CAT (VARC) PYQs

Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer. 1. For feminists, the question of how we read is inextricably linked with the question of what we read. 2. Elaine Showalter's critique of the literary curriculum is exemplary of this work. 3. Androcentric literature structures the reading experience differently depending on the gender of the reader. 4. The documentation of this realization was one of the earliest tasks undertaken by feminist critics. 5. More specifically, the feminist inquiry into the activity of reading begins with the realization that the literary canon is androcentric, and that this has a profoundly damaging effect on women readers.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. For years, movies and television series like Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) paint an unrealistic picture of the "science of voices." In the 1994 movie Clear and Present Danger an expert listens to a brief recorded utterance and declares that the speaker is "Cuban, aged 35 to 45, educated in the eastern United States." The recording is then fed to a supercomputer that matches the voice to that of a suspect, concluding that the probability of correct identification is 90%. This sequence sums up a good number of misimpressions about forensic phonetics, which have led to errors in real-life justice. Indeed, that movie scene exemplifies the so-called "CSI effect" the phenomenon in which judges hold unrealistic expectations of the capabilities of forensic science.

The sentences given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the numbers as your answer. 1. Tensions and sometimes conflict remain an issue in and between the 11 states in South East Asia (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam). 2. China's rise as a regional military power and its claims in the South China Sea have become an increasingly pressing security concern for many South East Asian states. 3. Since the 1990s, the security environment of South East Asia has seen both continuity and profound changes. 4. These concerns cause states from outside the region to take an active interest in South Asian security.

The sentences given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the numbers as your answer. 1. Relying on narrative structure alone, indigenous significances of nineteenth century San folktales are hard to determine. 2. Using their supernatural potency, benign shamans transcend the levels of the San cosmos in order to deal with social conflict and to protect material resources and enjoy a measure of respect that sets them apart from ordinary people. 3. Selected tales reveal that they deal with a form of spiritual conflict that has social implications and concern conflict between people and living or dead malevolent shamans. 4. Meaning can be elicited, and the tales contextualized, by probing beneath the narrative of verbatim, original-language records and exploring the connotations of highly significant words and phrases.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. For nearly a century most psychologists have embraced one view of intelligence. Individuals are born with more or less intelligence potential (I.Q.); this potential is heavily influenced by heredity and difficult to alter; experts in measurement can determine a person's intelligence early in life, currently from paper-and-pencil measures, perhaps eventually from examining the brain in action or even scrutinizing his/her genome. Recently, criticism of this conventional wisdom has mounted. Biologists ask if speaking of a single entity called "intelligence" is coherent and question the validity of measures used to estimate heritability of a trait in humans, who, unlike plants or animals, are not conceived and bred under controlled conditions.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. As Soviet power declined, the world became to some extent multipolar, and Europe strove to define an independent identity. What a journey Europe has undertaken to reach this point. It had in every century changed its internal structure and invented new ways of thinking about the nature of international order. Now at the culmination of an era, Europe, in order to participate in it, felt obliged to set aside the political mechanisms through which it had conducted its affairs for three and a half centuries. Impelled also by the desire to cushion the emergent unification of Germany, the new European Union established a common currency in 2002 and a formal political structure in 2004. It proclaimed a Europe united, whole, and free, adjusting its differences by peaceful mechanisms.

Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer. 1. Talk was the most common way for enslaved men and women to subvert the rules of their bondage, to gain more agency than they were supposed to have. 2. Even in conditions of extreme violence and unfreedom, their words remained ubiquitous, ephemeral, irrepressible, and potentially transgressive. 3. Slaves came from societies in which oaths, orations, and invocations carried great potency, both between people and as a connection to the all-powerful spirit world. 4. Freedom of speech and the power to silence may have been preeminent markers of white liberty in Colonies, but at the same time, slavery depended on dialogue: slaves could never be completely muted. 5. Slave-owners obsessed over slave talk, though they could never control it, yet feared its power to bind and inspire—for, as everyone knew, oaths, whispers, and secret conversations bred conspiracy and revolt.

The sentences given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the numbers as your answer. 1. Man has used poisons for assassination purposes ever since the dawn of civilization, against individual enemies but also occasionally against armies. 2. These dangers were soon recognized, and resulted in two international declarations- in 1874 in Brussels and in 1899 in The Hague-that prohibited the use of poisoned weapons. 3. The foundation of microbiology by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch offered new prospects for those interested in biological weapons because it allowed agents to be chosen and designed on a rational basis. 4. Though treaties were all made in good faith, they contained no means of control, and so failed to prevent interested parties from developing and using biological weapons.