FEDERAL PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION
COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION FOR RECRUITMENT
TO POSTS IN BPS-17 UNDER THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, 1987
ENGLISH (Précis and Composition)
Time allowed: 3 hours Maximum marks: 100
- Make a precis of the following passage and suggest a suitable title.
The incomparable gift of brain, with its truly amazing powers of abstraction, has rendered obsolete the slow and sometimes clumsy mechanisms utilized by evolution so far. Thanks to the brain alone, man, in the course of three generations only, has conquered the realm of air, while it took hundreds of thousands of years for animals to achieve the same result through the process of evolution. Thanks to the brain alone, the range of our sensory organs has been increased a million fold, far beyond the wildest dreams, we have brought the moon within thirty miles of us, we see the infinitely small and see the infinitely remote, we hear the inaudible, we have dwarfed distance and killed physical time. We have succeeded in understanding them thoroughly. We have put to shame the tedious and time consuming methods of trial and error used by Nature, because Nature has finally succeeded in producing its masterpieces in the shape of the human brain. But the great laws of evolution are still active, even though adaptation has lost its importance as far as we are concerned. We are now responsible for the progress of evolution. We are free to destroy ourselves if we misunderstand the meaning and the purpose of our victories. And we are free to forge ahead, to prolong evolution, to cooperate with God if we perceive the meaning of it all, if we realize that it can only be achieved through a whole-hearted effort toward moral and spiritual development. Our freedom, of which we may be justly proud, affords us the proof that we represent the spearhead of evolution: but it is up to us to demonstrate, by the way in which we use it, whether we are ready yet to assume the tremendous responsibility which has befallen us almost suddenly. -
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given at the end.
There is a sense in which the aim of education must be the same in all societies. Two hundred years from now there will be no one alive in the world who is alive today. Yet the sum total of human skill and knowledge will probably not be less than it is today. It will almost certainly be greater. And that this is so is due in large part to the educational process by which we pass on to one generation what has been learned and achieved by previous generations. The continuity and growth of society is obviously dependent in this way upon education, both formal and informal. If each generation had to learn for itself what had been learned by its predecessor, no sort of intellectual or social development would be possible and the present state of society would be little different from the society of the old stone age. But this basic aim of education is so general and so fundamental that it is hardly given conscious recognition as an educational purpose. It is rather to be classed as the most important social function of education and is a matter of interest to the sociologist rather than to the educational theorist. Education does this job in any society and the specific way in which it does it will vary from one society to another. When we speak in the ordinary way about the aims of education, we are interested rather in the specific goals set by the nature of society and the purposes of its members. The educational system of any society is a more or less elaborate social mechanism designed to bring about in the persons submitted to it certain skills and attitudes that are judged to be useful and desirable in the society.
(a) How is the continuity and growth of society dependent upon education?
(b) In what way the aims of education are related with a society and its members
(c) What importance does the writer give to the education system of a society. -
Use any FIVE of the following pairs of words in your own sentences so as to bring the difference in meaning clearly.
(i) Disclosure, Exposure (ii) Rigorous, Vigorous (iii) Custom, Habit (iv) Peculiar, Particular (v) Prescribe, Proscribe (vi) Accident, Incident (vii) Choice, Preference (viii) Ascent, Assent (ix) Emigrant, Immigrant (x) Continuous, Continual
- Make sentences to illustrate the meaning of any FIVE of the following.
(i) To back out (ii) To keep out of (iii) Bang into (iv) To smell a rat (v) To burn one’s fingers (vi) Null and void (vii) To catch up with (viii) To stand up for (ix) To skim through (x) To narrow down -
Complete any FIVE of the following sentences supplying the missing word or phrase in each.
(i) He wandered __________ he had lost his money.
(ii) He father knew that she __________ disobey him.
(iii) When Ahmed saw me come he __________.
(iv) Don’t imagine __________ you can get away.
(v) He puts up__________ almost anything.
(vi) I have applied __________ a new job.
(vii) Her parents strongly object __________ her travelling alone.
(viii) As soon as the plane had refueled __________.
(ix) __________ you take this medicine, you will feel better.
(x) A car with a good engine can go __________. -
Expand the idea contained in any ONE of the following in about 150 words.
(a) Learn to walk before you run (b) Marriage is a lottery (c) Success has many friends.