Comprehension P...

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

RESIDENTS of Loz ère, a hilly department in southern France, recite complaints familiar to  many rural corners of Europe. In remote hamlets and villages, with names such as Le Bacon  and Le Bacon Vieux, mayors grumble about a lack of local schools, jobs, or phone and  internet connections. Farmers of grazing animals add another concern: the return of wolves. Eradicated from France last century, the predators are gradually creeping back to more  forests and hillsides. “The wolf must be taken in hand,”said an aspiring parliamentarian, Francis Palombi, when pressed by voters in an election campaign early this summer. Tourists  enjoy visiting a wolf park in Loz ère, but farmers fret over their livestock and their livelihoods. .
. .

As early as the ninth century, the royal office of the Luparii —wolf-catchers —was created in  France to tackle the predators. Those official hunters (and others) completed their job in the  1930s, when the last wolf disappeared from the mainland. Active hunting and improved  technology such as rifles in the 19th century, plus the use of poison such as strychnine later  on, caused the population collapse. But in the early 1990s the animals reappeared. They  crossed the Alps from Italy, upsetting sheep farmers on the French side of the border. Wolves  have since spread to areas such as Loz ère, delighting environmentalists, who see the  predators ’presence as a sign of wider ecological health. Farmers, who say the wolves cause  the deaths of thousands of sheep and other grazing animals, are less cheerful. They grumble  that green activists and politically correct urban types have allowed the return of an old  enemy.

Various factors explain the changes of the past few decades. Rural depopulation is part of the  story. In Loz ère, for example, farming and a once-flourishing mining industry supported a  population of over 140,000 residents in the mid-19th century. Today the department has fewer  than 80,000 people, many in its towns. As humans withdraw, forests are expanding. In  France, between 1990 and 2015, forest cover increased by an average of 102,000 hectares  each year, as more fields were given over to trees. Now, nearly one-third of mainland France  is covered by woodland of some sort. The decline of hunting as a sport also means more  forests fall quiet. In the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters regularly spent winter  weekends tramping in woodland, seeking boars, birds and other prey. Today the F éd ération  Nationale des Chasseurs, the national body, claims 1.1m people hold hunting licences, though the number of active hunters is probably lower. The mostly protected status of the wolf  in Europe —hunting them is now forbidden, other than when occasional culls are sanctioned  by the state —plus the efforts of NGOs to track and count the animals, also contribute to the  recovery of wolf populations.

As the lupine population of Europe spreads westwards, with occasional reports of wolves  seen closer to urban areas, expect to hear of more clashes between farmers and those who  celebrate the predators ’return. Farmers ’losses are real, but are not the only economic story. Tourist venues, such as parks where wolves are kept and the animals ’spread is discussed, also generate income and jobs in rural areas.

The author presents a possible economic solution to an existing issue facing Loz ère  that takes into account the divergent and competing interests of:

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

RESIDENTS of Loz ère, a hilly department in southern France, recite complaints familiar to  many rural corners of Europe. In remote hamlets and villages, with names such as Le Bacon  and Le Bacon Vieux, mayors grumble about a lack of local schools, jobs, or phone and  internet connections. Farmers of grazing animals add another concern: the return of wolves. Eradicated from France last century, the predators are gradually creeping back to more  forests and hillsides. “The wolf must be taken in hand,”said an aspiring parliamentarian, Francis Palombi, when pressed by voters in an election campaign early this summer. Tourists  enjoy visiting a wolf park in Loz ère, but farmers fret over their livestock and their livelihoods. .
. .

As early as the ninth century, the royal office of the Luparii —wolf-catchers —was created in  France to tackle the predators. Those official hunters (and others) completed their job in the  1930s, when the last wolf disappeared from the mainland. Active hunting and improved  technology such as rifles in the 19th century, plus the use of poison such as strychnine later  on, caused the population collapse. But in the early 1990s the animals reappeared. They  crossed the Alps from Italy, upsetting sheep farmers on the French side of the border. Wolves  have since spread to areas such as Loz ère, delighting environmentalists, who see the  predators ’presence as a sign of wider ecological health. Farmers, who say the wolves cause  the deaths of thousands of sheep and other grazing animals, are less cheerful. They grumble  that green activists and politically correct urban types have allowed the return of an old  enemy.

