KEY TO PRACTICE TEST 25

PART 1. MCQs
Choose the best option to each of the following questions.
1. Brain cancer requires _______ treatment such as surgery.
A. aggressive B. confrontational C. malignant D. rigorous
2. He praised his wife for her dignity under the _______ of the tabloid press.
A. onslaught B. assault C. onset D. offensive
3. Buying a car was an important _______ for them.
A. transformation B. translation C. transaction D. transportation
4. She’s _______. She tends to think a lot and not to say a lot.
A. an introvert B. inverted C. an extrovert D. subdued
5.It’s _______ that he never mentioned our argument; I wonder why he didn’t.
A. special B. rare C. curious D. eccentric
6. In all _______, he’s already left.
A. odds B. probability C. certainty D. possibilities
7. Many people don’t use their computers to their full _______.
A. future B. expectation C. potential D. hope
8. When our friends have bad fortune, we try to show _______.
A. love B. sympathy C. affection D. pity
9. There’s no doubt about the outcome of the trial. The man is a _______ criminal.
A. self-conscious B. self-contained C. self-confessed D. self-centered
10. The job you’ve been offered is a(n)_______ opportunity to travel and meet people.
A. sole B. only C. unique D. single
11. Now that my summer vacation has just begun, I feel free as _______.
A. a bird B. a cucumber C. a pie D. a pig
12. The whole building collapsed, but fortunately there were no _______.
A. wounded B. hurts C. casualties D. victims
13. I have got a _______ headache. I need to take a rest and some aspirin.
A. spitting B. raving C. splitting D. burning
14. Martha has been hard _______ to it to organize a fancy dress party for the younger children.
A. forced B. ordered C. put D. made
15.It was a daring robbery, which took place in ______ daylight.
A. broad B. total C. wide D. absolute
16. Their choir stood in four rows according to their ________ heights.
A. respected B. respective C. respectable D. respectful
17. Stop fighting you two; shake hands and ________ your peace with each other.
A. set B. do C. make D. bring
18. Legal matters are not my ________. You will have to consult a lawyer.
A. prospect B. excess C. domain D. aspect
19. Our hosts had prepared a ______ meal with seven courses to celebrate our arrival.
A. generous B. lavish C. spendthrift D. profuse
20. Many children who get into trouble in their early teens go on to become ________ offenders.
A. persistent B. insistent C. inverted D. innate
21. Don’t read in such dim light; it will _______ your eyes.
A. dwindle B. contract C. impair D. decrease
22. Making private calls on the office is severely _________on in our department.
A. frowned B. criticized C. regarded D. objected
23. I must go to bed early tonight; I sat up till the _______ hours to finish that report.
A. late B. deep C. last D. early
24. An education system that benefits bright children _________ of those who are slower to learn.
A. at the expense B. at the limit C. at the cost D. at the loss
25. He kept his marriage for years, but eventually the truth ________.
A. came out B. went out C. came through D. fell out
26. Helen was ________ disappointed when she learned that she hadn’t won the beauty contest.
A. seriously B. bitterly C. strongly D. heavily
27. Doctors are often ________ to accidents in rural areas.
A. called up B. driven out C. called out D. rung up
28. To his own great _____, professor Howard has discovered a new method of bulimia treatment.
A. reputation B. name C. fame D. credit
29. We had to ________ the design of the car to take account of the rough terrain.
A. modify B. amend C. transfer D. convert
30. The escaped prisoner fought _________ before he was finally overpowered.
A. foot and mouth B. heart and soul C. head over heels D. tooth and nail
31. The plague, otherwise known as the Black Death, was a _______ disease.
A. contagious B. contiguous C. contingent D. congenial
32. The young man felt_______ in the presence of so many young ladies.
A. inhospitable B. hindered C. inhibited D. prohibited
33. The Conservatives declared their intention of_______ the whole Act once they came into power.
A. repulsing B. repelling C. impelling D. repealing
34. The Prime Minister will decide whether to release the prisoner or not; that's his_______.
A. prerogative B. derogatory C. abdication D. humanity
35. The new town development has begun to_______ on the surrounding green belt.
A. reach B. encroach C. enter D. intrude
36. I was informed by the police officer that he would be forced to take me into_______ .
A. guardianship B. bail C. custody D. protection
37. They continued fighting despite all the_______ they met with.
A. adversities B. amenities C. properties D. liabilities
38. The media are always keen on reporting_______.
A. mishaps B. calamities C. reverses D. hardships
39.Not only is little Johnny's grammar incoherent and his spelling atrocious but also
his punctuation_______.
A. slothful B. sluggish C. hazard D. haphazard
