Questions

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives and click the button corresponding to it.

To know language is to be able to speak it; even a child who does not yet attend school can speak his or her language. In order to speak a language it is important to listen to it and to read a few pages in it everyday. A child picks up language and learns to talk just as (s)he learns to walk. Walking and talking comes naturally to a child as it grows. In our country, a child may grow up speaking more than one language, if these languages are spoken in the home and in the neighbourhood. we call this multilingualism. A child speaks a language or languages much before (s)he starts going to school. To know a language then is first of all to be able to speak it as easily and naturally as a tree year old child does. Later on the child will learn to read and write in that language. In order to read and write in a language, one has to speak it. But it is possible to speak a language but not able to read or write in it. A baby does not speak until it is nine months old but it understands a few words at six months of age. It has been listening ever since it was born, and even a little before that. So the first strategy in speaking a language is to listen.

One of the activities of a child before it is even born is

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives and click the button corresponding to it.

Fever in the season of dengue is sending Calcuttans scurrying to hospitals for admission, triggering a shortage of beds that has forced some private health care institutes to even postpone planned surgeries. Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals on the Bypass had 504 patients in its care as on Thursday of whom 70 had been admitted with fever. Belle Vue Clinic had 180 patients, 32 of them with dengue. Calcutta Medical Research Institute had 350 patients 60 of them with fever.

The number of people admitted for treatment of fever caused by dengue or any undiagnosed illness has been rising every day across hospitals for more than a fortnight.

"There has been heavy pressure on all private hospitals for admission of dengue and cases of unknown fever since the beginning of August. Now it is a surge," said Pradip Tondon, President of the Association of Hospitals of Eastern India.

In July, four to five patients were getting admitted with fever on an average in every hospital. The number has since ballooned with the Calcutta Municipal Corporation apparently in denial about the extent of the dengue outbreak and the Government focused on playing down the threat.

Such has been the rush of patients with fever that some hospitals are calling up people to postpone admissions planned in advance, mostly for surgeries. "We have told many people to come only when we call them to confirm availability of beds," said an official at Belle Vue.

The rush in hospitals has been rising

Out of the four alternatives, choose the one which can be substituted for the given words/sentences and click the button corresponding to it.

Land covered by water on three sides

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the word similar in meaning to the word given.
Reiterate

In the following questions, one part of the sentence may have an error. Find out which part of the sentence has an error and click the button corresponding to it. If the sentence is free from error, click the "No error" option.

Variety (A)/ is (B)/ spice of life (C)/ No Error (D)

In each of the questions, four alternatives are given for the Idiom/Phrase. Choose the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the Idiom/Phrase and click the button corresponding to it.

Call in question

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?

eBiz is one of the integrated services projects and part of the 31 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) under the National e-Govemance Plan of the Government of India. eBiz is being implemented under the guidance and aegis of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry by