Contoh Soal Literasi Bahasa Inggris (UTBK) 2026 + Pembahasan

          We all know that mobile phones, cellphones, hand-phones whatever we want to call them (anti shouldn’t we all be calling them the same thing?) are changing our lives. But it takes a god old-fashioned survey to wake us up to the glaring reality: they have changed who we are. The mobile phone has indeed changed the way we behave. But perhaps we don’t realize how much we. have become its slave. Consider other elements of the Siemens 5 Mobile Survey: With the exception of Australia, in every, country surveyed the majority polled said they would go back for their phone if they left it at home (in Australia it was a respectable 39%). If you’ve endured the traffic in Indonesia the Philippines and India, you’ll kow what kind of sacrifice some two-thirds of those surveyed are making. I can’t think of anything I would go back for - except my wallet, maybe, or my clothes.

          And even if we remember to bring it, we’re still not happy. Many of us get anxious if it hasn’t rung or a text 10 massage hasn’t appeared for a while (a while being about an hour). Once again of those surveyed Indonesians (65%) and Filipinos (77%) get particularly jittery. Australians are more laid back about this (20%), but every other user in Asia seems to be glancing at the phone every few seconds. This statistic, I have to say is highly believable, and the instinct highly annoying. There’s nothing worse than chatting to someone who constantly checks his or her hand-phone.

           Then there’s the fact that mobile phones are not only enslaving the user, they’re trampling the rights of everyone else. Around a third of folk surveyed acknowledge they get so engrossed in mobile conversations that they’re often unaware of speaking loudly while discussing their private lives in public. At least most of us agree on one thing: With the exception of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the increasing use of mobile phones has led to a decline us courtesy and considerate behaviour.

        The bottom line here is that we are more than a litle bit out of control. Mobile phones arc great: but if we allow them to dominate our lives to this extent - interrupting conversations with those around us to take a call, staring at .our phones rather than relating to the world and people around us, sending flirty text massages to random numbers - then I can only assume that in another 10 years, society as we know it will no longer exist. All we’ll see is a blur of digital data going out and having all the fun, socializing, falling in love and taking sneaky pictures of each other.

Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE about cellphones?

          We all know that mobile phones, cellphones, hand-phones whatever we want to call them (anti shouldn’t we all be calling them the same thing?) are changing our lives. But it takes a god old-fashioned survey to wake us up to the glaring reality: they have changed who we are. The mobile phone has indeed changed the way we behave. But perhaps we don’t realize how much we. have become its slave. Consider other elements of the Siemens 5 Mobile Survey: With the exception of Australia, in every, country surveyed the majority polled said they would go back for their phone if they left it at home (in Australia it was a respectable 39%). If you’ve endured the traffic in Indonesia the Philippines and India, you’ll kow what kind of sacrifice some two-thirds of those surveyed are making. I can’t think of anything I would go back for - except my wallet, maybe, or my clothes.

          And even if we remember to bring it, we’re still not happy. Many of us get anxious if it hasn’t rung or a text 10 massage hasn’t appeared for a while (a while being about an hour). Once again of those surveyed Indonesians (65%) and Filipinos (77%) get particularly jittery. Australians are more laid back about this (20%), but every other user in Asia seems to be glancing at the phone every few seconds. This statistic, I have to say is highly believable, and the instinct highly annoying. There’s nothing worse than chatting to someone who constantly checks his or her hand-phone.

           Then there’s the fact that mobile phones are not only enslaving the user, they’re trampling the rights of everyone else. Around a third of folk surveyed acknowledge they get so engrossed in mobile conversations that they’re often unaware of speaking loudly while discussing their private lives in public. At least most of us agree on one thing: With the exception of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the increasing use of mobile phones has led to a decline us courtesy and considerate behaviour.

        The bottom line here is that we are more than a litle bit out of control. Mobile phones arc great: but if we allow them to dominate our lives to this extent - interrupting conversations with those around us to take a call, staring at .our phones rather than relating to the world and people around us, sending flirty text massages to random numbers - then I can only assume that in another 10 years, society as we know it will no longer exist. All we’ll see is a blur of digital data going out and having all the fun, socializing, falling in love and taking sneaky pictures of each other.

The phrase ‘trampling the rights of everyone else’ in lines 23-24 means ?

