ECAT Pre General Science English Chapter 8 Comprehension Online Test MCQs With Answers

Chocolate – there’s nothing quite like it, is there? Chocolate is simply delicious. What is chocolate? Where does it come from?

Christopher Columbus was probably the first to take cacao beans from the New World to Europe in around 1502. But the history of chocolate goes back at least 4,000 years! The Aztecs, who lived in America, through that their bitter cacao drink was a divine gift from heaven. In fact, the scientist Carolus Linnaeus named the plant Theobroma, which means “food of the gods”

The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortex went to America in 1519. He visited the Mexican emperor Montezuma. He saw that Montezuma drank cacao mixed with vanilla and spices. Cortez took some cacao home as a gift to the Spanish King Charles. In Spain, people began to drink Cortez’s chocolate in drink with chili peppers. However, the natural taste of cacao was too bitter for most people. To sweeten the drink, Europeans added sugar to the cacao drink. As a sweet drink, it became more popular. By the 17^th century, rich people in Europe were drinking it.

Later, people started using chocolate in pastries, like pies and cakes. In 1828, Dutch chocolate makers started using a new process for removing the fat from cacao beans, and getting to the center of the cacao bean. The Dutch chocolate maker Conrad J. Van Houten made a machine that pressed the fat from the bean. The resulting powder mixed better with water than cacao did. Now, some call van Houten’s chocolate “Dutch chocolate.”

It was easy to mix Dutuch chocolate powder with sugar. So other chocolate makers started trying new recipes that used powdered chocolate. People started mixing sweetened chocolate with cocoa butter to make solid chocolate bars. In 1849, an English chocolate maker made the first chocolate bar. In the 19^th century, the Swiss started making milk chocolate by mixing powdered milk with sweetened chocolate. Milk chocolate has not changed much since this process was invented.

Today, two countries – Brazil and Ivory Coast – account for almost half the world’s chocolate. The United States imports most of the chocolate in the world, but the Swiss eat the most chocolate per person. The most chocolate eaten today is sweet milk chocolate, but people also eat white chocolate and dark chocolate.

Cocoa and dark chocolate are believed to help prevent heart attacks, or help keep from happening. They are supposed to be good for the circulatory system. On the other hand, the high fat content of chocolate can cause weight gain, which is not good for people’s health. Other health claims for chocolate have not been proven, but some research shows that chocolate could be good for the brain.

Chocolate is a popular holiday gift. A popular Valentine’s Day gift is a box of chocolate candies with a card and flowers. Chocolate is sometimes given for Christmas and birthdays. Chocolate eggs are sometimes given at Easter.

Chocolate is toxic to some animals. An ingredient in chocolate is poisonous to dogs, cats, parrots, small rodents, and some livestock. Their bodies cannot process some if the chemicals found in chocolate. Therefore, they should never be fed chocolate.

Why did Linnaeus name the plant Theobroma?

The history of the modern world is a record of highly varied activity, of incessant change, and of astonishing achievement. The lives of men have, during the last few centuries, increasingly diversified, their powers have greatly multiplied, their powers have greatly multiplied, their horizon been enormously enlarged. New interests have arisen in rich profusion to absorb attention and to provoke exertion. New aspirations and new emotions have come to move the soul of men. Amid all the bewildering phenomena, interest, in particular, has stood out in clear and growing pre-eminence, has expressed itself in a multitude of ways and with an emphasis more and more pronounced, namely, the determination of the race to gain a larger measure of freedom than it has ever known before, freedom in the life of the intellect and spirit, freedom in the realm of government and law, freedom in the sphere of economic and social relationship. A passion that has prevailed so widely, that has transformed the world so greatly, and is still transforming it, is one that surely merits study and abundantly rewards it, its operations constitute the very pith and marrow of modem history.

Not that this passion was unknown to the long ages that proceeded the modern periods. The ancient Hebrews, the ancient Greeks and Roman blazed the was leaving behind them a precious heritage of accomplishments and suggestions and the men who were responsible for the Renaissance of the fifteenth century and the Reformation of the sixteen century contributed their imperishable part to this slow and difficult emancipation of the human race. But it is in modern times the pace and vigour, the scope and sweep of this liberal movement have so increased unquestionably as to dominate the age, particularly the last three centuries that have registered great triumphs of spirit.

