FEDERAL PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION
COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION FOR RECRUITMENT
TO POSTS IN BPS-17 UNDER THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, 1972
ENGLISH (Précis and Composition)
Time allowed: 3 hours Maximum marks: 100
- Make a precis of the following passage in about 250 words.
Up to a point the second German War resembled the first. Each began with a German bid for power which almost succeeded in spite of the opposition of France and Great Britain. In each the United State came to the rescue after years of neutrality. Each ended with a German defeat. But the differences were easier to see than the resemblances. The powers were differently grouped.
Italy and Japan were on the German side, Russia was neutral until the Germans attacked across what had been, to begin with, Poland and Baltic States. The second war lasted even longer than the other. It pressed harder on the civilian population. After a period of restraint, perhaps, intended to conciliate American opinion, both sides dropped bombs from the air, without respect for the nature of the targets, wherever the officers concerned expected to cause the greatest effect. In Great Britain, 60,000 civilians were killed. Though the Island was not invaded, the population was more directly involved than it was in any former war. Children and others were evacuated from towns into the country. Food supplies ran so short that, at the worst, even potatoes were rationed. All of the states opposed to Germany, Great Britain was the only one which fought throughout the war. The resources of the nation were concentrated in the war effort more completely than those of any other nation on either side. Labour for women as well as men, became compulsory. Nevertheless, once the war reached its full severity in the west, eight months after it was declared, there was less disunion between classes and interests than in any other five years within living memory.
Fighting spread all over the world. The Pacific was as vital a theatre as Europe. Scientists, especially Physicists, made revolutionary discoveries during the war, not only in the fields of weapons and defense against them, but also in supply, transport, and control in action. Strange to say the fight services suffered fewer casualties than in 1914-18: 300,000 of the armed forces and 35,000 of the navy were killed. There was nothing like the trench warfare of former war, though there was almost every other sort of warfare, from mechanized war of movement in the North Africa desert to hand to hand jungle fighting in Burma. Both sides experimented and built ip stocks for gas-warfare and biological warfare, but neither side used them. (George Clark: English History: A Survey)
- Rewrite the following poem in simple prose and then comment on the differences between the poetic achievement in the poem and the literal rendering in prose made by you.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age, that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer,
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose.
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks.
Drives my red blood, that drives the mouthing streams,
Turns mine to max.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountains spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool.
Stirs the quicksand, that ropes the blowing wind,
Hauls my shroud sail,
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man,
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head.
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood,
Small calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind,
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb,
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm
(Dylan Thomas)
- (a) Distinguish between the meaning of the words in the following pairs, and use them in illustrative sentences.
(i) Consciousness, Conscientiousness
(ii) Ingenious, Ingenuous
(iii) Fantastic, Fanatical
(iv) Honourable, Honorary
(v) Politician, Statesman
(b) Use the following expressions in sentences to bring out their meanings.
(i) To fall back on something
(ii) To fall through
(iii) On right earnest
(iv) Vested interests
(v) Meaningful Dialogue
- Write a dialogue between a C.S.P. officer and a young man aspiring to become one on how to improve civil administration in Pakistan.
OR
(a) Religion is the only force that can keep our people together.
(b) But it seems to have failed to do so in our country.
Continue the discussion. -
List, with brief amplification, what you regard as the FIVE most serious problems before the Government of Pakistan.
OR
“In the opinion of this house Regionalism is greatest hindrance in the way of our national progress”.
Write a speech for or against the above mentioned.