KPK. PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION PESHAWAR
COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION FOR TEHSILDAR
GENERAL ENGLISH
Time allowed: 03 hours Max Marks: 200
Note: All the questions are compulsory.
Q.1. Write a comprehensive and analytical essay of 700 words on any one of the following:
(a) Freedom of Speech and responsibility on Mass Media
(b) Terrorism
(c) Pollution-third world countries are the victims?
(d) Capital Punishment
(e) Separation of Religion and State
(f) Mobile Phones-s menace or a necessity?
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions at the end/40
Gradually I discovered what had happened or rather what was thought to have happened. As a rule the trans-Siberian expresses have no great turn of speed, but ours, at the time when disaster overtook her, had been on top of her form. She had along steep hill behind her, and also a following wind, she was giving of her best. But alas, at the bottom of that long steep hill the signals were against her, a fact which the driver noticed in the course of time. He put on his brakes. Nothing happened. Slightly less rapidly than before, but still at a very creditable speed, the train went charging down the long steep bill.
The line at this point is single track, but at the foot of the hill there was a little hall where a train may staind and let another pass. Our train, however, was in no mood for stopping it looked as though she was going to ignore the signals and try conclusions with a west-bound train, head-on. In this she was thwarted by a pointsman at the little halt, who summed up the situation and switched the runaway neatly ints a siding. It was a long curved sding, and to my layman’s eye appeared to have been designed for the sole purpose of receiving trains which got out of control on the hill above it. But for whatever purpose it was designed, it was designed a long while ago. Its permanent way had less claim to that epithet then is usual even in Russia. We were altogether too much for the siding. We made matchwood of the rotten sleeper and flung ourselves dramatically down the embankment.
(a) What sentence indicates that trains on the trains-Siberian railway do not normally travel tee?
(b) Why was this train going so fast at the time of the accident?
(c) What sentence suggests that the driver was not very alert?
(d) What happened when the brakes and the emergency brakes were put on?
(e) What was the purpose of the halt at the bottom of the hill?
(f) What did the points man do?
(g) Why was the siding unable to stand up to the weight of the train?
(h) What is the meaning of “to try conclusions with?
(i) What in the end happened to the train?
(j) What is meant by “We” in the last two sentences?
OR
Q3. Write a composition starting with any one of these lines/40
(a) The news of his death was spread at once through the camp……….
(b) A visit to the slum areas of the town brought home to me what………..
(c) Nowadays a politician’s life is not a bed of roses…….
Q4. Explain the meaning of any ten of the following and use them in sentence./30
(a) A double entendre
(b) A dark horse
(c) Mare’s nest
(d) Make a mountain out of mole-hill
(e) Lose heart
(f) Make a virtue of necessity
(g) Out of sorts
(h) Rat race
(i) Over and above
(j) Pluck up courage
(k) See with half an eye
(l) Set the heather on fire
(m) Pass the buck
(n) Pros and cons
(o) sit on fence
Q.5. Read the following passage carefully and write précis of it
During the thirty years or so that followed this talk. I never met a man who had an expert knowledge of thing or the making of thing who hadn’t a decent and honest core to his character and I never met a man who thought first of money and profits and cared nothing about the things he dealt in who seemed to me to be a satisfactory human being. In my own trade of making motion pictures, which attracted the easy money men almost from the first, the difference between these two types was most marked and all that was rotten in the industry came from those who went into it not because they were fascinated by the film-making but because they were first attracted by the possibility of huge quick profits. Of course the film-makers liked making money too-most of us do when we live in a society in which money opens so many doors and windows but it was the films themselves that had started them off and kept them hard at work and there is vital difference.