ENGLISH - Online Test

Comprehension passages and grammar Prepare / Learn

Q1.

Direction: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

State Bank of India (or SBI) is India’s largest public sector bank, and a Fortune 500 company. It has now branched into various financial services, and is a government-owned corporation headquartered out of Mumbai. As of 2014-15, SBI had assets worth Rs. 20,480 billion and was ranked 232rd on the Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s biggest corporations as of 2016.SBI traces its roots back to 1806, making it the oldest commercial bank in the Indian subcontinent. The State Bank of India as it is today has been in existence since 1956. As on date, it has a market share of over a whopping 20 percent in deposits and loans among Indian commercial banks.SBI offers a range of banking products and services through its extensive branch network, which includes products targeted at resident Indians as well as non-resident Indians (or NRIs).In addition to its five associate banks, the SBI also operates in the non-banking sphere which includes credit cards, life and general insurance, funds management and capital markets among others.

What sets them apart from competition is the sheer reach that SBI offers, reaching out to potential home owners in semi-urban and rural areas in addition to metropolitan cities. Further, in keeping with the rapid technological development in the banking and financial services (BFSI) sector, the SBI has expanded its reach by offering services at the click of a button.SBI has a wide reach that is not spread only domestically but as well as in the overseas market. There are 14 regional hubs and over 57 zonal offices located in India. The number of bank branches has crossed 18,354 in India itself, and as of 2014-15, the Bank had 191 offices spread across 36 countries worldwide. It also operates several foreign subsidies or affiliates.When it comes to home loans, SBI offers various products, and all of these product offerings can be categorised as under:Home loans, which include options for new homes, resale (or pre-owned) homes, as well as construction of a house. It provides Loan for Earnest Money Deposit, which is to help individuals finance their requirements towards earnest money to book residential plots/ built-up housing uses, properties being sold by government housing agencies an urban development authorities and housing boards. Further, this loan can be repaid through the proceeds of the housing loan availed of from SBI.Takeover of home loans, which is a balance transfer facility to shift your existing home loan from scheduled commercial banks, or private and foreign banks and even housing finance companies (registered with the National Housing Bank) to SBI.Tribal Plus Scheme, which is a special housing finance scheme for the hill/ tribal areas of North East India and areas around Chandigarh, Bhopal, Lucknow, Patna and Bhubaneswar.HerGhar, loans exclusively for women home owners, offered at a concessional interest rate. FlexiPay Home Loan Scheme, which is targeted at young working professionals to ease the financial burden by offering attractive repayment options.In addition the SBI also caters to the NRI audience with a selection of housing loan product offerings.In keeping with the tradition of employing the latest technological advances, you can apply for a housing loan both at a SBI branch and online as well. SBI also has digital branches known as SBI InTouch, which offer an instant loan facility for home loans, among other products and services. Rewarding individuals for availing of a home loan, SBI has an attractive rewards programme called the State Bank Rewardz, which offers reward points as part of its Group Loyalty Programme. These points can then be redeemed upon accrual for various products and services, both offline as well as online.

What makes SBI stand apart from its competitors?

A. SBI reaches out to potential home owners in semi-urban and rural areas in addition to metropolitan cities.

B. In keeping with the rapid technological development in the banking and financial services (BFSI) sector, the SBI has expanded its reach by offering services at the click of a button.

C. SBI has a wide reach that is not spread only domestically but as well as in the overseas market.

D. It operates several foreign subsidies or affiliates.

E. SBI traces its roots back to 1806, making it the oldest commercial bank in the Indian subcontinent.

Answer : Option A
Explaination / Solution:

It can be inferred from the following statement of the passage, 'What sets them apart from competition is the sheer reach that SBI offers, reaching out to potential home owners in semi-urban and rural areas in addition to metropolitan cities.'

Correction of incorrect grammatical sentences Prepare / Learn

Q2. Direction: Read the sentence(divided in different parts) to find out whether there is any error in it. The error, if any, will be in one part of the sentence.

A. While the character traits of particular individuals do

B. affect their susceptibility to different fallacies and mental errors,

C. this broad demograph range suggests a

D. dramatic approximation of a large and representative

E. sample of the population.

Answer : Option C
Explaination / Solution:

The error present above is usage of an incorrect part of speech. The word “range” is a noun which is incorrectly described by another noun “demograph”. The noun “range” should be qualified by the adjective “demographic” which is the correct part of speech in this reference.

Verbal Ability Prepare / Learn

Q3. Directions: In each question below is given a statement followed by two courses of action numbered I and II. A course of action is a step or administrative decision to be taken for improvement, follow-up or further action in regard to the problem, policy etc. On the basis of the information given in the statement, you have to assume everything in the statement to be true, then decide which of the suggested courses of action logically follows(s) for pursuing.

Statement: Many people have encroached upon govt. property and built their houses and business establishments.
Courses of action
I. The government should take immediate steps to remove all unauthorized constructions on govt. land.
II. All the encroachers should immediately be put behind bars and also be slapped with a hefty fine.

