The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions.

Choose the best answer to

each question.

The task of creative work is to weave something new and wonderful out of the tattered
threads of culture and convention. On the enchanted loom of the mind, our memory and
experience, our personal histories and cultural histories, interlace into a particular pattern
which only that particular mind can produce — such is the combinatorial nature of creativity.
In describing the machinery of his own mind, Albert Einstein called this interweaving
“combinatory play.” It cannot be willed. It cannot be rushed. It can only be welcomed — the
work of creativity is the work of bearing witness to the weaving.

The inner workings of that unwillable loom, which we often call inspiration, is what Rainer
Maria Rilke explores in a beautiful passage from his only novel – The Notebooks of
MalteLaurids Brigge, which also gave us Rilke on the essence of art. Decades before
pioneering psycholinguist Vera John-Steiner noted that “in the course of creative endeavors,
artists and scientists join fragments of knowledge into a new unity of understanding,” Rilke
writes:

For the sake of a few lines one must see many cities, men and things. One must know the
animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the small flowers
open in the morning. One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to
unexpected meetings and to partings which one has long seen coming; to days of childhood
that are still unexplained, to parents that one had to hurt when they brought one some joy
and one did not grasp it; to childhood illness that so strangely began with a number of
profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings
by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew
with all the stars — and it is not yet enough if one may think of all of this. One must have
memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of
women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must
also have been beside the dying, one must have sat beside the dead in the room with the
open window and the fitful noises.
More than half a century before neurologist Oliver Sacks enumerated “forgetting” among the
three essential elements of creativity, Rilke adds:

And still it is not enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are
many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet
the memories themselves. Not until they have turned to blood within us, to glance, to
gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves — not until then can it
happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth
from them.

1)
The purpose of this passage is to:

show that Rilke was a thinker ahead of his time.

explain the inner workings of the creative process.
present Rilke’s views on creativity and highlight that Rilke expressed them
decades before other prominent thinkers.
 list the combination of all elements essential in the course of creative endeavors.

2)
According to Rilke, poetry reflects all of the following experiences of a poet EXCEPT:

Solitude and solitary wanderings.

Travel to unfamiliar places.
Death and bereavement.
The guilt of hurting one’s parents.

3)
Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?

Inspiration is the accumulation of our experiences, memories and surroundings

that unite unconsciously in a new work of creativity.
Forgetting is the ability to revisit vast troves of memories so that they come in
handy in a rare hour of writing inspiring poetry.
Inspiration is a result of a poet’s complete mastery of the medium of poetry.
Forgetting must be consciously internalized.

4)
Which one of the following statements is true about inspiration?

It can be attained by travelling the world and meeting new people.

It strikes when we seek experiences, memories and knowledge of different
cultures.
It may strike when it is least expected.
It cannot be attained without knowing ourselves.

How the world uses energy is a hot topic for a warming planet, and fears of pollution and
resource strain have produced a virtual arms race of energy-efficiency strategies. From the
European Union to China, economies are vowing to reduce their energy intensity with the
help of technological innovations and legislative changes. Yet, despite these promises,
consumer demand for energy is forecast by the International Energy Agency to rise until at
least 2040. With the world’s energy needs growing, how can policymakers guarantee
supply?

To put it bluntly, the world has nothing to worry about when it comes to reserves. After 40
years of fearing energy shortages, we have entered an era of abundance. We need to guard
against false narratives, not scarce resources. The culprit of this storyline is the Club of
Rome, a global think-tank that, in the 1970s, spurred energy anxiety with its absurd
prophecies derived from questionable models. As devoted followers of Thomas Malthus and
Paul Ehrlich, the club argued that bad things come from exponential growth, and good things
from linear growth. This idea fueled the prediction that the world would run out of oil by 2020.

By adopting this nonsense dogma, developed countries enabled resource-rich authoritarian

leaders like Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran, to use
their oil reserves as tools to oppose the West – and particularly its support for Israel. This
contributed to the oil shocks of the 1970s, and reinforced the erroneous perception that
hydrocarbon reserves were even more limited, and largely confined to the Middle East.

