Embibe Experts Solutions for Chapter: Reading Comprehension, Exercise 1: Reading Comprehension

Direction: Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

"I am an urban creature, city-born. My childhood felt no touch of the village. When I started to look after our estates, I feared that my duties would be irksome. I was not used to such work and my ignorance lay heavy on my mind. I could not imagine that tied down to figures and accounts, I might yet remain human and natural. As I entered into the work, it took hold of me. It is my nature that, whenever I undertake any responsibility, I lose myself in it and try to do my utmost. Setting myself to unravel the complexities of Zamindari work, I earned a reputation for the new methods I evolved, as a matter of fact, neighbouring landlords began to send their men to me to learn my methods. The old men on my staff grew alarmed. They used to maintain records in a way that I could never have grasped. Their idea was that I should understand nothing more than what they chose to explain. A change of method would create confusion, so they said. They pointed out that on anything becoming a subject matter of litigation, the court would be doubtful about the new way the records were kept. I persisted through changing the thing from top to bottom and the result proved to be satisfactory. The tenants often came to see me at any time. Sometimes I had to spend the whole day listening to their representations and meal times would slip by. I did all this work with enthusiasm and joy. I had lived in seclusion since boyhood and here was my first experience of the village. I was filled with the pleasure of blazing news trails. I was anxious to see village life in the minutest detail. My duties took me from village to village, thus giving me a chance to see all aspects of village life and to satisfy my eager curiosity about the daily tasks of village-folk and the varied cycle of their work. Slowly, the poverty and misery of the people grew vivid before my eyes and made me restless and began to wish that I could do something for them. I was struck with shame that I was Zamindar, impelled by the money motive absorbed in revenue returns. With that realisation, l awoke to the task of trying to stir the minds of the people, so that they could shoulder their own responsibilities." 

Direction: Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

The supervisor would have to change his attitude towards people first. The staff under him must be perceived as human beings with feelings and needs. They are not automations within complex work machinery. One of the greatest needs of today's worker is to have a feeling that he is in control of his workplace and not vice versa. The best way to satisfy this need as far as possible is he must feel firstly, that his work is meaningful. To do this the supervisor must delegate responsibility and limited authority for the man to execute his job well. The subordinate must be properly trained to assume responsibility and authority. Once he is ready to assume these he can be made accountable for his job. Very often supervisors assume all responsibility and accountability for fear of losing control of the workplace. This makes workers under him pawns is a vast chessboard. Delegating accountability gives the worker a purpose in life and the need to do a job well. Most important is to sit with each worker and chalk out common objectives and agreed norms to achieve them. This gives workers security as to what is expected of them. When he has met his objectives he certainly has a feeling of achievement. This feeling of achievement is the greatest motivator.

Direction: Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

Once there lived an old man who had a bag of gold. He was foolish. He dug a hole in the ground and put the bag of gold into the hole. Then he covered the hole with a stone. He used to visit the place nearly every day. He would take away the stone and put his fingers into the hole. Then he would touch the gold and feel very happy. One day he took the stone away and put his fingers into the hole. How angry and sad he was when he discovered that his treasure was not there. The old man went to a friend and sadly told him the story. His friend said, "There is no reason for you to be sad. Your gold was useless to you. You still have the hole. You can visit it whenever you like. All you have to do is to imagine that your treasure is still there."

Direction: Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

Scarce diamonds are more valuable than the clusters of smaller crystals known as bort and carbonados. These diamonds are large single crystals of genuine crystalline carbon. Diamonds are found in diamantiferous earth that is located in both open-air pits and underground mines. To retrieve the diamonds, the earth is crushed and concentrated. The concentrated material is then sorted by passing it over streams of water on greased tables. Since diamonds are water repellent they will stick to the grease, while the other minerals will absorb water and pass over the grease. The diamonds are then removed from the grease and cleaned, examined, sorted and graded. The best diamonds are noted for their cleavage, their transparency and their colour. All diamonds have a natural line of cleavage along which they may be split, and it is essential to split them before they are cut and polished. Before they are cut and polished, they look like tiny blue-grey stones; they do not twinkle or shine yet. A perfectly cut and polished diamond has 58 faces arranged regularly over its surface. It will be transparent and colourless, blue, white, green or yellow. The value of a jewel diamond depends largely on its colour or 'water', as it is called professionally. A stone of the finest water is blue-white.

