English Questions Asked in Previous IBPS PO Pre Exams PDF
English Questions for IBPS PO : Hello Aspirants, as we know that IBPS is going to conduct IBPS Prelims exam soon. So you must be looking forward to see the previous year English questions that are asked in IBPS prelims exams. Below we are providing all the English questions with solutions that are asked in IBPS PO Pre exams previously.
Synonyms and Antonyms Asked in IBPS PO Prelims 8th Oct 2017
- Bleak
Definition: (of an area of land) lacking vegetation and exposed to the elements.
Synonyms: bare, exposed, desolate, stark, arid, desert
Usage: A bleak and barren moor.
- Overwhelming
Definition: very great in amount.
Synonyms: very large, profuse, enormous, immense
Usage: His party won overwhelming support.
- Linger
Definition: stay in a place longer than necessary because of a reluctance to leave.
Synonyms: wait around, stay, remain, stay put, wait; loiter
Usage: The crowd lingered for a long time, until it was almost dark
- Underlay
Definition: place something under (something else), especially to support or raise it.
Usage: The green fields are underlaid with limestone
- Limited
Definition: restricted in size, amount, or extent; few, small, or short.
Synonyms: restricted, finite, bounded, little, narrow
Usage: A limited number of places are available.
- Tandem
Definition: having two things arranged one in front of the other.
Usage: A tandem trailer
- Disinclined
Definition: unwilling; reluctant.
Synonyms: reluctant, unwilling, unenthusiastic, unprepared, indisposed
Usage: She was disinclined to abandon the old ways.
- Persistent
Definition: continuing firmly or obstinately in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.
Synonyms: tenacious, persevering, determined, resolute, purposeful
Usage: One of the government’s most persistent critics.
Sentence Rearrangement Question Asked in IBPS PO October 2017
Sentence Correction Question Asked in IBPS PO October 2017
Reading Comprehension Asked in IBPS PO Prelims 8th Oct 2017
Massa’s story would be familiar to many coffee farmers in Uganda, and around the world. Coffee is highly vulnerable to climate change. Rising temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall are already exposing trees to more pests and diseases, and decreasing both the quantity and quality of the crop, according to a global survey of coffee research published in September. Overall, the survey found that climate pressure could reduce the area suitable worldwide for coffee production 50 percent by 2050. That would be a devastating blow to the global coffee supply, which is already struggling to keep pace with rising demand. A paper published in Nature in June made similar dire predictions for Ethiopia, driving home the point for East Africa.
For coffee addicts in the U.S. and Europe, these impacts will likely manifest as a slightly higher bill for a slightly worse cup of coffee. But for the world’s 25 million coffee farmers, most of whom are smallholders like Massa whose fortunes rise and fall with the harvest, the consequences will be much more dire.
Uganda is especially vulnerable, because coffee is the country’s economic cornerstone. Now, scientists, government officials, farmers, and entrepreneurs, from the top of Mount Elgon to downtown Kampala to remote areas still reeling from warlord Joseph Kony, are scrambling to save the industry from climate change.
Uganda ranks number eight worldwide in coffee production by volume, on par with Peru, and second in Africa after Ethiopia. Uganda typically produces 3-4 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee each year, which accounts for only two to three percent of global production and is far below behemoths like Brazil (55 million bags) or Vietnam (25 million). The majority of what Ugandan farmers grow is Robusta, a relatively low-quality variety that is often used for mass production—think Folgers, rather than your local hipster roastery.
Nevertheless, over the past century, coffee here has advanced into Uganda’s most important and valuable industry, worth more than $400 million. It’s responsible for at least 20 percent of the country’s export revenue, and according to the Uganda Coffee Federation, one in five Ugandans, nearly eight million people, derive most or all of their income from coffee. Roughly 90 percent of the country’s coffee is produced by smallholders like Massa.
President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986 and cultivates a folky farmer-statesman persona, refers to coffee as an “anti-poverty crop” and is pushing an ambitious (and according to many experts here, completely unattainable) goal of increasing production five-fold, to 20 million bags by 2020. Coffee demand worldwide is projected to double by 2050, and Uganda wants in. It could be a solution to a variety of chronic social problems, particularly the rural poverty and food insecurity that afflict one-quarter of the population, and a $3.3 billion trade deficit (Uganda spends twice as much on petroleum imports as it earns from coffee).
