070124
Q1
Satellite data show that earthquakes are sometimes ________ by local anomalous
changes in the ionosphere over their epicenters, suggesting a way of improving
earthquake forecasts.
A) exacerbated
B) portended
C) accompanied
D) succeeded
E) averted
Q2
The garments created by Tunisian fashion designer Salah Barka, though not
understated in style, are (i)________ in their references to local cultures and
histories: Barka evokes Africa without (ii)________ readily discernible indigenous
stylistic elements.
i) subtle / commanding / inconsistent
ii) direct reproduction of / obvious departure from / imaginative adaptations of
Q3
The lack of (i)________ the poetry of the postwar decades has led not, as one might
have expected, to (ii)________ poetry, but to a curious closure in which all poets and
forms of poetry are (iii)________ and none, not even respected establishment poets,
command excitement.
(i) interest in / consensus about / innovation in
(ii) pluralistic debate on / popular acceptance of / any experimentation in
(iii) marginalized / revered / tolerated
Q6
Evolutionary psychologists hold that mating patterns arise from individual strategies
to ________ one’s genetic qualities, either by producing more offspring or by aiding
the survival of one’s relatives.
A) ascertain
B) transcend
C) transmit
D) propagate
E) overcome
F) regulate
Q7
Nancy Weiss Malkiel’s painstakingly detailed history of coeducation at elite
universities is an invaluable ________ the amnesia that has come to envelop even
such relatively recent – but critically neglected – development
A) antidote to
B) summary of
C) reinterpretation of
D) corrective to
E) diagnosis of
F) addition to
Q8
Typefaces, in one sense, are just like styles of shoes: they ________ because different
people have different tastes and identities and because both creators and users value
novelty for its own sake.
A) bemuse
B) converge
C) proliferate
D) abound
E) evolve
F) coincide
Q9
The impact of the film on people’s perceptions of what happened illustrates the
power of fiction to ________ history: patently inaccurate, the story told by the film
has nevertheless come to be the standard account.
A) trump
B) distort
C) exploit
D) supplant
E) popularize
F) utilize
參考答案
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Q1
Baron’s book implores scientists to present their work in ways that are accessible to
the general public in order to save the world at large from scientific illiteracy,
________ that is echoed in other recent publications.
A) a query
B) an analysis
C) an exhortation
D) an allurement
E) an implication
Q2
Reviews written by music critic and composer Stephenson were hardly (i)________ :
musicians who performed his music could count on sympathetic coverage, while
those who ignored him were held to (ii)________ standards.
(i) disinterested / lucid / conventional
(ii) exacting / minimal / accepted
Q3
She may have been (i)________ when she was finance minister, fighting deficits, but
now as prime minister she is marked by her (ii)________.
(i) collaborative / austere / resourceful
(ii) discretion / largesse / platitudes
Q4
Despite the apparently natural – if not essential – relationship between insult and
(i)________, for some people the experience of getting insulted may cause
(ii)________ : instead of lashing out at the offender, they end up (iii)________.
(i) self-esteem / injury / anger
(ii) outrage / dejection / confusion
(iii) reacting swiftly / suffering inwardly / recovering easily
Q10
Hoping to build a broader audience, the museum has mounted several exhibitions
based on popular culture, but their impact on attendance has been negligible, and
some complain that this direction has ________ the museum’s stature.
A) protracted
B) undermined
C) burnished
D) augmented
E) diminished
F) perpetuated
Q11
The attempt by some nineteenth-century physicists to reduce ordinary matter to
electromagnetic fields was ________, but once it was one of the biggest hopes of
theoretical physics.
A) counterproductive
B) unsuccessful
C) ill-conceived
D) ridiculed
E) overambitious
F) futile
Q12
Cement’s virtues as a building material continue to be ________ : it is versatile,
inexpensive, pourable, and capable of becoming as hard as a rock.
A) obvious
B) debated
C) diverse
D) manifold
E) exploited
F) disputed
參考答案
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070224
Q1
The company suffers from an almost total lack of ________ : even the most
innocuous communications between departments tend to devolve into acrimony.
