SBI PO 2016 PYQs

Question 1

Directions (Qs 1-10): Read the following story carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
On January 19th every year, Americans celebrate the life and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., (MLK), a Baptist clergyman turned activist, who is often credited with spearheading the country’s civil rights movement It is thanks to his efforts that America is today a nation where everyone has equal rights, regardless of race, color or creed. MLK who would have celebrated his 86th birthday on January 15th, 2015, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929, a city where racial divide was a way of life. Blacks and whites lived totally disparate lives. They went to different schools, ate at different restaurants and even sat on specially designated seats on buses and trains. Though this did not seem right to the young boy, just like the others, he accepted it as a way of life. Things started to change in the summer of 1944 when 15-year-old MLK left Atlanta to work in the tobacco fields of Simsbury, Connecticut. To his surprise, the black residents in the Northern states were not subjected to the same kind of racial injustice. The young boy expressed his astonishment in a letter he wrote to his father in June saying, “After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all. The white people here are very nice. We go to any place we want to and sit anywhere we want to.” By the end of the summer, the seeds of what would transform MLK into America’s most influential civil rights leader had been firmly planted. In 1954, MLK who was by now an
ordained
Minister and married chose to become pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama, a city that was notorious for its racial discrimination. His
foray
into activism began gradually - by encouraging Montgomery residents to register to vote and join the NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. However, his passive stance changed on December 1st, 1955, after fellow activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to vacate her seat on a public bus for a white passenger. Enraged, MLK asked the black residents of Montgomery to boycott all public transportation. This was no easy request. The buses were the only commute mode for the residents, whose jobs often
entailed
traveling long distances. But they took the challenge not for just one day or month, but a full year!As the news of the boycott spread, black people from other parts of the nation that had similar laws, joined in! In 1956, the activists won their first battle when the Supreme Court of the United States passed a ruling that abolished the transportation segregation law. But MLK was just getting started. He decided to dedicate his life to the cause and spent the next decade traveling around the country,
spurring
all Americans to stand up to segregation in a non-violent peaceful manner by organizing sit-ins, boycotts and protest marches. While he gave many inspiring speeches, his most memorable one was delivered on August 28th, 1963. The events leading to the oft-quoted ‘I have a dream’ speech began in June of that year when President John F. Kennedy asked the US Congress to pass a civil rights bill - one that would give all Americans equal access to public places. To convince government officials to pass the bill, MLK along with other civil rights leaders asked people to demonstrate their support by staging a.peaceful march in Washington D.C. Over 250,000 Americans from all over the country flew, drove, rode buses and even walked, to participate in what the history books now call the March on Washington! It was at this event while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that MLK articulated his dream of living in a country where everyone was treated equally. Unfortunately, the civil rights activist was killed while on a trip to Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, and did not live long enough to see it come true. But had MLK been alive, he sure would have been proud to see how far the country has come in recognizing that everyone is equal - regardless of race, color or creed!

Why did he initially accept discrimination as a way of life?

Accepted Answer

The question implies a lack of agency or understanding. Being young often means lacking the maturity and decision-making skills to challenge societal norms, leading to passive acceptance.

Question 2

Directions (Qs 1-5): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions. Certain words/phrases are given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
Until the 1960s boys spent longer and went further in school than girls, and were more likely to graduate from university. Now,across the rich world and in a growing number of poor countries, the balance has tilted the other way.policymakers once fretted about girls’ lack of confidence in science but this is changing. Sweden has commissioned research into its “boy crisis”. Australia has devised a reading programme called “Boys, Blokes,Books and Bytes”. In just a couple of generations, one gender gap has closed, only for another to open up.The reversal is laid out in a report published on March 5th by the OECD, a Paris-based rich-country think-tank. Boys’ dominance just about endures in maths; at age 15 they are, on average, the equivalent of three months’ schooling ahead of girls. In science the results are fairly even. But in reading, where girls have been ahead for sometime,a gulf has appeared. In all G4 countries and economies in the study,girls outperform boys. The average gap is equivalent to an extra year of schooling. The OECD deems literacy to be the most important skill that it assesses, since further learning depends on it. Sure enough,teenage boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail to achieve basic proficiency in any of maths, reading and science.
Youngsters in this group, with nothing to build on or shine at, are
prone
to drop out of school altogether.To see why boys and girls fares o differently in the classroom, first look at what they do outside it. The average 15-year old girl devotes five and-a-half hours a week to homework,an hour more than the average boy, who spend more time playing video games and trawling the internet. Three-quarters of girls read for pleasure, compared with little more than half of boys. Reading rates are falling everywhere as screens
draw
eyes from pages, but boys are giving up faster. The OECD found that, among boys who do as much homework as the average girl,the gender gap in reading fell by nearly a quarter.
Once in the classroom, boys long to be out of it. They are twice as likely as girls to report thats chool is a “waste of time”, and more often turn up late. Just as a teacher used to struggle to persuade girls that science is not only for men, the OECD now urges parents and policy makers to steer boys away from aversion of masculinity that ignores academic achievement. Boys’ disdain for school might have been less irrational when there were plenty of jobs for uneducated men. But those days have long gone. It may be that a bit of swagger helps in maths,where confidence plays a part in boys’ lead (though it sometimes extends to
delusion
: 12% of boys told the OECD that they are familiar with the mathematical concept of“subjunctive sealing”, a red herring that fooled only 7% of girls.) But their lack of self-discipline drives teachers crazy. The OECD found that boys did much better in its anonymised tests than in teachers assessments. What is behind this discrimination? One possibility is that teachers mark up students who are polite, eager and stay out off lights, all attributes that are more common among girls. In some countries, academic points can even be
docked
for bad behaviour.

Choose the word which isOPPOSITEin meaning to the wordDOCKEDgiven in bold as used in the passage.

Accepted Answer

To 'dock' means to bring a ship or boat into a dock, or to land an aircraft. The opposite action is to raise or lift it, making 'raised' the correct antonym.