But challenges abound, even without climate change. Farmers often lack access to basic equipment like fertilizer, irrigation, and high-quality seeds; services like bank loans, agricultural training, and market data; and infrastructure like paved roads and processing facilities. Most farms are small—the larger ones no bigger than a football field—and with a rapidly growing rural population, the land is divided into ever-smaller pieces. Weak land rights laws leave small farmers exposed to land grabs by wealthy neighbors or foreign investors. Many young people would rather try their luck in Kampala than follow their parents onto the farm. Women are frequently sidelined because land and household finances are traditionally controlled by men.
Overall, Uganda’s coffee farming practices have not advanced much since the time of Massa’s forebears, and farming incomes have stagnated among the lowest levels in Africa. As a result, farmers here are at a disadvantage to compete in a global market increasingly characterized by mechanization and unforgiving quality standards—and they’re entering the fight against climate change with one hand tied behind their backs.
Reading Comprehension Asked in IBPS PO Prelims 7th Oct 2017
The effects of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression are forcing changes on state governments and the U.S. economy that could linger for decades. By one Federal Reserve estimate, the country lost almost an entire year’s worth of economic activity – nearly $14 trillion – during the recession from 2007 to 2009.The deep and persistent losses of the recession forced states to make broad cuts in spending and public workforces. For businesses, the recession led to changes in expansion plans and worker compensation. And for individual Americans, it has meant a future postponed, as fewer buy houses and start families. Five years after the financial crash, the country is still struggling to recover. “In the aftermath of [previous] recessions there were strong recoveries. That is not true this time around,” said Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “This is more like the pace getting out of the Great Depression.” For years, housing served as the backbone of economic growth and as an investment opportunity that propelled generations of Americans into the middle class. But the financial crisis burst the housing bubble and devastated the real estate market, leaving millions facing foreclosure, millions more underwater, and generally stripping Americans of years’ worth of accumulated wealth.
Anthony B. Sanders, a professor of real estate finance at George Mason University, said even the nascent housing recovery can’t escape the effects of the recession. Home values may have rebounded, he said, but the factors driving that recovery are very different than those that drove the growth in the market in the 1990s and 2000s. Sanders said more than half of recent home purchases have been made in cash, which signals investors and hedge funds are taking advantage of cheap properties. That could freeze out average buyers and also means little real economic growth underpins those sales. Those effects are clear in homeownership rates, which continue to decline. In the second quarter of this year, the U.S. homeownership rate was 65.1%, according to Census Bureau data, the lowest since 1995. In the mid-2000s, it topped 69%, capping a steady pace of growth that began after the early 1990s recession. Reversing that will be a challenge, in part because credit has tightened and lending rules have been toughened in an effort to avoid the mistakes that inflated the housing bubble in the first place.
“Credit expanded, and now contracted, and it’s going to be tight like this as far as the eye can see,” Sanders said. “We so destroyed so many households when the bubble burst, there’s just not the groundswell to fill the demand again.” Some are skeptical that the tight credit market and new efforts to regulate the financial markets, like the Dodd-Frank law, will prove lasting. Americans have often responded with calls for regulation after financial sector-driven crises and accusations of mismanagement, according to Brookings’ Burtless.
“But eventually, those fires cool down,” he said. “It’s not as though this memory of what can go wrong sticks with us very long.” That can be seen in the intense efforts to water down Dodd-Frank’s regulations, Burtless said. Federal regulators have already made moves to relax requirements for some potential homeowners who were victims of the recent housing crisis. Even those steps and an unlikely return to easy credit might not fuel a full housing recovery without economic growth to back it up. As Sanders, referring to the growth in low-wage and part-time employment, put it: “At those wages, it’s tough to scramble together down payments and mortgages.”
