Table of Contents
Directions (1-5): 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.
Q1. (A)Not only is Indian women’s labour-force participation among the lowest in the world, research suggests it may be declining.
(B)Indian women’s labour force participation, at just 27 per cent, is ranked 170 out of the world’s 188 economies.
(C)There are many reasons why this matter: For one, women cannot contribute to India’s economic growth if they are not fully participating in the workforce.
(D)This is despite rising education levels and declining fertility.
(E)Also, working women tend to have greater bargaining power in their households, which could translate to better outcomes both for their children and themselves.
(a)ABCDE
(b)BADCE
(c)DCABE
(d)CDAEB
(e)EDACB
Q2. (A)The waste cleaned up by these plants has to undergo a final cleansing in the river.
(B)Moreover, even sewage treatment plants (STPs) can do so much.
(C)According to the National Mission for Clean Ganga website, nearly 12,000 million litres of sewage is generated every day in the Ganga basin.
(D)Barely a third of this waste is treated; the rest flows into the river.
(E)The volume of muck might actually be even greater because large parts of cities like Haridwar, Varanasi and Kanpur are not even connected to the sewage network, and their waste remains unaccounted for.
(F)But with more than 40 dams, weirs and barrages checking the Ganga’s flow along its 2,500 km journey, not even a martinet’s command can make the river clean sewage.
(a)CDEBAF
(b)FDCEBA
(c)DBECFA
(d)FBAECD
(e)ABCDEF
Q3. (A)Access to bank loans is disproportionately tied to access to land, as land and buildings provide strong collateral support for most bank loans.
(B)This is India’s financial misallocation problem.
(C)The underlying cause behind the financial misallocation is distortion in the land market, with less efficient firms accessing more land, and more bank loans.
(D)Growth requires more efficient firms to produce more output and use more factors of production, including greater access to bank loans.
(E)Unfortunately, less efficient firms manage to access more bank loans, leaving less room for growth of more efficient firms.
(F)This is not a problem for the service industry, which is less land-intensive.
(a)ABDCEF
(b)EDCAFB
(c)FBDECA
(d)DEBCAF
(e)CADEFB
Q4. (A)A few weeks ago, a scientific claim linking canola oil to Alzheimer’s disease risk raised an intriguing question.
(B)When it comes to healthy eating, do we have to choose between the head and the heart?
(C)In other words, is it possible that foods promoted as good for cardiovascular health, such as canola oil, are bad for the brain?
(D)There’s surprisingly little information out there on what to eat for brain health.
(E)Why wouldn’t scientists want to focus on maintaining the seat of consciousness, memory, creativity, love, learning and joy, as opposed to a glorified pump?
(F)The vast majority of nutrition research is aimed at the heart.
(a)BCDFEA
(b)ABCDFE
(c)FDCBAE
(d)ECDABF
(e)DBCAEF
Q5. (A)Gabaix’s unified theory is based on limited human attention.
(B)That kind of economizing is called bounded rationality, a term coined by polymathic social scientist Herbert Simon, himself a recipient of the Nobel.
(C)Because keeping track of this flood of information is very costly, it makes sense to think that people economize on what they pay attention to.
(D)Standard economic theory requires that consumers and businesspeople pay close attention to a vast array of prices, quantities and other information.
(a)DBCA
(b)BDAC
(c)CDAB
(d)ABCD
(e)ADCB
Directions (6-10): In the question given below few sentences are given which are grammatically correct and meaningful. Connect them by the word/phrase given above the statements in the best possible way without changing the intended meaning. Choose the best possible combination as your answer accordingly from the options to form a correct, coherent sentence.
Q6. Not only…but also
(A) This redesigned seat is healthier for the body
(B) It allows for a sounder sleep, so that when passengers arrive at their final destinations, they feel more refreshed.
(C) The redesign focuses on a much more private experience for business-class travelers, one in which each passenger has his or her own compartment.
(D) The redesign does, in some ways, look like what first class used to look like before the best seats on the airline turned into mini-lounges.
(a)Only A-B
(b)Only B-C
(c)Only C-A
(d)Both A-B and C-D
(e)None
Q7. Rather than
(A)As for the risk of a more pronounced slowdown, Bloxham says there is a risk, but if it were to occur it would likely be driven by external factors.
(B)Australian house price growth is slowing, auction clearance rates are falling and housing finance is also starting to soften, all pointing to cooling in the broader housing market after years of strong price growth.
