Reading Compreh...

An Olympic medalist, five time World Amateur Boxing champion and Padma Bhushan recipient Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom is an epitome of confidence, humility and dogged determination. Her grandmother named her Chungneijang which means prosperity but she decided to assume the name Mary because it was easier to pronounce.
In her childhood between attending school and playing all kinds of sports, Mary helped her parents in the fields. She was her fathers right hand, accompanying him wherever he found work as a farm hand. Life was tough because her family struggled to make ends meet and she always dreamed of living up to her name and supporting her family.
Although she loved all sport, the martial arts were her personal favourite.In 1998 when Manipuri boxer Dingko Singh won a gold medal at the Asian Games, Mary Kom decided to build a career in sports.
In the year 2000 when was adjudged best boxer at the state level sub-junior boxing championship, she realized that she was gifted and resolved to make a career in sport. Today the boxing champion and mother of two, who defied many a stereotype, is setting up her own boxing academy along with taking care of her family and training for the 2016 Olympics. When asked in an interview if there was anything she would like to say to the youth of the nation, she said The world today is full of distractions in almost every form and if you fail to notice them and overcome them you will end up nowhere or somewhere much less preferred.

Interviewer : What other qualities do you think made him an effective leader?
Maya Angelou : Intelligence, a very profound intelligence. Now, that does not always go handinhand with intellect. With Dr. King, it did. But I point out that intelligence is a separate gift, for the benefit of students, so that they may think of themselves as intellectual and not very intelligent, or intelligent and not very intellectual. One hopes, of course, that they try to bring the two virtues, the two elements, into their lives at the same time.
Dr. King was profoundly intelligent. That is to say, he was able to see, to examine, to analyze, to evaluate, to measure the climate of the times, the expediency of his calling, of his ministry. That's intelligence. Now intellect, of course, helped him to be able to explain what he saw with grace and eloquence and wonderful quotations, whether from Paul Laurence Dunbar or Longfellow. That was out of the virtue of his studies.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:
[/passage-header]    'Families of musical instruments'
    Have you ever thought about how many ways there are to make musical sounds? You can make music with your own body. You can sing, clap, or snap your fingers. Musical instruments allow us to make music beyond what our bodies are capable of. Bands and orchestras are made up of families, or groups, of musical instruments. Each family of instruments adds something unique to the music. 
    Strings are one family of musical instruments. You are probably familiar with some of these instruments. A guitar has strings. Guitar players make music by plucking the strings with their fingers. A violin has strings too, but a violin player uses a bow to make music. Bowing an instrument means sliding or scraping a bow over the strings. A bow is a smooth tool that makes the strings vibrate and produce sound. 
    Wind instruments make up another musical family. Wind instruments produce sound by moving columns of air. You may know someone who plays a flute. The flute is a tube-shaped wind instrument. A flute player makes music by blowing air over a hole in the tube. 
    Have you ever seen a clarinet? It is a wind instrument too. Clarinet players blow on a reed in the mouthpiece. The reed vibrates and sets the air inside the clarinet tube in motion. Trumpets, trombones, and French horns are other wind instruments, but they don't have reeds. 
    Drums make up one more family of instruments. Drums are made by stretching an animal hide over a bowl or open cylinder. 
People play drums by hitting the hide with a stick. Drums help keep the beat in a band or orchestra. Drums can be tuned to different tone levels. This is done by stretching or loosening the drum's hide covering. 
    Another family of musical instruments is the percussion group. Drums are often thought of as percussion. But true percussion instruments are made from a solid material that is shaken, struck, or scraped. Rattles, bells, and gongs are percussion instruments. A xylophone is a more complicated percussion instrument. It has keys that are struck with a hammer. Each key sounds a different pitch or tone level. 
   The number and range of musical instruments are amazing. The next time you hear - or play in - a band or orchestra, listen carefully to the richness and variety of sounds.

Interviewer : What other qualities do you think made him an effective leader?
Maya Angelou : Intelligence, a very profound intelligence. Now, that does not always go handinhand with intellect. With Dr. King, it did. But I point out that intelligence is a separate gift, for the benefit of students, so that they may think of themselves as intellectual and not very intelligent, or intelligent and not very intellectual. One hopes, of course, that they try to bring the two virtues, the two elements, into their lives at the same time.
Dr. King was profoundly intelligent. That is to say, he was able to see, to examine, to analyze, to evaluate, to measure the climate of the times, the expediency of his calling, of his ministry. That's intelligence. Now intellect, of course, helped him to be able to explain what he saw with grace and eloquence and wonderful quotations, whether from Paul Laurence Dunbar or Longfellow. That was out of the virtue of his studies.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question below.[/passage-header]In India working women lead a life of dual responsibilities if they are married and have a family. In the west, many women are hard -headed careerists and are committed to their jobs. Here in India women still have traditional roles to fulfill and prefer a career to avoid domestic drudgery.
There are four categories of working women in India. Some work while they are waiting for matrimony. A majority work because they are qualified, want a second income and different kind of life for part of the day. A small section consists of career women. A sizeable number of women are breadwinners.
It is quite apparent that with a majority of working women the family takes precedence over the job. They prefer to stay in joint families where their children can be taken care of while they are at work. When they come back in the evenings from the relatively modem surroundings of their work -- spots, their personalities have to undergo a change to accommodate the demands on their time and attention by different family members whose predominant feelings are of having been neglected. These women often do their shopping on the way from the office. They reserve their weekends for heavy housework which will help them to cope with the rest of the week with relatively less tension. Weekends are also reserved for spending time with their spouses and children, for entertainment, family duties, visits and other such endless chores. Actually speaking, they hardly have time for personal needs. Despite the freedom and confidence of their jobs and pay packets, working women still prefer to leave the financial decision -- making and budgeting to their husbands. They are unwilling to compromise on their dual burdens and prefer jobs with flexible timings. They are managing their double roles admirably.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question below.[/passage-header]General knowledge has immense significance today. It is most essential for success. Test of GK base is a common practice.
Yet most of the time we evade it and indulge in confused, inappropriate and ineffective readings leading us nowhere. We keep away from absorbing information, be it specific or general. The reason: we are not trained to collect information and store it in an organized way. Therefore, when we need information we are not able to trace it, though it is in our notes or files. We become persons of no consequence who do not benefit from all the labour we indulged in gathering information we 'thought' useful. But if we want to achieve the desired results, we have to develop a system of storing and arranging the general knowledge and recalling it at appropriate moments.
Remember, information is of no use unless you are able to retrieve it. For example, you can keep a notebook handy to jot down new facts and ideas before they go out of your memory bank. Prepare note cards and on each card do not write full details. Compress each point to a single word or short phrase. Leave sufficient spaces between the lines and on the margin. Write on one side of the card and use different colour inks to identify different points. Number all your cards.
You can use keywords to identify main subject areas before filing your notes or clippings from newspapers and magazines. Jot down the sources on your notes and clippings.
Regular reading helps in building a sound general knowledge bank. It needs determination and effort. You have to develop a passion for reading. If you do not, you surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

