SBI Clerk Main English Language Quiz
Is your DREAM to get selected in SBI Clerk 2019 recruitment? Well, then you must speed up your preparation as the Main exam which is the final step towards selection will take place on 10th August. The English Language is one of the subjects you’ll need to deal with and to help you keep your preparation up to the mark, here we provide you with a questionnaire of English Language to crack SBI Clerk Main. For other subjects, you can check the Dream SBI Clerk Selection Study Plan.
Directions (1- 8): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
Fifteen years after communism was officially pronounced dead, its spectre seems once again to be haunting Europe. Last month, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly voted to condemn the "crimes of totalitarian communist regimes", linking them with Nazism and complaining that communist parties are still "legal and active in some countries". Now Göran Lindblad, the conservative Swedish MP behind the resolution, wants to go further. Demands that European ministers launch a continent-wide anti-communist campaign - including school textbook revisions, official memorial days and museums - only narrowly missed the necessary two-thirds majority. Yesterday, declaring himself delighted at the first international condemnation of this "evil ideology", Lindblad pledged to bring the wider plans back to the Council of Europe in the coming months.
He has chosen a good year for his ideological offensive: this is the 50th anniversary of Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin and the subsequent Hungarian uprising, which will doubtless be the cue for further excoriation of the communist record. Paradoxically, given that there is no communist government left in Europe outside Moldova, the attacks have if anything become more extreme as time has gone on. A clue as to why that might be can be found in the rambling report by Mr. Lindblad that led to the Council of Europe declaration. Blaming class struggle and public ownership, he explained that "different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive". Perhaps the real problem for Mr Lindblad and his rightwing allies in eastern Europe is that communism is not dead enough - and they will only be content when they have driven a stake through its heart.
The fashionable attempt to equate communism and Nazism is in reality a moral and historical nonsense. Despite the cruelties of the Stalin terror, there was no Soviet Treblinka or Sobibor, no extermination camps built to murder millions. Nor did the Soviet Union launch the most devastating war in history at a cost of more than 50 million lives - in fact it played the decisive role in the defeat of the German war machine. Mr. Lindblad and the Council of Europe adopt as fact the wildest estimates of those "killed by communist regimes" (mostly in famines) from the fiercely contested Black Book of Communism, which also underplays the number of deaths attributable to Hitler. But in any case, none of this explains why anyone might be nostalgic in former communist states, now enjoying the delights of capitalist restoration. The dominant account gives no sense of how communist regimes renewed themselves after 1956 or why western leaders feared they might overtake the capitalist world well into the 1960s. For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality. It encompassed genuine idealism and commitment, captured even by critical films and books of the post-Stalin era such as Wajda's Man of Marble and Rybakov's Children of the Arbat. Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the west, boosted the anticolonial movement and provided a powerful counterweight to western global domination.
It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism - which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin's time. And while there is precious little connection between the ideas of fascism and communism, there is an intimate link between colonialism and Nazism. The terms lebensraum and konzentrationslager were both first used by the German colonial regime in south-west Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party.
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early 20th century; tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe - nor over the impact of European intervention in the third world since decolonisation. Presumably, European lives count for more.
Around 10 million Congolese died as a result of Belgian forced labour and mass murder in the early 20th century; tens of millions perished in avoidable or enforced famines in British-ruled India; up to a million Algerians died in their war for independence, while controversy now rages in France about a new law requiring teachers to put a positive spin on colonial history. Comparable atrocities were carried out by all European colonialists, but not a word of condemnation from the Council of Europe - nor over the impact of European intervention in the third world since decolonisation. Presumably, European lives count for more.
No major twentieth century political tradition is without blood on its hands, but battles over history are more about the future than the past. Part of the current enthusiasm in official western circles for dancing on the grave of communism is no doubt about relations with today's Russia and China. But it also reflects a determination to prove there is no alternative to the new global capitalist order - and that any attempt to find one is bound to lead to suffering and bloodshed. With the new imperialism now being resisted in both the Muslim world and Latin America, growing international demands for social justice and ever greater doubts about whether the environmental crisis can be solved within the existing economic system, the pressure for political and social alternatives will increase.
Q1. Among all the apprehensions that Mr. Goran Lindblad expresses against communism, which one gets admitted, although indirectly, by the author?
There is nostalgia for communist ideology even if communism has been abandoned by most European nations.
Notions of social justice inherent in communist ideology appeal to critics of existing systems.
Communist regimes were totalitarian and marked by brutalities and large scale violence.
Communist ideology is faulted because communist regimes resulted in economic failures.
