CLAT Practice Test- 33 - CLAT MCQ

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Many people mistakenly believe that the ability to learn is a matter of intelligence. For them, learning is an immutable trait like eye colour, simply luck of the genetic draw. People are born learners, or they're not, the thinking goes. So why bother getting better at it?

And that's why many people tend to approach the topic of learning without much focus. They don't think much about how they will develop an area of mastery. They use phrases like "practice makes perfect" without really considering the learning strategy at play. It's a remarkably ill-defined expression, after all. Does practice mean repeating the same skill over and over again? Does practice require feedback? Should practice be hard? Or should it be fun?

A growing body of research is making it clear that learners are made, not born. Through the deliberate use of practice and dedicated strategies to improve our ability to learn, we can all develop expertise faster and more effectively. In short, we can all get better at getting better.

Here's one example of a study that shows how learning strategies can be more important than raw smarts when it comes to gaining expertise. Marcel Veenman has found that people who closely track their thinking will outscore others who have sky-high IQ levels when it comes to learning something new. His research suggests that in terms of developing mastery, focusing on how we understand is some 15 percentage points more important than innate intelligence.

Here are three practical ways to build your learning skills, based on research.

Organize Your Goals

Effective learning often boils down to a type of project management. In order to develop an area of expertise, we first have to set achievable goals about what we want to learn. Then we have to develop strategies to help us reach those goals.

A targeted approach to learning helps us cope with all the nagging feelings associated with gaining expertise: Am I good enough? Will I fail? What if I'm wrong? Isn't there something else that I'd rather be doing?

While some self-carping is normal, Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura says these sorts of negative emotions can quickly rob us of our ability to learn something new. Plus, we're more committed if we develop a plan with clear objectives. The research is overwhelming on this point. Studies consistently show that people with clear goals outperform people with vague aspirations like "do a good job." By setting targets, people can manage their feelings more easily and achieve progress with their learning.

Think About Thinking

Metacognition is crucial to the talent of learning. Psychologists define metacognition as "thinking about thinking, " and broadly speaking, metacognition is about being more inspective about how you know what you know. It's a matter of asking ourselves questions like Do I really get this idea? Could I explain it to a friend? What are my goals? Do I need more background knowledge? Or do I need more practice?

Metacognition comes easily to many trained experts. When a specialist works through an issue, they'll often think a lot about how the problem is framed. They'll often have a good sense of whether or not their answer seems reasonable.

The key, it turns out, is not to leave this sort of "thinking about thinking" to the experts. When it comes to learning, one of the biggest issues is that people don't engage in metacognition enough. They don't stop to ask themselves if they really get a skill or concept.

The issue, then, is not that something goes in one ear and out the other. The issue is that individuals don't dwell on the dwelling. They don't push themselves to really think about their thinking.

Reflect on Your Learning

There is something of a contradiction in learning. It turns out that we need to let go of our learning in order to understand our learning. For example, when we step away from a problem, we often learn more about a problem. Get into a discussion with a colleague, for instance, and often your best arguments arrive while you're washing the dishes later. Read a software manual and a good amount of your comprehension can come after you shut the pages.

In short, learning benefits from reflection. This type of reflection requires a moment of calm. Maybe we're quietly writing an essay in a corner - or talking to ourselves as we're in the shower. But it usually takes a bit of cognitive quiet, a moment of silent introspection, for us to engage in any sort of focused deliberation.

Q. Which of the following is not a question raised by author while considering the learning strategy as ill-defined expression?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Many people mistakenly believe that the ability to learn is a matter of intelligence. For them, learning is an immutable trait like eye colour, simply luck of the genetic draw. People are born learners, or they're not, the thinking goes. So why bother getting better at it?

And that's why many people tend to approach the topic of learning without much focus. They don't think much about how they will develop an area of mastery. They use phrases like "practice makes perfect" without really considering the learning strategy at play. It's a remarkably ill-defined expression, after all. Does practice mean repeating the same skill over and over again? Does practice require feedback? Should practice be hard? Or should it be fun?

A growing body of research is making it clear that learners are made, not born. Through the deliberate use of practice and dedicated strategies to improve our ability to learn, we can all develop expertise faster and more effectively. In short, we can all get better at getting better.

Here's one example of a study that shows how learning strategies can be more important than raw smarts when it comes to gaining expertise. Marcel Veenman has found that people who closely track their thinking will outscore others who have sky-high IQ levels when it comes to learning something new. His research suggests that in terms of developing mastery, focusing on how we understand is some 15 percentage points more important than innate intelligence.

Here are three practical ways to build your learning skills, based on research.

Organize Your Goals

Effective learning often boils down to a type of project management. In order to develop an area of expertise, we first have to set achievable goals about what we want to learn. Then we have to develop strategies to help us reach those goals.

A targeted approach to learning helps us cope with all the nagging feelings associated with gaining expertise: Am I good enough? Will I fail? What if I'm wrong? Isn't there something else that I'd rather be doing?

While some self-carping is normal, Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura says these sorts of negative emotions can quickly rob us of our ability to learn something new. Plus, we're more committed if we develop a plan with clear objectives. The research is overwhelming on this point. Studies consistently show that people with clear goals outperform people with vague aspirations like "do a good job." By setting targets, people can manage their feelings more easily and achieve progress with their learning.

Think About Thinking

Metacognition is crucial to the talent of learning. Psychologists define metacognition as "thinking about thinking, " and broadly speaking, metacognition is about being more inspective about how you know what you know. It's a matter of asking ourselves questions like Do I really get this idea? Could I explain it to a friend? What are my goals? Do I need more background knowledge? Or do I need more practice?

Metacognition comes easily to many trained experts. When a specialist works through an issue, they'll often think a lot about how the problem is framed. They'll often have a good sense of whether or not their answer seems reasonable.