(C)The question that many are now asking is whether this slowdown will lead to outright price declines.
(D)Domestic factors influencing the risks of pronounced slowdown shall be avoided.
(a) Only A-B
(b) Only A-D
(c) Both C-D and D-A
(d) Both B-C and A-C
(e) None
Q8. Although
(A)Amanda Staveley has made a second bid in her attempt to buy Newcastle United
(B)The current owner Mike Ashley is yet to accept it and could ask her to increase the offer for a second time.
(C)Hopes are high that the negotiations are edging closer to completion.
(D)The sources have told Telegraph Sport that Staveley’s has still not offered enough for the takeover to go through at this stage.
(a)Only A-B
(b)Only A-D
(c)Both A-B and C-D
(d)Both A-C and B-C
(e)None
Q9. Whether
(A)As banks sharpen their internal assessment of risk before lending, they are investing in analytics, data gathering and use of social media more now than on conventional tools like score from credit information bureaus, which capture borrowing behaviour.
(B)To sanction a loan for you to buy a home or car, rather than relying solely on your credit card repayments.
(C)It is not just Kotak but others too, such as HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and even state-owned banks like State Bank of India, which use social media behaviour not only for loan sanctions but also for tailoring sales pitch for products.
(D)Loan officers at Kotak Mahindra Bank are spending more time in reading your Facebook posts, SMSes and payment data available in your mobile phone to decide.
(a) Only B-A
(b) Only D-B
(c) Only D-C
(d) Only A-C
(e) None
Q10. Also
(A)These mutations turn good cells bad by boosting the expression of a protein called PD-L1, or programmed death-ligand 1.
(B)Mutations in the Ras gene are double trouble.
(C)PD-L1 is being targeted by cancer immunotherapies, which try to unmask cancer cells, much about PD-L1 remains unknown
(D)Mutations help bad cells masquerade as good cells by uplifting protein PD-L1.
(a) Only A-B
(b) Only C-D
(c) Only B-C
(d) Only A-D
(e) None
Directions (11-15): Each of the following questions has a paragraph from which one sentence has been deleted. From the given options, choose the one that completes the paragraph in the most appropriate way.
Q11. The Great Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 was by no means simply a “Russian” revolution. Rather, it was a watershed event and a turning point in universal human history. This revolution came after a whole chain of revolutions that broke out in Europe in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789, but it was the first that envisioned the end not only of the rule of capital but of private property altogether, thus of all class society as such. In his seminal writings of March-April 1917, Lenin in fact envisions an immediate “withering away of the state”. ___________________________________________.
(a) The Bolshevik Revolution was the great historic event with which the peasantry first emerged as the maker of its own history.
(b) Russian colonies were the first in history to make a direct transition from colonial subjection to socialist liberation.
(c) Unlike Britain or France, Russia was not strong enough to acquire colonies far from its frontiers.
(d) This was the most far-reaching project that any revolution had ever set for itself.
(e) Russia itself was not only a tsarist state.
Q12. The October Revolutionised the conception of a “revolution”. In a sense, all revolutions do that anyway, but the October Revolution did so in a manner that continues to have an abiding relevance. Marx and Engels had essentially visualised a proletarian revolution in Europe. Engels, in his famous letter to Karl Kautsky in 1882, had talked no doubt of the possibility of revolutions in countries such as India, Egypt and Algeria, adding that “that would certainly be the best thing for us” (that is, for the proletarian revolution in Europe), but how such revolutions in the “periphery” might unfold and, in particular, how they were related to the prospects of socialism in those countries was not theorised. _______________________________________________________.
(a) This meant that the task of carrying forward the democratic revolution in such countries fell on the working class, which had to form an alliance with the peasantry for this purpose.
(b) The focus had been on socialist revolution in Europe.
(c) The theoretical work preceding and underlying the October Revolution broke new ground.
(d) Centralisation of capital in each of the advanced capitalist countries had reached a point, in the spheres of both industry and banking, where a small financial oligarchy presided over a huge mass of finance capital that was controlled by banks and employed in industry.
(e) This theory was further developed by its integration with the understanding of imperialism that came with the First World War.
