Reading Comprehension

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

All over India tenants from all walks of life and particularly bureaucrats and politicians have bought their rented premises from the owners for a pittance in distress sale. Who is the gainer? Only the treacherous tenants. If an inquiry is ordered in all such cases the Government can gain millions of rupees by correctly assessing the market price and then charge the transfer fees. These laws have created mind boggling black money in the shape of pagri. There is no need for any rent laws. No person should occupy or continue to occupy any premises without a proper agreement with the owner. Unauthorized occupation should be made a criminal offence just as bouncing of cheques has been made. The police should be given the powers as in the USA to throw out the belongings of a person who is an unauthorized occupant.

The passage is

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage. Do you have difficulty keeping resolutions? Do you ever feel overwhelmed by a goal? Many people have unrealistic expectations of what they can accomplish within a period of time. The problem is that they usually have taken on too many responsibilities at once. Does this ever happen to you? You find yourself rushing around each day in order to get projects done. In order to achieve success with your goals you need to narrow your scope of how many projects you can take on at a time. This requires prioritizing. In order to prioritize you must first get clear on what it is you truly want to achieve. When you pursue a goal you make a decision to put a certain amount of time, energy and effort into an endeavor. If that goal is not in line with what you truly want, you may find your inner self unconsciously sabotaging your efforts in some way.

What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

Intelligence probably depends on the efficiency of the electrical circuits in the brain, on being able to try out many connections quickly and select the best. Like memory, intelligence will probably be susceptible to improvement by drugs: the idea of an intelligence pill has been suggested so often that it is becoming more than a joke. We are unlikely ever to produce a drug for transforming a moron into a genius but a pill to improve intelligence may well be feasible. Rats clever at threading mazes apparently have more cholinesterase in their brains than duller rats; so intelligent and dull humans may have significant differences in the chemical compositions of their brain fluids. If so, the dull ones might be much brighter with the right mixture.

What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

The very act of placing our assets in the hands of other people requires immense trust. An untrustworthy stockbroker or insurance agent, like an untrustworthy physician or attorney, finds few takers for his or her services. Financial scandals shock us precisely because they involve people and institutions that we should be able to trust. Finance is not a clearly identifiable occupation or profession and involves a highly technical body of knowledge, but people who are trained in finance engage in a much wider range of activities. Accountants, by contrast, do much the same work in every setting, and the different accounting functions — public and management accounting or external and internal auditing — raise similar ethical problems that can be identified and addressed in a code of ethics.

What is the primary purpose of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

Year by year this contrast with the past becomes more marked as, I think, every college teacher, everyone who is brought into contact with the development of thoughtful young men and women, must note. For nearly twenty years I have been giving a course on the history of religions. I remember with what hesitancy and with what precaution, in the first years of my teaching, I turned from China, India, and Persia, and approached the religion of the Old Testament. The transition had to be made with all the sympathetic skill I could muster; and never a year went by but some of my students came to me after sleepless nights, wearied with inner struggle, sometimes with indignant voices, to talk out, after class, the implications involved in the Higher Criticism and in the attempt to deal with the Hebrew religion in the same historical light as we had studied Hinduism and Buddhism. All this is change now.

Which of the following options best represents the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

One of our hopes for the New Year is that Congress and the Bush administration will jointly and urgently address the manifold problems plaguing America's coastal waters. Two important panels, one private, one commissioned by Congress itself, have warned that the oceans simply cannot sustain prolonged abuse from industrial and recreational overfishing, from unchecked coastal development as well as polluted agricultural and urban runoff. Last month the White House released its formal response to the findings of the Congressional commission. The most that can be said about this 39-page report is that it is earnest; a summons to the barricades it is not. Though billed as an action plan, the report is actually an invitation to paralysis by analysis, calling for more committees and more research into problems that have been committee-ed and researched to death. We do not, for instance, need more science to tell us that industrial fishing has strip-mined the oceans of valuable fish species, that pollution is killing coral reefs and causing dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. What we need are concrete regulatory initiatives to discipline the commercial fishing industry (letting scientists, not fishermen, set quotas), to control residential development, reform farming practices and provide enough money to get the job done.

What is the primary purpose of the passage?

What, according to you, would be the appropriate title of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

Many of you have long experienced in your manufacturing operations the advantages of substantial, well-contrived, and well-executed machinery.
Experience has also shown you the difference of the results between mechanism which is    neat, clean, well arranged, and always in a high state of repair; and that which is allowed to be dirty, in disorder, and without the means of preventing unnecessary friction, and which therefore becomes, and works, much out of repair. In the first case the whole economy and management are good, every operation proceeds with ease, order, and success.
In the last, the reverse must follow, and dissatisfaction among all the agents and instruments interested or occupied in the general process, which cannot fail to create great loss.
If, then, due care as to the state of your inanimate machines can produce such beneficial results, what may not be expected if you devote equal attention to your vital machines, which are far more wonderfully constructed?
When you shall acquire a right knowledge of these, of their curious mechanism, of their self-adjusting powers; when the proper mainspring shall be applied to their various movements— you will become conscious of their real value, and you will readily be induced to turn your thoughts more frequently from your inanimate to your living machines; and you will discover that the latter may be easily trained and directed to procure a large increase of pecuniary gain, while you may also derive from them a high and substantial satisfaction.

