English Quiz for IBPS Clerk Prelims 19th of October

(a)A and B
(b)B and C
(c)A and C
(d)B and D
(e)A and D
L1Difficulty 2
QTags Vocabulary

Direction (2): Five statements are given below, labeled (a), (b), (c), (d) and (e). Among these, four statements are in logical order and form a coherent paragraph. From the given options, choose the option that does not fit into the theme of the paragraph.

Q2. (a)Or, it could be that they were worried about China.
(b)That did not happen because economic growth was slower than they expected.
(c)At the beginning of 2015 and 2016, the Fed anticipated making three rate hikes each.
(d) So, the oil price impact is asymmetric.
(e)After six years of zero rates and quantitative easing up to 2014, economic growth was still disappointing until 2016.
L1Difficulty 2
QTags Coherent paragraph


Directions (3): There are four sentences given in the following question. Find the sentence(s) which is/are grammatically correct and mark your answer choosing the best possible alternative among the five options given below each question. If all sentences are correct, choose (e) as your answer.

Q3. (I) Net neutrality laws ensure that creators are able to showcase their work and users can access content and services as they please.
(II) Given our country’s population and low purchasing power, net neutrality is extremely important to ensure democratic access to democratic content.
(III) India’s criminal justice system has an acute backlog crisis, and data on pending investigations and trials published recently by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that this crisis is becoming more severe with each passing year.
(IV) The lack of adequate personnel impedes the ability of the Indian state to maintain law and order, and effectively administer justice.

(a)Only (I) is correct
(b)Both (I) and (II) are correct
(c)Both (II) and (III) are correct
(d)Both (II) and (IV) are correct
(e)All are correct
L1Difficulty 2
QTags sentence based error

Directions (4-5): In the question given below, there are four sentences. Choose the sentence which is grammatically incorrect or illogical as your answer. In questions where all the given sentences are grammatically correct, choose option (e) ‘all are correct’ as your answer choice.

Q4.
(a) The doctors, as citizens, have certain fundamental duties under Article 51(A) towards their fellow citizens.
(b) Sashi came presently but I don’t know where he has gone.
(c) All the injured were taken to the KEM Hospital.
(d) Some of these feedback effects, such as loss of Arctic ice, could be reversed over a few hundred years, but others such as Antarctic ice would take much longer.
(e) all are correct
L1Difficulty 2
QTags sentence based error

Q5.
(a) Discrepancies in two government-commissioned surveys, both a year apart, submitted in the Supreme Court show that over two lakh children, said to be residing in childcare homes, are “missing.”
(b) There should instead be major changes in technological innovation, behaviour, values and governance.
(c)  Somebody reported to the contractor that his partner had only died a week before.
(d) No tariff can overturn the cost advantage that Mexico has over the U.S. in labour costs.
(e) all are correct
L1Difficulty 2
QTags sentence based error

Directions(6-10): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. 

On a personal level, winning doesn’t mean the other guy has to lose. As former P&G brand manager Bruce Miller put in, ‘It’s not a zero-sum game. It’s more like golf than tennis, you are playing against yourself and the course, not the guy across the net or in the next office. Play your best game and, if it’s good enough, you’ll be a winner. You might not achieve the specific goal you have set, but the company is big enough and flexible enough to move you up and onward in a way that suits your talents. That’s winning.”

Miller remembers the story of an assistant brand manager who, by his own account, was achieving great things and looked as if he had the world by the tail. At about the time his “class” was ready to go out on sales training, he had a closed-door meeting with his boss. His peers assumed he was the first to get the nod. It turned out his performance had all along been more flash than substance, and the meeting with his boss was to discuss other career alternatives inside or outside the company. Miller is convinced that the moral of the story is that winning is all about your own performance and not about keeping up with what the other guy seems to be doing.

