witches.
Beliefs in witchcraft provide the mystical medium in which deep–lying structural conflicts, especially those not susceptible of rational adjustment by social intervention and arbitration, may be expressed and in some measure discharged. The inherent disharmonies in the social system are thus cloaked under an insistence that there is harmony in the values of the society, and the surface disturbances that they cause are attributed to the wickedness of individuals. This is why the witch and sorcerer become the villains of the society's morality plays, the ones to whom the most inhuman crimes and characteristics are attributed. So numerous and so revolting are the believed practices of witches that to accuse anyone of witchcraft is a condensed way of charging him with a long list of the foulest crimes – and much the same may be said of sorcery, except that the alleged sorcerer might find some room for defense in the ambiguity as to when the use of destructive magic is legitimate and when it is to be regarded as sorcery.
Because accusations of witchcraft, if they are successful, are devastating attacks on reputation, they punctuate the micro political processes relating to many forms of competition for some scarce status, power, resource, or personal affiliation. Thus, among the matrilineal Cewa of east central Africa, the generally accepted succession rule states that a headman's office should pass to his younger brothers in turn, followed by the eldest son of their eldest sister. In practice, however, the Cewa take personal qualifications into account and would not permit the succession of the genealogically rightful heir if his competence as a headman were seriously challenged by a convincing accusation of sorcery. The believed victim of witchcraft or sorcery may also sometimes be regarded as getting his just deserts if he has, by tactless folly, incurred the wrath of dangerous, powerful persons in the community.
Because in such belief systems the transgressors of a society's ideals are depicted with dramatic disapproval, witchcraft and sorcery are usually powerful brakes upon social change. In many preliterate societies in modern times it is often those who have progressed economically and educationally who are most obsessed by fears of attack by witches and sorcerers or of accusation of employing witchcraft or sorcery. This is because they find themselves either out of line in social orders that economically at least are equalitarian or with a new–found status that lacks a niche in the traditional hierarchy; and their fears of the consequences of their eccentricity are expressed in belief that witches and sorcerers in the community will take their revenge or that they themselves will be accused of advancing their interests through mystical means at the cost of their kinsmen and neighbours.
On the other hand, belief in witchcraft may, under certain circumstances, have the effect of accelerating social change; e.g., by facilitating the rupture of close relationships that have become redundant but are difficult to break off. In such a situation an accusation of witchcraft has the effect of making a public issue out of what started as a private quarrel.
The meaning of the word 'circumspect' is ___________.
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
This explanatory function of witchcraft is widespread. So too are some of the details of the witch's believed habits and techniques, suc h as operating at night flying through the air on broomsticks or saucer shaped winnowing baskets; employing animal familiar, such as cats, dogs, and weasels in Europe, dogs and foxes in Japan, hyenas, owls, and baboons in Africa stealing or destroying property; injuring people in a variety of ways; eating them while they are still alive or killing them first and exhuming their corpses for ghoulish feasts by the local witches.
Beliefs in witchcraft provide the mystical medium in which deep–lying structural conflicts, especially those not susceptible of rational adjustment by social intervention and arbitration, may be expressed and in some measure discharged. The inherent disharmonies in the social system are thus cloaked under an insistence that there is harmony in the values of the society, and the surface disturbances that they cause are attributed to the wickedness of individuals. This is why the witch and sorcerer become the villains of the society's morality plays, the ones to whom the most inhuman crimes and characteristics are attributed. So numerous and so revolting are the believed practices of witches that to accuse anyone of witchcraft is a condensed way of charging him with a long list of the foulest crimes – and much the same may be said of sorcery, except that the alleged sorcerer might find some room for defense in the ambiguity as to when the use of destructive magic is legitimate and when it is to be regarded as sorcery.
Because accusations of witchcraft, if they are successful, are devastating attacks on reputation, they punctuate the micro political processes relating to many forms of competition for some scarce status, power, resource, or personal affiliation. Thus, among the matrilineal Cewa of east central Africa, the generally accepted succession rule states that a headman's office should pass to his younger brothers in turn, followed by the eldest son of their eldest sister. In practice, however, the Cewa take personal qualifications into account and would not permit the succession of the genealogically rightful heir if his competence as a headman were seriously challenged by a convincing accusation of sorcery. The believed victim of witchcraft or sorcery may also sometimes be regarded as getting his just deserts if he has, by tactless folly, incurred the wrath of dangerous, powerful persons in the community.
Because in such belief systems the transgressors of a society's ideals are depicted with dramatic disapproval, witchcraft and sorcery are usually powerful brakes upon social change. In many preliterate societies in modern times it is often those who have progressed economically and educationally who are most obsessed by fears of attack by witches and sorcerers or of accusation of employing witchcraft or sorcery. This is because they find themselves either out of line in social orders that economically at least are equalitarian or with a new–found status that lacks a niche in the traditional hierarchy; and their fears of the consequences of their eccentricity are expressed in belief that witches and sorcerers in the community will take their revenge or that they themselves will be accused of advancing their interests through mystical means at the cost of their kinsmen and neighbours.
On the other hand, belief in witchcraft may, under certain circumstances, have the effect of accelerating social change; e.g., by facilitating the rupture of close relationships that have become redundant but are difficult to break off. In such a situation an accusation of witchcraft has the effect of making a public issue out of what started as a private quarrel.
The author says that witchcraft and sorcery can impede social change __________.
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
This explanatory function of witchcraft is widespread. So too are some of the details of the witch's believed habits and techniques, suc h as operating at night flying through the air on broomsticks or saucer shaped winnowing baskets; employing animal familiar, such as cats, dogs, and weasels in Europe, dogs and foxes in Japan, hyenas, owls, and baboons in Africa stealing or destroying property; injuring people in a variety of ways; eating them while they are still alive or killing them first and exhuming their corpses for ghoulish feasts by the local witches.
Beliefs in witchcraft provide the mystical medium in which deep–lying structural conflicts, especially those not susceptible of rational adjustment by social intervention and arbitration, may be expressed and in some measure discharged. The inherent disharmonies in the social system are thus cloaked under an insistence that there is harmony in the values of the society, and the surface disturbances that they cause are attributed to the wickedness of individuals. This is why the witch and sorcerer become the villains of the society's morality plays, the ones to whom the most inhuman crimes and characteristics are attributed. So numerous and so revolting are the believed practices of witches that to accuse anyone of witchcraft is a condensed way of charging him with a long list of the foulest crimes – and much the same may be said of sorcery, except that the alleged sorcerer might find some room for defense in the ambiguity as to when the use of destructive magic is legitimate and when it is to be regarded as sorcery.
Because accusations of witchcraft, if they are successful, are devastating attacks on reputation, they punctuate the micro political processes relating to many forms of competition for some scarce status, power, resource, or personal affiliation. Thus, among the matrilineal Cewa of east central Africa, the generally accepted succession rule states that a headman's office should pass to his younger brothers in turn, followed by the eldest son of their eldest sister. In practice, however, the Cewa take personal qualifications into account and would not permit the succession of the genealogically rightful heir if his competence as a headman were seriously challenged by a convincing accusation of sorcery. The believed victim of witchcraft or sorcery may also sometimes be regarded as getting his just deserts if he has, by tactless folly, incurred the wrath of dangerous, powerful persons in the community.
Because in such belief systems the transgressors of a society's ideals are depicted with dramatic disapproval, witchcraft and sorcery are usually powerful brakes upon social change. In many preliterate societies in modern times it is often those who have progressed economically and educationally who are most obsessed by fears of attack by witches and sorcerers or of accusation of employing witchcraft or sorcery. This is because they find themselves either out of line in social orders that economically at least are equalitarian or with a new–found status that lacks a niche in the traditional hierarchy; and their fears of the consequences of their eccentricity are expressed in belief that witches and sorcerers in the community will take their revenge or that they themselves will be accused of advancing their interests through mystical means at the cost of their kinsmen and neighbours.
On the other hand, belief in witchcraft may, under certain circumstances, have the effect of accelerating social change; e.g., by facilitating the rupture of close relationships that have become redundant but are difficult to break off. In such a situation an accusation of witchcraft has the effect of making a public issue out of what started as a private quarrel.
An alleged sorcerer is sometimes better off when compared to a witch as ____________.
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
This explanatory function of witchcraft is widespread. So too are some of the details of the witch's believed habits and techniques, suc h as operating at night flying through the air on broomsticks or saucer shaped winnowing baskets; employing animal familiar, such as cats, dogs, and weasels in Europe, dogs and foxes in Japan, hyenas, owls, and baboons in Africa stealing or destroying property; injuring people in a variety of ways; eating them while they are still alive or killing them first and exhuming their corpses for ghoulish feasts by the local witches.
