PREFACE

Reading Comprehension (RC) passages constitute an integral part of the Verbal Ability section of most management admission Tests. These passages can be of varying lengths and cover a wide variety of topics in areas such as current affairs, history, literature, sociology, philosophy, anthropology etc. Needless to say you cannot expect to score very well in English section till you are good at RC, which means you have good speed as well as accuracy, as RC questions are more challenging and time consuming.

About this Book

This book has been created keeping in mind the need for providing more practice so that you get familiar with the different kinds of passages & question types. The emphasis put on RC in various tests differs hence all major MBA entrance exams such as the CAT/XAT/IIFT/NMAT/SNAP etc. have been covered in this book, with regard to the types of passages and the types of questions that appear in these examinations.

This book has the following components:1. One hundred passages along with four hundred questions2. Explanatory Answers for all the questions3. Performance Monitor

How to Use this Book

The passages in this book have been categorized from Level 1 to Level 5 - with Level 1 being the easiest and Level 5 being the most difficult. Furthermore, they have been arranged in sets of four passages each. The sets have been arranged in an increasing order of difficulty. The first ten sets mostly have a straight-forward application while the remaining sets challenge your ability to deduce, extrapolate and infer effectively. Try and solve RC passages in sets within the time allotted. After solving each set enter your performance in the Performance Monitor box and compare it with the target score. Explanatory answers to all the questions have been provided in a separate section at the end of the book.

The Performance Monitor

After solving each set of four RC passages, fill in your performance details in the Performance Monitor Scorecard given after each set of four passages. It is important that you fill this scorecard, as it could reveal the types of RC passages and questions that you are struggling with. Compare your performance with the benchmark target score to evaluate your performance and take corrective action.

The Performance Monitor Scorecard (after each set of four passages) will be in the format as given below:

Corrective ActionIf you are not achieving the level of performance that you desire, slow down and solve one RC passage at a time, instead of solving a set of RC passages. After every passage you solve, read the answer explanations thoroughly and try and figure out why you marked the wrong answer. Make a note of the reason as to why you got a particular question incorrect. When you solve the next RC passage try and recall these reasons which made you mark the wrong answer and ensure that you do not make the same mistake again.

PassageLOD of

passageNo. of

QuestionsAttempts Correct Incorrect

Target score

Must Do questions

Doable questions

Difficult questions

PERFORMANCE MONITOR

INDEXRC - 100

SR.NO. PAGE NO.

Passage 1 1Passage 2 2Passage 3 4Passage 4 6Passage 5 8Passage 6 9Passage 7 11Passage 8 12Passage 9 15Passage 10 16Passage 11 18Passage 12 21Passage 13 23Passage 14 24Passage 15 26Passage 16 28Passage 17 30Passage 18 31Passage 19 33Passage 20 34Passage 21 36Passage 22 37Passage 23 39Passage 24 41Passage 25 44Passage 26 46Passage 27 48Passage 28 49Passage 29 52Passage 30 53Passage 31 56Passage 32 58Passage 33 60Passage 34 61Passage 35 64Passage 36 65Passage 37 68Passage 38 69Passage 39 71Passage 40 73Passage 41 76Passage 42 77Passage 43 80Passage 44 82Passage 45 85Passage 46 86Passage 47 89

Passage 48 90Passage 49 94Passage 50 95Passage 51 97Passage 52 98Passage 53 103Passage 54 105Passage 55 107Passage 56 108Passage 57 110Passage 58 111Passage 59 113Passage 60 115Passage 61 117Passage 62 119Passage 63 120Passage 64 122Passage 65 125Passage 66 126Passage 67 128Passage 68 129Passage 69 133Passage 70 134Passage 71 135Passage 72 137Passage 73 141Passage 74 142Passage 75 144Passage 76 146Passage 77 148Passage 78 149Passage 79 150Passage 80 153Passage 81 157Passage 82 158Passage 83 160Passage 84 162Passage 85 166Passage 86 167Passage 87 170Passage 88 173Passage 89 176Passage 90 177Passage 91 179Passage 92 181Passage 93 184Passage 94 185Passage 95 188Passage 96 190Passage 97 193Passage 98 195Passage 99 197Passage 100 199

PASSAGE-4

LEVEL 2

DIRECTIONS for Questions 11-13: Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is regarded by many, including myself, as the greatest philosopher of this century. His two great works, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations have done much to shape subsequent developments in philosophy, especially in the analytic tradition. His charismatic personality has fascinated artists, playwrights, poets, novelists, musicians and even movie-makers, so that his fame has spread far beyond the confines of academic life.

