All 24 VARC questions in exam order, with the passage topic, what each question asks, the answer and the reasoning.
VA mix: 3 para summary, 0 para jumbles, 2 odd sentence out, 3 sentence placement. RC themes: Language, Arts & Literature; Science & Nature; Economics & Business; Technology & Society.
TopicRegulating biotechnology
AsksSummary of a paragraph on regulating biotechnology.
Correct option: Existing regulation is outdated, and it is doubtful that any flexible framework can anticipate every turn of so fast-moving a field.
C keeps both the outdated framework and the closing doubt. The closest option asserts that a new framework is urgently needed, a claim the passage doesn't make, and drops its scepticism.
Q2–Q5 · 4 questions · Except / NOT, Strengthen / weaken
AsksWhich scenario does NOT describe a loss caused by a language dying.
Correct option: A tribe merely dropping off a government list.
The passage counts lost environmental knowledge, emotional concepts and cultural expression as the costs of extinction, which the other options describe. An administrative listing change involves no such loss.
AsksThe scenario that would most seriously undermine the passage.
Correct option: Requiring liberal-arts students to become fluent in English and two of the world's biggest languages.
The passage pins its hopes on liberal-arts education fostering support for linguistic diversity. Steering that education toward dominant languages, the very forces that kill minority tongues, undercuts this. The other options only limit the benefits (few students go into linguistics, gains last a generation, recording freezes a language) without denying them.
AsksWhich option does NOT explain why South American languages survived better than North American ones.
Correct option: Giving locals jobs in the colonial administration.
Administrative jobs would push people toward the colonisers' language, the very pressure that drives extinction. The other options would plausibly help native languages survive, mirroring the contrast with child removals and killings in the north.
AsksWhich outcome the author does NOT attribute to liberal-arts education plus language preservation.
Correct option: Students setting up schools to save dying languages.
The passage credits communities, not students, with founding the schools. Better cross-cultural communication, learning other languages and insight into one's own biases are all claimed.
TopicSynapse formation and pruning
AsksFive sentences on how the brain's visual wiring develops before birth.
Logic: 4 → 2 → 5 → 3: eye–brain circuits form before birth → this matters for later sight → synapses are over-produced → then pruned to sharpen them.
The four sentences trace a developmental process. Sentence 1 zooms in on how a single synapse passes signals, a different level of detail, so it is the odd one.
TopicThe "tradwife" trend
AsksSummary of a paragraph on the "tradwife" phenomenon.
Correct option: Her traditional roles and vintage look throw the performed, superficial side of modern life into relief and unsettle current norms.
C makes her lifestyle itself the challenge, without assigning her an intent. The closest option treats her clothing as the mechanism, while the passage centres on her literal pursuit of an ideal.
TopicForecasting and experts
AsksFive sentences on amateur forecasters beating experts.
Logic: 1 → 5 → 4 → 3: forecasting needs no expertise → pooled amateurs beat pooled experts → a study shows forecasters beating intelligence analysts → even with classified data.
The four sentences build the case that non-experts forecast well. Sentence 2 explains why the intelligence community became interested, which breaks that chain, so it is the odd one.
Q9–Q12 · 4 questions · Author's view & tone, Except / NOT, Inference
AsksThe statement the author would reject (all the others he wouldn't disagree with).
Correct option: Keeping contamination to a minimum until life elsewhere is ruled out.
The author calls Martian microbes speculative and puts human exploration first, so this precautionary stance is the one he rejects. He backs zoning as a compromise, sees little lasting harm from past missions and worries about sterilisation costs.
AsksWhich reason for dismissing contamination worries the author does NOT give.
Correct option: That probes on the moon have had little environmental effect.
The author cites the lack of evidence of life on Mars, rivals ignoring the rules and earlier missions already contaminating. On the moon he only says it is too hostile for life, a different point.
AsksThe author's tone in the first paragraph.
Correct option: Sceptical of excessive sterilisation efforts for life that hasn't been shown to exist.
The paragraph frames planetary protection as costly and overdone. The author takes a clear critical position, so options suggesting ambivalence or admiration fail.