Various factors explain the changes of the past few decades. Rural depopulation is part of the  story. In Loz ère, for example, farming and a once-flourishing mining industry supported a  population of over 140,000 residents in the mid-19th century. Today the department has fewer  than 80,000 people, many in its towns. As humans withdraw, forests are expanding. In  France, between 1990 and 2015, forest cover increased by an average of 102,000 hectares  each year, as more fields were given over to trees. Now, nearly one-third of mainland France  is covered by woodland of some sort. The decline of hunting as a sport also means more  forests fall quiet. In the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters regularly spent winter  weekends tramping in woodland, seeking boars, birds and other prey. Today the F éd ération  Nationale des Chasseurs, the national body, claims 1.1m people hold hunting licences, though the number of active hunters is probably lower. The mostly protected status of the wolf  in Europe —hunting them is now forbidden, other than when occasional culls are sanctioned  by the state —plus the efforts of NGOs to track and count the animals, also contribute to the  recovery of wolf populations.

As the lupine population of Europe spreads westwards, with occasional reports of wolves  seen closer to urban areas, expect to hear of more clashes between farmers and those who  celebrate the predators ’return. Farmers ’losses are real, but are not the only economic story. Tourist venues, such as parks where wolves are kept and the animals ’spread is discussed, also generate income and jobs in rural areas.

Which one of the following statements, if true, would weaken the author ’s claims?

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

RESIDENTS of Loz ère, a hilly department in southern France, recite complaints familiar to  many rural corners of Europe. In remote hamlets and villages, with names such as Le Bacon  and Le Bacon Vieux, mayors grumble about a lack of local schools, jobs, or phone and  internet connections. Farmers of grazing animals add another concern: the return of wolves. Eradicated from France last century, the predators are gradually creeping back to more  forests and hillsides. “The wolf must be taken in hand,”said an aspiring parliamentarian, Francis Palombi, when pressed by voters in an election campaign early this summer. Tourists  enjoy visiting a wolf park in Loz ère, but farmers fret over their livestock and their livelihoods. .
. .

As early as the ninth century, the royal office of the Luparii —wolf-catchers —was created in  France to tackle the predators. Those official hunters (and others) completed their job in the  1930s, when the last wolf disappeared from the mainland. Active hunting and improved  technology such as rifles in the 19th century, plus the use of poison such as strychnine later  on, caused the population collapse. But in the early 1990s the animals reappeared. They  crossed the Alps from Italy, upsetting sheep farmers on the French side of the border. Wolves  have since spread to areas such as Loz ère, delighting environmentalists, who see the  predators ’presence as a sign of wider ecological health. Farmers, who say the wolves cause  the deaths of thousands of sheep and other grazing animals, are less cheerful. They grumble  that green activists and politically correct urban types have allowed the return of an old  enemy.

Various factors explain the changes of the past few decades. Rural depopulation is part of the  story. In Loz ère, for example, farming and a once-flourishing mining industry supported a  population of over 140,000 residents in the mid-19th century. Today the department has fewer  than 80,000 people, many in its towns. As humans withdraw, forests are expanding. In  France, between 1990 and 2015, forest cover increased by an average of 102,000 hectares  each year, as more fields were given over to trees. Now, nearly one-third of mainland France  is covered by woodland of some sort. The decline of hunting as a sport also means more  forests fall quiet. In the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters regularly spent winter  weekends tramping in woodland, seeking boars, birds and other prey. Today the F éd ération  Nationale des Chasseurs, the national body, claims 1.1m people hold hunting licences, though the number of active hunters is probably lower. The mostly protected status of the wolf  in Europe —hunting them is now forbidden, other than when occasional culls are sanctioned  by the state —plus the efforts of NGOs to track and count the animals, also contribute to the  recovery of wolf populations.

As the lupine population of Europe spreads westwards, with occasional reports of wolves  seen closer to urban areas, expect to hear of more clashes between farmers and those who  celebrate the predators ’return. Farmers ’losses are real, but are not the only economic story. Tourist venues, such as parks where wolves are kept and the animals ’spread is discussed, also generate income and jobs in rural areas.