Beliefs in witchcraft provide the mystical medium in which deep–lying structural conflicts, especially those not susceptible of rational adjustment by social intervention and arbitration, may be expressed and in some measure discharged. The inherent disharmonies in the social system are thus cloaked under an insistence that there is harmony in the values of the society, and the surface disturbances that they cause are attributed to the wickedness of individuals. This is why the witch and sorcerer become the villains of the society's morality plays, the ones to whom the most inhuman crimes and characteristics are attributed. So numerous and so revolting are the believed practices of witches that to accuse anyone of witchcraft is a condensed way of charging him with a long list of the foulest crimes – and much the same may be said of sorcery, except that the alleged sorcerer might find some room for defense in the ambiguity as to when the use of destructive magic is legitimate and when it is to be regarded as sorcery.
Because accusations of witchcraft, if they are successful, are devastating attacks on reputation, they punctuate the micro political processes relating to many forms of competition for some scarce status, power, resource, or personal affiliation. Thus, among the matrilineal Cewa of east central Africa, the generally accepted succession rule states that a headman's office should pass to his younger brothers in turn, followed by the eldest son of their eldest sister. In practice, however, the Cewa take personal qualifications into account and would not permit the succession of the genealogically rightful heir if his competence as a headman were seriously challenged by a convincing accusation of sorcery. The believed victim of witchcraft or sorcery may also sometimes be regarded as getting his just deserts if he has, by tactless folly, incurred the wrath of dangerous, powerful persons in the community.
Because in such belief systems the transgressors of a society's ideals are depicted with dramatic disapproval, witchcraft and sorcery are usually powerful brakes upon social change. In many preliterate societies in modern times it is often those who have progressed economically and educationally who are most obsessed by fears of attack by witches and sorcerers or of accusation of employing witchcraft or sorcery. This is because they find themselves either out of line in social orders that economically at least are equalitarian or with a new–found status that lacks a niche in the traditional hierarchy; and their fears of the consequences of their eccentricity are expressed in belief that witches and sorcerers in the community will take their revenge or that they themselves will be accused of advancing their interests through mystical means at the cost of their kinsmen and neighbours.
On the other hand, belief in witchcraft may, under certain circumstances, have the effect of accelerating social change; e.g., by facilitating the rupture of close relationships that have become redundant but are difficult to break off. In such a situation an accusation of witchcraft has the effect of making a public issue out of what started as a private quarrel.
Why according to the passage young people should be given opportunities to learn?
There is nothing in the arguments of those who say that old age takes no part in public business. They are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship, because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression of opinion. Of these old age is not only deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree. . .
It is generally agreed that a number of factors affect achievement in later years and that age is by no means the sole determinant. The first of these is the original level of intelligence. Vernon gives evidence that the rate of decline is slowest among those whose original score was high. There is therefore an accentuation of individual differences.
The second factor is stimulation and use of intellectual ability. A number of studies suggest a slow decline among those who make the greatest use of their intellectual ability and a more rapid decline in intelligence among those who do not. It is also possible that stimulation may have physical consequences for the brain. Evidence from animal studies shows that the weight of cerebral cortex is affected by stimulation from the environment. Evidence was found by Vogt of slower deterioration in brain cells of those whose level of intellectual activity had been high.
Old men retain their intellects well enough, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed. Neither is that the case only with men of high position and great office: it applies equally to private life and peaceful pursuits. Sophocles composed tragedies to extreme old age; and being believed to neglect the care of his property owing to his devotion to his art, his sons brought him into court to get a judicial decision depriving him of the management of his property on the ground of weak intellect – just as in our law it is customary to deprive a paterfamilias of the management of his property if he is squandering it.
A third factor is education and training. Wellford suggests that the manipulative, occupational, mental and social skills acquired through experience help to offset a decline in abilities as a result of the ageing process. Other important factors are state of health and motivation.