Text 1

        The first ancient DNA sequences to be gathered - 3400 base pairs from a 2400-year-old Egyptian mummy - were a proof of principle. A full genome sequence would be far more informative - perhaps explaining what killed King Tut, for instance. At present, Inuk's is the only published ancient human genome. However, a team led by Svante Paabo and Ed Green at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Gennany, will soon publish the complete genome sequence combined together from several Neanderthals, from between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago.
        Neanderthals are not the only hominids whose genomes could be sequenced, says Willerslev. Homo erectus, a species that emerged in Africa about 2 million years ago, survived in east Asia until less than 100,000 years ago. If well-preserved bones can be found, a genome might be possible, Willerslev says. Willerslev's laboratory has just received bones from Spain belonging to Homo heidelbergensis, the predecessor to Neanderthals. "We are basically starting on it right now," he says. If these genomes ever materialise - and that's a big if- they could lead to a better understanding of how different hominid species are related, and when and where they branched off. If the genetic infonnation is good enough, it may tell us something about the nature of past peoples - possibly even what they looked like. Ancient human genomes could give us insights into the evolution of our own species, explaining when genes involved in disease and higher cognitive skills emerged.
        But DNA is not forever. As it ages, its long strands shred into ever smaller pieces. Eventually they become too small to reassemble, and all information is lost. "There seems to be a time horizon of 100,000 years or so under most preservation conditions during which intact DNA survives," Green says. Stephan Schuster at Pennsylvania State University, who led the woolly mammoth genome project, thinks ancient genomics is already plateauing. Large chunks of Inuk's genome couldn't be filled in because his DNA had crumbled into small pieces. "We will face an uphill battle in trying to apply this to a large number of human remains," he says.

With reference to the whole text, the writer mainly deals with the topic on ...

Text I
The most common causes of tsunamis are underwater earthquakes. To understand underwater earthquakes, you must first understand plate tectonics. The theory of plate tectonics suggests that the lithosphere, or top layer of the Earth, is made up of a series of huge plates. These plates make up the continents and seafloor. They rest on an underlying viscous layer called the asthenosphere.
     Think of a pie cut into eight slices. The pie crust would be the lithosphere and the hot, sticky pie filling underneath would be the asthenosphere. On the Earth, these plates are constantly in motion, moving along each other at a speed of 1 to 2 inches (2.5-5 cm) per year. The movement occurs most dramatically along fault lines (where the pie is cut). These motions are capable of producing earthquakes and volcanism, which, when they occur at the bottom of the ocean, are two possible sources of tsunamis.
     When two plates come into contact at a region known as a plate boundary, a heavier plate can slip under a lighter one. This is called subduction. Underwater subduction often leaves enormous "handprint" in the form of deep ocean trenches along the seafloor. Iiv some cases of subduction, part of the seafloor connected to the lighter plate may “snap up” suddenly due to pressure from the sinking plate. This results in an earthquake. The focus of the earthquake is the point within the Earth where the rupture first occurs, rocks break and the
     first seismic waves are generated. The epicenter is the point on the seafloor directly above the focus.
When this piece of the plate snaps up and sends tons of rock shooting upward with tremendous force, the energy of that force is transferred to the water. The energy pushes the water upward above normal sea level. This is the birth of a tsunami. The earthquake that generated the December 26, 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean was a 9.0 on the Richter scale - one of the biggest in recorded history.

Which of the following best states the topic of this text?

The mam idea of this text is that...

Which of the following natural disasters happening in Indonesia is related to the fault movement of plate tectonics?

Bacalah teks berikut untuk menjawab soal pomor 1 sampai dengan nomor 5!

Physalia is half-boat, half-building, and all green. This mammoth aluminium concept by a Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut is meant to travel Europe’s rivers, making filthy water drinkable. At the same time, the ship generates more energy than it uses.

A coat of titanium dioxide paint brushed onto the silvery shell will neutralize pollution by absorbing ultraviolet rays, enabling a chemical reaction that decomposes organic and inorganic toxins. It is the same technology used in certain high-tech concrete that breaks down airborne particulates. As the vessel whips along, purifying waterways, it can draw on both solar and hydro power. Turbines under the hull transform water movement into electricity, and rooftop photovoltaic cells harness energy from the sun. The roof doubles as a nursery, whose carefully selected plants help filter river gunk, whether from the Thames, Rhine or Euphrates.

But Physalia is not just designed to be a working ship. The vessel will also be a floating museum of sorts. Scientists who study aquatic ecosystems can hole up in the dedicated “Earth garden” lab, and tourists can visit temporary exhibits in a “water garden” or settle into a submerged lounge that could easily pass for a London nightclub. Callebaut, 33, dreamed up the idea after last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen shone a long-overdue spotlight on global water issues. He has some superior terms for his project: It is a “nomadic hydrodynamic laboratory,” a “fragment of living earth,” and a “floating agora” on a “geopolitical scale.” Others might just call it a cool idea.

It is clear from the passage that the author of the passage above attempts to ...

