Punjab State Civil Services Combined Competitive Main Examination 2009

 ENGLISH (COMPULSORY)

Q.1 REad the Comprehension Passage given below and answer the questions at the end

of the passage.Your answers highlight your anderstanding of the curcial ideas in the

passage.

During the 19th century industrualisation of America, the idea of work s inherent vertue

may have seemed temporarily implausible to generations who laboured in the mines

and mills and sweatshops. And yet for generation of immigrants, work was ulltimately

avialing; the numb toil of an illiterate grandfather got the father a foothold and a high

school education, and the son wound up in college of even law school. The motive of

work was all. To work for mere survival is disperate. To work for a better life for one’s

children and grand children lends the labour a fierce dignity. That dignity, and

unconquerably hopeful energy and aspiration-driving, persisting like a life force-is the

American quality that many find missing now.

The work ethic is not dead, but it is weaker now. The psychology of work is much

changed in America. The acute, painful memory of the Great Depression used to

enforce a dsciplined and occasionally docile approach to work-in much the way that

older citizens in the Soviet Union do not complain about scarce food and overpopulated

apartments, because they remember how much more horrible everything was during

the war.

Work is still a profoundly respectatble thing in America. Most Americans suffer a sense

of loss, of diminutuon, even of worthlessness if they are thrown out on the street. But

the blow seldom carries the life and death implications it once had the sense of personal

ruin. Because today’s workers are better educated than those in the past their

expectations are higher . Many younger Americans have rearranged their ideas about

what they want to get out of life.

Work is stll the complicated and crucial core of most lives, the occupation melded

inseparably to the identity . Freud said that the successful psyche is one capble of

love and of work . Work is the most thorough and profound organizing principle in

American life. If mobility has weakened old blood ties, our co-workers often form our

new family. Our tribe, our social world; we become almost citizens of our companies,

living under the protection of salaries, pensions and health insurance. The workplace

performs the function of community.

Only the fortunate toil in ways that express them directly. There is a Renaissance

splendoru in Leonardo’s effusion: “The works that the eye orders the hands to make

are infinite. “But most of us labour closer to the ground. Even there, all work expresses

the labourer in a deeper sense; all life must be workd at, protected, planted, replanted,

fashioned, cooked for, coaxexd, diapered, formed, sustained. Work is the way that we

tend the world, the way that people connect. It is the most vigorous, vivid sign of life in

individuasl and in civilizations.

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Answer the following questions:

(a) What value did work have for immigrants to America?

(b) The author observes that the psychology of work has changed in America. How

does the author mean by this remark?

(c) “Work is the most thorough and profound organizing principle is American

life.”What does the author mean by this remark?

(d) Write a small composition in which you agree or disagree with the concludung

statement of the passage, “ Work is the way that we tend the world, the way that

people connect. It is the most vigorous, vivid sign of life- in individuals and in

civilizations.

(e) What to you is “work ethic? Is it a part of the work culture of your country?

(10 MARKS)

Q. 2 Write a Precis of the following pessage. The precis should be 1/3rd of the passage

given below and must have an appropriate title as well.

Ambition in one of those Rorschach words: define it and you instantly reveal a great

deal about yourself. Even that most neutral of works, Webster’s in its Seventh New

Collegiate Edition, gives itse If away, defining amobition first and foremost as “ardent

desire for rank, fame, fame, or power.” Ardent immediately assumes a heat

incommensurate with good sense and stability, and rank, fame andf power have

come under fairly heavyattack for at least a century. One can, after all, be ambitious

for the pulic good, for the alleviation fo suffering, for the enlightenment of mankind,

though there are some who asy that these are precisely the ambitious people most to

be distrusted.

Surely ambition is behind dreams of glory, of wealth, of love, of distinction, fo

accomplishment, of pleasure, of goodness. What life dose with our dreams and

expectations cannot, of course, be predicted. Some dreams, begun in selfishness,

end in rancour, other dreams, begun in selfishness,end in large-heartedness. The

unpredictablity of the outcome of dreams is on reason of cease dreaming.

To be sure, ambition, the sheer thing unallyed by some larger purpose than merely

clambering up, is never a pretty prospect to ponder.As drunks have done to alcohol,

the single-mended have done to ambition given it a bad name. Like a taste for alcohol,

ambition, too, does not always allow for easy satiation. Some people cannot handle it;

it has brought grif to others and not merely the ambitious alone. Still, none of this

seems sufficient cause for driving ambition under the counter.