Turmoil in the housing market has already reshaped the makeup of households nationwide. Homeownership rates among people with children under 18 fell sharply during the recession, declining 15% between 2005 and 2011, according to Census Bureau data. In some states it was far worse. For Michigan, the decline in homeownership was 23%, and in Arizona and California it was 22%. Lackluster job growth has outlived the downturn. A study by the Economic Policy Institute showed wages for all workers, when adjusted for inflation, grew just 1.5% between 2000 and 2007. But the last five years wiped out even those modest gains—the study found wages declined for the bottom 70% of all workers since the recession began. However, some areas have seen manufacturing jobs climb back from recessionary lows, and the energy sector has been a boon for some Midwestern states. One hopeful sign for workers is the shift away from manufacturing growth in the typically low-wage South back toward the Rust Belt states, reversing a movement that was taking hold before the downturn. That trend is documented in a 2012 report from the Brookings Institution, “Locating American Manufacturing: Trends in the Geography of Production.” From 2000 to 2010, both the Midwest and South lost manufacturing jobs at about the national rate of 34%. But the Midwest has seen nearly half of all manufacturing jobs gained since 2010, almost double the increase in the South. For Michigan, the growth was 19%; in Indiana, 12%. Even with that growth, there are caveats. Autoworker unions have ceded ground with companies on wages and benefits, for example, allowing new hires to work for lower pay and fewer benefits than those who’ve held their jobs longer. Unemployment remains stubbornly high in some states, and the jobs created have leaned heavily toward part-time and low-pay work. A study from the San Francisco Federal Reserve found the proportion of U.S. jobs that are part-time is high, as many of the jobs lost during the recession have not returned.
Massa’s story would be familiar to many coffee farmers in Uganda, and around the world. Coffee is highly vulnerable to climate change. Rising temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall are already exposing trees to more pests and diseases, and decreasing both the quantity and quality of the crop, according to a global survey of coffee research published in September. Overall, the survey found that climate pressure could reduce the area suitable worldwide for coffee production 50 percent by 2050. That would be a devastating blow to the global coffee supply, which is already struggling to keep pace with rising demand. A paper published in Nature in June made similar dire predictions for Ethiopia, driving home the point for East Africa. For coffee addicts in the U.S. and Europe, these impacts will likely manifest as a slightly higher bill for a slightly worse cup of coffee. But for the world’s 25 million coffee farmers, most of whom are smallholders like Massa whose fortunes rise and fall with the harvest, the consequences will be much more dire.
Uganda is especially vulnerable, because coffee is the country’s economic cornerstone. Now, scientists, government officials, farmers, and entrepreneurs, from the top of Mount Elgon to downtown Kampala to remote areas still reeling from warlord Joseph Kony, are scrambling to save the industry from climate change.
Uganda ranks number eight worldwide in coffee production by volume, on par with Peru, and second in Africa after Ethiopia. Uganda typically produces 3-4 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee each year, which accounts for only two to three percent of global production and is far below behemoths like Brazil (55 million bags) or Vietnam (25 million). The majority of what Ugandan farmers grow is Robusta, a relatively low-quality variety that is often used for mass production—think Folgers, rather than your local hipster roastery.
Nevertheless, over the past century, coffee here has advanced into Uganda’s most important and valuable industry, worth more than $400 million. It’s responsible for at least 20 percent of the country’s export revenue, and according to the Uganda Coffee Federation, one in five Ugandans, nearly eight million people, derive most or all of their income from coffee. Roughly 90 percent of the country’s coffee is produced by smallholders like Massa. President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda since 1986 and cultivates a folky farmer-statesman persona, refers to coffee as an “anti-poverty crop” and is pushing an ambitious (and according to many experts here, completely unattainable) goal of increasing production five-fold, to 20 million bags by 2020. Coffee demand worldwide is projected to double by 2050, and Uganda wants in. It could be a solution to a variety of chronic social problems, particularly the rural poverty and food insecurity that afflict one-quarter of the population, and a $3.3 billion trade deficit (Uganda spends twice as much on petroleum imports as it earns from coffee).
But challenges abound, even without climate change. Farmers often lack access to basic equipment like fertilizer, irrigation, and high-quality seeds; services like bank loans, agricultural training, and market data; and infrastructure like paved roads and processing facilities. Most farms are small—the larger ones no bigger than a football field—and with a rapidly growing rural population, the land is divided into ever-smaller pieces. Weak land rights laws leave small farmers exposed to land grabs by wealthy neighbors or foreign investors. Many young people would rather try their luck in Kampala than follow their parents onto the farm. Women are frequently sidelined because land and household finances are traditionally controlled by men.Overall, Uganda’s coffee farming practices have not advanced much since the time of Massa’s forebears, and farming incomes have stagnated among the lowest levels in Africa. As a result, farmers here are at a disadvantage to compete in a global market increasingly characterized by mechanization and unforgiving quality standards—and they’re entering the fight against climate change with one hand tied behind their backs.