The key, it turns out, is not to leave this sort of "thinking about thinking" to the experts. When it comes to learning, one of the biggest issues is that people don't engage in meta cognition enough. They don't stop to ask themselves if they really get a skill or concept.

The issue, then, is not that something goes in one ear and out the other. The issue is that individuals don't dwell on the dwelling. They don't push themselves to really think about their thinking.

Reflect on Your Learning

There is something of a contradiction in learning. It turns out that we need to let go of our learning in order to understand our learning. For example, when we step away from a problem, we often learn more about a problem. Get into a discussion with a colleague, for instance, and often your best arguments arrive while you're washing the dishes later. Read a software manual and a good amount of your comprehension can come after you shut the pages.

In short, learning benefits from reflection. This type of reflection requires a moment of calm. Maybe we're quietly writing an essay in a corner - or talking to ourselves as we're in the shower. But it usually takes a bit of cognitive quiet, a moment of silent introspection, for us to engage in any sort of focused deliberation.

Q. Which of the following is not a part of three practical ways to build your learning skills, based on research?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Many people mistakenly believe that the ability to learn is a matter of intelligence. For them, learning is an immutable trait like eye colour, simply luck of the genetic draw. People are born learners, or they're not, the thinking goes. So why bother getting better at it?

And that's why many people tend to approach the topic of learning without much focus. They don't think much about how they will develop an area of mastery. They use phrases like "practice makes perfect" without really considering the learning strategy at play. It's a remarkably ill-defined expression, after all. Does practice mean repeating the same skill over and over again? Does practice require feedback? Should practice be hard? Or should it be fun?

A growing body of research is making it clear that learners are made, not born. Through the deliberate use of practice and dedicated strategies to improve our ability to learn, we can all develop expertise faster and more effectively. In short, we can all get better at getting better.

Here's one example of a study that shows how learning strategies can be more important than raw smarts when it comes to gaining expertise. Marcel Veenman has found that people who closely track their thinking will outscore others who have sky-high IQ levels when it comes to learning something new. His research suggests that in terms of developing mastery, focusing on how we understand is some 15 percentage points more important than innate intelligence.

Here are three practical ways to build your learning skills, based on research.

Organize Your Goals

Effective learning often boils down to a type of project management. In order to develop an area of expertise, we first have to set achievable goals about what we want to learn. Then we have to develop strategies to help us reach those goals.

A targeted approach to learning helps us cope with all the nagging feelings associated with gaining expertise: Am I good enough? Will I fail? What if I'm wrong? Isn't there something else that I'd rather be doing?

While some self-carping is normal, Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura says these sorts of negative emotions can quickly rob us of our ability to learn something new. Plus, we're more committed if we develop a plan with clear objectives. The research is overwhelming on this point. Studies consistently show that people with clear goals outperform people with vague aspirations like "do a good job." By setting targets, people can manage their feelings more easily and achieve progress with their learning.

Think About Thinking

Metacognition is crucial to the talent of learning. Psychologists define metacognition as "thinking about thinking, " and broadly speaking, metacognition is about being more inspective about how you know what you know. It's a matter of asking ourselves questions like Do I really get this idea? Could I explain it to a friend? What are my goals? Do I need more background knowledge? Or do I need more practice?

Metacognition comes easily to many trained experts. When a specialist works through an issue, they'll often think a lot about how the problem is framed. They'll often have a good sense of whether or not their answer seems reasonable.

The key, it turns out, is not to leave this sort of "thinking about thinking" to the experts. When it comes to learning, one of the biggest issues is that people don't engage in meta-cognition enough. They don't stop to ask themselves if they really get a skill or concept.

The issue, then, is not that something goes in one ear and out the other. The issue is that individuals don't dwell on the dwelling. They don't push themselves to really think about their thinking.

Reflect on Your Learning

There is something of a contradiction in learning. It turns out that we need to let go of our learning in order to understand our learning. For example, when we step away from a problem, we often learn more about a problem. Get into a discussion with a colleague, for instance, and often your best arguments arrive while you're washing the dishes later. Read a software manual and a good amount of your comprehension can come after you shut the pages.

In short, learning benefits from reflection. This type of reflection requires a moment of calm. Maybe we're quietly writing an essay in a corner - or talking to ourselves as we're in the shower. But it usually takes a bit of cognitive quiet, a moment of silent introspection, for us to engage in any sort of focused deliberation.

Q. Psychologists define metacognition as _____.

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Many people mistakenly believe that the ability to learn is a matter of intelligence. For them, learning is an immutable trait like eye colour, simply luck of the genetic draw. People are born learners, or they're not, the thinking goes. So why bother getting better at it?

And that's why many people tend to approach the topic of learning without much focus. They don't think much about how they will develop an area of mastery. They use phrases like "practice makes perfect" without really considering the learning strategy at play. It's a remarkably ill-defined expression, after all. Does practice mean repeating the same skill over and over again? Does practice require feedback? Should practice be hard? Or should it be fun?

A growing body of research is making it clear that learners are made, not born. Through the deliberate use of practice and dedicated strategies to improve our ability to learn, we can all develop expertise faster and more effectively. In short, we can all get better at getting better.

Here's one example of a study that shows how learning strategies can be more important than raw smarts when it comes to gaining expertise. Marcel Veenman has found that people who closely track their thinking will outscore others who have sky-high IQ levels when it comes to learning something new. His research suggests that in terms of developing mastery, focusing on how we understand is some 15 percentage points more important than innate intelligence.

Here are three practical ways to build your learning skills, based on research.

Organize Your Goals

Effective learning often boils down to a type of project management. In order to develop an area of expertise, we first have to set achievable goals about what we want to learn. Then we have to develop strategies to help us reach those goals.

A targeted approach to learning helps us cope with all the nagging feelings associated with gaining expertise: Am I good enough? Will I fail? What if I'm wrong? Isn't there something else that I'd rather be doing?

