English Questions

Select the antonym of
therapeutic

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

Scot­free

Each item consists of six sentences of a passage. The first and sixth sentences are given in the beginning as S1 and S6. The middle four sentences in each have been jumbled up and labelled as P, Q, R and S. You are required to find the proper sequence of the four sentences and markyour response accordingly on the Answer Sheet.

S1 :India’s museums tend to be dreary experiences.
S6 :Because it’s better to attract crowds than dust.
P :Even the Louvre that attracted an eye-popping 8.1 million visitors last year compared to India’s 10.18 million foreign tourists, has hooked up with Beyonce and Jay-Z for promotion, where they take a selfie with Mona Lisa.
Q : Our museums need to get cool too.
R : A change of approach is clearly called for.
S:Troops of restless schoolchildren are often the most frequent visitors, endlessly being told to lower their voices and not touch the art.

The correct sequence should be

Rearrange the parts of the sentence in correct order.
There is a deeper
P-fissure here that goes
Q-from western theory
R-beyond explanations

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

A moot point

Improve the bracketed part of the sentence.
The real principle behind love is to see the (underlied) divine consciousness in everything.

Improve the bracketed part of the sentence.
In the eighteenth century, Japan's feudal overlords, from the shogun to the humblest samurai, found themselves (on) financial stress.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

The Amazon basin has been continuously inhabited for at least 10, 000 years, possibly more. Its earliest inhabitants were stone-age peoples, living in hundreds of far-flung tribes, some tiny, others numbering in the tens of thousands. It was from the west that Europeans explorers first arrived. In 1541 a Spanish expedition from Quito, led by Gonzalo Pizarro, ran short of supplies while exploring east of the Andes in what is today Peru. Pizarro’s cousin Francisco de Orellana offered to take 60 men along with the boats from the expedition and forage for supplies. De Orellana floated down the Rio Napo to its confluence with the Amazon, near Iquitos (Peru), and then to the mouth of the Amazon. Along the way his expedition suffered numerous attacks by Indians; some of the Indian warriors, they reported, were female, like the Amazons of Greek mythology, and thus the world’s greatest river got its name. No one made a serious effort to claim this sweaty territory, however, until the Portuguese built a fort near the mouth of the river at Belém in 1616, and sent Pedro Teixeira up the river to Quito and back between 1637 and 1639. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Portuguese bandeirantes (groups of roaming adventurers) penetrated ever further into the rain forest in pursuit of gold and Indian slaves, exploring as far as present-day Rondônia, and the Guaporé and Madeira river valleys. Amazonian Indians had long used the sap from rubber trees to make waterproof bags and other items. European explorers recognized the potential value of natural latex, but were unable to market it because it tended to grow soft in the heat, or brittle in the cold, and thus had limited appeal outside the rain forest. However, in 1842 American Charles Goodyear developed vulcanization (made natural rubber durable) and in 1890 Ireland’s John Dunlop patented pneumatic rubber tires. Soon there was an unquenchable demand for rubber in the recently industrialized USA and Europe, and the price of rubber on international markets soared. As profits skyrocketed, so did exploitation of the seringueiros, or rubber tappers, who were lured into the Amazon, mostly from the drought-stricken northeast, by the promise of prosperity only to be locked into a cruel system of virtual slavery dominated by seringalistas (owners of rubber-bearing forests). Rigged scales, hired guns, widespread illiteracy among the rubber tappers, and monopoly of sales and purchases all combined to perpetuate the workers’ debt and misery. In addition, seringueiros had to contend with jungle fevers, Indian attacks and all manner of deprivation.

From where did the Europeans explorers first arrive?