Direction(1-5): In the question given below, there is error in one or more sentences. Please select the most appropriate option, out of the five options given for each of the following sentences, which, in your view, is grammatically incorrect or structurally incorrect.
1. (I)Please put on your shoes.
(II)Please put your shoes on.
(III)Please put on them.
(IV)Please put them on.
select the most appropriate option
(a) ONLY I
(b) Only II
(c) Only III
(d) Only Iv
(e) both (II) and (IV)
2. (I)The teacher called on Josh.
(II)The teacher called Josh on.
(III)The teacher called on him.
(IV)The teacher called Josh on him.
select the most appropriate option
(a) ONLY I
(b) Only II
(c) Only III
(d) Only Iv
(e) both (II) and (IV)
3. (I)The detectives came some new clues across in their investigation.
(II)The detectives came across some new clues in
their investigation
(III)The detectives came out some new clues across in their investigation.
(IV)The detectives came some new across clues in their investigation.
select the most appropriate option
(a) ONLY II
(b) Only I
(c) Only III
(d) Only Iv
(e) both (I), (III) and (IV)
4. (I)The teacher called on Josh.
(II)The teacher called Josh on.
(III)The teacher called on him.
(IV)The teacher called Josh on him.
select the most appropriate option
(a) ONLY I
(b) Only II
(c) Only III
(d) Only Iv
(e) both (II) and (IV)
5. (I)The new employee finally turned up at noon.
(II)The new employee finally turned himself up at noon.
(III)The new employee finally turned it up at noon.
(IV)The new employee finally turned at noon up.
select the most appropriate option
(a) ONLY I
(b) both (II) and (IV)
(c) Only III
(d) Only (I) and (III)
(e) (II), (III) and (IV).
Cloze Test Asked in IBPS PO Prelims 16th Oct 2016
1. Big ideas come from tackling big problems. When one is confronted with an overwhelming task, it is natural to try to break it down into manageable pieces. Business jargon is full of phrases about that, like manageable sizes and low-hanging fruit. Meaning they have their place, but in the repertory of management practice, they should share their place with bold approaches to big challenges, yet in smaller doses. Much of todays most valuable knowledge came from wrestling with such issues. The most complicated workplace in the middle of the last century and even today remains the large and often unwieldy public sector organisations. Drawn to its complexity were Peter F. Drucker, W. Edwards Deming, and Taiichi Ohno, among others. The work they and their disciples did, applied to industry after industry, is the basis of the best that we know about their operations, managing people, innovation.
2. In the approximately eight years since the book Nudge, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, came out, nudges have become a widely used consumer influence strategy.Nudge marketing refers to deliberately manipulating how choices are presented to consumers. Its goal is to influence what consumers choose, either to steer them toward options that the marketer believes are good for them or simply to stimulate purchases and increase sales.
For example, a supermarket places plastic mats with huge arrows marked “Follow the green arrow for your health” pointing shoppers toward the produce aisle. Within two weeks, produce purchases increase by 9%. A company automatically enrols new employees in its retirement savings plan unless they opt out. Enrolment in the plan rises from 60% to 95%. A restaurant lists a fish entree at a clearly overpriced $35 on its menu. It is not interested in selling the entree; the fish is there as a decoy to make other, more profitable items appear attractive. Over a decade of behavioral economics research shows that such nudges are effective in influencing consumer behaviors. Many nudges have virtuous effects, encouraging consumers to donate their organs, reduce their consumption of energy, and save more money. However, not everything about nudge marketing is rosy. In their enthusiasm, marketers have overlooked some fundamental concerns about using nudges. A company that doesn’t understand these minefields could adversely affect its marketing. Nudges that are poorly thought out could be ticking time bombs waiting to explode and damage the company’s reputation and credibility among its loyal customers.
Parajumble Asked in IBPS PO Prelims October 2016
From London to Los Angeles, Berlin to Bangalore, seething anger at standstills is a common emotion felt by all drivers.