Our knowledge of the ageing process is imperfect, but there are a number of important implications for the trainer. Demographic trends indicate the availability of fewer young people in the workforce and an increasing dependence upon the services of older people. By 2006 the number of people aged 35–54 is projected to rise by 2.6 million, and there will be extra 0.9 million people aged over 55. There may have been a time when people of 50 and over were deemed to be unsuitable for job change and retraining but organizations of the future are unlikely to be able to take this view. In fact one supermarket has opened a store staffed entirely by people over 50; there is evidence that employees in their late 40s and early 50s tend to stay with the organization much longer than those in their early 20s, that they lower absenteeism and accident rates, often have greater spirit and reliability, and may already possess useful skills. Fears of difficulties in training should not therefore be used as a barrier of discriminatory factor in recruiting more mature workers.
If people are at their most receptive to learning in youth, and in later years draw upon their attainments, it is essential that the young are given every opportunity to learn. If those with lower cognitive ability are likely to show greater deterioration than those with above average potential, it is extremely important that a broad–based training is given to young people so that through vertical transfer they may find it easier to learn a variety of skills when they are older.
Rigid notions of age and aging limit the mind and imprison the spirit. Like all stereotypes, they evaporate on closer examination. Only by teasing apart the stereotypes can we truly see the individual members of the invisible old and the unheard young. As former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey said, the true test of a society is how it treats those in the dawn of life—its children, and the twilight of life—its elders.
By helping to break redundant close relationships, belief in witchcraft can __________.
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
This explanatory function of witchcraft is widespread. So too are some of the details of the witch's believed habits and techniques, suc h as operating at night flying through the air on broomsticks or saucer shaped winnowing baskets; employing animal familiar, such as cats, dogs, and weasels in Europe, dogs and foxes in Japan, hyenas, owls, and baboons in Africa stealing or destroying property; injuring people in a variety of ways; eating them while they are still alive or killing them first and exhuming their corpses for ghoulish feasts by the local witches.
Beliefs in witchcraft provide the mystical medium in which deep–lying structural conflicts, especially those not susceptible of rational adjustment by social intervention and arbitration, may be expressed and in some measure discharged. The inherent disharmonies in the social system are thus cloaked under an insistence that there is harmony in the values of the society, and the surface disturbances that they cause are attributed to the wickedness of individuals. This is why the witch and sorcerer become the villains of the society's morality plays, the ones to whom the most inhuman crimes and characteristics are attributed. So numerous and so revolting are the believed practices of witches that to accuse anyone of witchcraft is a condensed way of charging him with a long list of the foulest crimes – and much the same may be said of sorcery, except that the alleged sorcerer might find some room for defense in the ambiguity as to when the use of destructive magic is legitimate and when it is to be regarded as sorcery.
Because accusations of witchcraft, if they are successful, are devastating attacks on reputation, they punctuate the micro political processes relating to many forms of competition for some scarce status, power, resource, or personal affiliation. Thus, among the matrilineal Cewa of east central Africa, the generally accepted succession rule states that a headman's office should pass to his younger brothers in turn, followed by the eldest son of their eldest sister. In practice, however, the Cewa take personal qualifications into account and would not permit the succession of the genealogically rightful heir if his competence as a headman were seriously challenged by a convincing accusation of sorcery. The believed victim of witchcraft or sorcery may also sometimes be regarded as getting his just deserts if he has, by tactless folly, incurred the wrath of dangerous, powerful persons in the community.
Because in such belief systems the transgressors of a society's ideals are depicted with dramatic disapproval, witchcraft and sorcery are usually powerful brakes upon social change. In many preliterate societies in modern times it is often those who have progressed economically and educationally who are most obsessed by fears of attack by witches and sorcerers or of accusation of employing witchcraft or sorcery. This is because they find themselves either out of line in social orders that economically at least are equalitarian or with a new–found status that lacks a niche in the traditional hierarchy; and their fears of the consequences of their eccentricity are expressed in belief that witches and sorcerers in the community will take their revenge or that they themselves will be accused of advancing their interests through mystical means at the cost of their kinsmen and neighbours.
On the other hand, belief in witchcraft may, under certain circumstances, have the effect of accelerating social change; e.g., by facilitating the rupture of close relationships that have become redundant but are difficult to break off. In such a situation an accusation of witchcraft has the effect of making a public issue out of what started as a private quarrel.
According to the author, witches are blamed unnecessary and made to bear misdeeds of others in small scale communities because _________.