While some self-carping is normal, Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura says these sorts of negative emotions can quickly rob us of our ability to learn something new. Plus, we're more committed if we develop a plan with clear objectives. The research is overwhelming on this point. Studies consistently show that people with clear goals outperform people with vague aspirations like "do a good job." By setting targets, people can manage their feelings more easily and achieve progress with their learning.

Think About Thinking

Metacognition is crucial to the talent of learning. Psychologists define metacognition as "thinking about thinking, " and broadly speaking, metacognition is about being more inspective about how you know what you know. It's a matter of asking ourselves questions like Do I really get this idea? Could I explain it to a friend? What are my goals? Do I need more background knowledge? Or do I need more practice?

Metacognition comes easily to many trained experts. When a specialist works through an issue, they'll often think a lot about how the problem is framed. They'll often have a good sense of whether or not their answer seems reasonable.

The key, it turns out, is not to leave this sort of "thinking about thinking" to the experts. When it comes to learning, one of the biggest issues is that people don't engage in meta-cognition enough. They don't stop to ask themselves if they really get a skill or concept.

The issue, then, is not that something goes in one ear and out the other. The issue is that individuals don't dwell on the dwelling. They don't push themselves to really think about their thinking.

Reflect on Your Learning

There is something of a contradiction in learning. It turns out that we need to let go of our learning in order to understand our learning. For example, when we step away from a problem, we often learn more about a problem. Get into a discussion with a colleague, for instance, and often your best arguments arrive while you're washing the dishes later. Read a software manual and a good amount of your comprehension can come after you shut the pages.

In short, learning benefits from reflection. This type of reflection requires a moment of calm. Maybe we're quietly writing an essay in a corner - or talking to ourselves as we're in the shower. But it usually takes a bit of cognitive quiet, a moment of silent introspection, for us to engage in any sort of focused deliberation.

Q. Who found that people who closely track their thinking will outscore others who have sky-high IQ levels when it comes to learning something new?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Many people mistakenly believe that the ability to learn is a matter of intelligence. For them, learning is an immutable trait like eye colour, simply luck of the genetic draw. People are born learners, or they're not, the thinking goes. So why bother getting better at it?

And that's why many people tend to approach the topic of learning without much focus. They don't think much about how they will develop an area of mastery. They use phrases like "practice makes perfect" without really considering the learning strategy at play. It's a remarkably ill-defined expression, after all. Does practice mean repeating the same skill over and over again? Does practice require feedback? Should practice be hard? Or should it be fun?

A growing body of research is making it clear that learners are made, not born. Through the deliberate use of practice and dedicated strategies to improve our ability to learn, we can all develop expertise faster and more effectively. In short, we can all get better at getting better.

Here's one example of a study that shows how learning strategies can be more important than raw smarts when it comes to gaining expertise. Marcel Veenman has found that people who closely track their thinking will outscore others who have sky-high IQ levels when it comes to learning something new. His research suggests that in terms of developing mastery, focusing on how we understand is some 15 percentage points more important than innate intelligence.

Here are three practical ways to build your learning skills, based on research.

Organize Your Goals

Effective learning often boils down to a type of project management. In order to develop an area of expertise, we first have to set achievable goals about what we want to learn. Then we have to develop strategies to help us reach those goals.

A targeted approach to learning helps us cope with all the nagging feelings associated with gaining expertise: Am I good enough? Will I fail? What if I'm wrong? Isn't there something else that I'd rather be doing?

While some self-carping is normal, Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura says these sorts of negative emotions can quickly rob us of our ability to learn something new. Plus, we're more committed if we develop a plan with clear objectives. The research is overwhelming on this point. Studies consistently show that people with clear goals outperform people with vague aspirations like "do a good job." By setting targets, people can manage their feelings more easily and achieve progress with their learning.

Think About Thinking

Metacognition is crucial to the talent of learning. Psychologists define metacognition as "thinking about thinking, " and broadly speaking, metacognition is about being more inspective about how you know what you know. It's a matter of asking ourselves questions like Do I really get this idea? Could I explain it to a friend? What are my goals? Do I need more background knowledge? Or do I need more practice?

Metacognition comes easily to many trained experts. When a specialist works through an issue, they'll often think a lot about how the problem is framed. They'll often have a good sense of whether or not their answer seems reasonable.

The key, it turns out, is not to leave this sort of "thinking about thinking" to the experts. When it comes to learning, one of the biggest issues is that people don't engage in metacognition enough. They don't stop to ask themselves if they really get a skill or concept.

The issue, then, is not that something goes in one ear and out the other. The issue is that individuals don't dwell on the dwelling. They don't push themselves to really think about their thinking.

Reflect on Your Learning

There is something of a contradiction in learning. It turns out that we need to let go of our learning in order to understand our learning. For example, when we step away from a problem, we often learn more about a problem. Get into a discussion with a colleague, for instance, and often your best arguments arrive while you're washing the dishes later. Read a software manual and a good amount of your comprehension can come after you shut the pages.

In short, learning benefits from reflection. This type of reflection requires a moment of calm. Maybe we're quietly writing an essay in a corner - or talking to ourselves as we're in the shower. But it usually takes a bit of cognitive quiet, a moment of silent introspection, for us to engage in any sort of focused deliberation.

Q. Identify the antonym of 'metacognition'.

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Cornell professor of economics Robert Frank says he's alive today because of "pure dumb luck." In 2007, he collapsed on a tennis court, struck down by what was later diagnosed as a case of sudden cardiac death, something only 2 percent of victims survive. Frank survived because, even though the nearest hospital was 5 miles away, an ambulance just happened to be responding to another call a few hundred yards away at the time. Since the other call wasn't as serious, the ambulance was able to change course and save Frank. Paddles were put on him in record time. He was rushed to the local hospital, then flown by helicopter to a larger one where he was put on ice overnight. Most survivors of similar episodes are left with significant cognitive and physical impairments. Frank was back on the tennis court just two weeks later.

