English Reading Comprehension

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Literary imagination has always challenged philosophy, as it has in the modern age, with its philosophies utopianism and disenchantment. The contest between two has been raging in Russia for some two hundred years, often taking the form of an antagonism between modernity and tradition, and it cuts through the heart of Tolstoy's fiction Tolstoy's fiction grew originally out of his diaries, in which he tried to understand his own feelings and actions so as to control them. Tolstoy's major work, War and Peace, appeared between the years 1865 and 1869. The epic tale depicted the story of five families against the background of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

Tolstoy's other masterpiece, Anna Karenina (1873-77), told a tragic story of a married woman, who follows her lover, but finally commits suicide. Tolstoy juxtaposed in the work crises of family life with the quest for the meaning of life.

Of Tolstoy's two epic novels, the War and Peace has always been more popular than Anna Karenina, perhaps because it includes features of mythology that are accessible to readers. Though this story primarily deals with the interactions between various members of the Russian aristocracy before and during the war, the novel is interspersed with evenly spaced historical analysis by Tolstoy concerning such things as causes of war, sources of secular power, motivations for specific actions or instances of inaction during the French-Russian conflict, and explanations of societal phenomenon expressed vis-à-vis the mob.

Its subject (to use Bezukhov’s categories) is "life-as-spectacle," for readers, diverted by their various incidents, observe its hero In this sprawling epic narrative Tolstoy manages to accurately describe the trials and tribulations of life, brilliantly deconstruct the mythic figure of Napoleon, and attempt to explain the meaning of existence.

Napoleon primarily from without. The tragic Anna Karenina, however, presents “life-as-experience”: readers are asked to identify with the mind of Oblonsky, whose motivations render him not particularly likable hero. Death is an integral part of everybody's life and no matter who it is, everybody fears death. To come to terms with death is something that takes a lot of courage and a full understanding of oneself. Tolstoy in his novel, has revealed to us the effect that death can have on a person and advocates us to not succumb to the daily life of the world which we live in, because it is all a delusion. Yet if we live as naturally as possible, we can get a better grasp on the true essence of life as Levin does in the novel. He finds joy out of working and enjoying the fruits of his labor, instead of indulging himself in the materialism of the hypocritical aristocrats.

In addition, Anna Karenina more than the War and Peace, suggests the complexity of the gods’ involvement in human actions, and to the extent that modern readers find this complexity a needless complication, the Anna Karenina is satisfying than the War and Peace, with its simpler scheme of divine justice. Finally, since the Anna Karenina presents a historically verifiable action – Leningrad siege, the novel raises historical questions that are absent from the War and Peace's blithely imaginative world.

Leo Tolstoy writes from the perspective of a country in turmoil and how his social commentary is then closely intertwined with the more general search for personal fulfillment. The result is the timeless quality of the works that are still enjoyed by a wide readership today. It explores how it is this timeless quality of his work, based upon his search for meaning in life, that most prominently begs for Tolstoy's inclusion in today's literary canon.

The passage is primarily concerned with __________________.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Literary imagination has always challenged philosophy, as it has in the modern age, with its philosophies utopianism and disenchantment. The contest between two has been raging in Russia for some two hundred years, often taking the form of an antagonism between modernity and tradition, and it cuts through the heart of Tolstoy's fiction Tolstoy's fiction grew originally out of his diaries, in which he tried to understand his own feelings and actions so as to control them. Tolstoy's major work, War and Peace, appeared between the years 1865 and 1869. The epic tale depicted the story of five families against the background of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

Tolstoy's other masterpiece, Anna Karenina (1873-77), told a tragic story of a married woman, who follows her lover, but finally commits suicide. Tolstoy juxtaposed in the work crises of family life with the quest for the meaning of life.

Of Tolstoy's two epic novels, the War and Peace has always been more popular than Anna Karenina, perhaps because it includes features of mythology that are accessible to readers. Though this story primarily deals with the interactions between various members of the Russian aristocracy before and during the war, the novel is interspersed with evenly spaced historical analysis by Tolstoy concerning such things as causes of war, sources of secular power, motivations for specific actions or instances of inaction during the French-Russian conflict, and explanations of societal phenomenon expressed vis-à-vis the mob.

Its subject (to use Bezukhov’s categories) is "life-as-spectacle," for readers, diverted by their various incidents, observe its hero In this sprawling epic narrative Tolstoy manages to accurately describe the trials and tribulations of life, brilliantly deconstruct the mythic figure of Napoleon, and attempt to explain the meaning of existence.