The causes of traffic jams are well understood (accidents; poor infrastructure; peak hour traffic; and variable traffic speeds on congested roads).
But what is the cost of all this waiting around?
The Centre for Economics and Business Research, a London-based consultancy, and INRIX, a traffic-data firm, have estimated the impact of such delays on the British, French, German and American economies.
To do so they measured three costs: how sitting in traffic reduces productivity of the labour force; how inflated transport costs push up the prices of goods; and the carbon-equivalent cost of the fumes that exhausts splutter out.
In 2013 the expenses from congestion totalled $200 billion (0.8% of GDP) across the four countries. As road building fails to keep up with the increasing numbers of cars on the road, that figure is expected to rise to nearly $300 billion by 2030.
2. It is an old saying, but true as ever: “Time is money.” A company that can produce quality products in less time than its competitors is likely to be more profitable and productive. An urban area where employees travel less time to get to work is likely to be more productive than one where travel times are longer, all things being equal. Productivity is a principal aim of economic policy. Productivity means greater economic growth, greater job creation and less poverty. Congestion Costs: This is why such serious attention is paid to the Texas Transportation Institute’s (TTI) Annual Mobility Report, which estimates the costs of traffic congestion, principally the value of lost time as well as excess fuel costs. The fundamental premise, long a principle of transportation planning and policy, holds that more time spent traveling costs money, to employers, employees and shippers. Mobility & Productivity: Groundbreaking Research: Yet, until fairly recently, very little research was available to document the connection between travel times and the productivity of urban areas. The pioneering work has now been done by Remy Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee at the University of Paris. From reviewing French and Korean urban areas, they showed that productivity improves as the number of jobs that can be reached by employees in a particular period of time (such as 30 minutes) increases.
Parajumble :-
- Beijing’s annual bill for traffic congestion amounts to 70 billion yuan ($11.3 billion), a recent study has found. According to a 2014 survey conducted by Peking University’s National Development Research Institute, 80 percent of total loss relates to time wasted waiting, 10 percent to gas and 10 percent to environmental damage. Statistics drawn up by Beijing Department of Transportation shows that in 2013, the capital’s average daily congestion time came to one hour and 55 minutes, 25 minutes longer than in 2012. The waste in gas is increasing rapidly as more and more cars hit the road. In 2013, 21.98 million vehicles were sold in China, up by 14 percent over 2012. Idling time also adds to Beijing’s already-bad environmental problem via increased emissions. The city started tackling the problem years ago. In 2011, it introduced a lottery system to rein in the number of vehicles people buy. It also launched a policy to ban private cars one work-day a week based on the last digit of the number plate. Beijing has put restrictions on the number of vehicles from outside the city and raised parking fees in urban areas. However, such measures have done little in reducing congestion.What’s worse, traffic jams have also become a problem for third- and fourth-tier cities, a report jointly issued by China Central Television, National Statistics Bureau and the Postal Service revealed. In future, Beijing will continue studying proper economic policies and use technology to build a smart city and improve the public traffic experience.
2. DURING the past two decades astonishing progress has been made in fighting infectious diseases in poor countries. Polio has almost been eradicated; malaria is being tamed (see article); HIV/AIDS is slowly being brought under control. Yet almost unnoticed, another epidemic is raging across the developing world, this one man-made.Road crashes now kill 1.3m people a year, more than malaria or tuberculosis. On present trends, by 2030 they will take a greater toll than the two together, and greater even than HIV/AIDS.Building roads is a highly effective way of boosting growth: the World Bank finds many projects to fund that do better than its minimum acceptable economic rate of return of 12%.
3. Accidents are common for many reasons. Aside from the fact that China’s population is so large, most have to do with the fact that China is so new to the business of driving cars. In 2013 it added more cars to its roads than were driving in the whole country in 1999. In China, the number of vehicles has been increasing by 15m cars every single year for a decade. The number of licence-holders has risen even faster; one in five Chinese now has a licence. In the rich world, by contrast, the number of licence-holders is flat or falling. Speed of development plays a large part. There had been a gradual increase in the number of drivers in rich countries. In China, as in nations such as Indonesia, car ownership has risen so fast that a large portion of those on the road are new drivers with limited experience. In every country insurance premiums for new drivers are high for a reason: people who have only just passed their test are more likely to be involved in an accident than those who have driven for years. China certainly has some safety regulations in place. Drivers and passengers must wear seatbelts, for example, and mobile phones can only be used hands-free when driving. Unfortunately these laws are entirely ignored. Most taxis value keeping their seats clean over keeping their customers safe, so they cover the back seat and thus block the use of seat belts.