A) dissension
B) variance
C) comity
D) conformity
E) mordancy
Q2
Here was one of the main (i)________ of oceanography during the first two decades
after the Second World War. Support for oceanographic research was based on its
utility for making war on other nations. Yet at the same time, oceanography retained
an identity that tied it closely to (ii)________.
(i) fallacies / paradoxes / assumptions
(ii) international cooperation / military secrecy / naval strategy
Q3
How good a writer was she? It is too soon to be certain, and lack of distance is only
one of the difficulties in making that (i)________. Her books seem not merely to
entertain, but, by casting a spell over receptive readers, to (ii)________ their critical
faculties: many who read them tend to (iii)________ reason.
(i) claim / judgment / affirmation
(ii) qualify / glorify / dull
(iii) exemplify / overestimate / ignore
Q6
In the nineteenth century, the circus, for all its glitz and even its glamour, was
entertainment with an old soul, ________ the fast-forward pace of change in modern
life.
A) a forerunner of
B) an antidote to
C) a respite from
D) a break from
E) a precursor to
F) a rebuke to
Q7
Joshua Gisemba Bagaka found that the pedagogical results of group projects and
other engaged learning activities in Kenyan mathematics classrooms were ________;
such activities, then, may not be the best way of improving mathematics education.
A) overstated
B) counterintuitive
C) mixed
D) discouraging
E) inconsistent
F) inexplicable
Q8
The final chapter of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, in which de Beauvoir
argues that only economic self-sufficiency can release women from subordination,
was one of the ________ texts that revolutionized the women’s movement of the
sixties and seventies.
A) inspirational
B) animating
C) introductory
D) inessential
E) inscrutable
F) trivial
Q12
The ________ of criteria for determining what is meant by “balance” and whether it
is beneficial makes it difficult to evaluate claims that probiotics promote a healthy
balance of microorganisms in the body.
A) diversity
B) vagueness
C) stringency
D) paucity
E) dearth
F) rigor
參考答案
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Q1
Despite the fact that some of the company’s hiring and promotion practices have
been widely ________, these practices still persist in certain divisions of the
company.
A) misunderstood
B) recognized
C) proscribed
D) imitated
E) praised
Q2
The discovery of the brain’s alleged pleasure center has not resulted in any
breakthroughs in the treatment of mental illness. It may even have (i)_______
scientists by leading them to (ii)________ how pleasure is encoded and generated
within the brain.
(i) united / deceived / disabused
(ii) believe they understood / be curious about / ignore concerns over
Q3
There is something seductive about (i)________ judgments in the arts. When a critic
peremptorily announces that Titian’s canvases are the greatest ever painted or that
Mondrian and Malevich are the only truly radical artists of the twentieth century we
enjoy seeing all the confusions of taste swept aside, even though we may (ii)_______
reservations about the (iii)________ nature of these opinions.
(i) well-informed / conventional / absolutist
(ii) set aside / harbor / ignore
(iii) categorical / diffident / patronizing
Q4
Critics of the company’s senior management will be (i)________ by Hays’s careful
and meticulous account of its actions. Despite the book’s (ii)________ title, the
author has no designs on scandal; in fact, if anything her account tends toward
(iii)________, applauding the company’s all-conquering success without reservation.
(i) emboldened / disappointed / charmed
(ii) ominous / fawning / insipid
(iii) cynicism / pretentiousness / hagiography
Q10
The recent exhibition on Dadaism is nothing if not ________, for the visual arts are
currently awash in Dadaist gestures and gambits of one variety or another.
A) sensational
B) timely
C) daunting
D) ill-advised
E) opportune
F) misguided
Q11
All of his previous efforts at ingratiating himself with the official were _______ when
he responded antagonistically to the official’s goading.
A) assuaged
B) nullified
C) vitiated
D) implemented
E) alleviated
F) realized
Q12
The tools of science are so specialized that we accept them as a kind of _______
machinery for producing knowledge: we know that they work, but cannot explain
why.
A) occult
B) efficacious
C) potent
D) arcane
E) impersonal
F) reliable
參考答案
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070324
Q1
The fact that all major planets have satellites was ________ before the space age;
however, the numbers of known satellites for these planets have been greatly
expanded by spacecraft observations.
