English Quiz for Upcoming IBPS Bank Exams – Set 46 | New Pattern

DIRECTIONS (Qs. 1-5) : In each of
the following questions a short passage is given with one of the lines in the
passage missing and represented by a blank. Select the best out of the five
answer choices given, to make the passage complete and coherent (coherent means
logically complete and sound).

1. ______________Business is
instead moving to digitalnative insurers, many of which are offering low
premiums to those willing to collect and share their data. Yet the biggest
winners could be tech companies rather than the firms that now dominate the industry.
Insurance is increasingly reliant on the use of technology to change behaviour;
firms act as helicopter parents to policyholders, warning of impending
harm-slow down; reduce your sugar intake; call the plumber-the better to reduce
unnecessary payouts. Yet this sort of relationship relies on trust, and the
Googles and Apples of the world, on which consumers rely day-by-day and
hour-by-hour, may be best placed to win this business.

(a) The growing mountain of
personal data available to individuals and, crucially, to firms is giving those
with the necessary processing power the ability to distinguish between low-risk
and high-risk individuals.

(b) Cheap sensors and the tsunami
of data they generate can improve our lives; blackboxes in cars can tell us how
to drive more carefully and wearable devices will nudge us toward healthier
lifestyles.

(c) The better behaviour
resulting from smart devices is just one threat to the insurance industry.
Conventional risk pools (for home or car insurance, for example) are shrinking
as preventable accidents decline, leaving the slow-footed giants of the
industry at risk.

(d) The uncertainty that
underpins the need for insurance is now shrinking thanks to better insights
into individual risks.

(e) The data has enabled insurance
companies to gauge the situation and plan accordingly.

2. By calling for exempting
unionized businesses from the minimum wage, unions are creating more incentives
for employers to favor unionized workers over the nonunionized sort. Such
exemptions strengthen their power. ____________.Once employers are obliged to
pay the same minimum wage to both unionized and non-unionized labor, workers
often see less reason to pay the dues to join a union.

(a) High rates of unionization
make minimum-wage rules unnecessary as collaborative wage setting achieves the
flexibility goals of a low minimum wage and the fairness goals of a high one.

(b) Workers who have no real
alternative to employment in the unregulated shadows of the labor market are
even more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse than workers with the legal
right to take low wages.

(c) The labor ethos of worker
solidarity seems hollow if non-union workers are underpriced by union workers
and left unemployed or scrambling for unauthorized work.

(d) This is useful because for
all the effort unions throw at raising the minimum wage, laws for better pay
have an awkward habit of undermining union clout.

(e) Unions have been demanding
democratic vaues in the work cluture but on the contrary they have been
practicing dictatorial ways.

3. The premise that the choice of
major amounts to choosing a career path rests on the faulty notion that the
major is important for its content, and that the acquisition of that content is
valuable to employers. But information is fairly easy to acquire and what is
acquired in 2015 will be obsolete by 2020. What employers want are basic but
difficult-to-acquire skills. _______________________. They care about a
potential employee’s abilities: writing, researching, quantitative, and
analytical skills. A vocational approach to education eviscerates precisely the
qualities that are most valuable about it: intellectual curiosity, creativity
and critical thinking.

(a) As students flock to the two
or three majors they see as good investments, professors who teach in those
majors are overburdened, and the majors themselves become more formulaic and
less individualized.

(b) Often it is the art
historians and anthropology majors, for example, who, having marshaled the
abilities of perspective, breadth, creativity, and analysis, have moved a
company or project or vision forward.

(c) Furthermore, the link between
education and earnings is notoriously fraught, with cause and effect often
difficult to disentangle.

(d) Ideas such as education is
necessary to be successful in corporate life are unacceptable because education
isn’t that much relevant into day’s society.

(e) When they ask students about
their majors, it is usually not because they want to assess the applicants’
mastery of the content, but rather because they want to know if the students
can talk about what they learned.

4. What happens to our brains as
we age is of crucial importance not just to science but to public policy.
_______________________ However, this demographic time-bomb would be much less
threatening if the elderly were looked upon as intelligent contributors to
society rather than as dependants in long-term decline. It is time we rethink
what we mean by the ageing mind before our false assumptions result in
decisions and policies that marginalize the old or waste precious public
resources to re-mediate problems that do not exist.

(a) The idea that we get dumber
as we grow older is just a myth, according to brain research that will
encourage anyone old enough to know better.

(b) By 2030, for example, 72
million people in the US will be over 65, double the figure in 2000 and their
average life expectancy will likely have edged above 20 years

(c) Many of the assumptions
scientists currently make about ‘cognitive decline’ are seriously flawed and,
for the most part, formally invalid.

(d) Using computer models to
simulate young and old brains, Ramscar and his colleagues found they could
account for the decline in test scores simply by factoring in experience

(e) The reason it becomes harder
to recall an acquaintance’s name as you grow older is that there are so many
more of them.

5. The expenditure of time, money
and sparse judicial and prosecutorial resources is often justified by claims of
a powerful deterrent message embodied in the ultimate punishment- the death
penalty.__________ In 2010, the average time between sentencing and execution
in the United States averaged nearly 15 years. A much more effective deterrent
would be a sentence of life imprisonment imposed close in time to the crime.