Napoleon primarily from without. The tragic Anna Karenina, however, presents “life-as-experience”: readers are asked to identify with the mind of Oblonsky, whose motivations render him not particularly likable hero. Death is an integral part of everybody's life and no matter who it is, everybody fears death. To come to terms with death is something that takes a lot of courage and a full understanding of oneself. Tolstoy in his novel, has revealed to us the effect that death can have on a person and advocates us to not succumb to the daily life of the world which we live in, because it is all a delusion. Yet if we live as naturally as possible, we can get a better grasp on the true essence of life as Levin does in the novel. He finds joy out of working and enjoying the fruits of his labor, instead of indulging himself in the materialism of the hypocritical aristocrats.

In addition, Anna Karenina more than the War and Peace, suggests the complexity of the gods’ involvement in human actions, and to the extent that modern readers find this complexity a needless complication, the Anna Karenina is satisfying than the War and Peace, with its simpler scheme of divine justice. Finally, since the Anna Karenina presents a historically verifiable action – Leningrad siege, the novel raises historical questions that are absent from the War and Peace's blithely imaginative world.

Leo Tolstoy writes from the perspective of a country in turmoil and how his social commentary is then closely intertwined with the more general search for personal fulfillment. The result is the timeless quality of the works that are still enjoyed by a wide readership today. It explores how it is this timeless quality of his work, based upon his search for meaning in life, that most prominently begs for Tolstoy's inclusion in today's literary canon.

The author's period of origination and existence is easily decipherable from the passage.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

Those of us who grew up in the fifties believed in the permanency of our American-history textbooks. To us as children, those texts were the truth; of things: they were American history. It was not just that we read them before we understood that not everything that is printed is the truth, or the whole truth. It was that they, much more than other books, had the demeanor and tracings of authority. They were weighty volumes. They spoke in measured cadences: imperturbable, humorless, and as distant as Chinese emperors. Our teachers treated them with respect, and we paid them abject homage by memorising a chapter a week. But now the textbook histories have changed, some of them to such an extent that an adult would find them unrecognisable.

One current junior-high-school American history begins with a story about a Negro cowboy called George McJunkin. It appears that when McJunkin was riding down a lonely trail in New Mexico one cold spring morning in 1925 he discovered a mound containing bones and stone implements, which scientists later proved belonged to an Indian civilisation ten thousand year old. The book goes on to say that scientists now believe there were people in the Americas at least twenty thousand years ago. It discusses the Aztec, Mayan and Incan civilisations and the meaning of the word "culture" before introducing the European explorers.

Another history text - this one for the fifth grade - begins with the story of how Henry B. Gonzalez, who is a member of Congress from Texas, learned about his own nationality. When he was ten years old, his teacher told him he was an American because he was born in the United States. His grandmother, however, said, "The cat was born in the oven. Does that make him bread?" After reporting that Mr. Gonzalez eventually went to college and law school, the book explains that "the melting pot idea hasn't worked out as some thought it would, and that now "some people say that the people of the United States are more like a salad bowl than a melting pot".

Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American history. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America- even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok - the great self-promoters of American history-have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handed: and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington, and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis. A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompany Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks, a fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston Massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens had been reconstructed - his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents - except certain unmentionables in the second half of the nineteenth century- seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.

Of course, when one thinks about it, it is hardly surprising that modem scholarship and modern perspectives have found their way into children's books. Yet the changes remain shocking. Those who in the sixties complained of the bland optimism, the chauvinism, and the materialism of their old civics texts did so in the belief that, for all their protests, the texts would never change. The thought must have had something reassuring about it. For that generation never notices when its complaints began to take effect and the songs about radioactive rainfall and houses made of ticky-tacky began to appear in the text books/But this is what happened.

The history texts now hint at a certain level of unpleasantness in American history. Several books, for instance, tell the story of Ishi, the last "wild" Indian in the continental United States, who, captured in 1911 after the massacre of his tribe, spent the final four and half years of his life in the University of California's museum of anthropology, in San Francisco. At least three books show the same stunning picture of the breaker boys, the child coal miners of Pennsylvania- ancient children with deformed bodies and blackened faces who stare stupidly out from the entrance to a mine. One book quotes a soldier on the use of torture in the American campaign to pacify the Philippines at the beginning of the century. A number of books say that during the American Revolution the patriots tarred and feathered those who did not support them, and drove many of the loyalists from the country. Almost all the present-day history books note that the United States-interned Japanese-Americans in detention camps during the Second World War.

Ideologically speaking, the histories of the fifties were implacable, seamless. Inside their covers, America was perfect: the greatest nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom, and technological progress. For them, the country never changed in any important way: its values audits political institutions remained constant from the time of the American Revolution. To my generation - the children of the fifties - these texts appeared permanent just because they were so self-contained. Their orthodoxy, it seemed, left no hand-holds for attack, no lodging for decay. Who, after all, would dispute the wonders of technology or the superiority of the English colonists over the Spanish? Who would find fault with the pastorals of the West or the Old South? Who would question the anti-Communist crusade? There was, it seemed, no point in comparing these visions with reality, since they were the public truth and were thus quite irrelevant to what existed and to what anyone privately believed. They were- or so it seemed - the permanent expression of mass culture in America.