What races, according to the author, have blazed the way of the spirit of freedom?

Do you live in a house? You might be surprised to learn that there are many, many kinds of houses. Most people in the United States are used to houses made of wood or bricks.But many people around the word live in houses made of grass, dirt, or cloth.In the Great Rift Valley of Eritrea, the nomadic people who are in the Atr tribe build their houses of straw. Their houses are shaped like domes - half spheres. The homes are small and cool. The people can move their houses when they want to move. Since the people are nomads, they move often. They take their animals to new places in order to find food.People whi belong to the Uros tribe of Lake Titicaca. Peru build their houses of reeds. Not only that - they also live on islands that are made of reeds .Their boats are made of reeds too. About 2,000 people live on these man-made islands. They started to build their own islands about 500 years ago.In Andalusia, in the south of Spain, some people live in underground houses.This kind of house is called a cueba.During the winter, the houses stay warm. During the summer, the houses stay cool.In Sana'a, Yemen, some people live in tall houses made of bricks. These bricks are made of clay, straw and soil.The bricks last many years - maybe as long as 500 years. The modern houses in Sana'a are made to look like the older,traditional houses, but they are made of concrete instead of bricks.In Mindadanao in the Philippines, some people still live in tree houses. The tree houses are made of bamboo with grass roofs. The houses are good lookout for snakes and wild animals. The air is cool and the houses stay dry. Now, most people use these tree houses as meeting places.The fisherman of Sabah, Malaysia build their houses on the water. They use wood from mangrove trees.This wood stays strong in the water.The houses receive official addresses form the government.Fujian, China has many townhouses that are made of hard-packed soil. The dirt becomes as strong as bricks when it is packed hard. One large family group lives in a townhouse. The townhouses were built around 300 years ago. A group of townhouses is protected by a thick dirt-packed wall.In the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, some nomadic people live in homes called gels. These homes are made of cloth. The cloth is filled with animal hair. Two poles in the center of the house hold the house up. The people move often to find food for their animals. The houses are easy to move and set up.Some American Indians live in teepees. These homes are made of cloth or buffalo hide. There are wooden poles used to hold the teepee up. Now some people use teepees only for special ceremonies, but people used to live in them all the time.The traditional houses of Chitos, Greece, are made of stone. They have arched doorways and indoor courtyards.They have outdoor dining rooms which are decorated with tile and rock. This means they are ornamented, and made to look more beautiful.The Dayak people of Indonesia build some of their houses on stilts, several feet the ground. The frame of the house is made of iron. The walls are made of tree bark. The floors are made of wooden planks which are placed side by side.The houses are decorated with pictures of water snakes and rhinoceros birds. These animals are part of the people's story of creation, or how the world was made.People build their houses to fit the needs of their lives. The houses are different, but one thing is the same wherever you go. There's no place like home

Paul’s wife knows Paul loves to read cookbooks. She decides to get him one for his birthday. Paul tells her he will try to make a new recipe for three days in a row. On Monday, Paul makes blueberry pancakes for breakfast. He gets the blueberries from the farmers’ market. On Tuesday, Paul makes beef soup for dinner. He puts in cubes of beef, carrots, and onions. The recipe calls for cream, but Paul does not cream. He uses water instead. On Wednesday, Paul makes a tomato salad with cucumbers and onions. He picks the cucumbers and tomatoes from his garden. He likes this dish best. It was also the easiest for him to make.

What does Paul get from the farmer’s market?