Direction: Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

Of the many aspects of public administration, the ethical aspect is perhaps the most important but the least codified. While administrative rules and procedures have been codified in various public documents and manuals, There is no manual for the ethics of public servants. While organisational behaviour analyses the factors which influence the behaviour of individuals in an organisation, ethics refer to those norms and standards which behaviour of the people in an organisation must conform to. While behaviour analysis deals with factual aspects, ethics relates to the normative aspects of administration. The normative aspects are of the greatest significance. Just as for an individual if the character is lost, everything is lost, so also for an administration if the ethics are lost, everything is lost. Neither efficiency nor loyalty could be a substitute for high ethical standards. In India, though there is no ethical code for public administrators, there is what is called, the Government Servants' Conduct Rules. These rules lay down what constitutes misconduct for the public servants. It is apparently implied that such misconduct, which is not permitted, is also unethical conduct. 

Direction: Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

I used to have my meals at a vegetarian restaurant. Here, I met Mr Albert West. We used to meet in this restaurant every evening and go out for a walk after dinner. Mr West was a partner in a small printing concern. He read my letter in the press about the outbreak of the plague and not finding me in the restaurant, felt uneasy. My co-workers and I had reduced our diet since the outbreak, as I had long made it a rule to go on a light diet during epidemics. In these days, I had therefore given up my evening dinner. Lunch also I would finish before the other guests arrived. I knew the proprietor of the restaurant very well and I had informed him that, as I was engaged in nursing the plague patients, I wanted to avoid the contact of friends as much as possible. Not finding me in the restaurant for a day or two, Mr West knocked at my door early one morning just as I was getting ready to go out for a walk. As I opened the door Mr West said, "I did not find you in the restaurant and was really afraid lest something should have happened to you".

Direction: Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

The common people have a way of laughing at their own misfortunes. They can also laugh at their oppressors. Satire became a habit with them while they groaned under the oppression of kings, priests and plutocrats. In contemporary India, the politician and the bureaucrat are the ones, they take their revenge upon. There is much humour in Indian proverbs. Even the Gods are not spared. There is a special form of worship called Ninda Stuti, praise by dispraise. Real humour in India, as elsewhere, is contained within the different languages, and it is difficult for Indians of one region to understand the humour of another. India is also by tradition a class-ridden and hierarchical society. Excessive reverence is shown to elders and to those in authority, though this may be changing. Sons and daughters don't usually joke with their parents and vice versa; a boss can't afford to be seen in a mood of levity with his employees; the landlord wouldn't dream of sharing a joke with his peasant labourers. The path to wit and humour is strewn with pitfalls. With Indian intellectuals, solemnity is a motto. Many of them wouldn't be seen dead with a joke. And the higher they go in the cerebral scale, the drier they become.

Direction: Read the following passage carefully and answer the question given below it.

Dance is an art form that generally refers to the movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting. Gymnastics, figure skating and synchronized swimming are sports that incorporate dance, while martial arts kata are often compared to dances. Motion in ordinarily inanimate objects may also be described as dances (the leaves dance in the wind). Every dance no matter what style, has something in common. It not only involves flexibility and body movement but also physics. If the proper physics is not taken into consideration injuries may occur. Choreography is the art of creating dances. The person who creates (i.e. choreographs) a dance is known as the choreographer. Dance has certainly been an important part of the ceremony, rituals, celebrations and entertainment since the birth of the earliest human civilizations. Archaeology delivers trace of dance from prehistoric times such as the 9,000 years old Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka painting in India and Egyptian depicting dancing figures from circa 3300 BC. One of the earliest structured uses of dance may have been in the performance and in the telling of myths. Before the production of written languages dance was one of the methods of passing stories down from generation to generation.

Find the word in the passage which means the same as lifeless: