XAT 2022 - VALR

Instructions

For the following questions answer them individually

Question 1

Which of the following sentences are grammatically CORRECT ?
1. Have you any clothes to dispose of?
2. I saw a pleasant dream last night.
3. I have done it many a times safely.
4. Students struggle to cope up with academic pressure.
5. You need not give negative feedback to your employees.
6. My friend is good at playing football.

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Question 2

Read the poem carefully, and answer the following question.
I smiled at you because I thought that you
Were someone else; you smiled back; and there
grew
Between two strangers in a library
Something that seems like love; but you loved
me
(If thatā€™s the word) because you thought that I
Was other than I was. And by and by
We found weā€™d been mistaken all the while
From that first glance, that first mistaken smile
Which of the following CANNOT be inferred from the poem?

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Question 3

Carefully read the following statement:
The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it_____ for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that _____ are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the ________ is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has ________ to rewrite its own history.
Which of the following options will BEST fill up the above blanks meaningfully?

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Question 4

Read the passage carefully and answer the following question.
Geologists have been investigating a potential cycle in geological events for a long time. Back in the 1920s and 30s, scientists of the era had suggested that the geological record had a 30-million-year cycle, while in the 1980s and 90s researchers used the best-dated geological events at the time to give them a range of the length between 'pulses' of 26.2 to 30.6 million years. Now, everything seems to be in order -27.5 million years is right about where we'd expect. A study late last year suggested that this 27.5-million-year mark is when mass extinctions happen, too.
Which of the following statements can be BEST concluded from the passage?

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Question 5

Carefully read the following statement:
When I ask people to name three recently implemented technologies that most impact our world today, they usually propose the computers, the Internet and the laser. All three were unplanned, ___________, and_____________ upon their discovery and remained __________ well after their initial use.
Which of the following options will BEST fill up the above blanks meaningfully?

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Question 6

Which of the following sentences have INCORRECT usage of preposition?
1. The manager was sitting at the desk.
2. My work is superior to yours.
3. I prefer coffee than tea.
4. She was accused for stealing gold.
5. This is an exception to the rule.
6. They are leaving to England soon.

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Question 7

Arrange the following sentences in a LOGICAL sequence:
1. But when it comes to companies that lack computer programmers, the government is far more sympathetic.
2. As a result, limited access to foreign talent is a common gripe of tech founders and venture capitalists.
3. And, demand for the latter has soared among British startups.
4. This is less inconsistent than it may seem.
5. An HGV driver takes between six and ten weeks to train; a competent coder several years.

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Question 8

Arrange the following sentences in a LOGICAL sequence:
1. In America, primary-age pupils are on average five months behind where they would usually be in maths, and four months in reading, according to McKinsey, a consultancy.
2. As a new school year gets under way in many countries, the harm caused by months of closure is becoming ever clearer.
3. The crisis will accelerate that trend.
4. The damage is almost certainly worse in places such as India and Mexico, where theĀ disruption to schooling has been greater.
5. Even before pandemic, parents around the world were growing more willing to pay for extra lessons in the hope of boosting their childrenā€™s education.

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Question 9

Read the passage carefully and answer the following question.
One theory of accidents is what experts call the Swiss Cheese model. A slab of swiss cheese has several holes, randomly and unevenly distributed over its surface. If several slabs are stacked together, it would be impossible for something to slip through unless all the holes happen to line up.
If even one slab doesnā€™t align, the impending catastrophe will meet a layer of resistance, and the worst is averted. Aviation professionals will tell you that plane crashes never happen for a single reason. There may be an identifiable primary factor, but itā€™s usually a chain of events, an array of circumstances neatly piling up.
Which of the following statements can be BEST concluded from the passage?

Video Solution
Instructions

Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE questions that follow.

Comprehension:
Stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. Crudely put, it occurs when you donā€™t have the right conceptual tools for the job. The result is an inability to make sense of what is happening and a resulting tendency to force phenomena into crude, distorting pigeonholes.

