Arun Sharma and Meenakshi Upadhyay Solutions for Chapter: New Verbal Question Types, Exercise 10: Exercise

The passage is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text:

Once upon a time there was a French woman named Mathilda who made it her life's mission to save two of everything. Not just a spare for every possible eventuality-filling every cupboard to bursting, littering her cellar but a twin for every object she owned, right down to table lamps. This hoarding made no sense at all, until it emerged that her grandfather once saved his family's lives during the war by producing a spare reel of thread for a German soldier who needed to repair his uniform. Without that favour, they could have died. And so even as an adult, she could only feel safe so long as she had one of everything in reserve.

The following passage is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text:

Recent experiment shows that a group of people, say X who prepared their meals at home and regularly consumed break fast and an evening meal, had overall better diet. They avoided fast food and high sugar content drinks and ate more fresh vegetables and fruits compared to a group of people, say Group Y who did not keep an eating routine. Y who ate on the run or used media while they ate or purchased food often ate less healthily.

The passage is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text:

Questioning 5000 girls across Delhi about the various taxes they pay at their favourite restaurants, the respondents put the VAT at 12.5% when it actually costs 14.5%. They believed the service charge is another tax imposed by the State or Central Government when it is actually purely imposed by the restaurant for rendering its service to you; respondents estimated the service charge to be at 2.5% when it may vary from 4-10%. The Service tax was estimated to be another 2.5% when it is actually 12.36% and payable on 40% of your total bill (excluding taxes), which equals 4.96%.

The following passage is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text:

Many regime loyalists of Xi Jinping are just going through the motions. It is hard to miss the theatre of false pretence that has permeated the Chinese body politic for the past few years. Last summer, I was one of a handful of foreigners (and the only American) who attended a conference about the 'China Dream', Mr Xi's signature concept, at a party-affiliated think tank in Beijing. We sat through 2 days of mind-numbing, nonstop presentations by two dozen party scholars but their faces were frozen, their body language was wooden, and their boredom was palpable. They feigned compliance with the party and their leader's latest mantra. But it was evident that the propaganda had lost its power, and the emperor had no clothes.

The following passage is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text:

The common view of language is that any language is a set of arbitrary but conventionally agreed-upon words or signs, linked to each other by a purely formal system of syntactic and grammatical rules. Language, thus, is like a code; it is a way of representing actual things and events around in the perceived world, but has no internal, no ulterior, no arbitrary connections to that world, and hence is readily separable from it.

The following text is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text:

The Andaman holiday island of Viber islands has been plunged into a poisonous grey haze caused by illegal forest fires in neighbouring Neil islands. Reduced visibility caused passenger planes from Thailand des- tined for Port Blair airport to turn around on Tuesday. The noxious fumes which have been spreading for weeks have shut down many other islands of south- east Asia. Tourist spots have been closed in, and the local swimming championship cup scheduled to be held on Rutland island was cancelled on Wednesday. A beach volleyball championship in Barren Island scheduled on Thursday was also abandoned.

The following text is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text:

It was a good idea for Avery Fisher Hall that most often conducts shows of New York Philharmonic orchestra, one of the Big Five orchestras in the world, to invite East West players, a theatre group based in Los Angeles, to stage an abridged version of Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night s Dream, with Mendelssohn's entire score attached. Conducted by Muah Ling and directed by Jennifer Chang, the result is a perfect combination of words and music in a setting-with the local woods skirting one side of the theatre that is close to ideal.

The following text is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the text:

Ramsey is a smart and brilliant scholar, always curious and public spirited. He is also the perfect spokes-man for an approach that has come to be known as behavioural economics. He does not come across as someone preaching others about their shortcomings because they feel like his shortcomings too. Ramsey recounts a dispute at an academic conference with the orthodox economist John Thatcher: 'I said that the difference between our models was that he as- sumed that the subjects in his model were as smart as he was, and I assumed they were as dumb as I am. Thatcher agreed'.