Which one of the following has NOT contributed to the growing wolf population in  Loz ère?

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

Over the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, according to Patrick Deneen, a professor of politics at the University of Notre Dame. . . . Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism ’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry ”is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,”Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world ”? . . .

Deneen does an impressive job of capturing the current mood of disillusionment, echoing leftwing complaints about rampant commercialism, right-wing complaints about narcissistic and bullying students, and general worries about atomisation and selfishness. But when he concludes that all this adds up to a failure of liberalism, is his argument convincing? . . . He argues that the essence of liberalism lies in freeing individuals from constraints. In fact, liberalism contains a wide range of intellectual traditions which provide different answers to the question of how to trade off the relative claims of rights and responsibilities, individual expression and social ties. . . . liberals experimented with a range of ideas from devolving power from the centre to creating national education systems.

Mr Deneen ’s fixation on the essence of liberalism leads to the second big problem of his book: his failure to recognise liberalism ’s ability to reform itself and address its internal problems. The late 19th century saw America suffering from many of the problems that are reappearing today, including the creation of a business aristocracy, the rise of vast companies, the corruption of politics and the sense that society was dividing into winners and losers. But a wide variety of reformers, working within the liberal tradition, tackled these problems head on. Theodore Roosevelt took on the trusts. Progressives cleaned up government corruption. University reformers modernised academic syllabuses and built ladders of opportunity. Rather than dying, liberalism reformed itself.

Mr Deneen is right to point out that the record of liberalism in recent years has been dismal. He is also right to assert that the world has much to learn from the premodern notions of liberty as self-mastery and self-denial. The biggest enemy of liberalism is not so much atomisation but old-fashioned greed, as members of the Davos elite pile their plates ever higher with perks and share options. But he is wrong to argue that the only way for people to liberate themselves from the contradictions of liberalism is “liberation from liberalism itself ”. The best way to read “Why Liberalism Failed ”is not as a funeral oration but as a call to action: up your game, or else.

The author of the passage refers to “the Davos elite ”to illustrate his views on:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Understanding romantic aesthetics is not a simple undertaking for reasons that are internal to the nature of the subject. Distinguished scholars, such as Arthur Lovejoy, Northrop Frye and  Isaiah Berlin, have remarked on the notorious challenges facing any attempt to define romanticism. Lovejoy, for example, claimed that romanticism is “the scandal of literary history  and criticism ”. . . The main difficulty in studying the romantics, according to him, is the lack of any “single real entity, or type of entity ”that the concept “romanticism ”designates. Lovejoy concluded, “the word ‘romantic ’has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing ”. . .

The more specific task of characterizing romantic aesthetics adds to these difficulties an air of paradox. Conventionally, “aesthetics ”refers to a theory concerning beauty and art or the  branch of philosophy that studies these topics. However, many of the romantics rejected the identification of aesthetics with a circumscribed domain of human life that is separated from  the practical and theoretical domains of life. The most characteristic romantic commitment is to the idea that the character of art and beauty and of our engagement with them should  shape all aspects of human life. Being fundamental to human existence, beauty and art should be a central ingredient not only in a philosophical or artistic life, but also in the lives of  ordinary men and women. Another challenge for any attempt to characterize romantic aesthetics lies in the fact that most of the romantics were poets and artists whose views of art  and beauty are, for the most part, to be found not in developed theoretical accounts, but in fragments, aphorisms and poems, which are often more elusive and suggestive than  conclusive.

Nevertheless, in spite of these challenges the task of characterizing romantic aesthetics is neither impossible nor undesirable, as numerous thinkers responding to Lovejoy ’s radical  skepticism have noted. While warning against a reductive definition of romanticism, Berlin, for example, still heralded the need for a general characterization: “[Although] one does have a  certain sympathy with Lovejoy ’s despair …[he is] in this instance mistaken. There was a romantic movement …and it is important to discover what it is ”. . .