40. The dealer wanted £40 and I was only willing to pay £30, but we finally agreed to_______ the
difference.
A. drop B. decrease C. split D. divide
41. Money was short and people survived by _______and saving.
A. scrimping B. scavenging C. scouring D. scrounging
42. He left the meeting early on the unlikely _______ that he had a sick friend to visit.
A. claim B. pretext C. excuse D. motive
43. This is the _______ timetable for the conference. It may change later.
A. conditional B. indefinite C. provisional D. indeterminate
44. Drug-taking is a crime which society simply cannot _________.
A. approve B. acknowledge C. consent D. condone
45. The supervisor’s job is to _______ the work of his particular department.
A. overlook B. overrun C. oversee D. overview
46. Mr. Henson’s bitter comments on the management’s mistakes gave _______ to the conflict which
has already lasted for four months.
A. cause B. ground C. goal D. rise
47. I was scared _______ when I looked down from the top of the cliff.
A. tight B. stiff C. consent D. solid
48. There will of necessity be a ______ to the amount of money put at the new manager’s disposal.
A. ceiling B. roof C. hard D. solid
49. I was sitting on the bus when I heard this odd_______ of conversation.
 A. lumps B. air C. snatch D. stab
50. Though he faced many difficulties, he could not be _______ from his goal.
A. hindered B. obstructed C. prevented D. deflected
51. “How come you didn’t tell me that you would quit the job?” - “____________”
A. I found the job so interesting. B. Because I am so bored with it.
C. I would love to. Thank you. D. Because I know you would have made a fuss.
52. Dreams are commonly _________both visual and verbal images.
A. made of B. made from C. consisted of D. made up of
53. From the _____expression on his mother’s face, Roy realized that he wouldn’t be able to persuade
her.
A. tall B. firm C. weak D. hasty
54. They are unlikely to find any new evidence because so much time has _____since the crime.
A. spanned B. postponed C. lapsed D. elapsed
55. ____________, she went back to her room.
A. There was no cause for alarm B. Without having cause for alarm
C. There being no cause for alarm D. Being no cause for alarm
56. _________to a new office with a salary half as much did he appreciate his former boss’s
generosity.
A. He had been transferred B. Having been transferred
C. Not until transferred D. Only when he transferred
57. The jury _________her compliments on her excellent knowledge of the subject.
A. paid B. gave C. made D. said
58. “It is raining outside” – “_________”
A. So is it B. So it is C. So it does D. Is it so?
59. We have all passed our final exams. We are going to _________the town red to celebrate.
A. color B. decorate C. paint D. make
60. Mr. Jones knew who had won the contest, but he kept it under his _________until it was
announced publicly.
A. cap B. tongue C. umbrella D. hat
61. Mary is an _________liar, You must take what she says with a small grain of salt.
A. incorrigible B. incurable C. irredeemable D. irremediable.
62. They live in a very _________populated area of Italy.
A. sparsely B. scarcely C. hardly D. barely
63. I_________ my best suit – everyone else was very casually dressed.
A. needn’t wear B. mustn’t wear C. needn’t have worn D.mustn’t have
worn
64. It is an _______ that the most talented artists often go completely unrecognized in their lifetime.
A. irregularity B. eccentricity C. anomaly D. abnormality
65. My husband told me in no _______ terms that I would have to economize on household expenses.
A. unsure B. uncertain C. vague D. unclear
66. “He’s not interested in Physics, is he?”- “_________”
A. No problem! B. No, he isn’t. I’m afraid.
C. Yes, he is not at all. D. I promise he isn’t.
67. My father supposes, _________, that he will be retiring at 60.
A. like most people did B. like most people do
C. as do most people D. as most of people
68. After congratulating his team, the coach left, allowing the players to let their _________ down and
enjoy themselves.
A. hearts B. heads C. hair D. souls
69. The headmaster at my last school was a stern disciplinarian and made sure we________ the line.
A. drew B. touched C. faced D. toed
70. Unfortunately, their house _________while they were at the restaurant celebrating their
anniversary.
A. had burgled B. got burgled C. went burgled D. burgled
71. The pollution problems in the town have been _______ by mass tourism in the summer months.
A. exacerbated B. developed C. augmented D. contributed
72. Because of the dominance of retail chain-stores, most shopping centers show the same bland
________ and no imagination.
A. similarity B. likeness C. equality D. uniformity
73. The misunderstanding is thought to have ________ from an ambiguous article which appeared in
yesterday’s newspapers.
A. stirred B. steered C. strayed D. stemmed
74. The Red Cross is ________ an international aid organization.
A. intriguingly B. intrusively C. intrinsically D. intrepidly
75. Despite all the evidence, he wouldn’t admit that he was in the _________
A. fault B. error C. slip D. wrong

Key:
1. A 2. A 3. C 4. A 5. C 6. B 7. C 8. B 9. C 10. C
11. A 12. C 13. C 14. C 15. A 16. B 17. C 18. C 19. B 20. A
21. C 22. A 23. D 24. A 25. A 26. B 27. C 28. D 29. A 30. D
31. A 32. C 33. D 34. A 35. B 36. C 37. A 38. B 39. D 40. C
41. A 42. B 43. C 44. D 45. C 46. D 47. B 48. A 49. C 50. D
51.D 52.D 53.B 54. D 55.C 56.C 57.A 58.B 59.C 60.D
61.A 62.A 63.C 64.C 65.B 66.B 67.C 68.C 69.D 70.B
71. A 72. D 73. D 74. C 75. D

PART 2. WORD FORMS

Use the word given in capitals to form a word that fits in the space.

TEST 1:
1. Actually, scientists say that cloned animals will not be exact replicas of their_________. (GENE)
2. _________pain or pain in the belly is the reason for around 5% of all emergency department visits.
(ABDOMEN)
3. The _________between the two champions was emulating for both. (RIVAL)
4. The painting was of ______ value and it was carefully guarded. (CALCULATE)
5. I think my last statement ________ the situation pretty well – at least, I can’t think of any better
summary! (CAPSULE)
6. It's true that _________originates from the Orient. (REFLEX)
7. The clerk _________the banknote with a magnifying glass. (SCRUTINY)
8. My friends started going out late to nightclubs so I decided to _________myself from the group.
(SOCIAL)

Key:
1. progenitors 2. abdominal 3. rivalry 4. incalculable
5. encapsulates 6. reflexology 7. scrutinized 8. dissociate

TEST 2:
1. That the child behaved _______made the couple happy. (DEAR)
2. In Scotland, there is greater emphasis on ______ by individual schools. (VALUE)
3. It was_______________of me to mislead you like that.(FORGIVE)
4. The price of the house includes many existing ____________ and fittings. (FIX)
5. There has always been a deep __________ between the rich and the poor. (CLEAVE)
6. Suppliers have to pay a 10% ________ on imported goods. (CHARGE)
7. As the disease progressed, his speech degenerated from being difficult to understand to being
completely ________. (COHERE)
8. The reckless driver was imprisoned due to his _________ of the traffic jam. (OBSERVE)

Key:
1. endearingly 2. self-evaluation 3. unforgivable 4. fixtures
5. cleavage 6. surcharge 7. incoherent 8. non-observance

TEST 3:
1. My friends started going out late to nightclubs so I decided to ______ myself from the group.
(SOCIAL)
2. An alarm sounds when the temperature reaches a ______ level. (DETERMINE)
3. Please place your cigarette ends in the ______ provided. (RECEIVE)
4. If the participation mode is adopted, the farmers will be kept away from the disappointment
or_______________________. (ILLUSION)
5. In the end our fears proved ________ and we calmed down. (GROUND)
6. We can say that the colours of her clothes _______ nicely. (HARMONY)
7. Didn’t you know that his _______ was proverbial? (OBSTINATE)
8. His mates used to mock at his ________ but now they look up to him. (BOOK)

Key:
1. dissociate 2. predetermined 3. receptacles 4. disillusion
5. groundless 6. harmonize 7. obstinacy 8. bookishness

