DIRECTIONS for the question 1 & 2: Identify the meaning of the given idiom/ phrase.
DIRECTIONS for the question 3, 4 & 5: The passage given contains blanks, choose the best choice in each case from the words in the options and mark your answer accordingly.
A) During B) Since C) From D) Through
A) extensively B) somehow C) extremely D) hastily
A) threatens B) meaning C) fearing D) imply
DIRECTIONS for the question 6 & 7: Given below are five sentences. Identify the sentence(s) that is/are incorrect in terms of grammar and usage (including spelling, punctuation and logical consistency). Then, choose the most appropriate option.
A) A and C B) B, C and E C) A, B and C D) C, D and E
A) A and E B) B only C) B, C and E D) A and D
In B, them to be replaced by it as the word referred to by the pronoun is global warming. In C, would give instead of would have been given. In E, reckoned on and not reckoned about.
DIRECTIONS for the question 8: Choose an option, which can be substituted for a given word/sentence/phrase out of given options.
DIRECTIONS for the question 8: Choose an option, which can be substituted for a given word/sentence/phrase out of given options.
A) Mosaic B) Motif C) Stencil D) Design
DIRECTIONS for the question 9 & 10 : Read the passage and answer the question based on it.
Passage I:
I teach an undergraduate class on Nietzsche, a philosopher who has a reputation for captivating young minds. After one class, a student came to see me. There was something bothering her. “Is it OK to be changed by reading a philosopher?” she asked. “I mean, do you get inspired by Nietzsche—do you use him in your life?”You have to be careful about questions like this, and not only because the number of murderers claiming Nietzsche as their inspiration is higher than I would like. What the student usually means is: “Nietzsche mocks careful scholarship: Can I, in his spirit, write my paper however the hell I want and still get a good grade?” In this case, though, the student knew perfectly well how to write a scholarly paper. She wanted to do something else too: be Nietzschean!
Here’s my line, for what it’s worth: you can do whatever you want in life— take inspiration from The Smurfs for all I care—but I’m here to teach you how to read a philosopher, slowly and carefully, which is not an easy thing to do. If you want to be inspired by Nietzsche, you have to read him precisely, to make sure that it is Nietzsche who inspires you—not a preconception or a misappropriation or a scholarly reading, mine or anybody else’s, which is vulnerable to the interpreter’s peculiar agenda or the fashions of the hour. And what if, when you read him carefully, you find that he actually wrote things you think are false, wrong-headed, racist or sexist? It’s not a case of inspiration or careful scholarship, I say: choose both.
Notice: I am implying that if you get inspired by misreading someone, or by swallowing their false claims, then you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing. Of course, you might get inspired to do great things by ideas that are wrong or questionable. (Nietzsche could have told you that.) Notice too: I work in an intellectual environment in which young people think that applying philosophy to their own lives is something unusual. It is an oft-repeated idea that philosophy in its modern, professional form has become detached from what was, in ancient times, a founding ideal: to teach people how to live well. In today’s university, the emphasis is on the search for the truth about whichever subject lies at hand, regardless of how, if at all, such truths change what you do when you leave the classroom. So while students often report finding philosophy “therapeutic,” they do so in passing, somewhat guiltily. Perhaps they worry that the moment I hear they’re an emotional Nietzsche-user rather than a cold Nietzsche-scrutinizer my opinion of them will fall. Perhaps, against my better judgment, and in spite of being a user myself, they are right.
Professional philosophers don’t present themselves as particularly wise or as people to turn to for advice about how to live. And why should we? That’s not what we were trained for when we were students and it’s not what we promise in the prospectus. I remember, as a student, asking a philosophy professor something about what I should do the following year— whether I should continue with my studies or move on to something else. “That’s not a philosophy question,” she said. “That’s a life question! I can’t answer that.” I know what she meant, now more than ever, having faced such questions myself: you can’t expect a knowledge of philosophy to guide you through the big decisions about what to do with your life. But I can’t help wondering whether something has gone astray when “philosophy” questions and “life” questions are so easy to pull apart.
Passage 2
Dr. Reid began by calling a local school district and asking if anyone had records tracking, say, reading comprehension. The district experts actually had 20 years of data. Better still, they had conducted studies that were quite informative—and tragic. Based only on the first year’s testing, researchers could predict how well students would do in the third year, the seventh, and so on.
“The model is highly predictive,” explained the voice on the other end of the phone. Reid was thunderstruck. With cold, scientific precision, the researcher explained to her that the current education system essentially set kids on a course of success or failure beginning in the first grade—independent of what anyone did afterward.
Stunned and indignant, Reid was determined to find out if there was something teachers could do to make a difference. Weren’t there teachers out there who started with children the model predicted would lag behind, but who helped the students beat the model? And, if so, what was the difference between those who were successful and everyone else? Reid pored over the data until she found teachers whose students did better in later years than before being taught by those teachers. For whatever reason, their students beat the model. Reid was also able to find teachers whose students did far worse than predicted after spending a year under their tutelage.
She gathered a dozen teachers whose students were achieving better results than the model predicted and asked them what methods they used to cause their students to read at a higher level than expected. They didn’t know what had led to success. Later she gathered teachers whose students had done worse than predicted and bluntly asked: ‘What are you doing that prevents the children from learning?” They confessed that they didn’t know.
For the next five years Reid watched both top and bottom performers in action in order to divine the vital behaviours that separated the best teachers from the rest. She codified, gathered, and studied data on virtually every type of teaching behaviour she and a team of doctoral students could identify. They had found certain behaviours that separate top performers from everyone else. They’ve proven to be the same behaviours across ages, gender, geography, topic, and anything else the researchers could imagine.
One of the vital behaviours consists of the use of praise versus the use of punishment. Top performers reward positive performance far more frequently than their counterparts. Bottom performers quickly become discouraged and mutter things such as, “Didn’t I just teach you that two minutes ago?” The best consistently reinforce even moderately good performance, and learning flourishes.
