FEDERAL PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION FOR RECRUITMENT TO POSTS IN BPS-17 UNDER THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, 1993 ENGLISH (Précis and Composition)
Time allowed: 3 hours Maximum marks: 100
Q1. Make a Précis of the following passage, and suggest a suitable title: 25
The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge. A gift of knowledge is infinitely preferable to a gift of material things. There are many reasons for this. Nothing becomes truly one’s own except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice. A gift of material goods can be appropriated by the recipient without effort or sacrifice; it therefore rarely becomes his own and is all too frequently and easily treated as a mere windfall. A gift of intellectual goods, a gift of knowledge, is a very different matter. Without a genuine effort of appropriation on the part of the recipient there is no gift. To appropriate the gift and to make it one’s own is the same thing, and ‘neither moth nor rust doth corrupt’. The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free. The gift of knowledge also has far more lasting effects and is far more closely relevant to the concept of ‘development.’
Give a man a fish, as the saying goes, and you are helping him a little bit for a very short time, teach him the act of fishing, and he can help himself all his life. further, if you teach him to make his own fishing net, you have helped him to become not only self-supporting, but also self-reliant and independent, man and businessman. This, then should become the ever-increasing preoccupation of aid-programmes to make men self-reliant and independent by the generous supply of the appropriate intellectual gifts, gifts of relevant knowledge on the methods of self-help. This approach, incidentally, has also the advantage of being relatively cheap, of making money go a long way. For POUNDS 100/ – you may be able to equip one man with certain means of production, hut for the same money you may well be able to teach and hundred men to equip themselves. Perhaps a little ‘pumppriming’ by way of material goods will in some cases, be helpful to speed the process of development. (E. F. Schumacher)
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own words without lifting sentences from the given text 20
Recently the mass media, formerly subservient to the medical profession, have become increasingly, restive, and occasionally hostile. In Germany, in particular, the newspapers and television have given a great deal of time and space to the complaints against the medical profession. In Britain on BBC radio and television, the medical practices have come under sharp and aggressive criticism.
Is this antagonism to the profession justified? And if so, why? I have tried to answer that question by looking at the way it deals with some of the diseases of our civilisation, including the most lethal, heart-attacks and cancer. If what emerges is an indictment of the profession, then I would rebut the charge that I am anti-doctor. Montaigne said: ‘I honour physicians not for their services but for themselves.’ That goes for me too. (Brian Inglis)
a) What do you understand by the mass media?
b) What is Brian Inglis stance, towards the medical profession?
c) What is a lethal disease? –
d) Is there a radical change in the presentation of the art of healing by the mass media?
Q3. Use any five of the following pairs of words so as to bring out the difference in their meanings: 10
a) Queue: cue, b) Differ: defer, c) Conscious: conscience, d) Confidant: confidante, e) Atheist: agnostic, f) Loose: Lose, g) Briefing: debriefing, h) Dual, duel, i) Complement: compliment
Q4. Indicate the meaning of any five of the following: 10
a) Brag, b) Antiquarian, c) Input, d) Prodigal, e) Bibliophile, f) Nostalgia, g) Output, h) Feedback, i) Agrarian.
Q5. Use any five of the following in your sentences to bring out their exact meanings: 10
a) Play truant, b) Play down, c) Turn turtle, d) Turn the corner, e) A fair weather friend, f) Under a cloud, g) Burn one’s boats, h) Horse-trading.
Q6. Comment on any one of the following about 200 words: 20
a) To err is human, to forgive divine,
b) The child is father of the man,
c) God helps those who help themselves,
d) Beggars are no choosers,
e) Handsome is one who handsome does,
f) The impossible is often the untried,
g) Man has his will and woman her way.