Cloze Test Asked in IBPS PO Prelims October 2016
1. The idea that technology can revolutionise education is not new. In the 20th century almost every new invention was supposed to have big implications for schools. Companies promoting typewriters, moving pictures, film projectors, educational television, computers and CD-ROMS have all promised to improve student performance. A great deal of money went into computers for education in the dot.com boom of the late 1990s, to little avail, though big claims were advanced for the difference they would make. These claims were not entirely false: some bright, motivated children did use new technologies to learn things they would have missed otherwise. In many classrooms, too, computers have been used to improve efficiency and keep pupils engaged. But they did not transform learning in the way their boosters predicted. It is wise, therefore, to be sceptical about the claims made for the current wave of innovation. Yet there are also reasons to believe that a profound shift is occurring. Over the course of the 20th century mass education produced populations more literate, numerate and productive than any the world had seen before. But it did so, usually, in an impersonal manner, with regimented rows of children chanting their times-tables as Teacher tapped the blackboard with a cane. Schooling could never be tailored to each child, unless you employed lots of teachers.
2. No generation is more at ease with online, collaborative technologies than today’s young people— “digital natives”, who have grown up in an immersive computing environment. Where a notebook and pen may have formed the tool kit of prior generations, today’s students come to class armed with smart phones, laptops and iPods. This era of pervasive technology has significant implications for higher education. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of survey respondents from the public and private sectors say that technological innovation will have a major impact on teaching methodologies over the next five years. “Technology allows students to become much more engaged in constructing their own knowledge, and cognitive studies show that ability is key to learning success, Online degree programmes and distance e-learning have gained a firm foothold in universities around the world. What was once considered a niche channel for the delivery of educational content has rapidly become mainstream, creating wider access to education, new markets for content and expanded revenue opportunities for academic institutions Identify the blank.
3. Global competition and the workforce In today’s technology-enabled knowledge economy, many universities find themselves facing a new challenge: how not only to equip students with an adequate education in their field of study, but also to arm them with the skills and knowledge required to leverage technology effectively in the workplace. How well do current graduates fare? Some academics in the US warn that the quality of their domestic university brand may be slipping. Private-sector respondents are particularly concerned, with 46% expressing worry that the US is lagging behind other countries in its ability to produce high quality professionals. In fact, only about 40% of all survey respondents believe that current graduates are able to compete successfully in today’s global marketplace. Generational issues also play a role in training the workforce of the future. For more than a decade, author Amy Lynch has studied Generation Y (individuals born between 1982 and 2001, also referred to as “millennials”) and the American culture shaping it. When considering overall job-readiness, she says that “today’s millennials are open to collaboration, have an enormous facility for multi-tasking, and are at ease with new technologies. But they seem to have more limited experience in independent decision-making than past generations.” To help impart that experience, universities may need to ensure that collaborative student projects have not only an online instructional component but defined areas of individual responsibility as well. Although employers expect graduates to have amassed most of the requisite technology skills before joining their organisations, more than one-third of those responding from the private sector say that they assume some on-the-job training will be necessary to acclimatise new employees. “This generation is not content with passive involvement,” says Ms Lynch. “Companies need to make training programmes more engaging, retention programmes more personalised, and process improvement initiatives more open to employee input.”
4. Teaching programs that monitor children’s progress can change that, performing a role more like that of the private tutors and governesses employed long ago in wealthier households. Data derived from each child’s responses can be used to tailor what he sees or hears next on the computer screen. The same data also allow continual assessment of his abilities and shortcomings, letting schools, teachers and parents understand both the pupil himself and the way human beings learn.
Such learning—called “adaptive” in the trade—is not the only advantage technology offers to today’s teachers and pupils. Online resources, from wikis to podcasts to training videos, are allowing both children and adults to pursue education on their own, either instead of learning in schools or colleges or as a supplement. It is, in the words of Bill Gates, who follows developments in this area closely and whose foundation funds some of them, “a special time in education”.