Rapid advances in technology, particularly in the field of exploration and the ability to extract
hydrocarbons in new places, eventually upended such narratives. Today’s energy “crisis”
stems not from shortages, but from anxiety over pollution. But this anxiety has not slowed
our exploration habits. On the contrary, politics and international law, like the United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea, have been adapted to enable discovery.

But perhaps the biggest technology-driven upheaval for global energy markets in recent
years has come from shale gas and shale oil production in the United States. At 8.8 million
barrels per day, US oil production is now higher than that of Iraq and Iran combined. Taken
together, these developments have contributed to lower energy prices, and reduced the
strength of OPEC. Furthermore, because LNG is favored by the transport sector (particularly
freight and maritime shippers) for environmental reasons, the ability to use oil as a
geopolitical weapon has disappeared. Iran was so desperate to ramp up its oil exports that it
agreed to abandon its nuclear program.

Wind and solar are often presented as alternatives to oil and gas, but they cannot compete
with traditional sources for electricity generation. If they could, there would be no reason for
the EU to support renewable energy production through legislation. Moreover, while wind
and solar technologies generate electricity, the biggest energy demand comes from heating.
In the EU, for example, electricity represents only 22% of final energy demand, while heating
and cooling represents 45%; transportation accounts for the remaining 33%.

All of these factors help explain why fossil fuels, which currently meet more than 80% of the
world’s energy needs, will remain the backbone of global energy production for the
foreseeable future. This may not come as welcome news to those pushing for an immediate
phase-out of hydrocarbons. But perhaps some solace can be gained from the fact that
technological innovation will also play a key role in reducing the negative impacts on air and
water quality.

Amid the global conversation about climate change, it is understandable that developed
economies would promise significant gains in energy efficiency. But while the EU may be
committed to reducing CO2 emissions, other signatories of the 2015 Paris climate
agreement do not seem as resolute. It would not be surprising if most of the signatories
actually raised their energy consumption in coming years, turning to fossil fuels because
they cannot afford any other option.

Energy policy will remain on the agenda for advanced economies for many years to come.
But as countries work to balance security of supply with environmental goals, they must also
commit to getting their facts straight.
1)
Which of the following best describes what the passage is trying to do?

In view of the world’s growing energy needs, the passage cautions the energy
policy makers about the impossibility of ideals winning over facts.
Energy policy makers ought to take account of the fact that despite fears of
shortages or threats from pollution, we have entered an era of fossil fuel
abundance that shows no sign of abating.
While vowing to reduce their energy intensity with the help of technological
innovations, the energy policy makers must realize the prevalence of wrong
ideas.
Policy makers ought to realize that rapid advances in technology in the field of
exploration and the ability to extract hydrocarbons in new places will soon
deplete the world’s oil resources.

2)
What is the ‘false narrative’ that the author mentions in the second paragraph?

The narrative that after 40 years of shortages, we have entered an era of

abundance in oil reserves.
The prediction that the world would run out of oil by 2020.
The Malthusian doctrine that linear growth is preferable to exponential growth.
The shifting of energy anxiety that stemmed from fear of shortages to anxiety
over pollution.

3)
All of the following are said to have reduced the dependence on oil, especially from
any particular geopolitical area, EXCEPT:

Technological improvements in exploration methods

Extraction of hydrocarbons from new places around the globe
The preference for LNG by the fuel transporters

The discovery of energy efficient renewable energy sources

4)
According to the writer, the dependence on fossil fuels for meeting world’s energy
needs is unlikely to change in the near future, for all these reasons EXCEPT:

A major part of the world’s energy need is for heating which is currently met by
gas and oil.
Wind and solar energy cannot compete with the traditional sources for electricity
generation.
 Fossil fuels currently meet more than 80 percent of the world’s energy needs.
The legislation in European Union to support renewable energy production is
unlikely to succeed.