The existing economic order is wrongly viewed as imperialistic by proponents of communism.
Solution:
Refer the last few sentences of the third paragraph “For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality. It encompassed genuine idealism and commitment, captured even by critical films and books of the post-Stalin era such as Wajda's Man of Marble and Rybakov's Children of the Arbat.”
Q2. What, according to the author, is the real reason for a renewed attack against communism?
Disguising the unintended consequences of the current economic order such as social injustice and environmental crisis.
Idealizing the existing ideology of global capitalism.
Making communism a generic representative of all historical atrocities, especially those perpetrated by the European imperialists.
Communism still survives, in bits and pieces, in the minds and hearts of people.
Renewal of some communist regimes has led to the apprehension that communist nations might overtake the capitalists.
Solution:
Refer the last two sentences of the second paragraph “"different elements of communist ideology such as equality or social justice still seduce many" and "a sort of nostalgia for communism is still alive".
Q3. The author cites examples of atrocities perpetrated by European colonial regimes in order to
Compare the atrocities committed by colonial regimes with those of communist regimes.
Prove that the atrocities committed by colonial regimes were more than those of communist regimes.
Prove that, ideologically, communism was much better than colonialism and Nazism.
Neutralize the arguments of Mr. Lindblad and to point out that the atrocities committed by colonial regimes were more than those of communist regimes.
Neutralise the arguments of Mr. Lindblad and to argue that one needs to go beyond and look at the motives of these regimes.
Solution:
Refer the first sentence of fourth paragraph “It would be easier to take the Council of Europe's condemnation of communist state crimes seriously if it had also seen fit to denounce the far bloodier record of European colonialism - which only finally came to an end in the 1970s. This was a system of racist despotism, which dominated the globe in Stalin's time.”
Q4. Why, according to the author, is Nazism closer to colonialism than it is to communism?
Both colonialism and Nazism were examples of tyranny of one race over another
The genocides committed by the colonial and the Nazi regimes were or similar magnitude
Several ideas of the Nazi regime were directly imported from colonial regimes
Both colonialism and Nazism are based on the principles of imperialism
While communism was never limited to Europe, both the Nazis and the colonialists originated in Europe.
Solution:
Refer the last sentence of the fourth paragraph “The terms lebensraum and konzentrationslager were both first used by the German colonial regime in south-west Africa (now Namibia), which committed genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples and bequeathed its ideas and personnel directly to the Nazi party.”
Q5. Which of the following cannot be inferred as a compelling reason for the silence of the Council of Europe on colonial atrocities?
The Council of Europe being dominated by erstwhile colonialists
Generating support for condemning communist ideology
Unwillingness to antagonize allies by raking up an embarrassing past
Portraying both communism and Nazism as ideologies to be condemned
Greater value seemingly placed on European lives.
Solution:
“Unwillingness to antagonize allies by raking up an embarrassing past” is the motive of the council not the cause of the silence.
Q6. Which of the following undermines the author’s thesis that the current attempts to equate Nazism and communism are not defensible?
Communist equivalents of the camps of Treblinka or Sorbibor did not exist
Nazi Germany initiated a war which led to the loss of millions of lives
Extermination caps were not build in the soviet Union to eliminate large numbers
Casualty figures in communist regimes are exaggerated but as treated as factural
None of these.
Solution:
Refer to the third paragraph of the passage.
Directions (7-7): Choose the word/group of words which is most OPPOSITE in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in passage.
Q7. Excoriation
multifarious
instigate
inoculate
plaudit
inexorable
Solution:
Excoriation means harsh criticism. Hence it has opposite meaning as plaudit.
Inexorable means impossible to stop or prevent.
Inoculate means treat with a vaccine to produce immunity against a disease, vaccinate.
Instigate means bring about or initiate (an action or event).
Multifarious means having many aspects.
Directions (8-8): Choose the word/group of words which is most SIMILAR in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in passage.
Q8. Denounce
inane
munificent
proscribe
pernicious
impute
Solution:
Denounce means publicly declare to be wrong or evil. Hence it has same meaning as proscribe.
Inane means devoid of intelligence.
Impute means attribute or credit to.
Pernicious means exceedingly harmful.
Munificent means very generous.
