Here are Top 3 frequently asked Fill in the Blanks (Reading) questions in recent PTE Academic test (January 2021).

1.Fossil Fuels

But look beyond fossil fuels for the most intriguing trends. One is that the energy intensity of the world economy – the amount of energy it takes to produce one dollar’s worth of income – keeps falling, at a rate of about 2 percent. What this means is that even without any change in the relative shares of fossil-based and fossil-free sources in the world’s energy mix, we could have 2 percent annual economic growth without increasing carbon emissions from energy use. Of course that is not enough to address climate change and we need more economic growth than that. It is nonetheless a stunning number, which refutes the claim by some environmentalists that permanent economic growth is fundamentally incompatible with finite physical resources.

2.Music

Music is an important part of our lives. We connect and interact with it daily and use it as a way of projecting our self- identities to the people around us. The music we enjoy – whether it’s country or classical, rock n’ roll or rap – reflects who we are.

But where did music, at its core, first come from? It’s a puzzling question that may not have a definitive answer. One leading researcher, however, has proposed that the key to understanding the origin of music is nestled snugly in the loving bond between mother and child.

In a lecture at the University of Melbourne, Richard Parncutt, an Australian-born professor of systematic musicology, endorsed the idea that music originally spawned from ‘motherese’ – the playful voices mothers adopt when speaking to infants and toddlers.

As the theory goes, increased human brain sizes caused by evolutionary changes occurring between one and 2,000,000 years ago resulted in earlier births, more fragile infants and a critical need for stronger relationships between mothers and their newborn babies.

According to Parncutt, who is based at the University of Graz in Austria, ‘motherese’ arose as a way to strengthen this maternal bond and to help ensure an infant’s survival.

3.Foreign Policy

The foreign policy of a state, it is often argued, begins and ends with the border. No doubt an exaggeration, this aphorism nevertheless has an element of truth. A state’s relation with its neighbors, at least in the formative years, are greatly influenced by its frontier policy, especially when there are no settled borders. Empire builders in the past sought to extend imperial frontiers for a variety of reasons; subjugation of kings and princes to gain their allegiance (as well as handsome tributes or the coffers of the state), and, security of the core of the empire from external attacks by establishing a string of buffer states in areas Adjoining the frontiers. The history of British empire in India was no different. It is important to note in this connection that the concept of international boundaries (between two sovereign states), demarcated and delineated, was yet to emerge in India under Mughal rule.