810+ CAT RC (Reading Comprehension) Questions With Videos

Instruction for set 1:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

In the summer of 2022, subscribers to the US streaming service HBO MAX were alarmed to discover that dozens of the platform’s offerings - from the Covid-themed heist thriller Locked Down to the recent remake of The Witches - had been quietly removed from the service . . . The news seemed like vindication to those who had long warned that streaming was more about controlling access to the cultural commons than expanding it, as did reports (since denied by the show’s creators) that Netflix had begun editing old episodes of Stranger Things to retroactively improve their visual effects.

What’s less clear is whether the commonly prescribed cure for these cultural ills - a return to the material pleasures of physical media - is the right one. While the makers of Blu-ray discs claim they have a shelf life of 100 years, such statistics remain largely theoretical until they come to pass, and are dependent on storage conditions, not to mention the continued availability of playback equipment. The humble DVD has already proved far less resilient, with many early releases already beginning to deteriorate in quality Digital movie purchases provide even less security. Any film “bought” on iTunes could disappear if you move to another territory with a different rights agreement and try to redownload it. It’s a bold new frontier in the commodification of art: the birth of the product recall. After a man took to Twitter to bemoan losing access to Cars 2 after moving from Canada to Australia, Apple clarified that users who downloaded films to their devices would retain permanent access to those downloads, even if they relocated to a hemisphere where the [content was] subject to a different set of rights agreements. Thanks to the company’s ironclad digital rights management technology, however, such files cannot be moved or backed up, locking you into watching with your Apple account.

Anyone who does manage to acquire Digital Rights Management free (DRM-free) copies of their favourite films must nonetheless grapple with ever-changing file format standards, not to mention data decay - the gradual process by which electronic information slowly but surely corrupts. Only the regular migration of files from hard drive to hard drive can delay the inevitable, in a sisyphean battle against the ravages of digital time.

In a sense, none of this is new. Charlie Chaplin burned the negative of his 1926 film A Woman of the Sea as a tax write-off. Many more films have been lost through accident, negligence or plain indifference. During a heatwave in July 1937, a Fox film vault in New Jersey burned down, destroying a majority of the silent films produced by the studio.

Back then, at least, cinema was defined by its ephemerality: the sense that a film was as good as gone once it left your local cinema. Today, with film studios keen to stress the breadth of their back catalogues (or to put in Hollywood terms, the value of their IPs), audiences may start to wonder why those same studios seem happy to set the vault alight themselves if it’ll help next quarter’s numbers.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 1:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

In the summer of 2022, subscribers to the US streaming service HBO MAX were alarmed to discover that dozens of the platform’s offerings - from the Covid-themed heist thriller Locked Down to the recent remake of The Witches - had been quietly removed from the service . . . The news seemed like vindication to those who had long warned that streaming was more about controlling access to the cultural commons than expanding it, as did reports (since denied by the show’s creators) that Netflix had begun editing old episodes of Stranger Things to retroactively improve their visual effects.

What’s less clear is whether the commonly prescribed cure for these cultural ills - a return to the material pleasures of physical media - is the right one. While the makers of Blu-ray discs claim they have a shelf life of 100 years, such statistics remain largely theoretical until they come to pass, and are dependent on storage conditions, not to mention the continued availability of playback equipment. The humble DVD has already proved far less resilient, with many early releases already beginning to deteriorate in quality Digital movie purchases provide even less security. Any film “bought” on iTunes could disappear if you move to another territory with a different rights agreement and try to redownload it. It’s a bold new frontier in the commodification of art: the birth of the product recall. After a man took to Twitter to bemoan losing access to Cars 2 after moving from Canada to Australia, Apple clarified that users who downloaded films to their devices would retain permanent access to those downloads, even if they relocated to a hemisphere where the [content was] subject to a different set of rights agreements. Thanks to the company’s ironclad digital rights management technology, however, such files cannot be moved or backed up, locking you into watching with your Apple account.

Anyone who does manage to acquire Digital Rights Management free (DRM-free) copies of their favourite films must nonetheless grapple with ever-changing file format standards, not to mention data decay - the gradual process by which electronic information slowly but surely corrupts. Only the regular migration of files from hard drive to hard drive can delay the inevitable, in a sisyphean battle against the ravages of digital time.

In a sense, none of this is new. Charlie Chaplin burned the negative of his 1926 film A Woman of the Sea as a tax write-off. Many more films have been lost through accident, negligence or plain indifference. During a heatwave in July 1937, a Fox film vault in New Jersey burned down, destroying a majority of the silent films produced by the studio.

Back then, at least, cinema was defined by its ephemerality: the sense that a film was as good as gone once it left your local cinema. Today, with film studios keen to stress the breadth of their back catalogues (or to put in Hollywood terms, the value of their IPs), audiences may start to wonder why those same studios seem happy to set the vault alight themselves if it’ll help next quarter’s numbers.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 1:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

In the summer of 2022, subscribers to the US streaming service HBO MAX were alarmed to discover that dozens of the platform’s offerings - from the Covid-themed heist thriller Locked Down to the recent remake of The Witches - had been quietly removed from the service . . . The news seemed like vindication to those who had long warned that streaming was more about controlling access to the cultural commons than expanding it, as did reports (since denied by the show’s creators) that Netflix had begun editing old episodes of Stranger Things to retroactively improve their visual effects.

