Humankind was merely in its infancy; trillions of people might still be born.Paragraph: In setting Morrison’s critique and prophecy in relief, against the background of simultaneous counter-movements in the culture, we can begin to see the acuity and power of her arguments. Morrison ended with the image of a generative garden, but over the next three decades Earth’s actual gardens would be ravaged at a pace unprecedented in human history. _____(1)_____ Over this same period, even as the threat of imminent nuclear war receded from the forefront of public consciousness, new technologies were rapidly developing that would, emerging transhumanists argued, pose exponentially larger threats to humanity than those posed by nuclear weapons or environmental degradation. All these threats were anthropogenic, the result of human actions. _____(2)_____ Sentient life had reached a threshold; it would either evolve into more intelligent, self-optimised, wise and moral forms, or it would probably destroy itself within centuries, if not sooner. _____(3)_____ For all their doomsday predictions, many of these same transhumanists believed that these emerging technologies, if guided by careful, coordinated oversight, could create a future in which human suffering and poverty could be eradicated. _____(4)_____Option 1Option 2Option 4Option 3

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.Sentence: Humankind was merely in its infancy; trillions of people might still be born.Paragraph: In setting Morrison’s critique and prophecy in relief, against the background of simultaneous counter-movements in the culture, we can begin to see the acuity and power of her arguments. Morrison ended with the image of a generative garden, but over the next three decades Earth’s actual gardens would be ravaged at a pace unprecedented in human history. _____(1)_____ Over this same period, even as the threat of imminent nuclear war receded from the forefront of public consciousness, new technologies were rapidly developing that would, emerging transhumanists argued, pose exponentially larger threats to humanity than those posed by nuclear weapons or environmental degradation. All these threats were anthropogenic, the result of human actions. _____(2)_____ Sentient life had reached a threshold; it would either evolve into more intelligent, self-optimised, wise and moral forms, or it would probably destroy itself within centuries, if not sooner. _____(3)_____ For all their doomsday predictions, many of these same transhumanists believed that these emerging technologies, if guided by careful, coordinated oversight, could create a future in which human suffering and poverty could be eradicated. _____(4)_____Option 1Option 2Option 4Option 3

This is a literary device and genre used by writers to present a vision of the future that challenges readers to reflect on the current social and political environments in which they live. It often portrays society in cataclysmic decline resulting from environmental ruin, control through technology, and government oppression of individual freedom and expression.*A.ThemeB. DystopiaC. UtopiaD. Stereotype

Read this excerpt from H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds:No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.Which words best describe the tone of this passage?A.Excited and emotionalB.SatiricalC.Calm and matter-of-factD.Light-hearted

The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.Twentieth-century scholarship, advancing the modern human conceit, conspired against our ability to notice the divergent, layered, and conjoined projects that make up worlds. Entranced by the expansion of certain ways of life over others, scholars ignored questions of what else was going on. As progress tales lose traction, however, it becomes possible to look differently.The concept of assemblage is helpful. Ecologists turned to assemblages to get around the sometimes fixed and bounded connotations of ecological “community.” The question of how the varied species in a species assemblage influence each other—if at all—is never settled: some thwart each other; others work together to make life possible; still others just happen to find themselves in the same place. Assemblages are open-ended gatherings. They allow us to ask about communal effects without assuming them…Patterns of unintentional coordination develop in assemblages. To notice such patterns means watching the interplay of temporal rhythms and scales in the divergent lifeways that gather. Other authors use “assemblage” with other meanings. The qualifier “polyphonic” may help explain my variant. Polyphony is music in which autonomous melodies intertwine. When I first learned polyphony, it was a revelation in listening; I was forced to pick out separate, simultaneous melodies and to listen for the moments of harmony and dissonance they created together. This kind of noticing is just what is needed to appreciate the multiple temporal rhythms and trajectories of the assemblage.Imagine the polyphonic assemblage in relation to agriculture. Since the time of the plantation, commercial agriculture has aimed to segregate a single crop and work toward its simultaneous ripening for a coordinated harvest. But other kinds of farming have multiple rhythms. In the shifting cultivation in Indonesian Borneo, many crops grew together in the same field, and they had quite different schedules. Rice, bananas, taro, sweet potatoes, sugarcane, palms, and fruit trees mingled; farmers needed to attend to the varied schedules of maturation of each of these crops. These rhythms were their relation to human harvests; if we add other relations, for example, to pollinators or other plants, rhythms multiply…The polyphonic assemblage also moves us into the unexplored territory of the modern political economy. Factory labor is an exemplar of coordinated progress time. Yet the supply chain is infused with polyphonic rhythms. Consider the tiny Chinese garment factory; like its many competitors, it served multiple supply lines, constantly switching among orders for local boutique brands, knock-off international brands, and generic to-be-branded-later production. Each required different standards, materials, and kinds of labor. The factory’s job was to match industrial coordination to the complex rhythms of supply chains. The farther we stray into the peripheries of capitalist production, the more coordination between polyphonic assemblages and industrial processes becomes central to making a profit.As the last examples suggest, abandoning progress rhythms to watch polyphonic assemblages is not a matter of virtuous desire. Progress felt great; there was always something better ahead. The problem is that progress stopped making sense. More and more of us looked up one day and realized that the emperor had no clothes. It is in this dilemma that new tools for noticing seem so important. Indeed, life on earth seems at stake.Question 5Which of the following groups of words/phrases best encapsulates the key ideas in the passage?Interconnectedness, Polyphonic Assemblages, Unintentional Coordination, Diverse Rhythms.Twentieth-Century Scholarship, Assemblage, Progress Narratives, Political Economy.Twentieth-Century Scholarship, Polyphonic Assemblages, Monoculture Farming, Supply Chain Uniformity.Interconnectedness, Ecological communities, Assemblages, Progress-Driven Development.

