Professional Documents
Culture Documents
EXAMINATION 1982
ENGLISH (Précis & Composition)
Time allowed: 3 hours Maximum marks: 100
1. Write a Précis of the following passage in about 100 words and suggest a title: 20 Objectives
pursued by, organisations should be directed to the satisfaction of demands
resulting from the wants of mankind. Therefore, the determination of appropriate objectives for
organised activity must be preceded by an effort to determine precisely what their wants are.
Industrial organisations conduct market studies to learn what consumer goods should be
produced. City Commissions make surveys to ascertain what civic projects would be of most
benefit. Highway Commissions conduct traffic counts to learn what constructive programmes
should be undertaken. Organisations come into being as a means for creating and exchanging
utility. Their success is dependent upon the appropriateness of the series of acts contributed to
the system. The majority of these acts is purposeful, that is, they are directed to the
accomplishment of some objective. These acts are physical in nature and find purposeful
employment in the alteration of the physical environment. As a result utility is created, which,
through the process of distribution, makes it possible for the cooperative system to endure.
Before the Industrial Revolution most cooperative activity was accomplished in small
owner-managed enterprises, usually with a single decision maker and simple organisational
objectives. Increased technology and the growth of industrial organisations made necessary the
establishment of a hierarchy of objectives. This, in turn, required a divison of the management,
function until today a hierarchy of decision maker exists in most organisations..
The effective pursuit of appropriate objectives contributes directly the organisational
efficiency. As used here, efficiency is a measure of the want satisfying power of the cooperative
system as a whole. Thus efficiency is the summation of utilities received from the organisation
divided by the utilities given to the organisation, as subjectively evaluated by each contributor.
The function of the management process is the delineation of organisational objectives and
the coordination of activity towards the accomplishment of these objectives. The system of
coordinated activities must be maintained sothateach contributor, including the manager, gains
more than he contributes.
2. Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow:
After a situation has been carefully analysed and the possible outcomes have been evaluated
as accurately as possible, a decision can be made. This decision may include the alternative of
not making a decision on the alternatives presented. After all the data that can be brought to bear
on a situation has been considered, some areas of uncertainty may be expected to remain. If a
decision is to be made, these areas of uncertainty must be bridged by the consideration and
evaluation of intangibles. Some call the type of evaluation involved in the consideration of
intangibles, intuition, others call it hunch on judgement, whatever it be called, it is inescapable
tat this type of thinking must always be the final part in arriving at a decision about the future.
There is no other way if action is to be taken. There appears to be a marked difference in
people’s abilities to come to sound conclusions, when some facts relative to a situation are
missing, those who possess sound judgement, are richly rewarded.
But as effective as as intuition, hunch on judgement may some times be, this type of thinking
should be reserved for those areas where facts on which to base a decision, are missing.
a) How is it possible to come to a sound decision when facts are missing?
b) What part in your opinion. does decision making play in the efficient functioning of an
organisation.
OR
Bring out the implications of the following observation. Traveller, there is no path:
paths are made by walking.
3. Make sentences to illustrate the meaning of any five of the following:
i) To come to a dead end.
ii) To turn a deafer
iii) Every dark cloud has a silver lining
iv) Blowing hot and cold together
v) To let the cat out of the bag
vi) To put the cart before the horse
vii) To sail in the same boat
viii) A Swan Song.
Use any five of the following pairs of words in your own sentences to bring out their
meaning: -
i) Mitigate, Alleviate ii) Persecute, Prosecute
hi) Popular, Populace iv) Compliment, Complement -
v) Excite, Incite vi) Voracity, Veracity
vii) Virtual, Virtuous viii) Exceptional, Exceptionable
5. Write a paragraph on at least 100 words on any one of the following topics:
20
a) All that glitters is not gold.
b) Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
c) Problems of developing countries.
d) There is no short cut to success.
c) To err is human, to forgive is divine.