Cindy liked parks. She liked the trees and grass and nature. She liked the birds and squirrels she say in parks. She also liked walking down wooded trails or riding bikes along gravel paths. Parks were a lot more fun to exercise in than just walking down the street. because there was so much to see.She had been to many kinds of parks. Some were in mountains, with rivers and hiking. Some were open areas with broad stretches of green grass to play on. Others were in the forest, with paths running beneath towering trees with sweeping branches overhead. Cindy's favorite parks were near lakes.There was a lake park not far form her house. It had a boardwalk trail that was set on pilings across a shallow lake.That was the best part. She loved to walk along the brown wood path and stop along the way, looking in the water for frogs and turtles. There were a few pavilions to stop and sit under in the shade. The water was deeper near them, so she could see fish sometimes. Occasionally, she would even see long-legged water birds, like cranes. The fall was the best time to visit the lake parks. With the leaves changing color, it was very beautiful. The sun would be out in the cloudy sky, and then cool breezes would blow through the reeds and water grasses.Spring was nice, too, because all the butterflies were out. The flowers and blossoming trees along the wooded paths were fragrant and beautiful. The lake grasses were tall and green, rustling in the wind. Cattails bobbed among the reeds. It was a good time to visit. Summer was okay. It was still pretty, but too hot. At least in winter things were pretty, if in a stark and cold way. The white dusting of snow that covered everything gave the park a clean look. It was fun to follow other people's footprints in the snow, or to go out on the boardwalk and look at the frozen top of the lake.If Cindy had her way, she would visit the park every day. Come to think of it, she did it was also a great place to do homework or read.

In the early 1920's, settlers came to Alaska looking for gold. They traveled by boat to the coastal towns of Seward and Knik, and from there by land into the gold fields. The trail they used to travel inland is known today as the lditarod Trail, one of the National Historic Trails designated by the congress of the United States. The Iditarod Trail quickly became a major thoroughfare in Alaska, as the mail and supplies were carried across this trail. People also used it to get from place to place, including the priests, ministers, and judges who had to travel between villages down this trail was via god sled.

Once the gold rush ended, many gold-seekers went back to where they had come from, and suddenly there was much less travel on the lditarod Trail. The introduction of the airplane in the late 1920's meant dog teams were mode of transportation, of course airplane carrying the mail and supplies, there was less need for land travel in general. The final blow to the use of the dog teams was the appearance of snowmoniles.

By the mid 1960's most Alasknas didn't even know the lditarod Trail existed, or that dos teens had played a crucial role in Alaska's early settlements. Dorothy G.Page, a self-made historian, recognized how few people knew about the former use of sled dogs as working animals and about the Iditarod Trail's role in Alaska's colorful history. To she came up with the idea to have a god sled race over the Iditarod Trail. She presented her idea to an enthusiastic musher, as dog sled drivers are known, named Joe Redington, Sr. Soon the pages and the Redintons were working together to promote the idea of the Iditarod race.

Many people worked to make the first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race a reality in 1967. The Aurora Dog Mushers Club, along with men from the Adult Camp in Sutton, helped clear years of overgrowth from the first nine miles of the Iditarod Trail. To raise interest in the race, a $25,000 purse was offered, with Joe Redington donating one acre of his land to help raise the funds. The short race, approximately 27 miles long, was put on a second time in 1969.

After these first two successful races, the goal was to lengthen the race a little further to the ghost town of Iditarod by 1973. However in 1972, the U.S. Army reopened the trail as a winter exercise, and so in 1973, the decision was made to take the race all the way to the city of Nome-over 1,000 miles. There were who believed it could bot be done and that it wad crazy to send a bunch out into vast, uninhabited Alaskan wilderness. But the race went! 22 mushers finished that year, and to date over 400 people have completed it.

As used in paragraph 2, which is the best definition for ‘mode’

Many people like to eat pizza, but not everyone knows knows how to make it. Making the perfect pizza can be complicated, but there are lots of ways for you to make basic version at home.

When you make pizza, you must begin with the crust. The crust can be hard to make. If you want to make the crust yourself, you will have to make dough using flour, water, and yeast. You will have to knead the dough with your hands. If you do not have enough time to do this, you can use a prepared crust that you buy from the store.

After you have chosen your crust, you must then add the sauce. Making your own sauce from scratch can take a long time. You have to buy tomatoes, peel them, and then cook them with spices. If this sounds like too much work, you can also purchase jarred sauce from the store. Many jarred sauces taste almost as good as the kind you make at home.