What’s less clear is whether the commonly prescribed cure for these cultural ills - a return to the material pleasures of physical media - is the right one. While the makers of Blu-ray discs claim they have a shelf life of 100 years, such statistics remain largely theoretical until they come to pass, and are dependent on storage conditions, not to mention the continued availability of playback equipment. The humble DVD has already proved far less resilient, with many early releases already beginning to deteriorate in quality Digital movie purchases provide even less security. Any film “bought” on iTunes could disappear if you move to another territory with a different rights agreement and try to redownload it. It’s a bold new frontier in the commodification of art: the birth of the product recall. After a man took to Twitter to bemoan losing access to Cars 2 after moving from Canada to Australia, Apple clarified that users who downloaded films to their devices would retain permanent access to those downloads, even if they relocated to a hemisphere where the [content was] subject to a different set of rights agreements. Thanks to the company’s ironclad digital rights management technology, however, such files cannot be moved or backed up, locking you into watching with your Apple account.

Anyone who does manage to acquire Digital Rights Management free (DRM-free) copies of their favourite films must nonetheless grapple with ever-changing file format standards, not to mention data decay - the gradual process by which electronic information slowly but surely corrupts. Only the regular migration of files from hard drive to hard drive can delay the inevitable, in a sisyphean battle against the ravages of digital time.

In a sense, none of this is new. Charlie Chaplin burned the negative of his 1926 film A Woman of the Sea as a tax write-off. Many more films have been lost through accident, negligence or plain indifference. During a heatwave in July 1937, a Fox film vault in New Jersey burned down, destroying a majority of the silent films produced by the studio.

Back then, at least, cinema was defined by its ephemerality: the sense that a film was as good as gone once it left your local cinema. Today, with film studios keen to stress the breadth of their back catalogues (or to put in Hollywood terms, the value of their IPs), audiences may start to wonder why those same studios seem happy to set the vault alight themselves if it’ll help next quarter’s numbers.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 1:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

In the summer of 2022, subscribers to the US streaming service HBO MAX were alarmed to discover that dozens of the platform’s offerings - from the Covid-themed heist thriller Locked Down to the recent remake of The Witches - had been quietly removed from the service . . . The news seemed like vindication to those who had long warned that streaming was more about controlling access to the cultural commons than expanding it, as did reports (since denied by the show’s creators) that Netflix had begun editing old episodes of Stranger Things to retroactively improve their visual effects.

What’s less clear is whether the commonly prescribed cure for these cultural ills - a return to the material pleasures of physical media - is the right one. While the makers of Blu-ray discs claim they have a shelf life of 100 years, such statistics remain largely theoretical until they come to pass, and are dependent on storage conditions, not to mention the continued availability of playback equipment. The humble DVD has already proved far less resilient, with many early releases already beginning to deteriorate in quality Digital movie purchases provide even less security. Any film “bought” on iTunes could disappear if you move to another territory with a different rights agreement and try to redownload it. It’s a bold new frontier in the commodification of art: the birth of the product recall. After a man took to Twitter to bemoan losing access to Cars 2 after moving from Canada to Australia, Apple clarified that users who downloaded films to their devices would retain permanent access to those downloads, even if they relocated to a hemisphere where the [content was] subject to a different set of rights agreements. Thanks to the company’s ironclad digital rights management technology, however, such files cannot be moved or backed up, locking you into watching with your Apple account.

Anyone who does manage to acquire Digital Rights Management free (DRM-free) copies of their favourite films must nonetheless grapple with ever-changing file format standards, not to mention data decay - the gradual process by which electronic information slowly but surely corrupts. Only the regular migration of files from hard drive to hard drive can delay the inevitable, in a sisyphean battle against the ravages of digital time.

In a sense, none of this is new. Charlie Chaplin burned the negative of his 1926 film A Woman of the Sea as a tax write-off. Many more films have been lost through accident, negligence or plain indifference. During a heatwave in July 1937, a Fox film vault in New Jersey burned down, destroying a majority of the silent films produced by the studio.

Back then, at least, cinema was defined by its ephemerality: the sense that a film was as good as gone once it left your local cinema. Today, with film studios keen to stress the breadth of their back catalogues (or to put in Hollywood terms, the value of their IPs), audiences may start to wonder why those same studios seem happy to set the vault alight themselves if it’ll help next quarter’s numbers.

correct answer:-3

---

Instruction for set 2:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren’t much impressed with the small-bodied, slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. “Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives them an air exceedingly stupid,” one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the “zebra rat” because of its black-striped rump.

Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra rat—the smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today as the western barred bandicoot—exhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters.

Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia’s western coast.

“Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators,” says Reece Pedler, an ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program.

Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They’ve imported 20 bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the world’s most mercurial rainfall patterns—relentless droughts followed by sudden drenching floods.

The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced “exclosures,” cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy of Pedler’s sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third fenced area contains the program’s Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials (bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning to evade them. It’s unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of breakthrough.

For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself.

