Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

Her name was Sulekha, but since her childhood everyone had been calling her Bholi, the simpleton. She was the fourth daughter of Ramlal. When she was ten months old, she had fallen off the cot on her head and perhaps it had damaged some part of her brain. That was why she remained a backward child and came to be known as Bholi, the simpleton. At birth, the child was very fair and pretty. But when she was two years old, she had an attack of smallpox. Only the eyes were saved, but the entire body was permanently disfigured by deep black pockmarks. Little Sulekha could not speak till she was five as she was a slow learner, and when at last she learnt to speak, she stammered. The other children often made fun of her and mimicked her. As a result, she talked very little. Ramlal had seven children — three sons and four daughters, and the youngest of them was Bholi. It was a prosperous farmer’s household and there was plenty to eat and drink. All the children except Bholi were healthy and strong. The sons had been sent to the city to study in schools and later in colleges. Of the daughters, Radha, the eldest, had already been married. The second daughter Mangla’s marriage had also been settled, and when that was done, Ramlal would think of the third, Champa. They were good-looking, healthy girls, and it was not difficult to find bridegrooms for them. But Ramlal was worried about Bholi. She had neither good looks nor intelligence. From her very childhood Bholi was neglected at home. She was seven years old when Mangla was married. The same year a primary school for girls was opened in their village. The Tehsildar sahib came to perform its opening ceremony. He said to Ramlal, “As a revenue official you are the representative of the government in the village and so you must set an example to the villagers. You must send your daughters to school.” That night when Ramlal consulted his wife, she cried, “Are you crazy? If girls go to school, who will marry them?” But Ramlal had not the courage to disobey the Tehsildar. At last his wife said, “I will tell you what to do. Send Bholi to school. As it is, there is little chance of her getting married, with her ugly face and lack of sense. Let the teachers at school worry about her.”

At what age did Sulekha damage her brain?

You have brief passages with 10 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives

There is a general consensus that ‘International Understanding’ need to be taught as a separate subject at the school stage as that would add to the curricular load which is already too heavy. Instead it should be woven into the curriculum and the numerous opportunities that present themselves while teaching normal school subjects may be intelligently and imaginatively used by the teacher to promote International Understanding.

The school subjects which can be most profitably used for this purpose are History, Geography, Civics, Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Social Sciences, Languages as well as Physical and Life Sciences. However, at the higher education level, international education can be prescribed as a separate subject of study. In fact, the present situation in India broadly conforms to this consensus so far as the school stage is concerned.

At the under-graduate and the post-graduate levels, courses of study in subjects like History, Geography, Economics, Political Science, International Relations, International Law and International Organization have been prescribed by most of the universities and these contain content which has a direct or indirect bearing on promoting UNESCO ideals

Which phrase from the passage means “combined with the curriculum”?

Comprehension: In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. Coca-Cola is to become the new sponsor of the London Eye after (1) ______ a deal to replace France's EDF Energy. The capital's giant Ferris Wheel has been a (2) ______ tourist attraction since it was introduced in 2000, when it was (3) ______ as the Millennium Wheel. It was previously (4) ______ by British Airways before becoming the EDF Energy London Eye in 2011. Coca-Cola will take over in January after (5) ______ a two-year deal with the wheel's owner, Merlin Entertainments, for an undisclosed sum.

Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank number 1. 

Direction: 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.

The effects of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression are forcing changes on state governments and the U.S. economy that could linger for decades. By one Federal Reserve estimate, the country lost almost an entire year's worth of economic activity – nearly $14 trillion – during the recession from 2007 to 2009. The deep and persistent losses of the recession forced states to make broad cuts in spending and public workforces. For businesses, the recession led to changes in expansion plans and worker compensation. And for individual Americans, it has meant a future postponed, as fewer buy houses and start families. Five years after the financial crash, the country is still struggling to recover." In the aftermath of [previous] recessions there were strong recoveries. That is not true this time around," said Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "This is more like the pace getting out of the Great Depression." For years, housing served as the backbone of economic growth and as an investment opportunity that propelled generations of Americans into the middle class.

But the financial crisis burst the housing bubble and devastated the real estate market, leaving millions facing foreclosure, millions more underwater, and generally stripping Americans of years' worth of accumulated wealth. Anthony B. Sanders, a professor of real estate finance at George Mason University, said even the nascent housing recovery can't escape the effects of the recession. Home values may have rebounded, he said, but the factors driving that recovery are very different than those that drove the growth in the market in the 1990s and 2000s. Sanders said more than half of recent home purchases have been made in cash, which signals investors and hedge funds are taking advantage of cheap properties. That could freeze out average buyers and also mean little real economic growth underpins those sales. Those effects are clear in homeownership rates, which continue to decline. In the second quarter of this year, the U.S. homeownership rate was 65.1%, according to Census Bureau data, the lowest since 1995. In the mid-2000s, it topped 69%, capping a steady pace of growth that began after the early 1990s recession. Reversing that will be a challenge, in part because credit has tightened and lending rules have been toughened in an effort to avoid the mistakes that inflated the housing bubble in the first place.

"Credit expanded, and now contracted, and it's going to be tight like this as far as the eye can see," Sanders said. "We so destroyed so many households when the bubble burst, there's just not the groundswell to fill the demand again." Some are skeptical that the tight credit market and new efforts to regulate the financial markets, like the Dodd-Frank law, will prove lasting. Americans have often responded with calls for regulation after financial sector-driven crises and accusations of mismanagement, according to Brookings' Burtless. "But eventually, those fires cool down," he said. "It's not as though this memory of what can go wrong sticks with us very long." That can be seen in the intense efforts to water down Dodd-Frank's regulations, Burtless said. Federal regulators have already made moves to relax requirements for some potential homeowners who were victims of the recent housing crisis. Even those steps and an unlikely return to easy credit might not fuel a full housing recovery without economic growth to back it up. As Sanders, referring to the growth in low-wage and part-time employment, put it: "At those wages, it's tough to scramble together down payments and mortgages’’.

 "Turmoil in the housing market has already reshaped the makeup of households nationwide. Homeownership rates among people with children under 18 fell sharply during the recession, declining 15% between 2005 and 2011, according to Census Bureau data. In some states it was far worse. For Michigan, the decline in homeownership was 23%, and in Arizona and California it was 22%. Lackluster job growth has outlived the downturn. A study by the Economic Policy Institute showed wages for all workers, when adjusted for inflation, grew just 1.5% between 2000 and 2007. But the last five years wiped out even those modest gains—the study found wages declined for the bottom 70% of all workers since the recession began. However, some areas have seen manufacturing jobs climb back from recessionary lows, and the energy sector has been a boon for some Midwestern states. One hopeful sign for workers is the shift away from manufacturing growth in the typically low-wage South back toward the Rust Belt states, reversing a movement that was taking hold before the downturn. That trend is documented in a 2012 report from the Brookings Institution, "Locating American Manufacturing: Trends in the Geography of Production.’’

"From 2000 to 2010, both the Midwest and South lost manufacturing jobs at about the national rate of 34%. But the Midwest has seen nearly half of all manufacturing jobs gained since 2010, almost double the increase in the South. For Michigan, the growth was 19%; in Indiana, 12%. Even with that growth, there are caveats. Autoworker unions have ceded ground with companies on wages and benefits, for example, allowing new hires to work for lower pay and fewer benefits than those who've held their jobs longer. Unemployment remains stubbornly high in some states, and the jobs created have leaned heavily toward part-time and low-pay work. A study from the San Francisco Federal Reserve found the proportion of U.S. jobs that are part-time is high, as many of the jobs lost during the recession have not returned.

Choose the word/group of words which is most similar in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.
Q. Downturn

You have eight brief passages with 10 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives 

A farmer accompanied by his young son was driving his ass to the market in the hope of selling the ass for a good price. On the road, they met a bevy of girls who laughed and exclaimed, “See this pair of fools ? They are trudging along the dusty road, when they can be riding !” The man thought that there was sense in what they were saying. So he mounted his son on the ass and he walked at the side. Presently, they met some of his old friends, who greeted him and said, “You’ll spoil your son, by letting him ride while you toil along on foot! Make him walk. It’ll be good for him.” The farmer followed their advice and took his son’s place on the back of the ass while the boy trudged along behind. They would not have gone far, they were seen by women and children. The farmer heard them say, “What a selfish old man ! He rides in comfort, but lets his poor little fellow walk the distance.” So he asked his son to get up behind him. Further along the road, they met some travellers. They asked the farmer whether the ass was his property or was it hired for the purpose. The farmer told them that he was taking his ass to the market to sell it. The travellers said, “Good Heavens ! With the load like this, the poor beast will look exhausted and no one would like to purchase him. Why don’t you carry him.” Immediately, the farmer got off the ass, tied its legs with the rope and slung him on a pole and carried him in between them. This was such an absurd sight that people laughed at it. They called the farmer and his son lunatics. They had then reached a bridge over a river. Frightened by the noise around, the ass struggled, kicked, broke the pole, fell into the river and died. The farmer returned home vexed and ashamed. In trying to please all, he in fact, had pleased none and he had lost the ass in the transaction. 

On seeing the boy walk beside the ass, the women and children  

You have eight brief passages with 10 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives 

Time was when people looked heavenward and prayed, “Ye Gods, give us rain, keep drought away.” Today there are those who pray. “Give us rain, keep El Nino away.” 

El Nino and its atmospheric equivalent, called the Southern Oscillation, are together referred to as ENSO, and are household words today. Meteorologists recognize it as often being responsible for natural disaster worldwide. But this wisdom dawned only after countries suffered, first from the lack of knowledge, and then from the lack of coordination between policy making and the advances in scientific knowledge. 

Put simply, El Nino is a weather event restricted to certain tropical shores, especially the Peruvian coast. The event has diametrically opposite impacts on the land and sea. The Peruvian shore is a desert. But every few years, an unusually warm ocean current - El Nino - warms up the normally cold surface-waters off the Peruvian coast, causing very heavy rains in the early half of the year, 

And then, miraculously, the desert is matted green. Crops like cotton, coconuts and banana grow on the otherwise stubbornly barren land. These are the Peruvians’ anos de abundencia or years of abundance. The current had come to be termed El Nino, or the Christ Child because it usually appears as an enhancement if a mildly warm current that normally occurs here around every Christmas. 

But this boon on land is accompanied by oceanic disasters. Normally, the waters off the South American coast are among the most productive in the world because of a constant upwelling of nutrient rich cold waters from the ocean depths. During an El Nino, however waters are stirred up only from near the surface. The nutrient-crunch pushes down primary production, disrupting the food chain. Many marine species, including anchoveta (anchovies) temporarily disappear. 

This is just one damning effect of El Nino. Over the years its full impact has been studied and what the Peruvians once regarded as manna, is now seen as a major threat. 

Which word in Para 3 is the antonym for Fertile?  

You have brief passages with 10 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives

There is a general consensus that ‘International Understanding’ need to be taught as a separate subject at the school stage as that would add to the curricular load which is already too heavy. Instead it should be woven into the curriculum and the numerous opportunities that present themselves while teaching normal school subjects may be intelligently and imaginatively used by the teacher to promote International Understanding.

The school subjects which can be most profitably used for this purpose are History, Geography, Civics, Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Social Sciences, Languages as well as Physical and Life Sciences. However, at the higher education level, international education can be prescribed as a separate subject of study. In fact, the present situation in India broadly conforms to this consensus so far as the school stage is concerned.

At the under-graduate and the post-graduate levels, courses of study in subjects like History, Geography, Economics, Political Science, International Relations, International Law and International Organization have been prescribed by most of the universities and these contain content which has a direct or indirect bearing on promoting UNESCO ideals

Pick out the name of the subject which deals with the study of society.

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow

Plato is the earliest important educational thinker, and education is an essential element in ‘The Republic’ (his most important work on philosophy and political theory, written around 360 B.C.). In it, he advocates some rather extreme methods: removing children from their mothers' care and raising them as wards of the state, and differentiating children suitable to the various castes, the highest receiving the most education, so that they could act as guardians of the city and care for the less able. He believed that education should be holistic, including facts, skills, physical discipline, music and art. Plato believed that talent and intelligence is not distributed genetically and thus is be found in children born to all classes, although his proposed system of selective public education for an educated minority of the population does not really follow a democratic model.

Aristotle considered human nature, habit and reason to be equally important forces to be cultivated in education, the ultimate aim of which should be to produce good and virtuous citizens. He proposed that teachers lead their students systematically, and that repetition be used as a key tool to develop good habits, unlike Socrates' emphasis on questioning his listeners to bring out their own ideas. He emphasized the balancing of the theoretical and practical aspects of subjects taught, among which he explicitly mentions reading, writing, mathematics, music, physical education, literature, history, and a wide range of sciences, as well as play, which he also considered important.

What tool does Aristotle advocate to teachers to develop good habits in students?