General English Practice Question and Answer

Q:

Direction : Read the following passage carefully and answer the question given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the question.
 Governments have traditionally equated economic progress with steel mills and cement factories. While urban centers thrive and city dwellers get rich, hundreds of millions of farmers remain mired in poverty. However fears of food shortages, a rethinking of anti-poverty priorities and the crushing recession in 2008 are causing a dramatic shift in world economic policy in favour of greater support for agriculture.
 The last time when the world’s farmer felt such love was in the 1970s. At that time, as food prices spiked, there was real concern that the world was facing a crisis in which the planet was simply unable to produce enough grain and meat for an expanding population. Government across the developing world and international aid organisations plowed investment into agriculture in the early 1970s, while technological breakthroughs, like high-yield strains of important food crops, boosted production. The result was the Green Revolution and food production exploded. But the Green Revolution became a victim of its own success. Food prices plunged by some 60% by the late 1980s from their peak in the mid-1970s. Policy makers and aid workers turned their attention to the poor’s other pressing needs such as health care and education. Farming got starved of resources and investment. By 2004 aid directed at agriculture sank to 3.5 % and Agriculture lost its glitter. Also as consumer in high-growth giants such as China and India became wealthier they began eating more meat so grain once used for human consumption got diverted to beef up livestock. By early 2008 panicked buying by importing countries and restrictions slapped on grain exports by some big producers helped drive prices upto heights not seen for three decades. Making matters worse land and resources got reallocated to produce cash crops such as biofuels and the result was that voluminous reserves of grain evaporated. Protests broke out across the emerging world and fierce food riots toppled governments. This spurred global leaders into action. This made them aware that food security is one of the fundamental issues in the world that has to be dealt with in order to maintain administrative and political stability. This also spurred the US which traditionally provisioned food aid from American grain surpluses to help needy nations to move towards investing in farm sectors around the globe to boost productive for themselves and be in a better position to feed their own people.
 Africa, which missed out on the first Green Revolution due to poor policy and limited resources, also witnessed a 'change'. Swayed by the success of East Asia the primary poverty-fighting method favoured by many policy-makers in Africa was to get farmers off their farms and into modern jobs in factories and urban centers. But that strategy proved to be highly insufficient. Income levels in the countryside badly trailed those in cities while the FAO estimated that the number of poor going hungry in 2009 reached an all time high at more than one billion. In India on the other hand with only 40% of its farmland irrigated, entire economic boom currently underway is held hostage by the unpredictable monsoon. With much of India’s farming areas suffering from drought this year, the government will have a tough time meeting its economic growth targets. In a report Goldman Sachs, predicted that if this year, too receives weak rains it could cause agriculture to contract by 2 % this fiscal year making the government 7%GDP growth target look "a bit rich". Another green revolution is the need of the hour and to make it a reality, the global community still has much backbreaking farm work to do.           

What encouraged African policy-makers to focus on urban jobs?

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  • 1
    Misapprehension that it would alleviate poverty as it did in others countries
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    Rural development outstripped urban development in many parts of Africa
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    Breaking out of protests in the country and the fear that the government would topple
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    Blind imitation of western models of development
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 5
    None of these
    Correct
    Wrong
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Answer : 1. "Misapprehension that it would alleviate poverty as it did in others countries"

Q:

Directions: In the following questions, a sentence has been given in Active/Passive Voice. Out of the four alternatives suggested, select the one which best expresses the same sentence in Passive /Active Voice.

We should not encourage indiscipline.

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  • 1
    Indiscipline should have not encouraged by us.
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    Indiscipline should not be encouraged by us.
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    Indiscipline should not being encouraged.
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    Indiscipline should not been encouraged.
    Correct
    Wrong
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Answer : 2. "Indiscipline should not be encouraged by us. "

Q:

Directions: In question four alternatives are given for the Idiom/Phrase underlined in the sentences. Choose the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the Idiom/Phrase and mark it is the Answer Sheet.

Make one’s mark

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  • 1
    Distinguish oneself
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    Score high marks
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    Highlight something in a page
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    Reveal something
    Correct
    Wrong
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Answer : 1. "Distinguish oneself"

Q:

Select the most appropriate option to substitute the underlined segment in the given sentence. If there is no need to substitute it, select ‘No substitution required’.

The Ghats in Benaras were very crowded but we were able to watch the Ganga aarti clearly.

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  • 1
    No substitution required
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    but we was
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    but we are
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    so we were
    Correct
    Wrong
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Answer : 1. "No substitution required"
Explanation :

The underlined segment in the given sentence does not need substitution. It is already grammatically correct:

The Ghats in Benaras were very crowded but we were able to watch the Ganga aarti clearly.

Q:

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language-so the argument runs-must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. 
Now it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits, one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. 

What causes bad language in the end?

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  • 1
    The bad influence of individual writers
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    The imitation of bad language habits
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    Political and economic causes.
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    An assumption that nothing can be done about
    Correct
    Wrong
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Answer : 3. "Political and economic causes."
Explanation :

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