Numbers 1 to 3 refer to the following passage. Choose the most appropriate alternative.

The option that best completes (31) is ....

Numbers 1 to 3 refer to the following passage. Choose the most appropriate alternative.

Passage 1

â–  Over this decade, employment in jobs requiring education beyond a high school diploma will grow more rapidly than employment in jobs that do not; of the 30 fastest growing occupations, more than half require post-secondary education. With the average earnings of college graduates at a level that is twice as high as that of workers with only a high school diploma, higher education is now the clearest (1) ... into the middle class.

In higher education, the U.S. has been outpaced internationally. While the United States ranks ninth in the world in the proportion of young adults enrolled in college, we have fallen to 16th in the world in our share of certificates and degrees awarded to adults ages 25-34 lagging behind Korea, Canada, Japan, and other nations. While more than half of college students graduate within six years, the (2) ... for low-income students is around 25 percent.

Acknowledging these factors early in his adminis­tration, President Obama challenged every American to commit to at least one year of higher education or post­secondary training. (3) ... that America would once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.

The option that best completes (1) is ....

Text 1

The first ancient DNA sequences to be gathered - 3400 base pairs from a 2400-year-old Egyptian mummy

- were a proof of principle. A full genome sequence would be far more informative - perhaps explaining

what killed King Tut, for instance. At present, Inuk's is the only published ancient human genome. However,

a team led by Svante Paabo and Ed Green at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

5    in Leipzig, Germany, will soon publish the complete genome sequence combined together from several Neanderthals, from between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago.

     Neanderthals are not the only hominids whose genomes could be sequenced, says Willerslev. Homo

erectus, a species that emerged in Africa about 2 million years ago, survived in east Asia until less than

100,000 years ago. If well-preserved bones can be found, a genome might be possible, Willerslev says.

10    Willerslev's â–  laboratory has just received bones from Spain belonging to Homo heidelbergensis, the predecessor to Neanderthals. "We are basically starting on it right now," he says. If these genomes ever

materialise - and that's a big if- they could lead to a better understanding of how different hominid species

are related, and when and where they branched off. If the genetic information is good enough, it may tell us something about the nature of past peoples - possibly even what they looked like. Ancient human genomes

15     could give us insights into the evolution of our own species, explaining when genes involved in disease and higher cognitive skills emerged.

            But DNA is not forever. As it ages, its long strands shred into ever smaller pieces. Eventually they

become too small to reassemble, and all information is lost. "There seems to be a time horizon of 100,000

years or so under most preservation conditions during which intact DNA survives," Green says. Stephan

20  Schuster at Pennsylvania State University, who led the woolly mammoth genome project, thinks ancient genomics is already plateauing. Large chunks of Inuk's genome couldn't be filled in because his DNA had crumbled into small pieces. "We will face an uphill battle in trying to apply this to a large number of human remains," he says.

With reference to the whole text, the writer mainly deals with the topic on ...

Sampai clengan nomor 5!

Physalia is half-boat, half-building, and all green. This mammoth aluminium concept by a Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut is meant to travel Europe’s rivers, making filthy water drinkable. At the same time, the ship generates more energy than it uses.

A coat of titanium dioxide paint brushed onto the silvery shell will neutralize pollution by absorbing ultraviolet rays, enabling a chemical reaction that decomposes organic and inorganic toxins. It is the same technology used in certain high-tech concrete that breaks down airborne particulates. As the vessel whips along, purifying waterways, it can draw on both solar and hydro power. Turbines under the hull transform water movement into electricity, and rooftop photovoltaic cells harness energy from the sun. The roof doubles as a nursery, whose carefully selected plants help filter river gunk, whether from the Thames, Rhine or Euphrates.

But Physalia is not just designed to be a working ship. The vessel will also be a floating museum of sorts. Scientists who study aquatic ecosystems can hole up in the dedicated “Earth garden” lab, and tourists can visit temporary exhibits in a “water garden” or settle into a submerged lounge that could easily pass for a London nightclub. Callebaut, 33, dreamed up the idea after last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen shone a long-overdue spotlight on global water issues. He has some superior terms for his project: It is a “nomadic hydrodynamic laboratory,” a “fragment of living earth,” and a “floating agora” on a “geopolitical scale.” Others might just call it a cool idea.

It is clear from the passage that the author of the passage above attempts to....

What does the word ‘it' in ‘Others might just call it a cool idea’ (paragraph 3, last line) refer to?

