Verbal Ability
Directions for question (1 to 8) : Each ofthe two passages given below is followed by a set offour questions. Choose the best answer to each question. Passage - I
While complex in the extreme, Derrida's work has proven to be a particularly influential approach to the analysis ofthe ways in which language structures our understanding of ourselves and the world we inhabit, an approach he termed deconstruction. In its simplest formulation, deconstruction can be taken to refer to a methodological strategy which seeks to uncover layers of hidden meaning in a text that have been denied or suppressed. The term 'text', in this respect, does not refer simply to a written form of communication, however. Rather, texts are something we all produce and reproduce constantly in our everyday social relations, be they spoken, written or embedded in the construction of material artifacts. At the heart of Derrida's deconstructive approach is his critique of what he receives to be the totalitarian impulse of the Enlightenment pursuit to bring all that exists in the world under the domain of a representative language, a pursuit he refers to as logocentrism. Logocentrism is the searchfor a rational language that is able to know and represent the world and all its aspects perfectly and accurately. Its totalitarian dimension,for Derrida at least, lies primarily in its tendency to marginalize or dismiss all that does not neatly comply with its particular linguistic representations, a tendency that, throughout history, has all too frequently been manifested in the form of authoritarian institutions. Thus logocentrism has, in its search for the truth of absolute representation, subsumed difference and oppressed that which it designates as its alien 'other'. For Derrida, western civilization has been built upon such a systematic assault on alien cultures and ways of life, typically in the name of reason and progress. In response to logocentrism, deconstruction posits the idea that the mechanism by which this process of marginalization and the ordering of truth occurs is through establishing systems of binary opposition. Oppositional linguistic dualisms, such as rational/irrational, culture/nature and good/bad are not, however, construed as equal partners as they are in, say, the semiological structuralism of Sa us sure. Rather, they exist, for Derrida, in a series of hierarchical relationships with the first term normally occupying a superior position. Derrida defines the relationship between such oppositional terms using the neologism difference. This refers to idle realization that in any statement, oppositional terms differ from each other (for instance, the difference between rationality and irntionality is constructed through oppositional usage), and at the same time, a hierarchical relationship is maintained by the deference of one term to the other (in the positing of rationality over irrationality, for instance). It is this latter point which is perhaps the key to understanding Derrida's approach to deconstruction.
For the fact that at any given time one term must defer to its oppositional 'other', means that the two terms are constantly in a state of interdependence. The presence of one is dependent upon the absence or 'absent-presence' of the 'other', such as in the case of good and evil, whereby to understand the nature of one, we must constantly relate it to the absent term in order to grasp its meaning. That is, to do good, we must understand that our act is not evil for without that comparison the term becomes meaningless. Put simply, deconstruction represents an attempt to demonstrate the absent-presence of this oppositional 'other', to show that what we say or write is in itself not expressive simply of what is present, but also of what is absent. Thus, deconstruction seeks to reveal the interdependence of apparently dichotomous terms and their meanings relative to their textual context; that is, within the linguistic power relations which structure dichotomous terms hierarchically. In Derrida's awn wards, a deconstructive reading "must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he does not command of the patterns of a language that he uses .... [It] attempts to make the not-seen accessible to sight."
Meaning, then, is never fixed or stable, whatever the intention of the author ofa text. For Derrida, language is a system of relations that are dynamic, in that all meanings we ascribe to the world are dependent not only an what we believe to be present but also an what is absent. Thus, any act of interpretation must refer not only to what the author of a text intends, but also to what is absent from his or her intention. This insight leads, once again, Derrida's further rejection of the idea of the definitive authority of the intentional agent or subject. The subject is decentred; it is conceived as the outcome of relations of differance. As author of its awn biography, the subject thus becomes the ideological fiction of modernity and its logocentric philosophy, one that depends upon the formation of hierarchical dualisms, which repress and deny the presence of the absent 'other'. No meaning can, therefore, ever be definitive, but is merely an outcome of a particular interpretation.
1. According to the passage, Derrida believes that the system of binary opposition
(a) represents a prioritization or hierarchy.
(b) reconciles contradictions and dualities.
(c) weakens the process of marginalization and ordering of truth.
(d) deconstructs reality.
2. According to the passage, Derrida believes that:
(a) Reality can be construed only through the use of rational analysis.
(b) Language limits our construction of reality.
(c) A universal language will facilitate a common understanding of reality.
(d) We need to uncover the hidden meaning in a system of relations expressed by language.
3. Derrida rejects the idea of 'definitive authority of the subject' because
(a) interpretation of the text may not make the unseen visible.
(b) the meaning of the text is based an binary opposites.
(c) the implicit power relationship is often ignored.
(d) any act of interpretation must refer to what the author intends.
4. To Derrida, 'Iogocentrism' does not imply:
(a) A totalitarian impulse.
(b) A domain of representative language.
(c) Interdependence of the meanings of dichotomous terms.
(d) A strategy that seeks to suppress hidden meanings in a text.
Passage - II
Crinoline and croquet are out. As yet, no political activists have thrown themselves in front of the royal horse on Derby Day. Even so, same historians can spat the parallels. It is a time of rapid technological change. It is a period when the dominance of the world's superpower is coming under threat. It is an epoch when prosperity masks underlying economic strain. And, crucially, it is a time when policy-makers are confident that all is/or the best in the best of all possible worlds. Welcome to the Edwardian Summer of the second age of globalisation. Spare a moment to take stock of what's been happening in the pastfew months. Let's start with the oil price, which has rocketed to more than $65 a barrel, more than double its level 18 months ago. The accepted wisdom is that we shouldn't worry our little heads about that, because the incentives are there for business to build new production and refining capacity, which will effortlessly bring demand and supply back into balance and bring crude prices back to $25 a barrel. As Tommy Cooper used to say, 'just like that'.
Then there is the result of the French referendum on the European Constitution,seen as thick-headed luddites railing vainly against the modem world. What the French needed to realise, the argument went, was that there was no alternative to the reforms that would make the country more flexible, more competitive, more dynamic. Just the sort of reforms that allowed Gate Gourmet to sack hundreds of its staff at Heathrow after the sort of ultimatum that used to be handed out by Victorian mill owners. An alternative way of looking at the French "non" is that our neighbours translate "flexibility" as "you're fired".
Finally, take a squint at the United States. Just like Britain a century ago, a period of unquestioned superiority is drawing to a close. China is still a long way from matching America's wealth, but it is growing at a stupendous rate and economic strength brings geo-political clout. Already, there is evidence ofa new scramblefor Africa as Washington and Beijing compete for oil stocks. Moreover, beneath the surface of the US economy, all is not well. Growth looks healthy enough, but the competition from China and elsewhere has meant the world's biggest economy now imports far more than it exports. The US is living beyond its means, but in this time of studied complacency a current account deficit worth 6 percent of gross domestic product is seen as a sign of strength, not weakness.
In this new Edwardian summer, comfort is takenfrom the fact that dearer oil has not had the savage inflationary consequences of 1973-74, when a fourfold increase in the cost of crude brought an abrupt end to a postwar boom that had gone on uninterrupted for a quarter of a century. True, the cost of living has been affected by higher transport costs, but we are talking of inflation at 2.3 per cent and not 27 percent. Yet the idea that higher oil prices are oflittle consequence is fanciful. Ifpeople are paying more to fill up their cars it leaves them with less to spend on everything else, but there is a reluctance to consume less. In the 1970s unions were strong and able to negotiate large, compensatory pay deals that served to intensify inflationary pressure. In 2005, that avenue is pretty much closed off, but the abolition of all the controls on credit that existed in the 1970s means that households are invited to borrow more rather than consume less. The knock-on effects of higher oil prices are thus felt in different ways - through high levels of indebtedness, in inflated asset prices, and in balance of payments deficits.
