Fill in the blanks with the most appropriate options :
Early ________ of maladjustment to college culture is _______ by the tendency to develop friendship networks outside college which mask signals of maladjustment.
Companies that try to improve employees' performance by ______ rewards encourage negative kinds of behavior instead of ______ a genuine interest in doing the work well.
Read the passage given be low and answer the question that follows :
I eschew the notion of racial kinship. I do so in order to be free to claim what the distinguished political theorist Michael Sandel labels "the unencumbered self. "The unencumbered self is free and independent, "unencumbered by aims and attachments it does not choose for itself," Sandel writes. "Freed from the sanctions of custom and tradition and inherited status, unbound by moral ties antecedent to choice, the self is installed as sovereign, cast as the author of the only obligations that constrain . " Sandel believes that the unencumbered self is an illusion and that the yearning for it is a manifestation of a shallow liberalism that "cannot account for certain moral and political obligations that we commonly recognize , even prize "- "obligations of solidarity, religious duties, and other moral ties that may claim us for reasons unrelated to a choice," which are "indispensable aspects of our moral and political experience."
Sandal's objection to those who, like me, seek the unencumbered self is that they fail to appreciate loyalties that should be accorded moral force partly because they influence our identity, such that living by these attachments "is inseparable from understanding ourselves as the particular persons we are-as members of this family or city or nation or people, as bearers of that history, as citizens of this republic. " There is an important virtue in this assertion of the value of black life. It combats something still eminently in need of challenge: the assumption that because of their race black people are stupid , ugly, and low, and that because of their race white people are smart, beautiful , and righteous. But within some of the forms that this assertiveness has taken are important vices-including the belief that because of racial kinship blacks ought to value blacks more highly than others.
I shun racial pride because of my conception of what should properly be the object of pride for an individual: something that he or she has accomplished. I cannot feel pride in some state of affairs that is independent of my contribution to it. The color of my skin, the width of my nose, the texture of my hair, and the various other signs that prompt people to label me black constitute such a state of affairs. I did not achieve my racial designation. It was something I inherited-l ike my creed and socio-economic starting place and gender-and therefore something I should not be credited with.
In taking this position I follow Frederick Douglass, the great nineteenth -century reformer, who declared that ''the only excuse for pride in individuals is in the fact of their own achievements. " I admire Sandel's work and have learned much from it. But a major weakness in it is a conflation of "is " and "ought. " Sandel privileges what exists and has existed so much that his deference to tradition lapses into historical determinism. He faults the model of the unencumbered self because, he says, it cannot account for feelings of solidarity and loyalty that most people have not chosen to impose upon themselves but that they cherish nonetheless. This represents a fault, however, only if we believe that the unchosen attachments Sandel celebrates should be accorded moral weight. I am not prepared to do that simply on the basis that such attachments exist, have long existed , and are passionately felt. Feelings of primordial attachment often represent mere prejudice or superstition , a hangover of the childhood socialization from which many people never recover.
Through his discussion of the works and beliefs of Michael Sandel, the author suggests all of the following characteristics of the encumbered self EXCEPT :
The author states his definition of "what should properly be the object of pride for an individual " in order to :
With an eye towards the passage as a whole, which of the following represents the author's primary focus ?
For the following questions answer them individually
Read the passage carefully and answer the question that follows :
Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking. Multitasking creates a dopamine addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation. To make matters worse, the prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new-the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens. The irony here for those of us who are trying to focus amid competing activities is clear: The very brain region we need to rely on for staying on task is easily distracted. We answer the phone, look up something on the Internet, check our email, send an SMS, and each of these things tweaks the novelty-seeking, reward-seeking centers of the brain, causing a burst of endogenous opioids (no wonder it feels so good!), all to the detriment of our staying on task. It is the ultimate empty-caloried brain candy. Instead of reaping the big rewards that come from sustained, focused effort, we instead reap empty rewards from completing a thousand little sugarcoated tasks. In the old days, if the phone rang and we were busy, we either didn't answer or we turned the ringer off. When all phones were wired to a wall, there was no expectation of being able to reach us at all times-one might have gone out for a walk or be between places, and so if someone couldn't reach you (or you didn't feel I ke being reached), that was considered normal. Now more people have cell phones than have toilets. This has created an implicit expectation that you should be able to reach someone when it is convenient for you , regardless of whether it is convenient for them. This expectation is so ingrained that people in meetings routinely answer their cell phones to say, "I'm sorry, I can't talk now, I'm in a meeting." Just a decade or two ago, those same people would have let a land line on their desk go unanswered during a meeting, so different were the expectations for reachability.
According to the passage, why do people in meetings routinely answer their cell phones to say, "I'm sorry, I can't talk now, I'm in a meeting."?
Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:
Schools expect textbooks to be a valuable source of information for students. My research suggests, however, that textbooks that address the place of Native Americans within the history of the United States distort history to suit a particular cultural value system. In some textbooks, for example, settlers are pictured as more humane, complex, skilful, and wise than Native Americans. In essence, textbooks stereotype and depreciate the numerous Native American cultures while reinforcing the attitude that the European conquest of the New World denotes the superiority of European cultures. Although textbooks evaluate Native American architecture, political systems, and homemaking, I contend that they do it from an ethnocentric, European perspective without recognising that other perspectives are possible.
One argument against my contention asserts that, by nature, textbooks are culturally biased and that I am simply underestimating children's ability to see through these biases. Some researchers even claim that by the time students are in high school, they know they cannot take textbooks literally. Yet substantial evidence exists to the contrary. For example, two researchers have conducted studies suggesting that children's attitudes toward particular cultures are strongly influenced by the textbooks used in schools. Given this, an ongoing, careful review of how school textbooks depict Native Americans is certainly warranted.
Which of the following would most logically be the topic of the paragraph immediately following the passage?
The sentences as given below, when properly sequenced , form a coherent paragraph . Each sentence is labeled as A, B, C, D and E.
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given choices to construct a coherent paragraph .
A. Surrendered , or captured, combatants cannot be incarcerated in razor wire cages; this ·war' has a dubious legality.
B. How can then one characterize a conflict to be waged against a phenomenon as war?
C. The phrase ·war against terror ', which has passed into the common lexicon, is a huge misnomer.
D. Besides, war has a juridical meaning in international law, which has codified the laws of war, imbuing them with a humanitarian content.
E. Terror is a phenomenon , not an entity- either State or non-State
A. To avoid this, the QWERTY layout put the keys most likely to be hit in rapid succession on opposite sides. This made the keyboard slow, the story goes, but that was the idea.
B. A different layout, which had been patented by August Dvorak in 1936, was shown to be much faster.
C. The QWERTY design (patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873) aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters.
D. Yet the Dvorak layout has never been widely adopted , even though (with electric typewriters and then PCs) the anti-jamming rational for QWERTY has been defunct for years.
E. When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars often jammed.
For the following questions answer them individually
Choose the option that best describes the idiom given below :
To catch a tartar
