www.byjusexamprep.

com

1
www.byjusexamprep.com

PASSAGE 1
I concede that I am somewhat inept with regard to memory, personal grooming, walking through low
doorways, and much else, but the thing is, it's my genes. Allow me to explain.
I recently tore out of the newspaper an article concerning a study at the University of Michigan, or perhaps
it was the University of Minnesota (at any rate, it was somewhere cold with "University" in the title), which
found that absent-mindedness is a genetically inherited trait. I put it in a file marked "Absent-Mindedness"
and, of course, immediately mislaid the file. In searching for it I found another file intriguingly marked
"Genes and So On", which is just as interesting and - here was the lucky part - not altogether irrelevant.
In it I found a copy of a report from the 29 November 1996 issue of the journal Science entitled
"Association of Anxiety-related Traits with a Polymorphism in the Serotonin Transporter Gene Regulatory
Region". Now, to be frank, I don't follow polymorphism in serotonin or transporters as closely as I ought,
at least not during the basketball season, but when I read "By regulating the magnitude and duration of
serotonergic responses, the 5-HT transporter (5-HTT) is central to the fine-tuning of brain serotonergic
euro-transmission," I thought, Hey, these fellows could be on to something.
The upshot of the study is that scientists have located a gene (specifically gene SLC6A4 on chromosome
17q12, in case you want to experiment at home) which determines whether you are a born worrier or
not. To be precise, if you have a long version of the SLC6A4 gene, you are very probably easy- going and
serene, whereas if you have the short version, you can't leave home without saying at some point: "Stop
the car. I think I left the bath water running.“
What this means is that if you are not a born worrier then
you have nothing to worry about (though, of course, you wouldn't be worrying anyway), whereas if you
are a worrier by nature there is nothing you can do about it, so you may as well stop worrying, except, of
course, you can't. Now put this together with the findings about absent-mindedness at the University of
Somewhere Cold, and I think you can see that our genes have a great deal to answer for.
Here's another interesting fact from my "Genes and So On" file. According to Richard Dawkins in The Blind
Watchmaker, each one of the 10,000 billion cells in the human body contains more genetic information
than the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica (and without sending a salesman to your door), yet it appears
that 90 per cent of all our genetic material doesn't do anything at all. It just sits there, like Uncle Fred and
Aunt Muriel when they drop by on a Sunday.
From this I believe we can draw four important conclusions, namely: 1) Even though your genes don't do
much they can let you down in lots of embarrassing ways; 2) always post your letters first, then buy the
tobacco; 3) never promise a list of four things if you can't remember the fourth one, and 4)...

1. What is the overall tone of the passage?

A. Humorous
B. Sarcastic
C. Cynical
D. Scientific
Ans. A

2. The author has penned down the article above following which of the following styles?
A. Narrative
B. Abstruse
C. Analytical
D. Factual
Ans. A

2
www.byjusexamprep.com

PASSAGE 2
When I was little, children were bought two kinds of ice cream, sold from those white wagons with the
canopies made of silvery metal: either the two-cent cone or the four-cent ice cream pie. The two-cent
cone was very small, in fact it could fit comfortably into a child's hand, and it was made by taking the ice
cream from its container with a special scoop and piling it on the cone.
...I was fascinated, however, by some of my peers, whose parents bought them not a four-cent pie but
two two-cent cones. These privileged children advanced proudly with one cone in their right hand and
one in their left; and expertly moving their head
from side to side, they licked first one, then the other. This liturgy seemed to me so sumptuously enviable,
that many times I asked to be allowed to celebrate it. In vain. My elders were inflexible: a four-cent ice,
yes; but two two-cent ones, absolutely no.
As anyone can see, neither mathematics nor economy nor dietetics justified this refusal. Nor did hygiene,
assuming that in due course the tips of both cones were discarded. The pathetic, and obviously
mendacious, justification was that a boy concerned with turning his eyes from one cone to the other was
more inclined to stumble over stones, steps, or cracks in the pavement. I dimly sensed that there was
another secret justification, cruelly pedagogical, but I was unable to grasp it.
Today, citizen and victim of a consumer society, a civilization of excess and waste (which the society of
the thirties was not), I realize that those dear and now departed elders were right.Two two-cent cones
instead of one at four cents did not signify squandering, economically speaking, but symbolically they
surely did. It was for this precise reason, that I yearned for them: because two ice creams suggested
excess.
And this was precisely why they were denied me: because they looked indecent, an insult to poverty, a
display of fictitious privilege, a boast of wealth.
Only spoiled children ate two cones at once, those children who in fairy tales were rightly punished, as
Pinocchio was when he rejected the skin and the stalk. And parents who encouraged this weakness,
appropriate to little parvenus, were bringing up their children in the foolish theater of "I'd like to but I
can't."
...Nowadays the moralist risks seeming at odds with morality, in a world where the consumer civilization
now wants even adults to be spoiled, and promises them always something more, from the wristwatch in
the box of detergent to the bonus bangle sheathed, with the magazine it accompanies, in a plastic
envelope.
Like the parents of those ambidextrous gluttons I so envied, the consumer civilization pretends to give
more, but actually gives, for four cents, what is worth four cents.
You will throw away the old transistor radio to purchase the new one, that boasts an alarm clock as well,
but some inexplicable defect in the mechanism will guarantee that the radio lasts only a year.
...The morality of the old days made Spartans of us all, while today's morality wants all of us to be Sybarites
(extracted with edits from PYPQs CAT 2008)

3. Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage?

A. Today’s society is more extravagant than the society of the 1930s.
B. The act of eating two ice cream cones is akin to a ceremonial process.
C. Elders rightly suggested that a boy turning eyes from one cone to the other was more likely to fall.
D. Despite seeming to promise more, the consumer civilization gives away exactly what the thing is worth.
Ans. C

3
www.byjusexamprep.com

4. In the passage, the phrase ‘little parvenus’ refers to:

A. naughty midgets.
B. old hags.
C. arrogant people.
D. young upstarts.
Ans. C

5. The author pined for two-cent cones instead of one four-cent pie because:
A. it made dietetic sense.
B. it suggested intemperance.
C. it was more fun.
D. it had a visual appeal.
Ans. B

6. What does the author mean by “nowadays the moralist risks seeming at odds with morality”?
A. The moralist of yesterday has become immoral today.
B. The concept of morality has changed over the years.
C. Consumerism is amoral.
D. The risks associated with immorality have gone up.
Ans. B

7. According to the author, the justification for refusal to let him eat two cones was plausibly:
A. didactic.
B. dietetic.
C. dialectic.
D. diatonic.
Ans. B

PASSAGE 3
It seems that the commercial jungle that wine has now become has not in the slightest deterred people
from plunging adventurously into the thickets in order to taste and see. Consumers are no longer
intimidated by the thought of needing to know their Pouilly-Fuisse, just at the very moment when there
is more to know than ever before.
The reason for this new mood of confidence is not hard to find. It is on every wine label from Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa and the United States: the name of the grape from which the wine is made.
At one time that might have sounded like a fairly technical approach in itself. Why should native English-
speakers know what Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay were? The answer lies in the popularity that
wines made from those grape varieties now enjoy. Consumers effectively recognize them as brand names,
and have acquired a basic lexicon of wine that can serve them even when confronted with those Brazilian
upstarts.
In the wine heartlands of France, they are scared to death of that trend—not because they think their
wine isn’t as good as the best from California or South Australia (What French winemaker will ever admit
that?) but because they don’t traditionally call their wines Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay
They call them Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou or Corton-Charlemagne, and they aren’t about to change.
Some areas, in the middle of southern France, have now produced a generation of growers using the
varietal names on their labels and are

4
www.byjusexamprep.com

tempting consumers back to French wine. It will be an uphill struggle, but there is probably no other way
if France is to avoid simply becoming a specialty source of old-fashioned wines for old-fashioned
connoisseurs.
Wine consumption was also given a significant boost in the early 1990s by the work of Dr. Serge Renaud,
who has spent many years investigating the reasons for the uncannily low incidence of coronary heart
disease in the south of France. One of his major findings is that the fat-derived cholesterol that builds up
in the arteries and can eventually lead to heart trouble can be dispersed by the tannins in wine.
Tannin is derived from the skins of grapes, and is therefore present in higher levels in red wines, because
they have to be infused with their skins to attain the red colour. That news caused a huge upsurge in red
wine consumption in the United States. It has not been accorded the prominence it deserves in the UK,
largely because the medical profession still sees all alcohol as a menace to health, and is constantly calling
for it to be made prohibitively expensive. Certainly the manufacturers of anticoagulant drugs might have
something to lose if we all got the message that we would do just as well by our hearts by taking half a
bottle of red wine every day!

