READING COMPREHENSION ENGLISH

For me, as for the others, The Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most
of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of
having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve
been widely described and dully applauded. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhab pointed out
in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of
thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is
chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take
in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swifty moving stream of particles. Once I was a
suba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on jetski.
Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into
our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic
characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies we use
in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping the neural
circuits inside our brains. Experiments demostrate the readers of ideograms, such as Chinese,
develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very different from the circuitry found in those of us
whose written language employs an alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the
brain, including those trhat govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the
interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that circuits woven by our
use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed
works.

1. Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage?

A. The human brain is almost infinitely malleable.
B. Traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations.
C. Internet use affects cognition.
D. People are in the midst of a sea change in the way they read and think.

2. What does the last sentence of the first paragraph most likely suggest?
A. The author is practicing a new form of reading, which is skimming.
B. The author is not reading online in the traditional sense.
C. The author developed a reading technique through constant internet browsing.
D. The author lost the ability to read and absorb long articles both online and print.

3. Which of the following best summarizes the passage?

A. The internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition.
B. Internet promotes a new style of reading, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy above
all else.
C. The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in an individual’s mental
habits.
D. Internet weakens an individual’s capacity to for the kind of deep reading.

4. In the passage the word “conduit” means

A. source
B. instrument
C. channel
D. device

5. Which organizational schemes are used in the first and second paragraph of the passage?
A. assertion followed by supporting evidence
B. prediction followed by analysis
C. specific instace followed by generalizations
D. personal reminiscenes followed by objective reporting.

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It is difficult to reconcile the ideas of different schools of thought on the question of

education. Some people maintain that pupils of school should concentrate on a narrow range of
subjects which will benefit them directly in their subsequent careers. Others contend that they
should study a wide range of subjects so that they not only have the specialized knowledge
necessary for their chosen careers but also sound general knowledge about the world they will
have to work and live in. Supporters of the first theory state that the greatest contributions to
civilization are made by those who are expert in their trade or profession. Those on the other side
say that, unless they have a broad general education, the experts will be too narrow in their
outlook to have sympathy with their fellows or a proper sense of responsibility towards humanity
as a whole.

6. According to the second school of thought education will not be very effective, if students
A. do not have a wide general education.
B. have inadequate knowledge of their own work.
C. concentrate on only a few subjects.
D. ignore the study of fine arts.

The games we used to play when we were young have been sidelined by modern gadgets.
Nowadays, we no longer see children and teens playing piko, tumbang preso, luksong baka,
patintero and other enjoyable games our parents used to play. The young generation of today is
so hooked on gadgets that they even have no time to talk to each other during their free time.
This is very unhealthy according to some social scientists.

7. From the passage, we can conclude that:

A. Children and teens will not enjoy playing piko, patintero, luksong baka and tumbang preso.
B. Modern gadgets should be totally banned to protect our children.
C. The young generation of today prefers modern gadgets over piko, patintero and the likes.
D. Children and teens who use modern gadgets are sickly.

The advent of cellphone is perhaps the best contribution of modern technology to our
communication system. Back then, it would take a week or longer before we can communicate
with our loved ones if we are working in other countries. It was through letters that we could
communicate with them, and letters really took time to reach their destinations. Today, if we
want to talk to our loved ones, even if we are living in another country, we can do so very easily
with the use of cellphones. In a matter of minute, we are connected with them.

8. What does the passage say?

A. Cellphone can reach people in faraway places but letters cannot.
B. Communication using cellphones is fast and easy.
C. Back then, communication with our loved ones was impossible because there was no
cellphones.
D. Letters are useless in our modern time.
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[1] You may want to picture life as a bamboo—flexible and open-ended, yet enduring. Since life
stretches from youth to age, I see you at one end. Your red lips, red cheeks, and supple knees
seek even more assiduously the sun’s radiant glory. But while I feel the sun’s lengthening
shadow at my back, could we pause and talk awhile?
[2] If we, the older generation, dream dreams, you have your visions. Forward looking, you can
always project what you discern for our nation not only for now but for the years to come. You
can engineer plans that will destroy some of our systems or structures that due to age have
proved meaningless. This you can do since your imagination, sensitive to the signs of the times,
is sharp and sparkling.
[3] Now, if we become fixed in our thoughts and practices, strike us and, like the biblical Moses
striking the rock, water shall pour forth. If our rock stands for unchangeableness and solidity,
then the water that shall flow from our rock shall be the water of progress, of development, of
life itself.
[4] Remember the two ends of that piece of bamboo—age and youth. Together, we must make
Philippine history in its flux towards progress.