But now the texts have changed, and with them the country that American children are growing up into. The society that was once uniform is now a patchwork of rich and poor, old and young, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Indians. The system that ran so smoothly by means of the Constitution under the guidance of benevolent conductor. President is now a rattletrap affair. The past is no highway to the present; it is a collection of issues and events that do not fit together and that lead in no single direction. The word "progress" has been replaced by the word "change". Children, the modern texts insist, should learn history so that they can adapt to the rapid changes taking place around them. History is proceeding in spite of us. The present, which was once portrayed in the concluding chapters as a peaceful haven of scientific advances and Presidential inaugurations, is now a tangle of problems: race problems, urban problems, foreign-policy problems, problems of pollution, poverty, energy depletion, youthful rebellion, assassination, and drugs. Some books illustrate these problems dramatically. One, for instance, contains a picture of a doll half buried in a mass of untreated sewage: the caption reads, "Are we in danger of being overwhelmed by the products of our society and wastage created by their production?". Would you agree with this photographer's interpretation? Two books show the same picture of an old black woman sitting in a straight chair in a dingy room, her hands folded in graceful resignation: the surrounding text discusses the problems faced by the urban poor and by the aged who depend on Social Security. Other books present current problems less starkly. One of the texts concludes sagely: Such passages have a familiar ring. Amid all the problems, the deus ex machina of science still dodders around in the gloaming of pious hope.

Even more surprising than the emergence of problems is the discovery that the great unity of the text has broken. Whereas in the fifties all texts represented the same political view, current texts follow no pattern of orthodoxy. Some books, for instance, portray civil-rights legislation as a series of actions taken by a wise paternal government; others convey some suggestion of the social upheaval involved and make mention of such people as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X. In some books, the Cold War has ended; in others, it continues with Communism threatening the free nations of the earth.

That repartee is best which leaves the addressee _________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage.

The essential quality of repartee, according to the author, is _______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage.

The humorist aiming his repartee at rank and might has to be careful because _________.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage.

Which of the following options is true?

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

My parents were atto rneys: my father, a criminal lawyer and my mother, a negligence lawyer. They were the perfect left–brain/right–brain combination, my father was intuitive and my mother, all reason – qualities that, when balanced, matter the most in business.

The first five years of my life, we lived in Shanghai, China (my father was then in Army Intelligence). My clearest memories are of riding around in a rickshaw with my amah (nanny) and “grazing” at street food stalls (much to my mother’s horror). Because life was so dangerous then (fear of being “shanghai’d”), I was sent off to Sacred Heart Convent day school (much to my Orthodox Jewish grandmother’s horror).

When we fled the closing Red Curtain (the last plane out), we moved back to our apartment on Eleventh Street, between First and Second avenues in Manhattan. In the years dominated by the middle–class flight to the suburbs, I was the quintessential city kid. I’ve since wondered whether being outside the mainstream later helped me view mainstream America with a more objective eye.

Growing up, I spent more time with my maternal grandparents than I did at home. My grandmother was born in America, while my grandfather had come from Russia (claiming, convincingly, that he’d escaped on a horse). They lived a few blocks away from us, where they owned some tenements. My grandfather’s maxim was: If you can’t watch it, don’t’ buy it. So I’d sit out with him on Second Avenue in bentwood chairs to help him “watch” their buildings.

And that’s where I began to learn about marketing.

He had a haberdashery store and together we would decorate the front windows. Then we’d take our chairs back outside and wait. Few customers walked by without being hooked by our display, we’d pick up our chairs and go inside again to re–do the window. Repositioning a tie at a jauntier angle or changing the colour of a shirt, I learned, could convey a different message.

Meanwhile, my grandmother was upstairs in their apartment above the store, keeping the books. Every noontime, like clock–work, she’d take over running the store from my grandfather and they’d pass one another on the stairs, rarely exchanging a word–a marvelous business shorthand. After lunch, they’d again slip by each other in virtual silence, as they returned to their respective posts. I often think of them when I give my TrendView seminars and mention the trend of Cashing Out: theirs was the perfect Mom–and–Pop business, honest and human–scale, a business that ran so well it transcended language.

It was also my grandmother’s job to collect the monthly rents; I’d “help” her with that, too. On the first day of the month, the tenants would drop by to pay their rents – all of eight, twelve, twenty dollars a month. She’d sit at the mahogany table in her dining room, and chat with them in Yiddish, Russian, some German, and Ukrainian.