8. Which one of the following, if true, would provide most support for Dr. Renaud’s findings about the
effect of tannins?
A. A survey showed that film celebrities based in France have a low incidence of coronary heart disease.
B. Measurements carried out in southern France showed red wine drinkers had significantly higher levels
of coronary heart incidence than white wine drinkers did.
C. Data showed a positive association between sales of red wine and incidence of coronary heart disease.
D. Long-term surveys in southern France showed that the incidence of coronary heart disease was
significantly lower in red wine drinkers than in those who did not drink red wine.
Ans. D

9. The tone that the author uses while asking “What French winemaker will ever admit that?” is best
described as:
A. caustic.
B. satirical.
C. critical.
D. hypocritical.
Ans. B

10. What, according to the author, should the French do to avoid becoming a producer of merely old-
fashioned wines?
A. Follow the labelling strategy of the English-speaking countries.
B. Give their wines English names.
C. Introduce fruity wines as Brazil has done.
D. Produce the wines that have become popular in the English-speaking world.
Ans. A

11. The passage above is written in which of the following styles?

A. Analytical
B. Factual
C. Descriptive
D. Argumentative
Ans. D

5
www.byjusexamprep.com

PASSAGE 3
Freedom Day’ is coming, but how free will we actually be when it arrives? ...In a rather Orwellian turn,
‘Freedom Day’ means freedom for some, but not others. The unvaccinated might find their freedoms
curtailed in ways that would have seemed astonishing not so long ago. Meanwhile, the controversial ‘no
jab, no job’ policy, through which the unvaccinated can be fired or not hired, has been formalized and
expanded beyond those who work in healthcare.
...The Prime Minister is hoping to sneak through a fundamental change in the nature of the relationship
between individual and the state. Freedom — to go to cinemas, watch football and so on
— could soon not be guaranteed to all, but contingent on criteria decided by the government and
enforced by private companies. Johnson looks set to bring in an ID card system that is even more intrusive
than the Blairite scheme he once so fervently opposed. And this fits a trend. From gambling laws to the
huge salt and sugar taxes now being proposed, the current government is doing a fairly good impression
of creating the nanny state that Johnson once held up to ridicule. Big Boris is watching you — while
pretending not to.
The pandemic has shaken faith in liberal democracy: opinion polls show huge support for curfews and
quarantines...The future may well be one in which the government knows your temperature wherever
you go, and vaccine passports may be welcomed as an alternative to blanket lockdowns.
In France, Emmanuel Macron is thinking about making vaccines compulsory. Vaccine passports offer a
softer tool of coercion: people are free, in theory, not to have the jab, but their lives can be made much
more difficult by the government. It could become harder to get a job, harder to travel, harder to go
anywhere that isn’t home.
The Prime Minister has been honest about how the pandemic has shaken his liberalism...Hence a series
of new measures he’d once happily have denounced as ‘nanny statism’: a ban on fast-food advertising,
for example, and forcing restaurants to display calorie counts on menus
It may be that vaccine passports in Britain will go the way of Israel’s green passes and become redundant
almost as quickly as they come in. Or this could be the start of a biosecurity state: an all-seeing system
that future governments will decide to use in ways that go far beyond pandemics. These are huge issues
that will profoundly shape our society. But a government fearful of debate is trying to sneak vast changes
through, using its emergency powers, and asking us to celebrate ‘freedom day’ while finding new ways of
eroding our freedom.
Boris Johnson would have once mercilessly lampooned all of this. Now he says very little, acting almost as
if someone else is in charge. But it is his government, his cabinet, his agenda. If he has had a big change
of heart, with so much at stake, the least he can do is tell us. (494 words)
(By Fraser Nelson/Editor, The Spectator)

12. Which of the following best describes what the passage is trying to do?
A. Questions the policies of the present government in Britain and their implementation
B. Laments the destruction of democracy in Britain as a result of the pandemic
C. Compares the imperiousness of pandemic policies in Britain and France
D. Corrects a misconception about vaccine passports
Ans. A

6
www.byjusexamprep.com

13. Which one of the following statements, if false, could be seen as supporting the arguments in the
passage?
A. Boris Johnson has not communicated his policies clearly to the public.
B. Britain’s vaccine passport policy may be short lived and unnecessary.
C. The public has become more liberal since the pandemic and is against policies which infringe individual
freedom.
D. Boris Johnson is following anti-liberal policies which he had once denounced.
Ans. C

14. The author’s tone in the passage can be best described as:
A. fatuous.
B. humorous.
C. satirical.
D. scathing.
Ans. C