All 24 VARC questions in exam order, with the passage topic, what each question asks, the answer and the reasoning.
VA mix: 2 para summary, 2 para jumbles, 2 odd sentence out, 2 sentence placement. RC themes: Language, Arts & Literature; History, Politics & Society; Philosophy, Psychology & Culture.
TopicPerfectionism and the attention economy
AsksSummary of a paragraph on perfectionism then and now.
Correct option: The pressure to look flawless is old, but it has shifted from blending in to standing out.
B captures the passage's central contrast between conformist perfection and today's demand for distinctiveness. The closest option lists supporting details (media ideals) but misses that historical shift.
Q2–Q5 · 4 questions · Main idea & summary, Detail, Except / NOT, Inference
AsksThe main difficulty in studying romanticism.
Correct option: The term has no single, unified referent, so its boundaries are unclear.
The passage presents the objection that "romanticism" names no one real thing as the core obstacle. The option about defining aesthetics in general is a different challenge the passage mentions.
AsksWhat the romantics believed about aesthetics.
Correct option: It runs through all of life, ordinary as well as philosophical.
The romantics saw art and beauty shaping everyone's life. Keeping aesthetics in a separate sphere is the conventional view they rejected.
AsksWhich statement is NOT supported by the passage.
Correct option: That recent studies try to refute the differences among national romanticisms.
Recent studies characterise romanticism while respecting national differences, not denying them. That characterisation is possible, that views appear in fragments and aphorisms, and that aesthetics isn't a separate domain are all supported.
AsksWhy recent studies avoid a single definition, period or place for romanticism.
Correct option: They frame it through shared philosophical questions instead.
The passage says these studies focus on the concerns that unite romantic thought. The option calling a general characterisation impossible contradicts the passage.
TopicE-waste recycling
AsksArrange four sentences on a scientist's plan for recycling e-waste.
Logic: E-waste is rich in materials but barely recycled (3) → a scientist thinks there's a new solution (1) → she plans micro-factories (4) → her robots and drones separate and melt parts (2).
Sentence 3 states the problem, and sentence 1 introduces the person the "she" and "her" in 4 and 2 refer to. Sentence 4 gives the plan, and sentence 2 elaborates how it works.
TopicWhat an argument is
AsksWhere a sentence saying arguments can, for theory's sake, be studied apart from real use fits.
Logic: Blank 3.
Before blank 3 come the ways premises can support a conclusion, and after it a "but" sentence says studying arguments in real communication is also valuable. The abstract view must come first for that "but" to contrast with it.
Q8–Q11 · 4 questions · Main idea & summary, Inference, Strengthen / weaken, Except / NOT
AsksThe best statement of the paradox in patrimony laws.
Correct option: Laws meant to protect cultural heritage ended up reducing new archaeological discoveries.
A survey in the passage shows discoveries falling sharply after such laws pass. The other options bring in auctioneers, neglected sites or withheld treasures, none of which the passage discusses.
AsksWhy some source countries value archaeological sites.
Correct option: New finds boost tourism and national pride.
The passage says discoveries draw visitors and build cultural pride. Strict laws are presented as a drawback that discourages discovery, not as a reason the sites matter.
AsksWhich statement, if true, would weaken the passage's central claim.
Correct option: An international body funds digs in poor, artefact-rich countries.
The claim is that strict laws cut off the foreign investment that drives discovery. Outside funding would break that link. Local museums displaying finds don't restore the foreign incentive.
AsksWhat the author would NOT advise poor, archaeologically rich nations to do.
Correct option: Leave foreign institutes to fund and run digs instead of funding their own.
The author suggests source countries can pay for their own excavations, as China's collaborative turn shows, so A goes against that advice. Collaboration on the Chinese model is something the author would endorse.
TopicArmed conflict and illicit arms
AsksWhere a sentence saying armed conflict weakens the state's monopoly on force and helps organised crime grow fits.
Logic: Blank 3.
Before blank 3 the paragraph shows crime's profits fuelling conflict, and the missing sentence adds the reverse direction, completing the two-way link. After it comes the "criminalised peace" left by surplus weapons.