There are those who point out, rightly, that modem industrial capitalism has proved mightily resilient these past 250 years, and that a sign of the enduring strength of the system has been the way it apparently shrugged off everything - a stock market crash, 9/11, rising oil prices - that have been thrown at it in the half decade since the millennium. Even so, there are at least three reasonsfor concern. First, we have been here before. In terms of political economy, the first era of globalisation mirrored our own. There was a belief in unfettered capital flows, in free trade, and in the power ofthe market. It was a time of massive income inequality and unprecedented migration. Eventually, though, there was a backlash, manifested in a struggle between free traders and protectionists, and in rising labour militancy.
Second, the world is traditionally at its most fragile at times when the global balance of power is in flux. By the end of the nineteenth century, Britain's role as the hegemonic power was being challenged by the rise of the United States, Germany, and Japan while the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires were clearly in rapid decline. Looking ahead from 2005, it is clear that over the next two or three decades, both China and India - which together account for half the world's population - will flex their muscles.
Finally, there is the question of what rising oil prices tell us. The emergence of China and India means global demand for crude is likely to remain high at a time when experts say production is about to top out. If supply constraints start to bite, any declines in the price are likely to be short-term cyclical affairs punctuating a long upward trend.
5. Which of the following best represents the key argument made by the author?
(a) The rise in oil prices, the flux in the global balance of power and historical precedents should make us question our belief that the global economic prosperity would continue.
(b) The belief that modem industrial capitalism is highly resilient and capable of over coming shocks will be belied soon.
(c) Widespread prosperity leads to neglect of early signs ofunderIying economic weakness, manifested in higher oil prices and a flux in the global balance of power.
(d) A crisis is imminent in the West given the growth of countries like China and India and the increase in oil prices.
6. What can be inferred about the author's view when he states, 'As Tommy Cooper used to say "just like that'''?
(a) Industry has incentive to build new production and refining capacity and therefore oil prices would reduce.
(b) There would be a correction in the price levels of oil once new production capacity is added.
(c) The decline in oil prices is likely to be short-term in nature.
(d) It is not necessary that oil prices would go down to earlier levels.
7. What, according to the author, has resulted in a widespread belief in the resilience of modem capitalism?
(a) Growth in the economies of Western countries despite shocks in the form of increase in levels of indebtedness and inflated asset prices.
(b) Increase in the prosperity of Western countries and China despite rising oil prices.
(c) Continued growth of Western economies despite a rise in terrorism, an increase in oil prices and other similar shocks.
(d) The success of continued reforms aimed at making Western economies more dynamic, competitive and efficient.
8. By the expression 'Edwardian Summer', the author refers to a period in which there is
(a) unparalleled luxury and opulence.
(b) a sense of complacency among people because of all-round prosperity.
(c) a culmination of all-round economic prosperity.
(d) an imminent danger lurking behind economic prosperity.
Directions for questions (9 to 12) : Each question consists offour sentences on a topic Some sentences are grammatically incorrect or inappropriate. Select the option that indicates the grammatically correct and appropriate sentence(s).
9. A. The balance of power will shift to the East as China and India evolve.
B. Rarely the economic ascent of two still relatively poor nations has been watched with such a mixture of awe, opportunism, and trepidation.
C. Postwar era witnessed economic miracles in Japan and South Korea, but neither was populous enough to power worldwide growth or change the game in a complete spectrum of industries.
D. China and India, by contrast, possess the weight and dynamism to transform the 21 st-century global economy.
(a) A,B&C
(b) A&D
(c) C
(d) C&D
10. A. People have good reason to care about the welfare of animals.
B. Ever since Enlightenment, their treatment has been seen as a measure of mankind's humanity.
C. It is no coincidence that William Wilberforce and Sir Thomas Foxwell Buxton, two leaders of the movement to abolish the slave trade, helped found the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1820s.
D. An increasing number of people go further: mankind has a duty not to cause pain to animals that have the capacity to suffer.
(a) A & D
(b) A&C
(c) C&D
11. A. When virtuoso teams begin their work, individuals are in and group consensus is out.
B. As project progresses, however, the individual stars harness themselves to the product of the group.
C. Sooner or later, the members break through their own egocentrism and become a plurality with single-minded focus on the goal.
D. In short, they morph into a powerful team with a shared identity.
(a) A&C
(b) A&D
(c) B&D
(d) A, C&D
12. A. Large reductions in the ozone layer, which sits about 15-30 km above the Earth, take place each winter over the polar regions, especially the Antarctic, as low temperatures allow the formation of stratospheric clouds that assist chemical reactions breaking down ozone.
B. Industrial chemicals containing chlorine and bromine have-been blamed for thinning the layer because they attack the ozone molecules, making them to break apart.
C. Many an offending chemicals have now been banned.
D. It will still take several decades before these substances have disappeared from the atmosphere.
(a) D
(b) B&D
(c) A&D
(d) A&C
Directions for questions (13 to 16) : Each of the following questions has a paragraph from which the last sentence has been deleted. From the given options, choose the one that completes the paragraph in the most appropriate way.
13. Federer's fifth grand slam win prompted a reporter to ask whether he was the best ever. Federer is certainly not lacking in confidence, but he wasn't about to proclaim himselfthe best ever. "The best player ofthis generation, yes", he said, "But nowhere close to ever. Just look at the records that some guys have. I'm a minnow." _______ .
(a) His win against Agassi, a genius from the previous generation, contradicts that.
(b) Sampras, the king of an earlier generation, was as humble.
(c) He is more than a minnow to his contemporaries.
(d) The difference between 'the best of this generation' and 'the best ever' is a matter of perception.
14. Thus the end of knowledge and the closing of the frontier that it symbolizes is not a looming crisis at all, but merely one of many embarrassing fits of hubris in civilization's long industry. In the end, it will pass away and be forgotten. Ours is not the first generation to struggle to understand the organizational laws of the frontier, deceive itself that it has succeeded, and go to its grave having failed. ______ .
(a) One would be wise to be humble.
(b) But we might be the first generation to actually reach the frontier.
(c) But we might be the first generation tc deal with the crisis.
(d) However, this time the success is not illusory.
15. Most firms consider expert individuals to be too elitist, temperamental, egocentric, and difficult to work with. Force such people to collaborate on a high-stakes project and they just might come to fisticuffs. Even the very notion of managing such a group seems unimaginable. So most organizations fall into default mode, setting up project teams of people who get along nicely.
(a) The result, however, is disastrous.
(b) The result is mediocrity.
(c) The result is creation of experts who then become elitists.
(d) Naturally, they drive innovations.
16. The audiences for crosswords and sudoku, understandably, overlap greatly, but there are differences, too. A crossword attracts a more literary person, while sudoku appeals to a keenly logical mind. Some crossword enthusiasts turn up their noses at sudoku because they feel it lacks depth. A good crossword requires vocabulary, knowledge, mental flexibility and sometimes even a sense of humor to complete. It touches numerous areas of life and provides an "Aha!" or two along the way ______ .
(a) Sudoku, on the other hand, is just a logical exercise, each one similar to the last.
(b) Sudoku, incidentally, is growing faster in popularity than crosswords, even among the literati.
(c) Sudoku, on the other hand, can be attempted and enjoyed even by children.
(d) Sudoku, however, is not exciting in any sense of the term.
Directions for questions (17 to 20) : Each ofthe following questions has a paragraph with one italicized word that does not make sense. Choose the most appropriate replacement for that word from the options given below the paragraph.
