Mix series test #3 for paf navy army etc

Critical Reading Questions
Questions related to critical reading try to judge your reading skills and how you understand and interpret what you read. The paper includes a few passages that ask answering questions related to the passage.
Techniques for Critical Reading Exercises There are a few techniques related to the Critical Reading Questions that prove to be a good guideline for solving such questions.
• Do not read the questions before reading the whole passage. Try to skim through the whole passage and then read the questions to look for a more specific answer. Read the passage quickly with understanding but do not panic. Try to analyze what the whole passage is about and what the author really intends to convey.
While reading mark the lines where you think the passage carries the most important points. These strategies would definitely help you find the answers.
• When you find yourself stuck with a question, do not waste your time on it and go ahead for the next questions. Sometimes, answering other questions guide you about the earlier question. But, if you still
do not find the answer mark it for doing in the end more calmly, having enough time to think.
• Try to familiarize yourself with the types of critical reading questions. Once you know the nature of such questions, you will be able to find the answers more quickly even when you are reading the
passage. The examples of some commonly asked questions are as follows:
o Central Idea
Mostly, questions are asked to explain the central idea or main theme of the whole passage, which analyzes how you skim through it. Sometimes, the opening and closing lines can give you a better clue about answering such questions properly.


o Specific Details
Sometimes to analyze your scanning abilities you are asked to answer some specific details about the passage. Such questions are about ‘when’, ‘where’, ‘which’ and ‘who’. You can get the answers of this kind of questions from the area of the passage which you marked in the first reading, where you think the most
important and informational remarks of the author lies

o Making Inferences
Most of the questions ask you to infer from the passages, making your opinion about what is said in the paragraph, implying meaning and making your own point of view. These questions try to assess your judgment; you must be clear in your mind about what the author is referring to and then make your own opinion according to your understanding and comprehension. Read and think about all the choices and analyze each of it logically according to your comprehension rather than the author’s point of
view.

o Meaning in Context
Some selected words from the passage are pointed out to explain them with reference to the context to check your reading comprehension. Sometimes the word that describes something in
a dictionary portrays it the other way when it appears in the context. The test tries to judge your ability to make sense of the word in the context.
o Author’s Approach
Some questions ask you to explain the mood in which the author is writing whether it is sarcastic, humorous, witty, sad etc. When you are asked questions like these you can look for certain expressions, words, phrases or exclamations, which describe the tone, mood or style of the author. The feelings of the writer are
mostly exhibited through choice of words. While answering these questions read the message carefully observing particularly the use of words.
o Title Selection
Some passages ask for selecting a title that best suits the passage. Remember that the chosen title should not be narrowly or broadly selected. Try to avoid choosing those titles that describes only one or two paragraphs but the one, which is applicable to the whole passage and portrays it best.


Example Questions

Passage I:

We are profoundly ignorant about the origins of language and have to content ourselves with more or less plausible speculations. We do not even know for certain when language arose, but it seems likely that it goes
back to the earliest history of man, perhaps half a million years. We have no direct evidence, but it seems probable that speech arose at the same time as tool making and the earliest forms of specifically human
cooperation. In the great Ice Ages of the Pleistocene period, our earliest human ancestors established the Old Stone Age culture; they made flint tools and later tools of bone, ivory, and antler; they made fire and cooked their food; they hunted big game, often by methods that called for considerable cooperation and coordination. As their material culture gradually improved, they became artists and made carvings and engravings on bones and pebbles, and wonderful paintings of animals on the walls of caves. It is difficult to believe that the makers of these Paleolithic cultures lacked the power of speech. It is a long step Admittedly, from the earliest flint weapons to the splendid art of the late Old Stone Age: the first crude flints date back perhaps to 500,000 B.C., while the finest achievements of Old Stone Age man are later than 100,000 B.C.; and, in this period, we can envisage a corresponding development of language, from the most
primitive and limited language of the earliest human groups to a fully developed language in the flowering time of Old Stone Age culture.
How did language arise in the first place? There are many theories about this, based on various types of indirect evidence, such as the language of children, the language of primitive societies, the kinds of changes that have taken place in languages in the course of recorded history, the behavior of higher animals like chimpanzees, and the behavior of people suffering from speech defects. These types of evidence may provide us with useful pointers, but they all suffer from limitations, and must be treated with caution. When we consider the language of children, we have to remember that their situations are quite different from that of our earliest human ancestors, because the child is growing up in an environment where there is already a fully developed language, and is surrounded by adults who use that language and are teaching it to him.
For example, it has been shown that the earliest words used by children are mainly the names of things and people (“Doll,” “Spoon,” “Mummy”):
but, this does not prove that the earliest words of primitive man were also the names of things and people. When the child learns the name of an object, he may then use it to express his wishes or demands: “Doll!: often means “Give me my doll!” Or “I’ve dropped my doll: pick it up for me!”;
the child is using language to get things done, and it is almost an accident of adult teaching that the words used to formulate the child’s demands are mainly nouns, instead of words like “Bring!”’ “Pick up!”; and so on.

Examples questions