List of top English Language Comprehension Questions

I suppose the vitality of a group, an individual or a society is measured by the extent to which it posses courage and above all, creative imagination. If that imagination is lacking our growth becomes more and more stunted, which is a sign of decay. What then is happening. Today? Are we trying to improve in this respect or are we merely functioning somewhere on the surface without touching the reality which is afflicting on the surface without touching the reality which is afflicting the world & which may result in political conflict, economic warfare or world war? So, when there are discussions on the concept of man as visualized in the Eastern Ideal or The Western Ideal. They interest me greatly from a historical point of view and from a cultural point of view, although I have always resisted this idea of dividing the world into the orient and occident, I do not believe in such divisions. There have, of course, been differences in racial and nation of outlook and in ideals but to talk of the east & west as such as little meaning. I can see the difference between an industrialized and a non-industrialised country. I think the difference, say, between India and Europe in the middle ages, would not have been very great and would have been comparable to the difference between any of the great countries of Asia today. I feel that we think roughly because we are misled in our approach. Differences have crept in and been intensified by this process of industrialization & mechanization which has promoted material well being tremendously and which has been a blessing to humanity. At the same time, it is corroding the life of the mind & thereby encouraging a process of self destruction. I am not for the moment talking or thinking about wars and the like we have seen in history races come up and gradually fade away in Asia, in Europe and other places. Are we witnessing the same thing today? It may be that this will not take effect in our lifetime. In the past anyway, one great consolation was that things happened only in one particular greater of the world. If there was a collapse in one part of the world, the other part carried on. No part will be left to survive, as it could in older times. During the so called Dark ages of Europe, there were bright periods in Asia, in China, in India, in the middle east and else where. In the old days if progress was limited, disaster was also limited in extent and intensity. Today, when we have arrived at a period of great disaster and it is a little difficult for us to choose a middle way which would unable us to achieve a little progress and, at the same time to limit the scope of disaster. That is the major question. A person who has to carry a burden of responsibility is greater troubled by the practical aspects of this question. Am I right in saying that the mental life of the world is in a process of deterioration, chiefly because the environment that has been created by the Industrial Revolution does not give time or opportunity to individuals to think? I do not deny that today there are many great thinkers but it is quite likely that they might be submerged in the mass of unthinking humanity. We are dealing with and talking a great deal about democracy and I have little doubt that democracy is the best of all the various methods available to us for the governance of human beings. At the same time, we are using today-by today I mean the last two decades or sothe emergence of democracy in a somewhat uncontrolled form. When we think of democracy, we normally think of it in the rather limited sense of the 19th century or the early 20th century use of the term. Owing to the remarkable technological growth, something has happened since then and meanwhile democracy has also spread. The result is that we have vast masses of human beings brought up by the Industrial Revolution, who are not encouraged or given an opportunity to think much. They live a life which, from the point of view of physical comfort, is incomparably better than it has been in any previous generation, but they seldom have a chance to think. And yet in a democratic system, it is this vast mass of human beings that will ultimately govern or elect those who govern.

Fill in the blanks in the passage with appropriate choice. The one essential 1 factor in a company being able to create the right customer experience that is so necessary for it’s continued 2 is it’s people. A company will have among it’s employees planners, 3, and doers. But it doesn’t pay to forget that all of them are people and that their roles can never be 4 in a 5 fashion.

The following questions consist of sentences that are either partly or entirely underlined. Below each sentence that are either partly or entirely underlined. Below each sentence are four versions of the underlined portion of the sentence. Choice (1) duplicates the original version. The three other versions revise the underlined portion of the sentence. Read the sentence and the four choice carefully, and select the best version. If the original seems better than any of the revisions, select choice (1). If not, choose one of the revisions.

In a country like India, both poverty and economic growth pose serious environmental challenges. In their desperate attempt to survive today, people are forced to forsake their tomorrow and their environment. A classic example of the phenomenon can be found in impoverished tribal areas where millions of households are forced to cut forests everyday and sell wood to get at best, half-a meal a day. And all this does not come cheaply in terms of personal costs, as some people often tend to argue. Tribal women wake up before dawn, walk miles to the dwindling forests to cut and bundle wood and then carry the load tens of kilometers to a nearby town. And after all that, what they get is pittance.
At the same time uncontrolled economic growth, urbanization and industrialization can rip apart forests, mine the overuse ground water systems, dam rivers, pollute water and air, stuff the land with unknown poisons. In this way, economic growth not just poisons and destroys cities, but also erodes the rural resource base, setting in motion a vicious cycle. Rural ecosystems unable to support their growing populations push more and more people into the cities.
There is therefore, a golden mean, a balance, as in all things ecological between poverty and wealth, between need and greed. This is an area for values, education, culture, social aspirations, human satisfaction-especially amongst those who have them in sufficient measurein things other than what economists call goods. The new economic policies of the Government built around certain concepts of economic liberalization and structural adjustment have raised numerous questions in the minds of the environmentally – concerned. One set of critics believes that these policies will enhance impoverishment. Apart from being bad in themselves, the policies will have a negative environmental impact.
There is another set which believes that these policies will enhance entrepreneurship and processes of wealth generation and thus reduce poverty. But this set too does not know how these processes will be controlled to ensure a good and clean environment. If the government could not give the country a good economic governance and hence its role must be curtailed, then what is the guarantee that the same corrupt, inefficient, partisan and soft government, will give us good environmental governance, where the trade-offs, especially in a poor country like India, are even more difficult to assess and understand?
There is of course, another set of concerns which is as follows: even if the new policies generate wealth, will this wealth not be built on borrowed consumption patterns from industrialized countries? Will these consumption patterns not devastate our culture and environment, that is whatever that remains of them?

The other day we heard someone smilingly refer to poets as dreamers. Now, it is accurate to refer to poets as dreamers, but is not discerning to infer, as this person did, that the dreams of poets have no practical value beyond the realm of literary diversion. The truth is that poets are just as practical as people who build bridges or look into microscopes and just as close to reality and truth. Where they differ from the logician and the scientist is in the temporal sense alone; they are ahead of their time, whereas logicians and scientists are abreast of their time. We must not be so superficial that we fail to discern the practicable ness of dreams. Dreams are the sunrise streamers heralding a new day of scientific progress, another forward surge. Every forward step man takes, in any field of life, is first taken along the dreamy paths of imagination. Robert Fulton did not discover his steamboat with full steam up, straining at some Hudson River dock ; first he dreamed the steamboat, he and other dreamers, and then scientific wisdom converted a picture in the mind into a reality of steel and wood. The automobile was not dug out of the ground like a nugget to gold; first men dreamed the automobile, and afterward, long afterward, the practical minded engineers caught up with what had been created by winging fantasy. He who looks deeply and with a seeing eye into poetry of yesterday finds there all the cold scientific magic of today and much which we shall not enjoy until some tomorrow. If the poet does not dream so clearly that blueprints of his vision can immediately be drawn and the practical conversions immediately effected, he must not for that reason be described as merely the mental host for a sort of harmless madness. For the poet, like an engineer, is a specialist. His being, turned to the life of tomorrow, cannot be turned simultaneously to the life of today. To the scientist he says, “Here, I give you a flash of the future”. The wise scientist thanks him, and takes that flash of the future and makes it over into a fiber of today.

Read the passage and answer the following questions.
PASSAGE
Though the last twenty-five years have seen China dazzle the world with its excellent economic performance it has shied away from playing the kind of active role in international affairs that would seen commensurate with its economic weight. This is because traditionally China’s politics have been defined by the need for economic development above all else. In the past China’s authorities have tended to downplay the country’s international clout, choosing to stress instead its development country status and limited military capabilities. Such modest rhetoric was intended to allay the fears that China’s rise was causing across its immediate neighborhood. That Beijing is finally acknowledging its status as a major player in the international system is evidenced by the fact that the president has formally development a theory of international relations; the concept of harmonious world. The concept, encompassing broad notions of multilateralism, prosperity for all through common development and tolerance for diversity has left world opinion perplexed. These are commendable objectives but the theory is short on specifics regarding the means to achieve them.
China’s recent willingness to be a more active player internationally stems from complex factors. The country’s economic strength – having acquired the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world – is undeniable and reports favour it to be the largest economy in the next quarter of a century. For sustained double digit economic digit economic growth China thus has no choice but to become more active internationally. Moreover as a major proportion of the oil and other natural resources that China needs to feed its growing economy are imported Beijing has to aggressively woo the countries rich in energy resources, which also represent emerging markets for Chinese products. To ensure a stable security environment within the region and thus facilitate economic growth China played an active role in facilitating negotiations with North Korea. Destabilization of a potential flashpoint like the Korean peninsula would lead to a flood of refugees crossing the border, interrupting careful plans economic rejuvenation of China’s North – East. China’s growing influence has caused a shift in the geopolitical status quo and its influence is beginning to replace that of the United States and European powers in Africa. China‘s new diplomacy though has had its share of critics who have expressed their unease at China’s military modernization programme and its willingness to deal with regimes widely condemned as corrupt and oppressive. Despite this when the Africa was in need of aid and infrastructure or the US needed help in negotiating with Korea they turned to China. By taking a lead in a variety of international and regional forums, initiating bilateral and military exchange and dispensing aid and technical assistance in parts of the world where traditional powers are cautious to tread China has signaled that its days of sitting on the sidelines content to let other shape world affairs are emphatically over.