17. Intelligent design derives from an early 19th-century explanation ofthe natural worldgiven by an English clergyman, William Paley. Paley was the populariser of the famous watchmaker analogy. Proponents of intelligent design are crupping Paley's argument with a new gloss from molecular biology.
(a) destroying
(b) testing
(c) resurrecting
(d) questioning
18. Women squat, heads covered, beside huge piles of limp fodder and blunk oil lamps, and just about all the cows in the three towns converge upon this spot. Sinners, supplicants and yes, even scallywags hand over a few coins for a crack at redemption and a handful of grass.
(a) shining
(b) bright
(c) sputtering
(d) effulgent
19. It is klang to a sensitive traveler who walks through this great town, when he sees the streets, the roads, and cabin doors crowded with beggars, mostly women, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for alms.
(a) amusing
(b) irritating
(c) disgusting
(d) distressing
20. Or there is the mostfingummy diplomatic note on record: when Philip of Macedon wrote to the Spartans that, ifhe came within their borders, he would leave not one stone of their city, they wrote back the one word - "If'.
(a) witty
(b) rude
(c) simple
(d) terse
Directions for questions (21 to 24) : The passage given below is followed by a set of four questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
A game of strategy, as currently conceived in game theory, is a situation in which two or more "players" make choices amorg available alternatives (moves). The totality of choices determines the outcomes of the game, and it is assumed that the rank order of preferences for the outcomes is different for different players. Thus the "interests" of the players are generally in conflict. Whether these interests are diametrically opposed or only partially opposed depends on the type of game.
Psychologically, most interesting situations arise when the interests of the players are partly coincident and partly opposed, because then one can postulate not only a conflict among the players but also inner conflicts within the players. Each is tom between a tendency to cooperate, so as to promote the common interests, and a tendency to compete, so as to enhance his own individual interests.
Internal conflicts are always psychologically interesting. What we vaguely call "interesting" psychology is in very great measure the psychology of inner conflict. Inner conflict is also held to be an important component of serious literature as distinguished from less serious genres. The classical tragedy, as well as the serious novel, reveals the inner conflict of central figures. The superficial adventure story, on the other hand, depicts only external conflict; that is, the threats to the person with whom the reader (or viewer) identifies stem in these stories exclusively from external obstacles and from the adversaries who create them. On the most primitive level this sort of external conflict is psychologically empty. In the fisticuffs between the protagonists of good and evil, no psychological problems are involved or, at any rate, none are depicted in juvenile representations of conflict.
The detective story, the "adult" analogue of a juvenile adventure tale, has at times been described as a glorification of intellectualized conflict. However, a great deal of the interest in the plots of these stories is sustained by withholding the unraveling of a solution to a problem. The effort of solving the problem is in itselfnot a conflict if the adversary (the unknown criminal) remains passive, like Nature, whose secrets the scientist supposedly unravels by deduction. If the adversary actively puts obstacles in the detective's path toward the solution, there is genuine conflict. But the conflict is psychologically interesting only to the extent that it contains irrational components such as a tactical error on the criminal's part or the detective's insight into some psychological quirk of the criminal or something of this sort. Conflict conducted in a perfectly rational manner is psychologically no more interesting than a standard Western. For example, Tic- tac-toe, played perfectly by both players, is completely devoid of psychological interest. Chess may be psychologically interesting but only to the extent that it is played not quite rationally. Played completely rationally, chess would not be different from Tic-tac-toe.
In short, a pure conflict of interest (what is called a zero-sum game) although it offers a wealth of interesting conceptual problems, is not interesting psychologically, except to the extent that its conduct departs from rational norms.
21. According to the passage, which of the following options about the application of game theory to a conflict-of-interest situation is true?
(a) Assuming that the rank order of preferences for options is different for different players.
(b) Accepting that the interests of different players are often in conflict.
(c) Not assuming that the interests are in complete disagreement.
(d) All of the above.
22. The problem solving process of a scientist is different from that of a detective because
(a) scientists study inanimate objects, while detectives deal with living criminals or law offenders.
(b) scientists study known objects, while detectives have to deal with unknown criminals or law offenders.
(c) scientists study phenomena that are not actively altered, while detectives deal with phenomena that have been deliberately influenced to mislead.
(d) scientists study psychologically interesting phenomena, while detectives deal with "adult" analogues of juvenile adventure tales.
23. According to the passage, internal conflicts are psychologically more interesting than external conflicts because
(a) internal conflicts, rather than external conflicts, form an important component of serious literature as distinguished from less serious genres.
(b) only juveniles or very few "adults" actually experience external conflict, while internal conflict is more widely prevalent in society.
(c) in situations of internal conflict, individuals experience a dilemma in resolving their own preferences for different outcomes.
(d) there are no threats to the reader (or viewer) in case of external conflicts.
24. Which, according to the author, would qualify as interesting psychology?
(a) A statistician's dilemma over choosing the best method to solve an optimisation problem.
(b) A chess player's predicament over adopting a defensive strategy against an aggressive opponent.
(c) A mountaineer's choice of the best path to Mt. Everest from the base camp.
(d) A finance manager's quandary over the best way of raising money from the market.
Directions for questions (25 to 25) : The sentences given in each question, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labeled with a letter. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
25. A. Similarly, turning to caste, even though being lower caste is undoubtedly a separate cause of disparity, its impact is all the greater when the lower-caste families also happen to be poor.
B. Belonging to a privileged class can help a woman to overcome many barriers that obstruct women from less thriving classes.
C. It is the interactive presence ofthese two kinds of deprivation - being low class and being female - that massively impoverishes women from the less privileged classes.
D. A congruence of class deprivation and gender discrimination can blight the lives of poorer women very severely.
E. Gender is certainly a contributor to societal inequality, but it does not act independently of class.
(a) EABDC
(b) EBDCA
(c) DAEBC
(d) BECDA
Directions for questions (26 to 28) : In each question, there are five sentences. Each sentence has a pair of words that are italicized and highlighted. From the italicized and highlighted words, select the most appropriate words (A or B) to form correct sentences. The sentences are followed by options that indicate the words, which may be selected to correctly complete the set of sentences. From the options given, choose the most appropriate one.
26. The cricket council that was [A] / were [B] elected last March is [A] / are [B] at sixes and sevens over new rules.
The critics censored [A] / censured [B] the new movie because of its social unacceptability.
Amit's explanation for missing the meeting was credulous [A] / credible [B]
She coughed discreetly [A] / discretely [B] to announce her presence.
(a) BBAAA
(b) AAABA
(c) BBBBA
(d) AABBA
(e) BBBAA
27. Tnefunher [A] lfarther [B] he pushed himself, the more disillusioned he grew.
For the crowds it was more of a historical [A] / historic [B] event; for their leader, it was just another day.
The old man has a healthy distrust [A] / mistrust [B] for all new technology. This film is based on a real [A] / true [B] story.
One suspects that the compliment [A] / complement [B] was backhanded.
(a) BABAB
(b) ABBBA
(c) BAABA
(d) BBAAB
(e) ABABA
28. Regrettably [A] / Regretfully [B] I have to decline your invitation.
I am drawn to the poetic, sensual [A] / sensuous [B] quality of her paintings.
He was besides [A] / beside [B] himself with age when I told him what I had done.
After brushing against a stationary [A] / stationery [B] truck my car turned turtle.
As the water began to rise over [A] / above [B] the danger mark, the signs of an imminent flood were clear.