And yet in a sense Wittgenstein's thought has made very little impression on the intellectual life of this century. As he himself realised, his style of thinking is at odds with the style that dominates our present era. His work is opposed, as he once put it, to "the spirit which informs the vast stream of European and American civilisation in which all of us stand." Nearly 50 years after his death, we can see, more clearly than ever, that the feeling that he was swimming against the tide was justified. If we wanted a label to describe this tide, we might call it "scientism," the view that every intelligible question has either a scientific solution or no solution at all. It is against this view that Wittgenstein set his face.

Scientism takes many forms. In the humanities, it takes the form of pretending that philosophy, literature, history, music and art can be studied as if they were sciences, with "researchers" compelled to spell out their "methodologies"- a pretence which has led to huge quantities of bad academic writing, characterised by bogus theorising, spurious specialisation and the development of pseudo-technical vocabularies. Wittgenstein would have looked upon these developments and wept.

There is a widespread feeling today that the great scandal of our times is that we lack a scientific theory of consciousness. And so there is a great interdisciplinary effort, involving physicists, computer scientists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers, to come up with tenable scientific answers to the questions: what is consciousness? One of the leading competitors in this crowded field is the theory advanced by the mathematician Roger Penrose, that a stream of consciousness is an orchestrated sequence of quantum physical events taking place in the brain. Penrose's theory is that a moment of consciousness is produced by a sub-protein in the brain called a tubulin. The theory is, on Penrose's own admission, speculative, and it strikes many as being bizarrely implausible. But suppose we discovered that Penrose's theory was correct, would we, as a result, understand ourselves any better? Is a scientific theory the only kind of understanding?

Well, you might ask, what other kind is there? Wittgenstein's answer to that, I think, is his greatest, and most neglected, achievement. Although Wittgenstein's thought underwent changes between his early and his later work, his opposition to scientism was constant. Philosophy, he writes, "is not a theory but an activity." It strives, not after scientific truth, but after conceptual clarity. In the Tractatus, this clarity is achieved through a correct understanding of the logical form of language, which, once achieved, was destined to remain inexpressible, leading Wittgenstein to compare his own philosophical propositions with a ladder, which is thrown away once it has been used to climb up on.

In his later work, Wittgenstein abandoned the idea of logical form and with it the notion of ineffable truths. The difference between science and philosophy, he now believed, is between two distinct forms of understanding: the theoretical and the non-theoretical. Scientific understanding is given through the construction and testing of hypotheses and theories; philosophical understanding, on the other hand, is resolutely non-theoretical. What we are after in philosophy is "the understanding that consists in seeing connections.”

Non-theoretical understanding is the kind of understanding we have when we say that we understand a poem, a piece of music, a person or even a sentence. Take the case of a child learning her native language. When she begins to understand what is said to her, is it because she has formulated a theory? We can say that if we like-and many linguists and psychologists have said just that-but it is a misleading way of describing what is going on. The criterion we use for saying that a child understands what is said to her is that she behaves appropriately-she shows that she understands the phrase "put this piece of paper in the bin," for example, by obeying the instruction.

11. Ludwig Wittgenstein developed his theory against which notion/s?1] Every question has only two answers - a scientific solution or no solution.2] A discipline without its terminology loses its relevance in the scientific world.3] The bigger questions in life are answered from a scientific point of view.4] Both [1] and [2]

12. Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage? 1] Looking for scientific reasoning in everything can be a vain effort. 2] Wittgenstein's propositions were revolutionary and moulded the views of later philosophers. 3] Science makes claims that disregard the importance of nuances in humanities. 4] Philosophy and science are too far apart to have any common theory.

13. What type of a passage is this?1] analytical2] factual3] narrative4] none of the abovepermission to stay permanently.

PassageLOD of

PassageNo. of

QuestionsAttempts Correct Incorrect

Targetscore

Must Doquestions

Doablequestions

Difficultquestions

4 2 3 3 11,13 1222 1 3 3 81,82,8380 5 4 1 312 314 313,31595 4 5 2 380 378,379,381 382

SET 6 – PERFORMANCE MONITOR