Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension · XAT level
Exam-level Reading Comprehension: XAT practice questions
8 questions in the pattern of XAT. Each question is marked with the exams it suits. Answer it, then open the step-by-step solution.
Passage 1
When a measure becomes a target
Every organisation that wishes to improve something must first measure it, and every measurement is a simplification. A hospital that wants to treat patients better may count the minutes they wait in the emergency room; a school that wants children to learn may count the marks they score. The number is chosen because it is easy to see and roughly tracks the thing that matters. The trouble begins when the number is promoted from a sign to a goal.
Once people are rewarded for moving the number, they discover that there are cheaper ways to move it than improving the underlying reality. Emergency rooms that were judged on waiting time began to register patients only when a doctor was free, so that the clock started late. Schools judged on pass rates quietly discouraged weaker students from sitting the exam. In neither case did anyone set out to deceive; each step seemed sensible to the person who took it. The measure, however, slowly stopped measuring anything but the effort spent on the measure itself.
It would be easy to conclude that measurement is the villain and judgement the cure. But judgement, left unchecked, has its own vices: favouritism, inconsistency and the comfortable belief that one's own work is excellent. Numbers were introduced precisely to discipline those vices. The more useful lesson is that a measure stays honest only so long as the people being measured do not control how it is recorded, and only so long as it is one input among several rather than the sole basis of reward.
Some organisations have responded by rotating their measures, changing what they count before people learn to game it. Others pair every number with an independent check: an audit of a sample of records, or a conversation with the people the number claims to describe. Neither approach is free, and neither is permanent. What they share is a modesty about what numbers can do, together with an unwillingness to abandon them.
Questions 1–4 are based on this passage.
Q1Verbal · Exam-level Reading ComprehensionXAT
Which of the following best states the central idea of the passage?
Solution
The passage defends measurement (para 3) while explaining how measures decay when they become targets, and ends with ways to keep them honest. The other options contradict the passage (judgement has its own vices; no one set out to deceive; no approach is permanent) or are too narrow.
Answer: (C) Measures are useful, but they lose their value when they become the main basis of reward and the people measured can influence them
Q2Verbal · Exam-level Reading ComprehensionXAT
The examples of the emergency rooms and the schools are used mainly to show that:
Solution
Both examples show the number moving (shorter recorded waits, higher pass rates) while the reality it was meant to track does not improve. The author also says no one set out to deceive, which rules out the 'dishonesty' reading.
Answer: (C) Rewarding a number can change behaviour in ways that improve the number without improving the reality
Q3Verbal · Exam-level Reading ComprehensionXAT
The author would most likely agree with which of the following?
Solution
The last paragraph praises pairing every number with an independent check. The author rejects pure judgement (para 3), does not say gamed measures must be dropped forever, does not reject rewards outright, and treats ease of understanding as the reason measures are chosen, not as a guarantee of honesty.
Answer: (C) A measure is more reliable when it is checked against independent information
Q4Verbal · Exam-level Reading ComprehensionXAT
What does the author mean by 'a modesty about what numbers can do'?
Solution
The phrase is joined with 'an unwillingness to abandon them': numbers are still used, but with awareness of their limits, hence the checks described just before.
Answer: (B) An acceptance that numbers capture only part of what matters and need other checks
Passage 2
Trust in the village market
Economists once assumed that trade between strangers required either a powerful state to enforce contracts or a dense network of personal ties. Studies of weekly village markets suggest a third possibility. In many such markets, sellers and buyers meet only once a week and may come from villages far apart, yet cheating is surprisingly rare.
The explanation lies partly in repetition. A seller who returns every week to the same spot has a reputation that buyers can remember and share. A single short-changed customer can tell a dozen neighbours before the next market day, and the cost of losing them exceeds anything gained by cheating once. In this sense the market polices itself, not through goodwill but through memory.
Repetition alone, however, does not explain why newcomers are trusted at all. Here the market's informal institutions matter: a respected elder who settles disputes, a custom that measures are tested in public, the expectation that a seller's stall can be found again. These conventions lower the cost of trusting someone one does not know, and they work only because nearly everyone follows them.
When roads improve and buyers can easily travel to larger towns, village markets often decline. The usual explanation is price, but researchers note a subtler loss. As customers scatter, the memory that disciplined sellers weakens, and the informal institutions that newcomers relied upon lose their authority. The market does not merely shrink; it becomes a place where trust is harder to extend.
Questions 5–8 are based on this passage.
Q5Verbal · Exam-level Reading ComprehensionXAT
According to the passage, what mainly discourages a regular seller from cheating?
Solution
Paragraph 2: a cheated customer can tell a dozen neighbours, and the cost of losing them exceeds the gain from cheating once: reputation and memory.
Answer: (A) The risk that word of the cheating will spread and cost future customers
Q6Verbal · Exam-level Reading ComprehensionXAT
The author introduces the 'informal institutions' in paragraph 3 in order to:
Solution
The paragraph opens with 'Repetition alone, however, does not explain why newcomers are trusted' and then presents the institutions as the answer.
Answer: (E) Explain how strangers come to be trusted, which repetition alone cannot explain
Q7Verbal · Exam-level Reading ComprehensionXAT
Which of the following can be inferred from the last paragraph?
Solution
The author says the usual explanation is price but points to 'a subtler loss': scattered customers weaken memory and the institutions lose authority, so trust becomes harder to extend.
Answer: (B) Better roads can weaken trust in a village market even apart from changes in price
Q8Verbal · Exam-level Reading ComprehensionXAT
Which of the following, if true, would most support the author's account?
Solution
If sellers who are harder to find again cheat more, that supports the idea that being findable (repetition and memory) disciplines sellers. The other options do not bear on the mechanism.
Answer: (D) In markets where sellers change their stall location every week, complaints about cheating are more frequent
These are original practice questions written by Target Campus in the pattern and difficulty of MAH MBA CET, NMAT, SNAP and other MBA entrance tests. They are not previous-year papers.
Preparing for MAH CET, SNAP or NMAT? Courses, live classes and mocks by Dr. Kiran Derle at Target Campus.