The business worked. It was personal and hands–on, incorporating family and an occasional friend. There was built–in–child care for my sister Mechele and me. Family dinner conversations centered around daily problems and solutions – work was never something that stopped at 5 p.m. We talked about the real estate business, the store, my parents’ legal cases. Everybody knew everything, and we all helped out where we could. The objective was deceptively simple: get the work done and appreciate the process.

Years later, when I started to formulate the blueprint for BrainReserve, I structured it instinctively around what I had learned from my family. I began my filling up the ranks of the company with my sister and her friends and my friends. Many of my former colleagues were horrified. If you want to be a marketing consultant, act like one, they told me. Give your staff important–sounding titles. Develop a scientific approach [cut–and–dried) to what you’re doing. Don’t share any information with outsiders. And you must hire some M.B.A.’s.

Instead, I hired my best friend, Lys Marigold, a journalist, who turned out to be a genius at generating Big Ideas, at knowing something about everything, and at translating marketing into English. She worked with us for ten years, always claiming that she was only there “temporarily,” and when she left to spend more time in Europe, we were all devastated. It has turned out fine though – we just fax her in Amsterdam with questions and drag her back into the office whenever she comes home. She came home to work on this book.

My sister, Mechele Flaum, now manages BrainReserve – she runs operations, does strategic planning, and oversees client contentment. Plus, following the family heritage, she’s still watching over our grandparents’ buildings.

The point is that I never wanted a traditional corporation, with each employee sitting robotically in his or her office. I tried to create a community for thinking – for I believe what inspires productivity the most is freedom –and freedom begets creativity. Having a free and flexible environment provides a place where people can work together to focus on the future.

Author's way of running businesses can be best described as ________.

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

My parents were atto rneys: my father, a criminal lawyer and my mother, a negligence lawyer. They were the perfect left–brain/right–brain combination, my father was intuitive and my mother, all reason – qualities that, when balanced, matter the most in business.

The first five years of my life, we lived in Shanghai, China (my father was then in Army Intelligence). My clearest memories are of riding around in a rickshaw with my amah (nanny) and “grazing” at street food stalls (much to my mother’s horror). Because life was so dangerous then (fear of being “shanghai’d”), I was sent off to Sacred Heart Convent day school (much to my Orthodox Jewish grandmother’s horror).

When we fled the closing Red Curtain (the last plane out), we moved back to our apartment on Eleventh Street, between First and Second avenues in Manhattan. In the years dominated by the middle–class flight to the suburbs, I was the quintessential city kid. I’ve since wondered whether being outside the mainstream later helped me view mainstream America with a more objective eye.

Growing up, I spent more time with my maternal grandparents than I did at home. My grandmother was born in America, while my grandfather had come from Russia (claiming, convincingly, that he’d escaped on a horse). They lived a few blocks away from us, where they owned some tenements. My grandfather’s maxim was: If you can’t watch it, don’t’ buy it. So I’d sit out with him on Second Avenue in bentwood chairs to help him “watch” their buildings.

And that’s where I began to learn about marketing.

He had a haberdashery store and together we would decorate the front windows. Then we’d take our chairs back outside and wait. Few customers walked by without being hooked by our display, we’d pick up our chairs and go inside again to re–do the window. Repositioning a tie at a jauntier angle or changing the colour of a shirt, I learned, could convey a different message.

Meanwhile, my grandmother was upstairs in their apartment above the store, keeping the books. Every noontime, like clock–work, she’d take over running the store from my grandfather and they’d pass one another on the stairs, rarely exchanging a word–a marvelous business shorthand. After lunch, they’d again slip by each other in virtual silence, as they returned to their respective posts. I often think of them when I give my TrendView seminars and mention the trend of Cashing Out: theirs was the perfect Mom–and–Pop business, honest and human–scale, a business that ran so well it transcended language.

It was also my grandmother’s job to collect the monthly rents; I’d “help” her with that, too. On the first day of the month, the tenants would drop by to pay their rents – all of eight, twelve, twenty dollars a month. She’d sit at the mahogany table in her dining room, and chat with them in Yiddish, Russian, some German, and Ukrainian.

The business worked. It was personal and hands–on, incorporating family and an occasional friend. There was built–in–child care for my sister Mechele and me. Family dinner conversations centered around daily problems and solutions – work was never something that stopped at 5 p.m. We talked about the real estate business, the store, my parents’ legal cases. Everybody knew everything, and we all helped out where we could. The objective was deceptively simple: get the work done and appreciate the process.

Years later, when I started to formulate the blueprint for BrainReserve, I structured it instinctively around what I had learned from my family. I began my filling up the ranks of the company with my sister and her friends and my friends. Many of my former colleagues were horrified. If you want to be a marketing consultant, act like one, they told me. Give your staff important–sounding titles. Develop a scientific approach [cut–and–dried) to what you’re doing. Don’t share any information with outsiders. And you must hire some M.B.A.’s.

