General English Practice Question and Answer

Q:

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions as directed.

Start-ups troubled by the so-called angel tax may soon receive some (A)______from the government. On Monday, the Centre set up a five-member working committee to look into revising the (B)norms of the angel tax imposed on start-ups. The tax, which was first introduced in 2012 to curb money-laundering through the (i) at bloated prices, has caused a lot of anguish among start-up investors in the country. Start-up owners have complained that income tax officials have asked many start-ups to cough up money when they try to attract capital into their entities by issuing new shares. For its part, the IT department fears that start-ups may be used as convenient tools to launder illegally acquired money, so a tax on investments beyond a certain threshold is (ii). (C) But while the (1) unintended of such an angel tax may be (2) benefits, the arbitrary nature of it means the cost of (3) intent consequences could be larger than the supposed (4) justifiable. In trying to curb money-laundering, Section 56(2)(viib) of the Indian Income Tax Act, 1961 gives income tax officials a free hand to harass even genuine start-ups looking to raise investments for their growth. Under the Act, the IT department is free to arbitrarily decide the fair value of a company’s share and tax start-ups if the price at which their new shares are sold to investors is higher than the fair value of these shares. The broad-brush tax on all investments means an unnecessary cost is (iii)community simply because of the lack of better means at the government’s disposal to tackle black money.

The committee set up by the government will, among other things, consider raising the threshold beyond which new investments into start-ups will be taxed. It is expected that start-ups with aggregate paid-up share capital and share premium of less than ₹25 crore, against the previous threshold of only ₹10 crore, will not be taxed while attracting new investment. This would definitely make life easier to a certain extent for angel investors and start-ups. But it will not address the real problem with the angel tax, which has to do with the unbridled power that it vests in the hands of the income tax authorities. Investors, foreign or domestic, may become wary of investing in new ideas when they are taxed while risking money on untested ventures. So the government should look to withdraw the angel tax and focus instead on building the capability to better identify and rein in illegal wealth. Otherwise it risks killing the nascent start-up ecosystem in the country.

Which of the following words should fill in the blank in (A) to make a contextually correct and meaningful sentence? 

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  • 1
    collusion
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    commotion
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    concession
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    digression
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 5
    fluctuation
    Correct
    Wrong
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Answer : 3. "concession "

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Answer : 2. "d,a,c,b"

Q:

Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words have been printed in bold to help you locate them, while answering some of the questions.
Among those suffering from the global recession are millions of workers who are not even included in the official statistics : urban recyclers – the trash pickers, sorters, traders and reprocesses who extricate paper, cardboard and plastics from garbage heaps and prepare them for reuse. Their work is both unrecorded and largely unrecognized, even though in some parts of the World they handle as much as 20% of all waste.
The World’s 15 million informal recyclers clean up cities, prevent some trash from ending in landfills and thus, reduce climate change by saving energy on waste disposal techniques like incineration. In the developed countries they are the preferred ones since they recycle waste much more cheaply and efficiently than governments or private corporations can. In the developing World, on the other hand, they provide the only recycling services except for a few big cities. But as recession hits the markets Worldwide, the price of scrap metal, paper and plastic has also fallen. Recyclers throughout the World are experiencing a sharp drop in income. Trash pickers and scrap dealers saw a decline of as much as 80% in the price of scrap from October 2007 to October 2009. In some countries scrap dealers have shuttered so quickly that researchers at the Solid Waste Management Association didn’t have a chance to record their losses. In Delhi, some 80% of families in the informal recycling business surveyed by an organization said they had cut back on “luxury foods,” which they defined as fruit, milk and meat. About 41% had stopped buying milk for their children. By this summer, most of those children, already malnourished, hadn’t had a glass of milk in nine months. Many of these children have also cut down on hours spent in school to work alongside their parents. Families have liquidated their most valuable assets – primarily copper from electrical wires – and have stopped sending remittances back to their rural villages. Many have also sold their emergency stores of grain. Their misery is not as familiar as that of the laid-off workers of big name but imploding, service sector corporation, but it is often more tragic. Few countries have adopted emergency measures to help trash pickers. Brazil, for one, is  providing recyclers, or “catadores,” with cheaper food, both through arrangements with local farmers and by offering food subsidies. Other countries, with the support of non-governmental organizations  and donor agencies are following Brazil’s example. Unfortunately, most trash pickers operate outside official notice and end up falling through the cracks of programmes like these. In the long run,  though, these invisible workers will remain especially vulnerable to economic slowdowns unless they are integrated into the formal business sector, where they can have insurance and reliable wages. This is not hard to accomplish. Informal junk shops should have to apply for licences, and governments should create or expand doorstep waste collection programmes to employ trash pickers. Instead of sorting through haphazard trash heaps and landfills, the pickers would have access to the cleaner scrap that comes from households.

The need of the hour, however, is a more immediate solution. An efficient but temporary solution would be for governments where they’d have to pay a small subsidy to waste dealers so they could purchase scrap from trash pickers at about 20% above the current price. This increase, if well advertised and broadky utilized, would bring recyclers a higher price and eventually bring them back from the brink. Trash pickers make our cities healthier and more liveable. We all stand to gain by making sure that the work of recycling remains sustainable for years to come.

Which of the following is not true in the context of the passage?

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  • 1
    Purchase of trash at a higher price by the government is only a temporary solution to the larger problem.
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    The welfare programs started by the government for the recyclers largely fail to help them.
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    In the last couple of years the price of scrap has come down to 20% of its original price.
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    Few countries have started to take steps against the plight of the recyclers.
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 5
    All the true
    Correct
    Wrong
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Answer : 3. "In the last couple of years the price of scrap has come down to 20% of its original price."

Q:

Select the most appropriate option to fill in the blank.

Her parents always ______ her in her studies.

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    encouraged
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    interested
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    impressed
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    expected
    Correct
    Wrong
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Answer : 1. "encouraged"
Explanation :

(A) encouraged - Her parents always encouraged her in her studies.


Q:

Select the most appropriate option to substitute the underlined segment in the given sentence. If there is no need to substitute it, select ‘No substitution required’.

This appears to be the handiwork of someone who to belong to a criminal gang.

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  • 1
    No substitution required
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    who belongs
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    who is belonging
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    which belongs
    Correct
    Wrong
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Answer : 2. "who belongs"
Explanation :

The correct sentence should be:

This appears to be the handiwork of someone who belongs to a criminal gang.

Explanation: The original sentence has a verb tense issue. "To belong" should be replaced with "belongs" to maintain the correct present tense form in this context.

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Answer : 4. "QRSP"

Q:

Rearrange the parts of the sentence in correct order.
 Our study goes

P. beyond LDL cholesterol levels to get

Q. and the impact of eating walnuts daily

R. a complete picture of all of the lipoproteins

S. on their potential to improve cardiovascular risk

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  • 1
    SRPQ
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 2
    PQSR
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 3
    PRQS
    Correct
    Wrong
  • 4
    SPQR
    Correct
    Wrong
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Answer : 4. "SPQR"

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