Former CEO ED Artzt equates winning with professionalism: It’s mastery of the fundamentals. And that’s what you must do to win in management. You must master the fundamentals of the business you’re in, the functions you perform, and the process of managing people. If you don’t do that, you’ll eventually become a journeyman or journeywoman, and the brilliance you once had will surly tarnish.
Mastering the fundamentals of any profession, be it in the arts, sports, or business, requires great sacrifice, endless repetition, and a constant search for the best way to do things. A professional in search of mastery brings an attitude to his or her work that no sacrifice is too great, and no experience or grunt work is too menial if it helps achieve mastery of the fundamentals. It all begins with attitude, striving to attain professionalism and embracing winning as a way of life. If you want to become a winning manager, I urge you to embrace that attitude with all your might.

Q6. What does Miller mean when he says that winning is not “a zero sum game”? 
(a) It does not mean that the other guy has to lose.
(b) You are playing against yourself.
(c) It’s more like golf than tennis.
(d) The company is big enough to move you up.
(e) None of these
L1Difficulty 2
QTags Reading Comprehension

Q7. By “more flash than substance,” the author means 
(a) the achievement was temporary, not lasting.
(b) the achievement was more a matter of chance.
(c) the manager was fooling himself.
(d) None of the above
(e) All are correct
L1Difficulty 2
QTags Reading Comprehension


Q8. A journeyman or journeywoman 
(i) is not a master of fundamentals.
(ii) is just passing time.
(iii) is not brilliant.

(a) i and ii
(b) i, ii and iii
(c) i and iii
(d) ii and iii
(e) None
L1Difficulty 2
QTags Reading Comprehension

Q9. The author does not feel that  
(a) mastering fundamentals is essential to win.
(b) mastering fundamentals requires great sacrifice.
(c) winning is not a zero sum game.
(d) None of the above
(e) All of the above
L1Difficulty 2
QTags Reading Comprehension

Q10. The best title for the passage could be 
(a) Winning
(b) Winning and Professionalism
(c) Getting a Winner’s Attitude
(d) Mastering Fundamentals is Important
(e) winning and losing
L1Difficulty 2
QTags Reading Comprehension

Directions (11): In the question given below some sentences are given which are grammatically correct and meaningful. Connect them by the word given above the statements in the best possible way without changing the intended meaning. Choose your answer accordingly from the options to form a grammatically correct, coherent sentence.

Q11. BECAUSE
(A)The federal department has twice rejected LePage’s requests for centralization
(B)LePage has been in a tug of war with the regional boards for control of the federal money for several years.
(C)Lepage didn’t work in collaboration with federal department as required.
(D)The organization claims that LePage has broken federal law by refusing to release the funds within 30 days of them having become available in August.

(a) Only B-D
(b) Only D-A
(c) Both C-B and D-A
(d) Only A-C
(e) None of these
L1Difficulty 2
QTags Conjunctions

Direction (12): The following question consists of a sentence which is divided into three parts which contain grammatical errors in one or more than one part of the sentence, as specified in bold in each part. If there is an error in any part of the sentence, find the correct alternatives to replace those parts from the three options given below each question to make the sentence grammatically correct. If the given sentence is grammatically correct or does not require any correction, choose (e), i.e., “No correction required” as your answer.

Q12. It is a telling comment on the contradictions of our development experience that in some of the most developed countries (I)/as well as developing countries recording the highest levels of economic growth, (II)/very high levels of depression have been recorded and particularly among adolescents and youth. (III)

(I)some of most developed countries
(II)in a record to achieve the highest level of
(III)have recorded and particularly adolescents

(a)Only (I)
(b)Only (II)
(c)Both (I) and (III)
(d)All (I), (II) and (III)
(e)No correction required
L1Difficulty 2
QTags error correction

Direction (13): Select the phrase/connector (STARTERS) from the given three options which can be used to form a single sentence from the two sentences given below, implying the same meaning as expressed in the statement sentences.

Q13. (1) ‘Happiness’ has become such a trite word.
(2) It still fascinates many of us to figure out what makes us happy.

(I)Considering ‘Happiness’ as a fascinating…
(II)Despite the fact that ‘Happiness’…
(III)It is although true that many of us are…

(a)Only (I) is correct
(b)Only (II) is correct
(c)Only (III) is correct
(d)Both (I) and (II) are correct
(e)All are correct
L1Difficulty 2
QTags starter


Directions (14-15): In each of the following sentence there are three blank spaces. Below each sentence there are five options and each option consists of three words which can be filled up in the blanks in the sentence to make the sentence meaningful and grammatically correct.

Q14. Rivers, it seems, have gone out of the lives of large numbers of people in India, in cities surely. They do become part of public_________________, but only as items of disputes between riparian states, or as beneficiaries — or victims — of large projects or when they go into _______________and cause havoc, sometimes even when they run dry. But the river as a part of people’s day-to-day experiences is________________ a matter of public conversation.

(a) ignorance, deluge, hardly
(b) speech, shortage, seldom
(c) discourse, spate, rarely
(d) sermon, paucity, scracely
(e) talk, inundation, frequently
L1Difficulty 2
QTags filler

Q15. The Ganga is one such sorry ____________ of garbage. Over the three decades, much money has gone into cleaning this cesspool: More than Rs 1,800 crore under the Ganga Action Plan in its various avatars. The current government ________________ to spend more than 10 times this amount: Rs 20,000 crore over five years on the Namami Gange Project. But the project that took off last year is ________________on its predecessor in very few respects.

(a) holder, aspires, weakening
(b) receptacle, intends, improvement
(c) container, expects, deterioration
(d) chest, ignore, progress
(e) repository, neglect, enhancement
L1Difficulty 2
QTags filler

S1. Ans. (e)
Sol. The word “Savage” means cruel and vicious; aggressively hostile. Hence it is similar in meaning to the word “Vicious”.
Disingenuous means not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.
Avarice means extreme greed for wealth or material gain.
S2. Ans. (d)
Sol. Sentences in the sequence of cbea form a coherent paragraph which is about the comparisons of economic growth by the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC). However, the statement (d) seems to be irrelevant owing to its subject on the oil price impact. Hence option (d) is the correct choice of elimination.

S3. Ans.(e)
Sol. All the four sentences are grammatically correct and do not require any correction. Hence option (e) is the correct choice.

S4. (b)
Sol. In the option (b), the use of ‘presently’ is wrong because ‘presently’ and ‘shortly’ when used as Adverb of Time is to mean ‘without delay’, they are always used in the sense of Future Tense.
Hence, option (b) is the correct answer.

S5. (c)
Sol. “Only” will be used before “a week ago” because only then it will give the intended meaning which “only died” is illogical, and therefore incorrect.

S6. Ans. (a)
Sol.  Refer the third sentence of the first paragraph “It’s more like golf than tennis, you are playing against yourself and the course, not the guy across the net or in the next office.”

S7. Ans. (d)
Sol. The author means by the phrase “more flash than substance” is that there was no quality.

S8. Ans. (c)
Sol. Refer the third paragraph of the passage.

S9. Ans. (d)
Sol. None of the following sentences is true.

S10. Ans. (c)
Sol. We can get the idea from last few lines of the passage “It all begins with attitude,…”

S11. Ans. (d)
Sol. The conjunction ‘BECAUSE’ is used to introduce a word or phrase that stands for a clause expressing an explanation or reason.
“The federal department has twice rejected LePage’s requests for centralization because he didn’t work in collaboration with federal department.”

S12. Ans. (e)
Sol. The given sentence is grammatically correct and at the same time it is contextually meaningful. So, none of the bold parts requires correction or replacement. Hence option (e) is the correct choice.

S13. Ans. (b)
Sol. only the second starter can be used to construct a meaningful sentence connecting the above two statements without altering their intended meaning. Hence the option (b) is the correct choice.
(II)Despite the fact that ‘Happiness’ has become such a trite word, it still fascinates many of us to figure out what makes us happy.

S14. Ans. (c)
Sol. Spate means a sudden flood in a river.
Paucity means present in small amount.

S15. Ans. (b)
Sol. Receptacle means container that is used to put or keep the things in.