Text 1

It is common knowledge that as women get older, pregnancy becomes a riskier enterprise. Advanced maternal age is linked to a number of developmental disorders in children, such as Down’s syndrome. Now, a study has confirmed that older mothers are more likely to give birth to a child with autism, too. The authors of the epidemiological study, published February 8 in Autism Research, examined the parental age of more than 12,000 children with autism and nearly five million ‘control’ children between 1990 and 1999, all living in California. The researchers found that mothers over 40 had 51 percent higher risk than mother under 25.

Autisma developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication appears to be on the rise. The U. S Center for Disease Control and Prevention now estimates that as many as one in 110 children in the U. S. has an autistic spectrum disorder-a group of developmental disorders including autism, Asperger’s disorders in California in 2007 was 12 times that form 1987, representing an average annual growth of 13 percent, according to a report from the California Department of Developmental Services. Only a fraction of these extra cases can be explained by changes to diagnostic criteria and earlier diagnosis.

Maternal age is also increasing in the U. S. A California-based study reported a three-fold increase in the number of births to women aged 40 to 44 between 1982 and 2004. But this trend toward delayed childbearing accounted for less than 5 percent of the total increase in autism diagnosis in California over the decade, according to the study - a finding that surprised Janie Shelton, a doctoral student in University of California, Davi’s Department of Public Health Sciences and the study’s lead author. ‘I would have expected to see more of a contribution, because age is risk factor and women are having kids later,’ she says. Earlier work had suggested that both maternal and paternal ages are independently associated with autism risk. But the currently study found that paternal age is only a risk factor when the mother is under 30.

It can be concluded from the text that....

Text 1

Passage A

Secondhand smoke is the smoke that is exhaled or that comes from the burning end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar. Secondhand smoke can come in through cracks in the walls. It can hang around in hallways and doorways where people have been smoking.

Breathing someone else’s smoke can be deadly, especially if you live or work in a place where people smoke. That is why it is so important for smokers to go all the way outside if they want a cigarette. When one person smokes inside, it can cause problems for everyone else.

Children who are around tobacco smoke in their homes have more health problems like asthma and ear infections. They are sicker and stay in bed more. They miss more school days than children whose homes are smoke-free. Babies who live in homes with secondhand smoke are more likely to die as infants than other babies.

Passage B

The first conclusive evidence on the danger of passive smoking came from Takeshi Hirayama’s study in 1981 on lung cancer in non smoking Japanese women married to men who smoked. Although the tobacco industry immediately launched a multimillion dollar campaign to discredit the evidence, dozens of further studies have confirmed the link. Research then broadened into other areas and new scientific evidence continues to accumulate.

The risk of lung cancer in nonsmokers exposed to passive smoking is increased by between 20 and 30 percent, and the excess risk of heart disease is 23 percent. Children are at particular risk from adults’ smoking. Adverse health effects include pneumonia and bronchitis, coughing and wheezing, worsening of asthma, middle ear diseases, and possibly neuro-behavioural impairment and cardiovascular diseases in adulthood. A pregnant woman’s exposure to other people’s smoking can harm her foetus. The effects are compounded when the child is exposed to passive smoking after birth.

Both passages can be best summarized as which of the following?

Passage 1

Over this decade, employment in jobs requiring education beyond a high school diploma will grow more rapidly than employment in jobs that do not; of the 30 fastest growing occupations, more than half require post-secondary education. With the average earnings of college graduates at a level that is twice as high as that of workers with only a high school diploma. Higher education is now the clearest (1)... into the middle class.

In higher education, the U.S. has been outpaced internationally. While the United States ranks ninth in the world in the proportion of the young adults enrolled in college, we have fallen to 16th in the world in our share certificates and degrees awarded to adults ages 25-43—lagging behind Korea, Canada, Japan, and other nations. While more than half of college students graduate within six years, the (2)... for low-income students is around 25 percent.

Acknowledging these factors in his early Administration, President Obama challenged every American to commit to at least one year of higher education or post-secondary training. (3)... that America would once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.

The option that best completes (1) is....

Passage 2

The U.S. team is one of three digging into what is now known to be a vast system of lakes and streams deep below the surface of Antartica. A British team attempting to drill into much deeper Lake Ellsworth had return home in December because of equipment failure, but a Russian team is also at work now retrieving a core of water from Lake Vostok. With much fanfare, the Lake Vostok core was pulled up last year from more than 2.5 miles (4 Kilometers) from the frigid surface. Vostok is much deeper and larger than any other Antartic lake, and both it and Ellsworth lie under much colder ice and believed to have less subsurface water flowing in and out than does Whillans.

The existence of subglacial lakes and streams in Antartica is a relatively new discovery, and the size of this wet world under the ice has only been grasped in recent years. Helen Fricker, a glaciologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a principal investigator of the Whilllans team, first described Lake Whillans in 2007.

