Cloze Test from the Economist -Part 7

Directions (1-7): In the passage given below, there are 10 blanks, each followed by a word given in bold and has four alternative words given in options (a), (b), (c) and (d). You have to tell which word will best suit in the given blank. Mark (e) as your answer if the word given in bold after the blank is your answer.

THE human face is a remarkable piece ------ (1) ------ work. The astonishing variety of facial features helps people recognise each other and is crucial to the formation of complex societies. So is the face’s ability to send emotional signals, whether through an -------- (2) -------- blush or the ------ (3) ------- of a false smile. People spend much of their waking lives, in the office and the courtroom as well as the bar and the bedroom, reading faces, for signs of attraction, hostility, trust and deceit. They also spend plenty of time trying to ------- (4) ---------. Technology is rapidly ------- (5) -------- with the human ability to read faces. In America facial recognition is used by churches to track worshippers’ attendance; in Britain, by retailers to spot past shoplifters. This year Welsh police used it to -------- (6) ------- a suspect outside a football game. In China, it verifies the identities of ride-hailing drivers, permits tourists to enter attractions and lets people pay for things with a smile. Apple’s new iPhone is expected to use it to unlock the home screen (see page 53). Set against human skills, such applications might seem incremental. Some breakthroughs, such as flight or the internet, obviously transform human abilities; facial recognition seems merely to encode them. Although faces are peculiar to individuals, they are also public, so technology does not, at first sight, intrude on something that is private. And yet the ability to record, store and analyse images of faces cheaply, quickly and on a vast scale promises one day to -------(7)-------- fundamental changes to notions of privacy, fairness and trust. Start with privacy. One big difference between faces and other biometric data, such as fingerprints, is that they work at a distance. Anyone with a phone can take a picture for facial-recognition programs to use. Find Face, an app in Russia compares snaps of strangers with pictures on VKontakte, a social network, and can identify people with a 70% accuracy rate. Facebook’s bank of facial images cannot be scraped by others, but the Silicon Valley giant could obtain pictures of visitors to a car showroom, say, and later use facial recognition to serve them ads for cars. Even if private firms are unable to join the dots between images and identity, the state often can. China’s government keeps a record of its citizens’ faces; photographs of half of America’s adult population are stored in databases that can be used by the FBI. Law-enforcement agencies now have a powerful weapon in their ability to track criminals, but at enormous potential cost to citizens’ privacy.

Question 1. 

Find out the appropriate word:
a) For
b) Of
c) On
d) At
e) In
Answer: B 
Explanation: Option b fits correctly in the context.

Question 2. 

Find out the appropriate word:
a) Spontaneous
b) Purposefully
c) Premeditative
d) Involuntary
e) Peremptory
Answer: D
Explanation: Involuntary means not made or done willingly or by choice. Option a and e are synonyms but grammatically not correct. Option b, c are antonyms.

Question 3. 

Find out the appropriate word:
a) Dodge
b) Artifice
c) Inefficacy
d) Ineptness
e) clumsiness
Answer: B
Explanation: Artifice means a clever often-underhanded means to achieve an end. Option a is synonyms but not fit in the context.

Question 4. 

Find out the appropriate word:
a) Dissimulate
b) Pretended
c) Dissimulated
d) Counterfeit
e) Pretending
Answer: A
Explanation: dissimulate means to disguise or conceal under a false appearance.

Question 5. 

Find out the appropriate word:
a) Catching up
b) Caught
c) Catch
d) Catch up
e) Caught up
Answer: A
Explanation:  “Catching up with” is grammatically correct.

Question 6. 

Find out the appropriate word:
a) Caught
b) Release
c) Arrested
d) Arrest
e) Emancipation
Answer: D
Explanation: option d fits in the context. 

Question 7. 

Find out the appropriate word:
a) Bring on
b) bring down
c) bring about
d) bring up
e) bring out
Answer: C
Explanation: Bring something about means cause it to happen. Bring on means lead to. Bring down means cause to be lower. Bring up means raise a child. Bring out means cause to appear clearly.