CAT (VARC) PYQs

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Paragraph: Never before has a population, nearly all of whom has enjoyed at a least a secondary school education, been exposed to so much information, whether in newspapers and magazines or through YouTube, Google, and Facebook ___ (1) ___ . Yet it is not clear that people today are more knowledgeable than their barely literate predecessors. Contemporary advances in technology offered more serious and inquisitive students access to realms of knowledge previously unimaginable and unavailable ___ (2) ___ . But such readily available knowledge leads many more students away from serious study, the reading of actual texts, and toward an inability to write effectively and grammatically ___ (3) ___ . It has let people choose sources that reinforce their opinions rather than encouraging them to question inherited beliefs ___ (4) ___ .

Sentence: Having made citizens more and less knowledgeable than their predecessors, the Internet has proved to be both a blessing and a curse.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Paragraph: ___ (1) ___ An argument can be defined as a complex symbolic structure where some parts, known as the premises, offer support to another part, the conclusion. Alternatively, an argument can be viewed as a complex speech act consisting of one or more acts of premising (which assert propositions in favor of the conclusion), an act of concluding, and a stated or implicit marker ("hence", "therefore) that indicates that the conclusion follows from the premises ___ (2) ___ . The relation of support between premises and conclusion can be cashed out in different ways: the premises may guarantee the truth of the conclusion, or make Its truth more probable; the premises may imply the conclusion; the premises may make the conclusion more acceptable (or assertible) ___ (3) ___ . But depending on one's explanatory goals, there is also much to be gained from considering arguments as they in fact occur in human communicative practices ___ (4) ___ .

Sentence: For theoretical purposes, arguments may be considered as freestanding entities, abstracted from their contexts of use in actual human activities.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Paragraph: ___ (1) ___ You can't just put things anywhere you want to. The evolved architecture of the brain is haphazard and disjointed, and incorporates multiple systems, each of which has a mind of its own ___ (2) ___ . Evolution doesn't design things and it doesn't build systems, it settles on systems that, historically, conveyed a survival benefit. There is no overarching, grand planner engineering the systems so that they work harmoniously together ___ (3) ___ . The brain is more like a big, old house with piecemeal renovations done on every floor, and less like new construction ___ (4) ___ .

Sentence: The brain isn't organized the way you might set up your home office or bathroom medicine cabinet.