[passage-header]Read the following passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question below.[/passage-header]In India working women lead a life of dual responsibilities if they are married and have a family. In the west, many women are hard -headed careerists and are committed to their jobs. Here in India women still have traditional roles to fulfill and prefer a career to avoid domestic drudgery.
There are four categories of working women in India. Some work while they are waiting for matrimony. A majority work because they are qualified, want a second income and different kind of life for part of the day. A small section consists of career women. A sizeable number of women are breadwinners.
It is quite apparent that with a majority of working women the family takes precedence over the job. They prefer to stay in joint families where their children can be taken care of while they are at work. When they come back in the evenings from the relatively modem surroundings of their work -- spots, their personalities have to undergo a change to accommodate the demands on their time and attention by different family members whose predominant feelings are of having been neglected. These women often do their shopping on the way from the office. They reserve their weekends for heavy housework which will help them to cope with the rest of the week with relatively less tension. Weekends are also reserved for spending time with their spouses and children, for entertainment, family duties, visits and other such endless chores. Actually speaking, they hardly have time for personal needs. Despite the freedom and confidence of their jobs and pay packets, working women still prefer to leave the financial decision -- making and budgeting to their husbands. They are unwilling to compromise on their dual burdens and prefer jobs with flexible timings. They are managing their double roles admirably.

[passage-header]Read the question and answer the question below.[/passage-header]Clean air is obviously not a priority for those living in Delhi, the fourth most polluted city in the world. Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) claims that even the politicians are not much bothered about this malady. 
Although Delhi has the largest incidence of asthma among school children, only a small section of society seems aware that this is caused by the high levels of carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, suspended particulate matter (SPM), lead and benzene. Besides asthma, air pollution can also cause respiratory illnesses and cancer.
"Youngsters like my son wonder why I spend Rs. 30 every six months on getting a Pollution Under Control Certificate when most vehicle - owners don't bother to do so", says a professor at the IIT's energy studies department.
For the embassy personnel in the city, pollution is a preoccupation, according to the professor. He recalls how a scientist attached to a foreign embassy approached him to know if there were any gadgets available to measure air pollution levels in Indian schools.
"He was worried because their children study in these schools", recounts the professor. It is when you see air pollution that it gets worrying. He also recalls how his white shirt turns patchy by the time he reaches home in the evening. "About 65 percent of Delhi's air pollution is vehicular, another 5 percent is contributed by thermal power stations and industries", says the professor.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]If life exists on Mars, it is most likely to be in the form of bacteria buried deep in the planet's permafrost or lichens growing within rocks, say scientists from NASA. There might even be fossilised Martian algae locked up in ancient lake beds, waiting to be found. Christopher McKay of NASA's Ames Research Centre in California told the AAAS that exobiologists, who look for life on other planets, should look for clues among the life forms of the Earth's ultra-cold regions, where conditions are similar to those on Mars. Lichens, for example, are found within some Antarctic rocks, just beneath the surface where sunlight can still reach them. The rock protects the lichen from cold and absorbs water, providing enough for the lichen's needs, said McKay. Bacteria have also been found in 3-million-year old permafrost dug up from Siberia. If there are any bacteria alive on Mars today, they would have survived from the time before the planet cooled more than 3 billion years ago. Nevertheless, McKay is optimistic: "It may be possible that bacteria frozen into the permafrost at the Martian South Pole may be viable." McKay said, "Algae are found in Antarctic lakes with permanently frozen surfaces. Although no lakes are thought to exist on Mars today, they might have existed long ago. If so, the dried-out Martian lake beds may contain the fossilised remains of algae." "On Earth, masses of microscopic algae form large, layered structures known as stromatolites, which survive as fossils on lake beds, and the putative Martian algae might have done the same thing," said Jack Farmer, one of McKay's colleagues. "The researchers are compiling a list of promising Martian lake beds to be photographed from spacecrafts," said Farmer. Those photographs could help to select sites for landers that would search for signs of life, past or present. "If we find algae on Mars, I would say the Universe is lousy with algae," McKay said. "Intelligence would be another question".