Reading Comprehension

If you are a parent you know how hard it is to refuse repeated requests for an ice cream or a desperately wanted toy. If you are not a parent, I'm sure you remember asking, even begging for a toy, a treat or permission to stay up past your bedtime, until your parents finally gave in. Your customers and prospective customers are similar. They need to be asked repeatedly too. That is the whole game in a nutshell. Create or get a list of people who have demonstrated they are interested in the type of product or service you offer. AND/OR Get a list of people extremely likely to be interested, even if they haven't already proved they are, by buying from you or one of your competitors. Once you have these lists of people contact them with postcards which offer them the benefits of your products and services and keep making them offers until they inquire and/or buy from you and then ask them to buy more on a regular basis. You will have a smile on your face just like the little kid with a belly full of ice cream he/she convinced mom to buy.

Which of the conclusions can best be drawn from the passage?

A shrewd peasant was always protected well enough against impostors in the market place, and we have all sorts of businessmen who have made themselves excellent judges of phoniness without the benefit of a high-school diploma; but this kind of shrewdness goes along with a great deal of credulity. Outside the limited field within which experience has taught the peasant or the illiterate businessman his lessons, he is often hopelessly gullible.

Which of the options provides critical completion of the passage?

Through the 1800s, the form of the corporation took shape in an elaborate dance of wills. Entrepreneurs, torn between building legacies and extracting cash, led the dance; state legislators, torn between attracting corporations and limiting their power, followed. Abuses of corporate will led to new prohibitions, which sent businessmen scurrying for new ways to get around them. New types of technological webs bound the country: railroads, steamships, electric power, telegraph and telephone lines. The newly invented rotary press enabled printers to put out 100,000 copies of a magazine; this, in turn, allowed national advertising to sprout, which made it profitable for consumer product giants to build brands.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

“When I talked to adult women”, writes Judy Mann, “many of them described their adolescence with painful recollections that invariably had to do with a sense of lost self, a silencing of their voice, a loss of self-confidence and of identity”. Mary Pipher writes, “Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. . . They lose their resiliency and optimism and become less curious and inclined to take risks. They lose their assertive, energetic and tomboyish personalities and become more deferential, self-critical and depressed”. Once silenced by their acculturation into contemporary adult femininity, they no longer have the words to speak their minds. If the problem is silence, the solution is therefore for young women to speak. Then who takes the lead?

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

How often do you accomplish a goal or complete a project with no help from others? If you are a manager, how many of the great ideas you promote were contributed by staff members? Take the time, and expend the energy, to thank, reward, recognize and specify contributions of the people who help you succeed. This is a no-fail approach to building effective work relationships. Every employee in your organization has talents, skills, and experience. If you can help fellow employees harness their best abilities, you benefit the organization immeasurably. The growth of individual employees benefits the whole. Compliment, recognize, praise, and notice contributions. You don't have to be a manager to help create a positive, motivating environment for employees. In this environment, employees do find and contribute their greatness.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

Freud's writing rejected the existence of dream interpreters or terminology explaining meanings of dream symbols. He said the significance of all dreams could be studied through personal experience as self analysis would be the best to study one's own fantasies. Freud was a firm believer of the theory that every action and thought has a cause probably entangled with the unconscious mind. Every dream has a symbolic notation. It is a representation of our hidden pleasures and desires which our ego has guarded in day's light. In the blackness of night these pent up urges get outrageous and find way through dreams, even healthy minded dream. The content or stimuli to these dreams could relate to any present or past event of restriction.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

The Italians say a woman who may not speak is in danger of bursting; the Germans, that the burden of unspoken words affects her health and ages her prematurely; the English say similar things still more coarsely. Classical proverbs have dealt with the issue; numberless fairy tales, narratives, novels and poems have portrayed the difficulty of silence. Yet something may be learned from people who talk too much. If the why and how much of it are carefully studied, it is not difficult to draw a significant conclusion for one's own case at law.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

In respect to primitive works we may distinguish four steps in the acquisition of aesthetic features of form, three of which are normal, the fourth abnormal: First, we have that in which functional characters alone are considered, any element of beauty, whether due to the artist's hand or to the accidents of material, construction, or model, being purely adventitious; second, that in which the necessary features of the utensil appear to have experienced the supervision of taste, edges being rounded, curves refined, and symmetry perfected; third, that in which the functionally perfect object, just described, undergoes further variations of contour, adding to variety and unity, thus enhancing beauty without interfering with serviceability; and, fourth, that in which, under abnormal influences, beauty is sought at the sacrifice of functional and constructive perfection.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

When conventional management practices force plans, people, processes and decisions into frameworks that admit only rational considerations, the emotional side doesn't go away. It emerges as compliance - a downside mentality - and a short-term, just don't fail perspective. By changing the way they manage the initiative, executives can kindle the organization's energy for the upside too. This enables the organization to develop a commitment to success and to sustain it over the years it may take to achieve lasting results.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

It has been observed, that in order to enjoy natural objects aesthetically, we should withdraw them from their external and historical reality, and separate their simple appearance or origin from existence; that nature is beautiful only for him who contemplates her with the eye of the artist; that zoologists and botanists do not recognize beautiful animals and flowers; that natural beauty is discovered; that, without the aid of the imagination, no part of nature is beautiful, and that with such aid the same natural object or fact is now expressive, according to the disposition of the soul, now insignificant, now expressive of one definite thing, now of another, sad or glad, sublime or ridiculous, sweet or laughable; finally, that natural beauty, which an artist would not to some extent correct, does not exist.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

Let us concentrate attention on the table. To the eye it is oblong, brown and shiny, to the touch it is smooth and cool and hard; when I tap it, it gives out a wooden sound. But as soon as we try to be more precise our troubles begin. Although I believe that the table is 'really' of the same colour all over, the parts that reflect the light look much brighter than the other parts, and some parts look white because of reflected light. I know that, if I move, the parts that reflect the light will be different, so that the apparent distribution of colours on the table will change. It follows that if several people are looking at the table at the same moment, no two of them will see exactly the same distribution of colors, because no two can see it from exactly the same point of view, and any change in the point of view makes some change in the way the light is reflected. For most practical purposes these differences are unimportant, but here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

When we accept a new 'truth' we go beyond old 'facts'. The beliefs and notions of today probably can achieve the stature of being hypotheses tomorrow. It's undoubted that beliefs are in some way responsible for designing the theories of future. There always are cases where humans believe in a few things existing but lack explanation. There always are some ideas existing in nature. We can feel them; we can believe in their existence but cannot accept them till their existence is reasonably proved. Our beliefs are circumscribed by reasoning. We all believe in the connection between various things. No one can deny this. All things may consistently follow each other but that does not reveal any relation between them. There is ambiguity because the connectivity in our mind is cooked up work.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

All our past life is there, preserved even to the most infinitesimal details, and that we forget nothing, and that all that we have felt, perceived, thought, willed, from the first awakening of our consciousness, survives indestructibly. But the memories which are preserved in these obscure depths are there in the state of invisible phantoms. They aspire, perhaps, to the light, but they do not even try to rise to it; they know that it is impossible and that I, as a living and acting being, have something else to do than to occupy myself with them. But suppose that, at a given moment, I become disinterested in the present situation, in the present action, in other words, that I am asleep. Then these memories, perceiving that I have taken away the obstacle, have raised the trapdoor which has kept them beneath the floor of consciousness, arise from the depths; they rise, they move. They rush together to the door which has been left ajar. They all want to get through. But they cannot; there are too many of them. From the multitudes which are called, which will be chosen? It is not hard to say. Formerly, when I was awake, the memories which forced their way were those which could involve claims of relationship with the present situation, with what I saw and heard around me. Now it is more vague. So, then, among the phantom memories which aspire to fill themselves with materiality, the only ones that succeed are those which can assimilate themselves with the color-dust that we perceive, the external and internal sensations that we catch, etc., and which, besides, respond to the affective tone of our general sensibility.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

Michael Angelo said, one paints, not with one's hands, but with one's brain. Leonardo shocked the Prior of the Convent Delle Grazie by standing for days together opposite the Last Supper without touching it with the brush. The painter is a painter, because he sees what others only feel or catch a glimpse of, but do not see. We think we see a smile, but in reality we have only a vague impression of it, we do not perceive all the characteristic traits from which it results, as the painter perceives them after his internal meditations, which thus enable him to fix them on the canvas. The illusion is less easy as regards musical expression; because it would seem strange to everyone to say that the composer had added or attached notes to the motive, which is already in the mind of him who is not the composer. As if Beethoven's Ninth Symphony were not his own intuition and his own intuition the Ninth Symphony.

What is the underlying theme of the passage?

Which of the following is the best revision of the underlined portion of sentence no. (6) below?

During the recent past, the sense of insecurity has been the single greatest cause, both of individual anxiety and frustration, and social instability and unrest.

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

(1) It is necessary to have a standard of education. (2) We can set two sorts of standards there. (3) First, a minimum standard below which no one is allowed to fall, in the shape of so many years of elementary education in such and such subjects. (4) And secondly, and in a way even more important, a standard of equal opportunity for all, to ensure that no boy or girl is deprived of the chance of climbing to the top of the educational ladder through poverty or the accidents of birth. (5) There are also standards of economic security. (6) During the recent past, the sense of insecurity has been the single greatest cause, both of individual anxiety and frustration, and social instability and unrest. (7) A state must see to it that it gives to all its citizens minimum standards of security against ill health against unemployment against widowhood, against old age. (8) A man cannot be a good citizen nor do himself justice as an individual if he lives in a nightmare of frustration and anxiety about losing his job.
(9) Issues of social security are, therefore, interlinked. (10) This is irrespective of whether they are in the field of basic education, basic health, employment or even protection against economic needs arising out of old age, disability etc. (11) The state expenditure on social security is bound to fall back upon the shoulders of the society at large. (12) A society that cannot take due care of such basic needs of each and every of its members is not fit to be called in the true sense of the term.