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
This explanatory function of witchcraft is widespread. So too are some of the details of the witch's believed habits and techniques, suc h as operating at night flying through the air on broomsticks or saucer shaped winnowing baskets; employing animal familiar, such as cats, dogs, and weasels in Europe, dogs and foxes in Japan, hyenas, owls, and baboons in Africa stealing or destroying property; injuring people in a variety of ways; eating them while they are still alive or killing them first and exhuming their corpses for ghoulish feasts by the local witches.
Beliefs in witchcraft provide the mystical medium in which deep–lying structural conflicts, especially those not susceptible of rational adjustment by social intervention and arbitration, may be expressed and in some measure discharged. The inherent disharmonies in the social system are thus cloaked under an insistence that there is harmony in the values of the society, and the surface disturbances that they cause are attributed to the wickedness of individuals. This is why the witch and sorcerer become the villains of the society's morality plays, the ones to whom the most inhuman crimes and characteristics are attributed. So numerous and so revolting are the believed practices of witches that to accuse anyone of witchcraft is a condensed way of charging him with a long list of the foulest crimes – and much the same may be said of sorcery, except that the alleged sorcerer might find some room for defense in the ambiguity as to when the use of destructive magic is legitimate and when it is to be regarded as sorcery.
Because accusations of witchcraft, if they are successful, are devastating attacks on reputation, they punctuate the micro political processes relating to many forms of competition for some scarce status, power, resource, or personal affiliation. Thus, among the matrilineal Cewa of east central Africa, the generally accepted succession rule states that a headman's office should pass to his younger brothers in turn, followed by the eldest son of their eldest sister. In practice, however, the Cewa take personal qualifications into account and would not permit the succession of the genealogically rightful heir if his competence as a headman were seriously challenged by a convincing accusation of sorcery. The believed victim of witchcraft or sorcery may also sometimes be regarded as getting his just deserts if he has, by tactless folly, incurred the wrath of dangerous, powerful persons in the community.
Because in such belief systems the transgressors of a society's ideals are depicted with dramatic disapproval, witchcraft and sorcery are usually powerful brakes upon social change. In many preliterate societies in modern times it is often those who have progressed economically and educationally who are most obsessed by fears of attack by witches and sorcerers or of accusation of employing witchcraft or sorcery. This is because they find themselves either out of line in social orders that economically at least are equalitarian or with a new–found status that lacks a niche in the traditional hierarchy; and their fears of the consequences of their eccentricity are expressed in belief that witches and sorcerers in the community will take their revenge or that they themselves will be accused of advancing their interests through mystical means at the cost of their kinsmen and neighbours.
On the other hand, belief in witchcraft may, under certain circumstances, have the effect of accelerating social change; e.g., by facilitating the rupture of close relationships that have become redundant but are difficult to break off. In such a situation an accusation of witchcraft has the effect of making a public issue out of what started as a private quarrel.
The rate of decline in performance is slowest among those who ___________.
There is nothing in the arguments of those who say that old age takes no part in public business. They are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship, because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression of opinion. Of these old age is not only deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree. . .
It is generally agreed that a number of factors affect achievement in later years and that age is by no means the sole determinant. The first of these is the original level of intelligence. Vernon gives evidence that the rate of decline is slowest among those whose original score was high. There is therefore an accentuation of individual differences.
The second factor is stimulation and use of intellectual ability. A number of studies suggest a slow decline among those who make the greatest use of their intellectual ability and a more rapid decline in intelligence among those who do not. It is also possible that stimulation may have physical consequences for the brain. Evidence from animal studies shows that the weight of cerebral cortex is affected by stimulation from the environment. Evidence was found by Vogt of slower deterioration in brain cells of those whose level of intellectual activity had been high.
Old men retain their intellects well enough, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed. Neither is that the case only with men of high position and great office: it applies equally to private life and peaceful pursuits. Sophocles composed tragedies to extreme old age; and being believed to neglect the care of his property owing to his devotion to his art, his sons brought him into court to get a judicial decision depriving him of the management of his property on the ground of weak intellect – just as in our law it is customary to deprive a paterfamilias of the management of his property if he is squandering it.
A third factor is education and training. Wellford suggests that the manipulative, occupational, mental and social skills acquired through experience help to offset a decline in abilities as a result of the ageing process. Other important factors are state of health and motivation.