Frank says his research ideas often come from his own experience, and his work on luck is no exception. His book, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy, argues that the role of luck in life, and specifically in economic success, is not as widely appreciated as it should be. The book claims that if the prosperous were more cognizant of luck's role in their success they would be more supportive of government efforts to spread opportunity, and of the higher taxes they'd have to pay as a result.

Frank's other writings include the books The Winner-Take-All Society (with Philip J. Cook), The Darwin Economy, and Principles of Economics (with Ben S. Bernanke.) as well as an economics column that has run in The New York Times for over a decade. I spoke to him on the phone recently while he waited for his car to be repaired at a Syracuse dealership. He was warm and engaging and interested in my own experiences with luck and success, answering my questions as if he had all the time in the world.

What evidence is there that people don't appreciate the role of luck in their lives as much as they should? If people want to see a vivid example of that, I would steer them to the website that chronicled the reactions of voters to two political campaign speeches in 2012, one by Elizabeth Warren, the other by Barack Obama. The content of the speeches was essentially the same and if you read both transcripts carefully, you'd say, "Wow. There's nothing controversial here." What each one said in effect was that, in addition to working hard and being good at what you do, if you're a business owner, also you ship your goods to market on roads that the community paid for, you hired workers that we helped educate, we hired policemen, firemen to keep you safe. So, your success such as it is, is a product not just of your own talents and efforts, but it's a community project.

The reaction was overwhelmingly hostile to the speeches. The people who run businesses seemed to think that Obama and Elizabeth Warren were saying that they didn't deserve to have succeeded, that they were impostors by occupying these lofty positions that they had won. That wasn't the message at all, but it was hard for people to hear the totally reasonable and uncontroversial messages of those speeches.

The whole process of constructing life narratives is biased in ways that almost guarantee that people won't recognize the role of chance events adequately. So, you've been successful, you've been at it 30 years. It's true that you've worked hard all that time, you got up early, you put in a lot of effort, those memories are all very plentiful and available in your memory bank. You've solved lots of difficult problems. You remember examples of those, too. You know the formidable opponents that you've vanquished along the way. How can you forget them? So, if somebody says, "Why did you succeed?" those things are going to get top billing in your story.

Q. What can be infer from the passage about the content of the speech of two leaders Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Cornell professor of economics Robert Frank says he's alive today because of "pure dumb luck." In 2007, he collapsed on a tennis court, struck down by what was later diagnosed as a case of sudden cardiac death, something only 2 percent of victims survive. Frank survived because, even though the nearest hospital was 5 miles away, an ambulance just happened to be responding to another call a few hundred yards away at the time. Since the other call wasn't as serious, the ambulance was able to change course and save Frank. Paddles were put on him in record time. He was rushed to the local hospital, then flown by helicopter to a larger one where he was put on ice overnight. Most survivors of similar episodes are left with significant cognitive and physical impairments. Frank was back on the tennis court just two weeks later.

Frank says his research ideas often come from his own experience, and his work on luck is no exception. His book, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy, argues that the role of luck in life, and specifically in economic success, is not as widely appreciated as it should be. The book claims that if the prosperous were more cognizant of luck's role in their success they would be more supportive of government efforts to spread opportunity, and of the higher taxes they'd have to pay as a result.

Frank's other writings include the books The Winner-Take-All Society (with Philip J. Cook), The Darwin Economy, and Principles of Economics (with Ben S. Bernanke.) as well as an economics column that has run in The New York Times for over a decade. I spoke to him on the phone recently while he waited for his car to be repaired at a Syracuse dealership. He was warm and engaging and interested in my own experiences with luck and success, answering my questions as if he had all the time in the world.

What evidence is there that people don't appreciate the role of luck in their lives as much as they should? If people want to see a vivid example of that, I would steer them to the website that chronicled the reactions of voters to two political campaign speeches in 2012, one by Elizabeth Warren, the other by Barack Obama. The content of the speeches was essentially the same and if you read both transcripts carefully, you'd say, "Wow. There's nothing controversial here." What each one said in effect was that, in addition to working hard and being good at what you do, if you're a business owner, also you ship your goods to market on roads that the community paid for, you hired workers that we helped educate, we hired policemen, firemen to keep you safe. So, your success such as it is, is a product not just of your own talents and efforts, but it's a community project.

The reaction was overwhelmingly hostile to the speeches. The people who run businesses seemed to think that Obama and Elizabeth Warren were saying that they didn't deserve to have succeeded, that they were impostors by occupying these lofty positions that they had won. That wasn't the message at all, but it was hard for people to hear the totally reasonable and uncontroversial messages of those speeches.

The whole process of constructing life narratives is biased in ways that almost guarantee that people won't recognize the role of chance events adequately. So, you've been successful, you've been at it 30 years. It's true that you've worked hard all that time, you got up early, you put in a lot of effort, those memories are all very plentiful and available in your memory bank. You've solved lots of difficult problems. You remember examples of those, too. You know the formidable opponents that you've vanquished along the way. How can you forget them? So, if somebody says, "Why did you succeed?" those things are going to get top billing in your story.

Q. Which of the following is similar word of 'vanquished'?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Cornell professor of economics Robert Frank says he's alive today because of "pure dumb luck." In 2007, he collapsed on a tennis court, struck down by what was later diagnosed as a case of sudden cardiac death, something only 2 percent of victims survive. Frank survived because, even though the nearest hospital was 5 miles away, an ambulance just happened to be responding to another call a few hundred yards away at the time. Since the other call wasn't as serious, the ambulance was able to change course and save Frank. Paddles were put on him in record time. He was rushed to the local hospital, then flown by helicopter to a larger one where he was put on ice overnight. Most survivors of similar episodes are left with significant cognitive and physical impairments. Frank was back on the tennis court just two weeks later.

