English Comprehension PYQs

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given five alternatives.

Savers in Denmark must be squealing with pain at the advent of the world’s first negative rate mortgage, courtesy of Jyske Bank. Danish savers currently get about 0.1% for their pots of money at the bank and soon they might find deposit-takers start charging them to protect their piles of cash.

Borrowers, on the other hand, would appear to have the whip hand. When a mortgage rate is negative, a borrower must still make monthly payments, but they pay back less than they owe.

If the young borrow and the old save, this development must surely show that intergenerational transfers work in the direction of millennials and not, as more popularly argued, to the benefit of pensioners.

In this vein, it’s not unknown for pensioners to cite low savings rates as an outrage perpetrated by central banks that have a mission to favour the young over the old. Yet older homeowners miss a vital point, and one that is illustrated by the situation in Denmark, where house prices have risen consistently for decades and, as in most western European countries, stand at record highs.

They kept rising, especially in the capital, Copenhagen, through the financial crash and beyond – and by more than 4% last year – because low interest rates made rising property values more affordable.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given five alternatives.

Savers in Denmark must be squealing with pain at the advent of the world’s first negative rate mortgage, courtesy of Jyske Bank. Danish savers currently get about 0.1% for their pots of money at the bank and soon they might find deposit-takers start charging them to protect their piles of cash.

Borrowers, on the other hand, would appear to have the whip hand. When a mortgage rate is negative, a borrower must still make monthly payments, but they pay back less than they owe.

If the young borrow and the old save, this development must surely show that intergenerational transfers work in the direction of millennials and not, as more popularly argued, to the benefit of pensioners.

In this vein, it’s not unknown for pensioners to cite low savings rates as an outrage perpetrated by central banks that have a mission to favour the young over the old. Yet older homeowners miss a vital point, and one that is illustrated by the situation in Denmark, where house prices have risen consistently for decades and, as in most western European countries, stand at record highs.

They kept rising, especially in the capital, Copenhagen, through the financial crash and beyond – and by more than 4% last year – because low interest rates made rising property values more affordable.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given five alternatives.

Savers in Denmark must be squealing with pain at the advent of the world’s first negative rate mortgage, courtesy of Jyske Bank. Danish savers currently get about 0.1% for their pots of money at the bank and soon they might find deposit-takers start charging them to protect their piles of cash.

Borrowers, on the other hand, would appear to have the whip hand. When a mortgage rate is negative, a borrower must still make monthly payments, but they pay back less than they owe.

If the young borrow and the old save, this development must surely show that intergenerational transfers work in the direction of millennials and not, as more popularly argued, to the benefit of pensioners.

In this vein, it’s not unknown for pensioners to cite low savings rates as an outrage perpetrated by central banks that have a mission to favour the young over the old. Yet older homeowners miss a vital point, and one that is illustrated by the situation in Denmark, where house prices have risen consistently for decades and, as in most western European countries, stand at record highs.

They kept rising, especially in the capital, Copenhagen, through the financial crash and beyond – and by more than 4% last year – because low interest rates made rising property values more affordable.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given five alternatives.

The mayor of London has written to the owner of the King’s Cross development demanding to know whether the company believes its use of facial recognition software in its CCTV systems is legal. Sadiq Khan said he wanted to express his concern a day after the property company behind the 27-hectare (67-acre) central London site admitted it was using the technology “in the interests of public safety”.

In his letter, the Labour mayor writes to Robert Evans, the chief executive of the King’s Cross development, to “request more information about exactly how this technology is being used”. Khan also asks for “reassurance that you have been liaising with government ministers and the Information Commissioner’s Office to ensure its use is fully compliant with the law as it stands”.

The owner of King’s Cross is one of the first property companies to acknowledge it is deploying facial recognition software, even though it has been criticised by human rights group Liberty as “a disturbing expansion of mass surveillance”.

But the company has provided little detail of how the software is used beyond saying it employed “a number of detection and tracking methods, including facial recognition” in its CCTV systems.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given five alternatives.

The mayor of London has written to the owner of the King’s Cross development demanding to know whether the company believes its use of facial recognition software in its CCTV systems is legal. Sadiq Khan said he wanted to express his concern a day after the property company behind the 27-hectare (67-acre) central London site admitted it was using the technology “in the interests of public safety”.

In his letter, the Labour mayor writes to Robert Evans, the chief executive of the King’s Cross development, to “request more information about exactly how this technology is being used”. Khan also asks for “reassurance that you have been liaising with government ministers and the Information Commissioner’s Office to ensure its use is fully compliant with the law as it stands”.

The owner of King’s Cross is one of the first property companies to acknowledge it is deploying facial recognition software, even though it has been criticised by human rights group Liberty as “a disturbing expansion of mass surveillance”.

But the company has provided little detail of how the software is used beyond saying it employed “a number of detection and tracking methods, including facial recognition” in its CCTV systems.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given five alternatives.

The mayor of London has written to the owner of the King’s Cross development demanding to know whether the company believes its use of facial recognition software in its CCTV systems is legal. Sadiq Khan said he wanted to express his concern a day after the property company behind the 27-hectare (67-acre) central London site admitted it was using the technology “in the interests of public safety”.

In his letter, the Labour mayor writes to Robert Evans, the chief executive of the King’s Cross development, to “request more information about exactly how this technology is being used”. Khan also asks for “reassurance that you have been liaising with government ministers and the Information Commissioner’s Office to ensure its use is fully compliant with the law as it stands”.

The owner of King’s Cross is one of the first property companies to acknowledge it is deploying facial recognition software, even though it has been criticised by human rights group Liberty as “a disturbing expansion of mass surveillance”.

But the company has provided little detail of how the software is used beyond saying it employed “a number of detection and tracking methods, including facial recognition” in its CCTV systems.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given five alternatives.

Drop a plastic bottle into the Ganges and where does it end up? An all-female team of engineers, explorers and scientists is about to find out by undertaking the first expedition to measure plastic waste in one of the world’s most polluted waterways.

Following the Ganges upstream from where it empties in the Bay of Bengal to its source in the Himalayas, the National Geographic-backed expedition aims to better understand how plastic pollution travels from source to sea and provide solutions for reducing the amount that ends up in the world’s oceans.

The 2,525 km-long Ganges is a river of extreme paradox: though worshipped by 1 billion people and relied on as a water source for roughly 400 million people, it is contaminated with industrial runoff, untreated sewage and household waste. It is also one of 10 rivers responsible for 90% of the plastic that ends up at sea. The river is, therefore, a perfect starting point for measuring how plastic travels from land into rivers, and from rivers into the ocean, says National Geographic fellow and University of Georgia associate professor Jenna Jambeck, who is co-leading the expedition.

“We know there’s plastic in these river environments and that the plastic is heading into the ocean,” says environmental engineer Jambeck, whose previous research found that 8m metric tons of plastic waste enters oceans every year.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given five alternatives.

Drop a plastic bottle into the Ganges and where does it end up? An all-female team of engineers, explorers and scientists is about to find out by undertaking the first expedition to measure plastic waste in one of the world’s most polluted waterways.

Following the Ganges upstream from where it empties in the Bay of Bengal to its source in the Himalayas, the National Geographic-backed expedition aims to better understand how plastic pollution travels from source to sea and provide solutions for reducing the amount that ends up in the world’s oceans.

The 2,525 km-long Ganges is a river of extreme paradox: though worshipped by 1 billion people and relied on as a water source for roughly 400 million people, it is contaminated with industrial runoff, untreated sewage and household waste. It is also one of 10 rivers responsible for 90% of the plastic that ends up at sea. The river is, therefore, a perfect starting point for measuring how plastic travels from land into rivers, and from rivers into the ocean, says National Geographic fellow and University of Georgia associate professor Jenna Jambeck, who is co-leading the expedition.

“We know there’s plastic in these river environments and that the plastic is heading into the ocean,” says environmental engineer Jambeck, whose previous research found that 8m metric tons of plastic waste enters oceans every year.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given five alternatives.

