CAT (VARC) PYQs

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Paragraph: Somalia has been dealing with an enormous humanitarian catastrophe, driven by the longest and most severe drought the country has experienced in at least 40 years. ___ (1) ___ . Five consecutive rainy seasons have failed, causing more than 8million people - almost half of the country's population to experience acute food insecurity. ___ (2) ___ . More than 43,000 people are believed to have lost their lives, with half of the lives lost likely being children under five. The damage the drought has caused is far-reaching. ___ (3) ___ . Farmers have lost all their agricultural income, while pastoralists have lost more than 3 million livestock, impoverishing entire communities, and leaving them on the brink of famine. ___ (4) ___ . Some, like the pastoralists, may never be able to go back as their livelihoods have been irreversibly wiped out.

Sentence: Many have had to leave their homes behind, with more than 1.3 million people being displaced due to the drought.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Paragraph: ___ (1) ___ Prices are rising at their fastest rate in 40 years, consequently, return-to-office-related costs have shot up - think petrol and food, for instance. ___ (2) ___ . Yet wages haven't kept up with inflation even despite the salary growth many workers have enjoyed during a favorable pandemic labour market. ___ (3) ___ . This is especially jarring for workers who were able to save during remote work, when these expenditures weren't a factor. ___ (4) ___ . In April 2022, Umus, a London university lecturer, told BBC Work life that they were spending nearly a quarter of what they made every day on return-to-work costs.

Sentence: This reality is putting stress on employees who have to pay for transport, desk lunches, more childcare, clothing and that after-work socialisation - costs they haven't incurred for nearly two years.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Paragraph: Never before has a population, nearly all of whom has enjoyed at a least a secondary school education, been exposed to so much information, whether in newspapers and magazines or through YouTube, Google, and Facebook ___ (1) ___ . Yet it is not clear that people today are more knowledgeable than their barely literate predecessors. Contemporary advances in technology offered more serious and inquisitive students access to realms of knowledge previously unimaginable and unavailable ___ (2) ___ . But such readily available knowledge leads many more students away from serious study, the reading of actual texts, and toward an inability to write effectively and grammatically ___ (3) ___ . It has let people choose sources that reinforce their opinions rather than encouraging them to question inherited beliefs ___ (4) ___ .

Sentence: Having made citizens more and less knowledgeable than their predecessors, the Internet has proved to be both a blessing and a curse.