Frank says his research ideas often come from his own experience, and his work on luck is no exception. His book, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy, argues that the role of luck in life, and specifically in economic success, is not as widely appreciated as it should be. The book claims that if the prosperous were more cognizant of luck's role in their success they would be more supportive of government efforts to spread opportunity, and of the higher taxes they'd have to pay as a result.

Frank's other writings include the books The Winner-Take-All Society (with Philip J. Cook), The Darwin Economy, and Principles of Economics (with Ben S. Bernanke.) as well as an economics column that has run in The New York Times for over a decade. I spoke to him on the phone recently while he waited for his car to be repaired at a Syracuse dealership. He was warm and engaging and interested in my own experiences with luck and success, answering my questions as if he had all the time in the world.

What evidence is there that people don't appreciate the role of luck in their lives as much as they should? If people want to see a vivid example of that, I would steer them to the website that chronicled the reactions of voters to two political campaign speeches in 2012, one by Elizabeth Warren, the other by Barack Obama. The content of the speeches was essentially the same and if you read both transcripts carefully, you'd say, "Wow. There's nothing controversial here." What each one said in effect was that, in addition to working hard and being good at what you do, if you're a business owner, also you ship your goods to market on roads that the community paid for, you hired workers that we helped educate, we hired policemen, firemen to keep you safe. So, your success such as it is, is a product not just of your own talents and efforts, but it's a community project.

The reaction was overwhelmingly hostile to the speeches. The people who run businesses seemed to think that Obama and Elizabeth Warren were saying that they didn't deserve to have succeeded, that they were impostors by occupying these lofty positions that they had won. That wasn't the message at all, but it was hard for people to hear the totally reasonable and uncontroversial messages of those speeches.

The whole process of constructing life narratives is biased in ways that almost guarantee that people won't recognize the role of chance events adequately. So, you've been successful, you've been at it 30 years. It's true that you've worked hard all that time, you got up early, you put in a lot of effort, those memories are all very plentiful and available in your memory bank. You've solved lots of difficult problems. You remember examples of those, too. You know the formidable opponents that you've vanquished along the way. How can you forget them? So, if somebody says, "Why did you succeed?" those things are going to get top billing in your story.

Q. What does the word 'overwhelmingly' as used in passage mean?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Cornell professor of economics Robert Frank says he's alive today because of "pure dumb luck." In 2007, he collapsed on a tennis court, struck down by what was later diagnosed as a case of sudden cardiac death, something only 2 percent of victims survive. Frank survived because, even though the nearest hospital was 5 miles away, an ambulance just happened to be responding to another call a few hundred yards away at the time. Since the other call wasn't as serious, the ambulance was able to change course and save Frank. Paddles were put on him in record time. He was rushed to the local hospital, then flown by helicopter to a larger one where he was put on ice overnight. Most survivors of similar episodes are left with significant cognitive and physical impairments. Frank was back on the tennis court just two weeks later.

Frank says his research ideas often come from his own experience, and his work on luck is no exception. His book, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy, argues that the role of luck in life, and specifically in economic success, is not as widely appreciated as it should be. The book claims that if the prosperous were more cognizant of luck's role in their success they would be more supportive of government efforts to spread opportunity, and of the higher taxes they'd have to pay as a result.

Frank's other writings include the books The Winner-Take-All Society (with Philip J. Cook), The Darwin Economy, and Principles of Economics (with Ben S. Bernanke.) as well as an economics column that has run in The New York Times for over a decade. I spoke to him on the phone recently while he waited for his car to be repaired at a Syracuse dealership. He was warm and engaging and interested in my own experiences with luck and success, answering my questions as if he had all the time in the world.

What evidence is there that people don't appreciate the role of luck in their lives as much as they should? If people want to see a vivid example of that, I would steer them to the website that chronicled the reactions of voters to two political campaign speeches in 2012, one by Elizabeth Warren, the other by Barack Obama. The content of the speeches was essentially the same and if you read both transcripts carefully, you'd say, "Wow. There's nothing controversial here." What each one said in effect was that, in addition to working hard and being good at what you do, if you're a business owner, also you ship your goods to market on roads that the community paid for, you hired workers that we helped educate, we hired policemen, firemen to keep you safe. So, your success such as it is, is a product not just of your own talents and efforts, but it's a community project.

The reaction was overwhelmingly hostile to the speeches. The people who run businesses seemed to think that Obama and Elizabeth Warren were saying that they didn't deserve to have succeeded, that they were impostors by occupying these lofty positions that they had won. That wasn't the message at all, but it was hard for people to hear the totally reasonable and uncontroversial messages of those speeches.

The whole process of constructing life narratives is biased in ways that almost guarantee that people won't recognize the role of chance events adequately. So, you've been successful, you've been at it 30 years. It's true that you've worked hard all that time, you got up early, you put in a lot of effort, those memories are all very plentiful and available in your memory bank. You've solved lots of difficult problems. You remember examples of those, too. You know the formidable opponents that you've vanquished along the way. How can you forget them? So, if somebody says, "Why did you succeed?" those things are going to get top billing in your story.

Q. According to the author what is going to get on top in the stories of your life?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

The quality of your sleep is determined by a process called the sleep-wake cycle. There are two important parts of the sleep-wake cycle:

1. Slow-wave sleep (also known as deep sleep)

2. REM sleep (REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement)

During slow-wave sleep the body relaxes, breathing becomes more regular, blood pressure falls, and the brain becomes less responsive to external stimuli, which makes it more difficult to wake up. This phase is critical for the renewal and repair of the body. During slow-wave sleep, the pituitary gland releases growth hormone, which stimulates tissue growth and muscle repair. Researchers also believe that the body's immune system is repaired during this stage. Slow-wave sleep is particularly critical if you're an athlete. You'll often hear about professional athletes like Roger Federer or LeBron James sleeping 11 or 12 hours per night.

