ENGLISH  TEST  （下）

PRACTICE  EXAM:

The Change to Agriculture

      Approximately ten thousand years ago, a radical change took place in the way people lived, significantly altering their lives. (46) Ancient  peoples abandoned the traditional methods of hunting and gathering their food, which required an arduous seasonal migration. Instead, (47)they domesticated the plants and animals they needed for surviving.(48)

The shift to (49) domestication and a sedentary lifestyle wrought great change. Lost to us is the knowledge of whether or not (50) the lifestyle change itself gave rise to new technologies (or at least improvements and adaptations of the way things had been done) or whether the development of new technologies made the lifestyle shift possible.

What is known is (51) that after the initial adaptations, the two have seemed to move in tandem ever since. For example, a given area of land could now support more people than were (52)ever before possible .More people in a given area made finding a mate easier, and more children had been born and lived longer(53).Thus, the ability of the land to support more people ineluctably led to more people in the area.

     Agriculture necessitated the storage of seed stock, the division of labor, and allocating (54) land. The increased populace could now be put into productive service working (55) additional land, producing additional food, and providing more varied services. Economies of scale led to an increase specialization of crop, which in turn led to an increased need for other specialized products.

As each region became more specialized in what they produced, the need (56) for greater trade and communication intensified. The population in each area became situated around natural, centrally located points, which (57) development into the first cities. It became necessary to organize the increasingly complex and complicated (58) economic relationships and to develop a structure capable to deal (59)with the many societal changes. Thus, a centrally located (60) authority developed, giving rise to some of the first real governments.

53. A. NO CHANGE

   B. were being borned to live longer

   C. were being born and living longer

   D. were born and lived longer

Answer: D

This question is testing parallelism. The only choice that matches the verb in the rest of the passage is (D).

54. F. NO CHANGE

    G. to allocate

    H .allocated

    J. the allocation of

Answer: J

This is testing parallelism. The non-underlined part should guide you .The passage has “the storage of “and “the division of”, so only (J)matches.

55. A. NO CHANGE

    B. service: working

    C. service: Working

D. servitude and working

Answer: B

Punctuation is needed between “service” and “working.” A colon can be to introduce a list. and that’s what it is doing here.(C)might sound OK at first, but it turns the second half into a fragment .(D) is grammatically correct but change the meaning, so it’s out.

56. F. NO CHANGE

    G. it produced. The need

    H. they produced. The need

    J. it produced. the need

Answer: J

The subject here is “each region”, and it’s singular, so you can eliminate (F)and (H).(G)would turn the first part into a sentence fragment, so (J)is right.

57. A. NO CHANGE

    B. points: which

    C. points: which,

    D. point; which

Answer: A

The answer choices give you a clue that this is testing punctuation. The part after the punctuation is a dependent clause, so you have to use a comma.

58. F. NO CHANGE

    G. complex, and complicated

    H. complex but complicated

    J. complex

Answer: J

Watch out for redundancies! The adjectives “complex” and “complicated” mean pretty much the same thing ,so you don’t need both of them.

59. A. NO CHANGE

   B. of dealing

   C. to have dealt

   D. OMIT the underlined portion

Answer: B

If you OMIT here,　you ’ll be missing a verb, so (D)is out, This is testing idioms. “Capable” goes with “of doing” something, so (B) is right even though(A)sounds right.

60. F. NO CHANGE

    G. central location

    H. central located

    J. centrally location

Answer: F

The word “centrally “is an adverb modifying “located”, an adjective, and that’s exactly how things should be. The other answer choices do not provide this correct combination of parts of speech.