A. Only course of action I follows.

B. Only course of action II follows.

C. Either course of action I or II follows.

D. Neither course of action I nor II follows.

E. Both courses of action I and II follow.

Answer : Option A
Explaination / Solution:

Course of action (II) is an extreme and too harsh action hence not to be followed. So only (I) follows.

Comprehension Prepare / Learn

Q4.

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

As bitcoin launched in 2009, most early adopters saw its disruptive potential. While bitcoin has stalled for some time approaching a valid use of the term “stagnation”, cryptocurrency in a larger context is still just as disruptive. In 2011, I stated that bitcoin (cryptocurrency) will do to banks what e-mail did to the postal services. This is not just true, but it will be even more brutal to governments, and by extension, governmental services.

Now, governments love anything that smells like innovation, because it means jobs, this magic word that smells of magic unicorns to anybody in government. Therefore, people who like innovation are nurturing this bitcoin thing, this cryptocurrency thing, this ethereum thing (as if governments made a difference, but still). Lots of startups in tip-of-the-spear financial technology means that their government may get a head start over other governments. They have no idea that cryptocurrency will radically scale back the power of government, not just their own one, but also all those other governments over which it seeks a competitive edge.

Individual people in government can also love bitcoin because it gives them something to do. More specifically, it gives them something to regulate. Fortunately, other people in government see that this gives them something to do, which is to hold those government regulators with an overdeveloped sense of order somewhat in check. You’ll hear no shortage of wannabe regulators saying that “bitcoin is bad because it’s being used in crime and contraband trade!”, to which I usually respond, “well, bitcoin is a currency, so I mean you put it in relation to the US Dollar, which then… is not used in crime and contraband trade, is this the argument you’re using to support your position?”, at which point the discussion generally changes topic.

This completely disregards the observation that bitcoin and cryptocurrency were designed to not submit to regulation in the first place. Well, at least not governmental regulation. It is heavily regulated – but by its source code, and by its source code alone.

The reason this will cripple today’s governments — today’s idea of what a government is and does — is because today’s economy is built on one layer doing actual work and three layers of abstraction on top.

At the first and bottom layer of our economy are the individual people doing all the actual work.

The second layer on top of the first is the abstraction we call corporations, which is a way to organize our economy and optimize transaction costs.

The third layer on top of the second would be banks, which handle money for corporations and individual people in a middleman gatekeeper position.

Finally, the fourth layer is the government, which takes advantage of the banks’ gatekeeper position to siphon off taxes from money flows in order to fund itself and governmental services. In other words, layer four completely depends on layer three for its operations – or at least for the relative simplicity of funding its operations.

Now, what bitcoin and cryptocurrency do is make away with the banks – cutting them out of the loop entirely, making them redundant, obsolete, dinosaurified. This resulting absence of anything where banks used to be creates an air gap between the functional part of the economy – people and corporations – and governments who want funding.

The way governments want to tap all money flows in order to fund itself is not entirely unlike how the surveillance agencies want to tap all information flows in order to have an information advantage. In this way, the deployment of cryptocurrency is to tax collection what deployment of end-to-end encryption is to mass surveillance. The government can no longer reach into money flows and grab what it wants, but will be dependent on people actively sending it money. The government can’t point a gun at a computer and have it give up its money; you can only make a computer operator feel very sorry for not voluntarily producing the keys to that money. So the government is no longer able to collect taxes without the consent – even if coerced and forced consent – of the people being thus collected.

The deployment of cryptocurrency is to tax collection what deployment of end-to-end encryption is to mass surveillance.

Governments, and individual people in government, have no idea about this bigger picture. They’re far too wrapped up in things-as-usual to notice. They won’t see it coming until it’s already happened.

When this happens, there will be no shortage of people in government who suddenly want to regulate cryptocurrency – only to find out it will be as effective as regulating gravity. When this happens, it will be redefined from a coercive Colossus able to take what it wants and do what it wants into a construct that actually depends on people wanting to fund it. This will be a very interesting time to live in. While today’s governments will see themselves as getting crippled, I suspect most citizens will regard it as unquestionably healthy that governments will actually begin to depend on the approval of the people at large.

We’re just beginning to see the changes to society that the Internet brings. This is one of them.

Which one of the following is not one of the layers on which our economy is built on as described by the author?

A. Banking

B. Government

C. Corporations

D. Customers

E. Individual workers

Answer : Option D
Explaination / Solution:

The four layers described in the passage are the people who actually do the work, corporations, banks and the governments. Hence, option D is the correct answer.

English Prepare / Learn

Q5. Direction: Five statements are given below out of which one or more maybe grammatically incorrect. Identify the incorrect statement(s).

I. There is a train to Pune every Tuesdays.
II. We arrived at the station in the evening.
III. I have been working on this project from 10th of this month.
IV. Read not to contradict and confuse but to weigh and consider.
V. When she tried to make the matter clear, she got a flea in her ear.

A. IV and V

B. Only I

C. I and IV

D. II and V

E. All of these

Answer : Option B
Explaination / Solution:

After “every" singular noun or pronoun is used. So in sentence I Tuesday should be used instead of Tuesdays.