(a) BAABA
(b) BBBAB
(c) AAABA
(d) BBAAB
(e) BABAB
Directions for questions (29 to 31) : The passage given below is followed by a set ofthree questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
To discover the relation between rules, paradigms, and normal science, consider first how the historian isolates the particular loci of commitment that have been described as accepted rules. Close historical investigation of a given specialty at a given time discloses a set of recurrent and quasi-standard illustrations of various theories in their conceptual, observational, and instrumental applications. These are the community's paradigms, revealed in its textbooks, lectures, and laboratory exercises. By studying them and by practicing with them, the members ofthe corresponding community learn their trade. The historian, of course, will discover in addition a penumbral area occupied by achievements whose status is still in doubt, but the core of solved problems and techniques will usually be clear. Despite occasional ambiguities, the paradigms of a mature scientific community can be determined with relative ease.
That demands a second step and one of a somewhat different kind. When undertaking it, the historian must compare the community's paradigms with each other and with its current research reports. In doing so, his object is to discover what isolable elements, explicit or implicit, the members of that community may have abstracted from their more global paradigms and deploy it as rules in their research. Anyone who has attempted to describe or analyze the evolution of a particular scientific tradition will necessarily have sought accepted principles and rules of this sort. Almost certainly, he will have met with at least partial success. But, ifhis experience has been at all like my own, he will have foundthe search for rules both more difficult and less satisfying than the search for paradigms. Some of the generalizations he employs to describe the community's shared beliefs will present more problems. Others, however, will seem a shade too strong. Phrased in just that way, or in any other way he can imagine, they would almost certainly have been rejected by some members of the group he studies. Nevertheless, if the coherence of the research tradition is to be understood in terms of rules, some specification of common ground in the corresponding area is needed. As a result, the search for a body of rules competent to constitute a given normal research tradition becomes a source of continual and deep frustration.
Recognizing that frustration, however, makes it possible to diagnose its source. Scientists can agree that a Newton, Lavoisier, Maxwell, or Einstein has produced an apparently permanent solution to a group of outstanding problems and still disagree, sometimes without being aware of it, about the particular abstract characteristics that make those solutions permanent. They can, that is, agree in their identification of a paradigm without agreeing on, or even attempting to produce, a full interpretation or rationalization of it. Lack of a standard interpretation or of an agreed reduction to rules will not prevent a paradigm from guiding research. Normal science can be determ ined in part by the direct inspection of paradigms, a process that is often aided by but does not depend upon the formulation of rules and assumption. Indeed, the existence ofa paradigm need not even imply that any full set of rules exists.
29. What is the author attempting to illustrate through this passage?
(a) Relationships between rules, paradigms, and normal science
(b) How a historian would isolate a particular 'loci of commitment'
(c) How a set of shared beliefs evolves into a paradigm
(d) Ways of understanding a scientific tradition
(e) The frustrations of attempting to define a paradigm of a tradition
30. The term 'loci of commitment' as used in the passage would most likely correspond with which of the following?
(a) Loyalty between a group of scientists in a research laboratory
(b) Loyalty between groups of scientists across research laboratories
(c) Loyalty to a certain paradigm of scientific inquiry
(d) Loyalty to global patterns of scientific inquiry
(e) Loyalty to evolving trends of scientific inquiry
31. The author ofthis passage is likely to agree with which of the following?
(a) Paradigms almost entirely define a scientific tradition.
(b) A group of scientists investigating a phenomenon would benefit by defining a set of rules.
(c) Acceptance by the giants of a tradition is a sine qua non for a paradigm to emerge.
(d) Choice of isolation mechanism determines the type of paradigm that may emerge from a tradition.
(e) Parad igms are a general representation of rules and beliefs of a scientific tradition.
Directions for questions (32 to 34) : Each ofthe following questions has a paragraph from which the last sentence has been deleted. From the given options, choose the sentence that completes the paragraph in the most appropriate way.
32. Characters are also part of deep structure. Characters tie events in a story together and provide a thread of continuity and meaning. Stories can be about individuals, groups, projects, or whole organizations so from an organizational studies perspective, the focal actor(s) determine the level and unit of analysis used in a study. Stories of mergers and acquisitions, for example, are commonplace. In these stories whole organizations are personified as actors. But these macro-level stories usually are not told from the perspective of the macro-level participants, because whole organizations cannot narrate their experiences in the first person.
(a) More generally, data concerning the identities and relationships of the characters in the story are required, if one is to understand role structure and social networks in which that process is embedded.
(b) Personification of a whole organization abstracts away from the particular actors and from traditional notions ofJevel of analysis.
(c) The personification of a whole organization is important because stories differ depending on who is enacting various events.
(d) Every story is told from a particular point of view, with a particular narrative voice, which is not regarded as part of the deep structure.
(e) The personification of a whole organization is a textual device we use to make macro-level theories more comprehensible.
33. Nevertheless, photographs still retain some ofthe magical allure that the earliest daguerreotypes inspired. As objects, our photographs have changed; they have become physically flimsier as they have become more technologically sophisticated. Daguerre produced pictures on copper plates; today many of our photographs never become tangible things, but instead remain filed away on computers and cameras, part of the digital ether that envelops the modern world. At the same time, our patience for the creation of images has also eroded. Children today are used to being tracked from birth by digital cameras and video recorders and they expect to see the results of their poses and performances instantly. The space between life as it is being lived and life as it is being displayed shrinks to a mere second.
(a) Yet, despite these technical developments, photographs still remain powerful because they are reminders of the people and things we care about.
(b) Images, after all, are surrogates carried into battle by a soldier or by a traveller on holiday.
(c) Photographs, be they digital or traditional, exist to remind us of the absent, the beloved, and the dead.
(d) In the new era of the digital image, the images also have a greater potential for fostering falsehood and trickery, perpetuating fictions that seem so real we cannot tell the difference.
(e) Anyway, human nature being what it is, little time has passed after photography's invention became means of living life through images.
34. Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kg ale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe - the only private lady detective in Botswana - brewed redbush tea. And three mugs - one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance.
(a) But there was also the view, which again would appear on no inventory.
(b) No inventory would ever include those, of course.
(c) She had an intelligent secretary too.
(d) She was a good detective and a good woman.
(e) What she lacked in possessions was more than made up by a natural shrewdness.
Directions for questions (35 to 37) : The passage given below is followed by a set of three questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
The difficulties historians face in establishing cause-and-effect relations in the history of human societies are broadly similar to the difficulties facing astronomers, climatologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, geologists, and palaeontologists. To varying degrees each of these fields is plagued by the impossibility of performing replicated, controlled experimental interventions, the complexity arising from enormous numbers of variables, the resulting uniqueness of each system, the consequent impossibility offormulating universal laws, and the difficulties of predicting emergent properties and future behaviour. Prediction in history, as in other historical sciences, is most feasible on large spatial scales and over long times, when the unique features of millions of small-scale brief' events become averaged out. Just as I could predict the sex ratio of the next 1,000 newborns but not the sexes of my own two children, the historian can recognize factors that made inevitable the broad outcome ofthe collision between American and Eurasian societies after 13,000 years of separate developments, . but not the outcome of the 1960 U.S. presidential election. The details of which candidate said what during a single televised debate in October 1960 could have given the electoral victory to Nixon instead ofto Kennedy, but no details of who said what could have blocked the European conquest of Native Americans.
How can students of human history profit from the experience of scientists in other historical sciences? A methodology that has proved useful involves the comparative method and so-called natural experiments. While neither astronomers studying galaxy formation nor human historians can manipulate their systems in controlled laboratory experiments, they both can take advantage of natural experiments, by comparing systems differing in the presence or absence (or in the strong or weak effect) of some putative causative factor. For example, epidemiologists, forbidden to feed large amounts of salt to people experimentally, have still been able to identify effects of high salt intake by comparing groups of humans who already differ greatly in their salt intake; and cultural anthropologists, unable to provide human groups experimentally with varying resource abundances for many centuries, still study long-term effects of resource abundance on human societies by comparing recent Polynesian populations living on islands differing naturally in resource abundance.
