You Are On Multi Choice Question Bank SET 4399
219952. Based on the passage, which broad areas unambiguously fall under the purview of the UN conference being discussed?A. Racial prejudiceB. Racial prideC. Discrimination, racial or otherwiseD. Caste-related discriminationE. Race-related discrimination
219953. According to the author, the sociologist who argued that race is a ‘biological’ category and caste is a ‘social’ one,
219954. An important message in the passage, if one accepts a dialectic between nature and culture, is that
219955.
Studies of the factors governing reading development in young children have achieved a remarkable degree of consensus over the past two decades. The consensus concerns the causal role of ‘phonological skills in young children’s reading progress. Children who have good phonological skills, or good ‘phonological awareness’ become good readers and good spellers. Children with poor phonological skills progress more poorly. In particular, those who have a specific phonological deficit are likely to be classified as dyslexic by the time that they are 9 or 10 years old.Phonological skills in young children can be measured at a number of different levels. The term phonological awareness is a global one, and refers to a deficit in recognising smaller units of sound within spoken words. Development work has shown that this deficit can be at the level of syllables, of onsets and rimes, or phonemes. For example, a 4-year old child might have difficulty in recognising that a word like valentine has three syllables, suggesting a lack of syllabic awareness. A five-year-old might have difficulty in recognizing that the odd work out in the set of words fan, cat, hat, mat is fan. This task requires an awareness of the sub-syllabic units of the onset and the rime. The onset corresponds to any initial consonants in a syllable words, and the rime corresponds to the vowel and to any following consonants. Rimes correspond to rhyme in single-syllable words, and so the rime in fan differs from the rime in cat, hat and mat. In longer words, rime and rhyme may differ. The onsets in val:en:tine are /v/ and /t/, and the rimes correspond to the selling patterns ‘al’, ‘en’ and’ ine’.A six-year-old might have difficulty in recognising that plea and pray begin with the same initial sound. This is a phonemic judgement. Although the initial phoneme /p/ is shared between the two words, in plea it is part of the onset ‘pl’ and in pray it is part if the onset ‘pr’. Until children can segment the onset (or the rime), such phonemic judgements are difficult for them to make. In fact, a recent survey of different developmental studies has shown that the different levels of phonological awareness appear to emerge sequentially. The awareness of syllables, onsets, and rimes appears to merge at around the ages of 3 and 4, long before most children go to school. The awareness of phonemes, on the other hand, usually emerges at around the age of 5 or 6, when children have been taught to read for about a year. An awareness of onsets and rimes thus appears to be a precursor of reading, whereas an awareness of phonemes at every serial position in a word only appears to develop as reading is taught. The onset-rime and phonemic levels of phonological structure, however, are not distinct. Many onsets in English are single phonemes, and so are some rimes (e.g. sea, go, zoo).The early availability of onsets and rimes is supported by studies that have compared the development of phonological awareness of onsets, rimes, and phonemes in the same subjects using the same phonological awareness tasks. For example, a study by Treiman and Zudowski used a same/different judgement task based on the beginning or the end sounds of words. In the beginning sound task, the words either began with the same onset, as in plea and plank, or shared only the initial phoneme, as in plea and pray. In the end-sound task, the words either shared the entire rime, as in spit and wit, or shared only the final phoneme, as in rat and wit. Treiman and Zudowski showed that four- and five-year-old children found the onset-rime version of the same/different task significantly easier than the version based on phonemes. Only the sixyear- olds, who had been learning to read for about a year, were able to perform both versions of the tasks with an equal level of success.From the following statements, pick out the true statement according to the passage.
219956. Which one of the following is likely to emerge last in the cognitive development of a child?
219958. The Treiman and Zudowski experiment found evidence to support which of the following conclusions?
219959. The single-syllable words Rhyme and Rime are constituted by the exact same set ofA. rime(s)B. onset(s)C. rhyme(s)D. phonemes(s)
219960.