Instead, I hired my best friend, Lys Marigold, a journalist, who turned out to be a genius at generating Big Ideas, at knowing something about everything, and at translating marketing into English. She worked with us for ten years, always claiming that she was only there “temporarily,” and when she left to spend more time in Europe, we were all devastated. It has turned out fine though – we just fax her in Amsterdam with questions and drag her back into the office whenever she comes home. She came home to work on this book.

My sister, Mechele Flaum, now manages BrainReserve – she runs operations, does strategic planning, and oversees client contentment. Plus, following the family heritage, she’s still watching over our grandparents’ buildings.

The point is that I never wanted a traditional corporation, with each employee sitting robotically in his or her office. I tried to create a community for thinking – for I believe what inspires productivity the most is freedom –and freedom begets creativity. Having a free and flexible environment provides a place where people can work together to focus on the future.

What is the author's view about marketing communication?

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

My parents were atto rneys: my father, a criminal lawyer and my mother, a negligence lawyer. They were the perfect left–brain/right–brain combination, my father was intuitive and my mother, all reason – qualities that, when balanced, matter the most in business.

The first five years of my life, we lived in Shanghai, China (my father was then in Army Intelligence). My clearest memories are of riding around in a rickshaw with my amah (nanny) and “grazing” at street food stalls (much to my mother’s horror). Because life was so dangerous then (fear of being “shanghai’d”), I was sent off to Sacred Heart Convent day school (much to my Orthodox Jewish grandmother’s horror).

When we fled the closing Red Curtain (the last plane out), we moved back to our apartment on Eleventh Street, between First and Second avenues in Manhattan. In the years dominated by the middle–class flight to the suburbs, I was the quintessential city kid. I’ve since wondered whether being outside the mainstream later helped me view mainstream America with a more objective eye.

Growing up, I spent more time with my maternal grandparents than I did at home. My grandmother was born in America, while my grandfather had come from Russia (claiming, convincingly, that he’d escaped on a horse). They lived a few blocks away from us, where they owned some tenements. My grandfather’s maxim was: If you can’t watch it, don’t’ buy it. So I’d sit out with him on Second Avenue in bentwood chairs to help him “watch” their buildings.

And that’s where I began to learn about marketing.

He had a haberdashery store and together we would decorate the front windows. Then we’d take our chairs back outside and wait. Few customers walked by without being hooked by our display, we’d pick up our chairs and go inside again to re–do the window. Repositioning a tie at a jauntier angle or changing the colour of a shirt, I learned, could convey a different message.

Meanwhile, my grandmother was upstairs in their apartment above the store, keeping the books. Every noontime, like clock–work, she’d take over running the store from my grandfather and they’d pass one another on the stairs, rarely exchanging a word–a marvelous business shorthand. After lunch, they’d again slip by each other in virtual silence, as they returned to their respective posts. I often think of them when I give my TrendView seminars and mention the trend of Cashing Out: theirs was the perfect Mom–and–Pop business, honest and human–scale, a business that ran so well it transcended language.

It was also my grandmother’s job to collect the monthly rents; I’d “help” her with that, too. On the first day of the month, the tenants would drop by to pay their rents – all of eight, twelve, twenty dollars a month. She’d sit at the mahogany table in her dining room, and chat with them in Yiddish, Russian, some German, and Ukrainian.

The business worked. It was personal and hands–on, incorporating family and an occasional friend. There was built–in–child care for my sister Mechele and me. Family dinner conversations centered around daily problems and solutions – work was never something that stopped at 5 p.m. We talked about the real estate business, the store, my parents’ legal cases. Everybody knew everything, and we all helped out where we could. The objective was deceptively simple: get the work done and appreciate the process.

Years later, when I started to formulate the blueprint for BrainReserve, I structured it instinctively around what I had learned from my family. I began my filling up the ranks of the company with my sister and her friends and my friends. Many of my former colleagues were horrified. If you want to be a marketing consultant, act like one, they told me. Give your staff important–sounding titles. Develop a scientific approach [cut–and–dried) to what you’re doing. Don’t share any information with outsiders. And you must hire some M.B.A.’s.

Instead, I hired my best friend, Lys Marigold, a journalist, who turned out to be a genius at generating Big Ideas, at knowing something about everything, and at translating marketing into English. She worked with us for ten years, always claiming that she was only there “temporarily,” and when she left to spend more time in Europe, we were all devastated. It has turned out fine though – we just fax her in Amsterdam with questions and drag her back into the office whenever she comes home. She came home to work on this book.