Our knowledge of the ageing process is imperfect, but there are a number of important implications for the trainer. Demographic trends indicate the availability of fewer young people in the workforce and an increasing dependence upon the services of older people. By 2006 the number of people aged 35–54 is projected to rise by 2.6 million, and there will be extra 0.9 million people aged over 55. There may have been a time when people of 50 and over were deemed to be unsuitable for job change and retraining but organizations of the future are unlikely to be able to take this view. In fact one supermarket has opened a store staffed entirely by people over 50; there is evidence that employees in their late 40s and early 50s tend to stay with the organization much longer than those in their early 20s, that they lower absenteeism and accident rates, often have greater spirit and reliability, and may already possess useful skills. Fears of difficulties in training should not therefore be used as a barrier of discriminatory factor in recruiting more mature workers.
If people are at their most receptive to learning in youth, and in later years draw upon their attainments, it is essential that the young are given every opportunity to learn. If those with lower cognitive ability are likely to show greater deterioration than those with above average potential, it is extremely important that a broad–based training is given to young people so that through vertical transfer they may find it easier to learn a variety of skills when they are older.
Rigid notions of age and aging limit the mind and imprison the spirit. Like all stereotypes, they evaporate on closer examination. Only by teasing apart the stereotypes can we truly see the individual members of the invisible old and the unheard young. As former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey said, the true test of a society is how it treats those in the dawn of life—its children, and the twilight of life—its elders.
What according to the passage is the impact of stimulation and use of intellectual ability?
There is nothing in the arguments of those who say that old age takes no part in public business. They are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship, because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression of opinion. Of these old age is not only deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree. . .
It is generally agreed that a number of factors affect achievement in later years and that age is by no means the sole determinant. The first of these is the original level of intelligence. Vernon gives evidence that the rate of decline is slowest among those whose original score was high. There is therefore an accentuation of individual differences.
The second factor is stimulation and use of intellectual ability. A number of studies suggest a slow decline among those who make the greatest use of their intellectual ability and a more rapid decline in intelligence among those who do not. It is also possible that stimulation may have physical consequences for the brain. Evidence from animal studies shows that the weight of cerebral cortex is affected by stimulation from the environment. Evidence was found by Vogt of slower deterioration in brain cells of those whose level of intellectual activity had been high.
Old men retain their intellects well enough, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed. Neither is that the case only with men of high position and great office: it applies equally to private life and peaceful pursuits. Sophocles composed tragedies to extreme old age; and being believed to neglect the care of his property owing to his devotion to his art, his sons brought him into court to get a judicial decision depriving him of the management of his property on the ground of weak intellect – just as in our law it is customary to deprive a paterfamilias of the management of his property if he is squandering it.
A third factor is education and training. Wellford suggests that the manipulative, occupational, mental and social skills acquired through experience help to offset a decline in abilities as a result of the ageing process. Other important factors are state of health and motivation.
Our knowledge of the ageing process is imperfect, but there are a number of important implications for the trainer. Demographic trends indicate the availability of fewer young people in the workforce and an increasing dependence upon the services of older people. By 2006 the number of people aged 35–54 is projected to rise by 2.6 million, and there will be extra 0.9 million people aged over 55. There may have been a time when people of 50 and over were deemed to be unsuitable for job change and retraining but organizations of the future are unlikely to be able to take this view. In fact one supermarket has opened a store staffed entirely by people over 50; there is evidence that employees in their late 40s and early 50s tend to stay with the organization much longer than those in their early 20s, that they lower absenteeism and accident rates, often have greater spirit and reliability, and may already possess useful skills. Fears of difficulties in training should not therefore be used as a barrier of discriminatory factor in recruiting more mature workers.
If people are at their most receptive to learning in youth, and in later years draw upon their attainments, it is essential that the young are given every opportunity to learn. If those with lower cognitive ability are likely to show greater deterioration than those with above average potential, it is extremely important that a broad–based training is given to young people so that through vertical transfer they may find it easier to learn a variety of skills when they are older.
Rigid notions of age and aging limit the mind and imprison the spirit. Like all stereotypes, they evaporate on closer examination. Only by teasing apart the stereotypes can we truly see the individual members of the invisible old and the unheard young. As former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey said, the true test of a society is how it treats those in the dawn of life—its children, and the twilight of life—its elders.
On reading the passage, we feel that the author __________.
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
This explanatory function of witchcraft is widespread. So too are some of the details of the witch's believed habits and techniques, suc h as operating at night flying through the air on broomsticks or saucer shaped winnowing baskets; employing animal familiar, such as cats, dogs, and weasels in Europe, dogs and foxes in Japan, hyenas, owls, and baboons in Africa stealing or destroying property; injuring people in a variety of ways; eating them while they are still alive or killing them first and exhuming their corpses for ghoulish feasts by the local witches.
Beliefs in witchcraft provide the mystical medium in which deep–lying structural conflicts, especially those not susceptible of rational adjustment by social intervention and arbitration, may be expressed and in some measure discharged. The inherent disharmonies in the social system are thus cloaked under an insistence that there is harmony in the values of the society, and the surface disturbances that they cause are attributed to the wickedness of individuals. This is why the witch and sorcerer become the villains of the society's morality plays, the ones to whom the most inhuman crimes and characteristics are attributed. So numerous and so revolting are the believed practices of witches that to accuse anyone of witchcraft is a condensed way of charging him with a long list of the foulest crimes – and much the same may be said of sorcery, except that the alleged sorcerer might find some room for defense in the ambiguity as to when the use of destructive magic is legitimate and when it is to be regarded as sorcery.
Because accusations of witchcraft, if they are successful, are devastating attacks on reputation, they punctuate the micro political processes relating to many forms of competition for some scarce status, power, resource, or personal affiliation. Thus, among the matrilineal Cewa of east central Africa, the generally accepted succession rule states that a headman's office should pass to his younger brothers in turn, followed by the eldest son of their eldest sister. In practice, however, the Cewa take personal qualifications into account and would not permit the succession of the genealogically rightful heir if his competence as a headman were seriously challenged by a convincing accusation of sorcery. The believed victim of witchcraft or sorcery may also sometimes be regarded as getting his just deserts if he has, by tactless folly, incurred the wrath of dangerous, powerful persons in the community.
Because in such belief systems the transgressors of a society's ideals are depicted with dramatic disapproval, witchcraft and sorcery are usually powerful brakes upon social change. In many preliterate societies in modern times it is often those who have progressed economically and educationally who are most obsessed by fears of attack by witches and sorcerers or of accusation of employing witchcraft or sorcery. This is because they find themselves either out of line in social orders that economically at least are equalitarian or with a new–found status that lacks a niche in the traditional hierarchy; and their fears of the consequences of their eccentricity are expressed in belief that witches and sorcerers in the community will take their revenge or that they themselves will be accused of advancing their interests through mystical means at the cost of their kinsmen and neighbours.
On the other hand, belief in witchcraft may, under certain circumstances, have the effect of accelerating social change; e.g., by facilitating the rupture of close relationships that have become redundant but are difficult to break off. In such a situation an accusation of witchcraft has the effect of making a public issue out of what started as a private quarrel.
The author says that witches and the sorcerers become the villains of the society because ___________.
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
This explanatory function of witchcraft is widespread. So too are some of the details of the witch's believed habits and techniques, suc h as operating at night flying through the air on broomsticks or saucer shaped winnowing baskets; employing animal familiar, such as cats, dogs, and weasels in Europe, dogs and foxes in Japan, hyenas, owls, and baboons in Africa stealing or destroying property; injuring people in a variety of ways; eating them while they are still alive or killing them first and exhuming their corpses for ghoulish feasts by the local witches.
Beliefs in witchcraft provide the mystical medium in which deep–lying structural conflicts, especially those not susceptible of rational adjustment by social intervention and arbitration, may be expressed and in some measure discharged. The inherent disharmonies in the social system are thus cloaked under an insistence that there is harmony in the values of the society, and the surface disturbances that they cause are attributed to the wickedness of individuals. This is why the witch and sorcerer become the villains of the society's morality plays, the ones to whom the most inhuman crimes and characteristics are attributed. So numerous and so revolting are the believed practices of witches that to accuse anyone of witchcraft is a condensed way of charging him with a long list of the foulest crimes – and much the same may be said of sorcery, except that the alleged sorcerer might find some room for defense in the ambiguity as to when the use of destructive magic is legitimate and when it is to be regarded as sorcery.
