Directions [1-2]: In the following questions, a sentence has two blanks. For the blanks, there are options. From the options, choose the one that fits both the blanks in an appropriate way.
1. Ramesh ______ me coming to his table, he smiled and ______ me a chair.

A. Found, signaled B. Met, sat C. Looked, gave D. Saw, offered E. Welcomed, took

Answer: Option D
Explanation: for the first blank, ‘looked’ and ‘saw’ are the suitable words but in the first blank ‘looked’ is not suitable as this will be followed by ‘at’.
2. The leaders were ______ needed by those to ______ they addressed.

A. Angrily, who B. Readily, which C. Scarcely, whom D. Rarely, where E. Joyfully, when

Answer: Option C
Explanation: for the second blank, ‘who’ and ‘whom’ are the suitable option but in the first blank ‘angrily’ is inappropriate usage, moreover, ‘whom’ is suitable in objective case.

Directions [1-2]: Each of the following questions has a paragraph from which the last sentence has been deleted. From the given options, choose the one that completes the paragraph in the most appropriate way.
1. By calling for exempting unionized businesses from the minimum wage, unions are creating more incentives for employers to favor unionized workers over the non-unionized sort. Such exemptions strengthen their power. This is useful because for all the effort unions throw at raising the minimum wage laws for better pay to have an awkward habit of undermining union clout. (__________)

A. High rates of unionization make minimum-wage rules unnecessary as collaborative wage setting achieves the flexibility goals of a low minimum wage and the fairness goals of a high one. B. Workers who have no real alternative to employment in the unregulated shadows of the labor market are even more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse than workers with the legal right to take low wages. C. The labor ethos of worker solidarity seems hollow if non-union workers are underpriced by union workers and left unemployed or scrambling for unauthorized work. D. Once employers are obliged to pay the same minimum wage to both unionized and non-unionized labor, workers often see less reason to pay the dues to join a union. E. However, labors do not want to join a union because the dues they pay to join the same adds to the burden on them.

Answer: Option D
Explanation: Sentence A talks about the effect of high rates of unionization. It makes minimum wage laws unnecessary as the unions are able to achieve flexible and fair wages through collaboration. This sentence does not complete the given paragraph, which discusses the effect of minimum wage laws on the clout of the union and not the vice-versa.
Sentence B discusses the case of workers without the legal right to take the low wages (as set by the minimum wage law) and no real alternative to employment being more vulnerable to exploitation. This is a new line of thought and does not complete the paragraph given.
Sentence C argues that the spirit of worker solidarity seems hollow if non-unionized workers are under-priced by their unionized counterparts. This is a thought that seems, at the outset, to be related to the idea discussed in the paragraph. Unions are calling for exempting unionized businesses from the minimum wage. Thus they are encouraging employers to prefer unionized workers over the non-unionized and thus going against the ethos of worker solidarity.
However, this choice is incorrect, as the given paragraph is about why and how unions are seeking to increase their power having worked towards minimum wage laws, which, rather contrarily, decrease their clout. Sentence C does not carry forward the idea in the penultimate sentence about how laws for better pay have the “awkward habit of undermining union clout”.
Sentence D discusses the idea that workers have less incentive to pay and join a union when protected by minimum wage laws. This, clearly, undermines the clout of the unions. Thus sentence D provides a good choice to complete the given paragraph, carrying forward the idea expressed in the penultimate line.
2. Trade protectionism, disguised as concern for the climate, is raising its head. Citing competitiveness concerns, powerful industrialized countries are holding out threats of a levy on imports of energy-intensive products from developing countries that refuse to accept their demands. The actual source of protectionist sentiment in the OECD countries is, of course, their current lackluster economic performance, combined with the challenges posed by the rapid economic rise of China and India – in that order. (_______)

A. Climate change is evoked to bring trade protectionism through the back door. B. OECD countries are taking refuge in climate change issues to erect trade barriers against these two countries. C. Climate change concerns have come as a convenient stick to beat the rising trade power of China and India. D. Defenders of the global economic status quo are posing as climate change champions. E. Today’s climate change champions are the perpetrators of global economic inequity.

Answer: Option D
Explanation: Options (A) and (C) are very generalized statements. Option (B) is a repetition of the idea presented in the beginning of the paragraph. This paragraph talks about how developed countries indulge in trade protectionism as a move against China and India’s economic rise under the guise of climate concern. Option (D) and (E) talk about the same thing but (D) goes along with the subtle suggestive tone of the paragraph while (E) is more curt in its accusation of ‘perpetrators of inequity’. Hence (D) is the correct option which goes with the meaning of the sentence.

Directions [1-2]: In each of the question there are four sentences. In each sentence a pair of words is italicized and highlighted. From the italicized and highlighted words select the most appropriate the word (A or B) to form correct sentences. The sentences are followed by options that indicate the words, which may be selected to correctly complete the set if sentences. From the options given choose the most appropriate one.
1)
A) The U.S and other global powers must not be lulled into a false sense of (A) complacency / (B) complaisance
B) Ideally, the IS chief should have been captured alive and tired for (A) hilarious / (B) heinous
C) You cannot create a problem and then claim (A) adulation / (B) adulteration for executing piecemeal solution.
D) Bore wells have been turning into death traps for children due to an utter lack of regard at all levels for the ‘safety measures’ (A) proscribed / (B) prescribed under the concerns Panchayat Act.

A. BBBB B. AABA C. ABAA D. ABAB E. None of these

Answer: Option D
Explanation: In (A) “complacency” means self-satisfaction.
“complaisance” means willing to please others or to accept what they do or say without protest.
In (B) “hilarious” means extremely amusing
“heinous” means utterly odious or wicked.
In (C) “adulation” means excessive admiration or praise.
“Adulteration” means ‘the action of making something poorer in quality by the addition of another substance’.
In (D) “proscribed” means ban
“prescribed” means advise.
So, correct answer is D.
2)
A) The U.S and the other global powers cannot (A) abjure / (B) adjure from their moral duty to and what they started.
B) The choice of this delegation has also (A) raised / (B) raze
C) If this rule is (A) scrupulously / (B) sumptuously followed, 50% of the accidents can be prevented.
D) Palaniswami (A) went / (B) want on the trip now for another reason.

A. AAAA B. BABA C. ABAB D. BBBB E. None of these

Answer: Option A
Explanation:In (A) “abjure” means solemnly renounce.
“adjure” means request to someone.
In (B) “raised” means increase.
“raze” means completely destroy.
In (C) “scrupulously” means extremely attentive to details.
“sumptuously” means splendid and expensive-looking.
In (D) “went”, past form of go.
“want” means desire.
So, correct answer is A.

Directions [1-4]: In the following questions choose the word which is the exact OPPOSITE of the given words.
1. Antonym of DEVIANT is _____________?

A. Bent B. Devious C. Regular D. Atypical

Answer Option D
2. Antonym of DUCTILE is _____________?

A. Docile B. Pliable C. Stiff D. Supple

Answer Option C
3. Antonym of FRIVOLOUS is _____________?

A. Trivial B. Silly C. Petty D. Wise

Answer Option D
4. Antonym of WEAN is _____________?

A. Attach B. Detach C. Discourage D. Halt

Answer Option A

Directions[1-2]: In this question, a part of the sentence is made bold. Below are given alternatives to the bold part at (A), (B), (C) and (D) which may improve the sentence.
1. Parliamentary rules and procedures government conduct in business don’t allow sloganeering in any form inside the chamber.

A. government conduct in business B. governing conduct in business C. government conduct of business D. government conduct of business

Answer - Option D
Explanation - The original sentence is erroneous.
Reason: We can infer that parliamentary rules and procedures which govern how business is conducted do not allow sloganeering inside the chamber. Therefore, ‘governing’ should be used instead of ‘government’ in the given context of the sentence.
Moreover, here ‘conduct’ means ‘carrying out’, i.e. how business should be carried out. Therefore, instead of the preposition ‘in’, ‘of’ should be used here so as to make the sentence correct.
The sentence after replacement becomes:
Parliamentary rules and procedures governing conduct of business don’t allow sloganeering in any form inside the chamber.
Option D is hence the correct answer.
2. The weather office has stood up their initial forecast of monsoon rainfall being 96% of average in the June-September season.

A. stand by their initial forecast of B. stood by its initial forecast of C. stand by its initial forecast of D. stood up its initial forecast of

Answer - Option B
Explanation - The original sentence is erroneous.
Reason: There are two errors in the bold part.
Firstly, the phrasal verb ‘stand by’ which means ‘adhere to or abide by (something promised, stated, or decided)’ has been written incorrectly. Therefore, ‘stood up’ must be replaced by ‘stood by’ in order to make the sentence correct.
Secondly, usage of plural case of possessive pronoun ‘their’ is also erroneous. Here the writer refers to the weather office which is a single institution. Therefore, ‘their’ should be replaced by ‘its’ to make it a grammatically correct sentence.
Among the choices available, option B replaces the bold part most appropriately.
The sentence after replacement becomes:
The weather office has stood by its initial forecast of monsoon rainfall being 96% of average in the June-September season.
Option B is hence the correct answer.

Directions [1-4]: In the following questions choose the word which is the exact OPPOSITE of the given words.
1. Clemency

A. corporal B. intolerance C. sensibility D. compromise

Answer: Option B
2. WASTREL

A. devotee B. spender C. miser D. prodigal

Answer: Option C
3. ECCENTRIC

A. queer B. odd C. quaint D. normal

Answer Option D
4. WHOLESOME

A. unhealthy B. hygienic C. irrelevant D. surrounding

Answer Option A

1. To go overboard

A. . To tell people about someone’s secrets B. To encourage someone in his bad times C. To do too much of something D. Once in a life-time

Answer: Option C
Explanation: Meaning: to do too much; to be extravagant Ex. When it comes to having chicken, I go overboard.
2. On the rocks

A. likely to fail B. To feel very sad C. To act confident in a difficult situation D. To commit a fraud

Answer: Option C
Explanation: Meaning: If something, like a relationship, is on the rocks, it is in trouble and may come to an end. Ex. Their marriage is on the rocks.
3. From the horse’s mouth

A. To make to bear the sins for others B. From an authoritative or dependable source C. Take a subordinate position D. Worried for frivolous things

Answer: Option B
Explanation: Meaning: to listen to or hear something from a valid and genuine source. Ex. ‘Where did you hear it from?’ ‘From the horse’s mouth.’

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions that follows.
Neuroscience, like many other sciences, has a bottomless appetite for data. Flashy enterprises such as the BRAIN Initiative, announced by Barack Obama in 2013, or the Human Brain Project, approved by the European Union in the same year, aim to analyse the way that thousands or even millions of nerve cells interact in a real brain. The hope is that the torrents of data these schemes generate will contain some crucial nuggets that let neuroscientists get closer to understanding how exactly the brain does what it does.
But a paper just published in PLOS Computational Biology questions whether more information is the same thing as more understanding. It does so by way of neuroscience’s favourite analogy: comparing the brain to a computer. Like brains, computers process information by shuffling electricity around complicated circuits. Unlike the workings of brains, though, those of computers are understood on every level.
Eric Jonas of the University of California, Berkeley, and Konrad Kording of Northwestern University, in Chicago, who both have backgrounds in neuroscience and electronic engineering, reasoned that a computer was, therefore, a good way to test the analytical toolkit used by modern neuroscience. Their idea was to see whether applying those techniques to a microprocessor produced information that matched what they already knew to be true about how the chip works.
Their test subject was the MOS Technology 6502, first produced in 1975 and famous for powering, among other things, early Atari, Apple and Commodore computers. With just 3,510 transistors, the 6502 is simple enough for enthusiasts to have created a simulation that can model the electrical state of every transistor, and the voltage on every one of the thousands of wires connecting those transistors to each other, as the virtual chip runs a particular program. That simulation produces about 1.5 gigabytes of data a second—a large amount, but well within the capabilities of the algorithms currently employed to probe the mysteries of biological brains.
The chips are down One common tactic in brain science is to compare damaged brains with healthy ones. If damage to part of the brain causes predictable changes in behaviour, then researchers can infer what that part of the brain does. In rats, for instance, damaging the hippocampus—two small, banana-shaped structures buried towards the bottom of the brain—reliably interferes with the creatures’ ability to recognise objects.
When applied to the chip, though, that method turned up some interesting false positives. The researchers found, for instance, that disabling one particular group of transistors prevented the chip from running the boot-up sequence of “Donkey Kong”—the Nintendo game that introduced Mario the plumber to the world—while preserving its ability to run other games. But it would be a mistake, Dr. Jonas points out, to conclude that those transistors were thus uniquely responsible for “Donkey Kong”. The truth is more subtle. They are instead part of a circuit that implements a much more basic computing function that is crucial for loading one piece of software, but not some others.
Another neuroscientific approach is to look for correlations between the activity of groups of nerve cells and particular behavior. Applied to the chip, the researchers’ algorithms found five transistors whose activity was strongly correlated with the brightness of the most recently displayed pixel on the screen. Again, though, that seemingly significant finding was mostly an illusion. Drs Jonas and Kording know that these transistors are not directly involved in drawing pictures on the screen. (In the Atari, that was the job of an entirely different chip, the Television Interface Adaptor.) They are only involved in the trivial sense that they are used by some part of the program which is ultimately deciding what goes on the screen.
The researchers also analysed the chip’s wiring diagram, something biologists would call its connectome. Feeding this into analytical algorithms yielded lots of superficially impressive data that hinted at the presence of some of the structures which the researchers knew were present within the chip. On closer inspection, though, little of it turned out to be useful. The patterns were a mishmash of unrelated structures that were as misleading as they were illuminating. This fits with the frustrating experience of real neuroscience. Researchers have had a complete connectome of a tiny worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, which has just 302 nerve cells, since 1986. Yet they understand much less about how the creature’s “brain” works than they do about computer chips with millions of times as many components.
The essential problem, says Dr. Jonas, is that the neuroscience techniques failed to find many chip structures that the researchers knew were there, and which are vital for comprehending what is actually going on in it. Chips are made from transistors, which are tiny electronic switches. These are organised into logic gates, which implement simple logical operations. Those gates, in turn, are organised into structures such as adders (which do exactly what their name suggests). An arithmetic logic unit might contain several adders. And so on.
But inferring the existence of such high-level structures—working out exactly how the mess of electrical currents within the chip gives rise to a cartoon ape throwing barrels at a plumber—is difficult. That is not a problem unique to neuroscience. Dr. Jonas draws a comparison with the Human Genome Project, the heroic effort to sequence a complete human genome that finished in 2003. The hope was that this would provide insights into everything from cancer to aging. But it has proved much more difficult than expected to extract those sorts of revelations from what is, ultimately, just a long string of text written in the four letters of the genetic code.
Things were not entirely hopeless. The researchers’ algorithms did, for instance, detect the master clock signal, which co-ordinates the operations of different parts of the chip. And some neuroscientists have criticized the paper, arguing that the analogy between chips and brains is not so close that techniques for analyzing one should automatically work on the other.
Gaël Varoquaux, a machine-learning specialist at the Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation, in France, says that the 6502, in particular, is about as different from a brain as it could be. Such primitive chips process information sequentially. Brains (and modern microprocessors) juggle many computations at once. And he points out that, for all its limitations, neuroscience has made real progress. The ins-and-outs of parts of the visual system, for instance, such as how it categorizes features like lines and shapes, are reasonably well understood.
Dr. Jonas acknowledges both points. “I don’t want to claim that neuroscience has accomplished nothing!” he says. Instead, he goes back to the analogy with the Human Genome Project. The data is generated, and the reams of extra information churned out by modern, far more capable gene-sequencers, have certainly been useful. But hype-fuelled hopes of an immediate leap in understanding were dashed. Obtaining data is one thing. Working out what they are saying is another.
1. What, according to the context, is true about the analysis of the researchers?
a. the presence of some of the structures which were present within the chip b. five transistors whose activity was strongly correlated with the brightness of the most recently displayed pixel on the screen c. disabling one particular group of transistors prevented the chip from running the boot-up sequence of a programme.

A. Only a & b B. Only b & c C. Only a & c D. None of these E. All are correct

Answer: Option E
2. What, according to context, are chips?
a. chips are transistors b. chips are electronic switches c. chips are adders

A. Only a B. Only b C. Only c D. Only a & c E. Only b & c

Answer: Option B
3. What is the most appropriate synonym of “nuggets”:

A. abhors B. teasures C. duds D. debts E. All are correct

Answer: Option B
4. What is the main objective of the initiatives launched by Flashy enterprises?

A. to have created a simulation that can model the electrical state of every transistor B. to test the analytical toolkit used by modern neuroscience C. to understand how exactly the brain does what it does D. to analyse the way that thousands or even millions of nerve cells interact in a real brain E. All are correct

Answer: Option D
5. What is similar between a computer and a brain?
a. predictable changes b. testing analytical toolkit c. processing information

A. Only a & c B. Only b & c C. Only c D. None of these E. All are correct

Answer: Option E

Directions [1-3]: In the following question, some part of the sentence may have errors. Find out which part of the sentence has an error and select the appropriate option. If a sentence is free from error, select 'No Error'.
1. The Interviewer asked me (a) / if I knew that (b) / Kalidas was the greater (c) / than any other poet (d) / No error (e)

A. the Interviewer asked me B. if I knew that C. Kalidas was the greater D. than any other poet

Answer: Option C
2. These display (a) / the (b) / remarkable variety (c) / No error (d)

A. these display B. the C. remarkable variety D. no error

Answer: Option B
3. These display (a) / the (b) / remarkable variety (c) / No error (d)

A. these display B. the C. remarkable variety D. no error

Answer Option B

Directions [1-3]: In the following question, out of the four alternatives select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.
1. Full to the Gunwales

A. to be on the lowest point B. to the very top C. to have something in half D. to hate someone too much

Answer: B
2. Cutting Edge

A. very modern, latest B. to fright someone very much C. antiquated D. to belong to one’s past

Answer: A
3. Strike one’s fancy

A. to seem interesting or pleasing to oneself. B. to interpret something deeply C. to take excessive interest in others’ matters D. to buy a party dress

Answer: A

Directions [1-3]: Find out the error in each of the following sentences, if there is no error, answer is (E). Avoid punctuation mistake (if any).
1. (A) They /(B) said that/(C) they will go/(D) next day/(E) No error
Answer: Option C
Explanations: 'Would' should be used in place of 'will'. Since Reporting verb is in past, hence, the reported speech should also be in past.
2. (A) They said/(B) that I /(C) shall work hard/ (D) if I want to pass/ (E) no error
Answer: Option C
Explanations: 'Should' and 'wanted' should be used in place of 'shall' and 'want'. Since Reporting verb is in past, hence, the reported speech should also be in past.
3. (A) He asked her / (B) that if / (C)she was going / (D) to attend the meeting / (E) No error
Answer: Option B
Explanations: 'That' should not be used here, since when an interrogative the sentence is reposted, then, conjunctions 'if/whether' is used.