The student of human history can draw on many more natural experiments thanjust comparisons among the five inhabited continents. Comparisons can also utilize large islands that have developed complex societies in a considerable degree of isolation (such as Japan, Madagascar, Native American Hispaniola, New Guinea, Hawaii, and many others), as well as societies on hundreds of smaller islands and regional societies within each of the continents. Natural experiments in any field, whether in ecology or human history, are inherently open to potential methodological criticisms. Those include confounding effects of natural variation in additional variables besides the one of interest, as well as problems in inferring chains of causation from observed correlations between variables. Such methodological problems have been discussed in great detail for some of the historical sciences. In particular, epidemiology, the science of drawing inferences about human diseases by comparing groups of people (often by retrospective historical studies), has for a long time successfully employed formalized procedures for dealing with problems similar to those facing historians of human societies.
In short, I acknowledge that it is much more difficult to understand human history than to understand problems in fields of science where history is unimportant and where fewer individual variables operate. Nevertheless, successful methodologies for analyzing historical problems have been worked out in several fields. As a result, the histories of dinosaurs, nebulae, and glaciers are generally acknowledged to belong to fields of science rather than to the humanities.
35. Why do islands with considerable degree of isolation provide valuable insights into human history?
(a) Isolated islands may evolve differently and this difference is of interest to us.
(b) Isolated islands increase the number of observations available to historians.
(c) Isolated islands, differing in their endowments and size may evolve differently and this difference can be attributed to their endowments and size.
(d) Isolated islands, differing in their endowments and size, provide a good comparison to large islands such as Eurasia, Africa, A mericas and Australia.
(e) Isolated islands, in so far as they are inhabited, arouse curiosity about how human beings evolved there.
36. According to the author, why is prediction difficult in history?
(a) Historical explanations are usually broad so that no prediction is possible.
(b) Historical outcomes depend upon a large number offactors and hence prediction is difficult for each case.
(c) Historical sciences, by their very nature, are not interested in a multitude of minor factors, which might be important in a specific historical outcome.
(d) Historians are interested in evolution of human history and hence are only interested in long-term predictions.
(e) Historical sciences suffer from the inability to conduct controlled experiments and therefore have explanations based on a few long-term factors.
37. According to the author, which of the following statements would be true?
(a) Students of history are missing significant opportunities by not conducting any natural experiments.
(b) Complex societies inhabiting large islands provide great opportunities for natural experiments.
(c) Students of history are missing significant opportunities by not studying an adequate variety of natural experiments.
(d) A unique problem faced by historians is their inability to establish cause and effect relationships.
(e) Cultural anthropologists have overcome the problem of confounding variables through natural experiments.
Directions for questions (38 to 40) : In each question, there are five sentences or parts of sentences that form a paragraph. Identify the sentence(s) or part(s) of sentence(s) that is/are correct in terms of grammar and usage. Then, choose the most appropriate option.
38. A. When I returned to home, I began to read
B. everything r could get my hand on about Israel.
C. That same year Israel's Jewish Agency sent
D. a Shaliach a sort of recruiter to Minneapolis.
E. I became one of his most active devotees.
(a) C & E
(b) C only
(c) E only
(d) B, C & E
(e) C, D & E
39. A. So once an economy is actually in recession,
B. the authorities can, in principle, move the economy
C. out of slump - assuming hypothetically
D. that they know how to - by a temporary stimuli.
E. In the longer term, however, such policies have no affect on the overall behaviour of the economy.
(a) A, B & E
(b) B, C & E
(c) C & D
(d) E only
(e) B only
40. A. It is sometimes told that democratic
B. government originated in the city-states
C. of ancient Greece. Democratic ideals have been handed to us from that time.
D. In truth, however, this is an unhelpful assertion.
E. The Greeks gave us the word, hence did not provide us with a model.
(a) A, B & D
(b) B, C & D
(c) B & D
(d) B only
(e) D only
Direcctions for questions (41 to 43) : The passage given below is followed by a set of three questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Human Biology does nothing to structure human society. Age may enfeeble us all, but cultures vary considerably in the prestige and power they accord to the elderly. Giving birth is a necessary condition for being a mother, but it is not sufficient. We expect mothers to behave in maternal ways and to display appropriately maternal sentiments. We prescribe a clutch of norms or rules that govern the role of a mother. That the social role is independent of the biological base can be demonstrated by going back three sentences. Giving birth is certainly not sufficient to be a mother but, as adoption and fostering show, it is not even necessary!
The fine detail of what is expected of a mother or a father or a dutiful son differs from culture to culture, but everywhere behaviour is coordinated by the reciprocal nature of roles. Husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees, waiters and customers, teachers and pupils, warlords and followers; each makes sense only in its relation to the other. The term 'role' is an appropriate one, because the metaphor of an actor in a play neatly expresses the rule-governed nature or scripted nature of much of social life and the sense that society is ajoint production. Social life occurs only because people play their parts (and that is as true for war and conflicts as for peace and love) and those parts make sense only in the context of the overall show. The drama metaphor also reminds us of the artistic licence available to the players. We can playa part straight or, as the following from J.P. Sartre conveys, we can ham it up.
Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes towards the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tightrope walker .... All his behaviour seems to us a game .... But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a cafe.
The American sociologist Erving Goffman built an influential body of social analysis on elaborations of the metaphor of social life as drama, Perhaps his most telling point was that it is only through acting out a part that we express character. It is not enough to be evil or virtuous; we have to be seen to be evil or virtuous.
There is distinction between the roles we play and some underlying self. Here we might note that some roles are more absorbing than others. We would not be surprised by the waitress who plays the part in such a way as to signal to us that she is much more than her occupation. We would be surprised and offended by the father who played his part 'tongue in cheek'. Some roles are broader and more far- reaching than others. Describing someone as a clergyman or faith healer would say far more about that person than describing someone as a bus driver.
41. What is the thematic highlight of this passage?
(a) In the absence of strong biological linkages, reciprocal roles provide the mechanism for coordinating human behaviour.
(b) In the absence of reciprocal roles, biological linkages provide the mechanism for coordinating human behaviour.
(c) Human behaviour is independent of biological linkages and reciprocal roles.
(d) Human behaviour depends on biological linkages and reciprocal roles.
(e) Reciprocal roles determine normative human behaviour in society.
42. Which of the following would have been true if biological linkages structured human society?
(a) The role of mother would have been defined through her reciprocal relationship with her children.
(b) We would not have been offended by the father playing his role 'tongue in cheek'.
(c) Women would have adopted and fostered children rather than giving birth to them.
(d) Even if warlords were physically weaker than their followers, they would still dominate them.
(e) Waiters would have stronger motivation to serve their customers.
43. It has been claimed in the passage that "some roles are more absorbing than others". According to the passage, which of the following seem(s) appropriate reason(s) for such a claim?
A. Some roles carry great expectations from the society preventing manifestation of the true self.
B. Society ascribes so much importance to some roles that the conception of self may get aligned with the roles being performed.
C. Some roles require development of skill and expertise leaving little time for manifestation of self.
(a) A only
(b) B only
(c) C only
(d) A & B
(e) B & C
Directions for questions (44 to 47) : In each question, there are five sentences/paragraphs. The sentence/paragraph labelled A is in its correct place. The four that follow are labelled B, C, D and E, and need to be arranged in the logical order to form a coherent paragraph/passage. From the given options, choose the most appropriate option.
44. A. In America, highly educated women, who are in stronger position in the labour market than less qualified ones, have higher rates of marriage than other groups.