This is in part because it is a special time for information technologies in general. The capacity, and mindset, to design systems that use and make sense of large amounts of data gathered on the fly is coming of age. This makes it possible to track things like the “decay curve”, which governs a pupil’s fading recall of what has been taught.
Cloze Test :-
- Global competition and the workforce In today’s technology-enabled knowledge economy, many universities find themselves facing a new challenge: how not only to equip students with an adequate education in their field of study, but also to arm them with the skills and knowledge required to leverage technology effectively in the workplace. How well do current graduates fare? Some academics in the US warn that the quality of their domestic university brand may be slipping. Private-sector respondents are particularly concerned, with 46% expressing worry that the US is lagging behind other countries in its ability to produce high quality professionals. In fact, only about 40% of all survey respondents believe that current graduates are able to compete successfully in today’s global marketplace. Generational issues also play a role in training the workforce of the future. For more than a decade, author Amy Lynch has studied Generation Y (individuals born between 1982 and 2001, also referred to as “millennials”) and the American culture shaping it. When considering overall job-readiness, she says that “today’s millennials are open to collaboration, have an enormous facility for multi-tasking, and are at ease with new technologies. But they seem to have more limited experience in independent decision-making than past generations.” To help impart that experience, universities may need to ensure that collaborative student projects have not only an online instructional component but defined areas of individual responsibility as well. Although employers expect graduates to have amassed most of the requisite technology skills before joining their organisations, more than one-third of those responding from the private sector say that they assume some on-the-job training will be necessary to acclimatise new employees. “This generation is not content with passive involvement,” says Ms Lynch. “Companies need to make training programmes more engaging, retention programmes more personalised, and process improvement initiatives more open to employee input.”.
2. Higher education is in the vanguard. Barely a year from its launch, Coursera, one of the pioneers in offering “massive open online courses”, now boasts more than 3.9m students worldwide, taking courses supplied by 83 partner institutions. Colleges have always been keen to experiment with technology: Britain’s television-based Open University is now 44 years old. But this time schools are following. Four years after Salman Khan gave up his job at a hedge fund to focus on making maths videos, the Khan Academy has 6m registered users, who solve (or try to solve) 3m problems a day, and it has broadened its curriculum far beyond maths. It is spreading beyond America, too. Carlos Slim, one of the world’s richest men, is said to be paying for a version of Khan Academy’s curriculum to be developed for schoolchildren in his native Mexico. Edtech has collected other impressive advocates. Bill Gates calls this “a special moment” for education. Private-sector money is piling in. Rupert Murdoch, hardly a rose-tinted-specs technophile, is allowing Amplify, his digital education business, to run up losses of around $180m this year in hope of dominating an edtech market that News Corporation reckons will soon be worth $44 billion in America alone. GEMS, a Dubai-based education provider, wants to expand its use of technology in India and Ghana to reach children in remote areas.Others are not so sure. Many parents already blame the “dumbest generation” on too much gaming, always-on computing and illiterate texting. Teachers may use edtech websites, but their unions are suspicious of anything suggesting that schools could get along with fewer teachers, and they dislike the idea of private companies such as Mr Murdoch’s News Corp making money out of education. There are also worries about privacy: edtech companies will end up with a vast store of personal data on pupils.Most of these fears are overdone. For-profit companies have long been in the business of selling printed textbooks, and there is no reason why data-privacy laws cannot extend to students. The biggest question remains: will children learn more? That in turn relies on the teachers, because even the best technology will get nowhere without their support.
3. Beefing up technology in the classroom doesn’t always lead to better education for children, according to a new study from an international consortium presented Tuesday. The report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, tracked educational outcome among students based on their use of technology at home and in the classroom. While student performance improves when they use technology in moderation, the group found, overexposure to computers and the Internet causes educational outcomes to drop. “Despite considerable investments in computers, Internet connections and software for educational use, there is little solid evidence that greater computer use among students leads to better scores in mathematics and reading,” the report said. The report suggested that “we have not yet become good enough at the kind of pedagogues that make the most of technology; that adding 21st century technologies to 20th century teaching practices will just dilute the effectiveness of teaching.” Report results are based on an assessment in 2012 that tracked students in more than 40 countries and surveyed them on computer habits and conducted both written and digital tests. On average, seven out of 10 students in countries surveyed use computers at school and students average at least 25 minutes a day online. In some countries, like Turkey and Mexico, about half of the students don’t have access to a computer at home. The survey found that students with more exposure to computers do better, on average, than those with little exposure to computers, but the OECD cautioned against drawing conclusions based on that result. The data could simply reflect that school systems that invest in technology also invest in better teachers and draw on students from a higher socio-economic class, who tend to do better in school.