Because accusations of witchcraft, if they are successful, are devastating attacks on reputation, they punctuate the micro political processes relating to many forms of competition for some scarce status, power, resource, or personal affiliation. Thus, among the matrilineal Cewa of east central Africa, the generally accepted succession rule states that a headman's office should pass to his younger brothers in turn, followed by the eldest son of their eldest sister. In practice, however, the Cewa take personal qualifications into account and would not permit the succession of the genealogically rightful heir if his competence as a headman were seriously challenged by a convincing accusation of sorcery. The believed victim of witchcraft or sorcery may also sometimes be regarded as getting his just deserts if he has, by tactless folly, incurred the wrath of dangerous, powerful persons in the community.
Because in such belief systems the transgressors of a society's ideals are depicted with dramatic disapproval, witchcraft and sorcery are usually powerful brakes upon social change. In many preliterate societies in modern times it is often those who have progressed economically and educationally who are most obsessed by fears of attack by witches and sorcerers or of accusation of employing witchcraft or sorcery. This is because they find themselves either out of line in social orders that economically at least are equalitarian or with a new–found status that lacks a niche in the traditional hierarchy; and their fears of the consequences of their eccentricity are expressed in belief that witches and sorcerers in the community will take their revenge or that they themselves will be accused of advancing their interests through mystical means at the cost of their kinsmen and neighbours.
On the other hand, belief in witchcraft may, under certain circumstances, have the effect of accelerating social change; e.g., by facilitating the rupture of close relationships that have become redundant but are difficult to break off. In such a situation an accusation of witchcraft has the effect of making a public issue out of what started as a private quarrel.
What is evident from the animal studies?
There is nothing in the arguments of those who say that old age takes no part in public business. They are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship, because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying up and down the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression of opinion. Of these old age is not only deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree. . .
It is generally agreed that a number of factors affect achievement in later years and that age is by no means the sole determinant. The first of these is the original level of intelligence. Vernon gives evidence that the rate of decline is slowest among those whose original score was high. There is therefore an accentuation of individual differences.
The second factor is stimulation and use of intellectual ability. A number of studies suggest a slow decline among those who make the greatest use of their intellectual ability and a more rapid decline in intelligence among those who do not. It is also possible that stimulation may have physical consequences for the brain. Evidence from animal studies shows that the weight of cerebral cortex is affected by stimulation from the environment. Evidence was found by Vogt of slower deterioration in brain cells of those whose level of intellectual activity had been high.
Old men retain their intellects well enough, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed. Neither is that the case only with men of high position and great office: it applies equally to private life and peaceful pursuits. Sophocles composed tragedies to extreme old age; and being believed to neglect the care of his property owing to his devotion to his art, his sons brought him into court to get a judicial decision depriving him of the management of his property on the ground of weak intellect – just as in our law it is customary to deprive a paterfamilias of the management of his property if he is squandering it.
A third factor is education and training. Wellford suggests that the manipulative, occupational, mental and social skills acquired through experience help to offset a decline in abilities as a result of the ageing process. Other important factors are state of health and motivation.
Our knowledge of the ageing process is imperfect, but there are a number of important implications for the trainer. Demographic trends indicate the availability of fewer young people in the workforce and an increasing dependence upon the services of older people. By 2006 the number of people aged 35–54 is projected to rise by 2.6 million, and there will be extra 0.9 million people aged over 55. There may have been a time when people of 50 and over were deemed to be unsuitable for job change and retraining but organizations of the future are unlikely to be able to take this view. In fact one supermarket has opened a store staffed entirely by people over 50; there is evidence that employees in their late 40s and early 50s tend to stay with the organization much longer than those in their early 20s, that they lower absenteeism and accident rates, often have greater spirit and reliability, and may already possess useful skills. Fears of difficulties in training should not therefore be used as a barrier of discriminatory factor in recruiting more mature workers.
If people are at their most receptive to learning in youth, and in later years draw upon their attainments, it is essential that the young are given every opportunity to learn. If those with lower cognitive ability are likely to show greater deterioration than those with above average potential, it is extremely important that a broad–based training is given to young people so that through vertical transfer they may find it easier to learn a variety of skills when they are older.
Rigid notions of age and aging limit the mind and imprison the spirit. Like all stereotypes, they evaporate on closer examination. Only by teasing apart the stereotypes can we truly see the individual members of the invisible old and the unheard young. As former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey said, the true test of a society is how it treats those in the dawn of life—its children, and the twilight of life—its elders.