EXAMINATION 1983
EXAMINATION 1984
EXAMINATION 1985
EXAMINATION 1986
EXAMINATION 1987
EXAMINATION 1988
EXAMINATION 1992
EXAMINATION 1993
ENGLISH (Précis & Composition)
Time allowed: 3 hours Maximum mark: 100
1. Make a Précis of the following passage, and suggest a suitable title: 25 The best aid to give is
intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge. A gift of knowledge
is infinitely preferable to a gift of material things. There are many reasons for this. Nothing
becomes truly one’s own except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice. A gift of
material goods can be appropriated by the recipient without effort or sacrifice; it therefore rarely
becomes his own and is all too frequently and easily treated as a mere windfall. A gift of
intellectual goods, a gift of knowledge, is a very different matter. Without a genuine effort of
appropriation on the part of the recipient there is no gift. To appropriate the gift and to make it
one’s own is the same thing, and ‘neither moth nor rust doth corrupt’. The gift of material goods
makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free. The gift of knowledge also
has far more lasting effects and is far more closely relevant to the concept of ‘development.’
Give a man a fish, as the saying goes, and you are helping him a little bit for a very short time,
teach him the act of fishing, and he can help himself all his life. further, if you teach him to make
his own fishing net, you have helped him to become not only self-supporting, but also self-reliant
and independent, man and businessman.
This, then should become the ever-increasing preoccupation of aid-programmes to make men
self-reliant and independent by the generous supply of the appropriate intellectual gifts, gifts of
relevant knowledge on the methods of self-help. This approach, incidentally, has also the
advantage of being relatively cheap, of making money go a long way. For POUNDS 100/
- you may be able to equip one man with certain means of production, hut for the same money
you may well be able to teach and hundred men to equip themselves. Perhaps a little ‘pumppriming’
by way of material goods will in some cases, be helpful to speed the process of
development.
(E. F. Schumacher)
2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own words
without lifting sentences from the given text 20
Recently the mass media, formerly subservient to the medical profession, have become
increasingly, restive, and occasionally hostile. In Germany, in particular, the newspapers and
television have given a great deal of time and space to the complaints against the medical
profession. In Britain on BBC radio and television, the medical practices have come under sharp
and aggressive criticism.
Is this antagonism to the profession justified? And if so, why? I have tried to answer that
question by looking at the way it deals with some of the diseases of our civilisation, including the
most lethal, heart-attacks and cancer. If what emerges is an indictment of the profession, then I
would rebut the charge that I am anti-doctor. Montaigne said: ‘I honour physicians not for their
services but for themselves.’ That goes for me too. (Brian Inglis)
a) What do you understand by the mass media?
b) What is Brian Inglis stance, towards the medical profession?
c) What is a lethal disease? -
d) Is there a radical change in the presentation of the art of healing by the mass media?
3. Use any five of the following pairs of words so as to bring out the difference in their
meanings: 10
a) Queue: cue, b) Differ: defer,
c) Conscious: conscience, d) Confidant: confidante,
e) Atheist: agnostic, f) Loose: Lose,
g) Briefing: debriefing, h) Dual: duel,
i) - Complement: compliment
4. Indicate the meaning of any five of the following: 10
a) Brag, B) Antiquarian,
c) Input, d) Prodigal,
e) Bibliophile, f) Nostalgia,
g) Output, h) Feedback,
i) Agrarian.
5. Use any five of the following in your sentences to bring out their exact meanings: 10
a) Play truant, b) Play down,
c) Turn turtle, d) Turn the corner,
e) A fair weather friend, f) Under a cloud,
g) Burn one’s boats, h) Horse-trading.
6. Comment on any one of the following about 200 words: 20
a) To err is human, to forgive divine,
b) The child is father of the man,
c) God helps those who help themselves,
d) Beggars are no choosers,
e) - Handsome is one who handsome does,
f) The impossible is often the untried,
g) Man has his will and woman her way.
