English Practice Question and Answer

Q:

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions as directed.

We expect individuals (I) to take charge of their lives, to assume responsibility for their decisions. But when individuals group together, a problem arises. Groups can’t take charge of themselves, nor can every member simultaneously take charge of the entire group. Someone from the group is invariably asked to show the way, to become the primary agent, to lead. Yet, not everyone who occupies high office is a leader. A person who merely (II) or has management skills is not a leader. Moreover, not everyone who assumes the role of a leader is able to play it well. What qualities then make for a leader? Which (A)virtues are required to provide ethical leadership? I suppose there is little new (III). But let me still give it a shot in the hope that it serves as a good reminder. And in the election year, why not focus on qualities necessary for political leadership?

If a person is chosen to lead the group, it is her responsibility to take care of the interest of each person of the entire group. This often (B)____ putting collective interest before her own interest or that of her

preferred group. For this to happen, she must first be able to identify the common good, to have a grasp of what is acceptable to all, to have an inclusive vision. This requires an infinite capacity to listen to others, to learn from them, to have the intellectual ability to critically examine and evaluate what everyone wants and needs, and then put them all together. Since this intellectual formulation can only be the first step, an estimate of the real quality of a decision is not known until it is implemented; ______(C) _______.
 This requires him to keep his ear to the ground, listen patiently to criticism to judge if his policies are working. He must not be defensive when criticised, or evade uncomfortable questions, but face criticism head on and be able to sift the wheat from the chaff. It also necessitates that a leader show flexibility and an ability for course correction by admitting mistakes. He should know that one’s stature is not diminished by accepting fallibility. A leader must be a good communicator, and that is greatly helped if he has a way with words. But all the rhetorical flourish is of no avail if the speech lacks sincerity and conviction. Finally, a good leader knows that nothing can be achieved without the collective expertise and wisdom of a support team.
 It is equally tempting to pick those one has taken a fancy to, who are personally loyal. But such people often lack spine. (D)Fearful people with poor ability can never offer good advice to their leader and could allow bad decisions to prevail that push the country down a ruinous path. Besides, they are often among the first to backstab the leader once out of power. Thus, personal likes and dislikes too must be set aside.

Two sentences are given in italics on both sides of C. Which of the following statements can come in between the two sentences in place of C so as to maintain the continuity of the paragraph?

1166 0

  • 1
    this means that our leaders must owe supreme loyalty to nothing
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    understand the purpose of the job, can speak their mind, and are able, without fear
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    such persons can be identified only by one who possesses these qualities
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    Its deficiencies begin to show up only when put into practice.
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 5
    None of the above
    Correct
    Wrong
  • Show AnswerHide Answer
  • Workspace

Answer : 4. "Its deficiencies begin to show up only when put into practice."

  • Show AnswerHide Answer
  • Workspace

Answer : 3. "PRQ"

Q:

Direction: In the question a sentence has been given in Active/Passive Voice. Out of the four alternatives suggested, select the one which best expressed the same sentence in Passive/Active Voice and mark your answer in the Answer Sheet.

Will he give us the key?

1165 0

  • 1
    Will the key be given us by him?
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    Will the key be given to us by him?
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    Will be the key given to us?
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    Would the key be given to us?
    Correct
    Wrong
  • Show AnswerHide Answer
  • Workspace

Answer : 2. "Will the key be given to us by him?"

Q:

Select the most appropriate ANTONYM of the bracketed word in the given sentence.

It is irrelevance, at least to me, whether the grant was (improvident) or no.

1165 0

  • 1
    tardy
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    thrifty
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    cautious
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    hungry
    Correct
    Wrong
  • Show AnswerHide Answer
  • Workspace

Answer : 2. "thrifty"

Q:

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words have been printed in bold to help you locate them, while answering some of the questions.
Among those suffering from the global recession are millions of workers who are not even included in the official statistics : urban recyclers – the trash pickers, sorters, traders and reprocesses who extricate paper, cardboard and plastics from garbage heaps and prepare them for reuse. Their work is both unrecorded and largely unrecognized, even though in some parts of the World they handle as much as 20% of all waste.
The World’s 15 million informal recyclers clean up cities, prevent some trash from ending in landfills and thus, reduce climate change by saving energy on waste disposal techniques like incineration. In the developed countries they are the preferred ones since they recycle waste much more cheaply and efficiently than governments or private corporations can. In the developing World, on the other hand, they provide the only recycling services except for a few big cities. But as recession hits the markets Worldwide, the price of scrap metal, paper and plastic has also fallen. Recyclers throughout the World are experiencing a sharp drop in income. Trash pickers and scrap dealers saw a decline of as much as 80% in the price of scrap from October 2007 to October 2009. In some countries scrap dealers have shuttered so quickly that researchers at the Solid Waste Management Association didn’t have a chance to record their losses. In Delhi, some 80% of families in the informal recycling business surveyed by an organization said they had cut back on “luxury foods,” which they defined as fruit, milk and meat. About 41% had stopped buying milk for their children. By this summer, most of those children, already malnourished, hadn’t had a glass of milk in nine months. Many of these children have also cut down on hours spent in school to work alongside their parents. Families have liquidated their most valuable assets – primarily copper from electrical wires – and have stopped sending remittances back to their rural villages. Many have also sold their emergency stores of grain. Their misery is not as familiar as that of the laid-off workers of big name but imploding, service sector corporation, but it is often more tragic. Few countries have adopted emergency measures to help trash pickers. Brazil, for one, is  providing recyclers, or “catadores,” with cheaper food, both through arrangements with local farmers and by offering food subsidies. Other countries, with the support of non-governmental organizations  and donor agencies are following Brazil’s example. Unfortunately, most trash pickers operate outside official notice and end up falling through the cracks of programmes like these. In the long run,  though, these invisible workers will remain especially vulnerable to economic slowdowns unless they are integrated into the formal business sector, where they can have insurance and reliable wages. This is not hard to accomplish. Informal junk shops should have to apply for licences, and governments should create or expand doorstep waste collection programmes to employ trash pickers. Instead of sorting through haphazard trash heaps and landfills, the pickers would have access to the cleaner scrap that comes from households.

The need of the hour, however, is a more immediate solution. An efficient but temporary solution would be for governments where they’d have to pay a small subsidy to waste dealers so they could purchase scrap from trash pickers at about 20% above the current price. This increase, if well advertised and broadky utilized, would bring recyclers a higher price and eventually bring them back from the brink. Trash pickers make our cities healthier and more liveable. We all stand to gain by making sure that the work of recycling remains sustainable for years to come.

Choose the word/group of words which is most similar in meaning to the word printed in bold as used in the passage.
Cracks

1165 0

  • 1
    Breaks
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    Collapse
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    Fractures
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    Loopholes
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 5
    Fragments
    Correct
    Wrong
  • Show AnswerHide Answer
  • Workspace

Answer : 4. "Loopholes"

Q:

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.
If the census tells us that India has two or three hundred languages, it also tells us, I believe, that Germany has about fifty or sixty languages. I do not remember anyone pointing out this fact in proof of the disunity or disparity of Germany. As a matter of fact, a census mentions all manner of petty languages, sometimes spoken by a few thousand persons only; and often dialects are classed for scientific purposes as different languages. India seems to me to have surprisingly few languages, considering its area. Compared to the same area in Europe, it is far more closely allied in regard to language, but because of widespread illiteracy, common standards have not developed and dialects have formed. The principal languages of India are Hindustani (of the two varieties, Hindi and Urdu), Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. If Assamese, Oriya, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Pushtu and Punjabi are added, the whole country is covered except for some hill and forest tribes. Of these, the Indo-Aryan languages, which cover the whole north, centre and west of India, are closely allied; and the southern Dravidian languages, though different, have been greatly influenced by Sanskrit, and are full of Sanskrit words. 

The Dravidian languages have been greatly influenced by Sanskrit. This- 

1165 0

  • 1
    makes them inferior to the Indo-Aryan languages
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    makes them superior to the Indo-Aryan languages
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    brings them close to the Indo-Aryan languages
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    makes them very different from the other Indian languages
    Correct
    Wrong
  • Show AnswerHide Answer
  • Workspace

Answer : 3. "brings them close to the Indo-Aryan languages "

Q:

Read the following passage carefully and give the answer of following questions.

The cyber–world is ultimately ungovernable. This is alarming as well as convenient; sometimes, convenient because alarming. Some Indian politicians use this to great advantage. When there is an obvious failure in governance during a crisis they deflect attention from their own incompetence towards the ungovernable. So, having failed to prevent nervous citizens from fleeing their cities of work by assuring them of proper protection, some national leaders are now busy trying to prove to one another, and to panic-prone Indians, that a mischievous neighbour has been using the internet and social networking sites to spread dangerous rumours. And the Centre's automatic reaction is to start blocking these sites and begin elaborate and potentially endless negotiations with Google, Twitter and Facebook about access to information. If this is the official idea of prompt action at a time of crisis among communities, then Indians have more reason to fear their protectors than the nebulous mischief-makers of the cyber world. Wasting time gathering proof, blocking vaguely suspicious websites, hurling accusations across the border and worrying about bilateral relations are ways of keeping busy with inessentials because one does not quite known what to do about the essentials of a difficult situation. Besides, only a fifth of the 245 websites blocked by the Centre mention the people of the Northeast or the violence in Assam. And if a few morphed images and spurious texts can unsettle an entire nation, then there is something deeply wrong with the nation and with how it is being governed. This is what its leaders should be addressing immediately, rather than making a wrongheaded display of their powers of censorship.
 It is just as absurd, and part of the same syndrome, to try to ban Twitter accounts that parody despatches from the Prime Minister's Office. To describe such forms of humour and dissent as "misrepresenting" the PMO–as if Twitter would take these parodies for genuine despatches from the PMO — makes the PMO look more ridiculous than its parodists manage to. With the precedent for such action set recently by the chief minister of West Bengal, this is yet another proof that what Bengal thinks today India will think tomorrow. Using the cyber–world for flexing the wrong muscles is essentially not funny. It might even prove to be quite dangerously distracting.

The word ‘spurious’ means

1165 0

  • 1
    genuine
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    authentic
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    substantial
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    fake
    Correct
    Wrong
  • Show AnswerHide Answer
  • Workspace

Answer : 4. "fake"

      Report Error

    Please Enter Message
    Error Reported Successfully

      Report Error

    Please Enter Message
    Error Reported Successfully

      Report Error

    Please Enter Message
    Error Reported Successfully

      Report Error

    Please Enter Message
    Error Reported Successfully

      Report Error

    Please Enter Message
    Error Reported Successfully

      Report Error

    Please Enter Message
    Error Reported Successfully

      Report Error

    Please Enter Message
    Error Reported Successfully

      Report Error

    Please Enter Message
    Error Reported Successfully