Recent attempts to characterize romanticism and to stress its contemporary relevance follow this path. Instead of overlooking the undeniable differences between the variety of romanticisms of different nations that Lovejoy had stressed, such studies attempt to characterize romanticism, not in terms of a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place, but in terms of “particular philosophical questions and concerns ”. . .

While the German, British and French romantics are all considered, the central protagonists in the following are the German romantics. Two reasons explain this focus: first, because it
has paved the way for the other romanticisms, German romanticism has a pride of place among the different national romanticisms . . . Second, the aesthetic outlook that was developed in Germany roughly between 1796 and 1801-02 —the period that corresponds to the heyday of what is known as “Early Romanticism ”. . .—offers the most philosophical expression of romanticism since it is grounded primarily in the epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, and political concerns that the German romantics discerned in the aftermath of Kant ’s philosophy.

According to the romantics, aesthetics:

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

Over the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, according to Patrick Deneen, a professor of politics at the University of Notre Dame. . . . Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism ’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry ”is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,”Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world ”? . . .

Deneen does an impressive job of capturing the current mood of disillusionment, echoing leftwing complaints about rampant commercialism, right-wing complaints about narcissistic and bullying students, and general worries about atomisation and selfishness. But when he concludes that all this adds up to a failure of liberalism, is his argument convincing? . . . He argues that the essence of liberalism lies in freeing individuals from constraints. In fact, liberalism contains a wide range of intellectual traditions which provide different answers to the question of how to trade off the relative claims of rights and responsibilities, individual expression and social ties. . . . liberals experimented with a range of ideas from devolving power from the centre to creating national education systems.

Mr Deneen ’s fixation on the essence of liberalism leads to the second big problem of his book: his failure to recognise liberalism ’s ability to reform itself and address its internal problems. The late 19th century saw America suffering from many of the problems that are reappearing today, including the creation of a business aristocracy, the rise of vast companies, the corruption of politics and the sense that society was dividing into winners and losers. But a wide variety of reformers, working within the liberal tradition, tackled these problems head on. Theodore Roosevelt took on the trusts. Progressives cleaned up government corruption. University reformers modernised academic syllabuses and built ladders of opportunity. Rather than dying, liberalism reformed itself.

Mr Deneen is right to point out that the record of liberalism in recent years has been dismal. He is also right to assert that the world has much to learn from the premodern notions of liberty as self-mastery and self-denial. The biggest enemy of liberalism is not so much atomisation but old-fashioned greed, as members of the Davos elite pile their plates ever higher with perks and share options. But he is wrong to argue that the only way for people to liberate themselves from the contradictions of liberalism is “liberation from liberalism itself ”. The best way to read “Why Liberalism Failed ”is not as a funeral oration but as a call to action: up your game, or else.

All of the following statements are evidence of the decline of liberalism today, EXCEPT:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Understanding romantic aesthetics is not a simple undertaking for reasons that are internal to the nature of the subject. Distinguished scholars, such as Arthur Lovejoy, Northrop Frye and  Isaiah Berlin, have remarked on the notorious challenges facing any attempt to define romanticism. Lovejoy, for example, claimed that romanticism is “the scandal of literary history  and criticism ”. . . The main difficulty in studying the romantics, according to him, is the lack of any “single real entity, or type of entity ”that the concept “romanticism ”designates. Lovejoy concluded, “the word ‘romantic ’has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing ”. . .

The more specific task of characterizing romantic aesthetics adds to these difficulties an air of paradox. Conventionally, “aesthetics ”refers to a theory concerning beauty and art or the  branch of philosophy that studies these topics. However, many of the romantics rejected the identification of aesthetics with a circumscribed domain of human life that is separated from  the practical and theoretical domains of life. The most characteristic romantic commitment is to the idea that the character of art and beauty and of our engagement with them should  shape all aspects of human life. Being fundamental to human existence, beauty and art should be a central ingredient not only in a philosophical or artistic life, but also in the lives of  ordinary men and women. Another challenge for any attempt to characterize romantic aesthetics lies in the fact that most of the romantics were poets and artists whose views of art  and beauty are, for the most part, to be found not in developed theoretical accounts, but in fragments, aphorisms and poems, which are often more elusive and suggestive than  conclusive.

