TOEFL Questions

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Read the following passage carefully and choose the most appropriate answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

In short, to write a good letter you must approach the job in the lightest and most casual way. You must be personal, not abstract. You must not say, 'This is too small a thing to put down'. You must say, 'This is just the sort of small thing we talk about at home. If I tell them this they will see me, as it were they'll hear my voice, they'll know what I'm talking about'. That is the purpose of a letter. Carlyle had the trick to perfection. He is writing from Scotsbrig to his brother Alec in Canada and he begins talking about his mother. Good old Mother, he says, 'she is even now sitting at my back, trying at another table to write you a small word with her own hand; the first time she has tried such a thing for a year past. It is Saturday night, after dark; we are in the east room in a hard, dry evening with a bright fire to our two selves; Jenny and her Barns are 'scouring up things' in the other end of the house; and below stairs the winter operations of the farm go on, in a subdued tone; you can conceive the scene! How simple it is and yet how perfect. Can not you see Alec reading it in his far-off home and his eyes moistening at the picture of his old mother sitting and writing her last message to him on earth?

Abstract' in the passage means

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

A fool's paradise

In the following question, a word has been written in four different ways out of which only one is correctly spelt. Select the correctly spelt word.

A sentence has been given in Direct/Indirect Speech. Out of the four given alternatives, select the one which best expresses the same sentence in Indirect/Direct Speech.

He said to me, “I have often told you not to play in dark.”

In the following question, four words are given out of which one word is correctly spelt. Select the correctly spelt word.

In the following question, a word has been written in four different ways out of which only one is correctly spelt. Select the correctly spelt word.

In the following passage, some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

So, in asking you to consider the processes of reasoning we are ________ assuming that you never have reasoned--_________ the contrary we are fully aware that you in connection __________ every other person, have reasoned all your mature life. That is not the question. While everyone reasons, the fact is __________ true that the majority of persons reason incorrectly. Many persons reason ______________ lines far from correct and scientific, and suffer therefor and thereby.

have reasoned--_________ the contrary we

 In the following question, out of the given four alternatives, select the one which is opposite in meaning of the given word.

Melancholy