5)
It can be inferred from the passage that one of the fallouts of the unfounded fears
about scarce oil reserves is that …

authoritarian leaders could not use oil as a geopolitical weapon.

oil rich countries could oppose the west in its support to Israel.
the US started producing more oil than Iran and Iraq combined.
led to rapid advances in technology in the field of exploration and the ability to
extract hydrocarbons in new places.

6)
“How the world uses energy is a hot topic for a warming planet…” The first sentence
of the passage serves which of the following purposes in the essay?

It leads the reader to a better understanding of the “hot topic” of energy misuse
and the warming of the planet.
It captures the writer’s thesis that while potential shortages and threats from
pollution form the energy narrative, the demand for fossil fuels shows no sign of
abating.
It introduces the reader to the ideas about to be presented in the passage that
have to do with effective use of energy.
It makes a sarcastic stress on the “hot topic” which, as the passage later
reveals, is not deserving of the urgency it has received.

Traditionally, countries’ global political power was assessed according to military might: the
one with the largest army had the most power. But that logic was not always reflected in
reality. The US lost the Vietnam War; the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan. In its
first few years in Iraq, the US discovered the wisdom of Talleyrand’s adage that the one
thing you cannot do with a bayonet is sit on it.

Enter soft power. The term was coined by Harvard’s Joseph S. Nye in 1990 to account for
the influence a country – and, in particular, the US – wields, beyond its military (or “hard”)
power. As Nye put it, a country’s power rests on its “ability to alter the behavior of others” to
get what it wants, whether through coercion (sticks), payments (carrots), or attraction (soft
power). “If you are able to attract others,” he pointed out, “you can economize on the sticks
and carrots.”

Nye argues that a country’s soft power arises from “its culture (in places where it is attractive
to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign
policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority.)” But I believe that it
also emerges from the world’s perceptions of what a country is about: the associations and
attitudes conjured by the mention of a country’s name. Hard power is exercised; soft power
is evoked.

The US has been the world’s largest economy and oldest democracy, a haven for
immigrants, and the land of the American Dream – the promise that anyone can be anything
if they work hard enough. It is also the home of Boeing and Intel, Google and Apple,
Microsoft and MTV, Hollywood and Disneyland, McDonald’s and Starbucks. The
attractiveness of these assets, and of the American lifestyle that they represent, is that they
enable the US to persuade, rather than compel, others to adopt its agenda. In this sense,
soft power acts as both an alternative and a complement to hard power.

But there are limits to a country’s soft power – even America’s. In the wake of the US
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there was an outpouring of goodwill for the US.
Then the country launched its War on Terror, in which it relied heavily on hard power. The
instruments of that power – the Iraq invasion, indefinite detention of “enemy combatants”
and other suspects at Guantánamo Bay prison, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and revelations of
CIA “black sites,” the killing of Iraqi civilians by private US security contractors – were not
received well by the global public. America’s soft power declined sharply, demonstrating that
how a country exercises its hard power affects how much soft power it can evoke.

America’s domestic narrative soon overcame its foreign-policy setbacks, thanks partly to
today’s unprecedented connectivity. In a world of instant mass communications, countries
are judged by a global public fed on a diet of relentless online news, smartphone videos, and
Twitter gossip.

In such an information age, Nye wrote, three types of countries are likely to gain soft power:
“those whose dominant cultures and ideals are closer to prevailing global norms (which now
emphasize liberalism, pluralism, autonomy); those with the most access to multiple channels
of communication and thus more influence over how issues are framed; and those whose
credibility is enhanced by their domestic and international performance.” Nye has argued
that, in an information age, soft power often accrues to the country with the better story. The
US has long been the “land of the better story.” It has a free press and an open society; it
welcomes migrants and refugees; it has a thirst for new ideas and a knack for innovation. All
of this has given the US an extraordinary ability to tell stories that are more persuasive and
attractive than those of its rivals. However, Trump’s ascent to power has shattered America’s
image.