Nevertheless, in spite of these challenges the task of characterizing romantic aesthetics is neither impossible nor undesirable, as numerous thinkers responding to Lovejoy ’s radical  skepticism have noted. While warning against a reductive definition of romanticism, Berlin, for example, still heralded the need for a general characterization: “[Although] one does have a  certain sympathy with Lovejoy ’s despair …[he is] in this instance mistaken. There was a romantic movement …and it is important to discover what it is ”. . .

Recent attempts to characterize romanticism and to stress its contemporary relevance follow this path. Instead of overlooking the undeniable differences between the variety of romanticisms of different nations that Lovejoy had stressed, such studies attempt to characterize romanticism, not in terms of a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place, but in terms of “particular philosophical questions and concerns ”. . .

While the German, British and French romantics are all considered, the central protagonists in the following are the German romantics. Two reasons explain this focus: first, because it
has paved the way for the other romanticisms, German romanticism has a pride of place among the different national romanticisms . . . Second, the aesthetic outlook that was developed in Germany roughly between 1796 and 1801-02 —the period that corresponds to the heyday of what is known as “Early Romanticism ”. . .—offers the most philosophical expression of romanticism since it is grounded primarily in the epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, and political concerns that the German romantics discerned in the aftermath of Kant ’s philosophy.

Which one of the following statements is NOT supported by the passage?

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

Over the past four centuries liberalism has been so successful that it has driven all its opponents off the battlefield. Now it is disintegrating, destroyed by a mix of hubris and internal contradictions, according to Patrick Deneen, a professor of politics at the University of Notre Dame. . . . Equality of opportunity has produced a new meritocratic aristocracy that has all the aloofness of the old aristocracy with none of its sense of noblesse oblige. Democracy has degenerated into a theatre of the absurd. And technological advances are reducing ever more areas of work into meaningless drudgery. “The gap between liberalism ’s claims about itself and the lived reality of the citizenry ”is now so wide that “the lie can no longer be accepted,”Mr Deneen writes. What better proof of this than the vision of 1,000 private planes whisking their occupants to Davos to discuss the question of “creating a shared future in a fragmented world ”? . . .

Deneen does an impressive job of capturing the current mood of disillusionment, echoing leftwing complaints about rampant commercialism, right-wing complaints about narcissistic and bullying students, and general worries about atomisation and selfishness. But when he concludes that all this adds up to a failure of liberalism, is his argument convincing? . . . He argues that the essence of liberalism lies in freeing individuals from constraints. In fact, liberalism contains a wide range of intellectual traditions which provide different answers to the question of how to trade off the relative claims of rights and responsibilities, individual expression and social ties. . . . liberals experimented with a range of ideas from devolving power from the centre to creating national education systems.

Mr Deneen ’s fixation on the essence of liberalism leads to the second big problem of his book: his failure to recognise liberalism ’s ability to reform itself and address its internal problems. The late 19th century saw America suffering from many of the problems that are reappearing today, including the creation of a business aristocracy, the rise of vast companies, the corruption of politics and the sense that society was dividing into winners and losers. But a wide variety of reformers, working within the liberal tradition, tackled these problems head on. Theodore Roosevelt took on the trusts. Progressives cleaned up government corruption. University reformers modernised academic syllabuses and built ladders of opportunity. Rather than dying, liberalism reformed itself.

Mr Deneen is right to point out that the record of liberalism in recent years has been dismal. He is also right to assert that the world has much to learn from the premodern notions of liberty as self-mastery and self-denial. The biggest enemy of liberalism is not so much atomisation but old-fashioned greed, as members of the Davos elite pile their plates ever higher with perks and share options. But he is wrong to argue that the only way for people to liberate themselves from the contradictions of liberalism is “liberation from liberalism itself ”. The best way to read “Why Liberalism Failed ”is not as a funeral oration but as a call to action: up your game, or else.

