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Paragraph Jumbles
These questions will prove to be good exercise for some good
practice in para jumbles

Try to do the questions without looking at the solutions. The time

allotted is 30 mins.

Some useful sources for good para jumbles practice are :

• http://www.testfunda.com
• Arun Sharma – Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension
for the CAT

To get a 5% additional discount on the course material at

http://www.testfunda.com just give the referral code as
nickyswetha and send an email with a copy of your receipt
attached to testfunda.discount@gmail.com

The sentences given in each question, when properly sequenced,

form a coherent paragraph. Each sentence is labelled with a letter.
Choose the most logical order of sentences among the given
choices to construct a coherent paragraph.

Question1:

A. The word failure, it seems, is not good for building self-esteem

in school children.
B. Liz Beattie, a 37-year old veteran primary-level instructor,
proposed that the word failure
should be banned from classrooms and replaced with the more
appealing phrase deferred success so as not to discourage students
from continuing efforts to achieve.
C. Although the motion ultimately experienced its own “deferred
success,” it was not without supporters among the 35,000-member
teacher’s association.
D. One Wesley Paxton, a member of the PAT Council, expressed
his enthusiastic agreement, saying: “It’s time we made the word
‘fail’ redundant and replaced it with ‘please do a bit more’.”
E. In the summer of 2005, a British school teacher proposed a
rather controversial motion to her
union, the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT).

(1) ADBCE (2) BACDE (3) EBCDA (4)CEDAB

(5) ABCDE

Question 2:

A. In art, essentialism is the idea that certain concepts may be

expressed organically in certain media.
B. Each medium has its own particular strengths and weaknesses,
contingent on its mode of
communication.
C. This idea may be further refined and it may be said that the
haiku is a poor vehicle for describing a lover’s affection as
opposed to the more organically correct sonnet.
D. Essentialism is attractive to artists because it not only delineates
the role of art and media but also prescribes a method for
evaluating art.
E. A chase scene may be appropriate for motion pictures, but
poorly realised in poetry because the essential components of the
poetic medium are ill suited to convey the information of a chase
scene.
(1) DCEBA (2) BDACE (3) DABEC (4) ABEDC (5) ABECD

Question 3:

A. Enter the virtual assistants who are entrepreneurial partners -

highly skilled in their profession and able to have an impact on the
productivity of those they work with.
B. But most of the small businesses started today will reach an
impasse very quickly - they will be spending so much time on
administrative tasks that they can no longer concentrate on
growing their business.
C. On the contrary, some believe that increasing numbers of small
businesses will afford administrative support experts with
entrepreneurial spirit opportunities that have never before been
possible.
D. Traditionally, the need for assistance has left the small business
owner with several bleak optionshire
an expensive “temp” for a band-aid-style solution, take on a great
deal of expense and
responsibility with a “permanent” employee, or-perhaps worst of
all-turn away the work.
E. Corporate downsizing and the move towards small, home-based
businesses could appear to be bad news for the over 3 million
people whose expertise lies in the administrative support arena.

(1) DCABE (2) ECBDA (3) DBACE (4) EDCBA

(5) CDEBA

Question 4:

A. How does the cellular microenvironment regulate cellular

functions or vice versa?
B. This understanding can be used to engineer novel therapeutic
for new drug discovery techniques and for regenerative medicines
using directed stem cell differentiation
C. Can the complex sugar that compose the microenvironment
play a role in intercellular modulation at the protein signaling or
genetic levels?
D. The laboratory aims at understanding the correlation at the
cellular level and in using the knowledge to develop medicines for
curing diseases.
E. These are the domains which are explored using novel tools to
dissect complex sugars and observe changes in genetic and protein
signaling.
(1) DABCE (2) ACBED (3) DACEB (4) CADBE (5) ACDEB

Question 5:

A. As Sylvia Huot strikes, late medieval writers were perceptive of

their changing status and strived to cast off their image as lyric
entertainers for a more authorial identity.
B. Much of the scholarship on this issue identifies late-medieval
period as a critical moment in the development of modern concepts
of authority.
C. Jacqueline provides a detailed diagnosis of medieval literary
references for students & medieval scholars alike.
D. The colour of Melancholy cites an engaging survey of the
development of authorship in the late Middle Ages, mainly
designed for students.
E. Authorship is a subject that has enraptured medievalists for the
last two decades.