1)
“The one thing you cannot do with a bayonet is sit on it” – which of the following is
the most likely explanation of these words in the context of the passage?

A country with military-might must not remain idle without employing its power in
some way.
Military-might is useful to win a war but is not the correct assessment of a
country.
Military-might ultimately leads to a country’s downfall.
 A large military can be defeated by small but well-organized military forces.

2)
According to Joseph S Nye, all these are examples of soft power EXCEPT:

The ability to alter the behavior of others.

The ability to achieve what a country wants through inducements.
The ability to use the military and influence the behaviour of others.
The use of the military to win wars.

3)
All the following have contributed to America’s soft power in the world EXCEPT:

The American Dream.

American conglomerate.
American foreign policy.

The American war on terror.

4)
According the passage, the decline of US soft power can be attributed to which of
the following?

Its heavy dependence on hard power when it launched its war on terror in the
wake of the terrorist attacks of September 2011.
The invasion of Iraq and the misuse of the instruments of hard power.
Trump’s ascent to power.

All of the above.

According to Joseph S Nye, in a world of instant mass communication which of the

following helps a country to gain soft power?

I. Its adherence to globally emphasized norms of liberalism, pluralism, autonomy.

II. Its access to multiple channels of communication and credible domestic and
international performance.

III. Its propaganda machine that promotes a better story about itself.

All of I, II and III

 I and II
II and III
III only

6)
In the context of the passage, which of the following is likely to be a “country with a
better story”?

A Utopia
A country without borders – akin to the global village.
A liberal democratic society and economy.
A welfare state with military might.

Whether the art of writing was introduced into India from outside, or whether it was
an indigenous development, is still a moot point. But clearly many ideas and
influences had penetrated the Indian subcontinent from the north-west. Throughout
history the north-west frontier had been more often wide open than not. While the
Bactrian, Saka and Kushan empires had actually straddled the Khyber pass, the
constant spate of conquests had systematically eroded cultural barriers and washed
down onto the Indian plains a rich topsoil of Persian and Mediterranean skills and
ideals.

The most obvious example was in coins. At the time of the Mauryas (third century
BC), Indian coinage was still the unadorned lumps of metal marked with a simple
punch that had been in circulation from the earliest times. But the idea of a minted
coinage, incorporating a design or portrait and a legend, dates only from the time of
these invasions. The evolution of a specifically Indian coinage is clearly marked in
the coins of western India, where markedly Indian profiles start to appear about the
second century AD. By the fourth century, the distinctive gold coinage of the Guptas
was in circulation throughout north India.

In literature, it has been suggested that Sanskrit drama owed something to Greek
influence; Indian playwrights like Kalidasa may have inherited some of the
conventions of Greek comedy as performed at the Bactrian court in the Punjab.

In architecture there is a more obvious connection. The temple of Jandial at Taxila in

Pakistan has Ionic columns and a lay-out not unlike that of the Parthenon on a
reduced scale. It could hardly look less Indian and indeed it is not Indian; built by
Parthian invaders at the beginning of the first century AD, it was probably used by
fire-worshipping devotees of the Persian god Zoroaster. But the significant point is
that this temple is the earliest structural, as opposed to rock-cut, temple on Indian
soil. So did the ancient peoples of India learn about architecture from the invaders?
The answer is certainly no. They had been building on a grand scale in wood and
brick for centuries. Megasthenes’ description of the gigantic royal palace at
Pataliputra is in itself enough to prove the point. But Hellenistic buildings like Jandial
did have some impact. In the Himalayan valley of Kashmir the foreign style caught
on and produced a distinctive and enduring school of building which employed
classical pillars, trefoil arches and triangular pediments.

However, it was in the working of stone and in sculpture that foreign skills really
made their mark on India. Craftsmen and masons seem to have moved about the
ancient world more freely even than ambassadors. The Ashoka pillars with their bell-
shaped capitals bear a striking resemblance to the pillars of Persepolis, the ancient
Achaemenid capital of Persia. The highly developed modelling shown in the lion
capitals found at Sarnath and Sanchi suggest an already well-developed style which
must mean that Ashoka borrowed both the idea of the pillars, and the masons to
carve them, from Persia.