A) unheralded
B) recognized
C) baffling
D) disputed
E) novel
Q2
Rachel Carson is rightly credited with jump-starting the modern environmental
movement in the mid-twentieth century, but her (i)________ has been (ii)_______:
other ecologically minded women writers preceded and followed her.
(i) feminism / popularity / singularity
(ii) forgotten / recognized / exaggerated
Q3
Leo Tolstoy wrote many works of nonfiction and professed (i)________ these
explorations of ethics and religion compared with his novels and short stories. The
fiction writer in him, however, was hard to (ii)________. Hadji Murad is a short novel
with the breadth and power of an epic, with vivid characterization and intense
storytelling that sweep the reader away. While the reader sense the moral concerns
of the tale’s creator, the novel is a far cry from the (iii)________ of Tolstoy’s
nonfiction.
(i) a preference for / an aversion to / an indifference toward
(ii) suppress / identify / incite
(iii) didacticism / fluidity / creativity
Q6
Even though the amount of detail in the book seems ________ by most standards,
some experts contend that much that is necessary has been omitted.
A) spare
B) extravagant
C) lean
D) excessive
E) appropriate
F) typical
Q7
Evolutionary psychologists hold that mating patterns arise from individual strategies
to ________ one’s genetic qualities, either by producing more offspring or by aiding
the survival of one’s relatives.
A) ascertain
B) transcend
C) transmit
D) propagate
E) overcome
F) regulate
Q8
The Holy People in Navajo sacred narratives do not act as moral ________: when
they teach, it is as often by what they do wrong as by what they do right.
A) agents
B) arbiters
C) defenders
D) paragons
E) ethicists
F) exemplars
Q9
The so-called “sensational novel,” popular in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, was
dismissed by some as ________ form of fiction, partly because these spine-tingling
novels often appeared as serials in cheap, disposable periodicals.
A) an engrossing
B) an ephemeral
C) a macabre
D) a transitory
E) a captivating
F) a debased
參考答案
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Q1
AS tough as it looks, the Chihuahuan Desert is a ________ place: although few
humans have been here, their footsteps fallen heavily in the desert.
A) forbidding
B) fragile
C) secluded
D) beguiling
E) hallowed
Q2
The enthusiasm for dancing in New Zealand during the 1920s and 1930s to some
extent (i)________ in both the United States and Britain, where new dance halls
(ii)________ in response to customer demand, although the rampant
commercialization associated with larger populations in the United States was not so
apparent in New Zealand.
(i) heralded its decline / bucked trends / mirrored its popularity
(ii) foundered / burgeoned / rebounded
Q3
One radical approach to literary translation is to (i)________ creating a (ii)________
reproduction of the original work and simply to compose a new work, but in a
manner inspired by the older one.
(i) despair of / resign oneself to / aim for
(ii) popular / faithful / dense
Q4
One can easily be (i)_______ the artist’s (ii)________ nature, seeing her stylistic
changes as an opportunistic strategy that caters to short attention spans. More
(iii)________, she can be viewed as an artist of such many and varied talents that she
simply cannot stand still.
(i) overpowered by / sympathetic to / skeptical of
(ii) sycophantic / absentminded / protean
(iii) superficially / familiarly / charitably
Q10
The city commissioner’s statements may inadvertently provide comic relief, they are
so clearly ________, but it’s no laughing matter when serious debate gets
sidetracked by such absurdities.
A) diverting
B) nonsensical
C) careless
D) contentious
E) preposterous
F) lively
Q11
Despite its stellar performances, the film is ________: it seems mysteriously
incomplete in essential ways, yet feels repetitive at the same time.
A) wanting
B) dull
C) offensive
D) curious
E) distasteful
F) peculiar
Q12
In 1960 astronomer Frank Drake used a radio telescope to search for extraterrestrial
beings, and ever since, astronomers inspired by Drake have ________ the notion that
radio could bridge the gulfs marooning civilizations in space and time.
A) indulged in
B) ridiculed
C) persevered in
D) persisted in
E) emphasized
F) derided
參考答案
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070424
Q1
It is ironic that the scientist’s work was criticized recently for its ________ research
methodology, since other researchers have argued for years that this same
methodology was based absolutely on impeccable logic.
A) fastidious
B) esoteric
C) abstruse
D) impervious
E) specious
Q2
In attempting to turn the public against the judge’s legal rulings, the judge’s
adversaries have (i)________ her and her rulings; in so doing, they leave the
impression that they (ii)________ winning the argument on the merits and that they
are uninterested in the reasoning behind the judge’s decisions.
(i) evaluated / caricatured / exonerated
(ii) are incapable of / have long prepared for / have great interest in
Q3
Letters present an awkward stumbling block to those who take a high line about
literature as a custodian of moral values. The letters of accomplished poets and
novelists are – as often as not – about drinking and infidelity, about sponging and
wasting time. Consequently, one’s (i)________ the writer as (ii)________ can often
come in for a rude shock on contemplation of the writer’s correspondence: the soul
that composed the poems and the self that wrote the letters can seem (III)_______.
(i) doubts about / familiarity with / reverence for
(ii) feckless / exemplary / idiosyncratic
(iii) irreconcilable / inspirational / exotic
Q6
In the past, the exploitation of various categories of natural resources was done
________, but because of the hugely expanded scale of today’s economy,
exploitation of all the resources in many countries now occurs simultaneously.
A) fruitfully
B) rapidly
C) hastily
D) benignly
E) sequentially
F) successively
Q7
Developments in neuroscience and animal behavior have led researchers to question
the view that unmitigated competition is ________ animal life: in primatology, the
countermovement started with research into how friendships and conflict resolution
favor survival.
A) beneficial to
B) manifest in
C) rare in
D) essential in
E) evident in
F) foundational to
Q8
Whether the film is ________ adaptation of the legend is debatable: the author of
the screenplay claims that it was based on the original tale, but admits taking some
interpretive license with the story.
A) an inspired
B) a rigorous
C) an unsentimental
D) a successful
E) a sober
F) a faithful
參考答案
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Q1
It is a paradox of the Victorians that they were both ________ and, through their
empire, cosmopolitan.
A) capricious
B) insular
C) mercenary
D) idealistic
E) intransigent
Q2
In (i)________ yet (ii)________ book, Elizabeth R. DeSombre and J. Samuel Barkin
provide the general reader with a neatly constructed introduction to our present
state of knowledge regarding fisheries management.
(i) an abstruse / a succinct / a comprehensive
(ii) superficial / rambling / wide-ranging
Q3
The critic claims that it is rare nowadays to hear talk about obscenity, a fact that he
attributes to increased social (i)________. He argues that it is increasingly hard to
feel confident about advocating the punishment of something for being obscene; if
anything, he claims, there is merely an attempt to (ii)_______ obscenity rather than
(iii)________ it.
(i) laxity / probity / hypocrisy
(ii) espouse / condemn / discourage
(iii) denounce / ignore / identify
Q4
History is about recognizing continuities and therefore the historian must (i)_______
stories that rope together the disparate worlds of past and present. But it is also true
that honest history arises from a sense of (ii)_______. It is the experience of
discontinuity that alerts us to the (iii)________ of the past and sets us looking for
narratives to capture that unfamiliar entity.
(i) weave / shun / untangle
(ii) interruptedness / powerlessness / imperiousness
(iii) inexorableness / strangeness / lucidity
Q10
One of the features of spoken discourse is that a speaker need not be maximally
________: if an interlocutor is confused, he or she can interrupt and ask for
clarification.
A) honest
B) forthcoming
C) courteous
D) meticulous
E) explicit
F) unambiguous
Q11
The so-called “sensation novel,” popular in the mid-nineteenth-century Britain, was
dismissed by some as ________ form of fiction, partly because these spine-tingling
novels often appeared as serials in cheap, disposable periodicals.
A) an engrossing
B) an ephemeral
C) a macabre
D) a transitory
E) a captivating
F) a debased
Q12
While spectroscopy may be an obscure tool, there is nothing correspondingly
________ about claims concerning its importance: it proved that the rest of the
universe is built from the same kinds of atoms as we are.
A) banal
B) arcane
C) esoteric
D) prosaic
E) equivocal
F) self-evident
參考答案
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