(1) DECBA (2) EBADC (3) CDEAB (4) EADBC (5) BCDAE

Question 6:

A. Increasingly, many scholars in the field agree that there is a

need to revert to foundational economic issues.
B. This has led to important advancements, for example, in asset
pricing theory, and interest rate modelling.
C. This direction of study however can be regarded as somewhat
secluded from real-world considerations.
D. In the last two decades mathematical finance has developed
discretely from economic theory and primarily as a branch of
probability theory and stochastic exegesis.
E. Mainstream finance on the other hand has often entertained
interesting economic problems, but
finance chronicles normally pay less attention to high level
mathematical approach.

(1) DBCAE (2) ACDBE (3) DBACE (4) ADBEC (5) BADEC

In each question, there are five sentences/paragraphs. The

sentence/paragraph labelled A is in its correct place. The four that
follow are labelled B, C, D and E, and need to be arranged in a
logical order to form a coherent paragraph/passage. From the given
options, choose the most appropriate option.

Question 7:

A. Given the atrocities perpetrated with impunity by state forces, it

is a moral imperative that the negotiations — scheduled to resume
at the United Nations this month — on a comprehensive treaty to
regulate the sale of conventional arms should succeed.
B. Its recent report calls on countries to codify the so-called
“golden rule” — not to allow the transfer of arms to states where
there is a threat of grave abuses of human rights and humanitarian
law.
C. Every year, over 300,000 people are killed by conventional
weapons and millions injured, forcibly displaced, and bereaved
because of armed violence, according to Amnesty International.
D. The consensus that has emerged, since the 2006 Resolution for
a global pact, on underwriting provisions related to protection of
human rights and fundamental freedoms in the proposed treaty is
also a tacit recognition of the brutalities committed systematically
against innocent civilians in the conflict zones.
E. However, opposition by the United States, Russia, China and
India, besides others, to link the trade in arms to the observance of
human rights and humanitarian law by recipient countries threatens
to block progress.

(1) DECB (2) DEBC (3) EDBC (4) ECBD (5) EDCB

Question 8:

A. The mentor-protégé relationship also saw the unlikely

collaboration of two 19th century Victorian writers with disparate
styles collaborating on two plays and a short story.
B. However the first staging of “The Frozen Deep,” that Dickens
produced led to the breakdown of his marriage.
C. “The Frozen Deep” and “No Thoroughfare” the two plays
written jointly by them have not lingered on in public
consciousness unlike the novels they wrote individually, the plays
having met with what one would call a “mixed response” in
today’s parlance when they were staged initially.
D. Charles Dickens, one of the most revered figures in English
Literature, had an unlikely disciple in Wilkie Collins. Collins’s pen
made popular a brand of fiction known as “sensation novels,” a
genre that led to the birth of the modern day detective novels.
E. Dickens appointed Collins, Editor of the literary journals he
brought out and also got his daughter married to the younger
brother of his protégé.

(1) CDEB (2) CBED (3) DCEB (4) BCED (5) DECB
Question 9:

A. As a big cat native to the icy trans-Himalayan ranges, the snow

leopard is an elusive and intriguing species.
B. Uncia uncia is a graceful golden-eyed animal with thick fur,
padded paws that help it move noiselessly on rocky slopes, and a
gloriously long tail that provides balance on the tricky terrain.
C. Poaching to supply markets for fur and body parts presents
another challenge.
D. Like the tiger, the snow leopard is a keystone carnivore species
whose future is clouded by conflicts with people — in this case,
high-altitude pastoral communities.
E. Although these peaceable folk have historically co-existed with
the snow leopard in a dozen range countries, the increase in
livestock numbers in recent times has resulted in depredation and
retaliatory killing of the animal.

(1) BDEC (2) BECD (3) BDEC (4) CEDB (5) CEBD

Question 10:

A. Those who created the problem are now the doctors offering the
prescriptions.
B. Yet nothing is being done to stem the haemorrhaging.
C. A little while ago, we were told everything was fine.
D. Then, less than six months ago, we were told that the economy
was on the mend.
E. Now we are told the patient needs a massive transfusion, but
everyone can see that the patient is suffering from internal
bleeding; in California, the number of foreclosures may already be
outpacing voluntary sales.

(1) BCED (2) BECD (3) CDEB (4) CEBD (5) CBED
Answers:
1. 3
2. 5
3. 2
4. 3
5. 2
6. 1
7. 4
8. 5
9. 1
10. 3