B. Some work supports the Becker thesis, and some appear to contradict it.
C. And, as with crime, it is equally inconclusive.
D. But regardless ofthe conclusion of any particular piece of work, it is hard to establish convincing connections between family changes and economic factors using conventional approaches.
E. Indeed, just as with crime, an enormous academic literature exists on the validity of the pure economic approach to the evolution of family structures.
(a) BCDE
(b) DBEC
(c) BDCE
(d) ECBD
(e) EBCD
45. A. Personal experience of mothering and motherhood are largely framed in relation to two discernible or "official" discourses: the "medical discourse and natural childbirth discourse". Both of these tend to focus on the "optimistic stories" of birth and mothering and underpin stereotypes of the "good mother".
B. At the same time, the need for medical expert guidance is also a feature for contemporary reproduction and motherhood. But constructions of good mothering have not always been so conceived - and in different contexts may exist in parallel to other
equally dominant discourses.
C. Similarly, historical work has shown how what are now taken-for-granted aspects of reproduction and mothering practices
result from contemporary "pseudoscientific directives" and "managed constructs". These changes have led to a reframing of
modern discourses that pattern pregnancy and motherhood leading to an acceptance of the need for greater expert management.
D. The contrasting, overlapping, and ambiguous strands within these frameworks focus to varying degrees on a woman's biological
tie to her child and predisposition to instinctively know and he able to care for her child.
E. In addition, a third, "unofficial popular discourse" comprising "old wives" tales and based on maternal experiences of childbirth
has also been noted. These discourses have also been acknowledged in work exploring the experiences of those who apparently
do not "conform" to conventional stereotypes of the "good mother".
(a) EDBC
(b) BCED
(c) DBCE
(d) EOCB
(e) BCDE
46. A. Indonesia has experienced dramatic shifts in its formal governance arrangements since the fall of President Soeharto and the close of his centralized, authoritarian "New Order" regime in 1997.
B. The political system has taken its place in the nearly 10 years since Reformasi began. It has featured the active contest for political office among a proliferation of parties at central, provincial and district levels; direct elections for the presidency (since 2004); and radical changes in centre-local government relations towards administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization.
C. The mass media, once tidily under Soeharto's thumb, has experienced significant liberalization, as has the legal basis for non- governmental organizations, including many dedicated to such controversial issues as corruption control and human rights.
D. Such developments are seen optimistically by a number of donors and some external analysts, who interpret them as signs of
Indonesia's political normalization.
E. A different group of analysts paint a picture in which the institutional forms have changed, but power relations have not. Vedi Hadiz argues that Indonesia's "democratic transition" has been anything but linear.
(a) BDEC
(b) CBDE
(c) CEBD
(d) DEBC
(e) BCDE
47. A. I had six thousand acres of land, and had thus got much spare land besides the coffee plantation. Part of the farm was native forest, and about one thousand acres were squatters' land, what Kikuyuj called their shambas.
B. The squatters' land was more intensely alive than the rest of the farm, and was changing with the seasons the year round. The maize grew up higher than your head as you walked on the narrow hard-trampled footpaths in between the tall green rustling regiments.
C. The squatters are Natives, who with their families hold a few acres on a white man's farm, and in return have to work for him a certain number of days in the year. My squatters, I think, saw the relationship in a different light, for many of them were born on the farm, and their fathers before them, and they very likely regarded me as a sort of superior squatter on their estates.
D. The Kikuyu also grew the sweet potatoes that have a vine like leaf and spread over the ground like a dense entangled mat, and many varieties of big yellow and green speckled pumpkins.
E. The beans ripened in the fields, were gathered and thrashed by the women, and the maize stalks and coffee pods were collected and burned, so that in certain seasons thin blue columns of smoke rose here and there all over the farm.
(a) CBDE
(b) BCDE
(c) CBED
(d) DBCE
(e) EDBC
Directions for questions (48 to 50) : The passage given below is followed by a set of three questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Every civilized society lives and thrives on a silent but profound agreement as to what is to be accepted as the valid mould of experience. Civilization is a complex system of dams, dykes, and canals warding off, directing, and articulating the influx of the surrounding fluid element; a fertile fenland, elaborately drained and protected from the high tides of chaotic, unexercised, and inarticulate experience. In such a culture, stable and sure of itself within the frontiers of 'naturalized' experience, the arts wield their creative power not so much in width as in depth. They do not create new experience, but deepen and purify the old. Their works do not differ from one another like a new horizon from a new horizon, but like a madonna from a madonna.
The periods of art which are most vigorous in creative passion seem to occur when the estab lished pattern of experience loosens its rigidity without as yet losing its force. Such a period was the Renaissance, and Shakespeare its poetic consummation. Then it was as though the discipline ofthe old order gave depth to the excitement of the breaking away, the depth of job and tragedy, of incomparable conquests and irredeemable losses. Adventurers of experience set out as though in lifeboats to rescue and bring back to the shore treasures of knowing and feeling which the old order had left floating on the high seas. The works ofthe early Renaissance and the poetry of Shakespeare vibrate with the compassion for live experience in danger of dying from exposure and neglect. In this compassion was the creative genius of the age. Yet, it was a genius of courage, not of desperate audacity. For, however elusively, it still knew of harbours and anchors, of homes to which to return, and ¢: barns in which to store the harvest. The exploring spirit of art was in the depths of its consciousness still aware of a scheme of things into which to fit its exploits and creations.
But the more this scheme of things loses its stability, the more boundless and uncharted appears the ocean of potential exploration. In the blank confusion of infinite potentialities flotsam of significance gets attached to jetsam of experience; for everything is sea, everything is at sea -
... The sea is all about us;
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation ...
- and Rilke tells a story in which, as in T.S. Eliot's poem, it is again the sea and the distance of 'other creation' that becomes the image of the poet's reality. A rowing boat sets out on a difficult passage. The oarsmen labour in exact rhythm. There is no sign yet of the destination. Suddenly a man, seemingly idle, breaks out into song. And if the labour of the oarsmen meaninglessly defeats the real resistance ofthe real waves, it is the idle single who magically conquers the despair of apparent aimlessness. While the people next to him try to come to grips with the element that is next to them, his voice seems to bind the boat to the farthest distance so that the farthest distance draws it towards itself. 'I don't know why and how,' is Rilke's conclusion, but suddenly I understood the situation ofthe poet, his place and function in this age. It•does not matter if one denies him every place - except this one. There one must tolerate him.'
48. In the passage, the expression "like a madonna from a madonna" aJludes to
(a) The difference arising as a consequence of artistic license.
(b) The difference between two artistic interpretations.
(c) The difference between 'life' and 'interpretation of life' .
(d) The difference between 'width' and 'depth' of creative power.
(e) The difference between the legendary character and the modem day singer.
49. The sea and 'other creation' leads Rilke to
(a) Define the place of the poet in his culture.
(b) Reflect on the role of the oarsman and the singer.
(c) Muse on artistic labour and its aimlessness.
(d) Understand the elements that one has to deal with.
(e) Delve into natural experience and real waves.
50. According to the passage, the term "adventurers of experience" refers to
(a) Poets and artists who are driven by courage.
(b) Poets and artists who create their own genre.
(c) Poets and artists of the Renaissance.
(d) Poets and artists who revitalize and enrich the past for us.
(e) Poets and artists who delve in flotsam and jetsam in sea.
Directions (Q.51 to 60) : Read the foUowing passages-I, II and III and give answer based on it.
Passage - I
History has shaped academic medical centers (AMCs) to perform 3 functions: patient care, research, and teaching. These 3 missions are now fraught with problems becuase the attempt to combine them has led to such inefficiencies as duplication of activities and personnel, inpatient procedures that could and should have been out-patient procedures, and unwieldy administrative bureaucracies. One source of inefficiency derives from mixed lines of authority. Clinical chiefs and practitioners in AMCs are typically responsible to the hospital for practice issues but to the medical school for promotion, marketing, membership in a faculty practice plan, and educational accreditation. Community physicians with privileges at a university hospital add more complications. They have no official affiliationwith the AMC's medical school connected, but their cooperation with faculty members is essential for proper patient treatment. The fragmented accountability is heightened by the fact that 3 different groups often vie for the loyalty of physicians who receive research. The medical school may wish to. capitalize on the research for its educational value to students; the hospital may desire the state-of-the-art treatment methods resulting from the research; and the grant administrators may, focus on the researchers' humanitarian motives. Communication among these groups is rarely coordinated, and the physicians may serve whichever group promises the best perks and ignore the rest - which inevitably strains relationships.
Another source of inefficiency is the fact that physicians have obligations to many different groups: patients, students, faculty members, referring physicians, third-party payers, and staff members, all of whom have varied expectations. Satisfying the interests of one group may alienate others. Patient care provides a common example. For the benefit of medical students, physicians may order too many tests, prolong patient visits, or encourage experimental studies of a patient. If AMC faculty physicians were more aware of how much treatments of specific illnesses cost, and of how other institutions treat patient conditions, they would be better practitioners, and the educational and clinical care missions of AMCs would both be better served.
A bias toward specialization adds yet more inefficiency. AMCs are viewed as .institurt6'ns serving the gravest cases in need of the most advanced treatments. The high number of specialty residents and the presence of bum units, blood banks, and, transplant centers validate this belief. Also present at AMCs, though less conspicuous, are facilities for ordinary primary care patients. In fact, many patients choose to visit an AMC for primary care because they realize that any necessary follow-up can occur almost instantaneously. While AMCs have emphasized cutting-edge specialty medicine, their more routine medical services need development and enhancement.
A final contribution to inefficiency is organizational complacency. Until recently, most academic medical centers drew the public merely by existing. The rising presence, however, of tertiary hospitals with patient care as their only goal has immersed AMCs in a very competitive market. It is only in the past several years thatAMCs have started to recognize and develop strategies to address competition.
51.The author's attitude toward the inefficiences at academic medical centers is one of
(a) reluctant acquiescence
(b) strident opposition
(c) agonized indecision
(d) reasoned criticism
52. The author of the passage would most likely agree with which of the following statements about primary care atAMCs?
(a) AMCs would make more money if they focused mainly on primary care.
(b) Bum and transplant patients need specialty care more than primary care.
(c) AMCs offer the best primary care for most patients.
(d) Inefficiencies at AMCs would be reduced if better primary care were offered.
53. The author's primary purpose in this passage is to
(a) discuss the rise and fall of academic medical centers
(b) explain that multiple lines of authority in a medical centre create inefficiencies
(c) delineate conflicts occurring in academic medical facilities
(d) examine the differences between-academic and other health care entities
54. The author implies which of the following about faculty physicians atAMCs?
(a) Most of them lack good business sense.
(b) They put patients' physical health above their hospitals' monetary concerns.
(c) They sometimes focus on education at the expense of patient care.
(d) They lack official affiliation with the medical schools connected to AMCs.
Passage - II
Founded at the dawn of the modem industrial era, the nearly forgotten Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) played an instrumental Line role in advancing the cause of working women throughout.the early part of the twentieth century. In the face of considerable adversity, the WTUL made a contribution far greater than did most historical footnotes. The organization's successes did not come easily; conflict beset the WTUL in many forms. During those early days of American unions, organized labour was aggressively opposed by both industry and government. The WTUL, which represented a largely unskilled labour force, had little leverage against these powerful opponents. Also, because of the skill level of its workers as well as inherent societal gender bias, the WTUL had great difficulty finding allies among other unions. Even the large and powerful American Federation of Labour (AFL), which nominally took the WTUL under its wing, kept it at a distance. Because the AFL'S power stemmed from its highly skilled labour force, the organization saw little economic benefit in working with the WTUL. The - affiliation provided the AFL with political cover, allowing it to claim support for women workers; in return, the WTVL gained a potent but largely absent ally.
The WTUL also had to overcome internal discord. While the majority of the group's members were working women, a sizeable and powerful minority consisted of middle- and upperclass social reformers whose goals extended beyond labour reform. While workers argued that the WTUL should focus its efforts on collective bargaining and working conditions, the reformers looked beyond the workplace, seeking state and national legislation aimed at education reform and urban poverty relief as well as workplace issues. Despite these obstacles, the WTUL accomplished a great deal. The organization was instrumental in the passage of state laws mandating an eight-hour workday, a minimum wage for women, and a ban on child labour. It provided seed money to women who organized workers in specific plants and industries, and also established strike funds and soup kitchens to support striking unionists. After the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911, the WTUL launched a four-year investigation whose conclusions formed the basis of much subsequent workplace safety legislation. The organization also offered a political base for all reform-minded women, and thus helped develop the next generation of American leaders. Eleanor Roosevelt was one of many prominent figures to emerge from the WTUL.
The organization began a slow death in the late I 920s, when the Great Depression chokeci off its funding. The organization limped through the I 940s; the death knell eventually rang in 1950, at the onset of the McCarthy era. A turn of-the-century labour organization dedicated to. social reform, one that during its heyday was regarded by many as "radical," stood little chance of weathering that storm. This humble ending, however, does nothing to diminish the accomplishments of an organization that is yet to receive its historical due.
55. The primary purpose of this passage is to.
(a) describe the barriers confronting women in the contemporary workplace
(b) call readers' attention to an overlooked contributor to American history
(c) critique the methods employed by an important labour union
(d) rebuke historians for failing to cover the women's labor movement adequately
56. Which of the following best characterizes the American Federation of Labour's view of the Women's Trade Union League, as it is presented in the passage?
(a) The WTUL was an important component of the AFLs multifront assault on industry and its treatment of workers-
(b) Because of Eleanor Roosevelt's affiliation with the organization, the WTUL was a vehicle through which the AFL could gain access to the White House.
(c) The WTUL was to. be avoided because the radical element within it attracted unwanted government scrutiny.
(d) The WTUL offered the AFL some political capital but little that would assist it in labour negotiations.
57. Each ofthe following is cited in the passage as an accomplishment of the Women's Trade Union League EXCEPT
(a) It organized a highly skilled workforce to increase its bargaining power.
(b) It contributed to the development of a group of leaders in America.
(c) It provided essential support to striking women.
(d) It helped fund start-up unions for women.
Passage - III
The function of strategic planning is to. position a company for long-term growth and expansion in a variety of markets by analyzing its strengths and weaknesses and examining current and potential opportunities. Based on this information, the company develops strategy for itself. That strategy then becomes the basis for supporting strategies for its various departments.
This is where all too. many strategic plans go astray-at implementation. Recent business management surveys show that most CEOs who have a strategic plan are concerned with the potential breakdown in the implementation of the plan. Unlike 1980s corporations that blindly followed their 5-year plans, even when they were misguided, today's corporations tend to. second-guess.
Outsiders can help facilitate the process, but in the final analysis, ifthe company doesn't make the plan, the company won't follow the plan. This was one of the problems with strategic planning in the 1980s. In that era, it was an abstract, top-down process involving only a few top corporate officers and hired guns. Number crunching experts came into a company and generated tome-like volumes filled with a mixture of abstruse facts and grand theories which had little to do with the day- to-day realities ofthe company. Key middle managers were left out of planning sessions, resulting in lost opportunities and ruffled feelings .
However, more hands-on strategic planning can produce startling results. A recent survey queried more than a thousand small-to- jnedium sized businesses to compare companies with a strategic plan to companies without one. The survey found that companies with strategic plans had annual revenue growth of 6.2 percent as opposed to 3.8 percent for the other companies.
