Sushobhan's Online Coaching Zone

sushobhan

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Hello Everyone,

So how is life? Well life is all about CATs now especially for tomorrows budding managers.

Well lets u practice lots of questions to make sure that we are the hunters this time and the CAT is the hunted one this time

Sushobhan
 

sushobhan

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Here I start with a CAT 2003 Passage. Solve it and reply with your answers. once i get sufficient amount of replies I will post the correct answers.

RC Passage 1

Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain positions at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “Christians educate their sons … for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.

The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education: To what degree was it still a clerical preserve? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institutions staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century schools were clerical and yet “secular”?

Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often used to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word clerc even today has the connotation of intellectual.

Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed from a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.

Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writings of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.

1. According to the passage, which of the following is the most noteworthy trend in education in twelfth-century Europe?

1. Secularization of education.
2. Flowering of theology as the queen of the sciences.
3. Wealthy people increasingly turning to education.
4. Rise of the clergy’s influence on the curriculum.

2. What does the sentence “Christians educate their sons … will be ours and the other brothers” imply?

1. The Christian family was a close-knit unit in the twelfth century.
2. Christians educated their sons not so much for the love of learning as for material gain.
3. Christians believed very strongly in educating their sons in the Church.
4. The relationship between Christian parents and their sons was exploitative in the twelfth century.

3. According to the passage, twelfth century schools were clerical and yet secular because:

1. many teachers were craftsmen and professionals who did not form part of the church.
2. while the students had the legal privileges accorded to the clergy and looked like priests, not all were really priests.
3. the term ‘cleric’ denoted a literate individual rather than a strict association with the church.
4. though the clergy had a monopoly in education, the environment, objectives and curriculum in the schools were becoming secular.

4. According to the author, in the twelfth century, individuals were motivated to get higher education because it:

1. was a means for material advancement and higher status.
2. gave people with wealth an opportunity to learn.
3. offered a coveted place for those with a love of learning.
4. directly added to the income levels of people.

5. According to the passage, what led to the secularization of the curriculum of the liberal arts in the twelfth century?

1. It was divorced from religion and its influences.
2. Students used it mainly as a base for studying law and medicine.
3. Teaching could no longer be conducted exclusively in Latin.
4. Arabic was introduced into the curriculum.


 

premnath

New member
Here I start with a CAT 2003 Passage. Solve it and reply with your answers. once i get sufficient amount of replies I will post the correct answers.

RC Passage 1

Pure love of learning, of course, was a less compelling motive for those who became educated for careers other than teaching. Students of law in particular had a reputation for being materialistic careerists in an age when law was becoming known as “the lucrative science” and its successful practice the best means for rapid advancement in the government of both church and state. Medicine too had its profit-making attractions. Those who did not go on to law or medicine could, if they had been well trained in the arts, gain positions at royal courts or rise in the clergy. Eloquent testimony to the profit motive behind much of twelfth-century education was the lament of a student of Abelard around 1150 that “Christians educate their sons … for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a clerk, may help his father and mother and his other brothers, saying that a clerk will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.” With the opening of positions in law, government, and the church, education became a means for advancement not only in income but also in status. Most who were educated were wealthy, but in the twelfth century, more often than before, many were not and were able to rise through the ranks by means of their education. The most familiar examples are Thomas Becket, who rose from a humble background to become chancellor of England and then archbishop of Canterbury, and John of Salisbury, who was born a “plebeian” but because of his reputation for learning died as bishop of Chartres.

The instances of Becket and John of Salisbury bring us to the most difficult question concerning twelfth-century education: To what degree was it still a clerical preserve? Despite the fact that throughout the twelfth century the clergy had a monopoly of instruction, one of the outstanding medievalists of our day, R. W. Southern, refers with good reason to the institutions staffed by the clergy as “secular schools.” How can we make sense out of the paradox that twelfth-century schools were clerical and yet “secular”?

Let us look at the clerical side first. Not only were all twelfth-century teachers except professionals and craftsmen in church orders, but in northern Europe students in schools had clerical status and looked like priests. Not that all really were priests, but by virtue of being students all were awarded the legal privileges accorded to the clergy. Furthermore, the large majority of twelfth-century students, outside of the possible exception of Italy, if not already priests became so after their studies were finished. For these reasons, the term “cleric” was often used to denote a man who was literate and the term “layman” one who was illiterate. The English word for cleric, clerk, continued for a long time to be a synonym for student or for a man who could write, while the French word clerc even today has the connotation of intellectual.