TEST 4:
1. There is no significant _________ between modern and primitive societies.(CONTINUE)
2. Worse, it is making unforced errors which make it look ________ and incompetent.(AMATEUR)
3. He achieved _________ for failing a drug test after winning an Olympic final. (NOTORIOUS)
4. He made a _________ attempt to climb the tree to recover his kite. (FOOL)
5. After a successful career, he retired in 2004, but now he’s making a _______ and he’s released a
new CD. (COME)
6. Mum’s fine after her operation, although she’s still a little _______ on her feet. (STEADY)
7. My father is a strict _________who always believes in 'spare the rod, spoil the child'.
(DISCIPLINE)
8. How awful! What an _________ thing for anyone to do! (OUTRAGE)
Key:
1. discontinuity 2. amateurish 3. notoriety 4. foolhardy
5. comeback 6. unstready 7. disciplinarian 8. outrageous

TEST 5:
1. British universities are ________ good, but the pool of top scientific talent trickling from them
amounts to 0.01% of the working population. (DENY)
2. They paid little attention to the ________ of the pieces. (FRAGMENT)
3. This involved some ________ dealings with the chief of the police. (HAND)
4. My house is __________ from the two pubs in the village.(DISTANCE)
5. Research showed a clear __________between recession and levels of property crime.(RELATE)
6. The plan to _________the inner cities has been unanimously approved by the committee. (VITAL)
7. My house is _________ from the two pubs in the village.(DISTANCE)
8. Women who are slimming can never enjoy a meal without being afraid of __________ their diet.
(ORGANISE)

Key:
1. undeniably 2. fragmentariness 3. underhand 4. equidistant
5. correlation 6. revitalize 7. equidistant 8. disorganizing

PART 3: ERROR IDENTIFICATION

Each passage below contains 7 errors in spelling, grammar, and word formation. For questions
1-35, underline the errors and write the corrections in the corresponding number boxes. There
are THREE examples at the beginning (0, 00, 000)

PASSAGE 1

line Extract from a novel

I have escape to this island with a few books. I do not know why I use the word ‘escape’.
The villagers say jokeingly that only a sick man would choose so a remote place to
rebuild. Well then, I have come here to heal myself, if you like to put it that way.
Apart from the wrinkle old peasant who comes from the village on her mule each day to
5 clean the house, I am quite alone. I am neither happy nor unhappy; I liesuspending like a
hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory. I spoke of the uselessness of art but
added nothing truthfully about its consolations. The solace of such work as I do with
brain and heart lies in this - that only there, in the silences of the painter or the writer can
reality be reordered, reworked and made to show their significant side. Our common
10 actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hide the cloth-of-gold - the
meaning of the pattern. For us artists there wait the joyous compromise through art with
all that wounded or defeated us in dailylife; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the
ordinary people try doing, but to fulfill it in its true potential - the imagination.
Otherwises why should we hurt one another?
15

0. escaped (line 1) 00.jokingly (line 2) 000. such (line 2)

1. 2. 3.
4. 5. 6.
7.

Answer key
0. escaped (line 1)
1. wrinkled (line 5)
4.its (line 10- their)
7. Otherwise (line 15)
00.jokingly (line 2) 000. such (line 2)
2. suspended (line 6) 3. truthful (line 8)
5. hides (line 11) 6. to do (line 14)
PASSAGE 2

line Ecotourism

If there were awards for tourism phrase that have been hijacked, diluted and misused,
then ‘ecotourism’ would earn top prize. The term first surfaced in the early l9805,
reflecting a surge in environmental awarity and a realization by tour operators that many
travellers wanted to believe their present abroad would not have a negative impact. It
5 rapidly became the hotest marketing tag a holiday could carry.
These days the ecotourism label has broadened out to cover anything from a two-week
tour living with remote tribes, to a one-hour motor boat trip through an Australian gorge.
In fact, any tour that involves cultural interaction, natural beautiful spots, wildlife or a
dash of soft adventure is likely to be included in the overflowing ecotourism folder. There
10 is no doubt the original motives behind the movement were honorable attempts to provide
a way for those who cared to make informing choices, but the lack of regulations and a
standard industry definition leaves many travellers lost in an ecotourism jungle.

8. 9. 10. 11.
12. 13. 14.