As one example of the impact of sleep on physical performance, consider study researchers conducted on the Stanford basketball players. During this study, the players slept for at least ten hours per night (compared to their typical eight hours). During five weeks of extended sleep, the researchers measured the basketball players' accuracy and speed compared to their previous levels. The free-throw shooting percentage increased by 9 percent. The three-point shooting percentage increased by 9.2 percent. And the players were 0.6 seconds faster when sprinting 80 meters. If you place heavy physical demands on your body, slow-wave sleep is what helps you recover.

REM sleep is to the mind what slow-wave sleep is to the body. The brain is relatively quiet during most sleep phases, but during REM your brain comes to life. REM sleep is when your brain dreams and re-organizes information. During this phase, your brain clears out irrelevant information, boosts your memory by connecting the experiences of the last 24 hours to your previous experiences, and facilitates learning and neural growth. Your body temperature rises, your blood pressure increases, and your heart rate speeds up. Despite all of this activity, your body hardly moves. Typically, the REM phase occurs in short bursts about 3 to 5 times per night.

Without the slow-wave sleep and REM sleep phases, the body literally starts to die. If you starve yourself of sleep, you can't recover physically, your immune system weakens, and your brain becomes foggy. Or, as the researchers put it, sleep-deprived individuals experience increased risk of viral infections, weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, mental illness, and mortality.

To summarize: slow-wave sleep helps you recover physically while REM sleep helps you recover mentally. The amount of time you spend in these phases tends to decrease with age, which means the quality of your sleep and your body's ability to recover also decrease with age.

Q. Why does the body start to die without sleep?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

The quality of your sleep is determined by a process called the sleep-wake cycle. There are two important parts of the sleep-wake cycle:

1. Slow-wave sleep (also known as deep sleep)

2. REM sleep (REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement)

During slow-wave sleep the body relaxes, breathing becomes more regular, blood pressure falls, and the brain becomes less responsive to external stimuli, which makes it more difficult to wake up. This phase is critical for the renewal and repair of the body. During slow-wave sleep, the pituitary gland releases growth hormone, which stimulates tissue growth and muscle repair. Researchers also believe that the body's immune system is repaired during this stage. Slow-wave sleep is particularly critical if you're an athlete. You'll often hear about professional athletes like Roger Federer or LeBron James sleeping 11 or 12 hours per night.

As one example of the impact of sleep on physical performance, consider study researchers conducted on the Stanford basketball players. During this study, the players slept for at least ten hours per night (compared to their typical eight hours). During five weeks of extended sleep, the researchers measured the basketball players' accuracy and speed compared to their previous levels. The free-throw shooting percentage increased by 9 percent. The three-point shooting percentage increased by 9.2 percent. And the players were 0.6 seconds faster when sprinting 80 meters. If you place heavy physical demands on your body, slow-wave sleep is what helps you recover.

REM sleep is to the mind what slow-wave sleep is to the body. The brain is relatively quiet during most sleep phases, but during REM your brain comes to life. REM sleep is when your brain dreams and re-organizes information. During this phase, your brain clears out irrelevant information, boosts your memory by connecting the experiences of the last 24 hours to your previous experiences, and facilitates learning and neural growth. Your body temperature rises, your blood pressure increases, and your heart rate speeds up. Despite all of this activity, your body hardly moves. Typically, the REM phase occurs in short bursts about 3 to 5 times per night.

Without the slow-wave sleep and REM sleep phases, the body literally starts to die. If you starve yourself of sleep, you can't recover physically, your immune system weakens, and your brain becomes foggy. Or, as the researchers put it, sleep-deprived individuals experience increased risk of viral infections, weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, mental illness, and mortality.

To summarize: slow-wave sleep helps you recover physically while REM sleep helps you recover mentally. The amount of time you spend in these phases tends to decrease with age, which means the quality of your sleep and your body's ability to recover also decrease with age.

Q. What do the statistics of a player's performance in sports show about the sleep?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

The quality of your sleep is determined by a process called the sleep-wake cycle. There are two important parts of the sleep-wake cycle:

1. Slow-wave sleep (also known as deep sleep)

2. REM sleep (REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement)

During slow-wave sleep the body relaxes, breathing becomes more regular, blood pressure falls, and the brain becomes less responsive to external stimuli, which makes it more difficult to wake up. This phase is critical for the renewal and repair of the body. During slow-wave sleep, the pituitary gland releases growth hormone, which stimulates tissue growth and muscle repair. Researchers also believe that the body's immune system is repaired during this stage. Slow-wave sleep is particularly critical if you're an athlete. You'll often hear about professional athletes like Roger Federer or LeBron James sleeping 11 or 12 hours per night.

As one example of the impact of sleep on physical performance, consider study researchers conducted on the Stanford basketball players. During this study, the players slept for at least ten hours per night (compared to their typical eight hours). During five weeks of extended sleep, the researchers measured the basketball players' accuracy and speed compared to their previous levels. The free-throw shooting percentage increased by 9 percent. The three-point shooting percentage increased by 9.2 percent. And the players were 0.6 seconds faster when sprinting 80 meters. If you place heavy physical demands on your body, slow-wave sleep is what helps you recover.

REM sleep is to the mind what slow-wave sleep is to the body. The brain is relatively quiet during most sleep phases, but during REM your brain comes to life. REM sleep is when your brain dreams and re-organizes information. During this phase, your brain clears out irrelevant information, boosts your memory by connecting the experiences of the last 24 hours to your previous experiences, and facilitates learning and neural growth. Your body temperature rises, your blood pressure increases, and your heart rate speeds up. Despite all of this activity, your body hardly moves. Typically, the REM phase occurs in short bursts about 3 to 5 times per night.

Without the slow-wave sleep and REM sleep phases, the body literally starts to die. If you starve yourself of sleep, you can't recover physically, your immune system weakens, and your brain becomes foggy. Or, as the researchers put it, sleep-deprived individuals experience increased risk of viral infections, weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, mental illness, and mortality.