Question 3

Directions (Qs 1-10): Read the following story carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
On January 19th every year, Americans celebrate the life and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., (MLK), a Baptist clergyman turned activist, who is often credited with spearheading the country’s civil rights movement It is thanks to his efforts that America is today a nation where everyone has equal rights, regardless of race, color or creed. MLK who would have celebrated his 86th birthday on January 15th, 2015, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929, a city where racial divide was a way of life. Blacks and whites lived totally disparate lives. They went to different schools, ate at different restaurants and even sat on specially designated seats on buses and trains. Though this did not seem right to the young boy, just like the others, he accepted it as a way of life. Things started to change in the summer of 1944 when 15-year-old MLK left Atlanta to work in the tobacco fields of Simsbury, Connecticut. To his surprise, the black residents in the Northern states were not subjected to the same kind of racial injustice. The young boy expressed his astonishment in a letter he wrote to his father in June saying, “After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all. The white people here are very nice. We go to any place we want to and sit anywhere we want to.” By the end of the summer, the seeds of what would transform MLK into America’s most influential civil rights leader had been firmly planted. In 1954, MLK who was by now an
ordained
Minister and married chose to become pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama, a city that was notorious for its racial discrimination. His
foray
into activism began gradually - by encouraging Montgomery residents to register to vote and join the NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. However, his passive stance changed on December 1st, 1955, after fellow activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to vacate her seat on a public bus for a white passenger. Enraged, MLK asked the black residents of Montgomery to boycott all public transportation. This was no easy request. The buses were the only commute mode for the residents, whose jobs often
entailed
traveling long distances. But they took the challenge not for just one day or month, but a full year!As the news of the boycott spread, black people from other parts of the nation that had similar laws, joined in! In 1956, the activists won their first battle when the Supreme Court of the United States passed a ruling that abolished the transportation segregation law. But MLK was just getting started. He decided to dedicate his life to the cause and spent the next decade traveling around the country,
spurring
all Americans to stand up to segregation in a non-violent peaceful manner by organizing sit-ins, boycotts and protest marches. While he gave many inspiring speeches, his most memorable one was delivered on August 28th, 1963. The events leading to the oft-quoted ‘I have a dream’ speech began in June of that year when President John F. Kennedy asked the US Congress to pass a civil rights bill - one that would give all Americans equal access to public places. To convince government officials to pass the bill, MLK along with other civil rights leaders asked people to demonstrate their support by staging a.peaceful march in Washington D.C. Over 250,000 Americans from all over the country flew, drove, rode buses and even walked, to participate in what the history books now call the March on Washington! It was at this event while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that MLK articulated his dream of living in a country where everyone was treated equally. Unfortunately, the civil rights activist was killed while on a trip to Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, and did not live long enough to see it come true. But had MLK been alive, he sure would have been proud to see how far the country has come in recognizing that everyone is equal - regardless of race, color or creed!

What happened when he wentto Simsbury in the summerof 1944?

Accepted Answer

The question asks for a specific event in 1944. The passage states he was 'stupefied by what he saw there' in Simsbury during that time, directly matching option 3.

Question 4

Directions (Qs 1-10): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.Certain words/phrases have been given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions
The expression “the glass ceiling”first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1986 and was then used in the title of an academic article by A.M. Morrison and others published in 1987. Entitled“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Can Women Reach the Top of America’s Largest Corporations?”, it looked at the
persistent
failure of women to climb as far up the corporate ladder as might be expected from their representation in the working population as a whole. The idea behind the expression was that a transparent barrier, a glass ceiling, blocked them.Invisible from the bottom, when women started their careers, it was steely strong in stopping them attaining equality with men later on.It helped explain the fact that in large corporations in Europe and North America women rarely came to account for more than 10% of senior executives and 4%of CEOs and chairmen.
A secondary issue is that of women’s pay. There is evidence that even when women do reach the highest levels of corporate management, they do not receive the same pay as men for the same job; a figure of 75% is often quoted.And rather than getting better over time, the position seems to be
deteriorating
. One survey found that women executives in the United States were earning an even lower percentage of their male counterparts’ remuneration in 2000 than they were in 1995.
So worried was the American government about the issue that in 1991 it set up something called the Glass Ceiling Commission, a 21-member body appointed by the president and Congress and chaired by the labour secretary.The commission focused on barriers in three areas : the filling of management and decision-making positions; skills-enhancing activities; and compensation and reward systems.
The Glass Ceiling Commission“completed its mandate” in 1996 and was disbanded. Needless to say, the problem did not disappear with it. One of the first women to head a major Japanese company, when asked in 2005 what had changed least in Japanese business in the previous 20 years, said: “The mind set of Japanese gentlemen.”
Several theories have been presented to explain the glass ceiling :
⇒ l The time factor : One theory is that the cohorts of first-class female graduates have not yet had time to work through the pipeline and reach the top of the corporate hierarchy. Qualifications for a senior management post usually include a graduate degree and 25 years of continuous work experience.In the early 1970s, when today’s senior managers were graduating, fewer than 5% of law and MBA degrees were being awarded to women. Nowadays, women gain over 40%of all law degrees in the United States and 35% of MBAs.
⇒ Motherhood : Sometimes the blame for the glass ceiling islaid at the door of motherhood.Women are
distracted
from their career path by the need to stay at home and rear children.They are unable to undertake the tasks required to reach the top; for example, extended trips abroad, wearing air miles like battle medals, long evenings “entertaining”clients and changing plans at short notice
⇒ Lack of role models : In her1977 book “Men and Women of the Corporation”, Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggested that because managerial women are so often a token female in their work environment they
stand out
from the rest. This makes them (and their failures)much more visible, and exaggerates the differences between them and the dominant male culture.
Some authors recently have gone so far as to challenge the metaphor of the glass ceiling, arguing that it presents the image of a one-off blockage some where high up the career ladder, whereas in reality there is a whole series of obstacles along the way that hold women back.

Worried by the poor participation of women in America’s largest corporations, the government appointed a 21– member body chaired by the labour secretary. Which of the following area(s) was/were of their focus?I. Employment for management and decision making positions.II. How to enhance the women’s skillsIII. How to improve women’s presence in duty and their working hours.

Accepted Answer

The body focused on increasing women's representation in management and decision-making roles, and enhancing their skills to achieve this. Improving duty presence and working hours was not a primary focus.

Question 5

Directions (Qs 1-10): Read the following story carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
On January 19th every year, Americans celebrate the life and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., (MLK), a Baptist clergyman turned activist, who is often credited with spearheading the country’s civil rights movement It is thanks to his efforts that America is today a nation where everyone has equal rights, regardless of race, color or creed. MLK who would have celebrated his 86th birthday on January 15th, 2015, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929, a city where racial divide was a way of life. Blacks and whites lived totally disparate lives. They went to different schools, ate at different restaurants and even sat on specially designated seats on buses and trains. Though this did not seem right to the young boy, just like the others, he accepted it as a way of life. Things started to change in the summer of 1944 when 15-year-old MLK left Atlanta to work in the tobacco fields of Simsbury, Connecticut. To his surprise, the black residents in the Northern states were not subjected to the same kind of racial injustice. The young boy expressed his astonishment in a letter he wrote to his father in June saying, “After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all. The white people here are very nice. We go to any place we want to and sit anywhere we want to.” By the end of the summer, the seeds of what would transform MLK into America’s most influential civil rights leader had been firmly planted. In 1954, MLK who was by now an
ordained
Minister and married chose to become pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama, a city that was notorious for its racial discrimination. His
foray
into activism began gradually - by encouraging Montgomery residents to register to vote and join the NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. However, his passive stance changed on December 1st, 1955, after fellow activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to vacate her seat on a public bus for a white passenger. Enraged, MLK asked the black residents of Montgomery to boycott all public transportation. This was no easy request. The buses were the only commute mode for the residents, whose jobs often
entailed
traveling long distances. But they took the challenge not for just one day or month, but a full year!As the news of the boycott spread, black people from other parts of the nation that had similar laws, joined in! In 1956, the activists won their first battle when the Supreme Court of the United States passed a ruling that abolished the transportation segregation law. But MLK was just getting started. He decided to dedicate his life to the cause and spent the next decade traveling around the country,
spurring
all Americans to stand up to segregation in a non-violent peaceful manner by organizing sit-ins, boycotts and protest marches. While he gave many inspiring speeches, his most memorable one was delivered on August 28th, 1963. The events leading to the oft-quoted ‘I have a dream’ speech began in June of that year when President John F. Kennedy asked the US Congress to pass a civil rights bill - one that would give all Americans equal access to public places. To convince government officials to pass the bill, MLK along with other civil rights leaders asked people to demonstrate their support by staging a.peaceful march in Washington D.C. Over 250,000 Americans from all over the country flew, drove, rode buses and even walked, to participate in what the history books now call the March on Washington! It was at this event while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that MLK articulated his dream of living in a country where everyone was treated equally. Unfortunately, the civil rights activist was killed while on a trip to Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, and did not live long enough to see it come true. But had MLK been alive, he sure would have been proud to see how far the country has come in recognizing that everyone is equal - regardless of race, color or creed!

Why MLK was enraged?

Accepted Answer

Martin Luther King Jr. was enraged when Rosa Parks, a fellow activist, was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Question 6

Directions (Qs 1-10): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.Certain words/phrases have been given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions
The expression “the glass ceiling”first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1986 and was then used in the title of an academic article by A.M. Morrison and others published in 1987. Entitled“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Can Women Reach the Top of America’s Largest Corporations?”, it looked at the
persistent
failure of women to climb as far up the corporate ladder as might be expected from their representation in the working population as a whole. The idea behind the expression was that a transparent barrier, a glass ceiling, blocked them.Invisible from the bottom, when women started their careers, it was steely strong in stopping them attaining equality with men later on.It helped explain the fact that in large corporations in Europe and North America women rarely came to account for more than 10% of senior executives and 4%of CEOs and chairmen.
A secondary issue is that of women’s pay. There is evidence that even when women do reach the highest levels of corporate management, they do not receive the same pay as men for the same job; a figure of 75% is often quoted.And rather than getting better over time, the position seems to be
deteriorating
. One survey found that women executives in the United States were earning an even lower percentage of their male counterparts’ remuneration in 2000 than they were in 1995.
So worried was the American government about the issue that in 1991 it set up something called the Glass Ceiling Commission, a 21-member body appointed by the president and Congress and chaired by the labour secretary.The commission focused on barriers in three areas : the filling of management and decision-making positions; skills-enhancing activities; and compensation and reward systems.
The Glass Ceiling Commission“completed its mandate” in 1996 and was disbanded. Needless to say, the problem did not disappear with it. One of the first women to head a major Japanese company, when asked in 2005 what had changed least in Japanese business in the previous 20 years, said: “The mind set of Japanese gentlemen.”
Several theories have been presented to explain the glass ceiling :
⇒ l The time factor : One theory is that the cohorts of first-class female graduates have not yet had time to work through the pipeline and reach the top of the corporate hierarchy. Qualifications for a senior management post usually include a graduate degree and 25 years of continuous work experience.In the early 1970s, when today’s senior managers were graduating, fewer than 5% of law and MBA degrees were being awarded to women. Nowadays, women gain over 40%of all law degrees in the United States and 35% of MBAs.
⇒ Motherhood : Sometimes the blame for the glass ceiling islaid at the door of motherhood.Women are
distracted
from their career path by the need to stay at home and rear children.They are unable to undertake the tasks required to reach the top; for example, extended trips abroad, wearing air miles like battle medals, long evenings “entertaining”clients and changing plans at short notice
⇒ Lack of role models : In her1977 book “Men and Women of the Corporation”, Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggested that because managerial women are so often a token female in their work environment they
stand out
from the rest. This makes them (and their failures)much more visible, and exaggerates the differences between them and the dominant male culture.
Some authors recently have gone so far as to challenge the metaphor of the glass ceiling, arguing that it presents the image of a one-off blockage some where high up the career ladder, whereas in reality there is a whole series of obstacles along the way that hold women back.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE Directions (1–10) : Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.Certain words/phrases have been given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions The expression “the glass ceiling”first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1986 and was then used in the title of an academic article by A.M. Morrison and others published in 1987. Entitled“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Can Women Reach the Top of America’s Largest Corporations?”, it looked at the persistent failure of women to climb as far up the corporate ladder as might be expected from their representation in the working population as a whole. The idea behind the expression was that a transparent barrier, a glass ceiling, blocked them.Invisible from the bottom, when women started their careers, it was steely strong in stopping them attaining equality with men later on.It helped explain the fact that in large corporations in Europe and North America women rarely came to account for more than 10% of senior executives and 4%of CEOs and chairmen. A secondary issue is that of women’s pay. There is evidence that even when women do reach the highest levels of corporate management, they do not receive the same pay as men for the same job; a figure of 75% is often quoted.And rather than getting better over time, the position seems to be deteriorating . One survey found that women executives in the United States were earning an even lower percentage of their male counterparts’ remuneration in 2000 than they were in 1995. So worried was the American government about the issue that in 1991 it set up something called the Glass Ceiling Commission, a 21-member body appointed by the president and Congress and chaired by the labour secretary.The commission focused on barriers in three areas : the filling of management and decision-making positions; skills-enhancing activities; and compensation and reward systems. The Glass Ceiling Commission“completed its mandate” in 1996 and was disbanded. Needless to say, the problem did not disappear with it. One of the first women to head a major Japanese company, when asked in 2005 what had changed least in Japanese business in the previous 20 years, said: “The mind set of Japanese gentlemen.” Several theories have been presented to explain the glass ceiling : ⇒ l The time factor : One theory is that the cohorts of first-class female graduates have not yet had time to work through the pipeline and reach the top of the corporate hierarchy. Qualifications for a senior management post usually include a graduate degree and 25 years of continuous work experience.In the early 1970s, when today’s senior managers were graduating, fewer than 5% of law and MBA degrees were being awarded to women. Nowadays, women gain over 40%of all law degrees in the United States and 35% of MBAs. ⇒ Motherhood : Sometimes the blame for the glass ceiling islaid at the door of motherhood.Women are distracted from their career path by the need to stay at home and rear children.They are unable to undertake the tasks required to reach the top; for example, extended trips abroad, wearing air miles like battle medals, long evenings “entertaining”clients and changing plans at short notice ⇒ Lack of role models : In her1977 book “Men and Women of the Corporation”, Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggested that because managerial women are so often a token female in their work environment they stand out from the rest. This makes them (and their failures)much more visible, and exaggerates the differences between them and the dominant male culture. Some authors recently have gone so far as to challenge the metaphor of the glass ceiling, arguing that it presents the image of a one-off blockage some where high up the career ladder, whereas in reality there is a whole series of obstacles along the way that hold women back.

