Reading Comprehension

Most North Americans think minimal about American Indian culture and history. Researchers have concentrated such issues, yet they have not succeeded in broadcasting their decisions generally. Subsequently, it is as yet not generally realized that American Indians have epics, that they performed plays sometime before Europeans showed up, and that they practised politics and carried on the exchange system.

One way to gain a fuller appreciation of this rich culture is to examine American Indian poetry, for poetry is in all cultures the most central and articulate of the arts. It is especially important that we study American Indian poetry as this poetry can create a context that gives cohesive expression to the crafts, the artifacts, and the isolated facts that many Americans have managed to notice willy-nilly. Even a survey of American Indian poetry reveals a range of poetic thought and technique that defies easy generalization. Jarold Ramsey hazards a summary, however, which serves at least to give the uninitiated reader some sense of what American Indian poetry is like. Overall, he writes, it represents “an oral, formulaic, traditional, and anonymous art form,” whose approach is to emphasize the “mythic and sacred” components of reality. It “flourished through public performances. by skilled recitalists whose audiences already knew the individual stories” and valued the performers for their “ability to exploit their material dramatically and to combine them? their stories? in longer cycles” rather than for their “plot invention.” Because this poetry belongs to highly ethnocentric tribal peoples, whose cultures “we still do not know much about,” it “is likely to seem all the terser, even cryptic.”

American Indian poetry has another feature that Ramsey ignores: it is always functional. Whether sung, chanted, or recited; whether performed ceremonially, as entertainment, or as part of a task such as curing a patient or grinding corn; or whether recited individually or by a group, it is always fully woven into the fabric of ordinary life.

For complicated reasons, American Indian poetry has basically been ignored by non-Indian cultures. Kenneth Lincoln writes that failure to hear American Indian voices results “partly.from the tragedies of tribal dislocation, partly from mistranslation, partly from misconceptions about literature, partly from cultural indifference.” Brian Swann suggests an additional explanation: tribal poetry is oral, whereas Europeans arrived in the New World with a deeply ingrained belief in the primacy of the written word. As a result, European settles found it hard to imagine that poetry could exist without written texts and thus that the American Indians had achieved something parallel to what Europeans called literature long before Europeans arrived. As a consequence, Europeans did not fully respond to the rich vitality of American Indian poetry.

All of the following can be inferred from the given passage EXCEPT

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and choose the correct option.

1. The changes in the Earth's orbital tilt and precession (or the wobbling motion) occur because of gravitational forces emanating from other bodies in the solar system.

2. To understand exactly what happens, picture a spinning top when it is slightly disturbed.

3.  Just like a top, the Earth too wobbles slightly about its rotational axis.

4. This tilt changes between roughly 22 and 25 degrees about every 41,000 years, while the precession varies on about a 26,000-year period.

Most North Americans think minimal about American Indian culture and history. Researchers have concentrated such issues, yet they have not succeeded in broadcasting their decisions generally. Subsequently, it is as yet not generally realized that American Indians have epics, that they performed plays sometime before Europeans showed up, and that they practised politics and carried on the exchange system.

One way to gain a fuller appreciation of this rich culture is to examine American Indian poetry, for poetry is in all cultures the most central and articulate of the arts. It is especially important that we study American Indian poetry as this poetry can create a context that gives cohesive expression to the crafts, the artifacts, and the isolated facts that many Americans have managed to notice willy-nilly. Even a survey of American Indian poetry reveals a range of poetic thought and technique that defies easy generalization. Jarold Ramsey hazards a summary, however, which serves at least to give the uninitiated reader some sense of what American Indian poetry is like. Overall, he writes, it represents “an oral, formulaic, traditional, and anonymous art form,” whose approach is to emphasize the “mythic and sacred” components of reality. It “flourished through public performances. by skilled recitalists whose audiences already knew the individual stories” and valued the performers for their “ability to exploit their material dramatically and to combine them? their stories? in longer cycles” rather than for their “plot invention.” Because this poetry belongs to highly ethnocentric tribal peoples, whose cultures “we still do not know much about,” it “is likely to seem all the terser, even cryptic.”

American Indian poetry has another feature that Ramsey ignores: it is always functional. Whether sung, chanted, or recited; whether performed ceremonially, as entertainment, or as part of a task such as curing a patient or grinding corn; or whether recited individually or by a group, it is always fully woven into the fabric of ordinary life.

For complicated reasons, American Indian poetry has basically been ignored by non-Indian cultures. Kenneth Lincoln writes that failure to hear American Indian voices results “partly.from the tragedies of tribal dislocation, partly from mistranslation, partly from misconceptions about literature, partly from cultural indifference.” Brian Swann suggests an additional explanation: tribal poetry is oral, whereas Europeans arrived in the New World with a deeply ingrained belief in the primacy of the written word. As a result, European settles found it hard to imagine that poetry could exist without written texts and thus that the American Indians had achieved something parallel to what Europeans called literature long before Europeans arrived. As a consequence, Europeans did not fully respond to the rich vitality of American Indian poetry.

What would be unconventional for American Indian Poetry, as per the given passage?

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and choose the correct option.

1. His wide experience of men and things is manifest in the life-likeness and mature power of his poetry.

2. Chaucer's personality stands out in his writings plainly and most delightfully.

3. It accounts in part for the broad truth of all but his earliest work, which makes it essentially poetry not of an age but for all time.

4. It must be borne in mind that, like some others of the greatest poets, he was not a poet merely, but also a man of practical affairs, in the eyes of his associates first and mainly a courtier, diplomat, and government official.

Four jumbled up sentences, related to a topic, are given below. Three of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd one out.

1. As noted by the World Federation for Mental Health, the concept of optimum mental health refers not to an absolute or ideal state but to the best possible state insofar as circumstances are alterable.

2. Mental health is regarded as a condition of the individual, relative to the capacities and social-environmental context of that person.

3. Mental hygiene includes all measures taken to promote and to preserve mental health.

4. Mental arithmetic is the invaluable maths skill of doing calculations in your head.

The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and choose the correct option.

1. It is an incredibly versatile tool which is quick and easy to handle. 

2. Starting from measuring the distance between any two locations to providing directions to the drivers, bikers, walkers, and users of public transportation it helps users in a variety of ways.

3. Google Maps is one of the most widely used services nowadays. 

4. Google Maps have made out life much easy and now it's difficult to imagine a life without it.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide in which blank (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Some of them were with older people, and still others with younger gym-goers, which makes it hard to generalise.

 (1) _______. In one meta-analysis from 2014, researchers combined the data from 14 randomised controlled trials where, for example, half the people consumed powdered whey protein, which is made from the liquid left over when milk is made into cheese, and half had a placebo drink. (2)_________They found that as long as people also did resistance exercise, then consuming protein powders did increase their lean body mass. (3)__________ But if they simply drank the drinks without exercise there was no statistically significant increase.

One of the difficulties in trying to compare studies is that some are conducted with people who are obese. (4) ______________.

Unemployment is the problem of every modern nation. Even industrialized nations are not able to ensure a job for everyone. Following the conventional strategy of creating employment, governments of many developing countries try to attract employers (business houses/industrialists) by offering tax rebates and many other facilities so that they locate their upcoming plants on their soil and thereby create industrial employment. But there is a limit to what industry can bring. Also, industrial plants often create toxic waste which results in air and water pollution and environmental problems which can outweigh whatever employment benefit industrial employment brings. In addition, they don't bring as substantial relief to the dwindling economy of the host country as they seem to promise, as the profits of such foreign investments are carried back to the parent company and foreign shareholders abroad.

Self-employment has none of these drawbacks. The problem is that self-employment is not as obviously glamorous as a shiny new factory. But profits from self-employment remain in the country where they are produced. It is too small to create environmental hazards. It also puts the poor person in charge of his or her own working hours and conditions. The hours are flexible and can adapt to fit any family situation. It allows people to choose between running a business full time, or part-time when they face a crisis, or to put their business on hold and work full-time for a salary. Self-employment is tailor-made for anyone who is street-smart and has any acquired and inherited traditional skills, rather than learning acquired from books and technical schools. This means the illiterate and the poor can exploit their strengths, rather than be held back by their weaknesses. It allows a person to turn their hobbies into gainful employment. It allows individuals who cannot work well in a rigid hierarchy to run their own show.

Financing the poor to start their own little ventures elevates their sense of pride and self-respect. It offers a way out of welfare dependency, not just to become wage slaves, but to open a store or start a manufacturing business. It can help those who have found a job and are still nonetheless poor. It gives the victims of prejudice who would not be hired because of their colour or national origin, a chance to earn a living. The average cost of creating self-employment is ten, twenty or hundred times lesser than creating industry-based employment. It helps isolated poor people gain self-confidence, step by step.

Which of the following words can meaningfully replace the highlighted word given in the passage?

Unemployment is the problem of every modern nation. Even industrialized nations are not able to ensure a job for everyone. Following the conventional strategy of creating employment, governments of many developing countries try to attract employers (business houses/industrialists) by offering tax rebates and many other facilities so that they locate their upcoming plants on their soil and thereby create industrial employment. But there is a limit to what industry can bring. Also, industrial plants often create toxic waste which results in air and water pollution and environmental problems which can outweigh whatever employment benefit industrial employment brings. In addition, they don't bring as substantial relief to the dwindling economy of the host country as they seem to promise, as the profits of such foreign investments are carried back to the parent company and foreign shareholders abroad.

Self-employment has none of these drawbacks. The problem is that self-employment is not as obviously glamorous as a shiny new factory. But profits from self-employment remain in the country where they are produced. It is too small to create environmental hazards. It also puts the poor person in charge of his or her own working hours and conditions. The hours are flexible and can adapt to fit any family situation. It allows people to choose between running a business full time, or part-time when they face a crisis, or to put their business on hold and work full-time for a salary. Self-employment is tailor-made for anyone who is street-smart and has any acquired and inherited traditional skills, rather than learning acquired from books and technical schools. This means the illiterate and the poor can exploit their strengths, rather than be held back by their weaknesses. It allows a person to turn their hobbies into gainful employment. It allows individuals who cannot work well in a rigid hierarchy to run their own show.

Financing the poor to start their own little ventures elevates their sense of pride and self-respect. It offers a way out of welfare dependency, not just to become wage slaves, but to open a store or start a manufacturing business. It can help those who have found a job and are still nonetheless poor. It gives the victims of prejudice who would not be hired because of their colour or national origin, a chance to earn a living. The average cost of creating self-employment is ten, twenty or hundred times lesser than creating industry-based employment. It helps isolated poor people gain self-confidence, step by step.

Which one of the following comes closest in meaning to the author's understanding of industry-based employment?