EXAMINATION 1994
EXAMINATION- 1996
1. Make a precis of the given passage and give a suitable heading:(20) If then a practical end must be
assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of a society. Its ah is the art of
social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines its views to particular professions on the
one hand, not creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works indeed of genius fall under no art;
heroic minds come under no rule; a University is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal authors, of
founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of
Aristotle or Newtons of Napoleons or Washingtons of Raphaels or Shakespearcs though such miracles of
nature it has before now contained within its precincts. Nor is it content on the other hand with forming
the critic or the experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, through such too it includes within its
scope. But a University training is the great ordinary means to a great ordinary end; it aims at raising the
intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true
principles to popular aspirations. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own
opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in
urging them, ft teaches him to sec things as they arc, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of
thought, to detect what is sophistical and to - discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post
with credit, and to master any subject with facility. (John H. Ncwman)
2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end, in YOUR OWN WORDS. 20
My father was back in work within days of his return home. He had a spell in the shipyard, where the last
of the great Belfast liners, the CANBERRA, was under construction, and then moved to an electronics
firm in the east of the city. (These were the days when computers were the size of small houses and were
built by sheet metal workers). A short time after he started in this job, one of his colleagues was sacked for
taking off time to get married. The workforce went on strike to get the colleague reinstated. The dispute,
dubbed the Honeymoon Strike, made the Belfast papers. My mother told me not long ago that she and my
father, with four young sons, were hit so hard by that strike, that for years afterwards they were financially
speaking, running to stand still. I don't know how the strike ended, but whether or not the colleague got
his old job back, he was soon in another, better one. I remember visiting.him and his wife when I was still
quite young, in their new bungalow in Belfast northern suburbs. I believe they left Belfast soon after the
Troubles began.
My father then was thirty-seven, the age I am today. My Hither and I are father and son, which is to say
we are close without knowing very much about one another. We talk about events, rather than emotions.
We keep from each other certain of our hopes and fears and doubts. I have never for instance asked my
father whether he has dwelt on (he direction his life might have taken if at certain moments he had made
certain other choices. Whatever, he found himself, with a million and a half of his fellows, living in what
was in all but name a civil war.As a grown up 1 try often to imagine what it must be like to be faced with
such a situation. What, in the previous course of your life, prepares your for arriving, as my father did, at
the scene of a bomb blast close to your brother's place of work and seeing what you suppose, from the
colour of the hair, to be your brother lying in the road, only to find that you arc cradling the remains of a
woman?
(Glciin Patterson)
(a) From your reading of (he passage what do you infer about the nature of (he 'Troubles" (he writer
mentions.
(b) What according to the writer were (he working conditions in the Electronics firm where his father
worked?
(c) Why was his father's colleague sacked?
(d) How docs the writer show that as father and son they do not know much about each other?
(e) Explain the underlined words/phrases in the passage:
Made the Belfast papers, had a spell, dubbed, was sacked, hit hard.
(5) He said, "I baiigcd on Cliffs door but he did not answer".
(6) "Where is the boat? Hurry up we are being chased", she cried.
(7) "I have lost my way. Can you direct me to the Post Office please?" said the old lady.
(8) He said to me, "what a pity you missed such an important meeting.
(9) "How wonderful! Why didn't you suggest this plan earlier".
(10) He said, "Let's wait till the road gets cleared".
7. Use the following in your own sentences to bring out their meaning: (10)
(1) Kick the bucket
(2) Bolt from the blue
(3) Put your foot down
(4) Worth your salt
(5) Down the drain
(6) All cars
(7) Swan song
(8) Cheek by Jowl
(9) in a nutshell
(10) Give me five
FEDERAL PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION
We're dealing with a very dramatic and very fundamental paradigm shift here. You may try" to lubricate
your' social interactions with personality techniques and skills, but in the process, you may truncate the
vital character base. You can't have the fruits without the roots. It's the principle of sequencing: Private
victory precedes Public Victory. Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationship
with others. Some people say that you have to like yourself before you can like others. I think' that idea
has merit but if you don't know yourself, if you don't control yourself, if you don't have mastery over
yourself, it's very hard to like yourself, except in some short-term, psych-up, superficial way. Real self-
respect comes from dominion over*self from true independence. Independence is an achievement. Inter
dependence is a choice only independent people can make. Unless we are willing to achieve real
independence, it's foolish to try to develop human relations skills. We might try. We might even have
some degree of success when the sun is shining. But when the difficult times come - and they will - We
won't have the foundation to keep things together. The most important ingredient we put into any
relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come
from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core
(the character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won't be able to create and sustain the
foundation necessary" for effective interdependence. The techniques and skills that really make a
difference in human interaction are the ones that almost naturally flow from a truly independent character.
So the place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our Circle of Influence, our own
character. As we become independent - Proactive, centered in correct principles, value driven and able to
organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity - we then can choose to become
interdependent - capable of building rich, enduring, highly productive relationships with other people.
2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end, in YOUR OWN WORDS.
