English Questions

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

A bone of contention

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which will improve the bracketed part of the sentence. In case no improvement is needed, select "no improvement".
I wondered what one would have thought some 40 years ago if you (had said) you could heat liquid using a plastic container.

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

Great minds think alike

Read the following passage carefully and choose the most appropriate answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

Most economists in the United States seem captivated by the spell of the free market. Consequently, nothing seems good or normal that does not accord with the requirements of the free market. A price that is determined by the seller or, for that matter (for that matter: so far as that is concerned), established by anyone other than the aggregate of consumers seems pernicious. Accordingly, it requires a major act of will to think of price-fixing (the determination of prices by the seller) as both "normal" and having a valuable economic function. In fact, price-fixing is normal in all industrialized societies because the industrial system itself provides, as an effortless consequence of its own development, the price-fixing that it requires. Modern industrial planning requires and rewards great size. Hence, a comparatively small number of large firms will be competing for the same group of consumers. That each large firm will act with consideration of its own needs and thus avoid selling its products for more than its competitors charge is commonly recognized by advocates of free-market economic theories. But each large firm will also act with full consideration of the needs that it has in common with the other large firms competing for the same customers.

Selling a commodity at a price that is not more than that charged by competitors is -

In the following question, a sentence has been given in Direct/Indirect speech. Out of the four alternatives suggested, select the one which best express the same sentence in Indirect/Direct speech.

He said that she was coming that year.

In the following passage, some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

Irony. __________________word captures our response to the ongoing nationwide drought in more ways than one. We have woken _________ the reality of drought a full six months after the end of monsoon. After waking up, we focus ____________ the drinking water __________ in urban centres and not the multidimensional crisis of life and livelihood in _______________ hinterland.

Irony. __________________word captures our response to the ongoing nationwide drought

All this does not bode _______________ for even the loosest definitions of cosmopolitanism. A city by definition is a space, as ________________ historians and sociologists have already told us, which ideally privileges and _________________ the unexpected encounter, and calls on its citizens to be able to respond humanely even to those _______________ are not linked to us in familial, ethnic, nationalist or caste ___________________.

All this does not bode _______________ for even the loosest definitions of cosmopolitanism.

In the following passage, some of the words have been left out. Read the passage carefully and select the correct answer for the given blank out of the four alternatives.

Many persons of good education unconsciously circumscribe themselves ___________ a small vocabulary. They have a knowledge of hundreds of desirable wordswhich they do not put _________ practical use in their speech or writing. Many, too, are conscious __________ a poverty of language, which engenders in them a senseof timidity and self-___________. The method used for building a large vocabulary has __________ been confined to the study of single words.