Answer key
8.phrases (line 1) 9.awareness (line 3) 10.presence (line 4) 11. hottest (line5)
12.beauty (line 8) 13.informed (line 11) 14.left (line 12)
PASSAGE 3

line Industrial relations in football

Industrial relations in football in Britain, it seems, are tied to a form of language that makes
measured assessment difficulty and causes ill feeling by its very nature. Just as player-manager
relations are concluding in the outdated language of the traditional factory floor, so the
terminology used to describe changing jobs, ‘buying’ and ‘selling' players, distort the reality. Both
5 sides suffer from this: the management accuses some players of greedy or disloyalty, while the
players feel the club treats them cynically, as if they were disposable objects.
In the real world, though, people move from one job to another all the time. They aren’t bought or
sold, they resign, sign a new contract with another business, have a change. Sometimes, if they
have signed a long-term contract, their old employees refuse to let them go, or demand to be
10 compensated. In fact, life in the corporate world is generally less well paid, less secure and more
demanding than it is in the world of professional football. The resentment that players feel about
‘being sold' is probably created more by the language used to describe the process than by the
process itself. This all has a tendency to descend into steretypes: the gentleman chairman who
considers himself a model of good business behaviour, and the hypersensitive player who thinks
15 he is being treated like a disposable commodity.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

Answer key
15.difficult (line 2) 16.concluded (line 3) 17.distorts (line 4) 18.greed (line 5)
19.employers (line 9) 20.stereotypes (line 21. as (line 15- like)
13)

PASSAGE 4

line The scene set in the railway station in Deepa Mehta’s Earth focus upon Ice Candy Man
crouching on a platform at Lahore railway station amongst another waiting for the train to
arrive from the recent split Punjab, and the newly partitioned India. In breaking away from
the British, the land and the railway is being reclaimed and rewritten upon; the process of
5 cracking is entered into, revealing gaps and lapses in time and memory. As the train
arrives twelve hours late, an uncanny silence draws up next to it; a silence that is echoed
with the arrival of the ’ghost train’ of Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan. In Earth,
those wait for the arrival of the train expect to meet family members and the one-day-old
citizens of the newly formed nation of Pakistan; instead, the unnervingly silent carriage
10 divulge death and dismemberment. The communicative aspect of the railway network
becomes traumatically fulfilled; the railway carries the conflicting messages of renewal
and relief, and bloodshed and war. The men are described as having beenbutchered and
the women as having been unmembered with the ’members’ filling gunny sacks. The
witnesing of divided bodies echoes the land that has itself had incisions made upon it.
15
22. 23. 24. 25.
26. 27. 28

Answer key

22. focuses (line 1) 23. others (line 2) 24. recently (line 3) 25. waiting (line8)
26. carriages (line 9) 27. dismembered 28. witnessing (line14)
(line13)

PASSAGE 5

Line Every Picture Tells a Story

Adapting novels for film almost always involves a process of reduction, condensation and
deletion. This can be very frustrating for the writer, but also illuminating. Worked on a script, I
was struck by how much of the dialogue and narrative description in a given scence in the
novel I could dispense of, while still getting across the same point. This does not necessarily
5 mean that the dialogue and description of the original were superfluous. It is a matter of the
type of attention demanded of the audience by narrative in each medium, and a matter of the
type of redundancy each employs. I do not mean ‘redundancy’ in the usual colloquial sense of
material which is unnecessary, but in a technical sense.
In a novel, such redundancy would include the repeated allusion to certain trait by which
10 characters are identified, as well as speech tags such as ‘he said’. Strictly speaking a character
trait needs to be described only one, but it assists comprehension if we are constantly reminded
of it. And usually we can infer who is speaking in a scene of dialogue from the content and
layout on the page, but speech tags make read easier.
Stage drama, which consists mostly of speech, imitates and reproduces the redundancy of real
15 speech with various degrees of stylisation. In some modern dramas, this is taken to an extreme,
so that the dialogue seems to consist most entirely of redundant language, whose function is
purely phatic (merely establishing contact between the two speakers), leaving us in the dark as
to what is being communicated.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

Answer key

29. Working (line2) 30. scene (line3) 31. with (line4 –of) 32. traits (line 9)
33. once (line 11) 34. reading (line13) 35. almost (line 16)