Q. 1 Which of the following sentences are grammatically
CORRECT ?
1. Have you any clothes to dispose of?
2. I saw a pleasant dream last night.
3. I have done it many a times safely.
4. Students struggle to cope up with academic
pressure.
5. You need not give negative feedback to your
employees.
6. My friend is good at playing football.
Only 1, 5 and 6 are correct. Other options are
grammatically incorrect. 2 is incorrect because of
the phrase ‘saw a pleasant dream’. ‘many a times’
make option 3 incorrect. Cope up makes 4
incorrect.
Q. 2 Carefully read the following statement:
When I ask people to name three recently
implemented technologies that most impact our world
today, they usually propose the computers, the
Internet and the laser. All three were unplanned,
___________, and_____________ upon their
discovery and remained __________ well after their
initial use.
Which of the following options will BEST fill up the
above blanks meaningfully?
Here the use of the phrase ‘unplanned’ before the
blank is important. This makes only option A
respond to the given blanks.
Q. 3 Carefully read the following statement:
The moment we no longer have a free press, anything
can happen. What makes it_____ for a totalitarian
or any other dictatorship to rule is that _____ are not
informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not
informed? If everybody always lies to you, the
________ is not that you believe the lies, but rather
that nobody believes anything any longer. This is
because lies, by their very nature, have to be
changed, and a lying government has ________ to
rewrite its own history.
Which of the following options will BEST fill up the
above blanks meaningfully?
Possible fits the 1st blank, followed by ‘people’ ,
consequence and constantly respectively.
Q. 4 Read the poem carefully, and answer the following
question.
I smiled at you because I thought that you
Were someone else; you smiled back; and there
grew
Between two strangers in a library
Something that seems like love; but you loved me
(If that’s the word) because you thought that I
Was other than I was. And by and by
We found we’d been mistaken all the while
From that first glance, that first mistaken smile
Which of the following CANNOT be inferred from the
poem?
The given poem states that we often tend to fall in
love with someone else. But eventually we enjoy
the things that we find common between us, it’s
like falling in love with ourselves. Hence A is the
correct answer.
Q. 5 Read the passage carefully and answer the following
question.
Geologists have been investigating a potential cycle
in geological events for a longtime. Back in the 1920s
and 30s, scientists of the era had suggested that
the geological record had a 30-million-year cycle,
while in the 1980s and 90s researchers used the
best-dated geological events at the time to give them
a range of the length between ‘pulses’ of 26.2 to
30.6 million years. Now, everything seems to be in
order –27.5 million years is right about where we’d
expect. A study late last year suggested that this
27.5-million-year mark is when mass extinctions
happen, too.
Which of the following statements can be BEST
concluded from the passage?
It is clear from the given passage that pulses
recorded between 26.2 and 30million years is the
time frame of mass extinction. Hence D is the
correct answer.
Q. 6 Which of the following sentences have INCORRECT
usage of preposition?
1. The manager was sitting at the desk.
2. My work is superior to yours.
3. I prefer coffee than tea.
4. She was accused for stealing gold.
5. This is an exception to the rule.
6. They are leaving to England soon.
3, 4, 6 portray incorrect usage of prepositions. In
3, it should be coffee over tea. In 4, it should be of.
In 6, it should be for instead of to.
Q. 7 Arrange the following sentences in a LOGICAL
sequence:
1. But when it comes to companies that lack
computer programmers, the government is far
more sympathetic.
2. As a result, limited access to foreign talent is a
common gripe of tech founders and venture
capitalists.
3. And, demand for the latter has soared among
British startups.
4. This is less inconsistent than it may seem.
5. An HGV driver takes between six and ten weeks
to train; a competent coder several years.
1opens the paragraph stating that the government
is far more sympathetic to the lack of computer
programmers. It is followed by 4 and 5 as they
form a mandatory pair countering this attitude of
the government. And makes 3 follow 5.
For questions 8 to 10: Comprehension:
Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE
questions that follow.
What does a good life look like to you? For some, the
phrase may conjure up images of a close-knit family, a
steady job, and a Victorian house at the end of a street
arched with oak trees. Others may focus on the goal of
making a difference in the world, whether by working as a
nurse or teacher, volunteering, or pouring their energy into
environmental activism. According to Aristotlean theory,
the first kind of life would be classified as “hedonic”—one
based on pleasure, comfort, stability, and strong social
relationships. The second is “eudaimonic,” primarily
concerned with the sense of purpose and fulfilment one
gets by contributing to the greater good. The ancient Greek
philosopher outlined these ideas in his treatise
Nicomachean Ethics, and the psychological sciences have
pretty much stuck them ever since when discussing the
possibilities of what people might want out of their time on
Earth. But a new paper, published in the American
Psychological Association’s Psychological Review,
suggests there’s another way to live a good life. It isn’t
focused on happiness or purpose, but rather it’s a life
that’s “psychologically rich.”
What is a psychologically rich life? According to authors
Shige Oishi, a professor of psychology at the University
of Virginia, and Erin Westgate, an assistant professor of
psychology at the University of Florida, it’s one
characterized by “interesting experiences in which novelty
and/or complexity are accompanied by profound changes
in perspective.”
