EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 20 of 120

Correct — B, (b) It will unite people from all over the world to face the challenges of the 21st century. The stem quotes the last sentence of the passage and asks for the reason behind it, so the answer lies in the sentences that lead up to it. There are three, and together they are the author’s whole argument for global citizenship. He says first that it is now well recognized that 21st century challenges are global in nature and require cooperation beyond national boundaries. He says next that in a sustainable development sense we have to see ourselves as ‘citizens’ of the world and respond accordingly to the global challenges in the present century. And he adds that global challenges have expanded the very notion of citizenship itself. Only then does he conclude that there is an increasing recognition of the importance of global citizenship. Option (b) is that argument in one line. ‘Unite people from all over the world’ renders ‘cooperation beyond national boundaries’ — cooperation across borders is people acting together rather than as separate nations. ‘To face the challenges of the 21st century’ renders the author’s own phrase; he writes of 21st century challenges and of responding to the global challenges in the present century, and the booklet prints the superscript in ‘21st’ in this option exactly as it does in the passage, which is a fair sign that the option is quoting him. So the causal chain the author builds is: the challenges are global, therefore they cannot be met nation by nation, therefore we have to think of ourselves as citizens of the world, therefore global citizenship is increasingly recognised as important. Option (b) states the middle of that chain, which is where the reason lives.

• (a)People want to travel more and live in different parts of the world — ‘People want to travel more and live in different parts of the world’ is what ‘global citizenship’ suggests to an ordinary reader who has not read this passage — a cosmopolitan life, movement, residence abroad. The passage gives the phrase a quite different content: seeing oneself as a citizen of the world in order to respond to challenges that cross national boundaries. Travel and residence are never mentioned. This is the item’s outside-knowledge trap, and it works by supplying a definition of the key term from common usage instead of taking the one the author has just given.
• (c)People believe that there is a future in foreign countries — ‘People believe that there is a future in foreign countries’ has no basis in the passage at all, and it reads global citizenship as a matter of individual advantage — where a person’s prospects are best. The author’s argument is the opposite in kind: it is about a shared predicament and a shared response, not about where anyone’s future lies. Nothing about foreign countries, migration or opportunity appears anywhere in the text.
• (d)People will cooperate with each other to save themselves from natural disasters — ‘People will cooperate with each other to save themselves from natural disasters’ is the closest of the three and the one worth studying, because half of it is taken straight from the passage. Cooperation is there; so is the idea of a shared threat. What is not there is ‘natural disasters’. The author writes of 21st century challenges as global in nature without naming any of them, and the passage’s own examples of the problem are the depletion of life-supporting resources and unsustainability. Substituting one unnamed category of challenge for the general class narrows the author’s reason to something he never says, and a half-echo of this kind is the commonest way a well-prepared candidate loses a comprehension mark.

This is a reason question — the stem quotes a conclusion and asks why the author reaches it — and reason questions are answered by reading backwards from the quoted sentence. The method is to find the quoted sentence in the passage and then to read the two or three sentences before it, because that is where an expository writer puts his grounds. Connectors mark the joints: ‘in fact’, ‘therefore’, ‘in a sustainable development sense’, ‘it is now well recognized that’. Each of them signals a step in an argument, and the step immediately before the conclusion is normally the one an option has to state. The second idea being taught is the term-definition point. A passage that uses a phrase like ‘global citizenship’ almost always says what it means by it, and its meaning inside the passage may be narrower or different from the meaning the phrase carries in ordinary speech. Under Directions that confine the answer to the content of the passage, the author’s meaning is the only one admitted. Here he defines global citizenship functionally: seeing ourselves as citizens of the world so that we can respond to challenges that no country can meet alone. Anything the phrase suggests beyond that — travel, migration, cosmopolitan taste — is the reader’s association, not the author’s claim.

Q20 is the fifth item of the comprehension set and the last question of Part A; from Q21 the paper turns to Part B, which is printed on facing Hindi and English pages and runs through history, labour law, aptitude, accountancy, computers, science, polity and current affairs. The Directions and the passage for this set stand above Q16. Because it is the closing item of both the set and the section, it is a natural place to state the standard the whole section has been applying. The author’s argument here is contestable in the world — one may hold that the challenges of this century are best met by strong nation states rather than by an expanded notion of citizenship — and none of that is admissible. The Directions ask what the author says and why, and the paper marks the option that reports him accurately. Candidates who argue with a passage lose marks not because their view is wrong but because the question was never about their view.

• The passage’s reason for global citizenship is that 21st century challenges are global in nature and require cooperation beyond national boundaries.
• The author writes that in a sustainable development sense we have to see ourselves as ‘citizens’ of the world and respond accordingly to the global challenges in the present century.
• He adds that global challenges have expanded the very notion of citizenship itself, and only then concludes that global citizenship is increasingly recognised as important.
• The passage names no particular global challenge in this part of its argument; its examples earlier are the depletion of life-supporting resources and unsustainability.
• Travel, migration, foreign countries and natural disasters are not mentioned anywhere in the passage.

• Defining the key term from ordinary usage. ‘Global citizenship’ suggests travel and cosmopolitan life; the passage means responding to challenges no country can meet alone.
• Accepting an option because part of it is drawn from the passage. Cooperation is the author’s word; natural disasters is not.
• Naming a specific challenge where the author keeps the class general. Substituting an instance narrows his reason.
• Disagreeing with the author. The Directions ask what he says and why, and a candidate’s own view of nation states and global challenges is out of court.

The last item of a comprehension set in this paper tends to be the inferential one, quoting a conclusion and asking for its ground rather than asking what a phrase means. Its distractors are drawn from the ordinary associations of the passage’s key term, which is why the option that names something concrete and appealing — travel, prospects abroad, disaster relief — is so often wrong. The passage’s own vocabulary is the safest guide: the keyed option here reuses the author’s ‘21st century’ and his idea of cooperation across national boundaries, and adds nothing he has not said.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A passage reads : ‘Enforcement cannot rest on inspection alone, since an inspector reaches an establishment once a year at best. There is therefore a growing interest in self-certification by employers.’ Why is there a growing interest in self-certification ?

  • (a)Because employers have asked to be trusted
  • (b)Because inspection alone cannot cover establishments often enough to enforce compliance
  • (c)Because inspectors are being reduced in number
  • (d)Because self-certification is cheaper for the government

  Answer(b) Because inspection alone cannot cover establishments often enough to enforce compliance — the reason is the sentence immediately before the conclusion, and ‘therefore’ marks the joint. The other options give plausible reasons the passage does not state.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A comprehension passage defines a term in a narrower sense than it carries in everyday speech. Which sense governs the answer ?

  • (a)The everyday sense, since the examiner writes for ordinary readers
  • (b)The sense the passage gives it, because the Directions confine the answer to the content of the passage
  • (c)Whichever sense makes the largest number of options defensible
  • (d)The dictionary sense, in all cases

  Answer(b) The sense the passage gives it, because the Directions confine the answer to the content of the passage — an author who defines his term has settled its meaning for the item, and options built on its ordinary associations are distractors.