1997 SSC Section Officer Audit

You have brief passage with 5 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

What, one wonders, is the lowest common denominator : of Indian culture today? The attractive Hema Malini? The songs of vividh Bharati? Or the mouth-watering Masala Dosa? Delectable as these may be, each yields pride of place to that false (?) symbol of a new era - the synthetic fibre. In less than twenty years the nylon sari and the terylene shirt have swept the countryside, penetrated to the farthest comers of the land and persuaded every common man, woman and child that the key to success in the present day world lies in artificial fibres: glass nylon, crepe nylon, tery mixes, polyesters and what have you. More than the bicycles, the wristwatch or the transistor radio, synthetic clothes have come to represent the first step )' away from the village square. The village lass treasures the e flashy nylon sari in her trousseau most lovingly; the village youth gets a great kick out of his cheap terry cot shirt and u trousers, the nearest he can approximate to the expensive s synthetic sported by his wealthy city bred contemporaries. And the Neo-rich craze for 'phoren' is nowhere more apparent a than in the price that people will pay for smuggled, stolen, begged or borrowed second hand or thrown away synthetics. Alas, even the unique richness of the traditional tribal costume is being fast eroded by the deadening uniformity of nylon.

You have brief passage with 5 questions following each passage. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language - so the argument runs - must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.Now it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits, one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration; so the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writer.