To summarize: slow-wave sleep helps you recover physically while REM sleep helps you recover mentally. The amount of time you spend in these phases tends to decrease with age, which means the quality of your sleep and your body's ability to recover also decrease with age.

Q. Why does the brain comes to life during REM?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

The quality of your sleep is determined by a process called the sleep-wake cycle. There are two important parts of the sleep-wake cycle:

1. Slow-wave sleep (also known as deep sleep)

2. REM sleep (REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement)

During slow-wave sleep the body relaxes, breathing becomes more regular, blood pressure falls, and the brain becomes less responsive to external stimuli, which makes it more difficult to wake up. This phase is critical for the renewal and repair of the body. During slow-wave sleep, the pituitary gland releases growth hormone, which stimulates tissue growth and muscle repair. Researchers also believe that the body's immune system is repaired during this stage. Slow-wave sleep is particularly critical if you're an athlete. You'll often hear about professional athletes like Roger Federer or LeBron James sleeping 11 or 12 hours per night.

As one example of the impact of sleep on physical performance, consider study researchers conducted on the Stanford basketball players. During this study, the players slept for at least ten hours per night (compared to their typical eight hours). During five weeks of extended sleep, the researchers measured the basketball players' accuracy and speed compared to their previous levels. The free-throw shooting percentage increased by 9 percent. The three-point shooting percentage increased by 9.2 percent. And the players were 0.6 seconds faster when sprinting 80 meters. If you place heavy physical demands on your body, slow-wave sleep is what helps you recover.

REM sleep is to the mind what slow-wave sleep is to the body. The brain is relatively quiet during most sleep phases, but during REM your brain comes to life. REM sleep is when your brain dreams and re-organizes information. During this phase, your brain clears out irrelevant information, boosts your memory by connecting the experiences of the last 24 hours to your previous experiences, and facilitates learning and neural growth. Your body temperature rises, your blood pressure increases, and your heart rate speeds up. Despite all of this activity, your body hardly moves. Typically, the REM phase occurs in short bursts about 3 to 5 times per night.

Without the slow-wave sleep and REM sleep phases, the body literally starts to die. If you starve yourself of sleep, you can't recover physically, your immune system weakens, and your brain becomes foggy. Or, as the researchers put it, sleep-deprived individuals experience increased risk of viral infections, weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, mental illness, and mortality.

To summarize: slow-wave sleep helps you recover physically while REM sleep helps you recover mentally. The amount of time you spend in these phases tends to decrease with age, which means the quality of your sleep and your body's ability to recover also decrease with age.

Q. Why does our sleep tend to decrease with age?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

The quality of your sleep is determined by a process called the sleep-wake cycle. There are two important parts of the sleep-wake cycle:

1. Slow-wave sleep (also known as deep sleep)

2. REM sleep (REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement)

During slow-wave sleep the body relaxes, breathing becomes more regular, blood pressure falls, and the brain becomes less responsive to external stimuli, which makes it more difficult to wake up. This phase is critical for the renewal and repair of the body. During slow-wave sleep, the pituitary gland releases growth hormone, which stimulates tissue growth and muscle repair. Researchers also believe that the body's immune system is repaired during this stage. Slow-wave sleep is particularly critical if you're an athlete. You'll often hear about professional athletes like Roger Federer or LeBron James sleeping 11 or 12 hours per night.

As one example of the impact of sleep on physical performance, consider study researchers conducted on the Stanford basketball players. During this study, the players slept for at least ten hours per night (compared to their typical eight hours). During five weeks of extended sleep, the researchers measured the basketball players' accuracy and speed compared to their previous levels. The free-throw shooting percentage increased by 9 percent. The three-point shooting percentage increased by 9.2 percent. And the players were 0.6 seconds faster when sprinting 80 meters. If you place heavy physical demands on your body, slow-wave sleep is what helps you recover.

REM sleep is to the mind what slow-wave sleep is to the body. The brain is relatively quiet during most sleep phases, but during REM your brain comes to life. REM sleep is when your brain dreams and re-organizes information. During this phase, your brain clears out irrelevant information, boosts your memory by connecting the experiences of the last 24 hours to your previous experiences, and facilitates learning and neural growth. Your body temperature rises, your blood pressure increases, and your heart rate speeds up. Despite all of this activity, your body hardly moves. Typically, the REM phase occurs in short bursts about 3 to 5 times per night.

Without the slow-wave sleep and REM sleep phases, the body literally starts to die. If you starve yourself of sleep, you can't recover physically, your immune system weakens, and your brain becomes foggy. Or, as the researchers put it, sleep-deprived individuals experience increased risk of viral infections, weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, mental illness, and mortality.

To summarize: slow-wave sleep helps you recover physically while REM sleep helps you recover mentally. The amount of time you spend in these phases tends to decrease with age, which means the quality of your sleep and your body's ability to recover also decrease with age.

Q. why do the students need adequate sleep?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Bronnie Ware is a nurse in Australia. She has spent more than a decade counselling dying people. Over that time span, she began recording the top regrets that people have on their death bed.

After 12 years, she concluded that the most common regret of all was this:

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

Why is this such a common dying regret at the end of our lives? And how can you make sure that you don't end up feeling the same way?

If you're reading this, then you probably have the power to make decisions in your daily life. It's rare that we are actually forced to live in a way that we don't want to live (thankfully). But somehow, many of us still end up wishing we had lived in a way that was more true to ourselves.

Here's why I believe this happens:

Anytime I find myself feeling stuck in neutral, it's usually the result of not having a clear target. I find myself doing work without defining what the work should actually be or hoping for a change without determining the underlying actions that would lead to it. In other words, I'm not being clear about what I care about and how I can get there. More on this in a moment.

