OIETC/ELLT Reading Test

Details of ELLT Reading:

• Time: 40 Minutes Overall.
• Task: 2 Passages.
• Questions: Nearly 30-32 Questions.
• Each Passage has 16 Questions.
• Types of the Questions: MCQ, True/False/Not Given, Fill in the Blanks, vocabulary & comprehension.

Now Let’s Have a look at the Sample Test !

OIETC/ELLT Reading Test 

Time: 40 Minutes

Passage-1

You Should spend 20 Minutes To complete this passage.

Ensuring our future food sup

Climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties of seeds we depend on for food. Luckily, we still have many of the seeds used in the past-but we must take steps to save them.

Six miles outside the town of Decorah, Iowa in the USA, an 890-acre stretch of rolling fields and woods called Heritage Farm is letting its crops go to seed. Everything about Heritage Farm is in stark contrast to the surrounding acres of intensively farmed fields of corn and soybean that are typical of modern agriculture. Heritage Farm is devoted to collecting rather than growing seeds. It is home to the Seed Savers Exchange, one of the largest non government-owned seed banks in the United States.

In 1975 Diane Ott Whealy was given the seedlings of two plant varieties that her great grandfather had brought to America from Bavaria in 1870: Grandpa Ott’s morning glory and his German Pink tomato. Wanting to preserve similar traditional varieties, known as heirloom plants, Diane and her husband, Kent, decided to establish a place where the seeds of the past could be kept and traded. The exchange now has more than 13,000 members, and the many thousands of heirloom varieties they have donated are kept in its walk-in coolers, freezers, and root cellars the seeds of many thousands of heirloom varieties and, as you walk around an old red barn that is covered in Grandpa Ott’s beautiful morning glory blossoms, you come across the different vegetables, herbs, and flowers they have planted there.

“Each year our members list their seeds in this,”Diane Ott Whealy says, handing over a copy of the Seed Savers Exchange 2010 Yearbook. It is as thick as a big-city telephone directory, with page after page of exotic beans, garlic, potatoes, peppers, apples, pears, and plums-each with its own name and personal history .For example, there’s an Estonian Yellow Cherry tomato, which was brought to the seed bank by “an elderly Russian lady” who lived in Tallinn, and a Persian Star garlic from “a bazaar in Samarkand.”There’s also a bean donated by archaeologists searching for pygmy elephant fossils in New Mexico.

Heirloom vegetables have become fashionable in the United States and Europe over the past decade, prized by a food movement that emphasizes eating locally and preserving the flavor and uniqueness of heirloom varieties. Found mostly in farmers’ markets and boutique groceries, heirloom varieties have been squeezed out of supermarkets in favor of modern single-variety fruits and vegetables bred to ship well and have a uniform appearance, not to enhance flavor. But the movement to preserve heirloom varieties goes way beyond the current interest in North America and Europe in tasty, locally grown food. It’s also a campaign to protect the world’s future food supply.  Most people in the well-fed world give little thought to where their food comes from or how it’s grown. They wander through well-stocked supermarkets without realizing that there may be problem ahead. We’ve been hearing for some time about the loss of flora and fauna in our rainforests. Very little, by contrast, is being said or done about the parallel decline in the diversity of the foods we eat.

Food variety extinction is happening all over the world – and it’s happening fast. In the United States an estimated 90 percent of historic fruit and vegetable varieties are no longer grown. Of the 7,000 different apple varieties that were grown in the 1800s, fewer than a hundred remain. In the Philippines thousands of varieties of rice once thrived; now only about a hundred are grown there. In China 90 percent of the wheat varieties cultivated just a hundred years ago have disappeared. Experts estimate that in total we have lost more than 50 percent of the world’s food varieties over the past century.

Why is this a problem? Because if disease or future climate change affects one of the handful of plants we’ve come to depend on to feed our growing planet, we might desperately need one of those varieties we’ve let become extinct. The loss of the world’s cereal diversity is a particular cause for concern. A fungus called Ug99, which was first identified in Uganda in 1999, is spreading across the world’s wheat crops. From Uganda it moved to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen. By 2007 it had jumped the Persian Gulf into Iran. Scientists predict that the fungus will soon make its way into India and Pakistan, then spread to Russia and China, and eventually the USA.

Roughly 90 percent of the world’s wheat has no defense against this particular fungus. If it reached the USA, an estimated one billion dollars’ worth of crops would be at risk. Scientists believe that in Asia and Africa alone, the portion currently in danger could leave one billion people without their primary food source. A famine with significant humanitarian consequences could follow, according to Rick Ward of Cornell University.

The population of the world is expected to reach nine billion by 2045. Some experts say we’ll need to double our food production to keep up with this growth. Given the added challenge of climate change and disease, it is becoming ever more urgent to find ways to increase food yield. The world has become increasingly dependent upon a technology-driven, one-size-fits-all approach to food supply. Yet the best hope for securing our food’s future may depend on our ability to preserve the locally cultivated foods of the past.

 

Questions 1-7

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in the Reading Passage? In boxes 1 -7 on your answer sheet, write.

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1  Heritage Farm is different from most other nearby farms. 