The author of the passage is likely to disagree with all of the following statements, EXCEPT:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Understanding romantic aesthetics is not a simple undertaking for reasons that are internal to the nature of the subject. Distinguished scholars, such as Arthur Lovejoy, Northrop Frye and  Isaiah Berlin, have remarked on the notorious challenges facing any attempt to define romanticism. Lovejoy, for example, claimed that romanticism is “the scandal of literary history  and criticism ”. . . The main difficulty in studying the romantics, according to him, is the lack of any “single real entity, or type of entity ”that the concept “romanticism ”designates. Lovejoy concluded, “the word ‘romantic ’has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing ”. . .

The more specific task of characterizing romantic aesthetics adds to these difficulties an air of paradox. Conventionally, “aesthetics ”refers to a theory concerning beauty and art or the  branch of philosophy that studies these topics. However, many of the romantics rejected the identification of aesthetics with a circumscribed domain of human life that is separated from  the practical and theoretical domains of life. The most characteristic romantic commitment is to the idea that the character of art and beauty and of our engagement with them should  shape all aspects of human life. Being fundamental to human existence, beauty and art should be a central ingredient not only in a philosophical or artistic life, but also in the lives of  ordinary men and women. Another challenge for any attempt to characterize romantic aesthetics lies in the fact that most of the romantics were poets and artists whose views of art  and beauty are, for the most part, to be found not in developed theoretical accounts, but in fragments, aphorisms and poems, which are often more elusive and suggestive than  conclusive.

Nevertheless, in spite of these challenges the task of characterizing romantic aesthetics is neither impossible nor undesirable, as numerous thinkers responding to Lovejoy ’s radical  skepticism have noted. While warning against a reductive definition of romanticism, Berlin, for example, still heralded the need for a general characterization: “[Although] one does have a  certain sympathy with Lovejoy ’s despair …[he is] in this instance mistaken. There was a romantic movement …and it is important to discover what it is ”. . .

Recent attempts to characterize romanticism and to stress its contemporary relevance follow this path. Instead of overlooking the undeniable differences between the variety of romanticisms of different nations that Lovejoy had stressed, such studies attempt to characterize romanticism, not in terms of a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place, but in terms of “particular philosophical questions and concerns ”. . .

While the German, British and French romantics are all considered, the central protagonists in the following are the German romantics. Two reasons explain this focus: first, because it
has paved the way for the other romanticisms, German romanticism has a pride of place among the different national romanticisms . . . Second, the aesthetic outlook that was developed in Germany roughly between 1796 and 1801-02 —the period that corresponds to the heyday of what is known as “Early Romanticism ”. . .—offers the most philosophical expression of romanticism since it is grounded primarily in the epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, and political concerns that the German romantics discerned in the aftermath of Kant ’s philosophy.

According to the passage, recent studies on romanticism avoid “a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place ”because they:

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

The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally —or perhaps even knowingly —contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . .

Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: 300,000 tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, “The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate.”

It ’s not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate . . . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save 449 million lbs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. “Thrifting ”has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined ‘vintage ’, shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton.

So you ’re cool and you care about the planet; you ’ve killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with #vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective?

According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering 100,000 fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as 11,900 plastic grocery bags, and up to 40 per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . . So where does this leave second-hand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . . .

Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm B-Stock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, “high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability.”

According to the author, companies like ThredUP have not caught on in the UK for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that:

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Understanding romantic aesthetics is not a simple undertaking for reasons that are internal to the nature of the subject. Distinguished scholars, such as Arthur Lovejoy, Northrop Frye and  Isaiah Berlin, have remarked on the notorious challenges facing any attempt to define romanticism. Lovejoy, for example, claimed that romanticism is “the scandal of literary history  and criticism ”. . . The main difficulty in studying the romantics, according to him, is the lack of any “single real entity, or type of entity ”that the concept “romanticism ”designates. Lovejoy concluded, “the word ‘romantic ’has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing ”. . .

The more specific task of characterizing romantic aesthetics adds to these difficulties an air of paradox. Conventionally, “aesthetics ”refers to a theory concerning beauty and art or the  branch of philosophy that studies these topics. However, many of the romantics rejected the identification of aesthetics with a circumscribed domain of human life that is separated from  the practical and theoretical domains of life. The most characteristic romantic commitment is to the idea that the character of art and beauty and of our engagement with them should  shape all aspects of human life. Being fundamental to human existence, beauty and art should be a central ingredient not only in a philosophical or artistic life, but also in the lives of  ordinary men and women. Another challenge for any attempt to characterize romantic aesthetics lies in the fact that most of the romantics were poets and artists whose views of art  and beauty are, for the most part, to be found not in developed theoretical accounts, but in fragments, aphorisms and poems, which are often more elusive and suggestive than  conclusive.

