Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language-so the argument runs-must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. 
Now it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits, one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. 

The author believes that –

Direction: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words / phrases have been printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.

Princess Chandravati was very beautiful. She loved all kinds of ornaments and always wanted to wear the most precious and lovely jewels. Once, a jeweler came to the palace and gifted the King a wonderful diamond necklace. It glittered with big and small diamonds. It was certainly a very expensive necklace. The princess fell in love with it as soon as she saw it. So, the king presented it to her.
 From that day on, the princess always wore that necklace, wherever she went. One day before, going for a swim in the pond, she took the necklace off and put in the hands of her oldest and the most trustworthy servant. "Hold this and be careful. This is the most precious necklace in the whole world, " she said. The Servant was an old woman. She sat under tree, holding the ornament tightly and waited for the princess. It was a hot afternoon and the servant was very tired so she dozed off under the tree. Suddenly the servant felt that someone was tugging at the necklace and she woke up with a start. She looked around but it no one was there and the necklace was gone. Scared out of her wits, the old servant started screaming. On hearing her scream the royal guards rushed to her. She pointed towards the direction in which the thief may have gone and the guards ran off that way.
 There was a poor and dim-witted farmer walking on the same road. As soon as he saw the royal guards running towards him, he thought that they wanted to catch him and started running. But he was not a strong man and could not outrun the hefty guards. The royal guards caught him in no time. “Where is it? " they demanded. shaking him. “Where is what? " the poor farmer stammered back. The necklace you stole!" thundered one of the royal guards. The farmer had no idea what they were talking about. He only understood that some precious necklace was lost and he was supposed to have it. He quickly replied, " I don't know where it is now. I gave it to my landlord.”

The guards ran towards the landlord 's house. "Give us the necklace right now ! " the guards demanded of the at landlord. "Necklace? I don’t have any!" the stunned landlord replied. Then tell us quickly who “does demanded the soldiers. In order to get the royal guards off his back, the landlord pointed towards a priest who was walking by his house and said, "He does." The guards now caught hold of the priest who was walking towards the temple and thinking about the lunch he had just eaten. The priest was stunned when one of the burly guards jumped on him and asked about the necklace. He remembered that the minister, Bhupathi, was at the temple. He took the guards to the temple and pointed towards the praying minister, “I gave it to him, "he said. Bhupati too was caught and all four men were thrown in jail. The Chief Minister of the kingdom knew Bhupati well and was sure that Bhupati would never steal. He decided to find out who the culprit was. He hid near the jail where all four men were put and heard them talking First, Bhupati asked the priest, “Panditji, why did you say that you gave the necklace to me? I was quietly praying at the temple and now you have landed me in jail for no fault of mine.” The priest looked apologetic. He pointed towards the landlord and said, " I didn’t know what to say. He set the " guards on me. I was simply passing by his house and was on my way to the temple." The landlord looked at the priest sheepishly. Then he turned towards the poor farmer and yelled. “You lazy good-for-nothing man! Why did you say that I had the necklace? " The farmer, trembling under the angry gaze of all three men, said, " I was just walking home. The guards caught me and I did not know what to say." On hearing, this conversation, he Chief Minister understood that all the four men were innocent. He immediately ordered the royal guards to search thoroughly, near the pond. The guards searched high and low till they saw something clinging the tree. On the tree sat a monkey with the princess’ favorite necklace around his neck. It took a lot of coxing and bananas before the monkey threw the necklace on the ground. The’ king apologized to at the four men and gave them gold coins as compensation. He requested his daughter to wear the necklace only indoors.

Directions :  Choose the of words which is most similar in the meaning to the word / group of words printed in bold is used in the passage.
Tugging 

(DIRECTIONS 14): In the following questions, you have brief passages. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
Deriving your authority from the government , your position would secure the respect and consideration of everyone, especially in a service where official rank carries so much weight. This would secure you every attention and comfort on your way and there, together with a complete submission to your olders. I know these things are a matter of indifference to you expect so far as they may further, the great objects you have in view, but they are of important in themselves, and of every importance to  those who have a right to take interest in your personal position and comfort.
Writer main motive in this passage towards reader is?

What, one wonders, is the lowest common denominator of Indian culture today? The attractive Hema Malini ? The songs of Vinidh Barati? The attractive Hema Malini? The sons of Vinidh Barati?
Or the mouth-watering Masala Dosa? Delectable as these may be, each yield pride of place to that false (?) symbol of a new era-the synthetic fibre. In less than twenty years the nylon sari and the terylene shirt have swept the countryside, penetrated to the farthest corners of the land and persuaded every common man, woman and child that the key to success in the present day world lie in artificial fibers: glass nylon, crepe nylon, tery mixes, polyesters and what have you. More than the bicycles, the wristwatch or the transistor radio, synthetic clothes have come to represent the first step away form the village square. The village lass treasures the flashy nylon sari in her trousseau most delay; the village youth gets a great kick out of his cheap terrycot shirt and trousers, the nearest he can approximate to the expensive synthetic sported by his wealthy citybred contemporaries. And the Neo-rich craze for ‘phoren’ is nowhere more apparent than in the price that people will pay for smuggled, stolen, begged borrowed second hand or thrown away synthetics. Alas, even the uniformity of nylon.

The tern ‘Neo-rich’ means –

Read the following passage carefully and give the answer of following questions.

The cyber–world is ultimately ungovernable. This is alarming as well as convenient; sometimes, convenient because alarming. Some Indian politicians use this to great advantage. When there is an obvious failure in governance during a crisis they deflect attention from their own incompetence towards the ungovernable. So, having failed to prevent nervous citizens from fleeing their cities of work by assuring them of proper protection, some national leaders are now busy trying to prove to one another, and to panic-prone Indians, that a mischievous neighbour has been using the internet and social networking sites to spread dangerous rumours. And the Centre's automatic reaction is to start blocking these sites and begin elaborate and potentially endless negotiations with Google, Twitter and Facebook about access to information. If this is the official idea of prompt action at a time of crisis among communities, then Indians have more reason to fear their protectors than the nebulous mischief-makers of the cyber world. Wasting time gathering proof, blocking vaguely suspicious websites, hurling accusations across the border and worrying about bilateral relations are ways of keeping busy with inessentials because one does not quite known what to do about the essentials of a difficult situation. Besides, only a fifth of the 245 websites blocked by the Centre mention the people of the Northeast or the violence in Assam. And if a few morphed images and spurious texts can unsettle an entire nation, then there is something deeply wrong with the nation and with how it is being governed. This is what its leaders should be addressing immediately, rather than making a wrongheaded display of their powers of censorship.
 It is just as absurd, and part of the same syndrome, to try to ban Twitter accounts that parody despatches from the Prime Minister's Office. To describe such forms of humour and dissent as "misrepresenting" the PMO–as if Twitter would take these parodies for genuine despatches from the PMO — makes the PMO look more ridiculous than its parodists manage to. With the precedent for such action set recently by the chief minister of West Bengal, this is yet another proof that what Bengal thinks today India will think tomorrow. Using the cyber–world for flexing the wrong muscles is essentially not funny. It might even prove to be quite dangerously distracting.

The author warns us against

Directions :Read the following passage to answer the given questions based on it. Some words/phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
During the reign of king Veer, there lived a wise magistrate. Haripant’s verdicts were always just and people from all over vast kingdom came to him in ordered to settle their disputes. In the city where Haripant lived, there was a greedy ghee merchant named Niranjan. He always kept twenty barrels of ghee. Of these, fifteen would contain good quality ghee and the remaining could be adulterated. He would mix the two and sell it. This went on for a long time, till finally the people fed up of being cheated, complained to Haripant.
Haripant had the ghee examined and found to it be adulterated. He gave Niranjan a choice of punishment-drink the five barrels of adulterated ghee from his shop, or receive a hundred lashings, or pay a thousand gold coins to the treasury. Niranjan thought for a while. Losing a thousand gold coins was too much and a hundred lashings too painful. So he decided to drink the five barrels of ghee. Though Niranjan sold adulterated goods in his shop, he made sure his own food was of the best quality. So after drinking one barrel of ghee he began to feel sick. By the second barrel, he was vomiting. At this point he decided to opt for the lashings instead. But he was pampered and his body was unused to any harsh treatment. After ten lashes, he started trembling and by twenty he was giddy. ‘Stop!’ he screamed. ‘I will pay the thousand gold coins!’ And he handed them over.
So he ended up suffering all three punishments, something he did not forget in a hurry and the people of the city got to use only the best quality in their food from then on.

Luke remained behind at the orchard because he

Direction: In the following questions, a passage given in the below. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question.

As my train was not due to leave for another hour, I had plenty of time to spare. After buying some magazines to read on the journey, I made my way to the luggage office to collect the heavy suitcase I had left there three days before. There were only a few people waiting, and I took out my wallet to find the receipt for my case. The receipt did not seem to be where I had left it. I emptied the contents of the wallet, and the railway tickets, money, scraps of paper, and photographs tumbled out of it; but no matter how hard I searched, the receipt was nowhere to be found.

I explained the situation sorrowfully to the assistant. The man looked at me suspiciously as if to say he had heared this type of story many times and asked me to describe the case. I told him that it was an old, brown looking object no different from the many suitcases I could see on the shelves. The assistant then gave me form and told me to make a list of the contents of the case. If they were correct, he said, I could take the case away. I tried to remember all the articles I had hurriedly packed and wrote them down.

After I had done this, I went to look among the shelves. There were hundreds of cases there and for one dreadful moment , it occurred to me that if someone had picked the receipt up , he could easily have  claimed the case already , Fortunately this had not happened , for after a time , I found the case lying on its side high up in the corner . After examining the articles inside, the assistant gave me the case . 

I took out my walled to pay him. I pulled out a ten-shilling note and out slipped my “lost” receipt with it! I could not help blushing . The assistant noded his head knowingly, as if to say that he had often seen this happen too!!

The assistant asked the writer to make a list of the contents to

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow by choosing the correct option.
Too much importance must not be attached to the wrong acts done by children, particularly if they happen to be of minor nature. Many boys and girls at a young age are likely to be in the habit of stealing, neglecting their studies, slipping out of their classes or using bad language. In nearly every case of root cause of the trouble is the fact that proper care of the child is not taken in the house or sufficient interest is not shown to him. But if the parents were wise, they would correct the faults of their children by paying more attention to them. Whatever the case, one thing should never be done. Bad things in the children should never be repressed, that is, they should not be compelled to change for the better under fear of the rod. Physical punishment does not improve them. It only makes them worse than before.

What do boys and girls at young age do?