Cloze Test

English Cloze Test Practice Set 75

In the passage given below there are 10 blanks, each followed by a word given in bold. Each blank has four alternative words given in options (A), (B),(C) and (D). You have to tell which word will best suit the respective blank. Mark (E) as your answer if the word given in bold after the blank is your answer i.e. “No change required”.

The symbol of the World Wide Fund for Nature is a giant panda. The panda’s black-and-white pelage certainly (1)________ (envelop) for a striking logo. But, though pandas are an (2)________ (protected) species, the cause of their endangerment is (3) a_________(exhilarating) quotidian: a loss of (4)_______(surrounding) as Earth’s human population increases. A better icon might be an elephant, particularly an African elephant, for elephants are not mere collateral (5)_______(damage) in humanity’s relentless (6)_________(expansion). Often, rather, they are deliberate targets, shot by (7)________(killers), who want their ivory; by farmers, because of the damage they do to crops; and by cattle herders, who see (8)________(it) as competitors for forage. In August 2016 the result of the Great Elephant Census, the most extensive count of a wild species ever attempted, suggested that about 350,000 African savannah elephants remain alive. This is down by 140,000 since 2007. The census, (9)________(took off) by a team led by Mike Chase, an ecologist based in Botswana, and paid for by Paul Allen, one of the founders of Microsoft, undertook almost 500,000km of aerial surveys to come to its (10)_________(result) though the team were unable to include forest elephants, a smaller, more reclusive type that live in west and central Africa, and which many biologists think a separate species.