UCAT Verbal Reasoning free practice questions with answers

Do not spend too long on any one passage. Base every answer on the passage alone, not on what you already know. Passage 1: Hedgerows Hedgerows are among the oldest man-made features of the British landscape. Some were planted as long ago as the Bronze Age, though most of those still standing were created between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, when landowners enclosed open fields. They marked boundaries, kept livestock in, and provided timber, fruit and fuel. In the decades after the Second World War, however, farmers were encouraged to grow larger crops on larger fields, and an estimated half of all hedgerows were removed in some regions. Ecologists now regard this as a serious loss: a single mature hedgerow can shelter hundreds of species of plants, insects, birds and mammals, and it acts as a corridor along which animals can travel between fragments of woodland. More recently, government schemes have paid farmers to plant and maintain hedgerows. Critics argue that payments are too small to persuade owners of the largest arable farms, where the benefits of removing hedgerows are greatest. Supporters reply that even a modest increase in hedgerow length would help wildlife, and that farmers who manage them well also gain from reduced soil erosion and shelter for crop-pollinating insects.

1. Most hedgerows still standing in Britain were planted during the Bronze Age.

A True

B False

C Can't tell

2. Hedgerows help animals move between areas of woodland.

A True

B False

C Can't tell

3. Farmers who plant hedgerows always earn more money than farmers who remove them.

A True

B False

C Can't tell VERBAL REASONING — 44 QUESTIONS 11 passages · 22 minutes