English Language Quiz for IBPS 2021 Mains Exams- 2nd January

Directions (1-5). Five statements are given below, labelled a, b, c, d and e. Among these, four statements are in logical order and form a coherent paragraph. From the given options, choose the option that does not fit into the theme of the paragraph.

Q1.
(a)Unfortunately, it is not just the airline that is in a mess, but also the banks (including the venerable State Bank of India) that have lent to it.
(b)So they restructure debt, offer better terms, extend repayment periods, and provide more credit to keep the unit afloat.
(c)If they withdraw they invite default of the large volume of debt they have already provided.
(d) The dangers associated with restructuring was brought to public attention in the Kingfisher Airlines case, which is now facing the prospect of liquidation as a result of a combination of bad strategy, bad acquisitions, profligacy and obvious mismanagement.
(e) The largest chunk of bank debt to infrastructure (estimated at Rs. 269196 crore as of March 2011) is to the power sector.

Q2.
(a)In the rural areas, male usual (principal and subsidiary) status employment increased by only 13.4 million between 2004-05 and 2009-10, as compared with 20.2 million between 1999-2000 and 2004-05.
(b) This points to a structural shift in employment generation since most of the additional male employment generated in this age group during the 1999-2000 to 2004-05 period was in the self-employment category.
(c)The corresponding figures for the urban areas were 9.8 million and 15 million respectively.
(d)Thus there is clear evidence of deceleration here as well.
(e)To deal with the criticism that the figures on female employment are gross underestimates, and get on with the task at hand, we can restrict the analysis to movements in male employment.

Q3.
(a) The Survey sees the services sector, which recorded a marginal deceleration of growth in 2013-14, as poised for revival and as being an important contributor to growth in the future as well.
(b)Though India ranks low in terms of per capita income, its share of services in GDP is approaching the global average.
(c)This would imply that the relative per worker value added in services vis-à-vis the commodity producing sectors and construction, was higher in India than elsewhere.
(d)Interestingly, however, the contribution of services to employment was significantly lower than the world average.
(e)As the Economic Survey noted, while at the global level services accounted for 65.9 per cent of GDP and as much as 44 per cent of employment in 2012, in India’s case the sector, with 56.3 per cent of GDP, accounted for just 28.1 per cent of employment.

Q4.
(a) It may appear counter-intuitive, but research shows that imposing stricter penalties tends to reduce the level of enforcement of road rules.
(b) As the IIT Delhi’s Road Safety in India report of 2015 points out, the deterrent effect of law depends on the severity and swiftness of penalties, but also the perception that the possibility of being caught for violations is high.
(c) The amendments to the MV Act set enhanced penalties for several offences, notably drunken driving, speeding, jumping red lights and so on, but periodic and ineffective enforcement, which is the norm, makes it less likely that these will be uniformly applied.
(d) The bottleneck created by their lack of capacity has stifled regulatory reform in the transport sector and only encouraged corruption.
(e) Without an accountable and professional police force, the ghastly record of traffic fatalities, which stood at 1,46,133 in 2015, is unlikely to change.

Q5.
(a) Without such oversight, unethical commercial entities would have easy backdoor access to public funds in the form of state-backed insurance.
(b) But this requires accountability, both on the quality and cost of care.
(c) Against such a laggardly record, the policy now offers an opportunity to systematically rectify well-known deficiencies through a stronger National Health Mission.
(d)No more time should be lost in forming regulatory and accreditation agencies for healthcare providers at the national and State levels as suggested by the expert group on universal health coverage of the Planning Commission more than five years ago.
(e) Contracting of health services from the private sector may be inevitable in the short term, given that about 70% of all outpatient care and 60% of inpatient treatments are provided by it.

Directions (6-10): 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.

Q6. Physical violence is addictive and infectious. Like some deadly drug, once you partake of it you want a second (forgive the terrible pun) hit, and once you start doing it regularly you want more and more. With ingested substances your interaction is only with yourself, but violence always needs a target, or — if you must be libtardish about it — a victim. Now, as your blow transfers from your brain to the hand that pulls off your slipper to the recipient, you transfer not only the pain but also the infection from which you are suffering. Perhaps not immediately, especially if they’re reeling from serious bodily damage, but sooner or later, the person who’s hit will want to hit back. ________________________

(a) If your target is dead, the infection will spread to their loved ones and comrades.
(b) Despite limited experience I would suggest that a human being has two contradictory reactions when he visits physical harm on someone.
(c) These violent ideologies tend to get hungrier for sanctioned targets; the definitions of the enemy get wider, consciously and subconsciously.
(d) How can someone who hits you tell you not to do it to others?
(e) With parents it is difficult to hit back, especially when you’re very small.

Q7. In a recent and fascinating book called The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle between Faith and Reason: 1798 to Modern Times by Christopher de Bellaigue, there is an interesting counterfactual that is posed. Could the most advanced societies of the Islamic world in the early 19th century — the Ottoman empire — have understood Jane Eyre? _______________________________. To “get” Jane Eyre, not just as a cultural product but also as a viable, believable story, the Ottomans would have had to “get” the social infrastructure in which the novel unfolds. This would mean recognising a post-feudal society, understanding institutions like the postal services or newspapers, and the idea that a “respectable” single woman could make life choices on her own.

(a)The answer is not clear.
(b) Even within the democratic context of India, we find elaborately architected visions of linguistic chauvinism, imaginary sanctities, textual literalism, and genetic ‘purity’.
(c) Jane Eyre is a novel by Charlotte Brontë, published in 1847, about a young woman’s journey through life and love at the cusp of modernity.
(d) One can try to keep in mind that the ideas we hold to be self-evident and eternal were born out of contingent circumstances.
(e) At best, we can only point to a set of responses that shows how our present culture is born out of a complex set of exchanges and reactions.

Q8. The question is what defines headline inflation? For long, point-to-point changes in the wholesale price index (WPI) were considered the headline inflation rate. The WPI is a weighted average of the prices of most goods produced in the economy, with the weights being their shares in domestic output and their prices those prevailing in wholesale markets. _______________________________. Internationally consumer price indices rather than producer price indices are the standard for measuring inflation, since they reflect the prices that ordinary citizens face and pay.

(a) The release was supposed to mark the transition to the use by the government and the central bank of this new index rather than the wholesale price index (WPI) to compute the headline inflation rate.
(b) The reason for this significant difference partly lies in the substantial difference in rates of inflation across commodity groups as measured by the WPI.
(c) This does indeed make a difference.
(d) It is closer to a producer price index, reflecting more what producers charge their immediate buyers, rather than the prices that prevail at the end of the trading chain, in retail markets.
(e) Since many of these primary goods are likely to be consumed by the ordinary citizen and, therefore, feature in the CPI with a large weight, that index shows inflation to be much higher.

Q9. Is this China story true? And if so would India be among the countries that benefit? International comparisons of unit labour costs are difficult to come by, but some numbers are available from a few sources. This discussion is based on estimates made by the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) of the US government. Despite the difficulty involved in generating comparable numbers the BLS has (till recently) routinely put out figures on unit labour costs in different countries as part of its International Labour Comparison programme. ___________________________

(a)However, what matters from the point of view of competitiveness is not just compensation but unit labour costs in a common currency, which depends on compensation, productivity and the exchange rate.
(b) China and India were not part of the regular programme, but the BLS conducted special studies of labour compensation in these countries, being careful to underscore the dangers of comparing data that are different in terms of method, coverage and reliability across countries.
(c) There are several aspects of the Chinese experience that need to be taken note of.
(d) Given the evidence on labour compensation costs, conventionally seen as an important determinant of competitiveness, this differential in performance calls for an explanation.
(e) While China was recording a lower level of compensation costs when compared with India (though the two were close to each other), matters had changed significantly by 2009 with Chinese compensation costs racing ahead.

Q10. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) also estimates that around 18 per cent of individuals in India were using the Internet in 2014, as compared with 49.3 per cent in China, 90 per cent in Japan and 87.4 per cent in the US. _______________________________. Since services provided by the government are likely to be accessed by households, this improves the initial condition from which the government is working. But still, a quarter of households is a long way from the near universal access to cloud-based services that the government is hoping to ensure.

(a) One problem is, of course, that of providing access to the hardware through which individuals get access to the Internet.
(b) Almost a decade back it announced a policy initiative to bridge India’s widening digital divide by increasing physical access to computers connected to the Internet.
(c) The NSS survey quoted earlier suggests that there is an unusual relationship between internet access, computer access and literacy.
(d) If we go by figures from Internet World Stats, Internet penetration within the population in India amounted to 19.7 per cent at the end of June 2014, as compared with 86.9 per cent in the U. S., 86.2 per cent in Japan, and 47.4 per cent in China.
(e) But, as noted earlier, the NSS figures suggest that the proportion of households with Internet access is much higher than the “non-official” numbers on the proportion of individuals who are Internet users.

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) He was probably a Greek, but he did not accord with anything of his time.
(b) Their husbands are not likely ever to be rich men, and will probably be poor for some years to come.
(c) Had there been, he probably would have invited the visitor to walk to the fire and partake.
(d) The individual whom I address is probably the most popular beggar in the town.
(e) Between you and I, he probably won’t come at all.

Q12.
(a) Let no one remain with doubt that India is getting stronger and stronger.
(b) Only I made it stronger and more explicit than that, and knew they would comply if such a thing were humanly possible.
(c) The comfort she enjoyed and could always look forward to was making her stronger.
(d) It seems to me that the breeze is stronger here than it was out at sea.
(e) All are correct.

Q13.
(a) It was late in the afternoon when I set foot on solid earth, but I did not stay in the town.
(b) Almost as soon as he set foot in his home he was informed of the news by Trim.
(c)After many an adventure the explorer finally set foot on the English soil.
(d) She was resolved to leave Atlamalco on the first opportunity and never to set foot within the Republic again.
(e) All are correct.

Q14.
(a) They are at the same time modest and impudent, attack and careful retreat.
(b) The child was then careful to avoid what had been pronounced “wrong” in others.
(c) There are many a slips between the cup and the lip and so one has to be careful.
(d) Now lower the fire and be careful not to allow the compound to be overdone.
(e) Be careful not to overcook it, and it will not be pasty, but firm and tender.

Q15.
(a) They discussed their chances of contacting Space Academy with the communications set they had left hidden in the storeroom.
(b) He wondered how they’d go about contacting the commissioner.
(c) I will appreciate your contacting any of the girls who might be interested in joining our air line as stewardesses.
(d) No sooner I received the telegram from Avinash than I started contacting my friends on phone.
(e) All are correct.

Practice More Questions of English for Competitive Exams:

Solutions

S1. Ans. (e)
Sol. Among the given options, DACB makes a coherent paragraph which depicts the bad debts story associated with the lending, liquidation and their restructure process, citing the Kingfisher Airlines as the perfect example. Option (e) can be easily eliminated from the given options as it talks about the bank debt to the power sector which fails to connect with any other sentences.

S2. Ans. (b)
Sol. EACD forms a coherent paragraph as it talks about the statistical figure of comparison between the male and female employment. Option (b), which points to structural shift in male employment in a particular age group which is missing in other given options, does not make any connection with other sentences. Hence option (b) is the correct choice.

S3. Ans. (a)
Sol. The paragraph is about India’s performance in terms of per capita income in service sector. In this regard BDEC forms a coherent paragraph. Option (a) does not fit anywhere in the paragraph as it depicts the deceleration of growth in 2013-14. Hence option (a) is the correct choice.

S4. Ans. (d)
Sol. ABCE forms a coherent paragraph as it talks about the amendments in Motor Vehicles Bill. Among the given options, only sentence (d) fails to connect with any other options as it points out certain obstacle due to their lack of capacity and corruption in this field. Hence option (d) is the correct choice.

S5. Ans. (c)
Sol. Sentences in the sequence of EBDA forms a coherent paragraph that talks about the existing health policies in the country and the requirement of their reforms. All options except (c) are inter connected in some or other way. However, option (c) is about certain sluggish record in this field and the reformed policy which doesn’t get connection with other given sentences of the paragraph. Hence option (c) is the correct choice.

S6. Ans. (a)
Sol. The paragraph talks about the process and subsequent consequences of physical violence. Read the last and second last sentences of the paragraph carefully, it can be inferred from there that any kind of physical violence may act as an infection to the recipient. Among the given options, only sentence (a) makes a valid and appropriate connection with these two sentences. Other options can be easily eliminated as they do not make perfect conclusion to the paragraph.

S7. Ans. (c)
Sol. Read the paragraph carefully, it is about the different culture and faith that exist in the present society. It takes the examples of different books which talk about the practical existence of cultural autonomy. The sentences on either side of the blank space makes it clear that only option (c) suits appropriately to fill the gap. Other options are irrelevant as they fail to match the theme of the paragraph.

S8. Ans. (d)
Sol. The given paragraph explains the meaning of headline inflation. Read the sentences of either side of the blank space, there is a comparison of wholesale price index with consumer price index. Hence among the given options, only option (d) makes the correct substitution to the blank space. Other options offer different meanings which do not connect with the theme of the paragraph.

S9. Ans. (b)
Sol. The paragraph talks about the International Labour Comparison Programme by the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) of the US government, specifically highlighting the different modes of comparison between the two countries – India and China. After going through all the given options, option (b) makes the most appropriate conclusion to this paragraph as it clearly mentions that both the countries were not the part of this programme which can be connected well with its former sentence. Other options are irrelevant as they add different meanings to the conclusion.

S10. Ans. (e)
Sol. The paragraph is about the proportion of Indians who has got the access to internet connection. Read the sentence just after the blank space, it talks about the services provided by the government to the households which can be easily connected with the option (e) among the given options. Other options, though related to the topic, are irrelevant in the context of adding meaning to this particular paragraph.

S11. Ans. (e)
Sol. Replace ‘I’ by ‘me’ as ‘between’ is always followed by Objective Case.
e.g. Between you (Objective Case) and me (Objective Case).
Between him (Objective Case) and her (Objective Case).

S12. Ans. (a)
Sol. Replace ‘with’ by ‘in’ as the use of “in doubt, in confusion” are idiomatic.

S13. Ans. (e)
Sol. All the given sentences are grammatically correct.

S14. Ans. (c)
Sol. Use ‘many a slip’ or ‘many slips’ in place of ‘many a slips’ as the correct syntax is “Many + a/an + Singular Noun + Singular Verb” or “Many + Plural Noun + Plural Verb”.
e.g. Many a man (Noun – Singular) has come.
Many men (Noun – Plural) have come.

S15. Ans. (d)
Sol. Use ‘had’ after ‘No sooner’ as the sentence starting with “No sooner, Hardly, Scarcely, Rarely, Seldom” requires Inversion i.e. helping verb is used before Subject. However ‘did’ can also be used after ‘No sooner’ but then ‘received’ would be replaced by ‘receive’.
e.g. No sooner had I received…
No sooner did I receive…

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