The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.Twentieth-century scholarship, advancing the modern human conceit, conspired against our ability to notice the divergent, layered, and conjoined projects that make up worlds. Entranced by the expansion of certain ways of life over others, scholars ignored questions of what else was going on. As progress tales lose traction, however, it becomes possible to look differently.The concept of assemblage is helpful. Ecologists turned to assemblages to get around the sometimes fixed and bounded connotations of ecological “community.” The question of how the varied species in a species assemblage influence each other—if at all—is never settled: some thwart each other; others work together to make life possible; still others just happen to find themselves in the same place. Assemblages are open-ended gatherings. They allow us to ask about communal effects without assuming them…Patterns of unintentional coordination develop in assemblages. To notice such patterns means watching the interplay of temporal rhythms and scales in the divergent lifeways that gather. Other authors use “assemblage” with other meanings. The qualifier “polyphonic” may help explain my variant. Polyphony is music in which autonomous melodies intertwine. When I first learned polyphony, it was a revelation in listening; I was forced to pick out separate, simultaneous melodies and to listen for the moments of harmony and dissonance they created together. This kind of noticing is just what is needed to appreciate the multiple temporal rhythms and trajectories of the assemblage.Imagine the polyphonic assemblage in relation to agriculture. Since the time of the plantation, commercial agriculture has aimed to segregate a single crop and work toward its simultaneous ripening for a coordinated harvest. But other kinds of farming have multiple rhythms. In the shifting cultivation in Indonesian Borneo, many crops grew together in the same field, and they had quite different schedules. Rice, bananas, taro, sweet potatoes, sugarcane, palms, and fruit trees mingled; farmers needed to attend to the varied schedules of maturation of each of these crops. These rhythms were their relation to human harvests; if we add other relations, for example, to pollinators or other plants, rhythms multiply…The polyphonic assemblage also moves us into the unexplored territory of the modern political economy. Factory labor is an exemplar of coordinated progress time. Yet the supply chain is infused with polyphonic rhythms. Consider the tiny Chinese garment factory; like its many competitors, it served multiple supply lines, constantly switching among orders for local boutique brands, knock-off international brands, and generic to-be-branded-later production. Each required different standards, materials, and kinds of labor. The factory’s job was to match industrial coordination to the complex rhythms of supply chains. The farther we stray into the peripheries of capitalist production, the more coordination between polyphonic assemblages and industrial processes becomes central to making a profit.As the last examples suggest, abandoning progress rhythms to watch polyphonic assemblages is not a matter of virtuous desire. Progress felt great; there was always something better ahead. The problem is that progress stopped making sense. More and more of us looked up one day and realized that the emperor had no clothes. It is in this dilemma that new tools for noticing seem so important. Indeed, life on earth seems at stake.Question 6According to the passage, all of the following are true about ecological ‘communities’ EXCEPT:They consist of varied species influencing each other in complex ways.Their dynamics can be better understood through the concept of assemblages.They operate under rigid structures with clearly defined ecological boundaries.Interactions within them may involve cooperation, competition, or coexistence.