Q13. It was a hectic two weeks for the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS as he is now popularly known. In the first fortnight of November, the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia initiated a purge that involved the arrest of some of his royal half-brothers, leading businessmen, artistes and media professionals. He then announced a full blockade on Yemen after a missile fired from that country fell perilously close to the international airport in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. _____________________________________________________. The Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, was urgently summoned to Riyadh by the Saudi King. According to reports, he was promptly arrested after landing and given a prepared speech of resignation to read.
(a) The State Department memo detailing the conversation between Prince Alwaleed and the American ambassador was released by WikiLeaks.
(b) The Lebanese President has said that the Saudi authorities are holding the Prime Minister against his will.
(c) Hariri, before his unannounced appearance on a Saudi television channel, was presiding over a Lebanese government that was, after a long time, working in a united and cohesive way.
(d) After that he did something unparalleled in the history of contemporary diplomacy or politics in the region.
(e) The Lebanese Prime Minister was ordered to come alone to Riyadh by the Saudi authorities.
Q14. About two years ago when Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam breathed his last, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government decided to live up to tradition in paying tribute to the former President. Kalam, who was famously called a “nationalist despite being a Muslim” by a Union Minister, had a road named after him in the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi. There was a catch, though: Aurangzeb Road was renamed A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road. It was the latest instance of the time-worn “Good Muslim/Bad Muslim” binary, the liberal, nationalist Muslim versus a bigot. A few eyebrows were raised, but nobody complained. _____________________________________________________.
(a) Aurangzeb has always been criticised, projected as a villain who did nothing right.
(b) He was a pioneer in the development and use of Mysore rockets in warfare.
(c) The objective is to create antipathy towards Muslim rulers
(d) There are no good Muslims left, at least in history.
(e) Kalam deserved to be remembered by posterity.
Q15. State Bank of India is the only Indian bank to figure in the list of the world’s top 50 banks and the only one to be listed in Fortune 500. It is widely known as the banker of the nation and has 23,566 branches in the country, of which 15,037 are in rural and semi-urban areas. SBI has 189 international offices in 35 countries. __________________________________________________. It recently acquired additional muscle by merging its five associate banks with itself, besides opening crores of new accounts under the Prime Minister’s Jan Dhan Yojana. This bank is now being gifted to Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) on a platter, ostensibly for the purpose of “banking the unbanked”.
(a) The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave its final approval to RIL to start its payment bank in March 2017.
(b) Is it the beginning of the end for State Bank of India (SBI)?
(c) The avowed objective of the government and the RBI in giving the approval to the RIL-SBI partnership was to utilise the latest technology of Reliance Jio to reach unbanked rural areas.
(d) According to SBI officers, business correspondents appointed by SBI are being asked to work for RIL, thereby giving the corporate house an established network of business correspondents.
(e) As of September 30, 2014, the bank had approximately 225 million active customer accounts, and deposits, net advances and a total assets base of Rs.14,73,785 crore, Rs.12,09,648 crore and Rs.18,74,332 crore respectively
Practice More Questions of English for Competitive Exams:
Solutions
S1. Ans. (b)
Sol. Among the given options, it is quite easy to decide that the sentence (B) should be the first sentence of the paragraph. It should be followed by the sentence (A) as both are talking about the same subject. Sentences (C) and (E) form a combination, with (E) being the last statement of the paragraph. Thus, sentences in the sequence of BADCE form a coherent paragraph which is about Indian women’s labour force participation. Hence option (b) is the correct choice.
S2. Ans. (a)
Sol. Among the given options, the sentence (C) should be considered the starting sentence of the paragraph. Sentences (C), (D) and (E) form a chain which follow one after the other giving a logical flow to the paragraph. The sentence (F) should be the concluding sentence of the paragraph. Thus, sentences in the sequence of CDEBAF form a coherent paragraph. Hence (a) is the correct choice.
S3. Ans. (d)
Sol. Sentences (D) and (E) form a combination following one after the other. Moreover, the sentence (D) should begin the sentence as no other statements give a better start to the paragraph. Similarly, sentences (B) and (C) form a chain that would lead other sentences (A) and (F) to follow. Thus, sentences in the sequence of DEBCAF form a coherent paragraph which is about India’s financial misallocation problem. Hence option (d) is the correct choice.
