KP Public Service Commission, Peshawar Competitive Examination for Provincial Management Service, 2010 Paper: English Precis and Composition
Maximum Marks: 100 Note: Attempt all questions. Marks will be deducted for incorrect use of language. Extra attempt of any question will not be considered. Candidates must draw two straight lines (=== ) at the end to separate each question attempted In the answer book.
Q.1 Read the following piamage and answer the questions that follow: 20
During the last few decades medicine has undoubtedly advanced by huge strides in consequence of innumerable discoveries and inventions. Out have we actually become healthier as n result of this progress? Admittedly, Tuberculosis or Cholera is today a much rarer cause of death in many countries. On the other hand, various other no less dangerous diseases have appeared which we term “tune diseases”. They include not only certain impairments of the heart and the circulatory system, of the skeletal structure and internal organs, but also an increased psychic instability, the addiction to all manner of drugs etc., and states of nervous shock and exhaustion. According to }indenter. “Man’s hysterical and vain attempt to overtax and do violence to hit nature in order to adjust it to the technical world leads to a dangerous threat to health.” In other words. our organs can no longer cope with the noise, the bustle and all the inevitable concomitants of our modern civilimtion. A man’s body is simply not a machine to be used as he thinks lit, and as long as he likes. It is some thing living, a part of the image of God in which we macre created. That is why the body has a rhythm of its own, a rhythm that can make itself heard.
The most deep-seated of all the diseases of our time is that man no longer takes God into account, that he has lost confidence in God’s dominion over the world, that he considers the visible as the ultimate, the only, reality. But man without God suffers from his fate because he can not accept it from the hand of God. He suffers from the wend because he senses its disordered state without being able to put it right. He begins to suffer from his work because it exhausts him without satisfying him. He begins to suffer from his fellowmen because they are not his neighbours, to whom God would have him turn, but because he lets them get on his nerves and make him ill. And he suffers from himself bocause he finds himself out of tune and dissatisfied with himself. It is only because our time is no longer centered in God that its structure is increasingly becoming what critics of our civilization call “pathological” dominated by the fear of life as well as by the lust for life, ending in the splitting of personality.
i. how does the expression “Time diseases” indicate that these various ailments have some thing fundamental in common? Explain.
ii. Why does modem man suffer from his time? It is not because he has not adapted his body sufficiently to the demands of the machine? It is not rather because he has surrendered his soul to time and its powers?
iii. What cure would you suggest to combat these ills?
iv. Explain the last sentence fully.
Q.2 Write a precis of 100 words of the following passage. Suggest a suitable title. 20
Climate influences labour not only by enervating the lsbourer or by invigorating him, but also by the effect it produces on the regularity of his habits. Thus we find that no people living in very Northern latitude have ever possessed that steady and unflinching industry for which the inhabitants of temperate region are remarkable. In the more Northern countries the severity of the weather, and, at some seasons, the deficiency of light, render it impossible for the people to continue their usual out-of-door employment. The result is that the working classes, being compelled to cease from their ordinary pursuits, are rendered more prone to desultory habits, the chain of their ‘Indust“, is, as it were, broken, and they lose that impetus which long-continued and uninterrupted practice never fails to give. Hence there arises a national character more fitful and capricious than that possessed by a people whose climate permits the regular exercise of their ordinary industry. Indeed so powerful is this principle that we perceive its operations even under the most opposite circumstances. It would be difficult to conceive a greater difference in government, laws, religion, and manners than that which distinguishes Sweden and Norway, on the one hand, from Spain and Portugal on the other. But these four countries have one great point in common. In all of them continued agricultural industry is impracticable. In the two Southern countries labour is interrupted by the dryness of the weather and by the consequent state of the soil. In the Northern countries the same effect is produced by the severity of the winter and the shortness of days. The consequence is that these four nations, though so different in other aspects, are all remarkable for a cerain instability and fickleness of character.
Q.3. Explain the meaning of any five of the following: (05)
i. Enervate ii. Invigorate iii. Impetus iv. Capricious v. Impracticable vi. Severity vii. Instability viii. Fickleness
Q.4. a) Choose the word nearest in meaning to the word In capitals (Attempt only five). ( 05)
1. ABATE: a) rebate b) lessen c) essence d) obvious
2. AUGMENT: a) boost b) diminish c) degrade d) respect
3. BELATED: a) overdue b) punctual c) influential d) repudiate
4. BENIGN: a) tenfold b) peaceful c) blessed d) gentle
5. COLLUSION: a) consistence b) confrontation c) connivance d) bustle
6. ENIGMA: a) work b) problem c) solution d) question
b) Use any five of the following in sentences which illustrate the meaning of the Idiom: ( 10 )
i. Twiddle with
ii. Look large
iii. Besetting sin
iv. To hang file
v. Off the wall
vi. Wear the pants in the family
Q.5. Change the following into reported speech. Attempt any FIVE. Any extra attempt will not be considered. (10)
i. The teacher said, “The earth goes round the sun.”
ii. The police said to us, “Where are you going?”
iii. He said, “Will you listen to such a man?”
iv. He said to him, “Please wait here till I return.”
v. He shouted, “Let me go.”
vi. Hee said, “Alas! I am undone.”
vii. Alice said, “How clever I am!”
b) Makeup five groups of three words which are similar In meaning or area of use. (10)
excerpt, scum, moor, lather, lunge, froth, passage fragment, jab, universal, stab, cosmic, infinite, berth, anchor
Q. 6. Write about 250 words on one of the following:
i. How free is the press?
ii. The lure of fashion.
iii. A world without women.
iv. Children should be seen not heard.