(20)
We look before and after, wrote Shelley, and pine for what is not. It is said that this is what distinguishes
us from the animals and that they, unlike us, live always for and in the movement and have neither hopes
nor regrets. Whether it is so or not I do not know yet it is undoubtedly one of our distinguishing mental
attributes: we are actually conscious of our life in time and not merely of our life at the moment of
experiencing it. And as a result we find many grounds for melancholy and foreboding. Some of us
prostrate ourselves on the road way in Trafalgar Square or in front of the American Embassy because we
are fearful that our lives, or more disinterestedly those of our descendants will be cut short by nuclear war.
If only as" squirrels or butterflies are supposed to do, we could let the future look after itself and be
content to enjoy the pleasures of the morning breakfast, the brisk walk to the office through autumnal mist
or winter fog, the mid-day sunshine that sometimes floods through windows, tne warm, peaceful winter
evenings by the fireside at home. Yet all occasions for contentment are so often spoiled for us, to a greater
or lesser degree by our individual temperaments, by this strange human capacity for foreboding and regret
- regret for things which we cannot undo and foreboding for things which may never happen at all. Indeed
were it not for the fact that over breaking through our human obsessions with the tragedy of time, so
enabling us to enjoy at any rate some fleeting moments untroubled by vain yearning or apprehension, our
life would not be intolerable at all. As it is, we contrive, everyone of us, to spoil it to a remarkable degree.
1. What is the difference between our life and the life of an animal? (3)
3. How does the writer compare man to the butterflies and squirrels? (3)
4. How does anxiety about future disturb our daily life? (3)
4. (a) Choose the word that is nearly similar in meaning to the word in capital letters. * (5)
(1) ARCHIPELAGO:
1. Reef
2. Glacier
3. Cluster of islands
4. Lagoon
(2) PIAZZA:
1. Cheese dish
2. Veranda
3. Public Square
4. Style or dash
(3) BAKLAVA:
1. Stringed instrument
2. Dessert
3. Whining dance
4. Gratuity
(4) IONIC:
2. Greek architecture
3. Roman Sculpture
4. Mediterranean Sea
(5) CICERONE:
1. Teacher
2. Literary classic
3. Chaperone
4. Guide
(b) Pick the one most nearly opposite in meaning to the capitalized word: * (5)
(1) DESICCATE:
1. Lengthen
2. Hallow
3. Exonerate
4. Saturate
5. Anesthetize
(2) APOTHEOSIS:
1. Departure from tradition
4. Surrender to impulse
5. Cause for grief
(3) SPUNK:
1. Success
2. Timidity
3. Growing awareness
4. Loss of prestige
5. Lack of intelligence
(4) CAVIL:
1. Discern
2. Disclose
3. Introduce
4. Flatter
5. Commend
(5) RAUCOUS:
1. Orderly
2. Absorbent,
3. Buoyant
4. Mellifluous
5. Contentious
5. (a) Change the Voice of any FIVE of the following sentences: (5)
1. International Humanitarian Law forbids actions leading to unnecessary death and suffering.
4. Whv have the roads not been constructed by the government in this part of the country?
7. The arrangements of holding the Art Exhibition could not be completed on time.
7. The .house stood up in the dull street because of its red door.
6. (a) Use any FIVE of the following in your own sentences to bring out their meaning: (5)
Use FIVE of the following pairs of words in your own sentences so as to bring out their meanings: *
(10)
1. Auger, Augur
2. Fain, Feign
3. Emigrate, Immigrate
4. Envy, Jealousy
5. Invade, Attack
6. Trifling, Trivial
7. Simulation, Dissimulation
8. Venal, Venial
English (precis & Composition)
1. MAKE A PRÉCIS OF THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE IN ABOUT ONE THIRD OF ITS LENGTH.
Suggest a suitable title also. (20)
Besant describing the middle class of the 9th century wrote " In the first place it was for more a class
apart. "In no sense did it belong to society. Men in professions of any kind (except in the Army and Navy)
could only belong to society by right of birth and family connections; men in trade—bankers were still
accounted tradesmen—could not possibly belong to society. That is to say, if they went to live in the
country they were not called upon by the county families and in the town they were not admitted by the
men into their clubs, or by ladies into their houses… The middle class knew its own place, respected
itself, made its own society for itself, and cheerfully accorded to rank the deference due."
