ENGLISH QUIZ (29 NOV)
English Quiz
Directions (1-6): In each of the following questions a short passage is given with one of the lines in the passage missing and represented by a blank. Select the best out of the five answer choices given, to make the passage complete and coherent.
1. The new game is the competition for control of the world’s few remaining big oil fields. Global oil production will probably peak in 2010-15 and for the last 40 years new annual discoveries of oil have been far short of the increase in annual demand. The end of ‘big oil’ is in sight, and with it the oil-powered civilization we have all grown accustomed to (………………………)
(1) Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan together hold oil reserves three times the size of America’s.
(2) The BTC project costs around 2.4 billion, with B.P. leading a consortium of 11 companies.
(3) Almost three-quarters of the funding come from back loans with public bodies such as the World Bank providing 350 million.
(4) The struggle to dominate the remaining supplies is intense, nowhere more so than in the Caspian basin.
(5) None of these
2. Few would deny that one thing that Africa needs is investment.(………….) The history of corporate involvement in Africa is one of forced labour, evictions, murder, wars, the under-costing of resources, tax evasion and collusion with dictators.
(1) Mr. Gordon Brown’s moral crusade encourages us to forget the armed crusade he financed.
(2) But investment by many of our multinationals has not enriched its people but impoverished them.
(3) Debt, unfair terms of trade and poverty are not causes of Africa’s problems but symptoms.
(4)The G8 leaders and the business interests their summit promotes can absorb our demands for aid, debt, and fairer terms of trade and lose nothing.
(5) None of these
3. (…………….) nowhere else is this in greater evidence than in the Indian passenger car industry. Late to mature in India, the fast growing automobile industry has, since the mid-1990s, been giving Indian consumers a meaningful choice of cars across different price points and models.
(1) The traditional conservative mindset has been broken and borrowing against future income is now a widespread phenomenon in India, releasing the pent up demand for various types of consumer goods.
(2) No one disputes the fact that an exponential growth in the availability of car loans has made it more likely for a middle class consumer to graduate from a scooter to a car.
(3) The widespread need for means of personal transportation has long been felt in India.
(4) Retail lending has become the most spectacular innovation in the commercial banking sector in recent years.
(5) None of these
4. The main purpose of an Employment Guarantee Act is to enable people to claim from the state a basic aspect of their constitutional right to work. (……………….) it should aim at empowering the disadvantaged, and include extensive safeguards against any dereliction of duty by the authorities.
(1) This is the spirit in which a draft has been prepared by concerned citizens and revised by the National Advisory Council.
(2) An essential feature of the National Advisory Council draft is that it is based on the twin principles of university and self selection.
(3) For this to happen, the act must give them effective and durable entitlements.
(4) A benign state could certainly use this legislation with good effect to provide massive work opportunities to the rural poor
(5) None of these
5. The Parihar is, for all practical purposes, a functional, fully fitted out submarine. After this brief ceremony, the submarine is to be towed out for the first time across the naval dockyard and moored in an enclosed pier called Site Bravo (………….) Over the next few months, it will commence a series of harbor trials .the primary system, a nuclear reactor, generates the heat which drives the secondary system, a steam turbine which spins the submarine’s propeller, are to be tested separately. First, the steam turbine is to be jump started with shore based supply. The next significant step will be starting up the submarine’s nuclear reactor where Zirconium rods in the core of the submarine’s pressurized water reactor will be slowly raised.
(1) It is the advent of new technology in India
(2) It has entered in chain reaction chamber
(3) It is like coming out from maternity ward to nursery
(4) It is unprecedented step to start such a sequence of processes
(5) It is very critical for a nuclear submarine
6. A seemingly attractive proposal to boost infrastructure development in the country by utilizing a portion of the forex reserves has become controversial. The proposal, mooted by the planning commission has, however, not found favor with the Reserve Bank of India. Its proponents claim an additional benefit besides the obvious one of providing money for infrastructure projects on relatively soft terms and where needed, in foreign currencies. (…………….)
(1) One needs to ask whether infrastructure funding is in such dire straits that unconventional, if not desperate, methods of raising resources are called for.
(2) While not dismissing the proposal outright, the RBI and other skeptics advocate caution in pursuing a course of action that is not only unprecedented but involves a re-examination of the beliefs that have guided external sector management in this country
(3) There is also a fear that a long term commitment in rupees will magnify the exchange risks that are always present in the use of foreign currency resources for funding projects in India.
(4) Drawing down a portion of the reserves is one way of putting the stockpile to productive use.
(5) None of these
Directions (7-10): Read each sentence to find out whether there is any grammatical error in it. The error, if any, will be in one part of the sentence. The number of that part is the answer. If there is no error, the answer is (5), i.e. ‘No Error’. (Ignore the errors of punctuation. If any)
7. To facilitate exports and improve sales(1)/ in the domestic market/(2)some of the improvised fabrics and garments fabricated out from them(3)/are displayed in the pavilion.(4)/No error (5)
8. His father died of Cholera(1)/but his mother also(2)/though every week,(3)/ is not out of danger(4)./No error.(5)
9. When we consider all the factors, (1)/which are many,(2) /the number of school dropouts(3) /are quit disturbing.(4) / No error.(5)
10. The presumption that the average investor does not understand (1)/or take interest (2)/in the affairs of the company (3) /is not correct. (4)/ No error (5).
(168)