Perhaps most important, a strategic plan helps companies anticipate-and survive-change. New technology and the mobility of capital mean that markets can shift faster than ever before. Some financial analysts wonder why they should bother planning two. years ahead when market dynamics might be transformed by next quarter. The fact is that it's the very pace of change that makes planning so crucial. Now, more than ever, companies have to stay alert to the marketplace, In an environment of continual and rapid change, long range planning expands options and organizational flexibility.
58. The primary purpose of the passage is to
(a) refute the idea that change is bad for a corporation's long-term health
(b) describe how long-term planning, despite some potential pitfalls, can help a corporation to. grow
(c) compare and contrast two styles of corporate planning .
(d) evaluate the strategic planning goals of corporate America today
59. It can be inferred from the passage that, in general, strategic planning during the 1980s had all of the following shortco.mingsEXCEPT
(a) a reliance on outside consultants who did not necessarily understand the nuts and bolts of the business
(b) a dependence on theoretical models that did not always perfectly describe the workings of the company
(c) an inherent weakness in the company's own ability to implement the strategic plan
(d) an excess of information and data that made it difficult to get to key concepts
60. The author most likely mentions the results of the survey of 1,000 companies in order to
(a) put forth an opposing view on strategic plans so that she can then refute it
(b) illustrate that when strategic planning is "hands-on," it produces uninspiring results
(c) give a concrete example of why strategic planning did not work during the 1980s
(d) sup,port her contention that strategic planning when done correctly can be very successful
61. Over the last 20 years the rate of increase in total production in Workland has been second to none in the world. However, the growth is more modest when calculated per capita of total population. Over the last ten years progress has been much slower.
If the information above is accurate, which of the following must be true?
(a) Workland has a very large population.
(b) Productivity per capita has not grown as fast during the past ten years.
(c) Total production has increased faster than population growth ..
(d) The birth rate has declined.
62. Between 1979 and 1983, the number of unincorporated business self-employed women increased five times faster than the number of self employed men and more than three times faster than women wage-and-salary workers. Part-time self-employment among women increased more than full-time self-employment.
Each of the following, if true, could help to account for this trend except:
(a) Owning a business affords flexibility to combine work and family responsibilities.
(b) The proportion of women studying business administration courses has grown considerable.
(c) There are more self-employed women than men.
(d) Uninorporated service industries have grown by 300 percent over the period; the ratio of women to men in this industry is three to one.
63. There is no clear line between health and illness; it is easy to forget what it feels like to be really well and to get gradually used to often having a headache, feeling irritable, or tired. There is an unrecognized proportion of the population that has been tipped over the brink into ill health by ubiquitous contaminants.
Which of the following statements best describes the purpose of the abvoe?
(a) The public must be encouraged to have regular medical examinations.
(b) The public must be warned ~o be aware of various physical and chemical hazards.
(c) The public must be warned to treat seriously such symptoms as headaches, irritability, and tiredness.
(d) The medical professional is not always capable of diagnosing illness.
Directions (Q.64 - 65) : In each question, there are five sentences. Each sentence has a pair of words that are italicized and highlighted. From the italicized and highlighted words, select the most appropriate words (A or B) to form correct sentences. The sentences are foUowed by options that indicate the words, which may be selected to correctly complete the set of sentences. From the options given, choose the most appropriate one.
64. The further [A] /farther [B] he pushed himself, the more disillusioned he grew.
For the crowds it was more ofa historical [A] / historic [B] event; for their leader, it was just another day.
The old man has a healthy distrust [A] / mistrust [B] for all new technology. This film is based on a real [A] / true [B] story .
One suspects that the compliment [A] / complement [B] was backhanded.
(a) BABAB
(b) ABABA
(c) BAABA
(d) BBAAB
65. Regrettably [A] / Regretfully [B] I have to decline your invitation.
I am drawn to the poetic, sensual [A] / sensuous [B] quality of her paintings.
He was besides [A] / beside [B] himself with age when I told him what J had done.
After brushing against a stationary [A] / stationery [B] truck my car turned turtle .
As the water began to rise over [A] / above [B] the danger mark, the signs of an imminent flood were clear.
(a) BAABA
(b) BBBAB
(c) AAABA
(d) BBAAB
Directions (Q.66 - 67) : In each question, the word at the top is used in four different ways, numbered (a) to (d). Choose the option in which the usage of the word is Incorrect or Inappropriate.
66. SORT
(a) Let's sort these boys into four groups
(b) They serve tea of a sort on these trains.
(c) Farmers of all sort attended the rally.
(d) What sort of cheese do you use in pizza?
67. HOST
(a) A virus has infected the host computer
(b) Ranchi will play the host to the next national film festival
(c) Kerala' s forests are host to a range of snakes
(d) If you host the party, who will foot the bill
68. Select the one which would best fill the blanks.
Football evokes a ________ response in India compared to cricket, the almost _________ the nation
(a) tepid boiling
(b) lukewarm, electrifies
(c) turbid, fascinating
(d) apocryphal, genuinely fascinates
Directions (Q.69 - 70): Each question consists of four sentences on a topic. Some sentences are grammatically incorrect or inappropriate. Select the option that indicates the grammatically correct and. appropriate sentence(s).
69. A. Last Sunday, Archana had nothing to do.
B. After waking up, she lay on the bed thinking of what to do.
C. At 11 o'clock she took shower and got ready.
D. She spent most of the day shopping.
(a) B and C
(b) C
(c) A and B
(d) B, C and D
70. A. Large reductions in the ozone layer, which sits about 15-30 km above the Earth, take place each winter over the polar regions, especially the Antarctic, as low temperatures allow the formation of stratospheric clouds that assist chemical reactions breaking down ozone.
B. Industrial chemicals containing chlorine and bromine have-been blamed for thinning the layer because they attack the ozone molecules, making them to break apart.
C. Many an offending chemicals have now been banned.
D. It will still take several decades before these substances have disappeared from the atmosphere.
(a) D
(b) B & D
(c) A & D
(d) A & C
| Answers | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | (a) | 36. | (e) |
| 2. | (d) | 37. | (b) |
| 3. | (a) | 38. | (c) |
| 4. | (c) | 39. | (e) |
| 5. | (c) | 40. | (c) |
| 6. | (b) | 41. | (e) |
| 7. | (c) | 42. | (b) |
| 8. | (b) | 43. | (d) |
| 9. | (b) | 44. | (e) |
| 10. | (c) | 45. | (a) |
| 11. | (b) | 46. | (b) |
| 12. | (c) | 47. | (c) |
| 13. | (b) | 48. | (b) |
| 14. | (b) | 49. | (a) |
| 15. | (b) | 50. | (c) |
| 16. | (a) | 51. | (d) |
| 17. | (c) | 52. | (d) |
| 18. | (c) | 53. | (d) |
| 19. | (d) | 54. | (c) |
| 20. | (d) | 55. | (b) |
| 21. | (d) | 56. | (d) |
| 22. | (c) | 57 | (a) |
| 23. | (c) | 58. | (b) |
| 24. | (b) | 59. | (c) |
| 25. | (b) | 60. | (d) |
| 26. | (d) | 61. | (b) |
| 27. | (e) | 62. | (c) |
| 28. | (b) | 63. | (b) |
| 29. | (a) | 64. | (b) |
| 30. | (c) | 65. | (b) |
| 31. | (e) | 66. | (c) |
| 32. | (e) | 67. | (c) |
| 33. | (a) | 68. | (b) |
| 34. | (b) | 69. | (d) |
| 35. | (d) | 70. | (c) |
No comments:
Post a Comment