If ambition is to be well regarded, the rewards to ambition-wealth, distinction, control

owner one’s destiny –must be deemed worthyfo the sacrifices made on ambition’s

behalf. If the tradition of ambition is to have vitality it must be widely shared; and it

because nowadays more than ever before, it is jthy who have usurped the platforms

of public discussion and wield the power of the spoken and written word in newspapers,

in magazines on television. In an odd way, it is the educated who have claimed to have

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given up on ambution as an ideal .What is odd is that they have perhaps most benefited

from ambition –if not always their own thaen that of their parents and grandparents.

There is heavy note of hypocrisy in this; a case of closing the barn door after the

horses have escaped with the educated themselves astride them.

(10 MARKS)

Q.3. Write a letter to the Editor of a national newspaper responding as a concerned citizen

about the caste dictated role of “Khap Panchayats” in many parts of India (200 words.)

(10 MARKS)

Q.4. Write a Composition on any ONE of the following;

a. “ If music be the food of love, play on”

b. “ Only fools and simpletons deposit money in banks, the wise obtain loans”

c. An imaginary infantry attack at night.

(10 MARKS)

Q.5. translation english to punjabi…….

(5 MARKS) (5 MARKS)

And Punjabi to English

Q.6. Correct the following sentences:

a. One of my relatives are settled in Canada.

b. I paid hundred rupees for this box.

c. He prefers Engineering than B.A. Economics.

d. This is the gentleman whose all sons are in the army.

e. It is high time that we leave the place.

(5 MARKS)

Q.7. Change the voice of the following sentences.

a. They have decided to start a new sugar factory here.

b. We may drive the car throgh the tunnel

c. The general body had passed two of the resolutions.

d. These great men should be remembered and honored by every Indian.

e. He was refused admittance.

(5 MARKS)

Q.8. Change the following sentences into Indirect Speech:

a. I said to my sister, “ Last night I went to the moves. I injoyed the film very much.”

b. The mews reporte said, “I have visited the site of the accident. I have seen

everything.”

c. He told me, “ I was reading a book when the explosion occurred.”

e. She said, “ The lesson had already started when he arrived.”

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(5 MARKS)

Q.9 Rewrite as dircted:

a. My nephews arrive here tomorrow. (change into present continuous tense)

b. The police caught the thier at hte raliway station. (change inta present tense)

c. Mr. Singh taught in this college for ten years. (change into present perfect

continuous)

d. Miss Nirupma has lived in Patiala for fifteen years. (change into past fense)

e. The play began when we reached the theatre (chnge into past perfect tense)

(5 MARKS)

Q.10 Join the following sentences using conjunction:

(a) My mother teaches in a colloge. (a) She is a singer on T.V.

(b) Milk is rich in Vitamins. (b) Itcontains a lot of calcium.

(c) Farmers in Haryana grow a lot of wheat. (c) They grow a lot of sugar- cane.

(d) Suresh is too old to become an actor (d) He is too fat

(e) Bharat wrote two popular novels. (e) He was a good speaker.

(5 MARKS)

Q.11. Fill in the blanks with suitable prepositions.

a. The gol-keeper prevented the ball ……………… coming into the net.

b. The accident occurred………………………a remote village.

c. Nothing is known ……………………….his where abouts.

d. Mithara is not responsible…………………………. that accident.

e. It depended ……………………………. his choice.

(5 MARKS)

Q.12.Punctuate the following paragraph:

Farah WILL you look this wasy exclaimed Mrs Aiyer you have been fidgeting all morning

farah tore her eyes reluctantly away form the coin she was holding in her hand and trid

to concentrate on her class teacher who talking about maths something to with

multiplication farah vaguely recalled

(10 MARKS)

Q.13.

(a) Write the synonyms of the following words:

i. absurd ii. Confer iii. Eccentric iv. Incite v. Ultimate

(2.5 MARKS)

(b) Write the antonyms of the following words:

i. affirm ii.deficit iii. Extravagant iv latter v trivial

(2.5 MARKS)

 

 

Q.14.Fill in the blaks with appropriate forms of wverbs given in brackets:

a. He was tired because he ………………………..work since mornig.

b. Riding a horse………………………(be) not as easy as riding a cycle.

c. His father prevented from …………………..(join) his friends group.

d. A sensible person can ……………………..(imagine ) the plight of others.

(5 MARKS)