English Test for IBPS PO 2018 Prelim Exam Set – 23

Directions(1-5): Which of the phrases (A), (B), (C), (D) given below each sentence should replace the phrase printed in bold to make the sentence grammatically correct? If the sentence is correct as it is, mark (E) ie ‘No correction required’ as the answer.

1. Directly the meeting commenced then the Board called for the Chairman’s resignation.
   No sooner had the meeting commenced than
   As soon as the meeting commenced when
   Hardly did the meeting commence
   Soon after the meeting commences that
   No correction required
   Option A
   

    

2. The bank is overstaffed, has led to lo w productivity.
   led to
   will lead towards
   and has led in
   which has led in
   No correction required
   Option A
   

    

3. You delay in taking a decision conveys a negative impression.
   You delay to take
   If you delay taking
   Your delay in taking
   To delay by taking
   No correction required
   Option C
   

    

4. Today management student itself are opted to work for NGOs even though salaries offered to them are low.
   student itself is
   students themselves are
   students have
   student himself has
   No correction required
   Option C
   

    

5. Absence off any guidelines, they are unwilling to take up the project.
   Absent of
   In the absence of
   Because of the absence
   Without being absent
   No correction required
   Option B
   

    

Direction (6-10): In each question below a sentence is given with two blanks in each. Each question is followed by four options with two words in each. You have to select that option as your answer which can fill both the blanks of the sentence.

6. It all sounds so easy, but it’s not. All these plans are being discussed as _______________ , yet time is alarmingly running out. There is grave _______________ that an agreement will not be reached at the EU summit next month. And the EU has suggested the latest a deal could be finalised is November – that’s just eight weeks away.
   reasonable, confidence
   plausible, concern
   credible, indifference
   conceivable, insouciance
   tenable, patience
   Option B
   

    

7. Had it been a rehearsal, not the final hearing, notes for Brett Kavanaugh would surely have featured the suggestion, for the sake of _______________ , that he try to act a bit more like an actual judge. Part of the job description being, you imagine, the office holder’s ability to appear emphatic without pulling angry faces; to appear honest, without a reference from a 10-year-old; to subdue, for the sake of public faith in the judiciary, any behaviour that looks cheap, overblown, uncontrolled. And that includes _______________ .
   verisimilitude, sniffing
   veracity, emanating
   semblance, emitting
   prospect, drafting
   legitimacy, respiration
   Option A
   

    

8. Labour, by common _______________ , is winning the battle of ideas. Even as shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s plans for reshaping British capitalism were being dismissed as a _______________ to statism and trade union power, his critics were bemoaning that the Tories’ response was either a pale imitation of the same or a reheated and tired Thatcherism. Worse for his critics, McDonnell was winning a hearing because he spoke to widely held concerns about the economy.
   dissent, recession
   chaos, retrogression
   squabble, advance
   consent, regression
   protest, retroaction
   Option D
   

    

9. The Conservatives have dominated the government of Britain. The party emerged in the 1830s, at a time when steam locomotives were the scary new thing and only very affluent chaps had the vote. Since then, the Conservative party has collided with economic and social movements so powerful that many people, including many Tories themselves, thought they were _______________ to disappear. Yet this party originally rooted in reactionary _______________ adjusted to universal male suffrage, to women securing the vote and to the transformation of an agrarian economy into an industrial one.
   doomed, detriment
   explicit, incarceration
   doomed, privilege
   delivered, incarceration
   doomed, forgo
   Option C
   

    

10. As she stood at the touching ceremony to rename a Brussels square Place Jo Cox, the murdered MP’s sister, Kim Leadbeater, remembered her hope that the assassination of a _______________ politician would warn the British of the dangers of violent extremism. Fat chance. In a voice that spoke to her and her country’s unhappiness, she said: “Despite many people working extremely hard to show that Jo’s murder was not in _______________ , I’m sadly not at all sure that this was the case.”
    outrageous, conceited
    principled, vain
    opportunistic, egotistical
    crooked, vainglorious
    dissipated, egotistic
    Option B