They have a new nickname—a flattering one, this time. “We call them ecosystem engineers,” Pedler says.

correct answer:-1

---

Instruction for set 2:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren’t much impressed with the small-bodied, slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. “Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives them an air exceedingly stupid,” one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the “zebra rat” because of its black-striped rump.

Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra rat—the smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today as the western barred bandicoot—exhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters.

Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia’s western coast.

“Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators,” says Reece Pedler, an ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program.

Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They’ve imported 20 bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the world’s most mercurial rainfall patterns—relentless droughts followed by sudden drenching floods.

The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced “exclosures,” cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy of Pedler’s sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third fenced area contains the program’s Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials (bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning to evade them. It’s unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of breakthrough.

For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself.

They have a new nickname—a flattering one, this time. “We call them ecosystem engineers,” Pedler says.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 2:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren’t much impressed with the small-bodied, slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. “Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives them an air exceedingly stupid,” one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the “zebra rat” because of its black-striped rump.

Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra rat—the smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today as the western barred bandicoot—exhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters.

Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia’s western coast.

“Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators,” says Reece Pedler, an ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program.

Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They’ve imported 20 bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the world’s most mercurial rainfall patterns—relentless droughts followed by sudden drenching floods.

The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced “exclosures,” cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy of Pedler’s sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third fenced area contains the program’s Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials (bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning to evade them. It’s unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of breakthrough.

For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself.

They have a new nickname—a flattering one, this time. “We call them ecosystem engineers,” Pedler says.

correct answer:-4

---

Instruction for set 2:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren’t much impressed with the small-bodied, slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. “Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives them an air exceedingly stupid,” one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the “zebra rat” because of its black-striped rump.

Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra rat—the smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today as the western barred bandicoot—exhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters.

Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia’s western coast.

“Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators,” says Reece Pedler, an ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program.

Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They’ve imported 20 bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the world’s most mercurial rainfall patterns—relentless droughts followed by sudden drenching floods.

The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced “exclosures,” cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy of Pedler’s sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third fenced area contains the program’s Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials (bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning to evade them. It’s unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of breakthrough.

For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself.

They have a new nickname—a flattering one, this time. “We call them ecosystem engineers,” Pedler says.

correct answer:-4

---

Instruction for set 3:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

. . . [T]he idea of craftsmanship is not simply nostalgic. . . . Crafts require distinct skills, an allround approach to work that involves the whole product, rather than individual parts, and an attitude that necessitates devotion to the job and a focus on the communal interest. The concept of craft emphasises the human touch and individual judgment.

Essentially, the crafts concept seems to run against the preponderant ethos of management studies which, as the academics note, have long prioritised efficiency and consistency. . . . Craft skills were portrayed as being primitive and traditionalist.

The contrast between artisanship and efficiency first came to the fore in the 19th century when British manufacturers suddenly faced competition from across the Atlantic as firms developed the “American system” using standardised parts. . . . the worldwide success of the Singer sewing machine showed the potential of a mass-produced device. This process created its own reaction, first in the form of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century, and then again in the “small is beautiful” movement of the 1970s. A third crafts movement is emerging as people become aware of the environmental impact of conventional industry.

There are two potential markets for those who practise crafts. The first stems from the existence of consumers who are willing to pay a premium price for goods that are deemed to be of extra quality. . . . The second market lies in those consumers who wish to use their purchases to support local workers, or to reduce their environmental impact by taking goods to craftspeople to be mended, or recycled.

For workers, the appeal of craftsmanship is that it allows them the autonomy to make creative choices, and thus makes a job far more satisfying. In that sense, it could offer hope for the overall labour market. Let the machines automate dull and repetitive tasks and let workers focus purely on their skills, judgment and imagination. As a current example, the academics cite the “agile” manifesto in the software sector, an industry at the heart of technological change. The pioneers behind the original agile manifesto promised to prioritise “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. By bringing together experts from different teams, agile working is designed to improve creativity.

But the broader question is whether crafts can create a lot more jobs than they do today. Demand for crafted products may rise but will it be easy to retrain workers in sectors that might get automated (such as truck drivers) to take advantage? In a world where products and services often have to pass through regulatory hoops, large companies will usually have the advantage.

History also suggests that the link between crafts and creativity is not automatic. Medieval craft guilds were monopolies which resisted new entrants. They were also highly hierarchical with young men required to spend long periods as apprentices and journeymen before they could set up on their own; by that time the innovative spirit may have been knocked out of them. Craft workers can thrive in the modern era, but only if they don’t get too organised.

correct answer:-1

---

Instruction for set 3:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

. . . [T]he idea of craftsmanship is not simply nostalgic. . . . Crafts require distinct skills, an allround approach to work that involves the whole product, rather than individual parts, and an attitude that necessitates devotion to the job and a focus on the communal interest. The concept of craft emphasises the human touch and individual judgment.

Essentially, the crafts concept seems to run against the preponderant ethos of management studies which, as the academics note, have long prioritised efficiency and consistency. . . . Craft skills were portrayed as being primitive and traditionalist.