Nevertheless, in spite of these challenges the task of characterizing romantic aesthetics is neither impossible nor undesirable, as numerous thinkers responding to Lovejoy ’s radical  skepticism have noted. While warning against a reductive definition of romanticism, Berlin, for example, still heralded the need for a general characterization: “[Although] one does have a  certain sympathy with Lovejoy ’s despair …[he is] in this instance mistaken. There was a romantic movement …and it is important to discover what it is ”. . .

Recent attempts to characterize romanticism and to stress its contemporary relevance follow this path. Instead of overlooking the undeniable differences between the variety of romanticisms of different nations that Lovejoy had stressed, such studies attempt to characterize romanticism, not in terms of a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place, but in terms of “particular philosophical questions and concerns ”. . .

While the German, British and French romantics are all considered, the central protagonists in the following are the German romantics. Two reasons explain this focus: first, because it
has paved the way for the other romanticisms, German romanticism has a pride of place among the different national romanticisms . . . Second, the aesthetic outlook that was developed in Germany roughly between 1796 and 1801-02 —the period that corresponds to the heyday of what is known as “Early Romanticism ”. . .—offers the most philosophical expression of romanticism since it is grounded primarily in the epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, and political concerns that the German romantics discerned in the aftermath of Kant ’s philosophy.

The main difficulty in studying romanticism is the:

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

The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally —or perhaps even knowingly —contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . .

Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: 300,000 tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, “The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate.”

It ’s not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate . . . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save 449 million lbs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. “Thrifting ”has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined ‘vintage ’, shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton.

So you ’re cool and you care about the planet; you ’ve killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with #vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective?

According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering 100,000 fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as 11,900 plastic grocery bags, and up to 40 per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . . So where does this leave second-hand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . . .

Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm B-Stock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, “high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability.”

Based on the passage, we can infer that the opposite of fast fashion, ‘slow fashion ’, would most likely refer to clothes that:

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

The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally —or perhaps even knowingly —contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . .

Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: 300,000 tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, “The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate.”

It ’s not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate . . . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save 449 million lbs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. “Thrifting ”has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined ‘vintage ’, shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton.

So you ’re cool and you care about the planet; you ’ve killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with #vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective?

According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering 100,000 fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as 11,900 plastic grocery bags, and up to 40 per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . . So where does this leave second-hand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . . .

Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm B-Stock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, “high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability.”

The act of “thrifting ”, as described in the passage, can be considered ironic because it:

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

The Second Hand September campaign, led by Oxfam . . . seeks to encourage shopping at local organisations and charities as alternatives to fast fashion brands such as Primark and Boohoo in the name of saving our planet. As innocent as mindless scrolling through online shops may seem, such consumers are unintentionally —or perhaps even knowingly —contributing to an industry that uses more energy than aviation. . . .

Brits buy more garments than any other country in Europe, so it comes as no shock that many of those clothes end up in UK landfills each year: 300,000 tonnes of them, to be exact. This waste of clothing is destructive to our planet, releasing greenhouse gasses as clothes are burnt as well as bleeding toxins and dyes into the surrounding soil and water. As ecologist Chelsea Rochman bluntly put it, “The mismanagement of our waste has even come back to haunt us on our dinner plate.”

It ’s not surprising, then, that people are scrambling for a solution, the most common of which is second-hand shopping. Retailers selling consigned clothing are currently expanding at a rapid rate . . . If everyone bought just one used item in a year, it would save 449 million lbs of waste, equivalent to the weight of 1 million Polar bears. “Thrifting ”has increasingly become a trendy practice. London is home to many second-hand, or more commonly coined ‘vintage ’, shops across the city from Bayswater to Brixton.