What should be the most appropriate title of the given passage?

Accepted Answer

The idiom 'breaking the glass ceiling' refers to overcoming invisible barriers for women in professional advancement. This is the most appropriate title for a passage about women's corporate rise.

Question 7

Directions (Qs 1-5): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions. Certain words/phrases are given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
Until the 1960s boys spent longer and went further in school than girls, and were more likely to graduate from university. Now,across the rich world and in a growing number of poor countries, the balance has tilted the other way.policymakers once fretted about girls’ lack of confidence in science but this is changing. Sweden has commissioned research into its “boy crisis”. Australia has devised a reading programme called “Boys, Blokes,Books and Bytes”. In just a couple of generations, one gender gap has closed, only for another to open up.The reversal is laid out in a report published on March 5th by the OECD, a Paris-based rich-country think-tank. Boys’ dominance just about endures in maths; at age 15 they are, on average, the equivalent of three months’ schooling ahead of girls. In science the results are fairly even. But in reading, where girls have been ahead for sometime,a gulf has appeared. In all G4 countries and economies in the study,girls outperform boys. The average gap is equivalent to an extra year of schooling. The OECD deems literacy to be the most important skill that it assesses, since further learning depends on it. Sure enough,teenage boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail to achieve basic proficiency in any of maths, reading and science.
Youngsters in this group, with nothing to build on or shine at, are
prone
to drop out of school altogether.To see why boys and girls fares o differently in the classroom, first look at what they do outside it. The average 15-year old girl devotes five and-a-half hours a week to homework,an hour more than the average boy, who spend more time playing video games and trawling the internet. Three-quarters of girls read for pleasure, compared with little more than half of boys. Reading rates are falling everywhere as screens
draw
eyes from pages, but boys are giving up faster. The OECD found that, among boys who do as much homework as the average girl,the gender gap in reading fell by nearly a quarter.
Once in the classroom, boys long to be out of it. They are twice as likely as girls to report thats chool is a “waste of time”, and more often turn up late. Just as a teacher used to struggle to persuade girls that science is not only for men, the OECD now urges parents and policy makers to steer boys away from aversion of masculinity that ignores academic achievement. Boys’ disdain for school might have been less irrational when there were plenty of jobs for uneducated men. But those days have long gone. It may be that a bit of swagger helps in maths,where confidence plays a part in boys’ lead (though it sometimes extends to
delusion
: 12% of boys told the OECD that they are familiar with the mathematical concept of“subjunctive sealing”, a red herring that fooled only 7% of girls.) But their lack of self-discipline drives teachers crazy. The OECD found that boys did much better in its anonymised tests than in teachers assessments. What is behind this discrimination? One possibility is that teachers mark up students who are polite, eager and stay out off lights, all attributes that are more common among girls. In some countries, academic points can even be
docked
for bad behaviour.

Choose the word/group of words which is most nearly theSAMEin meaning as the wordDRAWgiven in bold as used in the passage.

Accepted Answer

Without the passage, we must consider common meanings. 'Draw' often means to depict or represent something visually or conceptually. Thus, 'represent' is the closest synonym.

Question 8

Directions (Qs 1-10): Read the following story carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
On January 19th every year, Americans celebrate the life and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., (MLK), a Baptist clergyman turned activist, who is often credited with spearheading the country’s civil rights movement It is thanks to his efforts that America is today a nation where everyone has equal rights, regardless of race, color or creed. MLK who would have celebrated his 86th birthday on January 15th, 2015, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929, a city where racial divide was a way of life. Blacks and whites lived totally disparate lives. They went to different schools, ate at different restaurants and even sat on specially designated seats on buses and trains. Though this did not seem right to the young boy, just like the others, he accepted it as a way of life. Things started to change in the summer of 1944 when 15-year-old MLK left Atlanta to work in the tobacco fields of Simsbury, Connecticut. To his surprise, the black residents in the Northern states were not subjected to the same kind of racial injustice. The young boy expressed his astonishment in a letter he wrote to his father in June saying, “After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all. The white people here are very nice. We go to any place we want to and sit anywhere we want to.” By the end of the summer, the seeds of what would transform MLK into America’s most influential civil rights leader had been firmly planted. In 1954, MLK who was by now an
ordained
Minister and married chose to become pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama, a city that was notorious for its racial discrimination. His
foray
into activism began gradually - by encouraging Montgomery residents to register to vote and join the NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. However, his passive stance changed on December 1st, 1955, after fellow activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to vacate her seat on a public bus for a white passenger. Enraged, MLK asked the black residents of Montgomery to boycott all public transportation. This was no easy request. The buses were the only commute mode for the residents, whose jobs often
entailed
traveling long distances. But they took the challenge not for just one day or month, but a full year!As the news of the boycott spread, black people from other parts of the nation that had similar laws, joined in! In 1956, the activists won their first battle when the Supreme Court of the United States passed a ruling that abolished the transportation segregation law. But MLK was just getting started. He decided to dedicate his life to the cause and spent the next decade traveling around the country,
spurring
all Americans to stand up to segregation in a non-violent peaceful manner by organizing sit-ins, boycotts and protest marches. While he gave many inspiring speeches, his most memorable one was delivered on August 28th, 1963. The events leading to the oft-quoted ‘I have a dream’ speech began in June of that year when President John F. Kennedy asked the US Congress to pass a civil rights bill - one that would give all Americans equal access to public places. To convince government officials to pass the bill, MLK along with other civil rights leaders asked people to demonstrate their support by staging a.peaceful march in Washington D.C. Over 250,000 Americans from all over the country flew, drove, rode buses and even walked, to participate in what the history books now call the March on Washington! It was at this event while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that MLK articulated his dream of living in a country where everyone was treated equally. Unfortunately, the civil rights activist was killed while on a trip to Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, and did not live long enough to see it come true. But had MLK been alive, he sure would have been proud to see how far the country has come in recognizing that everyone is equal - regardless of race, color or creed!