The contrast between artisanship and efficiency first came to the fore in the 19th century when British manufacturers suddenly faced competition from across the Atlantic as firms developed the “American system” using standardised parts. . . . the worldwide success of the Singer sewing machine showed the potential of a mass-produced device. This process created its own reaction, first in the form of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century, and then again in the “small is beautiful” movement of the 1970s. A third crafts movement is emerging as people become aware of the environmental impact of conventional industry.

There are two potential markets for those who practise crafts. The first stems from the existence of consumers who are willing to pay a premium price for goods that are deemed to be of extra quality. . . . The second market lies in those consumers who wish to use their purchases to support local workers, or to reduce their environmental impact by taking goods to craftspeople to be mended, or recycled.

For workers, the appeal of craftsmanship is that it allows them the autonomy to make creative choices, and thus makes a job far more satisfying. In that sense, it could offer hope for the overall labour market. Let the machines automate dull and repetitive tasks and let workers focus purely on their skills, judgment and imagination. As a current example, the academics cite the “agile” manifesto in the software sector, an industry at the heart of technological change. The pioneers behind the original agile manifesto promised to prioritise “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. By bringing together experts from different teams, agile working is designed to improve creativity.

But the broader question is whether crafts can create a lot more jobs than they do today. Demand for crafted products may rise but will it be easy to retrain workers in sectors that might get automated (such as truck drivers) to take advantage? In a world where products and services often have to pass through regulatory hoops, large companies will usually have the advantage.

History also suggests that the link between crafts and creativity is not automatic. Medieval craft guilds were monopolies which resisted new entrants. They were also highly hierarchical with young men required to spend long periods as apprentices and journeymen before they could set up on their own; by that time the innovative spirit may have been knocked out of them. Craft workers can thrive in the modern era, but only if they don’t get too organised.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 3:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

. . . [T]he idea of craftsmanship is not simply nostalgic. . . . Crafts require distinct skills, an allround approach to work that involves the whole product, rather than individual parts, and an attitude that necessitates devotion to the job and a focus on the communal interest. The concept of craft emphasises the human touch and individual judgment.

Essentially, the crafts concept seems to run against the preponderant ethos of management studies which, as the academics note, have long prioritised efficiency and consistency. . . . Craft skills were portrayed as being primitive and traditionalist.

The contrast between artisanship and efficiency first came to the fore in the 19th century when British manufacturers suddenly faced competition from across the Atlantic as firms developed the “American system” using standardised parts. . . . the worldwide success of the Singer sewing machine showed the potential of a mass-produced device. This process created its own reaction, first in the form of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century, and then again in the “small is beautiful” movement of the 1970s. A third crafts movement is emerging as people become aware of the environmental impact of conventional industry.

There are two potential markets for those who practise crafts. The first stems from the existence of consumers who are willing to pay a premium price for goods that are deemed to be of extra quality. . . . The second market lies in those consumers who wish to use their purchases to support local workers, or to reduce their environmental impact by taking goods to craftspeople to be mended, or recycled.

For workers, the appeal of craftsmanship is that it allows them the autonomy to make creative choices, and thus makes a job far more satisfying. In that sense, it could offer hope for the overall labour market. Let the machines automate dull and repetitive tasks and let workers focus purely on their skills, judgment and imagination. As a current example, the academics cite the “agile” manifesto in the software sector, an industry at the heart of technological change. The pioneers behind the original agile manifesto promised to prioritise “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. By bringing together experts from different teams, agile working is designed to improve creativity.

But the broader question is whether crafts can create a lot more jobs than they do today. Demand for crafted products may rise but will it be easy to retrain workers in sectors that might get automated (such as truck drivers) to take advantage? In a world where products and services often have to pass through regulatory hoops, large companies will usually have the advantage.

History also suggests that the link between crafts and creativity is not automatic. Medieval craft guilds were monopolies which resisted new entrants. They were also highly hierarchical with young men required to spend long periods as apprentices and journeymen before they could set up on their own; by that time the innovative spirit may have been knocked out of them. Craft workers can thrive in the modern era, but only if they don’t get too organised.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 3:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

. . . [T]he idea of craftsmanship is not simply nostalgic. . . . Crafts require distinct skills, an allround approach to work that involves the whole product, rather than individual parts, and an attitude that necessitates devotion to the job and a focus on the communal interest. The concept of craft emphasises the human touch and individual judgment.

Essentially, the crafts concept seems to run against the preponderant ethos of management studies which, as the academics note, have long prioritised efficiency and consistency. . . . Craft skills were portrayed as being primitive and traditionalist.

The contrast between artisanship and efficiency first came to the fore in the 19th century when British manufacturers suddenly faced competition from across the Atlantic as firms developed the “American system” using standardised parts. . . . the worldwide success of the Singer sewing machine showed the potential of a mass-produced device. This process created its own reaction, first in the form of the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century, and then again in the “small is beautiful” movement of the 1970s. A third crafts movement is emerging as people become aware of the environmental impact of conventional industry.

There are two potential markets for those who practise crafts. The first stems from the existence of consumers who are willing to pay a premium price for goods that are deemed to be of extra quality. . . . The second market lies in those consumers who wish to use their purchases to support local workers, or to reduce their environmental impact by taking goods to craftspeople to be mended, or recycled.

