English Questions

A passage is given with 5 questions following it. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

Due to poor rainfall over the past few months, the vadu mangai season is expected to be short this year. There are two distinct varieties available in the vicinity of Coimbatore. The closest to Coimbatore, and the one that appears in the markets first, is the Thadagam variety. The second and more popular variety is the one from the Thirumoorthy Hills, near Udumalpet. Representatives from commercial pickle brands whisk these mangais away in big lots directly from the wholesalers. Only a small portion of the year's harvest trickles down to the local markets. Small vendors bring sacks full of these tiny tender mangoes to one particular street corner in Ram Nagar during the season. The corner of Rajaji Road and Sathyamurthy Road plays host to these vendors from as early as 7.00 am every day. Depending on the quantity they have, the mangais are available until around 11.00 am. If the vendors have a good day and their produce is sold quickly, they pack up and leave even as early as 9.00 am.

What do you think 'Thadagam' is from the passage?

A passage is given with 5 questions following it. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives and click the button corresponding to it.

Man's attitude to various animals changed many times in the course of centuries. From indifference or practicality, he went on to adoration and deification, and then to hatred. Ancient Egyptians, for example, highly appreciated the cat's ability to destroy rodents. The cat was much superior in this respect to the grass­snakes and weasels they had kept in their houses before. These proved unable to cope with hordes of rats which invaded Egypt from Asia. So the cat, a very useful animal, was ranked as a sacred animal and one of the most important animals, too. The goddess of the Moon, fertility and child­birth, Bast herself was portrayed by the Egyptians as a woman with a cat's head.

Sumptuous temples were built to this goddess, where cats were kept in luxury and fed the choicest of foods. They had their own priests and votaries, more numerous as a matter of fact than any other sacred animal could boast. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the festival in the city of Bubastis, which had a temple dedicated to cats, was attended by as many as 700 thousand, who brought their offerings to the goddess in the shape of figurines of her made of gold, silver and bronze and adorned with precious stones.

The word 'deification' in the passage means _____ .

Each item consists of six sentences of a passage. The first and sixth sentences are given in the beginning as S1 and S6. The middle four sentences in each have been jumbled up and labelled as P, Q, R and S. You are required to find the proper sequence of the four sentences and mark your response accordingly on the Answer Sheet.

S1 :The weak have no place here, in this life or in any other life. Weakness leads to slavery.
S6 :This is the great fact : strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery : weakness is death.
P :They dare not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened.
Q : Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death.
R : But they cannot harm us unless we become weak, until the body is ready and predisposed to receive them.
S :There are hundreds of thousands of microbes surrounding us.The correct sequence should be

Choose the correctly spelt word:-

Look at the underlined part of each sentence. Below each sentence are given three possible substitutions for the underlined part. If one of them (a), (b) or (c) is better than the underlined part, indicate your response on the Answer Sheet against the corresponding letter. If none of the substitutions imporves the sentence, indicate (d) as your response on the Answer Sheet.

The chairman with the other members of the board are touring Europe these days.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

The conclusion of World Trade Organization’s 11th biennial ministerial conference at Buenos Aires was worrisome. From an Indian standpoint, there was no loss as status quo continues in the most important issue: the right to continue the food security programme by using support prices. But the inability of the negotiators to reach even one substantive outcome suggests that WTO’s efficacy is under question. As a 164-country multilateral organisation dedicated to crafting rules of trade through consensus, WTO represents the optimal bet for developing countries such as India. Strengthening WTO is in India’s best interest.

Perhaps the biggest threat to WTO’s efficacy today is the attitude of the US. The world’s largest economy appears to have lost faith in the organisation and has begun to undermine one of its most successful segments, the dispute redressal mechanism. This is significant as the US has been directly involved in nearly half of all cases brought to WTO. Separately, large groups of countries decided to pursue negotiations on e-commerce, investment facilitation and removal of trade obstacles for medium and small scale industries. By itself this should not weaken WTO. But it comes at a time when there is growing frustration with gridlock at WTO.