Studying abroad, for example, is one way that college
students often introduce psychological richness into their
lives. As they learn more about a new country’s customs
and history, they’re often prompted to reconsider the social
mores of their own cultures. Deciding to embark on a
difficult new career path or immersing one’s self in avantgarde
art(the paper gives a specific shout-out to James
Joyce’s Ulysses) also could make a person feel as if their
life is more psychologically rich.
Crucially, an experience doesn’t have to be fun in order to
qualify as psychologically enriching. It might even be a
hardship. Living through war or a natural disaster might
make it hard to feel as though you’re living a particularly
happy or purposeful life, but you can still come out of the
experience with psychological richness. Or you might
encounter less dramatic but nonetheless painful events:
infertility, chronic illness, unemployment. Regardless of
the specifics, you may experience suffering but still find
value in how your experience shapes your understanding
of yourself and the world around you.
Q. 8 Which of the following statements BEST contrasts
Hedonic from Eudaimonic?
Option A distorts the core concern of the passage, i.e. good life. Thus, iT is incorrect.
Option B is incorrect as coming out of a bad experience with enriched psychology is termed as a good life, not the bad experience itself gives a good life.
Option D is incorrect as the passage does not suggest or argue anything regarding the binary terms of a good life. The passage only explains the view of Shige Oishi on the definition of a good life.
Option C can be inferred from the last paragraph of the passage.
Option E is an incorrect inference as psychologically enriching life could be a good life, not a psychologically rich one.
For questions 11 to 13: Comprehension:
Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE
questions that follow.
What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state
of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker
concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies
misrepresent, by virtue of being false. Since bullshit need
not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational
intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend
to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the
facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive
us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably
distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he
misrepresents what he is up to. This is the crux of the
distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar
represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to
communicate the truth. The success of each depends
upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself
that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away
from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know
that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be
false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on
the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements
are of no central interest to him; what we are not to
understand is that his intention is neither to report the
truth nor to conceal it. This does not mean that his speech
is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and
controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are. It is impossible for someone to
lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit
requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby
responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful
of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he
believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly
indispensable that he considers his statements to be false.
Q. 11 Which of the following statements can be BEST
inferred from the passage?
Refer to these lines of the passage: 'But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting ... things about which he speaks truly are'
Option B captures the implied message correctly. The aim of the bullshitter is to deceive (outcome) the other person, and he does not have any other secret interest to serve.
Thus, option B is the correct answer.
For questions 14 to 16: Comprehension:
Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE
questions that follow.
What Arendt does for us is to remind us that our
“publicness” is as important to our flourishing as our
sociability and our privacy. She draws a distinction between
what it means to act “socially” and what is means to act
“politically.” The social realm for Arendt is both the context
where all our basic survival needs “are permitted to appear
in public” and also the realm of “behaviour.” One of the
things she fears about modern societies is that society –
focused on how we behave and what we will permit for
ourselves and others –becomes the realm of conformism.
This is worrying not just because we don’t really get vibrant
societies out of conformism and sameness, but also,
Arendt says because there is a risk that we think this is
all there is to our living together. We lose ourselves in the
tasks of managing behaviour and forget that our true public
task is to act, and to distinguish ourselves in doing so.
The risk, says Arendt, is therefore that we confuse
behaviour with action, that in modern liberal societies
“behaviour replaces action as the foremost mode of human
relationship.” This confusion can happen in any area of
our modern lives and institutions, secular or faith-based.
None is immune.
Arendt wants to drive home the point that the healthy public
life requires that we do not just see ourselves as social
actors but also as fully public persons, committed to
judging and acting as members of a common world we
want to inhabit and pass on. Arendt tells us that public
action is action in which we stand out, are individuated,
become in some way excellent in a manner that is of
service to others and a greater good. This is the space
where we take risks, subject our common life to scrutiny,
seek justice (that sometimes requires us to transgress
what seem like accepted laws) in order to be increasingly
open to the claims and needs of other humans – ones
who are not our household and our kin.
Q. 14 According to the passage, who can be BEST
categorised as a “public person”?
Refer to the last paragraph of the passage. It clearly
states that a public person is someone who is
committed to judging and acting as members of
common world for the greater good. Out of the given
options only C provides a correct example.
Q. 15 Based on the passage, which of the following options
BEST describes “public action”?
Refer to the sentence, “One of the things she fears
about modern societies is that society – focused
on how we behave and what we will permit for
ourselves and others –becomes the realm of
conformism.” Therefore, option (D) is correct.
Q. 17 Which of the following conditional sentences are
grammatically INCORRECT?
1. If Sandhya had started from the hotel on time,
she would have not missed the flight.
2. The students wouldn’t have completed their
assignment even if the professor would have been
there.
3. I had travelled across Europe if I weren’t afraid of
airplane crashes.
4. Saurav won’t join music classes unless his father
will ask him.