For workers, the appeal of craftsmanship is that it allows them the autonomy to make creative choices, and thus makes a job far more satisfying. In that sense, it could offer hope for the overall labour market. Let the machines automate dull and repetitive tasks and let workers focus purely on their skills, judgment and imagination. As a current example, the academics cite the “agile” manifesto in the software sector, an industry at the heart of technological change. The pioneers behind the original agile manifesto promised to prioritise “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”. By bringing together experts from different teams, agile working is designed to improve creativity.

But the broader question is whether crafts can create a lot more jobs than they do today. Demand for crafted products may rise but will it be easy to retrain workers in sectors that might get automated (such as truck drivers) to take advantage? In a world where products and services often have to pass through regulatory hoops, large companies will usually have the advantage.

History also suggests that the link between crafts and creativity is not automatic. Medieval craft guilds were monopolies which resisted new entrants. They were also highly hierarchical with young men required to spend long periods as apprentices and journeymen before they could set up on their own; by that time the innovative spirit may have been knocked out of them. Craft workers can thrive in the modern era, but only if they don’t get too organised.

correct answer:-1

---

Instruction for set 4:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

The history of any major technological or industrial advance is inevitably shadowed by a less predictable history of unintended consequences and secondary effects — what economists sometimes call “externalities.” Sometimes those consequences are innocuous ones, or even beneficial. Gutenberg invents the printing press, and literacy rates rise, which causes a significant part of the reading public to require spectacles for the first time, which creates a surge of investment in lens-making across Europe, which leads to the invention of the telescope and the microscope.

Oftentimes the secondary effects seem to belong to an entirely different sphere of society. When Willis Carrier hit upon the idea of air-conditioning, the technology was primarily intended for industrial use: ensuring cool, dry air for factories that required low-humidity environments. But…it touched off one of the largest migrations in the history of the United States, enabling the rise of metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Las Vegas that barely existed when Carrier first started tinkering with the idea in the early 1900s.

Sometimes the unintended consequence comes about when consumers use an invention in a surprising way. Edison famously thought his phonograph, which he sometimes called “the talking machine,” would primarily be used to take dictation….But then later innovators… discovered a much larger audience willing to pay for musical recordings made on descendants of Edison’s original invention. In other cases, the original innovation comes into the world disguised as a plaything…the way the animatronic dolls of the mid-1700s inspired Jacquard to invent the first “programmable” loom and Charles Babbage to invent the first machine that fit the modern definition of a computer, setting the stage for the revolution in programmable technology that would transform the 21st century in countless ways.

We live under the gathering storm of modern history’s most momentous unintended consequence….carbon-based climate change. Imagine the vast sweep of inventors whose ideas started the Industrial Revolution, all the entrepreneurs and scientists and hobbyists who had a hand in bringing it about. Line up a thousand of them and ask them all what they had been hoping to do with their work. Not one would say that their intent had been to deposit enough carbon in the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect that trapped heat at the surface of the planet. And yet here we are.

Ethyl (leaded fuel) and Freon belonged to the same general class of secondary effect: innovations whose unintended consequences stem from some kind of waste by-product that they emit. But the potential health threats of Ethyl (unleaded fuel) were visible in the 1920s, unlike, say, the long-term effects of atmospheric carbon build up in the early days of the Industrial Revolution….

Indeed, it is reasonable to see CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) as a forerunner of the kind of threat we will most likely face in the coming decades, as it becomes increasingly possible for individuals or small groups to create new scientific advances — through chemistry or biotechnology or materials science — setting off unintended consequences that reverberate on a global scale.

correct answer:-1

---

Instruction for set 4:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

The history of any major technological or industrial advance is inevitably shadowed by a less predictable history of unintended consequences and secondary effects — what economists sometimes call “externalities.” Sometimes those consequences are innocuous ones, or even beneficial. Gutenberg invents the printing press, and literacy rates rise, which causes a significant part of the reading public to require spectacles for the first time, which creates a surge of investment in lens-making across Europe, which leads to the invention of the telescope and the microscope.

Oftentimes the secondary effects seem to belong to an entirely different sphere of society. When Willis Carrier hit upon the idea of air-conditioning, the technology was primarily intended for industrial use: ensuring cool, dry air for factories that required low-humidity environments. But…it touched off one of the largest migrations in the history of the United States, enabling the rise of metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Las Vegas that barely existed when Carrier first started tinkering with the idea in the early 1900s.

Sometimes the unintended consequence comes about when consumers use an invention in a surprising way. Edison famously thought his phonograph, which he sometimes called “the talking machine,” would primarily be used to take dictation….But then later innovators… discovered a much larger audience willing to pay for musical recordings made on descendants of Edison’s original invention. In other cases, the original innovation comes into the world disguised as a plaything…the way the animatronic dolls of the mid-1700s inspired Jacquard to invent the first “programmable” loom and Charles Babbage to invent the first machine that fit the modern definition of a computer, setting the stage for the revolution in programmable technology that would transform the 21st century in countless ways.

