EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 18 of 120

Correct — A, (a) We are now more connected and dependent upon each other for our survival. A paraphrase question asks you to render a quoted phrase in other words, and the test of a rendering is that every part of the original is accounted for and nothing has been added that the passage does not carry. The quoted phrase has two adjectives, and option (a) renders both. ‘Interconnected’ becomes ‘connected’; ‘interdependent’ becomes ‘dependent upon each other’. The second of those matters more than it looks, because the prefix inter- means mutually, in both directions, and ‘each other’ is what preserves it. A rendering that keeps the dependence but drops the mutuality has changed the word. The rest of option (a) is licensed by the passage rather than imported into it. ‘For our survival’ picks up the sentence the whole passage opens with — the world’s life-supporting resources are being depleted at a faster rate than ever before — and the argument built on it, that we have to change our practices towards a more sustainable future. Life-supporting is survival. And the sentences on either side of the quoted phrase say the same thing in the author’s own terms: globalization has an inevitability about it, and 21st century challenges are global in nature and require cooperation beyond national boundaries. Interdependence, in this passage, is the reason cooperation is not optional. One further point about the quotation. The sentence in the passage begins ‘Whether we like it or not’, and the stem quotes only the clause that follows. That opening is part of the meaning: the author is describing a condition we are in, not a policy anyone chose, which is why the right answer states a fact about how we now live.

• (b)The means of transport have become faster — ‘The means of transport have become faster’ is a true statement about the modern world and a plausible cause of interconnection, and it is not in the passage. Transport is never mentioned; nor are communications, trade or technology. Under Directions that confine the answer to the content of the passage, an explanation the candidate supplies from outside is inadmissible however sound it is. This option is the set’s outside-knowledge trap, and it works on readers who ask what makes the world interconnected rather than what the author says about its being so.
• (c)We have become dependent on other countries — ‘We have become dependent on other countries’ drops the very element the word ‘interdependent’ exists to carry. Dependence on others is one-directional; interdependence is mutual, and the passage’s point is that everybody is in the same position, which is why it goes on to say that the challenges require cooperation beyond national boundaries and that we must see ourselves as citizens of the world. The option also narrows the relation to countries, whereas the passage is speaking of a world and of the people in it. It is a half-translation, and half a translation of a two-part phrase is a wrong answer.
• (d)We are facing challenges from globalization — ‘We are facing challenges from globalization’ misreads two things at once. The passage says that 21st century challenges are global in nature — global describes their scale, not their source — and it nowhere makes globalization the cause of them. And the quoted phrase is not about challenges at all: it states a condition of the world, which the author then uses to explain why the challenges must be met cooperatively. Substituting the consequence for the statement is a standard way of getting a paraphrase question wrong.

Paraphrase items are the second of the two kinds of comprehension question in this set, and they are scored differently in the mind from retrieval items. A retrieval item is answered by finding a sentence. A paraphrase item is answered by translating one, which means two tests have to be passed. The completeness test: is every element of the quoted phrase represented in the option ? A phrase with two adjectives needs both, and an option that renders one faithfully and drops the other is wrong however well it reads. The addition test: does the option add anything the passage does not carry ? Additions are not automatically fatal — a paraphrase may draw on the sentences around the phrase, which are also the content of the passage — but they must be traceable to the text and not to the world. The morphology is worth a line of its own. The prefix inter- means between or among, and marks reciprocity: interdependent, interconnected, interact, interchange, intergovernmental, international. Set against it are the intra- words, which mean within a single body — intra-departmental, intrastate — and simple dependence, which runs one way. A candidate who reads ‘interdependent’ as a longer word for ‘dependent’ will choose the option that says one side needs the other, and the whole of this item lies in that difference.

Q18 is the third item of the comprehension set closing Part A. It prints only its question; the Directions and the passage stand above Q16 and govern all five items. The item is well made because its three wrong options fail in three different ways, which makes it a good place to learn the standard shapes. One offers a real-world explanation the passage never gives. One offers an incomplete translation that quietly loses a prefix. One replaces the author’s statement with a consequence he draws elsewhere. None of them is nonsense, and none of them can be eliminated by feel; each has to be checked against the quoted words. In the booklet the phrase is quoted inside single quotation marks with the full stop placed outside them, and the stem is reproduced here exactly as printed.

• The full sentence in the passage reads ‘Whether we like it or not, we live in a highly interconnected and interdependent world’, so the condition is presented as one we did not choose.
• The prefix inter- marks reciprocity — interdependent means mutually dependent — which is what ‘dependent upon each other’ preserves and ‘dependent on other countries’ loses.
• The passage opens by saying the world’s life-supporting resources are being depleted at a faster rate than ever before, which is what licenses the words ‘for our survival’.
• The passage says 21st century challenges are global in nature and require cooperation beyond national boundaries; it does not say globalization causes them.
• Transport, communications and technology are nowhere mentioned in the passage.

• Explaining the quoted phrase instead of translating it. The item asks what it means in the passage, not what has made the world that way.
• Losing a prefix. ‘Interdependent’ is not a longer word for ‘dependent’, and the option that treats it as one is placed there for readers who do.
• Rejecting an option because it contains words the passage does not use. ‘For our survival’ is a fair rendering of ‘life-supporting’, which the passage does use.
• Accepting a statement that is true of the world. Faster transport is a fact and still not an answer under these Directions.

Two of the five items in this comprehension set quote a phrase back from the passage and ask what it means, which makes paraphrase the most heavily weighted single skill in the set. The quoted phrases are taken from prominent sentences — the passage’s opening line and a short declarative in the middle of the second paragraph — and the options are close enough that elimination has to be done word by word. Expect at least one option in each such item to be a fact about the world that the passage does not state.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A passage reads : ‘The two departments are interdependent : neither can clear a file without the other’s certificate.’ What does ‘interdependent’ mean here ?

  • (a)Each department relies on the other
  • (b)One department relies on the other
  • (c)The departments work without reference to each other
  • (d)The departments have been merged

  Answer(a) Each department relies on the other — the prefix inter- marks a mutual relation, and the passage spells it out by saying neither can act without the other’s certificate. One-way reliance, independence and merger are three different relations, none of which the sentence describes.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In a comprehension set, an option restates a quoted phrase accurately but adds a clause drawn from an earlier sentence of the same passage. How should it be judged ?

  • (a)Rejected, because a paraphrase may use only the words of the quoted phrase
  • (b)Accepted, if the added clause is supported by the passage, since the passage as a whole is the admissible evidence
  • (c)Rejected, because any addition is an interpretation
  • (d)Accepted only if the added clause appears in the same paragraph

  Answer(b) Accepted, if the added clause is supported by the passage, since the passage as a whole is the admissible evidence — the Directions confine the answer to the content of the passage, not to the quoted fragment, so material traceable to the text is legitimate while material brought in from outside is not.