Table of Contents
Directions (1-5): Which of the words/phrases (a), (b), (c) and (d) given below should replace the words/phrases given in bold in the following sentences to make it meaningful and grammatically correct? If the sentence is correct as it is and ‘No correction is required’, mark (e) as the answer.
Q1. Mr. Trump’s threat of unilateral action against Pyongyang in the event that China fails to restrain in North Korea may partly echo the mood in Washington after the recent missile strikes in Syria. If the Chinese government belief Pyongyang’s growing nuclear capability with concern, as it affirms to, then it must do much to use its influence effectively.
(a) control, convictions, contradict, clout
(b) actuate, opinions, declares, influence
(c) curb, ignores, acknowledges, advantage
(d) rein, views, professes, leverage
(e) No improvement required
Q2. Merely stressing the need for a peaceful fortitude to the conflict is not enough. Japan, Washington’s important regional associate, would view with no less dismay any potential threat to stability in its neighbourhood. American air strikes in Syria last week have raised very valid interests about their legitimacy under international law.
(a) determination, friend, fear, malices
(b) hesitation, confederate, dread, affairs
(c) resolution, ally, consternation, concerns
(d) perseverance, foe, dread, worries
(e) No improvement required
Q3. Syria has to be treated as an immediate precedence, and in a way that excels the narrow geopolitical interests of regional and global controls. There must be a coordinated attempt to bring the war to an end, and to hold the perpetrators of war crimes accountable for their barbarism. Only then can Syria be rebuilt.
(a) antecedence, fails, influences, exertion
(b) priority, transcends, powers, effort
(c) advantage, exceeds, ability, apathy
(d) subservience, transgresses, capacity, struggle
(e) No improvement required
Q4. We live in a very complex world in which the media is at the forefront of public interest. Social media, yet another unruly horse, with its stretch, impacts the lives of millions. Populism is at its height. The taste of civilised discourse have vanished. Economic interests sometimes drive public discourse. News is occasionally mitigated.
(a) discourse, outreach, contours, motivated
(b) talk, back, forms, driven
(c) shear, exceed, outlines, encouraged
(d) discussion, outwit, delineates, languorous
(e) No improvement required
Q5. For the court to be completely isolated from this environment is not easy. Most of us tend to be swayed by what we read. Judges are not superhuman. They, too, are mortals. This is why they have to be exceptionally careful in rendering decisions, which cause unintended consequences.
(a) separated, ambiguous, depicting, produce
(b) integrated, influenced, executing, induce
(c) detached, controlled, convicting, make
(d) divided, persuaded, executing, effect
(e) No improvement required
Directions (6-10): The sentences given in each of the following questions, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labeled with a letter. From among the five choices given below each question, choose the most logical order of sentences that construct a coherent paragraph.
Q6. (A) India, with several millennia of history, boasts of a diverse and rich built heritage.
(B)Even those structures considered to be of national/state or local importance in India and protected as such remain under threat from urban pressures, neglect, vandalism and, worse, demolition, only for the value of the land they stand upon.
(C)Yet, less than 15,000 monuments and heritage structures are legally protected in India—a fraction of the 600,000 protected in the UK.
(D)This poor state of preservation of a large part of our national heritage is a result of the inability of those entrusted with their care and management to unlock the economic potential of these sites and demonstrate that conservation efforts can lead to meeting development objectives in a more sustainable manner.
(E)Each region of our subcontinent boasts of monumental buildings and remarkable archaeology.
(a)AEDCB
(b)AECBD
(c)BDCAE
(d)ADBCE
(e)BCEAD
Q7. (A)The PSL will have 12 city-named teams, with nine players each.
(B)However, unlike cricket, football, badminton or even kabaddi, the card game remains on the fringes, still fighting perceptions that prevent it from being considered a mind sport—like chess—and keenly trying to break free of its associations with gambling.
(C)For 108 players—and many other stakeholders—May 2017 will be a significant “coming out of the shadows” month.
(D)The Poker Sports League (PSL), a first of its kind in India, will follow in the footsteps of many other sports in the country that have received a leg-up since a league brought them into the limelight and made them the subject of dinner-table conversations.
