List of top Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Questions

Identify the correctly spelled word:

Identify the correctly spelled word:

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent
paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. Fish skin collagen has excellent thermo-stability and tensile strength making it ideal for use as bandage
that adheres to the skin and adjusts to body movements.
2. Collagen, one of the main structural proteins in connective tissues in the human body, is well known for
promoting skin regeneration.
3. Fish skin swims in here as diseases and bacteria that affect fish are different from most human pathogens.
4. The risk of introducing disease agents into other species through the use of pig and cow collagen proteins
for wound healing has inhibited its broader applications in the medical field

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
[1] Women may prioritize cooking because they feel they alone are responsible for mediating a toxic and unhealthy food system.
[2] Food is commonly framed through the lens of individual choice: you can choose to eat healthily.
[3] This is particularly so in a neoliberal context where the state has transferred the responsibility for food onto individual consumers.
[4] The individualized framing of choice appeals to a popular desire to experience agency, but draws away from the structural obstacles that stratify individual food choices.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Most were first-time users of a tablet and a digital app.
Paragraph: Aage Badhein’s USP lies in the ethnographic research that constituted the foundation of its development process. Customizations based on learning directly from potential users were critical to making this self-paced app suitable for both a literate and non-literate audience. ____(1)____ The user interface caters to a Hindi-speaking audience who have minimal to no experience with digital services and devices. ____(2)____ The content and functionality of the app are suitable for a wide audience. This includes youth preparing for an independent role in life or a student ready to create a strong foundation of financial management early in her life. ____(3)____ Household members desirous of improving their family’s financial strength to reach their aspirations can also benefit. We piloted Aage Badhein in early 2021 with over 400 women from rural areas. ____(4)____ The digital solution generated a large amount of interest in the communities.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1,2,3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: This has meant a lot of uncertainty around what a wide-scale return to office might look like in practice.
Paragraph: Bringing workers back to their desks has been a rocky road for employers and employees alike. The evolution of the pandemic has meant that best laid plans have often not materialised. ___(1)___ The flow of workers back into offices has been more of a trickle than a steady stream. ___(2)___ Yet while plenty of companies are still working through their new policies,some employees across the globe are now back at their desks,whether on a full-time or hybrid basis. ___(3)___ That means we're beginning to get some clarity on what return-to-office means - what's working,as well as what has yet to be settled. ___(4)___.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Tamsin Blanchard,curator of Fashion Open Studio,an initiative by a campaign group showcasing the work of ethical designers says, "We're all drawn to an exquisite piece of embroidery,a colourful textile or even a style of dressing that might have originated from another heritage. [But] this magpie mentality, where all of culture and history is up for grabs as 'inspiration', has accelerated since the proliferation of social media...Where once a fashion student might research the history and traditions of a particular item of clothing with care and respect,we now have a world where images are lifted from image libraries without a care for their cultural significance. It's easier than ever to steal a motif or a craft technique and transfer it on to a piece of clothing that is either mass produced or appears on a runway without credit or compensation to their original communities."

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
To defend the sequence of alphabetisation may seem bizarre, so obvious is its application that it is hard to imagine a reference,catalogue or listing without it. But alphabetical order was not an immediate consequence of the alphabet itself. In the Middle Ages,deference for ecclesiastical tradition left scholars reluctant to categorise things according to the alphabet-to do so would be a rejection of the divine order. The rediscovery of the ancient Greek and Roman classics necessitated more efficient ways of ordering, searching and referencing texts. Government bureaucracy in the 16th and 17th centuries quickened the advance of alphabetical order,bringing with it pigeonholes,notebooks and card indexes.

The four sentences (labelled 1,2,3 and 4) below,when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer: 1. The more we are able to accept that our achievements are largely out of our control,the easier it becomes to understand that our failures, and those of others,are too. 2. But the raft of recent books about the limits of merit is an important correction to the arrogance of contemporary entitlement and an opportunity to reassert the importance of luck,or grace, in our thinking. 3. Meritocracy as an organising principle is an inevitable function of a free society,as we are designed to see our achievements as worthy of reward. 4. And that in turn should increase our humility and the respect with which we treat our fellow citizens,helping ultimately to build a more compassionate society.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1,2,3 or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: When people socially learn from each other, they often learn without understanding why what they're copying-the beliefs and behaviours and technologies and know-how-works.
Paragraph: ___(1)___. The dual-inheritance theory ....says....that inheritance is itself an evolutionary system. It has variation. What makes us a new kind of animal, \and so different and successful as a species,is we rely heavily on social learning,to the point where socially acquired information is effectively a second line of inheritance, the first being our genes.... ___(2)___. People tend to home in on who seems to be the smartest or most successful person around,as well as what everybody seems to be doing-the majority of people have something worth learning. ___(3)___. When you repeat this process over time,you can get,around the world,cultural packages-beliefs or behaviours or technology or other solutions-that are adapted to the local conditions. People have different psychologies, effectively. ___(4)___.