This is easiest to introduce with a tragic case. British high command during the First World War frequently understood trench warfare using concepts and strategies from the cavalry battles of their youth. As one of Field Marshal Douglas Haigā€™s subordinates later remarked, they thought of the trenches as ā€˜mobile operations at the haltā€™: i.e., as fluid battle lines with the simple caveat that nothing in fact budged for years. Unsurprisingly, this did not serve them well in formulating a strategy: they were hampered, beyond the shortage of material resources, by a kind of ā€˜conceptual obsolescenceā€™, a failure to update their cognitive tools to fit the task in hand. In at least some cases, intelligence actively abets stupidity by allowing pernicious rationalisation.

Stupidity will often arise in cases like this, when an outdated conceptual framework is forced into service, mangling the userā€™s grip on some new phenomenon. It is important to distinguish this from mere error. We make mistakes for all kinds of reasons. Stupidity is rather one specific and stubborn cause of error. Historically, philosophers have worried a great deal about the irrationality of not taking the available means to achieve goals: Tom wants to get fit, yet his running shoes are quietly gathering dust. The stock solution to Tomā€™s quandary is simple willpower. Stupidity is very different from this. It is rather a lack of the necessary means, a lack of the necessary intellectual equipment. Combatting it will typically require not brute willpower but the construction of a new way of seeing our self and our world. Such stupidity is perfectly compatible with intelligence: Haig was by any standard a smart man.

Question 10

Which of the following statements BEST summarizes the author's view on stupidity?

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Question 11

Which of the following statements BEST explains why stupidity for a smart person isā€œperfectly compatible with intelligenceā€?

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Question 12

Based on the passage, which of the following can BEST help a leader avoidstupidity?

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Instructions

For the following questions answer them individually

Question 13

Read the excerpt carefully and answer the following question.
The over-whelming preponderance of people have not freely decided what to believe, but, rather, have been socially conditioned (indoctrinated) into their beliefs. They are unreflective thinkers.
Which of the following statements CANNOT be concluded from the excerpt?

Video Solution
Instructions

Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE questions that follow.

Comprehension:
What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false. Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to. This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are. It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false.

Question 14

Which of the following statements can be BEST inferred from the passage?

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Question 15

Why does the author say that the bullshitterā€™s intention ā€œis neither to report the truthnor to conceal it?ā€

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Question 16

When will a liar BEST turn into a bullshitter?

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Instructions

Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE questions that follow.

Comprehension:
What does a good life look like to you? For some, the phrase may conjure up images of a close-knit family, a steady job, and a Victorian house at the end of a street arched with oak trees. Others may focus on the goal of making a difference in the world, whether by working as a nurse or teacher, volunteering, or pouring their energy into environmental activism. According to Aristotlean theory, the first kind of life would be classified as ā€œhedonicā€ā€”one based on pleasure, comfort, stability, and strong social relationships. The second isā€œeudaimonic,ā€ primarily concerned with the sense of purpose and fulfilment one gets by contributing to the greater good. The ancient Greek philosopher outlined these ideas in his treatiseĀ Nicomachean Ethics, and the psychological sciences have pretty much stuck with them ever since when discussing the possibilities of what people might want out of their time on Earth. But a new paper, published in the American Psychological Associationā€™s Psychological Review, suggests thereā€™s another way to live a good life. It isnā€™t focused on happiness or purpose, but rather itā€™s a life thatā€™s ā€œpsychologically rich.ā€

What is a psychologically rich life? According to authors Shige Oishi, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and Erin Westgate, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Florida, itā€™s one characterized by ā€œinteresting experiences in which novelty and/or complexity are accompanied by profound changes in perspective.ā€Ā Studying abroad, for example, is one way that college students often introduce psychological richness into their lives. As they learn more about a new countryā€™s customs and history, theyā€™re often prompted to reconsider the social mores of their own cultures. Deciding to embark on a difficult new career path or immersing oneā€™s self in avant-garde art(the paper gives a specific shout-out to James Joyceā€™sĀ Ulysses) also could make a person feel as if their life is more psychologically rich.

Crucially, an experience doesnā€™t have to be fun in order to qualify as psychologically enriching. It might even be a hardship. Living through war or a natural disaster might make it hard to feel as though youā€™re living a particularly happy or purposeful life, but you can still come out of the experience with psychological richness. Or you might encounter less dramatic but nonetheless painful events: infertility, chronic illness, unemployment. Regardless of the specifics, you may experience suffering but still find value in how your experience shapes your understanding of yourself and the world around you.

Question 17

Which of the following statements BEST contrasts Hedonic from Eudaimonic?

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Question 18

Which of the following statements BEST defines a ā€œpsychologically rich lifeā€?

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Question 19

Which of the following statements can be BEST concluded from the passage?

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Instructions

Read the passage carefully and answer the THREE questions that follow.

Comprehension:
What Arendt does for us is to remind us that our ā€œpublicnessā€ is as important to our flourishing as our sociability and our privacy. She draws a distinction between what it means to act ā€œsociallyā€ and what is means to act ā€œpolitically.ā€ The social realm for Arendt is both the context where all our basic survival needs ā€œare permitted to appear in publicā€ and also the realm of ā€œbehaviour.ā€ One of the things she fears about modern societies is that society - focused on how we behave and what we will permit for ourselves and others -becomes the realm of conformism. This is worrying not just because we donā€™t really get vibrant societies out of conformism and sameness, but also, Arendt says because there is a risk that we think this is all there is to our living together. We lose ourselves in the tasks of managing behaviour and forget that our true public task is to act, and to distinguish ourselves in doing so. The risk, says Arendt, is therefore that we confuse behaviour with action , that in modern liberal societies ā€œbehaviour replaces action as the foremost mode of human relationship.ā€ This confusion can happen in any area of our modern lives and institutions, secular or faith-based. None is immune.

Arendt wants to drive home the point that the healthy public life requires that we do not just see ourselves as social actors but also as fully public persons, committed to judging and acting as members of a common world we want to inhabit and pass on. Arendt tells us that public action is action in which we stand out, are individuated, become in some way excellent in a manner that is of service to others and a greater good. This is the space where we take risks, subject our common life to scrutiny, seek justice (that sometimes requires us to transgress what seem like accepted laws) in order to be increasingly open to the claims and needs of other humans - ones who are not our household and our kin.

Question 20

According to the passage, who can be BEST categorised as a ā€œpublic personā€?

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Question 21

Based on the passage, which of the following options BEST describes ā€œpublic actionā€?

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Question 22

Which of the following is the BEST reason for focusing on behaviour instead of acting in public?

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Instructions

Read the poem carefully, and answer the TWO questions that follow.

Comprehension:
It hurts to walk on new legs:
The curse of consonants. The wobble of vowels.
And you for whom I gave up a kingdom
Can never love that thing I was.
When you look into my past
You see
Only weeds and scales.
Once I had a voice.
Now I have legs.
Sometimes I wonder
Was it a fair trade?

Question 23

Which of the following statements BEST reflects the theme of the poem?

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Question 24

What does the author BEST mean by ā€œOnce I had a voice. /Now I have legs?ā€

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Instructions

For the following questions answer them individually

Question 25

Which of the following conditional sentences are grammatically INCORRECT?
1. If Sandhya had started from the hotel on time, she would have not missed the flight.
2. The students wouldnā€™t have completed their assignment even if the professor would have been there.
3. I had travelled across Europe if I werenā€™t afraid of airplane crashes.
4. Saurav wonā€™t join music classes unless his father will ask him.
5. Should you wish to join the party, you must let me know by this evening.
6. We would be stupid if we shared our strategy with her.

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Question 26

Read the passage carefully and answer the following question.
Labouring is simply what we do to survive. We labour to eat. To keep our bodieshealthy. To keep roof over our heads, and to keep life reproducing. All animalslabour, with or without coaxingā€¦. Thereā€™s nothing special about labour, save for thefact that without it we would die.
Work, on the other hand, gives collective meaning to what we do. When we work toproduce something we both put something into and leave something lasting in theworld: a table, a house, a book, a car, a rug, a high precision piece of engineeringwith which we can order the days into time, or keep a body breathing.
Which of the following statements can be BEST concluded from the passage?

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