Drop a plastic bottle into the Ganges and where does it end up? An all-female team of engineers, explorers and scientists is about to find out by undertaking the first expedition to measure plastic waste in one of the world’s most polluted waterways.

Following the Ganges upstream from where it empties in the Bay of Bengal to its source in the Himalayas, the National Geographic-backed expedition aims to better understand how plastic pollution travels from source to sea and provide solutions for reducing the amount that ends up in the world’s oceans.

The 2,525 km-long Ganges is a river of extreme paradox: though worshipped by 1 billion people and relied on as a water source for roughly 400 million people, it is contaminated with industrial runoff, untreated sewage and household waste. It is also one of 10 rivers responsible for 90% of the plastic that ends up at sea. The river is, therefore, a perfect starting point for measuring how plastic travels from land into rivers, and from rivers into the ocean, says National Geographic fellow and University of Georgia associate professor Jenna Jambeck, who is co-leading the expedition.

“We know there’s plastic in these river environments and that the plastic is heading into the ocean,” says environmental engineer Jambeck, whose previous research found that 8m metric tons of plastic waste enters oceans every year.

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given five alternatives.

Drop a plastic bottle into the Ganges and where does it end up? An all-female team of engineers, explorers and scientists is about to find out by undertaking the first expedition to measure plastic waste in one of the world’s most polluted waterways.

Following the Ganges upstream from where it empties in the Bay of Bengal to its source in the Himalayas, the National Geographic-backed expedition aims to better understand how plastic pollution travels from source to sea and provide solutions for reducing the amount that ends up in the world’s oceans.

The 2,525 km-long Ganges is a river of extreme paradox: though worshipped by 1 billion people and relied on as a water source for roughly 400 million people, it is contaminated with industrial runoff, untreated sewage and household waste. It is also one of 10 rivers responsible for 90% of the plastic that ends up at sea. The river is, therefore, a perfect starting point for measuring how plastic travels from land into rivers, and from rivers into the ocean, says National Geographic fellow and University of Georgia associate professor Jenna Jambeck, who is co-leading the expedition.

“We know there’s plastic in these river environments and that the plastic is heading into the ocean,” says environmental engineer Jambeck, whose previous research found that 8m metric tons of plastic waste enters oceans every year.

The following five sentences form a paragraph but are not given in their proper order. Read the sentences and answer the given questions.

A. Called La Marjal, it serves as a typical recreation area and a nature reserve. 

B. However, its primary purpose is to store, and then recycle, rainwater.

C. But when it comes it was torrential, bringing destructive and sometimes fatal flooding.

D. Alicante, a city in southeast Spain, goes without rain for months on end. 

E. In San Juan, a low-lying area of the city, authorities have now build a new park with a twist.

The following five sentences form a paragraph but are not given in their proper order. Read the sentences and answer the given questions.

A. Called La Marjal, it serves as a typical recreation area and a nature reserve. 

B. However, its primary purpose is to store, and then recycle, rainwater.

C. But when it comes it was torrential, bringing destructive and sometimes fatal flooding.

D. Alicante, a city in southeast Spain, goes without rain for months on end. 

E. In San Juan, a low-lying area of the city, authorities have now build a new park with a twist.

The following five sentences form a paragraph but are not given in their proper order. Read the sentences and answer the given questions.

A. Called La Marjal, it serves as a typical recreation area and a nature reserve. 

B. However, its primary purpose is to store, and then recycle, rainwater.

C. But when it comes it was torrential, bringing destructive and sometimes fatal flooding.

D. Alicante, a city in southeast Spain, goes without rain for months on end. 

E. In San Juan, a low-lying area of the city, authorities have now build a new park with a twist.

The following five sentences form a paragraph but are not given in their proper order. Read the sentences and answer the given questions.

A. Called La Marjal, it serves as a typical recreation area and a nature reserve. 

B. However, its primary purpose is to store, and then recycle, rainwater.

C. But when it comes it was torrential, bringing destructive and sometimes fatal flooding.

D. Alicante, a city in southeast Spain, goes without rain for months on end. 

E. In San Juan, a low-lying area of the city, authorities have now build a new park with a twist.