English Reading Comprehension

Which of the following if placed after sentence (14) will be the most effective concluding sentence for the passage?

Directions: Read the passage and select the best answer for the question:

(1) There is something humbling to human pride in a rustic life. (2) It grates against the heart to think of the tone in which we unconsciously permit ourselves to address a rustic. (3) We see in him humanity in its simplest state. (4) It is a sad thought to feel that we despise him; that all we respect in our species is what has been created by art; the gaudy dress, the glittering equipage, or even the cultivated intellect. (5) The mere and naked material of nature we eye with in difference, or trample on with disdain. (6) Poor child of toil, from the gray dawn to the setting sun one long test of endurance. (7) No ideas elicited, no thought awakened beyond those that suffice to make him the machine of others, the serf of the hard soil. (8) And then too, mark how we frown upon his scanty holidays, how we hedge in his mirth, and how we turn hilarity into crime. (9) We make the whole of the gay world, wherein we take our snares and perils to him a place of pleasure. (10) Do we not mistake the idyllic, unaffected rustic charm for uncouth, inelegant artlessness?
(11) Why not look upon the whole issue from the other angle – the viewpoint of the ‘observed’? (12) How did the rustic view the uptown gentry? (13) The view will surely not be very flattering. (14) The ‘rustic’ has the civility to ‘waive off’ such ‘reckless’ opinions about the urban folk and restrict himself to the upkeep of values only on his own part.

Which of the following is the best revision of the underlined portion of sentence no. (8) below?

how we frown upon his scanty holidays, how we hedge in his mirth, and how we turn hilarity into crime.

Directions: Read the passage and select the best answer for the question:

(1) There is something humbling to human pride in a rustic life. (2) It grates against the heart to think of the tone in which we unconsciously permit ourselves to address a rustic. (3) We see in him humanity in its simplest state. (4) It is a sad thought to feel that we despise him; that all we respect in our species is what has been created by art; the gaudy dress, the glittering equipage, or even the cultivated intellect. (5) The mere and naked material of nature we eye with in difference, or trample on with disdain. (6) Poor child of toil, from the gray dawn to the setting sun one long test of endurance. (7) No ideas elicited, no thought awakened beyond those that suffice to make him the machine of others, the serf of the hard soil. (8) And then too, mark how we frown upon his scanty holidays, how we hedge in his mirth, and how we turn hilarity into crime. (9) We make the whole of the gay world, wherein we take our snares and perils to him a place of pleasure. (10) Do we not mistake the idyllic, unaffected rustic charm for uncouth, inelegant artlessness?
(11) Why not look upon the whole issue from the other angle – the viewpoint of the ‘observed’? (12) How did the rustic view the uptown gentry? (13) The view will surely not be very flattering. (14) The ‘rustic’ has the civility to ‘waive off’ such ‘reckless’ opinions about the urban folk and restrict himself to the upkeep of values only on his own part.

It was somewhere in the seventies when old Peaceful Harry woke to a realization that gold-hunting and lumbago do not take kindly to one another, and the fact that his pipe and dim-eyed meditation appealed to him more keenly than did his prospector's pick and shovel and pan seemed to imply that he was growing old. He was a silent man, by occupation and by nature, so he said nothing about it; but, like the wild things of prairie and wood, _____________________.

What is the most critical completion of the passage?

Directions: This question presents a sentence, all or part of which is underlined. Beneath the sentence you will find five ways of phrasing the underlined part. The first of these repeats the original; the other four are different. If you think the original is the best, choose the first answer; otherwise choose any one of the others.

There was something very strange and weird about that sound, which sent a chill of horror through both the hearers, and they laughed the next moment at their fears, for the noise was only such as could be given out by a pair of rusty hinges.

Directions: The question is a logical sequence of statements with a missing link, the location of which is shown parenthetically. Choose the alternative that best fits the sequence logically.

The shafts of the mine still bear on their rocky walls the marks made by the pick of the workman who toiled to excavate them. The space between each prop in the underground galleries might be marked as a miner's grave; who can tell what (…), in privations, in unspeakable wretchedness to the family who depended on the scanty wage of the worker cut off in his prime by fire damp, rock fall or flood?

Directions: The question is a logical sequence of statements with a missing link, the location of which is shown parenthetically. Choose the alternative that best fits the sequence logically.

Many of the white race looked upon them as beggars, which was bad enough, or as thieves, which was worse; and in a general way they could not deny the truth of it. But they never stole from the Harts, and they never openly begged from the Harts. The friends of the Harts, however, must (.) before they could hope for better than imperturbable neutrality.

What is theme of the passage?

Directions: Read the paragraph and answer the question that follows.

Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say.
Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: To hell with your standards�. Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour about which they really agreed. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do what unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.

Which of the following would be the appropriate title for the passage?

Directions: Read the paragraph and answer the question that follows.

Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say.
Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: To hell with your standards�. Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour about which they really agreed. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do what unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.

Directions: Read the following passage/information and answer the question that follows. Multinationals have a habit of dumping their international concepts on the market place while advertising their brands in India. Some international jokers do not even change their foreign models or dub the advertisement in Indian languages.

Which of the following undermines the argument above?

Directions: Read the following passage/information and answer the question that follows:

At the time of independence, the total area under cultivation was only 29%. Yet for almost 2 decades, the production of food grains kept on increasing. In 1965, food grains production was increasing at the rate of 7% per annum. In 1985, the total area under cultivation was 69%, but the rate of increase in the production was less than 1.5%. It was less than the minimum increase required to feed the increasing population.

It can properly be inferred from the passage that

Directions: The last sentence in the following passage has been deleted. Select the sentence, out of the available options, that best suits the end of the passage.

You see him every day, sometimes on the street, sometimes in the ration shop, an ageless and timeless entity in the ever-changing world around him. And yet he is elusive. The man-in-the-street is no flesh-and-bone creature but a mere statistic, an apocryphal figure who is invoked by politicians and economists alike but with whom they are most comfortable as long as he remains abstract.

Directions: The last sentence in the following passage has been deleted. Select the sentence, out of the available options, that best suits the end of the passage.

Thus Simon tells us of a dream in which he saw some gigantic figures seated at table and clearly heard the frightful snapping noise made by their jaws coming together as they chewed. When he awoke he heard the beat of a horse's hooves galloping past his window. The noise made by the horse's hooves may have suggested ideas from a group of memories connected with Gu!liver's Travels—the Giants of Brobdingnag and the virtuous Houyhnhnms—if I may venture on an interpretation without the dreamer's assistance. Is it not probable, then, that the choice of such an unusual group of memories as these were facilitated by

Directions: In the following question part of the text has been deleted. The deleted text has been indicated as (…..). From the given options, select the one that best fits in place of the space marked (….).

There is a saying (…) that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. In the very teeth of that, and in spite of the fact that he was neither very good, nor an Indian - nor in any sense dead - men called Grant Imsen Good Indian to his face; and if he resented the title, his resentment was never made manifest - perhaps because he had grown up with the name, he rather liked it when he was a little fellow, and with custom had come to take it as a matter of course.

Directions: In the following question part of the text has been deleted. The deleted text has been indicated as (…..). From the given options, select the one that best fits in place of the space marked (….).

The boys signaled each other to attention by kicking surreptitiously under the table, but nothing happened. Evadna bowed a demure acknowledgment when her Aunt Phoebe introduced the two, accepted the sugar-bowl from Grant and the butter from Lewis (…) She seemed perfectly at ease; too perfectly at ease, decided Grant, who had an instinct for observation and was covertly watching her.