Now that you have your crust and your sauce, you need to add the cheese. Cheese comes from milk, which comes from cows. Do you have a cow in your backyard? Do you how to milk the cow? Do you know how to turn that milk into cheese? If not, you might want to buy cheese from the grocery store instead of making it yourself. When you have the crust, sauce, and cheese ready, you can add other toppings. Some people like to put meat on their pizza, while other people like to add vegetables. Some people even like to add pineapple! The best part of making a pizza at home is that you can customize it by adding your own favorite ingredients

Which of the following conclusions would work best at the end of this passage?

A great deal of discussion countries as to the real extent of global environmental degradation and its implicational. What few people challenge however is that the renewable natural resources of developing countries are today subject to stresses of unprecedented magnitude. These pressures are bought about, in part, by increased population and the quest for an ever expanding food supply. Because the healthy, nutrition and general well-being of the poor majority are directly depends on the integrity and productivity of their natural resources, the capability of governments to manage them effectively over the long term becomes of paramount importance. Developing countries are becoming more aware of the ways in which present and future economic development must build upon a sound and sustainable natural resources base. Some are looking at our long tradition in environmental protection and are receptive to US assistance which recognizes the uniqueness of the social and ecological systems in these tropical countries. Developing countries recognize the need to improve their capability to analyze issues and their own natural resource management. In February 1981, for example AID funded a national Academy of Sciences panel to advise Nepal on their severe natural resource degradation problems. Some countries such as Senegal, India, Indonesia and Thailand, are now including conservation concerns in their economic development planning process. Because so many governments of developing nations have recognized the importance of these issues, the need today is not merely one of raising additional consciousness, but for carefully designed and sharply focused activities aimed at management regimes that are essential to the achievement of sustained development. The poor people of the developing world can lead a happy and contented life if?

In the early 1920's, settlers came to Alaska looking for gold. They traveled by boat to the coastal towns of Seward and Knik, and from there by land into the gold fields. The trail they used to travel inland is known today as the lditarod Trail, one of the National Historic Trails designated by the congress of the United States. The Iditarod Trail quickly became a major thoroughfare in Alaska, as the mail and supplies were carried across this trail. People also used it to get from place to place, including the priests, ministers, and judges who had to travel between villages down this trail was via god sled.

Once the gold rush ended, many gold-seekers went back to where they had come from, and suddenly there was much less travel on the lditarod Trail. The introduction of the airplane in the late 1920's meant dog teams were mode of transportation, of course airplane carrying the mail and supplies, there was less need for land travel in general. The final blow to the use of the dog teams was the appearance of snowmoniles.

By the mid 1960's most Alasknas didn't even know the lditarod Trail existed, or that dos teens had played a crucial role in Alaska's early settlements. Dorothy G.Page, a self-made historian, recognized how few people knew about the former use of sled dogs as working animals and about the Iditarod Trail's role in Alaska's colorful history. To she came up with the idea to have a god sled race over the Iditarod Trail. She presented her idea to an enthusiastic musher, as dog sled drivers are known, named Joe Redington, Sr. Soon the pages and the Redintons were working together to promote the idea of the Iditarod race.

Many people worked to make the first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race a reality in 1967. The Aurora Dog Mushers Club, along with men from the Adult Camp in Sutton, helped clear years of overgrowth from the first nine miles of the Iditarod Trail. To raise interest in the race, a $25,000 purse was offered, with Joe Redington donating one acre of his land to help raise the funds. The short race, approximately 27 miles long, was put on a second time in 1969.

After these first two successful races, the goal was to lengthen the race a little further to the ghost town of Iditarod by 1973. However in 1972, the U.S. Army reopened the trail as a winter exercise, and so in 1973, the decision was made to take the race all the way to the city of Nome-over 1,000 miles. There were who believed it could bot be done and that it wad crazy to send a bunch out into vast, uninhabited Alaskan wilderness. But the race went! 22 mushers finished that year, and to date over 400 people have completed it.

As used in paragraph-3, the phrase “self-made historian” implies that Dorothy G. Page

First introduced in 1927, The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories are a series of books about the adventures of brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, teenaged detectives who solve one baffling mystery after another. The Hardy Boys were so popular among young boys that in 1930 a similar series was created for girls featuring a sixteen-year-old detective named Nancy Drew. The cover of each volume of The Hardy Boys states that he author of the series is Franklin W. Dixon; the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories are supposedly written by Carolyn Keene. Over the years, though, many fans of both series have been surprised to find out that Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene are not real people. If Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene never existed, then who wrote The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries?

The Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew books were written through a process called ghostwriting. A ghostwriter writes a book according to a specific formula. While ghostwriters are paid for writing the books, their authorship is not acknowledged, and their names do not appear on the published books. Ghostwriters can write books for children or adults, the content of which is unspecific. Sometimes they work on book series with a lot of individual titles, such as The Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew series.

The initial idea for both The Hardy Boys and the Nancy Drew series was developed by a man named Edward Stratemeyer, who owned a publishing company that specialized in children’s book.

Stratemeyer noticed the increasing popularity of mysteries among adult, and surmised that children would enjoy reading mysteries about younger detectives with whom they could identify. Stratemeyer first developed each book with an outline describing the plot and setting. Once he completed the outline, Stratemeyer then hired a ghostwriter to convert it into a book of slightly over 200 pages. After the ghostwriter had written a draft of a book, he or she would send it back to Stratemeyer, who would make a list of corrections and mail it back to the ghostwriter. The ghostwriter would revise the book according to Stratemeyer’s instructions and then return it to him. Once Stratemeyer approved the book, it was ready for publication.

Because each series ran for so many years, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys both had a number of different ghostwriters producing books; however, the first ghostwrites for each series proved to be the most influential. The initial ghostwriter for The Hardy Boys was a Canadian journalist named Leslie McFarlane. A few years later, Mildred A. Wirt, a young writer from lowa, began writing the Nancy Drew books. Although they were using prepared outlines as guides, both McFarlane and Wirt developed the characters themselves. The personalities of Frank and Joe Hardy and Nancy arose directly from McFarlane’s and wirt’s imaginations. For example, Mildred Wirt had been a star college athelete and gave Nancy similar athletic abilities. The ghostwriters were also responsible for numerous plot and setting details. Leslie McFarlane used elements of his small C fictional hometown.

Although The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books were very popular with children, not everyone approved of them. Critics thought their plots were unrealistic and even far-fetched, since most teenagers did not experience the adventures Frank and Joe Hardy or Nancy Drew did. The way the books were written also attracted criticism. Many teachers and librarians objected to the ghostwriting process, claiming it was designed to produce books quickly rather than create quality literature. Some libraries – including the New York Public Library – even refused to include the books in their children’s collections. Ironically, this decision actually helped sales of his books, because children simply purchased them when they were unavailable in local libraries.

Regardless of the debates about their literary merit, each series of books has exerted an undeniable influence on American and even global culture. Most Americans have never heard of Edward Stratemeyer, Leslie McFarlane, or Mildred wirt, but people throughout the world are familiar with Nancy Drew and Frank and Joe Hardy.

According to the passage, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books were created based on the idea that

I mystery books for adults are popular

II children enjoy reading about characters they can relate to

III girls and boys are not interested in the same things

Recent advances in science and technology have made it possible for geneticists to find out abnormalities in the unborn foetus and take remedial action to rectify some defects which would otherwise prove to be fatal to the child. Though genetic engineering is still at its infancy, scientists can now predict with greater accuracy a genetic disorder. It is not yet an exact science since they are not in a position to predict when exactly a genetic disorder will set in. While they have not yet been able to change the genetic order of the gene in germs, they are optimistic and are holding out that in the near future they might be successful in achieving this feat. They have, however, acquired the ability in manipulating tissue cells. However, genetic mis-information can sometimes be damaging for it may adversely affect people psychologically. Genetic information may lead to a tendency to brand some people as inferiors. Genetic information can therefore be abused and its application in deciding the sex of the foetus and its subsequent abortion is now hotly debated on ethical lines. But on this issue geneticists cannot be squarely blamed though this charge has often been leveled at them. It is mainly a societal problem. At present genetic engineering is a costly process of detecting disorders but scientists hope to reduce the costs when technology becomes more advanced. This is why much progress in this area has been possible in scientifically advanced and rich countries like the U.S.A., U.K. and Japan. It remains to be seen if in the future this science will lead to the development of a race of supermen or will be able to obliterate disease from this world.

What is the tone of the author in the last sentence of the passage?