We live under the gathering storm of modern history’s most momentous unintended consequence….carbon-based climate change. Imagine the vast sweep of inventors whose ideas started the Industrial Revolution, all the entrepreneurs and scientists and hobbyists who had a hand in bringing it about. Line up a thousand of them and ask them all what they had been hoping to do with their work. Not one would say that their intent had been to deposit enough carbon in the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect that trapped heat at the surface of the planet. And yet here we are.

Ethyl (leaded fuel) and Freon belonged to the same general class of secondary effect: innovations whose unintended consequences stem from some kind of waste by-product that they emit. But the potential health threats of Ethyl (unleaded fuel) were visible in the 1920s, unlike, say, the long-term effects of atmospheric carbon build up in the early days of the Industrial Revolution….

Indeed, it is reasonable to see CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) as a forerunner of the kind of threat we will most likely face in the coming decades, as it becomes increasingly possible for individuals or small groups to create new scientific advances — through chemistry or biotechnology or materials science — setting off unintended consequences that reverberate on a global scale.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 4:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

The history of any major technological or industrial advance is inevitably shadowed by a less predictable history of unintended consequences and secondary effects — what economists sometimes call “externalities.” Sometimes those consequences are innocuous ones, or even beneficial. Gutenberg invents the printing press, and literacy rates rise, which causes a significant part of the reading public to require spectacles for the first time, which creates a surge of investment in lens-making across Europe, which leads to the invention of the telescope and the microscope.

Oftentimes the secondary effects seem to belong to an entirely different sphere of society. When Willis Carrier hit upon the idea of air-conditioning, the technology was primarily intended for industrial use: ensuring cool, dry air for factories that required low-humidity environments. But…it touched off one of the largest migrations in the history of the United States, enabling the rise of metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Las Vegas that barely existed when Carrier first started tinkering with the idea in the early 1900s.

Sometimes the unintended consequence comes about when consumers use an invention in a surprising way. Edison famously thought his phonograph, which he sometimes called “the talking machine,” would primarily be used to take dictation….But then later innovators… discovered a much larger audience willing to pay for musical recordings made on descendants of Edison’s original invention. In other cases, the original innovation comes into the world disguised as a plaything…the way the animatronic dolls of the mid-1700s inspired Jacquard to invent the first “programmable” loom and Charles Babbage to invent the first machine that fit the modern definition of a computer, setting the stage for the revolution in programmable technology that would transform the 21st century in countless ways.

We live under the gathering storm of modern history’s most momentous unintended consequence….carbon-based climate change. Imagine the vast sweep of inventors whose ideas started the Industrial Revolution, all the entrepreneurs and scientists and hobbyists who had a hand in bringing it about. Line up a thousand of them and ask them all what they had been hoping to do with their work. Not one would say that their intent had been to deposit enough carbon in the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect that trapped heat at the surface of the planet. And yet here we are.

Ethyl (leaded fuel) and Freon belonged to the same general class of secondary effect: innovations whose unintended consequences stem from some kind of waste by-product that they emit. But the potential health threats of Ethyl (unleaded fuel) were visible in the 1920s, unlike, say, the long-term effects of atmospheric carbon build up in the early days of the Industrial Revolution….

Indeed, it is reasonable to see CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) as a forerunner of the kind of threat we will most likely face in the coming decades, as it becomes increasingly possible for individuals or small groups to create new scientific advances — through chemistry or biotechnology or materials science — setting off unintended consequences that reverberate on a global scale.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 4:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

The history of any major technological or industrial advance is inevitably shadowed by a less predictable history of unintended consequences and secondary effects — what economists sometimes call “externalities.” Sometimes those consequences are innocuous ones, or even beneficial. Gutenberg invents the printing press, and literacy rates rise, which causes a significant part of the reading public to require spectacles for the first time, which creates a surge of investment in lens-making across Europe, which leads to the invention of the telescope and the microscope.

Oftentimes the secondary effects seem to belong to an entirely different sphere of society. When Willis Carrier hit upon the idea of air-conditioning, the technology was primarily intended for industrial use: ensuring cool, dry air for factories that required low-humidity environments. But…it touched off one of the largest migrations in the history of the United States, enabling the rise of metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Las Vegas that barely existed when Carrier first started tinkering with the idea in the early 1900s.

Sometimes the unintended consequence comes about when consumers use an invention in a surprising way. Edison famously thought his phonograph, which he sometimes called “the talking machine,” would primarily be used to take dictation….But then later innovators… discovered a much larger audience willing to pay for musical recordings made on descendants of Edison’s original invention. In other cases, the original innovation comes into the world disguised as a plaything…the way the animatronic dolls of the mid-1700s inspired Jacquard to invent the first “programmable” loom and Charles Babbage to invent the first machine that fit the modern definition of a computer, setting the stage for the revolution in programmable technology that would transform the 21st century in countless ways.

We live under the gathering storm of modern history’s most momentous unintended consequence….carbon-based climate change. Imagine the vast sweep of inventors whose ideas started the Industrial Revolution, all the entrepreneurs and scientists and hobbyists who had a hand in bringing it about. Line up a thousand of them and ask them all what they had been hoping to do with their work. Not one would say that their intent had been to deposit enough carbon in the atmosphere to create a greenhouse effect that trapped heat at the surface of the planet. And yet here we are.