What was the first victory won by the activists?

Accepted Answer

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, a key event in the Civil Rights Movement, directly led to the Supreme Court ruling against segregated public transportation, marking the first major victory.

Question 9

Directions (Qs 1-10): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.Certain words/phrases have been given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions
The expression “the glass ceiling”first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1986 and was then used in the title of an academic article by A.M. Morrison and others published in 1987. Entitled“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Can Women Reach the Top of America’s Largest Corporations?”, it looked at the
persistent
failure of women to climb as far up the corporate ladder as might be expected from their representation in the working population as a whole. The idea behind the expression was that a transparent barrier, a glass ceiling, blocked them.Invisible from the bottom, when women started their careers, it was steely strong in stopping them attaining equality with men later on.It helped explain the fact that in large corporations in Europe and North America women rarely came to account for more than 10% of senior executives and 4%of CEOs and chairmen.
A secondary issue is that of women’s pay. There is evidence that even when women do reach the highest levels of corporate management, they do not receive the same pay as men for the same job; a figure of 75% is often quoted.And rather than getting better over time, the position seems to be
deteriorating
. One survey found that women executives in the United States were earning an even lower percentage of their male counterparts’ remuneration in 2000 than they were in 1995.
So worried was the American government about the issue that in 1991 it set up something called the Glass Ceiling Commission, a 21-member body appointed by the president and Congress and chaired by the labour secretary.The commission focused on barriers in three areas : the filling of management and decision-making positions; skills-enhancing activities; and compensation and reward systems.
The Glass Ceiling Commission“completed its mandate” in 1996 and was disbanded. Needless to say, the problem did not disappear with it. One of the first women to head a major Japanese company, when asked in 2005 what had changed least in Japanese business in the previous 20 years, said: “The mind set of Japanese gentlemen.”
Several theories have been presented to explain the glass ceiling :
⇒ l The time factor : One theory is that the cohorts of first-class female graduates have not yet had time to work through the pipeline and reach the top of the corporate hierarchy. Qualifications for a senior management post usually include a graduate degree and 25 years of continuous work experience.In the early 1970s, when today’s senior managers were graduating, fewer than 5% of law and MBA degrees were being awarded to women. Nowadays, women gain over 40%of all law degrees in the United States and 35% of MBAs.
⇒ Motherhood : Sometimes the blame for the glass ceiling islaid at the door of motherhood.Women are
distracted
from their career path by the need to stay at home and rear children.They are unable to undertake the tasks required to reach the top; for example, extended trips abroad, wearing air miles like battle medals, long evenings “entertaining”clients and changing plans at short notice
⇒ Lack of role models : In her1977 book “Men and Women of the Corporation”, Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggested that because managerial women are so often a token female in their work environment they
stand out
from the rest. This makes them (and their failures)much more visible, and exaggerates the differences between them and the dominant male culture.
Some authors recently have gone so far as to challenge the metaphor of the glass ceiling, arguing that it presents the image of a one-off blockage some where high up the career ladder, whereas in reality there is a whole series of obstacles along the way that hold women back.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE Directions (1–10) : Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.Certain words/phrases have been given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions The expression “the glass ceiling”first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1986 and was then used in the title of an academic article by A.M. Morrison and others published in 1987. Entitled“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Can Women Reach the Top of America’s Largest Corporations?”, it looked at the persistent failure of women to climb as far up the corporate ladder as might be expected from their representation in the working population as a whole. The idea behind the expression was that a transparent barrier, a glass ceiling, blocked them.Invisible from the bottom, when women started their careers, it was steely strong in stopping them attaining equality with men later on.It helped explain the fact that in large corporations in Europe and North America women rarely came to account for more than 10% of senior executives and 4%of CEOs and chairmen. A secondary issue is that of women’s pay. There is evidence that even when women do reach the highest levels of corporate management, they do not receive the same pay as men for the same job; a figure of 75% is often quoted.And rather than getting better over time, the position seems to be deteriorating . One survey found that women executives in the United States were earning an even lower percentage of their male counterparts’ remuneration in 2000 than they were in 1995. So worried was the American government about the issue that in 1991 it set up something called the Glass Ceiling Commission, a 21-member body appointed by the president and Congress and chaired by the labour secretary.The commission focused on barriers in three areas : the filling of management and decision-making positions; skills-enhancing activities; and compensation and reward systems. The Glass Ceiling Commission“completed its mandate” in 1996 and was disbanded. Needless to say, the problem did not disappear with it. One of the first women to head a major Japanese company, when asked in 2005 what had changed least in Japanese business in the previous 20 years, said: “The mind set of Japanese gentlemen.” Several theories have been presented to explain the glass ceiling : ⇒ l The time factor : One theory is that the cohorts of first-class female graduates have not yet had time to work through the pipeline and reach the top of the corporate hierarchy. Qualifications for a senior management post usually include a graduate degree and 25 years of continuous work experience.In the early 1970s, when today’s senior managers were graduating, fewer than 5% of law and MBA degrees were being awarded to women. Nowadays, women gain over 40%of all law degrees in the United States and 35% of MBAs. ⇒ Motherhood : Sometimes the blame for the glass ceiling islaid at the door of motherhood.Women are distracted from their career path by the need to stay at home and rear children.They are unable to undertake the tasks required to reach the top; for example, extended trips abroad, wearing air miles like battle medals, long evenings “entertaining”clients and changing plans at short notice ⇒ Lack of role models : In her1977 book “Men and Women of the Corporation”, Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggested that because managerial women are so often a token female in their work environment they stand out from the rest. This makes them (and their failures)much more visible, and exaggerates the differences between them and the dominant male culture. Some authors recently have gone so far as to challenge the metaphor of the glass ceiling, arguing that it presents the image of a one-off blockage some where high up the career ladder, whereas in reality there is a whole series of obstacles along the way that hold women back.

Which of the following statements is not true in the context of the given passage?

Accepted Answer

The passage states that the term 'glass ceiling' first appeared in a Wall Street Journal article, not an academic article by A.M. Morrison. Therefore, statement 2 is not true.