1)
The central point in the first paragraph is that:

Historically, many foreign cultural influences entered India from the north- west.
It is not clear whether writing entered India from outside, but many other ideas
and influences did.
In the north-west of India, constant conquests tore down the empires that
existed around the Khyber pass.
Constant conquests from the north-west resulted in ancient India being unable
to develop culturally on its own.

2)
What, according to the author, is noteworthy about the temple of Jandial?

It was built by Parthian invaders around two millennia ago.

It was used by the fire-worshipping devotees of the Persian god Zoroaster.
It is the earliest temple on Indian soil that was built rather than carved from rock.
It is the earliest example of a typically Indian style of architecture.

3)
The passage answers all the following questions EXCEPT..

When did distinctly Indian coinage arise in ancient India?

Did the Hellenistic style of building have any impact on India?
What was the reason for the well-developed style of the Ashoka pillars?
Was the art of writing an indigenous development in India?

4)
What is the central idea of the passage?
 The effect of foreign invasions on ancient India
Foreign influence on ancient Indian art and culture
Indian art and architecture in ancient times
The similarity between ancient Indian and foreign art

Regularly drinking above the UK alcohol guidelines can take years off your life,
according to a major report. The study of 600,000 drinkers estimated that having 10
to 15 alcoholic drinks every week could shorten a person's life by between one and
two years. And they warned that people who drink more than 18 drinks a week could
lose four to five years of their lives. Scientists, who compared the health and drinking
habits of alcohol drinkers in 19 countries, found people who drank the equivalent of
about five to 10 drinks a week could shorten their lives by up to six months.
Recommended limits in Italy, Portugal, and Spain are almost 50% higher than the
UK guidelines, and in the USA the upper limit for men is nearly double this.

Which of the following can be validly concluded from the above?

Mortality rate due to consumption of alcohol in UK is likely to be lower than

that in the US, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.
Light drinkers, or drinkers who consume alcohol less than the
recommended limits lower the risk of several cardiovascular conditions.

If you already drink alcohol, drinking less may help you live longer.

There are no health benefits from drinking alcohol even below the
recommended limits.

After achieving dramatic gains against hunger and famine, the world runs the risk of
backsliding, owing to poorly considered choices. But if we accept the claim that
climate change is to blame for a recent uptick in global hunger and malnutrition, we
also risk embracing the costliest and least effective solutions.

The argument assumes that:

Recent uptick in global hunger and malnutrition is attributable to climate

change.

Climate policies divert resources from measures that directly reduce hunger.

Any realistic effort to combat climate change will be incredibly expensive

and have virtually no impact on climate.
Very well-intentioned policies to combat global warming could very well
exacerbate hunger and malnutrition.
In order to avoid chances of drug addicts getting affected by HIV, National AIDS
Control Organization (NACO) would start with oral substitution therapy (OST).
Besides, addicts would be motivated to shed use of syringes. Health employees are
already being trained in this connection. Under this programme, oral medicines
would be given to all drug users to help them kick the habit. This would also help in
reducing the risk of HIV transmission from one intravenous drug user to another.

Which of the following, if true, would make OST successful in reducing the risk of
HIV among drug addicts?

Drug addicts are globally marginalized and have high rates of HIV infection.

Over 75% of HIV infected drug addicts are used to the sharing of needles.

OST is recommended by the World Health Organization for people who

inject drugs after diagnosis with HIV infection.
Providing Oral Substitution Therapy (OST) alongside other therapies to
people who inject drugs results in a significantly greater reduction in deaths.

A law to completely ban plastic bags has come into force in Maharashtra. The aim is
to reduce the choking of drains due to plastic waste, during rainy season and thereby
prevent flooding. The government is determined to implement the ban by imposing
penalties on users and manufacturers of plastic bags. This will ensure that the ban
will achieve its objective.