Ethyl (leaded fuel) and Freon belonged to the same general class of secondary effect: innovations whose unintended consequences stem from some kind of waste by-product that they emit. But the potential health threats of Ethyl (unleaded fuel) were visible in the 1920s, unlike, say, the long-term effects of atmospheric carbon build up in the early days of the Industrial Revolution….

Indeed, it is reasonable to see CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) as a forerunner of the kind of threat we will most likely face in the coming decades, as it becomes increasingly possible for individuals or small groups to create new scientific advances — through chemistry or biotechnology or materials science — setting off unintended consequences that reverberate on a global scale.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 5:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

[S]pices were a global commodity centuries before European voyages. There was a complex chain of relations, yet consumers had little knowledge of producers and vice versa. Desire for spices helped fuel European colonial empires to create political, military and commercial networks under a single power.

Historians know a fair amount about the supply of spices in Europe during the medieval period - the origins, methods of transportation, the prices - but less about demand. Why go to such extraordinary efforts to procure expensive products from exotic lands? Still, demand was great enough to inspire the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama, launching the first fateful wave of European colonialism. . . .

So, why were spices so highly prized in Europe in the centuries from about 1000 to 1500? One widely disseminated explanation for medieval demand for spices was that they covered the taste of spoiled meat. . . . Medieval purchasers consumed meat much fresher than what the average city-dweller in the developed world of today has at hand. However, refrigeration was not available, and some hot spices have been shown to serve as an anti-bacterial agent. Salting, smoking or drying meat were other means of preservation. Most spices used in cooking began as medical ingredients, and throughout the Middle Ages spices were used as both medicines and condiments. Above all, medieval recipes involve the combination of medical and culinary lore in order to balance food's humeral properties and prevent disease. Most spices were hot and dry and so appropriate in sauces to counteract the moist and wet properties supposedly possessed by most meat and fish. . . .

Where spices came from was known in a vague sense centuries before the voyages of Columbus. Just how vague may be judged by looking at medieval world maps . . . To the medieval European imagination, the East was exotic and alluring. Medieval maps often placed India close to the so-called Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden described in the Bible.

Geographical knowledge has a lot to do with the perceptions of spices’ relative scarcity and the reasons for their high prices. An example of the varying notions of scarcity is the conflicting information about how pepper is harvested. As far back as the 7th century Europeans thought that pepper in India grew on trees "guarded" by serpents that would bite and poison anyone who attempted to gather the fruit. The only way to harvest pepper was to burn the trees, which would drive the snakes underground. Of course, this bit of lore would explain the shriveled black peppercorns, but not white, pink or other colors.

Spices never had the enduring allure or power of gold and silver or the commercial potential of new products such as tobacco, indigo or sugar. But the taste for spices did continue for a while beyond the Middle Ages. As late as the 17th century, the English and the Dutch were struggling for control of the Spice Islands: Dutch New Amsterdam, or New York, was exchanged by the British for one of the Moluccan Islands where nutmeg was grown.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 5:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

[S]pices were a global commodity centuries before European voyages. There was a complex chain of relations, yet consumers had little knowledge of producers and vice versa. Desire for spices helped fuel European colonial empires to create political, military and commercial networks under a single power.

Historians know a fair amount about the supply of spices in Europe during the medieval period - the origins, methods of transportation, the prices - but less about demand. Why go to such extraordinary efforts to procure expensive products from exotic lands? Still, demand was great enough to inspire the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama, launching the first fateful wave of European colonialism. . . .

So, why were spices so highly prized in Europe in the centuries from about 1000 to 1500? One widely disseminated explanation for medieval demand for spices was that they covered the taste of spoiled meat. . . . Medieval purchasers consumed meat much fresher than what the average city-dweller in the developed world of today has at hand. However, refrigeration was not available, and some hot spices have been shown to serve as an anti-bacterial agent. Salting, smoking or drying meat were other means of preservation. Most spices used in cooking began as medical ingredients, and throughout the Middle Ages spices were used as both medicines and condiments. Above all, medieval recipes involve the combination of medical and culinary lore in order to balance food's humeral properties and prevent disease. Most spices were hot and dry and so appropriate in sauces to counteract the moist and wet properties supposedly possessed by most meat and fish. . . .

Where spices came from was known in a vague sense centuries before the voyages of Columbus. Just how vague may be judged by looking at medieval world maps . . . To the medieval European imagination, the East was exotic and alluring. Medieval maps often placed India close to the so-called Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden described in the Bible.

Geographical knowledge has a lot to do with the perceptions of spices’ relative scarcity and the reasons for their high prices. An example of the varying notions of scarcity is the conflicting information about how pepper is harvested. As far back as the 7th century Europeans thought that pepper in India grew on trees "guarded" by serpents that would bite and poison anyone who attempted to gather the fruit. The only way to harvest pepper was to burn the trees, which would drive the snakes underground. Of course, this bit of lore would explain the shriveled black peppercorns, but not white, pink or other colors.