India did well to defend its position on its food security programme. The envisaged reform package which will see a greater use of direct cash transfers to beneficiaries will be in sync with what developed countries do. But it’s important for India to enhance its efforts to reinvigorate WTO. In this context, India’s plan to organise a meeting of some countries early next year is a step in the right direction. WTO represents the best available platform to accommodate interests of a diverse set of nations. Therefore, India should be at the forefront of moves to fortify it.

Which of the following nation is keen to fortify its interest on WTO platform?

Each item consists of six sentences of a passage. The first and sixth sentences are given in the beginning as S1 and S6. The middle four sentences in each have been jumbled up and labelled as P, Q, R and S. You are required to find the proper sequence of the four sentences and markyour response accordingly on the Answer Sheet.

S1 :The dawn of the information age opened up great opportunities for the beneficial use of data.
S6 :To some, in this era of Big Data analytics and automated, algorithm-based processing of zettabytes of information, the fear that their personal data may be unprotected may conjure up visions of a dystopian world in which individual liberties are compromised.
P :But it is the conflict between the massive scope for progress provided by digital era and the fear of loss of individual autonomy that is foregrounded in any debates about data protection laws.
Q : It also enhanced the perils of unregulated and arbitrary use of personal data.
R : It is against this backdrop that the White Paper made public to elicit views from the public on the shape and substance of a comprehensive data protection law assumes significances.
S :Unauthorised leaks, hacking and other cyber crimes have rendered databases vulnerable.

The correct sequence should be

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

The Amazon basin has been continuously inhabited for at least 10, 000 years, possibly more. Its earliest inhabitants were stone-age peoples, living in hundreds of far-flung tribes, some tiny, others numbering in the tens of thousands. It was from the west that Europeans explorers first arrived. In 1541 a Spanish expedition from Quito, led by Gonzalo Pizarro, ran short of supplies while exploring east of the Andes in what is today Peru. Pizarro’s cousin Francisco de Orellana offered to take 60 men along with the boats from the expedition and forage for supplies. De Orellana floated down the Rio Napo to its confluence with the Amazon, near Iquitos (Peru), and then to the mouth of the Amazon. Along the way his expedition suffered numerous attacks by Indians; some of the Indian warriors, they reported, were female, like the Amazons of Greek mythology, and thus the world’s greatest river got its name. No one made a serious effort to claim this sweaty territory, however, until the Portuguese built a fort near the mouth of the river at Belém in 1616, and sent Pedro Teixeira up the river to Quito and back between 1637 and 1639. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Portuguese bandeirantes (groups of roaming adventurers) penetrated ever further into the rain forest in pursuit of gold and Indian slaves, exploring as far as present-day Rondônia, and the Guaporé and Madeira river valleys. Amazonian Indians had long used the sap from rubber trees to make waterproof bags and other items. European explorers recognized the potential value of natural latex, but were unable to market it because it tended to grow soft in the heat, or brittle in the cold, and thus had limited appeal outside the rain forest. However, in 1842 American Charles Goodyear developed vulcanization (made natural rubber durable) and in 1890 Ireland’s John Dunlop patented pneumatic rubber tires. Soon there was an unquenchable demand for rubber in the recently industrialized USA and Europe, and the price of rubber on international markets soared. As profits skyrocketed, so did exploitation of the seringueiros, or rubber tappers, who were lured into the Amazon, mostly from the drought-stricken northeast, by the promise of prosperity only to be locked into a cruel system of virtual slavery dominated by seringalistas (owners of rubber-bearing forests). Rigged scales, hired guns, widespread illiteracy among the rubber tappers, and monopoly of sales and purchases all combined to perpetuate the workers’ debt and misery. In addition, seringueiros had to contend with jungle fevers, Indian attacks and all manner of deprivation.

Where did De Orellano float down to for its confluence with the Amazon?