2  Most non government-owned seed banks are bigger than Seed Savers Exchange.

3 Diane Out Whealy’s grandfather taught her a lot about seed varieties.

4  The seeds people give to the Seed Savers Exchange are stored outdoors.

5  Diane and her husband choose which heirloom seeds to grow on Heritage Farm.

6  The seeds are listed in alphabetical order in The Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook.

7 The Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook describes how each seed was obtained.

 

Questions 8-13

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

The food we grow and eat

Supermarkets

• sell fruit and vegetables that transport well
• want fruit and vegetables to be standard in their 8 ……………

Public awareness

• while people know about plants disappearing from 9 …………….  very few know about the decline in fruit and vegetable varieties

Extinction of food varieties

• less than 100 of the types of 10 …………. once available in the USA are still grown
• over 11……………..  of food varieties around the world have disappeared in the last 100 years

Current problems in food production

• a particular fungus is attacking wheat in various countries
• Rick Ward believes the threat to food supplies in Asia and Africa might lead to a 12 ………..

Food production in the future

• • climate change and disease may put pressure on food production
  • twice the amount of food may be needed because of an increase in 13…………..
  • A famine with significant 14……….. consequences could follow, according to Rick Ward of Cornell University.

• Food variety 15………….  is happening all over the world – and it’s happening fast.

Answer Table :

1. TRUE	8. FLAVOR
2. FALSE	9. Supermarkets
3. NOT GIVEN	10. apples
4. FALSE	11. 50 percent
5. NOT GIVEN	12. famine
6. NOT GIVEN	13. Population
7. TRUE	14. Humanitarian 15. Extinction

Passage – 2

You Should spend 20 Minutes To complete this passage.

 

A

International trade is growing at a startling pace. While the global economy has been expanding at a bit over 3% a year, the volume of trade has been rising at a compound annual rate of about twice that. Foreign products, from meat to machinery, play a more important role in almost every economy in the world, and foreign markets now tempt businesses that never much worried about sales beyond their nation’s borders.

B

What lies behind this explosion in international commerce? The general worldwide decline in trade barriers, such as customs duties and import quotas, is surely one explanation. The economic opening of countries that have traditionally been minor players is another. But one force behind the import-export boom has passed all but unnoticed: the rapidly falling cost of getting goods to market. Theoretically, in the world of trade, shipping costs do not matter. Goods, once they have been made, are assumed to move instantly and at no cost from place to place. The real world, however, is full of frictions. Cheap labour may make Chinese clothing competitive in America, but if delays in shipment lie up working capital and cause winter coats to arrive in spring, trade may lose its advantages.

C

At the turn of the 20th century, agriculture and manufacturing were the two most important sectors almost everywhere, accounting for about 70% of total output in Germany, Italy and France, and 40-50% in America, Britain and Japan. International commerce was therefore dominated by raw materials, such as wheat, wood and iron ore, or processed commodities, such as meat and steel. But these sorts of products are heavy and bulky and the cost of transporting them relatively high.

D

Countries still trade disproportionately with their geographic neighbours. Over time, however, world output has shitted into goods whose worth is unrelated to their size and weight. Today, it is finished manufactured products that dominate the flow of trade, and, thanks to technological advances such as lightweight components, manufactured goods themselves have tended to become lighter and less bulky. As a result, less transportation is required for every dollar’s worth of imports or exports.

E

To see how this influences trade, consider the business of making disk drives for computers. Most of the world’s disk-drive manufacturing is concentrated in South-east Asia. This is possible only because disk drives, while valuable, are small and light and so cost little to ship. Computer manufacturers in Japan or Texas will not face hugely bigger freight bills if they import drives from Singapore rather than purchasing them on the domestic market. Distance therefore poses no obstacle to the globalization of the disk-drive industry.

F

This is even more true of the fast-growing information industries. Films and compact discs cost little to transport, even by aeroplane. Computer software can be ‘exported’ without ever loading it onto a ship, simply by transmitting it over telephone lines from one country to another, so freight rates and cargo-handling schedules become insignificant factors in deciding where to make the product. Businesses can locate based on other considerations, such as the availability of labour, while worrying less about the cost of delivering their output.

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Questions 1-10

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?

In boxes 1-10 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE    if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE    if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1. International trade is increasing at a greater rate than the world economy.

2. Foreign goods are nothing for the economy.

3. Generally, shipping cost is the major concern in the trade.

4. Cheap labour guarantees effective trade conditions.

5. Chinese people can make revolution in Business.

6. Japan imports more meat and steel than France.

7.  Most countries continue to prefer to trade with nearby nations.

8. Small computer components are manufactured in Germany.

9. Distance makes the globalization of the disk-drive industry easy.

10. Films as well as compact discs cost little to transport, even by ships.

 

Now Let’s learn some tips & tricks for True/False/Not Given

How to Solve True/False & Not Given ? 

1. Read at least 2 questions at a time & mark the key words (like- Noun, Pronoun, Time & Any extreme word). 
2. Now, go to the passage & Skim through to identify the location of it. 
3. Once you get the location, read 2 or 3 sentences very carefully. 
4. After that come back to your question and try to match that information with the questions . 
5. If that information matches with the question, Answer will be True. 
6. If that information does not match with the question, Answer will be False. 
7. If there is no information in the passage , Answer will be Not Given. 

Note : 

1. This question type maintains the serial in the passage.