The four sentences (labelled 1,2,3 and 4) below,when properly sequenced,would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer: 1.Various industrial sectors including retail,transit systems,enterprises,educational institutions,event organizing, finance, travel etc. have now started leveraging these beacons solutions to track and communicate with their customers. 2.A beacon fixed on to a shop wall enables the retailer to assess the proximity of the customer,and come up with a much targeted or personalized communication like offers,discounts and combos on products in each shelf. 3.Smart phones or other mobile devices can capture the beacon signals,and distance can be estimated by measuring received signal strength. 4.Beacons are tiny and inexpensive, micro-location-based technology devices that can send radio frequency signals and notify nearby Bluetooth devices of their presence and transmit information.

The four sentences (labelled 1,2,3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer: 1. If I wanted to sit indoors and read,or play Sonic the Hedgehog on a red-hot Sega Mega Drive,I would often be made to feel guilty about not going outside to "enjoy it while it lasts". 2. My mum,quite reasonably,wanted me and my sister out of the house,in the sun. 3. Tales of my mum's idyllic-sounding childhood in the Sussex countryside,where trees were climbed by 8 am and streams navigated by lunchtime,were passed down to us like folklore. 4. To an introverted kid,that felt like a threat-and the feeling has stayed with me

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
[1] From chemical pollutants in the environment to the damming of rivers to invasive species transported through global trade and travel, every environmental issue is different and there is no single tech solution that can solve this crisis.
[2] Discourse on the threat of environmental collapse revolves around cutting down emissions, but biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse are caused by myriad and diverse reasons.
[3] This would require legislation that recognises the rights of future generations and other species that allows the judiciary to uphold a much higher standard of environmental protection than currently possible.
[4] Clearly, our environmental crisis requires large political solutions, not minor technological ones, so, instead of focusing on infinite growth, we could consider a path of stable-state economies, while preserving markets and healthy competition.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
[1] The trajectory of cheerfulness through the self is linked to the history of the word ‘cheer’ which comes from an Old French meaning ‘face’.
[2] Translations of the Bible into vernacular languages, expanded the noun ‘cheer’ into the more abstract ‘cheerful-ness’, something that circulates as an emotional and social quality defining the self and a moral community.
[3] When you take on a cheerful expression, no matter what the state of your soul, your cheerfulness moves into the self: the interior of the self is changed by the power of cheer.
[4] People in the medieval ‘Canterbury Tales’ have a ‘piteous’ or a ‘sober’ cheer; ‘cheer’ is an expression and a body part, lying at the intersection of emotions and physiognomy.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: This was years in the making but fast-tracked during the pandemic, when “people started being more mindful about their food”, he explained.
Paragraph: For millennia, ghee has been a venerated staple of the subcontinental diet, but it fell out of favour a few decades ago when saturated fats were largely considered to be unhealthy. ____(1)____ But more recently, as the thinking around saturated fats is shifting globally, Indians are finding their own way back to this ingredient that is so integral to their cuisine. ____(2)____ For Karmakar, a renewed interest in ghee is emblematic of a return-tobasics movement in India. ____(3)____ This movement is also part of an overall trend towards “slow food”. In keeping with the movement’s philosophy, ghee can be produced locally (even at home) and has inextricable cultural ties. ____(4)____ At a basic level, ghee is a type of clarified butter believed to have originated in India as a way to preserve butter from going rancid in the hot climate.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
There’s a common idea that museum artworks are somehow timeless objects available to admire for generations to come. But many are objects of decay. Even the most venerable Old Master paintings don’t escape: pigments discolour, varnishes crack, canvases warp. This challenging fact of art-world life is down to something that sounds more like a thread from a morality tale: inherent vice. Damien Hirst’s iconic shark floating in a tank – entitled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living – is a work that put a spotlight on inherent vice. When he made it in 1991, Hirst got himself in a pickle by not using the right kind of pickle to preserve the giant fish. The result was that the shark began to decompose quite quickly – its preserving liquid clouding, the skin wrinkling, and an unpleasant smell wafting from the tank.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Today, many of the debates about behavioural control in the age of big data echo Cold War-era anxieties about brainwashing, insidious manipulation and repression in the ‘technological society’. In his book Psychopolitics, Han warns of the sophisticated use of targeted online content, enabling ‘influence to take place on a pre-reflexive level’. On our current trajectory, “freedom will prove to have been merely an interlude.” The fear is that the digital age has not liberated us but exposed us, by offering up our private lives to machine-learning algorithms that can process masses of personal and behavioural data. In a world of influencers and digital entrepreneurs, it’s not easy to imagine the resurgence of a culture engendered through disconnect and disaffiliation, but concerns over the threat of online targeting, polarisation and big data have inspired recent polemics about the need to rediscover solitude and disconnect.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Several of the world’s earliest cities were organised along egalitarian lines. In some regions, urban populations governed themselves for centuries without any indication of the temples and palaces that would later emerge; in others, temples and palaces never emerged at all, and there is simply no evidence of a class of administrators or any other sort of ruling stratum. It would seem that the mere fact of urban life does not, necessarily, imply any particular form of political organization, and never did. Far from resigning us to inequality, the picture that is now emerging of humanity’s past may open our eyes to egalitarian possibilities we otherwise would have never considered.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. It’s not that modern historians of medieval Africa have been ignorant about contacts between Ethiopia and Europe; they just had the power dynamic reversed. The traditional narrative stressed Ethiopia as weak and in trouble in the face of aggression from external forces, so Ethiopia sought military assistance from their fellow Christians to the north. But the real story, buried in plain sight in medieval diplomatic texts, simply had not yet been put together by modern scholars. Recent research pushes scholars of medieval Europe to imagine a much more richly connected medieval world: at the beginning of the so-called Age of Exploration, there is evidence that the kings of Ethiopia were sponsoring their own missions of diplomacy, faith and commerce.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. The creative element in product design has become of paramount importance as it is one of the few ways
a firm or industry can sustain a competitive advantage over its rivals.
2. In fact, the creative element in the value of world industry would be larger still, if we added the
contribution of the creative element in other industries, such as the design of tech accessories.
3. The creative industry is receiving a lot of attention today as its growth rate is faster than that of the world
economy as a whole.
4. It is for this reason that today’s trade issues are increasingly involving intellectual property, as Western
countries have an interest in protecting their revenues along with freeing trade in non-tangibles.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit. Sentence: Having made citizens more and less knowledgeable than their predecessors, the Internet has proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Paragraph: Never before has a population, nearly all of whom has enjoyed at a least a secondary school education, been exposed to so much information, whether in newspapers and magazines or through YouTube, Google, and Facebook. ____(1) ____. Yet it is not clear that people today are more knowledgeable than their barely literate predecessors. Contemporary advances in technology offered more serious and inquisitive students access to realms of knowledge previously unimaginable and unavailable. ____ (2) ____. But such readily available knowledge leads many more students away from serious study, the reading of actual texts, and toward an inability to write effectively and grammatically. ____ (3) ____. It has let people choose sources that reinforce their opinions rather than encouraging them to question inherited beliefs. ____ (4) ____.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit. Sentence: Easing the anxiety and pressure of having a “big day” is part of the appeal for many couples who marry in secret. Paragraph: Wedding season is upon us and – after two years of Covid chaos that saw nuptials scaled back– you may think the temptation would be to go all out. ____(1) ____. But instead of expanding the guest list, many couples are opting to have entirely secret ceremonies. With Covid case numbers remaining high and the cost of living crisis meaning that many couples are feeling the pinch, it’s no wonder that some are less than eager to send out invites. ____(2) ____. Plus, it can’t hurt that in celebrity circles getting married in secret is all the rage. ____ (3) ____. “I would definitely say that secret weddings are becoming more common,” says Landis Bejar, the founder of a therapy practice, which specialises in helping brides and grooms manage wedding stress. “People are looking for ways to get out of the spotlight and avoid the pomp and circumstance of weddings. ____ (4) ____. They just want to get to the part where they are married.”

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. Some company leaders are basing their decisions on locating offices to foster innovation and growth, as their best-performing inventors suffered the greatest productivity losses when their commutes grew longer.
2. Shorter commutes support innovation by giving employees more time in the office and greater opportunities for in-person collaboration, while removing the physical strain of a long commute.
3. This is not always the case: remote work does not automatically lead to greater creativity and productivity as office water-cooler conversations are also very important for innovation.
4. Some see the link between long commutes and productivity as support for work-from-home scenarios, as many workers have grown accustomed to their commute-free arrangements during the pandemic

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. Petitioning is an expeditious democratic tradition, used frequently in prior centuries, by which citizens can bring issues directly to governments. As expressions of collective voice, they support procedural democracy by shaping agendas. They can also recruit citizens to causes, give voice to the voteless, and apply the discipline of rhetorical argument that clarifies a point of view. By contrast, elections are limited in several respects: they involve only a few candidates, and thus fall far short of a representative democracy. Further, voters’ choices are not specific to particular policies or laws, and elections are episodic, whereas the voice of the people needs to be heard and integrated constantly into democratic government.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. All that we think we know about how life hangs together is really some kind of illusion that we have perpetrated on ourselves because of our limited vision. What appear to be inanimate objects such as stones turn out not only to be alive in the same way that we are, but also in many infinitesimal ways to be affected by stimuli just as humans are. The distinction between animate and inanimate simply cannot be made when you enter the world of quantum mechanics and try to determine how those apparent subatomic particles, of which you and everything else in our universe is composed, are all tied together. The point is that physics and metaphysics show there is a pattern to the universe that goes beyond our capacity to grasp it with our brains.