So you ’re cool and you care about the planet; you ’ve killed two birds with one stone. But do people simply purchase a second-hand item, flash it on Instagram with #vintage and call it a day without considering whether what they are doing is actually effective?

According to a study commissioned by Patagonia, for instance, older clothes shed more microfibres. These can end up in our rivers and seas after just one wash due to the worn material, thus contributing to microfibre pollution. To break it down, the amount of microfibres released by laundering 100,000 fleece jackets is equivalent to as many as 11,900 plastic grocery bags, and up to 40 per cent of that ends up in our oceans. . . . So where does this leave second-hand consumers? [They would be well advised to buy] high-quality items that shed less and last longer [as this] combats both microfibre pollution and excess garments ending up in landfills. . . .

Luxury brands would rather not circulate their latest season stock around the globe to be sold at a cheaper price, which is why companies like ThredUP, a US fashion resale marketplace, have not yet caught on in the UK. There will always be a market for consignment but there is also a whole generation of people who have been taught that only buying new products is the norm; second-hand luxury goods are not in their psyche. Ben Whitaker, director at Liquidation Firm B-Stock, told Prospect that unless recycling becomes cost-effective and filters into mass production, with the right technology to partner it, “high-end retailers would rather put brand before sustainability.”

The central idea of the passage would be undermined if:

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

RESIDENTS of Loz ère, a hilly department in southern France, recite complaints familiar to  many rural corners of Europe. In remote hamlets and villages, with names such as Le Bacon  and Le Bacon Vieux, mayors grumble about a lack of local schools, jobs, or phone and  internet connections. Farmers of grazing animals add another concern: the return of wolves. Eradicated from France last century, the predators are gradually creeping back to more  forests and hillsides. “The wolf must be taken in hand,”said an aspiring parliamentarian, Francis Palombi, when pressed by voters in an election campaign early this summer. Tourists  enjoy visiting a wolf park in Loz ère, but farmers fret over their livestock and their livelihoods. .
. .

As early as the ninth century, the royal office of the Luparii —wolf-catchers —was created in  France to tackle the predators. Those official hunters (and others) completed their job in the  1930s, when the last wolf disappeared from the mainland. Active hunting and improved  technology such as rifles in the 19th century, plus the use of poison such as strychnine later  on, caused the population collapse. But in the early 1990s the animals reappeared. They  crossed the Alps from Italy, upsetting sheep farmers on the French side of the border. Wolves  have since spread to areas such as Loz ère, delighting environmentalists, who see the  predators ’presence as a sign of wider ecological health. Farmers, who say the wolves cause  the deaths of thousands of sheep and other grazing animals, are less cheerful. They grumble  that green activists and politically correct urban types have allowed the return of an old  enemy.

Various factors explain the changes of the past few decades. Rural depopulation is part of the  story. In Loz ère, for example, farming and a once-flourishing mining industry supported a  population of over 140,000 residents in the mid-19th century. Today the department has fewer  than 80,000 people, many in its towns. As humans withdraw, forests are expanding. In  France, between 1990 and 2015, forest cover increased by an average of 102,000 hectares  each year, as more fields were given over to trees. Now, nearly one-third of mainland France  is covered by woodland of some sort. The decline of hunting as a sport also means more  forests fall quiet. In the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters regularly spent winter  weekends tramping in woodland, seeking boars, birds and other prey. Today the F éd ération  Nationale des Chasseurs, the national body, claims 1.1m people hold hunting licences, though the number of active hunters is probably lower. The mostly protected status of the wolf  in Europe —hunting them is now forbidden, other than when occasional culls are sanctioned  by the state —plus the efforts of NGOs to track and count the animals, also contribute to the  recovery of wolf populations.

As the lupine population of Europe spreads westwards, with occasional reports of wolves  seen closer to urban areas, expect to hear of more clashes between farmers and those who  celebrate the predators ’return. Farmers ’losses are real, but are not the only economic story. Tourist venues, such as parks where wolves are kept and the animals ’spread is discussed, also generate income and jobs in rural areas.

The inhabitants of Loz ère have to grapple with all of the following problems, EXCEPT: