Questions

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 questions, one part of the sentence may have an error. Find out which part of the sentence has an error and click the button corresponding to it. If the sentence is free from error, click the "No error" option.

He lost heart (A) / because he could not cope up with (B) / the difficulties in life. (C) / No Error (D)

Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives and click the button corresponding to it.

In the world today we make health an end in itself. We have forgotten that health really means to enable a person to do his work and do it well. A lot of modern medicine, and this includes many patients as well as many physicians, pay very little attention to health but very much attention to those who imagine they are ill. Our great concern with health is shown by the medical columns in newspapers, the health articles in popular magazines and the popularity of television programmes and all those books on medicine. We talk about health all the time. Yet for the most part the only result is more people with imaginary illness. A healthy man should not be wasting time talking about health : he should be using health for work.

Modern medicine is primarily concerned with

In the following question the 1st and the last part of the sentence/passage are numbered 1 and 6. The rest of the sentence/ passage is split into four parts and named P, Q, R and S. These four parts are not given in their proper order. Read the sentence/passage and find out which of the four combinations is correct

1. Suddenly the man heard the low hum of an engine.
P. Instead, it grew louder and louder and seemed to be coming from above.
Q. At first he thought that it must be a car travelling along the road he had recently left.
R. He looked up quickly and saw an aeroplane cutting a crazy, zigzag path across the sky.
S. He expected the noise to fade away in the distance.
6. It disappeared for an instant behind some clouds, then emerged and plunged into the field.

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.

For me the ______________ and the chill of those nights dissolved into those little flames of fire that for hours made us live in a wonderland, in a ___________ fair of fireflies, and made us _________ there’s nothing that can blow those divine lights ________. In my mind I can still hear the jingling sounds of ________ tiny bells that grandma used to ring during the puja.

For me the ______________ and the chill of those nights

In the following question, a sentence / a part of sentence is underlined. Below are given alternatives to the underlined part which may improve the sentence. Choose the correct alternative. In case no improvement is required, choose "No Improvement" option.

Ramu, Shyamu and Abdul came forward one after the others.

 If an object travels in a straight line and its velocity increases or decreases by equal amounts in equal intervals of time, then the acceleration of the object is said to be ______________.

Who appoints the chairman of all the parliamentary committees of Lok Sabha?