9. What does the writer pose on the youth in the final sentence of the text?
A. a challenge
B. a question
C. a problem
D. a protest

10. What does the text say about the relationship between the older and the younger generations?
A. The two must take turns leading.
B. The two must work together.
C. The younger generation must follow.
D. The older generation must lead.

11. The speaker expresses a willingness to

A. open up to the youth.
B. dream with the youth.
C. give way to the youth.
D. listen to the youth.

12. The last sentence of the text says that the Philippines is
A. yet on its way to development.
B. almost where progress is.
C. a subject of concern.
D. a country where history is unfolding.

The proudest now is but my peer, My stubborn right abide;

The highest not more high;
Today, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
Today, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people’s hall,
The ballot box my throne!
Who serves today upon the list
Beside the served shall stand;
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist,
The gloved and dainty hand!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong today;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
Today let pomp and vain pretense
13. What is the theme of the poem?
A. the right to vote
B. the power of the ballot box
C. election of government officials
D. equality among men
I set a plain man’s common sense
Against the pedant’s pride.
Today shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!
While there’s grief to seek redress,
Or balance to adjust,
Where weighs our living manhood less
Than Mammon’s vilest dust—
While there’s a right to need my vote,
A wrong to sweep away, Up!
Clouted knee and ragged coat A man’s a
man today!

14. “The wide world has not wealth to buy the power in my right hand!” These lines suggest that
the speaker
A. is going to exercise his right to vote.
B. is intending to sell his vote.
C. believes he has all the power in the world.
D. believes the world also suffers from poverty.

15. To whom are the last two lines of the last stanza addressed?
A. to anyone
B. to Mammon
C. to the reader
D. to the voter

16. What does the poet accomplish through his poem?

A. honor the poor
B. reproach the rich
C. keep the poor man’s pride high
D. contrast the rich and the poor

[1] The Filipino comfort women were plucked from the unprotected peripheries of an occupied
Filipino society which did not expect to be treated well by the Japanese and was, indeed, content
to simply sit out the occupation, waiting for the Caucasian “master” to come back and make
things right again. The case of these brave women has, ironically, given Philippine society,
including its unheroic segments, a second chance at heroism, and decades after the war.
[2] Many of us still agonize over whether the Filipino women were abused as repositories of
“trash semen” with the sanction of the occupation forces’ high command or not. Although the
point is debatable, it is really beside the point. Whether a woman is gang-raped by soldiers or
used as a comfort woman (meaning, recruited at the behest of the highest-ranking Japanese Army
officers), her ordeal is neither more nor less real; and her rapists are, by any name, war criminals.
Indeed the most disciplined war criminals are the most loathsome; in their case, discipline comes
to mean inhumane, even subhuman control.
[3] All victorious armies, we presume, take it to be their right to despoil the beaten enemy.
Whether their despoliation of Filipino women was isolated and opportunistic rather than routine
and systematic makes some difference, of course. But the difference is really very small in its
historical context—the entire Filipino civilian population was routinely and systematically
subjugated, whatever it took.
[4] By forcing us to come to terms with the past, the comfort women who have braved public
ridicule have forced us to look straight at the beast which rears its hideous face at the breast of
every man or woman drunk with power. And we are forced to concede, however grudgingly, that
the powerless victim, as the Christians would put it, has a better chance of keeping his/her
humanity than the woman who has power and abuses it.
[5] Let us then look back—to get angry, yes, but also to cleanse ourselves of anger.
[6] And vow to prevent the unspeakable events from ever happening again anywhere.

17. The passage clearly tells the reader that Filipino comfort women
A. came from places where people expected no pleasant experiences with the Japanese.
B. hoped to be treated well by the Japanese before the tragedy happened.
C. were just waiting for Americans to avenge what happened to them.
D. have always been left unprotected by Filipino men.

18 The ultimate solution to the problem of comfort women is

A. to stop ridiculing publicly these women who have already suffered much.
B. to punish the surviving Japanese soldiers.
C. to encourage people to be more Christian in their ways.
D. for people to be vigilant and keep such problems from occurring once more.

19 One way of interpreting “the beast” mentioned in the first sentence of paragraph 4 is seeing it
as
A. the evil that lies latent in the human heart.
B. the evil spirit opposing the goodness of God.
C. the desire for unlimited power over people’s lives.
D. the negative things like pride, envy and malice.

20. In summary, the passage tells us that

A. comfort women are perfect examples of what it means to be brave in the face of difficulties.
B. the case of comfort women has given Filipinos the chance to right a wrong and prevent a
hideous event like it from ever happening again.
C. Filipinos owe it to comfort women to fight for these women’s right to obtain justice from the
war criminals.
D. heroism is about having the courage to endure suffering.