CAT 2020 Question Paper | VARC Slot 1

CAT Questions

This passage is on Writing(Ahem!). Writing is not an easy task, I agree. It is really difficult to get started with it without worrying about what other people will think. Should we be careful about grammar when writing a sentence? Many of us have thought about this question once. This passage answers all questions regarding that. To check out more interesting passages like this one, check out 2IIM CAT Question Bank.

The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Vocabulary used in speech or writing organizes itself in seven parts of speech (eight, if you count interjections such as Oh! and Gosh! and Fuhgeddaboudit!). Communication composed of these parts of speech must be organized by rules of grammar upon which we agree. When these rules break down, confusion and misunderstanding result. Bad grammar produces bad sentences. My favorite example from Strunk and White is this one: “As a mother of five, with another one on the way, my ironing board is always up.”

Nouns and verbs are the two indispensable parts of writing. Without one of each, no group of words can be a sentence, since a sentence is, by definition, a group of words containing a subject (noun) and a predicate (verb); these strings of words begin with a capital letter, end with a period, and combine to make a complete thought which starts in the writer’s head and then leaps to the reader’s.

Must you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought. If your work consists only of fragments and floating clauses, the Grammar Police aren’t going to come and take you away. Even William Strunk, that Mussolini of rhetoric, recognized the delicious pliability of language. “It is an old observation,” he writes, “that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric.” Yet he goes on to add this thought, which I urge you to consider: “Unless he is certain of doing well, [the writer] will probably do best to follow the rules.”

The telling clause here is Unless he is certain of doing well. If you don’t have a rudimentary grasp of how the parts of speech translate into coherent sentences, how can you be certain that you are doing well? How will you know if you’re doing ill, for that matter? The answer, of course, is that you can’t, you won’t. One who does grasp the rudiments of grammar finds a comforting simplicity at its heart, where there need be only nouns, the words that name, and verbs, the words that act.

Take any noun, put it with any verb, and you have a sentence. It never fails. Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Mountains float. These are all perfect sentences. Many such thoughts make little rational sense, but even the stranger ones (Plums deify!) have a kind of poetic weight that’s nice. The simplicity of noun-verb construction is useful—at the very least it can provide a safety net for your writing. Strunk and White caution against too many simple sentences in a row, but simple sentences provide a path you can follow when you fear getting lost in the tangles of rhetoric—all those restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, those modifying phrases, those appositives and compound-complex sentences. If you start to freak out at the sight of such unmapped territory (unmapped by you, at least), just remind yourself that rocks explode, Jane transmits, mountains float, and plums deify. Grammar is . . . the pole you grab to get your thoughts up on their feet and walking.

Question 14 : Which one of the following quotes best captures the main concern of the passage?

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Video Explanation

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Explanatory Answer

According to the passage, grammar is fundamental to language. When grammar rules break down, confusion results. So, the main concern of the passage is best expressed by the line "bad grammar produces bad sentences."

Options A and B are easily eliminated, as they are about specific aspects of grammar. Option C is close, as this is also one of the concerns of the author-- a person may not be able to judge if they are "doing well" in their use of language. But between C and D, D is more general and the better choice.

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The question is "Which one of the following quotes best captures the main concern of the passage?"

Hence, the answer is, "“Bad grammar produces bad sentences.”"

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