Billie Holiday died a few weeks ago. I have been unable until now to write about her, but since she will survive many who receive longer obituaries, a short delay in one small appreciation will not harm her or us. When she died we — the musicians, critics, all who were ever transfixed by the most heart-rending voice of the past generation — grieved bitterly. There was no reason to. Few people pursed self-destruction more whole-heartedly than she, and when the pursuit was at an end, at the age of 44, she had turned herself into a physical and artistic wreck. Some of us tried gallantly to pretend otherwise, taking comfort in the occasional moments when she still sounded like a ravaged echo of her greatness. Others had not even the heart to see and listen any more. We preferred to stay home and, if old and lucky enough to own the incomparable records of her heyday from 1937 to 1946, many of which are not even available on British LP, to recreate those coarse-textured, sinuous, sensual and unbearable sad noises which gave her a sure corner of immortality. Her physical death called, if anything, for relief rather than sorrow. What sort of middle age would she have faced without the voice to earn money for her drinks and fixes, without the looks — and in her day she was hauntingly beautiful — to attract the men she needed, without business sense, without anything but the disinterested worship of ageing men who had heard and seen her in her glory?And yet, irrational though it is, our grief expressed Billie Holiday’s art, that of a woman for whom one must be sorry. The great blues singers, to whom she may be justly compared, played their game from strength. Lionesses, though often wounded or at bay (did not Bessie Smith call herself ‘a tiger, ready to jump’?), their tragic equivalents were Cleopatra and Phaedra; Holiday’s was an embittered Ophelia. She was the Puccini heroine among blues singers, or rather among jazz singers, for though she sang a cabaret version of the blues incomparably, her natural idiom was the pop song. Her unique achievement was to have twisted this into a genuine expression of the major passions by means of a total disregard of its sugary tunes, or indeed of any tune other than her own few delicately crying elongated notes, phrased like Bessie Smith or Louis Armstrong in sackcloth, sung in a thin, gritty, haunting voice whose natural mood was an unresigned and voluptuous welcome for the pains of love. Nobody has sung, or will sing, Bess’s songs from Porgy as she did. It was this combination of bitterness and physical submission, as of someone lying still while watching his legs being amputated, which gives such a blood-curdling quality to her Strange Fruit, the anti-lynching poem which she turned into an unforgettable art song. Suffering was her profession; but she did not accept it.Little need be said about her horrifying life, which she described with emotional, though hardly with factual, truth in her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues. After an adolescence in which self-respect was measured by a girl’s insistence on picking up the coins thrown to her by clients with her hands, she was plainly beyond help. She did not lack it, for she had the flair and scrupulous honesty of John Hammond to launch her, the best musicians of the 1930s to accompany her — notably Teddy Wilson, Frankie Newton and Lester Young — the boundless devotion of all serious connoisseurs, and much public success. It was too late to arrest a career of systematic embittered self-immolation. To be born with both beauty and selfrespect in the Negro ghetto of Baltimore in 1915 was too much of a handicap, even without rape at the age of 10 and drug-addiction in her teens. But, while she destroyed herself, she sang, unmelodious, profound and heartbreaking. It is impossible not to weep for her, or not to hate the world which made her what she was.Why will Billie Holiday survive many who receive longer obituaries?
219963. According to the passage, Billie Holiday was fortunate in all but one of which of the following ways?
219964.
The narrative of Dersu Uzala is divided into two major sections, set in 1902, and 1907, that deal with separate expeditions which Arseniev conducts into the Ussuri region. In addition, a third time frame forms a prologue to the film. Each of the temporal frames has a different focus, and by shifting them Kurosawa is able to describe the encroachment of settlements upon the wilderness and the consequent erosion of Dersu’s way of life. As the film opens, that erosion has already begun. The first image is a long shot of a huge forest, the trees piled upon one another by the effects of the telephoto lens so that the landscape becomes an abstraction and appears like a huge curtain of green. A title informs us that the year is 1910. This is as late into the century as Kurosawa will go. After this prologue, the events of the film will transpire even farther back in time and will be presented as Arseniev’s recollections. The character of Dersu Uzala is the heart of the film, his life the example that Kurosawa wishes to affirm. Yet the formal organization of the film works to contain, to close, to circumscribe that life by erecting a series of obstacles around it. The film itself is circular, opening and closing by Dersu’s grave, thus sealing off the character from the modern world to which Kurosawa once so desperately wanted to speak. The multiple time frames also work to maintain a separation between Dersu and the contemporary world. We must go back father even than 1910 to discover who he was. But this narrative structure has yet another implication. It safeguards Dersu’s example, inoculates it from contamination with history, and protects it from contact with the industrialised, urban world. Time is organised by the narrative into a series of barriers, which enclose Dersu in a kind of vacuum chamber, protecting him from the social and historical dialectics that destroyed the other Kurosawa heroes. Within the film, Dersu does die, but the narrative structure attempts to immortalise him and his example, as Dersu passes from history into myth.
We see all this at work in the enormously evocative prologue. The camera tilts down to reveal felled trees littering the landscape and an abundance of construction. Roads and houses outline the settlement that isbeing built. Kurosawa cuts to a medium shot of Arseniev standing in the midst of the clearing, lookinguncomfortable and disoriented. A man passing in a wagon asks him what he is doing, and the explorersays he is looking for a grave. The driver replies that no one has died here, the settlement is too recent. These words enunciate the temporal rupture that the film studies. It is the beginning of things (industrial society) and the end of things (the forest), the commencement of one world so young that no one has had time yet to die and the eclipse of another, in which Dersu had died. It is his grave for which the explorer searches. His passing symbolises the new order, the development that now surrounds Arseniev. The explorer says he buried his friend three years ago next to huge cedar and fir trees, but now they are all gone. The man on the wagon replies they were probably chopped down when the settlement was built, and he drives off. Arseniev walks to a barren, treeless spot next to a pile of bricks. As he moves, the camera tracks and pans to follow, revealing a line of freshly built houses and a woman hanging her laundry to dry. A distant train whistle is heard, and the sounds of construction in the clearing vie with the cries of birds and the rustle of wind in the trees. Arseniev pauses, looks around for the grave that once was, and murmurs desolately, ‘Dersu’. The image now cuts farther into the past, to 1902, and the first section of the film commences, which describes Arseniev’s meeting with Dersu and their friendship.
Kurosawa defines the world of the film initially upon a void, a missing presence. The grave is gone, brushed aside by a world rushing into modernism, and now the hunter exists only in Arseniev’s memories. The hallucinatory dreams and visions of Dodeskaden are succeeded by nostalgic, melancholy ruminations. Yet by exploring these ruminations, the film celebrates the timelessness of Dersu’s wisdom. The first section of the film has two purposes: to describe the magnificence and in human vastness of nature and to delineate the code of ethics by which Dersu lives and which permits him to survive in these conditions. When Dersu first appears, the other soldiers treat him with condescension and laughter, but Arseniev watches him closely and does not share their derisive response. Unlike them, he is capable of immediately grasping Dersu’s extraordinary qualities. In camp, Kurosawa frames Arseniev by himself, sitting on the other side of the fire from his soldiers. While they sleep or joke among themselves, he writes in his diary and Kurosawa cuts in several point-of-view shots from his perspective of trees that appear animated and sinister as the fire light dances across their gnarled, leafless outlines. This reflective dimension, this sensitivity to the spirituality of nature, distinguishes him from the others and forms the basis of his receptivity to Dersu and their friendship. It makes him a fit pupil for the hunter.How is Kurosawa able to show the erosion of Dersu’s way of life?
219971. What possible factor would a dynamic leader consider a ‘hindrance’ in achieving the development goals of a nation?
219972. Which of the following four statements can be inferred from the above passage?A. Scientific rationality is an essential feature of modernity.B. Scientific rationality results in the development of impersonal rules.C. Modernisation and development have been chosen over traditional music, dance and drama.D. Democracies aspire to achieve substantive equality.
219975. Which of the following four statements can be inferred from the above passage?A. There is conflict between the pursuit of equality and individuality.B. The disadvantages of impersonal rules can be overcome in small communities.C. Despite limitations, impersonal rules are essential in large systems.D. Inspired leadership, rather than plans and schemes, is more effective in bridging inequality.
219976.
In the modern scientific story, light was created not once but twice. The first time was in the Big Bang, when the universe began its existence as a glowing, expanding, fireball, which cooled off into darkness after a few million years. The second time was hundreds of millions of years later, when the cold material condensed into dense suggests under the influence of gravity, and ignited to become the first stars.Sir Martin Rees, Britain’s astronomer royal, named the long interval between these two enlightements the cosmic ‘Dark Age’. The name describes not only the poorly lit conditions, but also the ignorance of astronomers about that period. Nobody knows exactly when the first stars formed, or how they organized themselves into galaxies — or even whether stars were the first luminous objects. They may have been preceded by quasars, which are mysterious, bright spots found at the centres of some galaxies.Now two independent groups of astronomers, one led by Robert Becker of the University of California, Davis, and the other by George Djorgovski of the Caltech, claim to have peered far enough into space with their telescopes (and therefore backwards enough in time) to observe the closing days of the Dark age.The main problem that plagued previous efforts to study the Dark Age was not the lack of suitable telescopes, but rather the lack of suitable things at which to point them. Because these events took place over 13 billion years ago, if astronomers are to have any hope of unravelling them they must study objects that are at least 13 billion light years away. The best prospects are quasars, because they are so bright and compact that they can be seen across vast stretches of space. The energy source that powers a quasar is unknown, although it is suspected to be the intense gravity of a giant black hole. However, at the distances required for the study of Dark Age, even quasars are extremely rare and faint.Recently some members of Dr Becker’s team announced their discovery of the four most distant quasars known. All the new quasars are terribly faint, a challenge that both teams overcame by peering at them through one of the twin Keck telescopes in Hawaii. These are the world’s largest, and can therefore collect the most light. The new work by Dr Becker’s team analysed the light from all four quasars. Three of them appeared to be similar to ordinary, less distant quasars. However, the fourth and most distant, unlike any other quasar ever seen, showed unmistakable signs of being shrouded in a fog because new-born stars and quasars emit mainly ultraviolet light, and hydrogen gas is opaque to ultraviolet. Seeing this fog had been the goal of would-be Dark Age astronomers since 1965, when James Gunn and Bruce Peterson spelled out the technique for using quasars as backlighting beacons to observe the fog’s ultraviolet shadow.The fog prolonged the period of darkness until the heat from the first stars and quasars had the chance to ionise the hydrogen (breaking it into its constituent parts, protons and electrons). Ionised hydrogen is transparent to ultraviolet radiation, so at that moment the fog lifted and the universe became the well-lit place it is today. For this reason, the end of the Dark Age is called the ‘Epoch of Re-ionisation’. Because the ultraviolet shadow is visible only in the most distant of the four quasars, Dr Becker’s team concluded that the fog had dissipated completely by the time the universe was about 900 million years old, and oneseventh of its current size.In the passage, the Dark Age refers to
219980. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.A. Although there are large regional variations, it is not infrequent to find a large number of people sitting here and there and doing nothing.B. Once in office, they receive friends and relatives who feel free to call any time without prior appointment.C. While working, one is struck by the slow and clumsy actions and reactions, indifferent attitudes, procedure rather than outcome orientation, and the lack of consideration for others.D. Even those who are employed often come late to the office and leave early unless they are forced to be punctual.E. Work is not intrinsically valued in India.F. Quite often people visit ailing friends and relatives or go out of their way to help them in their personal matters even during office hours.[CAT 2001]
219981. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.A. But in the industrial era destroying the enemy’s productive capacity means bombing the factories which are located in the cities.B. So in the agrarian era, if you need to destroy the enemy’s productive capacity, what you want to do is burn his fields, or if you’re really vicious, salt them.C. Now in the information era, destroying the enemy’s productive capacity means destroying the information infrastructure.D. How do you do battle with your enemy?E. The idea is to destroy the enemy’s productive capacity, and depending upon the economic foundation, that productive capacity is different in each case.F. With regard to defence, the purpose of the military is to defend the nation and be prepared to do battle with its enemy.[CAT 2001]
219982. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.A. Michael Hofman, a poet and translator, accepts this sorry fact without approval or complaint.B. But thanklessness and impossibility do not daunt him.C. He acknowledges too — in fact, he returns to the point often — that best translators of poetry always fail at some level.D. Hofman feels passionately about his work and this is clear from his writings.E. In terms of the gap between worth and rewards, translators come somewhere near nurses and street-cleaners.[CAT 2001]
219983. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.A. Passivity is not, of course, universal.B. In areas where there are no lords or laws, or in frontier zones where all men go armed, the attitude of the peasantry may well be different.C. So indeed it may be on the fringe of the unsubmissive.D. However, for most of the soil-bound peasants the problem is not whether to be normally passive or active, but when to pass from one state to another.E. This depends on an assessment of the political situation.[CAT 2001]
219984. Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.A. The situations in which violence occurs and the nature of that violence tends to be clearly defined at least in theory, as in the proverbial Irishman’s question: “Is this a private fight or can anyone join in?”B. So the actual risk to outsiders, though no doubt higher than our societies, is calculable.C. Probably the only uncontrolled applications of force are those of social superiors to social inferiors and even here there are probably some rules.D. However, binding the obligation to kill, members of feuding families engaged in mutual massacre will be genuinely appalled if by some mischance a bystander or outsider is killed.[CAT 2001]
219985. Fill in the Blanks: But _____ are now regularly written not just for tools, but well-established practices, organisations and institutions, not all of which seem to be _____ away.
219986. Fill in the Blanks: The Darwin who _____ is most remarkable for the way in which he _____ the attributes of the world class thinker and head of the household.
219987. Fill in the Blanks: Since her face was free of _____ there was no way to _____ if she appreciated what had happened.
219988. Fill in the Blanks: In this context, the _____ of the British labour movement is particularly _____.
219989. Fill in the Blanks: Indian intellectuals may boast, if they are so inclined, of being _____ to the most elitist among the intellectual _____ of the world.
219990. Pick the word from the alternatives given that is most inappropriate in the given context.Specious: A specious argument is not simply a false one but one that has the ring of truth.
219991. Pick the word from the alternatives given that is most inappropriate in the given context.Obviate: The new mass transit system may obviate the need for the use of personal cars.
219992. Pick the word from the alternatives given that is most inappropriate in the given context.Disuse: Some words fall into disuse as technology makes objects obsolete.
219993. Pick the word from the alternatives given that is most inappropriate in the given context.Parsimonious: The evidence was constructed from very parsimonious scraps of information.
219994. Pick the word from the alternatives given that is most inappropriate in the given context.Facetious: When I suggested that war is a method of controlling population, my father remarked that I was being facetious.
219995. The number of positive integer valued pairs (x, y), satisfying 4x - 17 y = I and x < 1000 is:
219996. Let a, b, c be distinct digits. Consider a two digit number $$'ab'$$ and a three digit number $$'ccb'$$, both defined under the usual decimal number system. If ($$ab^{2} = ccb$$) and $$ccb > 300$$ then the value of b is
219998. Ten points are marked on a straight line and eleven points are marked on another straight line. How many triangles can be constructed with vertices from among the above points?
219999. For a scholarship, at most n candidates out of 2n + I can be selected. If the number of different ways of selection of at least one candidate is 127, the maximum number of candidates that can be selected for the scholarship is:
220000. The speed of a railway engine is 42 Km per hour when no compartment is attached, and the reduction in speed is directly proportional to the square root of the number of compartments attached. If the speed of the train carried by this engine is 24 Km per hour when 9 compartments are attached, the maximum number of compartments that can be carried by the engine is:
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