English Test for LIC AAO Prelims Exam Set – 3

Direction (1-5): 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.

1. The Road Accidents in India report of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways for 2017 comes as a ___________. By reiterating poorly performing policies and programmes, it has failed to signal the quantum shift necessary to reduce death and disability on the roads. It expresses concern at the large number of people who die every year and the thousands who are ___________ in accidents, but the remedies it highlights are weak, incremental and unlikely to bring about a transformation. The lack of progress in reducing traffic injuries is glaring, given that the Supreme Court is seized of the issue and has been issuing periodic directions in a public interest petition with the assistance of the Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan Committee constituted by the Centre.
   fiasco, intact
   discontent, salubrious
   frustration, hearty
   disappointment, crippled
   All are Correct
   Option D
   

    

2. The far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro could not have got closer to Brazil’s presidency in a more convincing manner in the first round of elections, that took place on Sunday. The former army captain who belongs to the Social Liberal Party ___________ up 46% of the vote, only a few percentage points short of crossing the 50% needed for an outright victory, in a multi-cornered contest. In a graphic illustration of the sharp___________ in Latin America’s largest country, he left his nearest rival, Fernando Haddad, of the Workers’ Party (PT), who garnered 29% of the vote, far behind. If that were not enough, the elections also put paid to speculation that the right-wing radical may not secure adequate representation in the new legislature.
   serrated, polarized
   notched, polarisation
   nock, biased
   nicked, timbering
   All are Correct
   Option B
   

    

3. Just three months after the final draft of the National Register of Citizens for Assam was released, the Supreme Court has tagged a petition seeking a similar process for Tripura. The petition now ___________ to the Assam case was heard by a bench headed by the Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, on Monday. The petitioners, a group of activists from Tripura, sought a process to identify illegal migrants and deport them from the State. They maintained that the ___________ amounted to “external aggression” and that they have turned the tribal people into a minority in their own native land. Much of the migration into Tripura occurred before the creation of Bangladesh.
   tagged, influx
   marked, effluence
   designated, egress
   designated, extinction
   All are Correct
   Option A
   

    

4. In what has been called India’s MeToo moment, the social media is thick with women coming forth with stories of sexual harassment. In the quick aftermath of actor Tanushree Dutta’s allegations, in an interview in end-September, of harassment at the hands of actor Nana Patekar on a film set a decade ago, women have been speaking of their experiences and the trauma, mostly on Twitter and Facebook. The testimonies so far have mostly concerned the film world and the mainstream media, and cover both the workplace and private spaces. They range from stories of ___________ to propositioning, suggestiveness to stalking. In the vast majority of cases, the naming is a result of the failure to receive a just ___________ from the system, a signal that it is no longer possible for such behaviour to be breezily dismissed or excused because boys, after all, will be boys.
   guard, address
   support, retaliation
   assault, response
   bastion, reaction
   All are Correct
   Option C
   

    

5. American economists William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer were jointly ___________ the 50th economics Nobel prize this week in recognition of their work on economic growth and its long-run sustainability. The Nobel committee noted that the duo’s work “brought us considerably closer to answering the important question of how we can achieve sustained and sustainable economic growth”. The committee’s praise is fitting as both economists ___________ their careers to the study of the various “externalities” or “spillovers” that affect economic growth in a market economy. Mr. Nordhaus, for one, has been a pioneer in the movement towards quantifying the impact of economic growth on the climate and, in turn, the impact of climate change on economic growth.
   flogged, staunch
   awarded, devoted
   retrieved, devout
   granted, ardent
   All are Correct
   Option B
   

    

Directions(6-10): In each of the following questions there are sentences. There is error in one of the parts. Mark the option which contains error parts as your answer. If no part contains error mark option E as your answer.

6. (A) Road safety data is a contested area in India. The figures of death and injury from accidents are viewed as an underestimate by scholars; /(B) the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme at IIT Delhi, for instance, estimates that cumulatively, road traffic injuries recorded by the police are underestimated by a factor of 20, and those that need hospitalisation by a factor of four. /(C) Unless this is correct, the number of people who suffered injuries in 2017 far exceeds the 4,70,975 reported by the Ministry. /(D) It is welcome that greater attention is being paid to the design and safety standards of vehicles, but such professionalism should extend to public infrastructure: the design of roads, their quality and maintenance, and the safety of public transport, among others.
   A
   B
   C
   D
   NE
   Option C
   Unless = if

    

7. (A) Mr. Bolsonaro, despite his long experience as a congressman from Rio de Janeiro, has gained from the perception of being a political outsider. /(B) Ahead of the elections, he reinvented himself like an economic liberal, promising to reform the bloated pension system that allegedly has been gamed by the more privileged. /(C) Investors prefer to give Mr. Bolsonaro the benefit of the doubt for now. His popularity has also occasioned comparisons to other populist leaders around the world. /(D) His admiration for the country’s military dictatorship during the 1960s-1980s is well-known. The presidential frontrunner has made no secret of his misogynistic, homophobic and racist opinions. Many of these positions may be watered down to widen Mr. Bolsonaro’s appeal before the final polls.
   A
   B
   C
   D
   NE
   Option B
   like = as

    

8. (A) Over the last three decades, multiple insurgent groups have ended violent struggles — either quelled by force of law or as a result of conceding vital demands for preserving the gains made by earlier tribal struggles. /(B) The judicial-bureaucratic process of hearing a petition to seek the deportation of long-settled migrants is fraught into problems, not dissimilar to those already being faced in Assam. /(C) The question of what awaits the four million people whose names did not figure in the final NRC draft, and have been given a second chance to prove their antecedents, still hangs in the balance. /(D) Notwithstanding the fact that the NRC process in Assam has an overall popular legitimacy across most political parties, there is no answer to how the deportation process could (or should) proceed.
   A
   B
   C
   D
   NE
   Option B
   into = with

    

9. (A) No one can be deemed guilty only because he had been named and any punishment must be proportionate to the misdemeanour. /(B) But the larger issue perhaps is the message sent out by the outpouring — namely, that there had been a systemic disregard for making workplaces and common spaces free of harassment. /(C) It must disturb us that a thread that binds so many allegations now coming out is that many women thought that their words and feelings would be dismissed, their careers would suffer, or their families would pull them back into the safety of home. /(D) This fear of making a complaint needs to be overcome in all workspaces, not only the media and the film industry. All of society needs to internalise a new normal that protects a woman’s autonomy and her freedom from discrimination at the workplace.
   A
   B
   C
   D
   NE
   Option B
   had been = has been

    

10. (A) It is equally troublesome when one needs to determine how much subsidy, or other forms of government support, should be allotted towards research and development. /(B) Even though mathematical models have been devised to address these problems, they are only as good as the data fed into them. /(C) Further, such decisions regarding the perfect carbon tax rate or the ideal subsidy allocation are likely to be determined by political considerations rather than simply pure economics. /(D) So the threat of government failure may have to be taken as seriously as the effects of market failure. These concerns lead to questions about the real-world impact of the policies supported by the pair. Nonetheless, many would argue that Mr. Nordhaus and Mr. Romer’s works are an improvement from the past in that they try to use the market mechanism itself to address its failures.
    A
    B
    C
    D
    NE
    Option E