Since then, however, the life of the middle classes had undergone great changes as their numbers had
swelled and their influence had increased.
Their already well –developed consciousness of their own importance had deepened. More critical than
they had been in the past of certain aspects of aristocratic life, they wee also more concerned with the
plight of the poor and the importance of their own values of society, thrift, hand work, piety and
respectability thrift, hand work, piety and respectability as examples of ideal behavior for the guidance of
the lower orders. Above all they were respectable. There were divergences of opinion as to what exactly
was respectable and what was not. There were, nevertheless, certain conventions, which were universally
recognized: wild and drunker behaviors were certainly not respectable, nor were godlessness or avert
promiscuity, not an ill-ordered home life, unconventional manners, self-indulgence or flamboyant clothes
and personal adornments.
2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own words. (20)
The vitality of any teaching, or historical movement, depends upon what it affirms rather than upon what
it affirms rather than upon what it denies, and its survival and continued power will often mean that its
positives are insufficiently regarded by opposing schools. The grand positives of Bentham were
benevolence and veracity: the passion for the relief of man’s estate, and the passion for truth. Bent ham’s
multifarious activities, pursued without abatement to the end of a long life, wee inspired by a "dominant
and all-comprehensive desire for the amelioration of human life"; they wee inspired, too, by the belief that
he had found the key to all moral truth. This institution, this custom, this code, this system of legislation--
does it promotes human happiness? Then it is sound. This theory, this creed, this moral teaching – does it
rightly explain why virtue is admirable, or why duty is obligatory? The limitation of Bentham can be
gauged by his dismissal of all poetry (and most religion) as "misrepresentation’; this is his negative side.
But benevolence and veracity are Supreme Values, and if it falls to one of the deniers to be their special
advocate, the believers must have long been drowsed. Bentham believes the Church teaches children
insincerity by making them affirm what they cannot possibly understand or mean. They promise, for
example, to fulfill the undertaking of their god---parents, that they will "renounce the devil and all his
works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world" etc. ‘The Devil" Bentham comments: " who or what is
he, and how is it that he is renounced?" Has the child happened to have any dealings with him? Let the
Archbishop of Canterbury tell us, and let him further explain how his own "works" are distinguished from
the aforesaid "Pomps and Vanity". What king, what Lords Temporal or Spiritual, have ever renounced
them? (Basil Willey)
(d) In what context has the Archbishop of Canterbury been quoted i.e. is he praised or condemned?
3. Write a comprehensive note (250 –300 words) on ONE of the following subjects:
(20)
(a) Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness (Thomas Pain).
(b) We learn from history that we do not learn from history. (Hegel)
(c) Liberty doesn’t work as well in practice as it does in speeches. (Will Rogers)
5. Use any FIVE of the following idioms in sentences to make their meaning clear:
6. Use FIVE of the following pairs of words in sentences of your own to bring out the difference: (10)
Knead, need; Queue, cue; quarts, quartz; choral, coral; discrete, discreet; epoch, epic; Libel, liable; male,
mail; banned, band; barred, bard;
7. Complete the conversation with the correct idiom in the correct form: (10)
Keep regular hours, an unearthly hour, the small hours, a night owl, have a night out, at any moment, have
one’s moments, have a minute to all one’s own, a night on the town, on the spur of the moment:
"morning, Paul! You look tired". "Yes I am. I had a late night last night. I’m not usually------------------but
I ----------------------- ------ with some friends yesterday. I have been so busy all week that I’ve
hardly---------------------------------- , so I really enjoyed -------------------------------------------- . I start work
early, so I usually -------------- ------- ------ -- but yesterday was an exception. I didn’t think. I got into bed
and must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew my landlady was shaking me, saying she was
sorry to wake me at such----------------------------------- , but she thought there was a burglar in the
kitchen".
"Mr. Dick’s working on the night-shift, and I was the only man in the house. I am usually a coward, but I
do-----------------------------------, so I grabbed my tennis racket, which was the only thing I could think of
-----------------------------, and crept downstairs".
"And then?"
" I saw a dark figure in the kitchen with a knife in his hand, ready to strike------------------------------ . I was
just about to hit him with the racket, when a voice shouted out, " "Hey! It’s me! It was Mr. Dick. He had
forgotten his sandwiches".