Despite all this, twelfth-century education was taking on many secular qualities in its environment, goals, and curriculum. Student life obviously became more secular when it moved out from the monasteries into the bustling towns. Most students wandered from town to town in search not only of good masters but also of worldly excitement, and as the twelfth century progressed they found the best of each in Paris. More important than environment was the fact that most students, even though they entered the clergy, had secular goals. Theology was recognized as the “queen of the sciences,” but very few went on to it. Instead they used their study of the liberal arts as a preparation for law, medicine, government service, or advancement in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

This being so, the curriculum of the liberal arts became more sophisticated and more divorced from religion. Teaching was still almost exclusively in Latin, and the first book most often read was the Psalter, but further education was no longer similar to that of a choir school. In particular, the discipline of rhetoric was transformed from a linguistic study into instruction in how to compose letters and documents; there was a new stress on logic; and in all the liberal arts and philosophy texts more advanced than those known in the early Middle Ages were introduced.

Along with the rise of logic came the translation of Greek and Arabic philosophical and scientific works. Most important was the translation of almost all the writings of Aristotle, as well as his sophisticated Arabic commentators, which helped to bring about an intellectual revolution based on Greek rationalism. On a more prosaic level, contact with Arabs resulted in the introduction in the twelfth century of the Arabic numeral system and the concept of zero. Though most westerners first resisted this and made crude jokes about the zero as an ambitious number “that counts for nothing and yet wants to be counted,” the system steadily made its inroads first in Italy and then throughout Europe, thereby vastly simplifying the arts of computation and record keeping.

1. According to the passage, which of the following is the most noteworthy trend in education in twelfth-century Europe?

1. Secularization of education.
2. Flowering of theology as the queen of the sciences.
3. Wealthy people increasingly turning to education.
4. Rise of the clergy’s influence on the curriculum.

2. What does the sentence “Christians educate their sons … will be ours and the other brothers” imply?

1. The Christian family was a close-knit unit in the twelfth century.
2. Christians educated their sons not so much for the love of learning as for material gain.
3. Christians believed very strongly in educating their sons in the Church.
4. The relationship between Christian parents and their sons was exploitative in the twelfth century.

3. According to the passage, twelfth century schools were clerical and yet secular because:

1. many teachers were craftsmen and professionals who did not form part of the church.
2. while the students had the legal privileges accorded to the clergy and looked like priests, not all were really priests.
3. the term ‘cleric’ denoted a literate individual rather than a strict association with the church.
4. though the clergy had a monopoly in education, the environment, objectives and curriculum in the schools were becoming secular.

4. According to the author, in the twelfth century, individuals were motivated to get higher education because it:

1. was a means for material advancement and higher status.
2. gave people with wealth an opportunity to learn.
3. offered a coveted place for those with a love of learning.
4. directly added to the income levels of people.

5. According to the passage, what led to the secularization of the curriculum of the liberal arts in the twelfth century?

1. It was divorced from religion and its influences.
2. Students used it mainly as a base for studying law and medicine.
3. Teaching could no longer be conducted exclusively in Latin.
4. Arabic was introduced into the curriculum.





My answers:
1. 1
2. 2
3. 4
4. 1
5. 1

Regards,
PremNath
 

sushobhan

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Here is another CAT 2003 Passage. Solve it and reply with your answers. once i get sufficient amount of replies I will post the correct answers.

RC Passage 2

While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer’s scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home — he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can’t get into: colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn’t welcome anymore. Related by blood, we’re separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.

What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest
Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It’s like that for Straddlers. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing: the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-and-pop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.

When they pick careers (not jobs), it’s often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can’t understand. But for the white-collar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In Corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a Straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.


People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and crème brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks: someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor’s office, or the executive suite. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives. This ‘belongingness’ is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more organic, ‘legitimate’ means of appropriating cultural capital, Bourdieu tells us. Those of us possessing ‘ill-gotten Culture’ can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates—universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.

Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no blue-collar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals born to the working-class report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won’t always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on and speaking your mind doesn’t always work, no matter how educated the Straddler is.


In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instructions. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity, obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm — the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.

1.
According to the passage, which of the following statements about ‘cultural capital’ is NOT true?
1. It socializes children early into the norms of middle class institutions.
2. It helps them learn the language of universities and corporations.
3. It creates a sense of enlightenment in middle-class children.
4. It develops bright kids into Straddlers.