Spices never had the enduring allure or power of gold and silver or the commercial potential of new products such as tobacco, indigo or sugar. But the taste for spices did continue for a while beyond the Middle Ages. As late as the 17th century, the English and the Dutch were struggling for control of the Spice Islands: Dutch New Amsterdam, or New York, was exchanged by the British for one of the Moluccan Islands where nutmeg was grown.

correct answer:-1

---

Instruction for set 5:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

[S]pices were a global commodity centuries before European voyages. There was a complex chain of relations, yet consumers had little knowledge of producers and vice versa. Desire for spices helped fuel European colonial empires to create political, military and commercial networks under a single power.

Historians know a fair amount about the supply of spices in Europe during the medieval period - the origins, methods of transportation, the prices - but less about demand. Why go to such extraordinary efforts to procure expensive products from exotic lands? Still, demand was great enough to inspire the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama, launching the first fateful wave of European colonialism. . . .

So, why were spices so highly prized in Europe in the centuries from about 1000 to 1500? One widely disseminated explanation for medieval demand for spices was that they covered the taste of spoiled meat. . . . Medieval purchasers consumed meat much fresher than what the average city-dweller in the developed world of today has at hand. However, refrigeration was not available, and some hot spices have been shown to serve as an anti-bacterial agent. Salting, smoking or drying meat were other means of preservation. Most spices used in cooking began as medical ingredients, and throughout the Middle Ages spices were used as both medicines and condiments. Above all, medieval recipes involve the combination of medical and culinary lore in order to balance food's humeral properties and prevent disease. Most spices were hot and dry and so appropriate in sauces to counteract the moist and wet properties supposedly possessed by most meat and fish. . . .

Where spices came from was known in a vague sense centuries before the voyages of Columbus. Just how vague may be judged by looking at medieval world maps . . . To the medieval European imagination, the East was exotic and alluring. Medieval maps often placed India close to the so-called Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden described in the Bible.

Geographical knowledge has a lot to do with the perceptions of spices’ relative scarcity and the reasons for their high prices. An example of the varying notions of scarcity is the conflicting information about how pepper is harvested. As far back as the 7th century Europeans thought that pepper in India grew on trees "guarded" by serpents that would bite and poison anyone who attempted to gather the fruit. The only way to harvest pepper was to burn the trees, which would drive the snakes underground. Of course, this bit of lore would explain the shriveled black peppercorns, but not white, pink or other colors.

Spices never had the enduring allure or power of gold and silver or the commercial potential of new products such as tobacco, indigo or sugar. But the taste for spices did continue for a while beyond the Middle Ages. As late as the 17th century, the English and the Dutch were struggling for control of the Spice Islands: Dutch New Amsterdam, or New York, was exchanged by the British for one of the Moluccan Islands where nutmeg was grown.

correct answer:-2

---

Instruction for set 5:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

[S]pices were a global commodity centuries before European voyages. There was a complex chain of relations, yet consumers had little knowledge of producers and vice versa. Desire for spices helped fuel European colonial empires to create political, military and commercial networks under a single power.

Historians know a fair amount about the supply of spices in Europe during the medieval period - the origins, methods of transportation, the prices - but less about demand. Why go to such extraordinary efforts to procure expensive products from exotic lands? Still, demand was great enough to inspire the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco Da Gama, launching the first fateful wave of European colonialism. . . .

So, why were spices so highly prized in Europe in the centuries from about 1000 to 1500? One widely disseminated explanation for medieval demand for spices was that they covered the taste of spoiled meat. . . . Medieval purchasers consumed meat much fresher than what the average city-dweller in the developed world of today has at hand. However, refrigeration was not available, and some hot spices have been shown to serve as an anti-bacterial agent. Salting, smoking or drying meat were other means of preservation. Most spices used in cooking began as medical ingredients, and throughout the Middle Ages spices were used as both medicines and condiments. Above all, medieval recipes involve the combination of medical and culinary lore in order to balance food's humeral properties and prevent disease. Most spices were hot and dry and so appropriate in sauces to counteract the moist and wet properties supposedly possessed by most meat and fish. . . .

Where spices came from was known in a vague sense centuries before the voyages of Columbus. Just how vague may be judged by looking at medieval world maps . . . To the medieval European imagination, the East was exotic and alluring. Medieval maps often placed India close to the so-called Earthly Paradise, the Garden of Eden described in the Bible.

Geographical knowledge has a lot to do with the perceptions of spices’ relative scarcity and the reasons for their high prices. An example of the varying notions of scarcity is the conflicting information about how pepper is harvested. As far back as the 7th century Europeans thought that pepper in India grew on trees "guarded" by serpents that would bite and poison anyone who attempted to gather the fruit. The only way to harvest pepper was to burn the trees, which would drive the snakes underground. Of course, this bit of lore would explain the shriveled black peppercorns, but not white, pink or other colors.

Spices never had the enduring allure or power of gold and silver or the commercial potential of new products such as tobacco, indigo or sugar. But the taste for spices did continue for a while beyond the Middle Ages. As late as the 17th century, the English and the Dutch were struggling for control of the Spice Islands: Dutch New Amsterdam, or New York, was exchanged by the British for one of the Moluccan Islands where nutmeg was grown.

correct answer:-2