My sister, Mechele Flaum, now manages BrainReserve – she runs operations, does strategic planning, and oversees client contentment. Plus, following the family heritage, she’s still watching over our grandparents’ buildings.

The point is that I never wanted a traditional corporation, with each employee sitting robotically in his or her office. I tried to create a community for thinking – for I believe what inspires productivity the most is freedom –and freedom begets creativity. Having a free and flexible environment provides a place where people can work together to focus on the future.

Which of the following options do you think is true?

Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

My parents were atto rneys: my father, a criminal lawyer and my mother, a negligence lawyer. They were the perfect left–brain/right–brain combination, my father was intuitive and my mother, all reason – qualities that, when balanced, matter the most in business.

The first five years of my life, we lived in Shanghai, China (my father was then in Army Intelligence). My clearest memories are of riding around in a rickshaw with my amah (nanny) and “grazing” at street food stalls (much to my mother’s horror). Because life was so dangerous then (fear of being “shanghai’d”), I was sent off to Sacred Heart Convent day school (much to my Orthodox Jewish grandmother’s horror).

When we fled the closing Red Curtain (the last plane out), we moved back to our apartment on Eleventh Street, between First and Second avenues in Manhattan. In the years dominated by the middle–class flight to the suburbs, I was the quintessential city kid. I’ve since wondered whether being outside the mainstream later helped me view mainstream America with a more objective eye.

Growing up, I spent more time with my maternal grandparents than I did at home. My grandmother was born in America, while my grandfather had come from Russia (claiming, convincingly, that he’d escaped on a horse). They lived a few blocks away from us, where they owned some tenements. My grandfather’s maxim was: If you can’t watch it, don’t’ buy it. So I’d sit out with him on Second Avenue in bentwood chairs to help him “watch” their buildings.

And that’s where I began to learn about marketing.

He had a haberdashery store and together we would decorate the front windows. Then we’d take our chairs back outside and wait. Few customers walked by without being hooked by our display, we’d pick up our chairs and go inside again to re–do the window. Repositioning a tie at a jauntier angle or changing the colour of a shirt, I learned, could convey a different message.

Meanwhile, my grandmother was upstairs in their apartment above the store, keeping the books. Every noontime, like clock–work, she’d take over running the store from my grandfather and they’d pass one another on the stairs, rarely exchanging a word–a marvelous business shorthand. After lunch, they’d again slip by each other in virtual silence, as they returned to their respective posts. I often think of them when I give my TrendView seminars and mention the trend of Cashing Out: theirs was the perfect Mom–and–Pop business, honest and human–scale, a business that ran so well it transcended language.

It was also my grandmother’s job to collect the monthly rents; I’d “help” her with that, too. On the first day of the month, the tenants would drop by to pay their rents – all of eight, twelve, twenty dollars a month. She’d sit at the mahogany table in her dining room, and chat with them in Yiddish, Russian, some German, and Ukrainian.

The business worked. It was personal and hands–on, incorporating family and an occasional friend. There was built–in–child care for my sister Mechele and me. Family dinner conversations centered around daily problems and solutions – work was never something that stopped at 5 p.m. We talked about the real estate business, the store, my parents’ legal cases. Everybody knew everything, and we all helped out where we could. The objective was deceptively simple: get the work done and appreciate the process.

Years later, when I started to formulate the blueprint for BrainReserve, I structured it instinctively around what I had learned from my family. I began my filling up the ranks of the company with my sister and her friends and my friends. Many of my former colleagues were horrified. If you want to be a marketing consultant, act like one, they told me. Give your staff important–sounding titles. Develop a scientific approach [cut–and–dried) to what you’re doing. Don’t share any information with outsiders. And you must hire some M.B.A.’s.

Instead, I hired my best friend, Lys Marigold, a journalist, who turned out to be a genius at generating Big Ideas, at knowing something about everything, and at translating marketing into English. She worked with us for ten years, always claiming that she was only there “temporarily,” and when she left to spend more time in Europe, we were all devastated. It has turned out fine though – we just fax her in Amsterdam with questions and drag her back into the office whenever she comes home. She came home to work on this book.

My sister, Mechele Flaum, now manages BrainReserve – she runs operations, does strategic planning, and oversees client contentment. Plus, following the family heritage, she’s still watching over our grandparents’ buildings.

The point is that I never wanted a traditional corporation, with each employee sitting robotically in his or her office. I tried to create a community for thinking – for I believe what inspires productivity the most is freedom –and freedom begets creativity. Having a free and flexible environment provides a place where people can work together to focus on the future.

Explain: 'a creature of the shadows and silence'.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage.

Now, let us speak of one of the most prolific writers of her time, Anne Silvia Spencer. Her writings and pieces of work very aptly reflect not only the social set–up of that age but also what she thought about the same. Her writings give us a clear view of what kind of a human being she was. The most famous of her works, her autobiography, “The story of a simple girl” presents to us the way she acquired great heights as an author.

Her father, Charles Spencer, was, as Anne later wrote, a very peculiar person. Heir to a fortune, educated at Harrow and Cambridge, he was nevertheless a complete domestic tyrant. After bearing him ten children, his gentle wife had little strength left for struggle against him, and the children never dared oppose his wishes.

Yet Anne’s childhood was happy. She romped and studied with her eldest brother, learnt Greek and French, read widely and wrote poetic tragedies. Her own tragedy began at fifteen with a cough and an injury to her back, which resulted in increasingly bad health. Then her mother died. Four years later, her father decided to sell the country home. The large family moved from house to house until her father bought No. 72 Deer Haven. There Anne's health grew worse, and she became a creature of the shadows and silence.

As the years passed, the family grew used to her withdrawn life. She had a certain independence, for an uncle had left her a small income. But her brothers and sisters were at the mercy of Mr. Spencer's harsh rules, which hung over the household like thunder in heavy weather. Chief among them was the absolute refusal to let his daughters marry. He prevented the marriage of Anne’s gay, dance–loving sister, Helena, and the scenes that followed broke Anne’s heart. Yet she remained devoted to her father. It was devotion that served to strengthen the walls of her prison.

She didn’t talk much to her siblings and definitely not to her father. Irrespective of her solitary existence, she was pretty fond of her brothers and siblings. As per her feelings for her father, she herself could not decide (as she writes in her autobiography) whether she had a feeling of loathe or veneration for her father.

What broke Anne's heart?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage.

Now, let us speak of one of the most prolific writers of her time, Anne Silvia Spencer. Her writings and pieces of work very aptly reflect not only the social set–up of that age but also what she thought about the same. Her writings give us a clear view of what kind of a human being she was. The most famous of her works, her autobiography, “The story of a simple girl” presents to us the way she acquired great heights as an author.

Her father, Charles Spencer, was, as Anne later wrote, a very peculiar person. Heir to a fortune, educated at Harrow and Cambridge, he was nevertheless a complete domestic tyrant. After bearing him ten children, his gentle wife had little strength left for struggle against him, and the children never dared oppose his wishes.

Yet Anne’s childhood was happy. She romped and studied with her eldest brother, learnt Greek and French, read widely and wrote poetic tragedies. Her own tragedy began at fifteen with a cough and an injury to her back, which resulted in increasingly bad health. Then her mother died. Four years later, her father decided to sell the country home. The large family moved from house to house until her father bought No. 72 Deer Haven. There Anne's health grew worse, and she became a creature of the shadows and silence.

As the years passed, the family grew used to her withdrawn life. She had a certain independence, for an uncle had left her a small income. But her brothers and sisters were at the mercy of Mr. Spencer's harsh rules, which hung over the household like thunder in heavy weather. Chief among them was the absolute refusal to let his daughters marry. He prevented the marriage of Anne’s gay, dance–loving sister, Helena, and the scenes that followed broke Anne’s heart. Yet she remained devoted to her father. It was devotion that served to strengthen the walls of her prison.

She didn’t talk much to her siblings and definitely not to her father. Irrespective of her solitary existence, she was pretty fond of her brothers and siblings. As per her feelings for her father, she herself could not decide (as she writes in her autobiography) whether she had a feeling of loathe or veneration for her father.

Which of the following options cannot be inferred from the passage about managements of target firms prior to the current takeover frenzy?

1. They used more imaginative tactics to resist takeovers.
2. They were more concerned about shareholders' interests.
3. They rarely took strong action to resist takeover attempts.

   Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.

   The 1980s have come to be regarded as the decade of corporate consolidation in the United States, with the number of mergers and their dollar value both setting records. Many public forums have questioned, on both social and economic grounds, the merits of this takeover frenzy. Even more controversial than the mergers themselves, however, is the reaction of the management of target firms. No longer is management content to be passive or to put up minimal resistance in the face of an unwelcome takeover attempt. Indeed, the responses of target managements have become as imaginative as the methods used by the would–be acquirers. These so–called antitakeover tactics have received nearly universal condemnation from government regulatory bodies, the financial press, and some academic publications. Why is there so much criticism when management resists takeovers? At the most general level, such criticism is based on studies that find a negative return to shareholders when a negotiated (friendly) merger is unsuccessful. These studies examine the cumulative return from the period just prior to the first public announcement of the proposed merger through the announcement of cancellation. Results range from a total return of –9.02 per cent to + 3.68 per cent, with an average of –2.88 percent. In unsuccessful mergers, therefore, stockholders in target firms lose on average nearly 3 per cent of the shares' value.

