English Questions

Look at the underlined part of each sentence. Below each sentence are given three possible substitutions for the underlined part. If one of them (a), (b) or (c) is better than the underlined part, indicate your response on the Answer Sheet against the corresponding letter. If none of the substitutions imporves the sentence, indicate (d) as your response on the Answer Sheet.

Poor Tom laid in the shade of a tree before he could walk further.

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.

Seringalistas refers to

In the following question, choose the word which is opposite in meaning to the give word and click the button corresponding to it.

GRACEFUL

The question below consists of a set of labelled sentences. These sentences, when properly sequenced form a coherent paragraph. Select the most logical order of sentences from among the options.

P: When you read a book you are focusing your attention on the conceptual ideas in the book.
Q: Self awareness is developed through practices in focusing your attention on the details of your personality and behavior which isn’t learned from reading a book.
R: You can develop an intellectual understanding of the ideas of self awareness from a book, but this is not the same.
S: With your attention in a book you are practicing not paying attention to your own behavior, emotions and personality.

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

I took the grinder yesterday.

A sentence has been given in Active/Passive Voice. Out of the four given alternatives, select the one which best expresses the same sentence in Passive/Active Voice.

Tanya will bring the snake.

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 :A decade ago UN recognized that rape can constitute a war crime and a constitutive act of genocide.
S6 :The fact that these two peace laureates come from two different nations underlines that this problem has been widespread, from Rwanda to Myanmar.
P :This year’s Nobel peace prize has been awarded to two exceptional individuals for their fight to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Q : Denis Mukwege is a doctor who has spent decades treating rape survivors in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a long civil war has repeatedly witnessed the horror of mass rapes.
R : Nadia Murad is herself a survivor of sexual war crimes, perpetuated by IS against the Yazidis.
S :Today she campaigns tirelessly to put those IS leaders in the dock in international courts.

The correct sequence should be

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