Question 10

Directions (Qs 1-10): Read the following story carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
On January 19th every year, Americans celebrate the life and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., (MLK), a Baptist clergyman turned activist, who is often credited with spearheading the country’s civil rights movement It is thanks to his efforts that America is today a nation where everyone has equal rights, regardless of race, color or creed. MLK who would have celebrated his 86th birthday on January 15th, 2015, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929, a city where racial divide was a way of life. Blacks and whites lived totally disparate lives. They went to different schools, ate at different restaurants and even sat on specially designated seats on buses and trains. Though this did not seem right to the young boy, just like the others, he accepted it as a way of life. Things started to change in the summer of 1944 when 15-year-old MLK left Atlanta to work in the tobacco fields of Simsbury, Connecticut. To his surprise, the black residents in the Northern states were not subjected to the same kind of racial injustice. The young boy expressed his astonishment in a letter he wrote to his father in June saying, “After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all. The white people here are very nice. We go to any place we want to and sit anywhere we want to.” By the end of the summer, the seeds of what would transform MLK into America’s most influential civil rights leader had been firmly planted. In 1954, MLK who was by now an
ordained
Minister and married chose to become pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama, a city that was notorious for its racial discrimination. His
foray
into activism began gradually - by encouraging Montgomery residents to register to vote and join the NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. However, his passive stance changed on December 1st, 1955, after fellow activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to vacate her seat on a public bus for a white passenger. Enraged, MLK asked the black residents of Montgomery to boycott all public transportation. This was no easy request. The buses were the only commute mode for the residents, whose jobs often
entailed
traveling long distances. But they took the challenge not for just one day or month, but a full year!As the news of the boycott spread, black people from other parts of the nation that had similar laws, joined in! In 1956, the activists won their first battle when the Supreme Court of the United States passed a ruling that abolished the transportation segregation law. But MLK was just getting started. He decided to dedicate his life to the cause and spent the next decade traveling around the country,
spurring
all Americans to stand up to segregation in a non-violent peaceful manner by organizing sit-ins, boycotts and protest marches. While he gave many inspiring speeches, his most memorable one was delivered on August 28th, 1963. The events leading to the oft-quoted ‘I have a dream’ speech began in June of that year when President John F. Kennedy asked the US Congress to pass a civil rights bill - one that would give all Americans equal access to public places. To convince government officials to pass the bill, MLK along with other civil rights leaders asked people to demonstrate their support by staging a.peaceful march in Washington D.C. Over 250,000 Americans from all over the country flew, drove, rode buses and even walked, to participate in what the history books now call the March on Washington! It was at this event while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that MLK articulated his dream of living in a country where everyone was treated equally. Unfortunately, the civil rights activist was killed while on a trip to Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, and did not live long enough to see it come true. But had MLK been alive, he sure would have been proud to see how far the country has come in recognizing that everyone is equal - regardless of race, color or creed!

What led to the famous “I have a dream” speech?

Accepted Answer

Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, advocating for civil rights legislation, specifically in support of President Kennedy's proposed bill.

Question 11

Directions (Qs 1-10): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.Certain words/phrases have been given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions
The expression “the glass ceiling”first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1986 and was then used in the title of an academic article by A.M. Morrison and others published in 1987. Entitled“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Can Women Reach the Top of America’s Largest Corporations?”, it looked at the
persistent
failure of women to climb as far up the corporate ladder as might be expected from their representation in the working population as a whole. The idea behind the expression was that a transparent barrier, a glass ceiling, blocked them.Invisible from the bottom, when women started their careers, it was steely strong in stopping them attaining equality with men later on.It helped explain the fact that in large corporations in Europe and North America women rarely came to account for more than 10% of senior executives and 4%of CEOs and chairmen.
A secondary issue is that of women’s pay. There is evidence that even when women do reach the highest levels of corporate management, they do not receive the same pay as men for the same job; a figure of 75% is often quoted.And rather than getting better over time, the position seems to be
deteriorating
. One survey found that women executives in the United States were earning an even lower percentage of their male counterparts’ remuneration in 2000 than they were in 1995.
So worried was the American government about the issue that in 1991 it set up something called the Glass Ceiling Commission, a 21-member body appointed by the president and Congress and chaired by the labour secretary.The commission focused on barriers in three areas : the filling of management and decision-making positions; skills-enhancing activities; and compensation and reward systems.
The Glass Ceiling Commission“completed its mandate” in 1996 and was disbanded. Needless to say, the problem did not disappear with it. One of the first women to head a major Japanese company, when asked in 2005 what had changed least in Japanese business in the previous 20 years, said: “The mind set of Japanese gentlemen.”
Several theories have been presented to explain the glass ceiling :
⇒ l The time factor : One theory is that the cohorts of first-class female graduates have not yet had time to work through the pipeline and reach the top of the corporate hierarchy. Qualifications for a senior management post usually include a graduate degree and 25 years of continuous work experience.In the early 1970s, when today’s senior managers were graduating, fewer than 5% of law and MBA degrees were being awarded to women. Nowadays, women gain over 40%of all law degrees in the United States and 35% of MBAs.
⇒ Motherhood : Sometimes the blame for the glass ceiling islaid at the door of motherhood.Women are
distracted
from their career path by the need to stay at home and rear children.They are unable to undertake the tasks required to reach the top; for example, extended trips abroad, wearing air miles like battle medals, long evenings “entertaining”clients and changing plans at short notice
⇒ Lack of role models : In her1977 book “Men and Women of the Corporation”, Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggested that because managerial women are so often a token female in their work environment they
stand out
from the rest. This makes them (and their failures)much more visible, and exaggerates the differences between them and the dominant male culture.
Some authors recently have gone so far as to challenge the metaphor of the glass ceiling, arguing that it presents the image of a one-off blockage some where high up the career ladder, whereas in reality there is a whole series of obstacles along the way that hold women back.

theories have been presented to explain the glass ceiling. Which of the following is/are correct in this regard?I. Because managerial women are so often a token female in their work environment they stand out from the rest.II. Sometimes the blame for glass ceiling is laid at the door of motherhood.III. The cohorts of first–class female graduates have not yet had time to work through the pipeline and reach the top of the corporate hierarchy.

Accepted Answer

All three statements (I, II, and III) are recognized theories or contributing factors to the glass ceiling phenomenon, explaining barriers women face in career advancement.