   But looking at the returns only through the termination date can be misleading. Other studies examining the period from six months prior to an offer to six months after the offer have found that the total return averages nearly +36 per cent, even though the offer was unsuccessful. Given the typical stock market reaction to unsuccessful negotiated mergers, this is a curious finding. The explanation for this seeming anomaly emerges when firms are divided into two groups: those eventually acquired by some other bidder, and those not acquired. Firms that were not acquired eventually lost the entire 36 per cent return. But firms subsequently acquired, earned an additional 20 per cent return above the initial 36 per cent, earning shareholders a total return of 56 per cent. Those earnings compare favorably to the overall average return of 30 percent earned by shareholders & of all companies successfully acquired. These results suggest that some form of resistance by management may be desirable. Playing hard to get may influence the initial suitor to increase the bid, or it may permit time for competing bids to be submitted. It is possible, however, to have too much of a good thing. When management actions are designed solely to eliminate a takeover by a specific bidder, then shareholders may be harmed. Nevertheless, antitakeover tactics do not deserve the blanket condemnation they receive in the press.

    

Anne's father was 'a complete domestic tyrant'. It implies that ______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage.

Now, let us speak of one of the most prolific writers of her time, Anne Silvia Spencer. Her writings and pieces of work very aptly reflect not only the social set–up of that age but also what she thought about the same. Her writings give us a clear view of what kind of a human being she was. The most famous of her works, her autobiography, “The story of a simple girl” presents to us the way she acquired great heights as an author.

Her father, Charles Spencer, was, as Anne later wrote, a very peculiar person. Heir to a fortune, educated at Harrow and Cambridge, he was nevertheless a complete domestic tyrant. After bearing him ten children, his gentle wife had little strength left for struggle against him, and the children never dared oppose his wishes.

Yet Anne’s childhood was happy. She romped and studied with her eldest brother, learnt Greek and French, read widely and wrote poetic tragedies. Her own tragedy began at fifteen with a cough and an injury to her back, which resulted in increasingly bad health. Then her mother died. Four years later, her father decided to sell the country home. The large family moved from house to house until her father bought No. 72 Deer Haven. There Anne's health grew worse, and she became a creature of the shadows and silence.

As the years passed, the family grew used to her withdrawn life. She had a certain independence, for an uncle had left her a small income. But her brothers and sisters were at the mercy of Mr. Spencer's harsh rules, which hung over the household like thunder in heavy weather. Chief among them was the absolute refusal to let his daughters marry. He prevented the marriage of Anne’s gay, dance–loving sister, Helena, and the scenes that followed broke Anne’s heart. Yet she remained devoted to her father. It was devotion that served to strengthen the walls of her prison.

She didn’t talk much to her siblings and definitely not to her father. Irrespective of her solitary existence, she was pretty fond of her brothers and siblings. As per her feelings for her father, she herself could not decide (as she writes in her autobiography) whether she had a feeling of loathe or veneration for her father.

What does the last sentence of the passage imply?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage.

Now, let us speak of one of the most prolific writers of her time, Anne Silvia Spencer. Her writings and pieces of work very aptly reflect not only the social set–up of that age but also what she thought about the same. Her writings give us a clear view of what kind of a human being she was. The most famous of her works, her autobiography, “The story of a simple girl” presents to us the way she acquired great heights as an author.

Her father, Charles Spencer, was, as Anne later wrote, a very peculiar person. Heir to a fortune, educated at Harrow and Cambridge, he was nevertheless a complete domestic tyrant. After bearing him ten children, his gentle wife had little strength left for struggle against him, and the children never dared oppose his wishes.

Yet Anne’s childhood was happy. She romped and studied with her eldest brother, learnt Greek and French, read widely and wrote poetic tragedies. Her own tragedy began at fifteen with a cough and an injury to her back, which resulted in increasingly bad health. Then her mother died. Four years later, her father decided to sell the country home. The large family moved from house to house until her father bought No. 72 Deer Haven. There Anne's health grew worse, and she became a creature of the shadows and silence.

As the years passed, the family grew used to her withdrawn life. She had a certain independence, for an uncle had left her a small income. But her brothers and sisters were at the mercy of Mr. Spencer's harsh rules, which hung over the household like thunder in heavy weather. Chief among them was the absolute refusal to let his daughters marry. He prevented the marriage of Anne’s gay, dance–loving sister, Helena, and the scenes that followed broke Anne’s heart. Yet she remained devoted to her father. It was devotion that served to strengthen the walls of her prison.

She didn’t talk much to her siblings and definitely not to her father. Irrespective of her solitary existence, she was pretty fond of her brothers and siblings. As per her feelings for her father, she herself could not decide (as she writes in her autobiography) whether she had a feeling of loathe or veneration for her father.