4. It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture,” observed Thomas Edison in 1913, predicting that books would soon be obsolete in the classroom. In fact the motion picture has had little effect on education. The same, until recently, was true of computers. Ever since the 1970s Silicon Valley’s visionaries have been claiming that their industry would change the schoolroom as radically as the office—and they have sold a lot of technology to schools on the back of that. Children use computers to do research, type essays and cheat. But the core of the system has changed little since the Middle Ages: a “sage on a stage” teacher spouting “lessons” to rows of students. Tom Brown and Huckleberry Finn would recognise it in an instant—and shudder. Now at last a revolution is under way. At its heart is the idea of moving from “one-size-fits-all” education to a more personalised approach, with technology allowing each child to be taught at a different speed, in some cases by adaptive computer programs, in others by “superstar” lecturers of one sort or another, while the job of classroom teachers moves from orator to coach: giving individual attention to children identified by the gizmos as needing targeted help. In theory the classroom will be “flipped”, so that more basic information is supplied at home via screens, while class time is spent embedding, refining and testing that knowledge (in the same way that homework does now, but more effectively). The promise is of better teaching for millions of children at lower cost—but only if politicians and teachers embrace it.
Reading Comprehension Asked in IBPS PO Prelims October 2016
In the 1980s Ireland seemed destined to be western Europe’s perennial laggard: “The poorest of the rich”, as a survey by The Economist put it in 1988. But within a decade Ireland had transformed itself into the Celtic tiger, Europe’s unlikely answer to the booming economies of South-East Asia.
Central to this shift were American companies seeking a foothold in the EU ahead of the creation of the single market in goods in 1992 and lured by a well-educated, English-speaking workforce. The state offered inducements, such as grants and a low corporate-tax rate. Intel, a chipmaker, started production in Dublin in 1990. Other big firms followed. Boston Scientific, a maker of medical devices, set up shop in 1994 in Galway, an hour’s drive from Shannon. A medical-technology and pharmaceutical cluster emerged in the region.
Thanks to foreign direct investment (FDI) of this kind, Ireland went from the poorest of the rich to among the richest. It was a textbook example of the benefits of capital flows. But Ireland is also an archetype of the malign side-effects of capital mobility. As it became richer, other countries took exception to its low corporate-tax rate, which they saw as simply a device to allow global companies to book profits in Ireland and save tax.
The scale of the problem was highlighted in July when Ireland’s statistical office revealed that the country’s GDP had grown by 26% in 2015. The figure said little about the health of the Irish economy. First, it was inflated by “tax inversions” in which a small Irish company acquires a bigger foreign one and the merged firm is registered in Ireland to benefit from its low corporate taxes. Last year saw a rush of transactions before a clampdown by America. Second, the GDP figures were distorted by the aircraft-leasing industry. The world’s two largest lessor fleets are managed from Shannon, though many of the 4,000 registered aircraft will never touch down there.
But it is the damage wrought by short-term capital flows in Ireland that is most striking. After the launch of the euro in 1999, would-be homeowners were seduced by irresistibly low interest rates set in Frankfurt. Irish banks borrowed heavily in the euro interbank market to fuel the property boom and to speculate on assets outside Ireland. Bank loans to the private sector grew by almost 30% a year in 2004-06, at the peak of the boom. When that boom turned to bust, the country suffered a brutal recession and had to be bailed out by the IMF. Ireland still bears the scars. Preliminary figures from this year’s census show that almost 10% of homes in Ireland are permanently empty. Some of the worst-affected areas are in the west of Ireland, up or down the coast from Shannon. Ghost estates and failed bed-and-breakfast places are the legacy of a building boom that by 2007 had drawn one in eight of all workers into the construction industry.
