B.Ing

Fery Martias

1200951192

TUGAS PERTEMUAN 13

Exercise : Reading Comprehension

Read the following passage and answer the questions by selecting one of the 4 choices given for the questions below.

A revolution in our understanding of the Earth is reaching its climax as evidence accumulates that the continents of today are not venerable landmasses but amalgams of other lands repeatedly broken up, juggled, rotated, scattered far and wide, then crunched together into new configurations like ice floes swept along the shore of a swift-flowing stream.

After considerable modification this became the now largely accepted concept “plate tectonics,” explaining much of what is observed regarding our dynamic planet. Some oceans, such as the Atlantic, are being split apart, their opposing coasts carried away from one another at one or two inches per year as lava wells up along the line of separation to form new seafloor. Other oceans, such as the Pacific, are shrinking as seafloor descends under their fringing coastlines or offshore arcs of islands.

The earth’s crust, in this view, is divided into several immense plates that make up the continents and seafloors, and that all float on a hot, plastic, subterranean “mantle.” What causes these plates to jostle each other, splitting apart or sliding under one another at their edges, is still a mystery to geologists: it may be friction from circulating rock in the Earth’s mantle, or it may be an effect produced by gravity.

Select your answer from the four choices given

1. What is the author’s main purpose in the passage?

(D) To explain the theory of plate tectonics

2. The author implies that people used to believe the continents were?

(B) rotating masses of rock

3. The first paragraph, the author mentions ice floes in order to

(A) illustrate the concept of how continents shift

4. The word “swept” as used in line 4 could best be replaced by which of the following?

(D) removed

5. According to...