Here's the result:

If you never draw a line in the sand and clarify what is really important to you, then you'll end up doing what's expected of you. When you don't have a clear purpose driving you forward, you default to doing what other people approve of. We're not sure what we really want, and so we do what we think other people want.

The grey areas in life usually arise when we haven't decided what we believe.

This is the position I think we all find ourselves in from time to time. And it's one reason why I think many of us end up living the life others expect us to live instead of a life that is true to ourselves.

I think often about how I can get better at living with purpose and how I can live an important life instead of an urgent one. When it comes to being clear about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, I like to use a technique that I call the Bullseye Method.

"If you didn't know where the target was located, you would never fire an arrow and expect to hit the bullseye." And yet, we often live our lives this way. We wake up and face the world day after day (we keep firing arrows), but we are focused on everything except the bullseye.

Q. What is the bullseye according to the author?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Bronnie Ware is a nurse in Australia. She has spent more than a decade counselling dying people. Over that time span, she began recording the top regrets that people have on their death bed.

After 12 years, she concluded that the most common regret of all was this:

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

Why is this such a common dying regret at the end of our lives? And how can you make sure that you don't end up feeling the same way?

If you're reading this, then you probably have the power to make decisions in your daily life. It's rare that we are actually forced to live in a way that we don't want to live (thankfully). But somehow, many of us still end up wishing we had lived in a way that was more true to ourselves.

Here's why I believe this happens:

Anytime I find myself feeling stuck in neutral, it's usually the result of not having a clear target. I find myself doing work without defining what the work should actually be or hoping for a change without determining the underlying actions that would lead to it. In other words, I'm not being clear about what I care about and how I can get there. More on this in a moment.

Here's the result:

If you never draw a line in the sand and clarify what is really important to you, then you'll end up doing what's expected of you. When you don't have a clear purpose driving you forward, you default to doing what other people approve of. We're not sure what we really want, and so we do what we think other people want.

The grey areas in life usually arise when we haven't decided what we believe.

This is the position I think we all find ourselves in from time to time. And it's one reason why I think many of us end up living the life others expect us to live instead of a life that is true to ourselves.

I think often about how I can get better at living with purpose and how I can live an important life instead of an urgent one. When it comes to being clear about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, I like to use a technique that I call the Bullseye Method.

"If you didn't know where the target was located, you would never fire an arrow and expect to hit the bullseye." And yet, we often live our lives this way. We wake up and face the world day after day (we keep firing arrows), but we are focused on everything except the bullseye.

Q. What is the result given by the author in the passage?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Bronnie Ware is a nurse in Australia. She has spent more than a decade counselling dying people. Over that time span, she began recording the top regrets that people have on their death bed.

After 12 years, she concluded that the most common regret of all was this:

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

Why is this such a common dying regret at the end of our lives? And how can you make sure that you don't end up feeling the same way?

If you're reading this, then you probably have the power to make decisions in your daily life. It's rare that we are actually forced to live in a way that we don't want to live (thankfully). But somehow, many of us still end up wishing we had lived in a way that was more true to ourselves.

Here's why I believe this happens:

Anytime I find myself feeling stuck in neutral, it's usually the result of not having a clear target. I find myself doing work without defining what the work should actually be or hoping for a change without determining the underlying actions that would lead to it. In other words, I'm not being clear about what I care about and how I can get there. More on this in a moment.

Here's the result :

If you never draw a line in the sand and clarify what is really important to you, then you'll end up doing what's expected of you. When you don't have a clear purpose driving you forward, you default to doing what other people approve of. We're not sure what we really want, and so we do what we think other people want.

The grey areas in life usually arise when we haven't decided what we believe.

This is the position I think we all find ourselves in from time to time. And it's one reason why I think many of us end up living the life others expect us to live instead of a life that is true to ourselves.

I think often about how I can get better at living with purpose and how I can live an important life instead of an urgent one. When it comes to being clear about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, I like to use a technique that I call the Bullseye Method.

"If you didn't know where the target was located, you would never fire an arrow and expect to hit the bullseye." And yet, we often live our lives this way. We wake up and face the world day after day (we keep firing arrows), but we are focused on everything except the bullseye.

Q. Which of the following can be used instead of bullseye?

Direction: Read the passage carefully to answer the question given.

Bronnie Ware is a nurse in Australia. She has spent more than a decade counselling dying people. Over that time span, she began recording the top regrets that people have on their death bed.

After 12 years, she concluded that the most common regret of all was this :

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

Why is this such a common dying regret at the end of our lives? And how can you make sure that you don't end up feeling the same way?

If you're reading this, then you probably have the power to make decisions in your daily life. It's rare that we are actually forced to live in a way that we don't want to live (thankfully). But somehow, many of us still end up wishing we had lived in a way that was more true to ourselves.

Here's why I believe this happens:

Anytime I find myself feeling stuck in neutral, it's usually the result of not having a clear target. I find myself doing work without defining what the work should actually be or hoping for a change without determining the underlying actions that would lead to it. In other words, I'm not being clear about what I care about and how I can get there. More on this in a moment.

Here's the result:

If you never draw a line in the sand and clarify what is really important to you, then you'll end up doing what's expected of you. When you don't have a clear purpose driving you forward, you default to doing what other people approve of. We're not sure what we really want, and so we do what we think other people want.

The grey areas in life usually arise when we haven't decided what we believe.

This is the position I think we all find ourselves in from time to time. And it's one reason why I think many of us end up living the life others expect us to live instead of a life that is true to ourselves.

I think often about how I can get better at living with purpose and how I can live an important life instead of an urgent one. When it comes to being clear about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, I like to use a technique that I call the Bullseye Method.

"If you didn't know where the target was located, you would never fire an arrow and expect to hit the bullseye." And yet, we often live our lives this way. We wake up and face the world day after day (we keep firing arrows), but we are focused on everything except the bullseye.

Q. What is the grey area of our lives?