English: Cloze Test for Upcoming Exams – Set 120

Directions: In the passage given below there are 10 blanks. Every blank has four alternative words given in options (A),(B),(C), and (D). You have to tell which option is appropriate according to the context. If all are appropriate then mark your answer as “E”.

Two years ago, Jon Hegeman, a farmer from Alabama, was struggling to expand his business. He could offer unglamorous but steady work. Potting plants and shifting them to a greenhouse paid $10.59 an hour. He couldn’t find workers; he even  ____1____ recruiting from a youth-detention programme.

Mr Hegeman stumbled on a solution when he met Sarah Williamson, of Protect the People (PTP), a charity for people affected by humanitarian disasters. With the International Organisation for Migration, PTP was trying a novel way of helping Haiti after its devastating earthquake in 2010: by taking Haitians to work temporarily in America. The idea ____2____ to Mr Hegeman, born to missionary parents on the same island (but in the Dominican Republic). With the agencies’ help, eight workers arrived in September 2015.

A new study by Michael Clemens and Hannah Postel of the Centre for Global Development compares those Haitians who ____3_____ visas through the project with unsuccessful applicants left behind. The benefits were mind-boggling: the temporary migrants earned a monthly income 1,400% higher than those back in Haiti. Most of their earnings flowed back home in the form of ____4____. For comparison, a 10-30% raise would normally be cause for celebration.

The sample for the study was small. But its findings match those for a similar scheme that offered temporary agricultural work in New Zealand to people from Tonga and Vanuatu. That policy was ____5____ by economists at the World Bank as “among the most effective development policies evaluated to date”.

This type of aid is controversial. The history of visas that tie workers to employers is ____6____ with tales of exploitation. Some fear the beneficiaries push locals’ wages down. More fundamentally, some philanthropists working in Haiti saw helping people leave Haiti as giving up on those left behind.

The biggest hurdle, however, was securing visas from the American authorities. PTP had ____7____ to help hundreds of Haitians get jobs. But most applications were rejected, either because the Department of Labour said an American could fill the job, or because employers did not meet the required standards. Of 238 candidates the charity prepared in 2016, all of whom had been matched to employers, only 58 made it to America.

Despite the spectacular benefits to those who managed to ____8____ , so few did that funding for the project dried up. Worse, those benefits were outweighed by the even more spectacular costs of managing the process. The extra income the Haitians ____9____ was less than the money put into the scheme.

Mr Clemens is sure that if the project could get big enough it would be cost-effective. After a winter break, Mr Hegeman’s employees are back from Haiti, “smiling from ear to ear”. He worries that, unless PTP  ____10____ the funding to help them navigate the bureaucracy, this year might be their last in Alabama.

  1. trecherous
    tried
    perfidious
    recreant
    All are correct
    Option B

     

  2. appealed
    disgusted
    refused
    repulsed
    All are correct
    Option A

     

  3. liable
    exposed
    vulnerable
    secured
    All are correct
    Option D

     

  4. remittances
    consignments
    remittances
    transfers
    All are correct
    Option E

     

  5. appraised
    assessed
    considered
    gauged
    All are correct
    Option E

     

  6. conventional
    delicate
    speckled
    indifferent
    All are correct
    Option C

     

  7. yearned
    wanted
    desired
    hoped
    All are correct
    Option E

     

  8. abide
    move
    pause
    come
    All are correct
    Option B

     

  9. ingenerate
    scattered
    earned
    deserved
    All are correct
    Option C

     

  10. secures
    losses
    detaches
    endangers
    All are correct
    Option A

     



 

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