TopicRecovery of island birds and plants
AsksSummary of a paragraph on an island recovering after pests were removed.
Correct option: With pests gone, the island's birds and plants are reviving together.
B keeps the cause (pest removal) and the shared recovery. The closest option describes a generic positive change without the cause.
TopicHiring and soft skills
AsksFive sentences on employers shifting from hard to soft skills.
Logic: 1 → 3 → 4 → 5: hiring less on technical skill alone → job ads seek soft skills → technical know-how still matters for some roles → a recruiter credits the pandemic.
The four sentences track the shift toward soft skills. Sentence 2, about dropping the search for one perfect candidate, is a general point that doesn't connect to that thread.
TopicThe Bo language of the Andamans
AsksFive sentences on the death of the last speaker of Bo.
Logic: 4 → 3 → 1 → 5: a language's last speaker dies → what Bo was → who she was and what she survived → she had no one to speak it with.
The four sentences stay on the language and its last speaker. Sentence 2 widens to the colonial decline of the whole native population, shifting the focus.
Q16–Q19 · 4 questions · Except / NOT, Author's view & tone, Purpose of example
AsksWhat the author does NOT credit to Pinker and the Greeks as part of rationality.
Correct option: That conscious, step-by-step reasoning is the main source of great human achievements.
The author argues that many breakthroughs come from sudden insight, intuition or dreams, so C contradicts the passage. Knowing the limits of one's knowledge, a moral dimension and judging arguments on their merits are all linked to rationality.
AsksWhy the author endorses Pinker's emphasis on logical reasoning.
Correct option: It equips people to deal with hard practical problems.
Sequential reasoning helps with real decisions under uncertainty. The author says Pinker under-explores moral education, so logic isn't presented as an ethical guide.
AsksWhy the author cites a dream-inspired chemical discovery and Mozart's symphonies.
Correct option: Great breakthroughs in science and art often come from sudden insight rather than step-by-step logic.
Both examples show insight arriving through intuition or dreams. Options that confine the point to science, or separate science from other fields, miss the contrast with logical reasoning.
AsksWhy the ancient Greek philosophers are mentioned.
Correct option: To show the moral side of rationality that Pinker's book leaves underdeveloped.
The Greeks are cited for linking moral character to rational behaviour, the gap the author sees. That one of them anticipates Pinker is a side remark, not the purpose.
TopicThe printing press and learning
AsksArrange four sentences on the printing press and learning.
Logic: Printing's first effect: reading replaced listening (2) → private study without teachers (4) → the shift was socially complex, literacy came late (3) → centuries later, schooling still rests on reading (1).
Sentence 2 names the first effect, and sentence 4 develops what it meant for learners. Sentence 3 adds the social complexity, and sentence 1 ("centuries later") brings the story to the present.
Q21–Q24 · 4 questions · Except / NOT, Strengthen / weaken, Purpose of example
AsksWhich is NOT presented as a cause of climate-policy failure.
Correct option: Decentralised renewable power.
Fossil-fuel interests, oil geopolitics and the sidelining of non-European views of nature are blamed. Decentralised solar appears only as a victim of utility companies' obstruction.
AsksWhat, if true, would make the reviewer's use of "who" for the Earth unsuitable.
Correct option: Non-European societies seeing the Earth as a lifeless resource.
The personification rests on non-European traditions that treat the Earth as alive, so evidence that they see it as inert removes the basis. Western science's view doesn't bear on those traditions.
AsksWhat cannot be inferred from the review.
Correct option: That academic discourse has always promoted environmental awareness.
The review says Euro-centred scholarship has largely drowned out challenges to colonial views of nature. Tying climate history to colonialism and valuing non-European perspectives are both supported.
AsksWhy the review discusses the colonisation of the Banda Islands.
Correct option: To show how colonialism produced and carried forward the mindset behind today's climate crisis.
The episode illustrates treating people and nature as things to exploit, an attitude that feeds the present crisis. It is one example in a longer history, not the first instance, and is about more than crops.
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