S4. Ans. (b)
Sol. Sentences (A), (B) and (C) form a proper sequence with (A) being the beginning sentence of the paragraph as the question raised in the first statement is fulfilled in the form of statements (B) and (C). Sentences (D) and (F) form another combination with (F) following the former. The sentence (E) should be the concluding sentence of the paragraph. Thus, sentences in the sequence of ABCDFE form a coherent paragraph which is about the healthy eating habits considering the diseases related to the head and the heart. Hence option (b) is the correct choice.
S5. Ans. (e)
Sol. The sentence (A) should begin the sentence as it initiates the central theme of the paragraph. Sentences (D) and (C) are complementary and the sentence (C) follows the former to bring out the reason. The sentence (B) is an automatic choice for conclusion. Thus, sentences in the sequence of ADCB form a coherent paragraph which is about Gabaix’s unified economic theory. Hence (e) is the correct choice.
S6. (a)
Sol. Option (a) is the correct choice.
When using not only . . . but also in a sentence, parallelism should be the goal. It means that the words following both parts of this correlative conjunction should belong to the same parts of speech. For example, if a noun follows not only, then that noun should also follow but also.
“Not only this redesigned seat is healthier for the body, but it also allows for a sounder sleep, so that when passengers arrive at their final destinations, they feel more refreshed.”
S7. Ans. (b)
Sol. Option (b) is the correct choice.
‘Rather than’ is used to give more importance to one thing when two alternatives or preferences are being compared.
“As for the risk of a more pronounced slowdown, Bloxham says there is a risk, but if it were to occur it would likely be driven by external factors rather than domestic factors”.
S8. Ans. (c)
Sol. ‘Although’ means ‘in spite of the fact that; even though’.
‘Although’ also means ‘however; but’.
“Amanda Staveley has made a second bid in her attempt to buy Newcastle United although, the current owner Mike Ashley is yet to accept it and could ask her to increase the offer for a second time.”
“Hopes are high that the negotiations are edging closer to completion, although, the sources have told Telegraph Sport that Staveley’s has still not offered enough for the takeover to go through at this stage.”
S9. Ans. (b)
Sol. ‘Whether’ means ‘expressing a doubt or choice between alternatives’.
“Loan officers at Kotak Mahindra Bank are spending more time in reading your Facebook posts, SMSes and payment data available in your mobile phone to decide whether to sanction a loan for you to buy a home or car, rather than relying solely on your credit card repayments.”
S10. Ans. (d)
Sol. ‘Also’ means ‘in addition; too.’
“These mutations turn good cells bad and also help bad cells masquerade as good cells by boosting the expression of a protein called PD-L1, or programmed death-ligand 1.”
S11. Ans. (d)
Sol. Here sentence (d) completes the paragraph. The paragraph is giving the brief description about the Russian revolution, which was a turning point in human history broke out after French revolution, envisaged the end of capital rule and private property. The sentence before the blank is talking about the project of Lenin related to the revolution and hence the blank must be filled by the sentence related to his project. Hence only sentence (d) is making the paragraph meaningful and complete.
S12. Ans. (b)
Sol. The paragraph discusses the envision of Marx and Engels about the revolution in countries like India, Egypt and Algeria and how they are related to the prospects of socialism. After going through the sentences, we can conclude that sentence (b) is going correctly with the theme of the paragraph talking about the socialist revolution in Egypt. Hence option (b) is the correct choice.
S13. Ans. (d)
Sol. We can easily identify the theme of the paragraph that revolves around the actions of Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman. The sentences before the blank talks about announcement by him to siege the Yemen and sentences after the blank is about the arrest of Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri by Saudi King and the blank must be filled by the sentence related to this theme. Going through all the sentences, we can conclude that sentence (d) is going in harmony with the paragraph talking about his move of arresting PM of Lebanon, that is exceptional. Hence option (d) is the correct choice.
S14. Ans. (e)
Sol. The paragraph is all about paying tribute to Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government by renaming a road after him. Hence the blank must be filled by the sentence representing the objective of this move. Read the sentences, sentence (e) talking about Kalam to be remembered by future generations, is making the paragraph meaningful. Hence option (e) is the correct choice.
S15. Ans. (e)
Sol. The paragraph is all about State Bank of India, the only bank to be listed in the World’s top 50 banks and in Fortune 500. The sentences before the blank is giving the description about the number of branches of SBI and the sentences after the blank talks about the recent changes in the bank structure. The blank must be filled by the sentence discussing more information regarding SBI. Only sentence (e) is giving the further description and hence making the given option the correct choice.
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