Which of the following, if true, weakens the author’s conclusion?

A blanket ban on plastic bags of all sizes and thickness will make it easier to
implement.
Maharashtra had banned bags below 50 microns after the Mumbai floods of
2005, but that did not lead to prevention of flooding.
The ban does not cover multi-laminated packaging, which is plastic lined
with foil, which is most widely in use and the greatest in terms of volume of
waste.
The government has failed to set-up proper systems to ensure the
collection, segregation and disposal of the existing stockpile of plastic bags.

The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option
that best captures the author's position. Enter your answer in the space
provided using the keypad.

An idea comes to some minds as an intuition, to many in the form of faith or

imitation, or a convenient corroboration of a bias. An idea always arrives as a
realization, spreads as a belief. The arrival of an idea is a religious moment. But its
legitimacy is proved in public and private through the fabrication of rational
substantiation. An argument then is reverse engineering of a religious moment. Is
debate then as intellectually robust and pure as we are trained to assume? In the
hierarchy of intellectual activities, this method of transmission of an idea is
unfortunately more respected than the very force that creates ideas—intuition.

1. The religious moment in which ideas arise in some minds spread later as beliefs
and unfortunately become more respected.

2. Ideas arise to some minds as a religious realization of their faith or biases.

Debates try to reverse- engineer the faith and are unfortunately more respected.

3. Realization happens as a result of the corroboration of a faith or bias. Debates are

the unfortunate reverse engineering of realizations arising out of intuition.

4. An idea that comes to some minds as intuition is rationalized to reverse engineer

the intuition; this is unfortunate as it ignores the intuition that creates ideas.

The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option
that best captures the author's position. Enter your answer in the space
provided using the keypad.

Although the category of popular music presupposes differences from serious music,
there is limited consensus about the nature of these differences beyond the near-
tautology that most people prefer popular music to art music. This obvious disparity
in popular reception generates philosophical (and not merely sociological) issues
when it is combined with the plausible assumption that popular music is aesthetically
different from folk music, art music, and other music types. There is general
agreement about the concept’s extension or scope of reference – agreement that the
Beatles made popular music but Igor Stravinsky did not. However, there is no
comparable agreement about what “popular music” means or which features of the
music are distinctively popular.

1. The assumption that popular music is aesthetically different from art music
generates philosophical and sociological issues about which there is no consensus
except about the extent of reference.

2. There appears to be no difference between popular music and serious music

aesthetically except for a broad consensus that Beatles made popular music but Igor
Stravinsky did not.

3. Although popular music presupposes differences from serious music, there is

limited consensus about their aesthetic differences beyond the near-tautology that
most people prefer popular music to serious music.
4. Popular music presupposes differences from serious music; however, the
assumption that they are aesthetically different raises philosophical and sociological
issues about their distinctive features.

The five sentences (labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) given in this question, when properly

sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labeled with a
number. Decide on the proper order for the sentences and key in this
sequence of five numbers as your answer.

1. But it also had an older association with philosophy, going back to Plato, for whom
light is knowledge of the true, which we acquire as we leave the caves whose walls
of prejudice and ignorance have obscured our vision.

2. Or rather, the English term ‘enlightenment’ is itself a translation, coined in the late
19thcentury, of two distinct terms, both in use in the 18th century: the
French lumières and the German Aufklärung.

3. ‘Enlightenment’ has had many translations.

4. Light then carried a strong religious connotation: Christ was the light of the world,
a light that we let into our souls.

5. The two have in common the idea of ‘light’; the French noun, however, is in the
plural, while the German one indicates less a light shining than a process of
enlightenment.

The five sentences (labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) given in this question, when

properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is
labeled with a number. Decide on the proper order for the sentences
and key in this sequence of five numbers as your answer.

1. The atmosphere is almost entirely made of carbon dioxide, and the

atmospheric pressure is only 1 percent that of the Earth, so an astronaut
would suffocate within a few minutes if exposed to the thin Martian air and
his blood would begin to boil.

2. For one, there are the fierce dust storms, which engulf the planet with a
fine red dust that resembles talcum powder and almost tipped over the
spacecraft in the movie.

3. The movie was realistic enough to give the public a taste of the
difficulties Martian colonists would encounter.

4. In the 2015 movie The Martian, the astronaut played by Matt Damon
faces the ultimate challenge: to survive alone on a frozen, desolate, airless
planet.

5. To produce enough oxygen to breathe, Matt Damon has to create a

chemical reaction in his pressurized space station.

The five sentences (labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) given in this question, when properly

sequenced, form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labeled with a
number. Decide on the proper order for the sentences and key in this
sequence of five numbers as your answer.

1. Our industrial and commercial age erects universities and museums, huge concert
halls and stadiums, railroads, highways, and the World Wide Web.

2. Aztec rulers of ancient Mexico laid out their fifteenth-century capital, Tenochtitlan,
‘the Place of the Prickly Pear Cactus’, in the centre of their vast empire as a
depiction in stone and stucco of their cosmos.

3. They are the civilization’s most tangible statement of what is important in its time,
and what it would be known for in history.

4. The Pyramids of Giza in Egypt were built at enormous expense as symbolic

ladders to heaven for the divine pharaohs who were buried in them 4,500 years ago.

5. Every civilization expresses itself through its great works.

Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be
put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph.
Identify the odd one out and key in your answer.

1. For several decades Salim Ali’s was the only Indian name that figured in
the world of ornithologists or in general knowledge books for
schoolchildren.

2. Interestingly, the number of bird species sighted is only increasing,

helped no doubt by the vast range of habitats available in the subcontinent.

3. Dividing his time between Delhi, Dehradun and the Sunderbans, he has
never shied away from doing the hard yards when it comes to
birdwatching.

4. BikramGrewal is one such avid birdwatcher who has quietly but

persuasively kept his lens focused on the birds of the subcontinent.

5. Today, inspired by Salim Ali, thousands of people have taken to bird

study, birdwatching and bird photography.

Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be
put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph.
Identify the odd one out and key in your answer.

1. The Government of India became a party to the protocol schedule in

June 1992, entrusting the responsibility of implementation to the ministry of
environment, forest and climate change.

2. Further scaling up the fight against emissions, Montreal Protocol

signatories decided to move on from focusing on ozone depletion to
tackling global warming in 2016.

3. It played a crucial role in phasing out the production and consumption of

ozone-depleting substances (ODSs) such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs),
carbon tetrachloride (CTC) and halons.

4. This means an urgent need to find efficient and environment-friendly

alternatives to these refrigerants.

5. Implementation of the Montreal Protocol has had a significant impact on

protecting the ozone layer for three decades.
Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put
together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd
one out and key in your answer.

1. Every cell that is “you” carries a molecular ID card made of a protein marker.

2. Our body is a nation of trillions of cells working together under a system.

3. To ensure equitable distribution of common facilities only to the “self” and not to
hostile or parasitic aliens, human body is armed with a highly specialized UID
system.

4. The only agenda they serve is towards their self-gain and growth.

5. This system ensures that each body cell receives common facilities like oxygen,
nutrients, protection from attack etc. in exchange for serving in the specific role it is
assigned.

In the following question the word given at the top is used in four different
ways. Choose the sentence in which the use of the given word is incorrect and
key in your answer in the space provided.

Slew

1] He has written a slew of books.

2] I was assaulted by the thump and slew of the bus.

3] The knight slew the dragon.

4] He watched the snake slew its skin.

In the following question the word given at the top is used in four different
ways. Choose the sentence in which the use of the given word is incorrect and
key in your answer in the space provided.

Pin

1] He handed me a pin with a peace sign on it.

2] Bother them all! I don’t care a pin about them.

3] It is hard to pin exactly when things changed.

4] She doesn’t generally pin up her beautiful long hair.