5. Should you wish to join the party, you must let
me know by this evening.
6. We would be stupid if we shared our strategy
with her.
Q. 18 Read the excerpt carefully and answer the following
question.
The over-whelming preponderance of people have not
freely decided what to believe, but, rather, have been
socially conditioned (indoctrinated) into their beliefs.
They are unreflective thinkers.
Which of the following statements CANNOT be
concluded from the excerpt?
Opposition to certain beliefs is not mentioned in
the excerpt. So, option (c) is the answer.
For questions 19 to 21: Comprehension:
Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE
questions that follow.
Stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. Crudely put, it occurs when you don’t have the right conceptual tools for
the job. The result is an inability to make sense of what is
happening and a resulting tendency to force phenomena
into crude, distorting pigeonholes.
This is easiest to introduce with a tragic case. British
high command during the First World War frequently
understood trench warfare using concepts and strategies
from the cavalry battles of their youth. As one of Field
Marshal Douglas Haig’s subordinates later remarked, they
thought of the trenches as ‘mobile operations at the halt’:
i.e., as fluid battle lines with the simple caveat that nothing
in fact budged for years. Unsurprisingly, this did not serve
them well in formulating a strategy: they were hampered,
beyond the shortage of material resources, by a kind of
‘conceptual obsolescence’, a failure to update their
cognitive tools to fit the task in hand. In at least some
cases, intelligence actively abets stupidity by allowing
pernicious rationalisation.
Stupidity will often arise in cases like this, when an
outdated conceptual framework is forced into service,
mangling the user’s grip on some new phenomenon. It is
important to distinguish this from mere error. We make
mistakes for all kinds of reasons. Stupidity is rather one
specific and stubborn cause of error. Historically,
philosophers have worried a great deal about the
irrationality of not taking the available means to achieve
goals: Tom wants to get fit, yet his running shoes are
quietly gathering dust. The stock solution to Tom’s
quandary is simple willpower. Stupidity is very different
from this. It is rather a lack of the necessary means, a
lack of the necessary intellectual equipment. Combatting
it will typically require not brute willpower but the
construction of a new way of seeing our self and our world.
Such stupidity is perfectly compatible with intelligence:
Haig was by any standard a smart man.
Q. 19 Which of the following statements BEST summarizes
the author’s view on stupidity?
Refer to the sentence, “Stupidity will often arise in
cases like this, when an outdated conceptual
framework is forced into service, mangling the
user’s grip on some new phenomenon.” Therefore,
option (A) is correct.
Q. 20 Which of the following statements BEST explains
why stupidity for a smart person is “perfectly
compatible with intelligence”?
Refer to the first sentence of the last paragraph.
Therefore, option (C) is true.
Q. 22 Read the passage carefully and answer the following
question.
One theory of accidents is what experts call the Swiss
Cheese model. A slab of Swiss cheese has several
holes, randomly and unevenly distributed over its
surface. If several slabs are stacked together, it would
be impossible for something to slip through unless
all the holes happen to line up.
If even one slab doesn’t align, the impending
catastrophe will meet a layer of resistance, and the
worst is averted. Aviation professionals will tell you
that plane crashes never happen for a single reason.
There may be an identifiable primary factor, but it’s
usually a chain of events, an array of circumstances
neatly piling up.
Which of the following statements can be BEST
concluded from the passage?
Refer to the first sentence of the second paragraph
for the answer.
Q. 23 Read the passage carefully and answer the following
question.
Labouring is simply what we do to survive. We labour
to eat. To keep our bodies healthy. To keep roof over
our heads, and to keep life reproducing. All animals
labour, with or without coaxing…. There’s nothing
special about labour, save for the fact that without it
we would die.
Work, on the other hand, gives collective meaning to
what we do. When we work to produce something
we both put something into and leave something
lasting in the world: a table, a house, a book, a car,
a rug, a high precision piece of engineering with which
we can order the days into time, or keep a body
breathing.
Which of the following statements can be BEST
concluded from the passage?
For questions 24 and 25: Comprehension:
Read the poem carefully, and answer the TWO
questions that follow.
It hurts to walk on new legs:
The curse of consonants. The wobble of vowels.
And you for whom I gave up a kingdom
Can never love that thing I was.
When you look into my past
You see
Only weeds and scales.
Once I had a voice.
Now I have legs.
Sometimes I wonder
Was it a fair trade?
Q. 24 Which of the following statements BEST reflects the
theme of the poem?
‘Voice’ refers to identity. Therefore, option (C) is
the most appropriate answer.
Q. 26 Arrange the following sentences in a LOGICAL
sequence:
1. In America, primary-age pupils are on average
five months behind where they would usually be
in maths, and four months in reading, according
to McKinsey, a consultancy.
2. As a new school year gets under way in many
countries, the harm caused by months of closure
is becoming ever clearer.
3. The crisis will accelerate that trend.
4. The damage is almost certainly worse in places
such as India and Mexico, where the disruption
to schooling has been greater.
5. Even before pandemic, parents around the world
were growing more willing to pay for extra lessons
in the hope of boosting their children's education.
