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English Language Ability Quiz for XAT entrance exam

Dear readers,

This quiz consists of questions from past
actual XAT papers. Leave your answers/ responses in the comments section below
and soon we’ll let you know the correct answers!

Analyse
the passage given and provide an appropriate answer for the question nos. 1
through 4 that follow.

Enunciated by Jung as an integral part of
his psychology in 1916 immediately after his unsettling confrontation with the
unconscious, the transcendent function was seen by Jung as uniting the
opposites, transforming psyche, and central to the individuation process. It
also undoubtedly reflects his personal experience in coming to terms with the
unconscious. Jung portrayed the transcendent function as operating through
symbol and fantasy and mediating between the opposites of consciousness and the
unconscious to prompt the emergence of a new, third posture that transcends the
two. In exploring the details of the transcendent function and its connection
to other Jungian constructs, this work has unearthed significant changes,
ambiguities, and inconsistencies in Jung’s writings. Further, it has identified
two separate images of the transcendent function: (1) the narrow transcendent
function, the function or process within Jung’s pantheon of psychic structures,
generally seen as the uniting of the opposites of consciousness and the
unconscious from which a new attitude emerges; and (2) the expansive
transcendent function, the root metaphor for psyche or being psychological that
subsumes Jung’s pantheon and that apprehends the most fundamental psychic
activity of interacting with the unknown or other. This book has also posited
that the expansive transcendent function, as the root metaphor for exchanges
between conscious and the unconscious, is the wellspring from whence flows
other key Jungian structures such as the archetypes and the Self, and is the
core of the individuation process. The expansive transcendent function has been
explored further by surveying other schools of psychology, with both depth and
non-depth orientations, and evaluating the transcendent function alongside
structures or processes in those other schools which play similar mediatory
and/or transitional roles.

1:
The above passage is most likely an excerpt from:

(A) A research note

(B) An entry on a psychopathology blog

(C) A popular magazine article

(D) A scholarly treatise

(E) A newspaper article 

2:
It can be definitely inferred from the passage above that

(A) The expansive transcendent function
would include elements of both the Consciousness and the Unconscious.

(B) Archetypes emerge from the narrow
transcendent function.

(C) The whole work, from which this excerpt
is taken, primarily concerns itself with the inconsistencies in Jung’s
writings.

(D) Jung’s pantheon of concepts subsumes
the root metaphor of psyche.

(E) The transcendent is the core of the
individuation process. 

3:
A comparison similar to the distinction between the two images of the
transcendent function would be:

(A) raucous: hilarious

(B) synchronicity: ontology

(C) recession: withdrawal

(D) penurious: decrepit

(E) none of the above 

4:
As per the passage, the key Jungian structure – other than the Self – that
emerges from the expansive transcendent function may NOT be expressed as a(n):

(A) Stereotype

(B) Anomaly

(C) Idealized model

(D) Original pattern (E) Epitome

Analyse
the following passage and provide an appropriate answer for the question nos. 5
through 11 that follow.

India is renowned for its diversity.
Dissimilitude abounds in every sphere – from the physical elements of its land
and people to the intangible workings of its beliefs and practices. Indeed,
given this variety, India itself appears to be not a single entity but an
amalgamation, a “constructs” arising from the conjoining of innumerable,
discrete parts. Modem scholarship has, quite properly, tended to explore these
elements in isolation. (In part, this trend represents the conscious reversal
of the stance taken by an earlier generation of scholars whose work reified
India into a monolithic entity – a critical element in the much maligned
“Orientalist” enterprise.) Nonetheless, the representation of India as a
singular “Whole” is not an entirely capricious enterprise; for India is an
identifiable entity, united by – if not born out of – certain deep and
pervasive structures. Thus, for example, the Hindu tradition has long
maintained a body of mythology that weaves the disparate temples, gods, even
geographic landscapes that exist throughout the subcontinent into a unified,
albeit syncretic, whole.

In the realm of thought, there is no more
pervasive, unifying structure than karma. It is the “doctrine” or “law” that
ties actions to results and creates a determinant link between an individual’s
status in this life and his or her fate in future lives. Following what is
considered to be its appearances in the Upanishads, the doctrine reaches into
nearly every corner of Hindu thought. Indeed, its dominance is such in the
Hindu world view that karma encompasses, at the same time, life-affirming and
life-negating functions; for just as it defines the world in terms of the
“positive” function of delineating a doctrine of rewards and punishments, so
too it defines the world through its “negative” representation of action as an
all but inescapable trap, an unremitting cycle of death and rebirth. 

Despite – or perhaps because of – karma’s
ubiquity, the doctrine is not easily defined. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty reports
of a scholarly conference devoted to the study of karma that although the
participants admitted to a general sense of the doctrine’s parameters, considerable
time was in a “lively but ultimately vain attempt to define…karma and rebirth”.
The base meaning of the term “karma” (or, more precisely, in its Sanskrit stem
form, karman a neuter substantive) is “action”. As a doctrine, karma
encompasses a number of quasi-independent concepts: rebirth (punarjanam),
consequence (phala, literally “fruit,” a term that suggests the “ripening” of
actions into consequences), and the valuation or “ethic-ization” of acts,
qualifying them as either “good” (punya or sukarman) or “bad” (papam or
duskarman).

In a general way, however, for at least the
past two thousand years, the following (from the well known text, the Bhagavata
Parana) has held true as representing the principal elements of the karma
doctrine: “The same person enjoys the fruit of the same sinful or a meritorious
act in the next world in the same manner and to the same extent according to
the manner and extent, to which that (sinful or meritorious) act has been done
by him in this world.” Nevertheless, depending on the doctrine’s context, which
itself ranges from its appearance in a vast number of literary sources to its
usage on the popular level, not all these elements may be present (though in a
general way they may be implicit).

5:
The orientalist perspective, according to the author:

(A) Viewed India as a country of diversity.

(B) Viewed India as if it was a single and
unitary entity devoid of diversity.

(C) Viewed India both as single and diverse
entity.

(D) Viewed India as land of karma.

(E) Viewed India in the entirety. 

6:
“Reify” in the passage means:

(A) To make real out of abstract

(B) Reversal of stance

(C) Unitary whole

(D) Diversity

(E) Unity in diversity 

7:
“Ethic-ization” in the passage means

(A) Process of making something ethical

(B) Converting unethical persons into
ethical

(C) Judging and evaluation

(D) Teaching ethics

(E) None of the above 

8:
Consider the following statements:

1.
Meaning of karma is contextual.

2.
Meaning of karma is not unanimous.

3.
Meaning of karma includes many other quasi-independent concepts.

4.
Karma also means actions and their rewards.

Which
of the statements are true?

(A) 1,2,3

(B) 2,3,4

(C) 1,3,4

(D) None of the above

(E) All the four are true

9:
The base meaning of karma is:

(A) reward and punishment.

(B) only those actions which yield a
“phala”.

(C) any action.

(D) ripening of actions into consequences.

(E) None of the above.

10:
As per the author, which of the following statements is wrong?

(A) India is a diverse country.

(B) Doctrine of karma runs across divergent
Hindu thoughts.

(C) Doctrine of karma has a rich scholarly
discourse

(D) Scholars could not resolve the meaning
of karma

(E) Modern scholars have studied Hinduism
as a syncretic whole.

MBA:

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Answers

1(d)    2(e)    
3(e)    4(b)     5(b)    
6(a)   7(c)    8(e)    
9(c)    10(b)