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CAT VARC Practice Test 7

CAT VARC • Medium • 12 Questions
Progress 0 / 12
25:00

The Case for Boredom

Boredom has a bad reputation, treated as a problem to be solved with a screen. Yet psychologists who study it argue that boredom is a signal, much like hunger, that tells us our current activity no longer holds our interest and that we should look for something that does. Seen this way, the discomfort is useful, because it pushes us to seek challenges and to change course when we are stuck.

The trouble begins when the signal is silenced as soon as it appears. A person who reaches for a phone at the first flicker of boredom never learns what it feels like to stay with a dull moment, and never gets the chance to find out what the mind does when left alone. Several studies suggest that people who are given quiet intervals produce more original ideas afterwards than those who are constantly occupied, though the effect is modest and not found in every experiment.

None of this is an argument for pointless tedium. A boring job that offers no prospect of change is a source of stress, not creativity. The claim is narrower: that a certain amount of unstructured time, taken voluntarily, is a condition for some kinds of thinking, and that a culture which fills every gap with stimulation may be quietly removing it.

Passage 1 Questions Questions 1-4
1

Which of the following best states the author's central claim?

2

The comparison of boredom to hunger is used to suggest that boredom:

3

The author's attitude to the studies on quiet intervals is best described as:

4

With which of the following statements would the author most strongly disagree?

Why Tea Became Everyone's Drink

Tea was once a luxury confined to a few Chinese provinces and the households of European aristocrats. Within two centuries it had become the most widely consumed beverage in the world after water. The usual account credits trade and empire, and these were indeed essential: large companies moved tea across oceans and built plantations where the climate allowed. But supply alone does not create demand.

What turned a costly import into an everyday habit was a change in how people lived. Industrial work in Britain brought long shifts and crowded housing, and a hot, cheap drink offered warmth, a short break and, because water had to be boiled, relative safety from disease. Sugar, produced in colonial plantations at falling prices, made the bitter drink more appealing. In this way, a product of distant trade became tied to the rhythm of the working day.

Other countries followed their own paths. In India, tea was promoted by planters seeking new buyers, and the habit spread chiefly when vendors began selling cups cheaply at railway stations and street corners. The common thread is that tea won not because it was imposed on consumers but because it fitted the circumstances in which they already lived.

Passage 2 Questions Questions 5-8
5

The passage is mainly about:

6

The sentence 'But supply alone does not create demand' serves to:

7

Which of the following is NOT given as a reason for the spread of tea in Britain?

8

The example of India suggests that tea became popular there mainly because:

Type in the answer for the para-jumble and odd-sentence questions. For the rest, choose the best option.

Verbal Ability Questions Questions 9-12
9

The four sentences below, labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4, form a coherent paragraph when arranged in the right order. Type the correct order as a four-digit sequence (for example, 1234). 1. The towers still stand, but they now guide visitors more than ships. 2. Their light had to be tended through the night, which meant that someone's whole life was organised around it. 3. Lighthouses once stood at the edge of every busy coast, guarded by keepers who lived inside them. 4. Automatic lamps and satellite navigation have since made most keepers unnecessary.

10

Four of the five sentences below form a coherent paragraph; one is out of place. Type the number of the odd sentence. 1. Honeybees communicate the location of food through a movement known as the waggle dance. 2. The angle of the dance relative to vertical shows the direction of the food relative to the sun. 3. The duration of the waggle indicates how far the flowers are. 4. Honey has been used as a natural sweetener and preservative for thousands of years. 5. Other bees watch the dancer and then fly to the food source.

11

Choose the option that best summarises the following paragraph. Sports science once focused on producing the strongest and fastest athletes. Increasingly, teams also track sleep, stress and recovery, since an exhausted athlete is more likely to be injured. The change suggests that performance depends as much on how well an athlete recovers as on how hard the athlete trains.

12

Choose the option that best summarises the following paragraph. Open offices were meant to encourage conversation and collaboration. Several studies, however, find that workers in open plan spaces talk face to face less and send more messages, as people put on headphones to protect their concentration. The design has produced the opposite of its intended effect.

What is in this test

  • Passage 1, questions 1-4
  • Passage 2, questions 5-8
  • Verbal Ability, questions 9-12

12 questions in 25 minutes, marked +3 for a correct answer and -1 for a wrong multiple choice answer, with no penalty on type in the answer questions. When you finish you get your marks, a section breakdown and a written explanation for every question. Learn the method first on the topic practice pages and keep the formula sheet handy while you review.