Question 12

Directions (Qs 1-5): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions. Certain words/phrases are given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
Until the 1960s boys spent longer and went further in school than girls, and were more likely to graduate from university. Now,across the rich world and in a growing number of poor countries, the balance has tilted the other way.policymakers once fretted about girls’ lack of confidence in science but this is changing. Sweden has commissioned research into its “boy crisis”. Australia has devised a reading programme called “Boys, Blokes,Books and Bytes”. In just a couple of generations, one gender gap has closed, only for another to open up.The reversal is laid out in a report published on March 5th by the OECD, a Paris-based rich-country think-tank. Boys’ dominance just about endures in maths; at age 15 they are, on average, the equivalent of three months’ schooling ahead of girls. In science the results are fairly even. But in reading, where girls have been ahead for sometime,a gulf has appeared. In all G4 countries and economies in the study,girls outperform boys. The average gap is equivalent to an extra year of schooling. The OECD deems literacy to be the most important skill that it assesses, since further learning depends on it. Sure enough,teenage boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail to achieve basic proficiency in any of maths, reading and science.
Youngsters in this group, with nothing to build on or shine at, are
prone
to drop out of school altogether.To see why boys and girls fares o differently in the classroom, first look at what they do outside it. The average 15-year old girl devotes five and-a-half hours a week to homework,an hour more than the average boy, who spend more time playing video games and trawling the internet. Three-quarters of girls read for pleasure, compared with little more than half of boys. Reading rates are falling everywhere as screens
draw
eyes from pages, but boys are giving up faster. The OECD found that, among boys who do as much homework as the average girl,the gender gap in reading fell by nearly a quarter.
Once in the classroom, boys long to be out of it. They are twice as likely as girls to report thats chool is a “waste of time”, and more often turn up late. Just as a teacher used to struggle to persuade girls that science is not only for men, the OECD now urges parents and policy makers to steer boys away from aversion of masculinity that ignores academic achievement. Boys’ disdain for school might have been less irrational when there were plenty of jobs for uneducated men. But those days have long gone. It may be that a bit of swagger helps in maths,where confidence plays a part in boys’ lead (though it sometimes extends to
delusion
: 12% of boys told the OECD that they are familiar with the mathematical concept of“subjunctive sealing”, a red herring that fooled only 7% of girls.) But their lack of self-discipline drives teachers crazy. The OECD found that boys did much better in its anonymised tests than in teachers assessments. What is behind this discrimination? One possibility is that teachers mark up students who are polite, eager and stay out off lights, all attributes that are more common among girls. In some countries, academic points can even be
docked
for bad behaviour.

Choose the word/group of words which is most nearly theSAMEin meaning as the wordPRONEgiven in bold as used in the passage.

Accepted Answer

In the context of the passage, 'prone' means having a tendency or likelihood to do something. 'Likely' accurately conveys this meaning.

Question 13

Directions (Qs 1-10): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.Certain words/phrases have been given in
bold
to help you locate them while answering some of the questions
The expression “the glass ceiling”first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1986 and was then used in the title of an academic article by A.M. Morrison and others published in 1987. Entitled“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Can Women Reach the Top of America’s Largest Corporations?”, it looked at the
persistent
failure of women to climb as far up the corporate ladder as might be expected from their representation in the working population as a whole. The idea behind the expression was that a transparent barrier, a glass ceiling, blocked them.Invisible from the bottom, when women started their careers, it was steely strong in stopping them attaining equality with men later on.It helped explain the fact that in large corporations in Europe and North America women rarely came to account for more than 10% of senior executives and 4%of CEOs and chairmen.
A secondary issue is that of women’s pay. There is evidence that even when women do reach the highest levels of corporate management, they do not receive the same pay as men for the same job; a figure of 75% is often quoted.And rather than getting better over time, the position seems to be
deteriorating
. One survey found that women executives in the United States were earning an even lower percentage of their male counterparts’ remuneration in 2000 than they were in 1995.
So worried was the American government about the issue that in 1991 it set up something called the Glass Ceiling Commission, a 21-member body appointed by the president and Congress and chaired by the labour secretary.The commission focused on barriers in three areas : the filling of management and decision-making positions; skills-enhancing activities; and compensation and reward systems.
The Glass Ceiling Commission“completed its mandate” in 1996 and was disbanded. Needless to say, the problem did not disappear with it. One of the first women to head a major Japanese company, when asked in 2005 what had changed least in Japanese business in the previous 20 years, said: “The mind set of Japanese gentlemen.”
Several theories have been presented to explain the glass ceiling :
⇒ l The time factor : One theory is that the cohorts of first-class female graduates have not yet had time to work through the pipeline and reach the top of the corporate hierarchy. Qualifications for a senior management post usually include a graduate degree and 25 years of continuous work experience.In the early 1970s, when today’s senior managers were graduating, fewer than 5% of law and MBA degrees were being awarded to women. Nowadays, women gain over 40%of all law degrees in the United States and 35% of MBAs.
⇒ Motherhood : Sometimes the blame for the glass ceiling islaid at the door of motherhood.Women are
distracted
from their career path by the need to stay at home and rear children.They are unable to undertake the tasks required to reach the top; for example, extended trips abroad, wearing air miles like battle medals, long evenings “entertaining”clients and changing plans at short notice
⇒ Lack of role models : In her1977 book “Men and Women of the Corporation”, Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggested that because managerial women are so often a token female in their work environment they
stand out
from the rest. This makes them (and their failures)much more visible, and exaggerates the differences between them and the dominant male culture.
Some authors recently have gone so far as to challenge the metaphor of the glass ceiling, arguing that it presents the image of a one-off blockage some where high up the career ladder, whereas in reality there is a whole series of obstacles along the way that hold women back.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE Directions (1–10) : Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.Certain words/phrases have been given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions The expression “the glass ceiling”first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1986 and was then used in the title of an academic article by A.M. Morrison and others published in 1987. Entitled“Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Can Women Reach the Top of America’s Largest Corporations?”, it looked at the persistent failure of women to climb as far up the corporate ladder as might be expected from their representation in the working population as a whole. The idea behind the expression was that a transparent barrier, a glass ceiling, blocked them.Invisible from the bottom, when women started their careers, it was steely strong in stopping them attaining equality with men later on.It helped explain the fact that in large corporations in Europe and North America women rarely came to account for more than 10% of senior executives and 4%of CEOs and chairmen. A secondary issue is that of women’s pay. There is evidence that even when women do reach the highest levels of corporate management, they do not receive the same pay as men for the same job; a figure of 75% is often quoted.And rather than getting better over time, the position seems to be deteriorating . One survey found that women executives in the United States were earning an even lower percentage of their male counterparts’ remuneration in 2000 than they were in 1995. So worried was the American government about the issue that in 1991 it set up something called the Glass Ceiling Commission, a 21-member body appointed by the president and Congress and chaired by the labour secretary.The commission focused on barriers in three areas : the filling of management and decision-making positions; skills-enhancing activities; and compensation and reward systems. The Glass Ceiling Commission“completed its mandate” in 1996 and was disbanded. Needless to say, the problem did not disappear with it. One of the first women to head a major Japanese company, when asked in 2005 what had changed least in Japanese business in the previous 20 years, said: “The mind set of Japanese gentlemen.” Several theories have been presented to explain the glass ceiling : ⇒ l The time factor : One theory is that the cohorts of first-class female graduates have not yet had time to work through the pipeline and reach the top of the corporate hierarchy. Qualifications for a senior management post usually include a graduate degree and 25 years of continuous work experience.In the early 1970s, when today’s senior managers were graduating, fewer than 5% of law and MBA degrees were being awarded to women. Nowadays, women gain over 40%of all law degrees in the United States and 35% of MBAs. ⇒ Motherhood : Sometimes the blame for the glass ceiling islaid at the door of motherhood.Women are distracted from their career path by the need to stay at home and rear children.They are unable to undertake the tasks required to reach the top; for example, extended trips abroad, wearing air miles like battle medals, long evenings “entertaining”clients and changing plans at short notice ⇒ Lack of role models : In her1977 book “Men and Women of the Corporation”, Rosabeth Moss Kanter suggested that because managerial women are so often a token female in their work environment they stand out from the rest. This makes them (and their failures)much more visible, and exaggerates the differences between them and the dominant male culture. Some authors recently have gone so far as to challenge the metaphor of the glass ceiling, arguing that it presents the image of a one-off blockage some where high up the career ladder, whereas in reality there is a whole series of obstacles along the way that hold women back.

Select the correct statement in the context of the given passage.

Accepted Answer

The correct statement is option 4, as the passage explicitly mentions the Glass Ceiling Commission completed its mandate and was disbanded in 1996. This is a direct factual recall.

Question 14

Which of the following factors can have an impact on results of boys in school ?(A) Perceptions of teachers.(B) Societal attitude towards educational achievement and boys.(C) Overconfidence of male students.

Accepted Answer

All listed factors—teacher perceptions, societal attitudes, and male student overconfidence—can influence boys' school results. Each plays a role in shaping academic outcomes.

Question 15

Directions (Qs 7-8): Which oneof the following words is most similarin meaning to the word givenin bold letters in the passage?

Select the word most SIMILAR in meaning to the given word.

Persistent

Accepted Answer

Persistent means continuing firmly or obstinately in a course of action. Unrelenting means not yielding in strength, severity, or determination. Thus, 'unrelenting' is the closest synonym, making it the antonym of the implied opposite.

Question 16

Directions (Qs 6-15): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions. Certain words/phrases are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions
What is immediately needed today is the establishment of a World Government or an International Federation of mankind. It is the utmost necessity of the world today, and all those persons who wish to see all human beings happy and prosperous naturally feel it keenly. Of course, at times we feel that many of the problems of our political, social, linguistic and cultural life would come to an end if there were one Government allover the world. Travellers, businessmen,seekers of knowledge and teachers of
righteousness
know very well that
great impediments
and obstructions are faced by them when they pass from one country to another, exchange goods, get information, and make an effort to spread their good gospel among their fellow-men. In the past, religious sects divided one set of people against another, colour of skin or shape of the body set one against the other.
But today when philosophical light has exploded the darkness that was created by religious differences,and when scientific knowledge has falsified the superstitions,they have enabled human beings of all religious views and of all races and colours to come infrequent contact with one another.It is the governments of various countries that keep people of one country apart from, those of another. They create artificial barriers,unnatural distinctions, unhealthy isolation, unnecessary fears and dangers in the minds of common men who by their nature want to live in friendship with their fellow-men. But all these evils would cease to exist if there were one Government all over the world.

What is the urgent need of the world today?

Accepted Answer

The concept of a world government is often cited as the ultimate solution for global peace and order, addressing various international challenges comprehensively.

Question 17

Directions (Qs 6-15): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions. Certain words/phrases are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions
What is immediately needed today is the establishment of a World Government or an International Federation of mankind. It is the utmost necessity of the world today, and all those persons who wish to see all human beings happy and prosperous naturally feel it keenly. Of course, at times we feel that many of the problems of our political, social, linguistic and cultural life would come to an end if there were one Government allover the world. Travellers, businessmen,seekers of knowledge and teachers of
righteousness
know very well that
great impediments
and obstructions are faced by them when they pass from one country to another, exchange goods, get information, and make an effort to spread their good gospel among their fellow-men. In the past, religious sects divided one set of people against another, colour of skin or shape of the body set one against the other.
But today when philosophical light has exploded the darkness that was created by religious differences,and when scientific knowledge has falsified the superstitions,they have enabled human beings of all religious views and of all races and colours to come infrequent contact with one another.It is the governments of various countries that keep people of one country apart from, those of another. They create artificial barriers,unnatural distinctions, unhealthy isolation, unnecessary fears and dangers in the minds of common men who by their nature want to live in friendship with their fellow-men. But all these evils would cease to exist if there were one Government all over the world.

What will the world Government be expected to do?

Accepted Answer

The passage implies that a world government would foster moral regeneration, suggesting a deeper societal change beyond just ending wars or interplanetary contact.

Question 18

Choose the word which isOPPOSITEin meaning to the wordDELUSIONgiven in bold as used in the passage.

Accepted Answer

Delusion means a false belief or impression. The opposite of a false belief is something that is true and factual, which is reality.

Question 19

Directions (Qs 6-15): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions. Certain words/phrases are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions
What is immediately needed today is the establishment of a World Government or an International Federation of mankind. It is the utmost necessity of the world today, and all those persons who wish to see all human beings happy and prosperous naturally feel it keenly. Of course, at times we feel that many of the problems of our political, social, linguistic and cultural life would come to an end if there were one Government allover the world. Travellers, businessmen,seekers of knowledge and teachers of
righteousness
know very well that
great impediments
and obstructions are faced by them when they pass from one country to another, exchange goods, get information, and make an effort to spread their good gospel among their fellow-men. In the past, religious sects divided one set of people against another, colour of skin or shape of the body set one against the other.
But today when philosophical light has exploded the darkness that was created by religious differences,and when scientific knowledge has falsified the superstitions,they have enabled human beings of all religious views and of all races and colours to come infrequent contact with one another.It is the governments of various countries that keep people of one country apart from, those of another. They create artificial barriers,unnatural distinctions, unhealthy isolation, unnecessary fears and dangers in the minds of common men who by their nature want to live in friendship with their fellow-men. But all these evils would cease to exist if there were one Government all over the world.

Choose the word which is SIMILAR in meaning as the word “righteousness” as used in the passage.

Accepted Answer

Righteousness means morally right or justifiable. Rectitude is a direct synonym, meaning morally correct behavior or thinking. Therefore, option 1 is the correct answer.

Question 20

Directions (Qs 9-10): Which one of the following words is most opposite in meaning to the word given in bold letters in the passage?

Select the word most OPPOSITE in meaning to the given word.

Deteriorate

Accepted Answer

The word 'deteriorate' means to become progressively worse. Therefore, its antonym, meaning to become better, is 'improve'.