(E)The online qualifiers will end on 23 April on the gaming website Adda52.com, while the live qualifiers ended on Saturday.
(F)Besides a captain/mentor, a team will have two professional players, two members who get through the live qualifiers, two members who get through the online qualifiers and two wild card entries.
(a)DBCAFE
(b)DABCEF
(c)CABEFD
(d)DFEACB
(e)CDBAFE
Q8. (A)The report of the expert committee formed to incorporate Telugu culture and history in the design of Amaravati, the planned capital city of Andhra Pradesh, is expected to be out soon.
(B)The Parakala Prabhakar-led committee aims to develop Amaravati into the best city of the century.
(C)This is not the first occasion when a grand new city is being built in India or elsewhere.
(D)From the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) in India to Songdo in South Korea, numerous masterplans are at different stages of completion.
(E)But there is a crucial policy question that often gets neglected: Is developing a new city necessarily a better option than expanding and improving existing cities?
(a)DBCEA
(b)BDACE
(c)ABCDE
(d)BCDAE
(e)AEDCB
Q9. (A)Their strategies mostly revolved around guiding one’s hard-earned income to appropriate savings destinations.
(B)Investors with the goal of providing good education to their children are advised to invest in a certain product while those with the aggressive goal of owing a luxury car are advised to invest in a different type of investment product.
(C)This was done by linking the future life goals of investors to a particular investment product.
(D)Over the years, governments, financial institutions and investment advisers have taken many initiatives to inculcate a saving habit among individuals.
(E)The financial services industry took learnings from behavioural sciences to motivate individuals to invest in various savings instruments.
(F)Financial products with varying levels of returns, liquidity, tax benefits, etc., have been developed to attract investments from individuals.
(a)DAFECB
(b)EDCBAF
(c)BEDCAF
(d)DBCEAF
(e)EACFDB
Q10. (A)Over the same period employment in the organised, non-agricultural sector, defined to include all units with 10 or more workers if using power and 20 or more workers if not using power, rose from 28.8 million to 47.7 million, whereas employment in the unorganised sector rose from 185.4 million to 209.6 million.
(B)Even in 2011-12, as much as 86 per cent of workers in the private sector and 50 per cent in the public sector were in units that could be designated as unorganised based on employment size.
(C)In absolute terms there were more who joined the unorganised sector’s workforce than the number who entered the organised sector between the two years.
(D)That is organised sector employment stood at 6.3 per cent and 10.1 per cent respectively of total employment in 2004-05 and 2011-12.
(E)Between 2004-05 and 2011-12, total employment in the country rose from 457.9 million to 472.4 million.
(a)EBDAC
(b)EDCAB
(c)EADCB
(d)EBDCA
(e)ECBDA
Directions (11-15): In each of the following questions, five options are given and you have to choose the one which has some or any grammatical error in it. In the questions where the fifth option is “all are correct” and all the given four options are correct choose option (e) as your choice.
Q11. (a) To the cultured Hindus it is an object of the deepest reverence.
(b) Cultured modern history, like Nature, would refuse to proceed per saltum.
(c) This young lady is more beautiful but not so cultured as her youngest sister.
(d) In any real sense of the word, they are neither educated nor cultured.
(e) Miss Burkham was the acme of all that was cultured and elegant.
Q12. (a) Rajan abided by all the rules which were explained to him before the programme.
(b) Rules are accepted from custom and enforced by authority and force.
(c) It contained the rules that govern the use of the Reading Room.
(d) The rules were taken up and adopted with scarcely a single objection.
(e) All are correct.
Q13. (a) They were kindly requested to attend the seminar in which lectures on the evils of communalism were to be delivered.
(b) Age had steeped him deep in black wisdom, not weakened his powers of evil.
(c) There shall then be no corruption, which is the only evil thing about the body.
(d) Its evil effects are to be found by turning to those who fail to get entrance to it.
(e) It is not conversion of evil men that must be aimed at, but their control.