Comprehension passages and grammar Prepare / Learn

Q6.

Direction: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

How is Loan For Earnest Money Deposit beneficial?

A. This loan can be repaid through the proceeds of the housing loan availed of from SBI.

B. It provides a balance transfer facility to shift your existing home loan from scheduled commercial banks, or private and foreign banks and even housing finance companies (registered with the National Housing Bank) to SBI.

C. It is a special housing finance scheme for the hill/ tribal areas of North East India.

D. It is offered at a concessional interest rate.

E. It would finance their requirements towards earnest money to book anything starting from residential plots/ built-up housing uses to properties being sold by government housing agencies.

Answer : Option E
Explaination / Solution:

It can be inferred from the following statement of the passage, 'It provides Loan for Earnest Money Deposit, which is to help individuals finance their requirements towards earnest money to book residential plots/ built-up housing uses, properties being sold by government housing agencies an urban development authorities and housing boards.'

Correction of incorrect grammatical sentences Prepare / Learn

Q7. Direction: Read each part of the sentence to find out if there is any error in it. The error, if any, will be in one part of the sentence. The number of that part is the answer. If there is no error, mark your answer as (5).

A. (1)

B. (2)

C. (3)

D. (4)

E. (5)

Answer : Option B
Explaination / Solution:

It’s very complicated to figure out the distinction between the two prepositions 'among' and 'between'. But here as per the context ‘Among’ is an appropriate word against between. The term ‘between’ is usually used with two — but sometimes more than two — separate and distinct things. While ‘Among’ is used to portray the idea of being in a group or in the midst of a group.

Verbal Ability Prepare / Learn

Q8. Direction: In the question, a statement followed by two courses of action numbered I and II. A course of action is a step or administrative decision to be taken for improvement, follow-up or further action in regard to the problem, policy etc. On the basis of the information given in the statement, you have to assume everything in the statement to be true, then decide which of the suggested courses of action logically follows(s) for pursuing.

Statement: The meteorological department has predicted normal rainfall throughout the country during the current monsoon.
Courses of action
I. The govt should reduce the procurement price of food grains for the current year.
II. The govt. should reduce subsidy on fertilizers for the current year.

A. Only course of action I follows.

B. Only course of action II follows.

C. Either course of action I or II follows.

D. Neither course of action I nor II follows.

E. Both courses of action I and II follow.

Answer : Option D
Explaination / Solution:

A course of action should be such that it provides relief or solves the problem. the given two courses of action are not problem solving rather problem creating. Hence, none wil follow because government's work is not to create the problems rather solve the problem. Besides this, the statement mentioned is not a problem. A course of action is required for problems. If the situation is normal, the government need not interfere and create problems.

Comprehension Prepare / Learn

Q9.

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

At the first and bottom layer of our economy are the individual people doing all the actual work.

The second layer on top of the first is the abstraction we call corporations, which is a way to organize our economy and optimize transaction costs.

The third layer on top of the second would be banks, which handle money for corporations and individual people in a middleman gatekeeper position.

The deployment of cryptocurrency is to tax collection what deployment of end-to-end encryption is to mass surveillance.

We’re just beginning to see the changes to society that the Internet brings. This is one of them.

It can be inferred from the given passage that-
(i) both cryptocurrency and end-to-end encryption weaken the role of government
(ii) the unhindered use of cryptocurrency will eventually contribute towards making a truly democratic society
(iii) cryptocurrency will cripple the government because it is dependent on banking for its operations

A. Only (i)

B. Only (ii)

C. Both (i) and (ii)

D. Both (ii) and (iii)

E. Both (i) and (iii)

Answer : Option E
Explaination / Solution:

Statement (i) can be inferred from the given passage as cryptocurrency weakens the government by depriving it of its regulating power. On the other hand, end-to-end encryption impedes the accessibility of the users’ data by encryption. It is indicated in the passage that cyrptocurrency will weaken the government to such an extent that it will have to rely on its people for funding. But a truly democratic society is a very comprehensive concept. Hence, we cannot infer statement (ii). Statement (iii) can be inferred from the given passage because Banking is one of the layers of the existing economy and the government is dependent on it for funding its operation. In its absence, the government will not be able to function at all. Hence, it can also be inferred from the passage. Hence, option E is the correct answer.

English Prepare / Learn

Q10. Direction: Five statements are given below out of which one or more maybe grammatically incorrect. Identify the incorrect statement(s).

I. Whatever the problem, someone can always oversimplify it.
II. Sometimes a problem is simpler than it seems at the first sight.
III. There is a mysterious chemistry that alter things.
IV. The teacher was taken back by the sudden questions asked by the students.
V. The decision was taken in camera.

A. I and II

B. IV and V

C. II and III

D. III and IV

E. All of these

Answer : Option D
Explaination / Solution:

In statement III the subject is singular, therefore the singular verb "alters" should be used. In statement IV, “back" should be replaced by aback. 'Taken aback' means shocked.

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