AsksWhat the contrasting reactions to the Chinese and Israeli lunar cases suggest.
Correct option: Scientific communities differ in how much they care about biological contamination of other worlds.
One case drew little protest while the other caused an uproar, pointing to differing sensitivities. The passage neither ranks animal contamination as worse nor alleges bias against any country.
Q13–Q16 · 4 questions · Word / phrase in context, Inference, Except / NOT
AsksHow the comparison of Moutai's hangover-free claim to a world-changing invention is meant.
Correct option: Figuratively: it stresses how significant the claim would be, not that it is a real invention.
The conditional wording marks it as hypothetical emphasis. Reading it literally, or as an equation of the two, misses the hedge.
AsksThe factor that both drives Moutai's success and could undermine it.
Correct option: Its appeal to older drinkers, while younger people's changing habits erode the drinking culture behind demand.
Older and middle-aged buyers power the market today, but millennials' lifestyles threaten the banquet culture that sustains it. The other options are presented as strengths only, not as double-edged.
AsksWhy Moutai's three success drivers are called an "unholy trinity".
Correct option: They defy conventional Western marketing wisdom.
Nationalism, elitism and appeal to older buyers break the standard playbook, which is the sense of "unholy". The option naming one factor ignores the other two.
AsksWhat a firm entering China's liquor market need NOT consider, per the passage.
Correct option: That marketing to the middle class brings easy profits.
The passage implies the middle-class segment is fiercely competitive, which is why Moutai targeted the very rich, so A is unsupported. The intense competition for middle-class buyers is itself a real consideration.
TopicThe "Napalm Girl" photograph
AsksWhere a sentence giving the photograph's place and date, and linking it to the war's civilian toll, fits.
Logic: Blank 3.
Just before blank 3 the paragraph describes soldiers walking behind the children, and right after it come the picture's title and nickname, which the sentence's "the picture" leads into. Other blanks would split the description of the scene or interrupt the closing lines on the title.
TopicMarxism and lyric poetry
AsksSummary of a paragraph on Marxism and lyric poetry.
Correct option: Lyric poetry's personal focus seems at odds with Marxism, yet it can be read as resistance to an oppressive culture.
C captures both the tension and its resolution (poetry as implicitly critical and utopian). The closest option sees the poetry as merely utopian and drops its critical edge.
TopicDrought in Somalia
AsksWhere a sentence on mass displacement, singling out pastoralists whose livelihoods are gone, fits.
Logic: Blank 4.
The sentence before blank 4 describes farmers and herders losing income and livestock, and the next continues with pastoralists who may never return home, so the sentence bridges them. Blank 3 would cut the drought's wider damage off from the economic losses that follow.
TopicInflation and return-to-office costs
AsksWhere a sentence on return-to-office costs straining employees' finances fits.
Logic: Blank 3.
Before blank 3 the paragraph notes that wages trail inflation, and after it comes "this is especially jarring", so the personal strain belongs in between. Blank 4 would sit between the savings point and the anecdote that illustrates it.
Q21–Q24 · 4 questions · Except / NOT, Author's view & tone
AsksWhich outcome of AI's command of language the author does NOT describe as dire.
Correct option: Using emotional bonds to deepen political polarisation.
The author warns that AI could form intimate bonds and shift people's views, but never ties this to polarisation. That consequence is added by the option.
AsksWhich is NOT a reason the author calls language civilisation's "operating system".
Correct option: That AI tools are what make language important.
Language shaping opinion, carrying values and culture, and creating laws, myths and stories are the author's reasons. AI is the threat to that system, not the reason language matters.
AsksThe statement the author would most likely agree with.
Correct option: Unregulated AI could erode language-based public conversation, making democracy a major casualty.
The author argues that democracy runs on conversation, which AI's manipulation of language could destroy. He calls worries about student essays minor, not unfounded, and shifts focus from physical harms rather than dismissing them.
AsksThe tone of the passage.
Correct option: Cautionary.
The author builds a reasoned warning about AI's effects and calls for prompt regulation. "Alarmist" overstates a measured argument, and "prescient" misses that the point is warning and remedy.
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