Q14. (a) Crosbie, to whom all this was not repeated, would have preferred a wedding in the country.
(b) She was to have married my brother but she had been killed in a plane crash a month before the wedding date.
(c) On the wedding day, the bride and bridegroom are seated on two planks placed on the dais.
(d) Maria came, and, thanks to the holiday spirit of a wedding week, for a long day.
(e) All are correct.
Q15. (a) There was a shrinking from the economic hardships that war would entail.
(b) As he straightened, he realized that he was the object of an intense scrutiny.
(c) I could not see your object, but I was sure you had a motive.
(d) I object to war not because it drains economy but that it seems inhuman.
(e) In all English-speaking countries marriage is an object of pathos.
Practice More Questions of English for Competitive Exams:
Solutions
S1. Ans. (d)
Sol. Leverage means power.
Actuate means to make operate.
Profess means claim, announce.
S2. Ans. (c)
Sol. Consternation means a feeling of anxiety or dismay, typically at something unexpected.
Confederate means supporter.
Malice means ill will.
S3. Ans. (b)
Sol. Subservience means willingness to obey others.
Apathy means lack of interest.
S4. Ans. (a)
Sol. Outwit means deceive by greater ingenuity.
Languorous means certain kind of mood.
Contours means bounding the shape or form of something.
S5. Ans. (e)
Sol. Ambiguous means not clear or decided.
Swayed means control or influence.
S6. Ans. (b)
Sol. A must be the first sentence as it talks about India’s diverse and rich built heritage. E should follow A as it explains further what is mentioned in sentence A. B-D makes a combination and D should be the concluding sentence of the paragraph. Hence AECBD is the correct sequence to form a meaning paragraph.
S7. Ans. (e)
Sol. The paragraph is about the Poker Sports League (PSL) and hence it can be easily connected with one another. C must be the first sentence as it gives the inside view of the next statement. D should follow C and B should follow D. A-F makes a combination as they define the rules of the game. Hence among the given options, only (e) makes the perfect sequence to form the meaningful paragraph.
S8. Ans. (c)
Sol. A must be the first sentence as it talks about the planned capital city of Andhra Pradesh i.e. Amravati. B-C makes a combination and E must be the concluding sentence as it ends with the most obvious question. Hence ABCDE is the correct sequence to form a coherent paragraph.
S9. Ans. (a)
Sol. D must be the first sentence as it talks about the initiatives taken by financial institutions and financial advisers towards inculcating a saving habit. A must follow D and E-C makes a combination. B must be the concluding sentence. Hence DAFECB is the correct sequence to form a coherent paragraph.
S10. Ans. (c)
Sol. The paragraph reveals the statistical figures of employment and unemployment in the country. A must follow E as it talks about the same period as mentioned in the sentence E. A-D makes a combination. Similarly C-B makes another combination as both the sentences can be connected with the two sectors i.e. public and private, they are talking about. Hence EADCB is the correct sequence to form a coherent paragraph.
S11. Ans. (c)
Sol. Use ‘than’ after ‘more beautiful’ as the sentence is in Comparative and Positive Degree. The given sentence means – This young lady is better than (her youngest sister) but (this young lady is) not so cultured as her youngest sister = This young lady is better than but not so cultured as her youngest sister.
S12. Ans. (e)
Sol. All the given sentences are grammatically correct.
S13. Ans. (a)
Sol. Remove ‘kindly’ from the sentence as the use of “kindly/Please” in Active voice is stated as “you are requested” in the Passive form. As the sentence is in Passive voice, remove ‘Kindly’ to make it grammatically correct.
e.g. Please/Kindly shut the door. [Active]
You are requested to shut the door. [Passive]
S14. Ans. (b)
Sol. Replace ‘was to’ by ‘would’ as in this sentence the desire of the past is not fulfilled. For such desires, we generally use “Subject + would/could/might/should + have + V3” with the main Clause.
S15. Ans. (d)
Sol. Replace ‘that’ by ‘because’ as ‘because’ is used after ‘not’ in the sentence, hence ‘but’ will also be followed by ‘because’.
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