FEDERAL PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION
COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION FOR RECRUITMENT
TO POSTS IN BPS-17 UNDER THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, 1979
ENGLISH (Précis and Composition)
Time allowed: 3 hours Maximum marks: 100
- Write a precis of the following passage and assign a suitable heading to it.
Probably the only protection for contemporary man is to discover how to use his intelligence in the service of love and kindness. The training of human intelligence must include the simultaneous development of the emphatic capacity. Only in this way can intelligence be made an instrument of social morality and responsibility — and thereby increase the chances of survival.
The need to produce human beings with trained morally sensitive intelligence is essentially a challenge to educators and educational institutions. Traditionally, the realm of social morality was left to religion and the churches as guardians or custodians. But their failure to fulfill this responsibility and their yielding to the seductive lures of the men of wealth and pomp and power and documented by the history of the last two thousand years and have now resulted in the irrelevant “God is Dead”theological rhetoric. The more pragmatic men of power have had no time or inclination to deal with the fundamental problems of social morality. For them simplistic Machiavellianism must remain the guiding principle of their decisions — power is morality, morality is power. This over simplification increases the chances of nuclear devastation. We must therefore, hope that educators and educational institutions have the capacity, the commitment and the time to instill moral sensitivity as an integral part of the complex pattern of functional human intelligence. Some way must be found in the training of human beings to give them the assurance to love, the security to be kind, and the integrity required for a functional empathy. -
Paraphrase the following poem and critically examine its theme.
The quality of mercy is not strained:
It droppeth as the gentle rain from the Heaven
Upon the place beneath; it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes;
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of Kings;
But mercy is above the sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.
- (a) Use any FIVE of the following pair of words in your own sentences so as to bring out their meanings.
(i) Cession, Session (ii) Canon, Cannon (iii) Barbarism, Barbarity (iv) Artist, Artisan (v) Antic, Antique (vi) Illusion, Allusion (vii) Aspire, Expire (viii) Collision, Collusion (ix) Counsel, Council (x) Expedient, Expeditious
(b) Use any FIVE of the following expressions and idioms in your own sentences so as to bring out their meanings.
(i) Take down at peg (ii) To monkey with (iii) In hot water (iv) Petticoat Government (v) To pull oneself together (vi) To rise from the ranks (vii) To rub shoulders
- Would your rather have the kind of society where students were so indifferent that they lacked interest in politics or the society in which they show independence to differ with the administration?
OR
Life is a tragedy to those who feel and comedy to those who think. Comment. -
In reviving stale philosophies of the East and romanticizing it’s past, the West is helping to perpetuate Eastern backwardness. Comment on this statement.
OR
“I am his Majesty’s dog at Kew;
Pray tell me; whose dog are you?”
(Alexander Pope)
Comment on the psychological implications of this query.