What is the central point made out in the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

Many of you have long experienced in your manufacturing operations the advantages of substantial, well-contrived, and well-executed machinery.
Experience has also shown you the difference of the results between mechanism which is    neat, clean, well arranged, and always in a high state of repair; and that which is allowed to be dirty, in disorder, and without the means of preventing unnecessary friction, and which therefore becomes, and works, much out of repair. In the first case the whole economy and management are good, every operation proceeds with ease, order, and success.
In the last, the reverse must follow, and dissatisfaction among all the agents and instruments interested or occupied in the general process, which cannot fail to create great loss.
If, then, due care as to the state of your inanimate machines can produce such beneficial results, what may not be expected if you devote equal attention to your vital machines, which are far more wonderfully constructed?
When you shall acquire a right knowledge of these, of their curious mechanism, of their self-adjusting powers; when the proper mainspring shall be applied to their various movements— you will become conscious of their real value, and you will readily be induced to turn your thoughts more frequently from your inanimate to your living machines; and you will discover that the latter may be easily trained and directed to procure a large increase of pecuniary gain, while you may also derive from them a high and substantial satisfaction.

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

There is no merit without zeal, just as there is no movement without wind. What is zeal? It is enthusiasm for virtue. What is said to be its antithesis? It is spiritual sloth, clinging to the reprehensible, apathy, and self-contempt. The spiritual practice of zeal means, being fully aroused by life. We tap into the divine energy that pulsates within us and around us. We are ready for anything that comes our way, and every moment is a golden every moment is a golden gateway to new possibilities. This spiritual practice includes a wholehearted delight in the sense and a passionate love for who we are and what we have been given. We are encouraged in its pursuit by our companions on the path and the countless teachers who stretch our souls. Our zeal moves us to live compassionately and to serve others.

What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

Whatever is, is in some sense the seed of what is to emerge from it… To be in process of change is not an evil, any more than to be the product of change is a good… Time is a river, the resistless flow of all created things. One thing no sooner comes in sight than it is hurried past and another is borne along, only to be swept away in its turn…What follows is ever closely linked to what precedes; it is not a procession of isolated events, merely obeying the laws of sequence, but a rational continuity. Moreover, just as things already in existence are all harmoniously coordinated, things in the act of coming into existence exhibit the same marvel of concatenation, rather than simply the bare fact of succession.

What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

Ask an American schoolchild what he or she is learning in school these days and you might even get a reply, provided you ask it in Spanish. But don’t bother, here’s the answer: Americans nowadays are not learning any of the things that we learned in our day, like reading and writing. Apparently these are considered fusty old subjects, invented by white males to oppress women and minorities. No one ever spent a moment building my self-esteem when I was in school. In fact, from the day I first stepped inside a classroom my self-esteem was one big demolition site. All that mattered was “the subject,” be it geography, history, or mathematics. I was praised when I remembered that “near”, “fit”, “friendly”, “pleasing”, “like” and their opposites took the dative case in Latin. I was reviled when I forgot what a cosine was good for. Generally I lived my school years beneath a torrent of castigation so consistent I eventually ceased to hear it, as people who live near the sea eventually stop hearing the waves.

What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

The significance of life is living. Do we really live? Is life worth living when there is fear, when our whole life is trained in imitation, in copying? In following authority, is there living? Are you living when you follow somebody, even if he is the greatest saint or the greatest politician or the greatest scholar? If you observe your own ways, you will see that you do nothing but follow somebody or another. It is very difficult to put away authority. What is freedom from authority? You can break a law. That is not the freedom from authority. But there is freedom in understanding the whole process, how the mind creates authority, how each one of us is confused and therefore wants to be assured that he is living the right kind of life. Because we want to be told what to do, we are exploited by gurus, spiritual as well as scientific.

What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

The ancients who were well versed in Reason did not thereby enlighten the people; they intended thereby to make them simple-hearted. Spiritual virtue, verily, is profound. Verily, it is far-reaching. Verily, it is to everything reverse. But then it will procure great recognition. Now a man is great only because he resembles the unlikely. Did he resemble the likely, how lasting indeed, would his mediocrity be! I have three treasures which I cherish and prize. The first is called compassion. The second is called economy. The third is called not daring to come to the front in the world. The compassionate can be brave; the economical can be generous; those who dare not come to the front in the world can become perfect as chief vessels. Now, if people discard compassion and are brave; if they discard economy and are generous; if they discard modesty and are ambitious, they will surely die. Now, the compassionate will in attack be victorious, and in defence firm. Heaven when about to save one will with compassion protect him. Is not heaven's Reason truly like stretching a bow? Those who have abundance it depleteth; those who are deficient it augmenteth. Man's Reason is not so as he depletes the deficient to serve those who have abundance.

What is the theme of the passage?

Directions: The short passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

When you take a fish out of the ocean and throw it on the bank – the misery and the suffering and the torture, and the hankering and the effort to reach back to the ocean is because that is where the fish belongs. Any suffering is simply indicative that you are not in communion with existence that the fish is not in the ocean. When a dewdrop slips from a lotus leaf into the ocean, it does not find that it is part of the ocean, it finds it is the ocean. And to find it is the ultimate goal, the ultimate realisation. There is nothing beyond it. I don’t want anybody to stand between an individual and existence. You are here, every individual is here, and the whole existence is available.

What is the theme of the passage?

is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.

We are entering the Age of the Terrific Deal, where choices are almost limitless and it's easy to switch to something better. This is the first principle of the new economy. Understanding it is the first step towards understanding what is happening to the rest of our lives. All else follows. And who doesn't want a better deal? Only the indolent, insane, or congenitally complacent would pass up a product that's obviously better (and costs no more) or cheaper (and of the same quality), an investment with a higher return, a more rewarding job, a more comfortable community. You owe it to yourself, your family. You owe it to capitalism. The insistence on a better deal didn't begin in America. It's just more extreme here. For most of history, humankind lived in villages surrounded by dense forests, deserts, or otherwise dangerous and mysterious terrain.

What is the theme of the passage?