(a) A single federal death
penalty case in Philadelphia was found to cost upwards of $10 million – eight
times higher than the cost of trying a death eligible case where prosecutors
seek only life imprisonment. (b) The ethics of the issue aside, it is
questionable whether seeking the death penalty is ever worth the time and
resources that it takes to sentence someone to death.

(c) Apart from delaying justice,
the death penalty diverts resources that could be used to help the victims’
families heal.

(d) But studies repeatedly
suggest that there is no meaningful deterrent effect associated with the death
penalty and further, any deterrent impact is no doubt greatly diluted by the
amount of time that inevitably passes between the time of the conduct and the
punishment.

(e) While some victims and their
families supported and some opposed the decision, any expectation that Tsarnaev
will be put to death might be misplaced.

6. Five statements are given
below, labelled a, b, c, d and e. Among these, four statements are in logical
order and form a coherent paragraph/passage. From the given options, choose the
option that does not fit into the theme of the passage.

(a) Dinets first observed the
behaviour in 2007 when he spotted crocodiles lying in shallow water along the
edge of a pond in India with small sticks or twigs positioned across their
snouts.

(b) The behaviour potentially
fooled nest-building birds wading in the water for sticks into thinking the
sticks were floating on the water.

(c) The crocodiles remained still
for hours and if a bird neared the stick, they would lunge.

(d) Crocodiles are way clever
than thought about generally.

(e) To see if the stick-displaying
was a form of clever predation, Dinets and his colleagues performed systematic
observations of the reptiles for one year at four sites in Louisiana, including
two rookery and two non-rookery sites.

7. Five statements are given
below, labelled a, b, c, d and e. Among these, four statements are in logical
order and form a coherent paragraph/passage. From the given options, choose the
option that does not fit into the theme of the passage.

(a) The competitive pressures in
the environment have radically altered the context in which human Resource
services are delivered in Indian organizations.

(b) The HR competencies, in other
words, differentiate outstanding performers from average performers in the HR
function.

(c) The traditional role of HR,
based on the image of a transaction and administrative oriented HR practitioner
providing services to a set of customers, is undergoing change.

(d) With the focus moving towards
integrating HR into strategic planning of the organization, another dimension
is added to the picture of HR service deliver.

(e) This change in focus calls
for HR professionals taking up the emerging roles of advocate, business
partner, and change agent in new organizational structures that are radically
different from the past.

8. Five statements are given
below, labelled a, b, c, d and e. Among these, four statements are in logical
order and form a coherent paragraph/passage. From the given options, choose the
option that does not fit into the theme of the passage.

(a) Every campaign leader known
how to pick up and kiss a child in the crowds, how to hug an old widow, how to
chant with the pundits, and show abeyance to the Mullahs.

(b) Did anyone hit at
“quality” for infrastructure amenities, education, health and finally
governance.

(c) Politics is still a game of
money, mind and manipulations.

(d) False promise are not
entirely a sin, but let these be redeemed by true, professional, and quality
governance, that shows at the end of the tenure.

(e) Many Asian countries have
transformed their work culture, and up-scaled their economies.

9. Five statements are given
below, labelled a, b, c, d and e. Among these, four statements are in logical
order and form a coherent paragraph/passage. From the given options, choose the
option that does not fit into the theme of the passage.

(a) The emerging web services
paradigm offers the promise of new efficiencies and improve integration
designed to enhance collaboration between internal and external applications.

(b) For example web services can
serve as a bridge between an e-procurement application and an internal
inventory system.

(c) Although, web services are
relatively nascent and adoption rates currently low, it is critical for ERP
vendors to begin taking steps to prepare for their rapidly maturing initiative.

(d) As items are purchased
through e-procurement application, a web service specific to inventory
reduction can be invoked to adjust inventory levels.

(e) As soon as re-order points
are hit, a Web services, the cycle time between buying and replenishment can be
greatly reduced and the potential for errors virtually eliminated.

10. Five statements are given
below, labelled a, b, c, d and e. Among these, four statements are in logical
order and form a coherent paragraph/passage. From the given options, choose the
option that does not fit into the theme of the passage.

(a) Much of the modern use of
metals happens behind closed doors of corporations, under the veil of trade
secrets.

(b) He chooses to restrict his
analysis to metals and metalloids, which could face more critical constraints
because many of them are relatively rare.

(c) Even if we can find out how
certain metals are used, it may not always be possible to determine the
proportions they are used in.

(d) The authors compromise was to
account for the use of 80% of the material that is made available each year
through extraction and recycling.

(e) Their compromise was to
account for the use of 80% of the material that is made available each year
through extraction and recycling.

Answers & Explanations:

1. (c)

2. (d)

3. (e)

4. (b)

5. (d)

6. (d) Option (d) does not fit
into the theme of the passage as the given passage delineates the systematic
observations of reptiles. It does focus the nature of crocodiles particularly.

7. (b) Option (b) is odd one out
into the theme of the passage. The passage tells about the changing role of HR
in the context of radically altered environment not about HR competencies.

8. (e) The passage depicts about
the strategies followed by politicians during the election campaign. It does
not pay attention upon economies.

9. (c) Option (c) does not fit into
the theme of the passage.

10. (b) Option (b) is odd one
out, all other options describes the modern uses of metals while option (b) is
related to analysis of metals.