Directions (9- 15): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
Deliberative democracy demands a reflexive (or reflection driven) reordering of preferences in a non-coercive manner. The authenticity of democracy requires in addition that these reflective preferences, influence collective outcomes and action, and so long as the state is the main (though far from exclusive) locus of collective decisions; it requires discursive mechanisms for transmission of public opinion to the state. A deliberative or more properly a discursive democracy, in order that it can accommodate several competing versions of democracies such as the liberal, the minimal, the difference, etc., must also accommodate rhetoric, narratives, and empathy along with reasoning. A rationality and a reasoning that does not accommodate values is meaningless. However, it is also argued that individual rationality cannot be realised if values are embedded in the decision procedures, in other words, realisation of values could be made possible only when individuals behave non-rationally. Further if values having been abandoned at the individual level are accorded a place only collectively, the same must lead to either “epistemological inconsistency or abandonment of autonomy of individual evaluations”. A talk or a rhetoric, otherwise, is strategic and is employed with the intention of signaling certain information. Such a talk can be therefore deceptive and coercive. The illocutionary force and the normative trappings of a Foucauldian discourse while allowing identification with a community and differences with the others, do simultaneously pose through coercion a threat to an utterance as such. If democracy cannot ensure utterance as freedom and if the illocutionary forces in a discursive democracy disciplines the thought and the talk, then how such a democracy could indeed be called authentic!
Most human actions and discourses are actuated by a deeper or primordial ante-deliberation Desire (let us use a capital D). Speaking as such is out of such a Desire (one might use volition or passion). Engaging in a deliberation or else in an action is possible only since there has been such a Desire. Desire appears to both the reflection and also to an observer as a mental-state. A discourse can be set only when such mental states are in harmony, or share a common predisposition or attitude. In the absence of such shared mental-states, no discourse and no deliberation can begin. A running underlying and most often unstated theme that remains at the back of the idea of deliberative democracy is competition – a competition with the ‘other’ which introduces strategy. The alternative to competition, a mental-state which is out of a Desire to enjoy the ‘other’ in the light of a memory that this ‘one’ and the ‘other’ were but the same and would again become the same, do not appear in the known Anglo-American literature. Such a mental-state might generate and keep alive possibilities, of cooperation although is never a state of cooperation alone as such.
Q9. Desire as ante-deliberation driving action refer to
Irrationality of deliberation.
Uselessness of deliberation.
Desire to act without thinking.
Temporal inconsistency in a position that argues for deliberative action constituting democracy.
None of these
Solution:
Refer the first few lines of second paragraph “ Most human actions and discourses are actuated by a deeper or primordial ante-deliberation Desire (let us use a capital D). Speaking as such is out of such a Desire (one might use volition or passion). Engaging in a deliberation or else in an action is possible only since there has been such a Desire. “
Q10. Which of the following is true from the passage?
Author argues that democracy is bound to fail.
Author argues that Desire is primal.
Author argues for an end to primal desire so that an end to competition can come through.
Both (a) and (b)
None of these
Solution:
None of the given sentence is going in accordance with the passage.
Q11. A Foucauldian discourse as used in the passage does NOT refer to
discourse based on power.
community based discourse.
strategic discourse.
Both (b) and (c)
None of these
Solution:
Refer “through coercion a threat”, “identification with a community”, “normative trapping”.
Q12. Which of the following words is closest to the word ‘primordial’ as used in the passage above?
Elemental
Anarchist
Animalistic
Nihilistic
analystic
Solution:
‘Primordial’ here means basic or existing since beginning.
Anarchist - believing in total absence of law or government
Nihilistic- believing in total rejection of morality are not suitable.
Anarchist - believing in total absence of law or government
Nihilistic- believing in total rejection of morality are not suitable.
Q13. Which of the following captures the spirit of the position that the author hints at through the phrase ‘alternative to competition’?
All the pragmatic world is a stage – a play unfolding.
Democracy is an unruly fight among citizens.
Socialist planning does away with the chaos of competition.
Both (a) and (b)
None of these
Solution:
‘alternative to competition’ is what the author calls “desire to enjoy the other” or co-operation.
Q14. Which of the following follows from the passage above?
A rhetoric laden talk can generate authentic democratic collective choice.
Irrational persons alone can have values.
Authenticity of democracy requires a strong reflection-action interaction.
A paradigm of competition alone can sustain an authentic democracy.
All of the above
Solution:
Refer the second sentence of the first paragraph “The authenticity of democracy requires in addition that these reflective preferences, influence collective outcomes and action, and so long as the state is the main (though far from exclusive) locus of collective decisions; it requires discursive mechanisms for transmission of public opinion to the state.”
Directions (15-15): Choose the word/group of words which is most SIMILAR in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in passage.
Q15. Discursive
duress
extant
emend
meandering
didactic
Solution:
Discursive means digressing from subject to subject. Hence it has same meaning as meandering. Didactic means instructive. Duress means compulsory force or threat.
Extant means still in existence.
Extant means still in existence.
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