2.
According to the passage, the patterns of socialization of working-class children make them most suited for jobs that require
1. diplomacy. 2. compliance with orders. 3. enterprise and initiative 4. high risk taking.


3.
When Straddlers enter white collar jobs, they get lost because:
1. they are thrown into an alien value system.
2. their families have not read the rules in corporate manuals.
3. they have no one to guide them through the corporate maze.
4. they miss the ‘mom and pop orthodoxy’.


4.
What does the author’s statement, “My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches”, illustrate?
1. Organic cultural capital.
2. Professional arrogance and social distance.
3. Evolving social transformation.
4. Breakdown of family relationship


5.
Which of the following statements about Straddlers does the passage NOT support explicitly?
1. Their food preferences may not match those of their parents.
2. They may not keep up some central religious practices of their parents.
3. They are at home neither in the middle class nor in the working-class.
4. Their political ideologies may differ from those of their parents.
 

deepakraam

Par 100 posts (V.I.P)
Here is another CAT 2003 Passage. Solve it and reply with your answers. once i get sufficient amount of replies I will post the correct answers.

RC Passage 2

While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica du jour, my father was on a bricklayer’s scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home — he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can’t get into: colleges, condos, office towers. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn’t welcome anymore. Related by blood, we’re separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.

What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest
Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It’s like that for Straddlers. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing: the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-and-pop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo folk may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brie to Kraft slices. They marry outside the neighbourhood and raise their kids differently. They might not be in church on Sunday.

When they pick careers (not jobs), it’s often a kind of work their parents never heard of or can’t understand. But for the white-collar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In Corporate America, where the rules are based on notions foreign to working-class people, a Straddler can get lost. Social class counts at the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate norms are based on middle-class values, business types say. From an early age, middle-class people learn how to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It is as though they are following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to read.


People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. Growing up in an educated environment, they learn about Picasso and Mozart, stock portfolios and crème brulee. In a home with cultural capital, there are networks: someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job. Dinner-table talk could involve what happened that day to mom and dad at the law firm, the doctor’s office, or the executive suite. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement that will carry them through their lives. This ‘belongingness’ is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early access and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more organic, ‘legitimate’ means of appropriating cultural capital, Bourdieu tells us. Those of us possessing ‘ill-gotten Culture’ can learn it, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater match between middle-class lives and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates—universities or corporations. Children of the middle and upper classes have been speaking the language of the bosses and supervisors forever.

Blue-collar kids are taught by their parents and communities to work hard to achieve, and that merit is rewarded. But no blue-collar parent knows whether such things are true in the middle-class world. Many professionals born to the working-class report feeling out of place and outmanoeuvred in the office. Soon enough, Straddlers learn that straight talk won’t always cut. Resolving conflicts head-on and speaking your mind doesn’t always work, no matter how educated the Straddler is.


In the working-class, people perform jobs in which they are closely supervised and are required to follow orders and instructions. That, in turn, affects how they socialise their children. Children of the working-class are brought up in a home in which conformity, obedience and intolerance for back talk are the norm — the same characteristics that make a good factory worker.

1.
According to the passage, which of the following statements about ‘cultural capital’ is NOT true?
1. It socializes children early into the norms of middle class institutions.
2. It helps them learn the language of universities and corporations.
3. It creates a sense of enlightenment in middle-class children.
4. It develops bright kids into Straddlers.


2.
According to the passage, the patterns of socialization of working-class children make them most suited for jobs that require
1. diplomacy. 2. compliance with orders. 3. enterprise and initiative 4. high risk taking.


3.
When Straddlers enter white collar jobs, they get lost because:
1. they are thrown into an alien value system.
2. their families have not read the rules in corporate manuals.
3. they have no one to guide them through the corporate maze.
4. they miss the ‘mom and pop orthodoxy’.


4.
What does the author’s statement, “My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches”, illustrate?
1. Organic cultural capital.
2. Professional arrogance and social distance.
3. Evolving social transformation.
4. Breakdown of family relationship


5.
Which of the following statements about Straddlers does the passage NOT support explicitly?
1. Their food preferences may not match those of their parents.
2. They may not keep up some central religious practices of their parents.
3. They are at home neither in the middle class nor in the working-class.
4. Their political ideologies may differ from those of their parents.



My ans for RC:2

1.4
2.2
3.2
4.3
5.1

-Deepak.
 

gaurav200x

Gaurav Mittal
@ALL,

while posting, please don't quote the whole message of the previous post. Go for 'Advanced' and just keep 2-3 lines in the quotes post.
 
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