Using satellite data, she and her colleagues discovered a periodic rising and falling of the ice surface above the Whillans Ice streams between 2003 and 2006, and concluded that a lake was likely underneath.

Why does the author state, “...she and her colleagues discovered a periodic rising and falling of the ice surface above the Whillans Ice streams between 2003 and 2006...” (Paragraph 3, line 13)?

Text 1

After rising steadily for almost a century, standards of education in the public schools of Europe and North America have leveled off, and in the opinion of many parents and employers, are actually falling. More and more children are leaving school with little more than basic knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and illiteracy is becoming a social problem once again. With dropout rates of twenty-seven percent in high school and fifty percent in colleges, the American education system is clearly in trouble; European dropout rates, though lower than those of U.S., are rising too.

Various factors have been blamed for the apparent decline in educational standards. Some people say that over-crowding and lack of discipline are major factors. Others maintain that subjects like art and drama have been overemphasized at the expense of more practical subjects. The negative influence of television is frequently mentioned as a reason for growing illiteracy. Many teachers and principals, however, insist that the problem is not of falling standards but of rising expectations on the part of parents and employers.

Whether or not standards in public schools are actually failing, many parents feel that the only way to secure a good education for their children is to send them to private schools, which generally have smaller classer and stricter discipline. The popularity of such schools is going steadily, despite the high tuition fees. In the United States, for example, eleven percent of all school children attend private schools; in France, over sixteen percent do so.

The text is about....

Passage A
It is standard practice in a hospital setting particularly among Western cultures, to separate mothers and their newborns. Separation is also common for babies under medical distress or premature babies, who may be placed in an incubator.

Human are the only mammals who practice such maternal-neonate separation, but its physiological impact on the baby has been unknown until now. Researchers measured heart rate variability in 2-day-old sleeping babies for one hour each during skin-to-skin contact with mother and alone in a cot next to mother's bed. Neonatal autonomic activity was 176% higher and quiet sleep 86% lower during maternal separation compared to skin-to-skin contact.

Dr. John Krytal, Editor of Biological Pyschiactry, commented on the study's findings: "Maternal separation suggests that it is major physiologic stressor for the infant. "Thus, as futher evidenceemerges, the challenge to doctors will be to incorporate skin-to-skin contact into routine treatment whilst still safely providing the other elements of newborn medical care.

Passage B
In study of 29 father-infant pairs, full-term healthy newborns born by planned cesarean section were randomized to be place either skin-to-skin on their father's chest or beside their father in a crib. The infants in the skin-to-skin group stopped crying and were calmer compared to infants in the crib group. A father should therefore be regarded as the primary caregiver for the baby when a mother is not available immediately following a birth.

Early skin-to-skin contact between a mother and her baby may need to be limited for practical and medical safety reasons. "After births with complication, mothers are often not available to their babies for contact," says principal author Kerstin Erlandsson. The study shows that a father can soothe his newborn as effectively as a mother, and more effectively than if baby is placed in a crib during the first two hours after birth.

Which of the following themes is mainly discussed in both passages?

Passage A
It is standard practice in a hospital setting particularly among Western cultures, to separate mothers and their newborns. Separation is also common for babies under medical distress or premature babies, who may be placed in an incubator.

Human are the only mammals who practice such maternal-neonate separation, but its physiological impact on the baby has been unknown until now. Researchers measured heart rate variability in 2-day-old sleeping babies for one hour each during skin-to-skin contact with mother and alone in a cot next to mother's bed. Neonatal autonomic activity was 176% higher and quiet sleep 86% lower during maternal separation compared to skin-to-skin contact.

Dr. John Krytal, Editor of Biological Pyschiactry, commented on the study's findings: "Maternal separation suggests that it is major physiologic stressor for the infant. "Thus, as futher evidenceemerges, the challenge to doctors will be to incorporate skin-to-skin contact into routine treatment whilst still safely providing the other elements of newborn medical care.

Passage B
In study of 29 father-infant pairs, full-term healthy newborns born by planned cesarean section were randomized to be place either skin-to-skin on their father's chest or beside their father in a crib. The infants in the skin-to-skin group stopped crying and were calmer compared to infants in the crib group. A father should therefore be regarded as the primary caregiver for the baby when a mother is not available immediately following a birth.

Early skin-to-skin contact between a mother and her baby may need to be limited for practical and medical safety reasons. "After births with complication, mothers are often not available to their babies for contact," says principal author Kerstin Erlandsson. The study shows that a father can soothe his newborn as effectively as a mother, and more effectively than if baby is placed in a crib during the first two hours after birth.

Which of the following statements are true according to both passage?