Exam-level Verbal Ability: XAT practice questions

The sentences below, when properly arranged, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order.

A. Within a decade, the same farmers were using their phones to check prices in distant markets before deciding where to sell.

B. When mobile phones first reached rural India, many expected them to be used mainly for calls to relatives.

C. This small change shifted bargaining power from traders towards the farmers who grew the crops.

D. Traders who had earlier set prices on the strength of information only they possessed found their margins shrinking.

E. Instead, they turned out to be tools of commerce.

The sentences below, when properly arranged, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order.

A. The answer, it turns out, depends less on the tree than on the fungi that live among its roots.

B. Foresters have long wondered why seedlings planted near old trees survive better than those planted in open ground.

C. Through these threads, older trees pass sugars and water to younger ones that are still in the shade.

D. These fungi form fine threads that connect the roots of neighbouring trees, sometimes across many metres.

E. Cutting down the old trees, therefore, can break a support system that young forests depend on.

The sentences below, when properly arranged, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order.

A. But a ban on plastic bags alone can shift shoppers to paper bags, which need more energy and water to make.

B. Governments often ban plastic bags to reduce waste.

C. A small charge on every bag, plastic or paper, tends to reduce the use of both.

D. The lesson is that the aim should be fewer bags, not merely different ones.

E. Shoppers then reuse the bags they already have.

The sentences below, when properly arranged, form a coherent paragraph. Choose the most logical order.

A. Such a person is likely to be overconfident in fields where they know little.

B. Experts are often asked for opinions on matters outside their own field.

C. Audiences, impressed by the expert's credentials, rarely notice the difference.

D. Success in one field can give a person the feeling of being an expert in general.

E. As a result, confident but poorly informed views can travel far.

Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.

A city that widens its roads to reduce traffic often finds, a few years later, that the roads are as crowded as before. Faster journeys encourage people to drive more, to live farther from work and to make trips they once avoided. The extra space is soon filled. Planners call this induced demand, and it suggests that building more road is rarely a lasting cure for congestion.

Choose the option that best captures the essence of the paragraph.

Translators are often praised for being invisible, for producing text that reads as if it had been written in the reader's own language. Yet a translation that hides every trace of its origin may also hide what was strange and valuable in the original: its rhythms, its customs, its way of seeing. A good translation sometimes lets the reader feel that the work comes from somewhere else.

Four of the following five sentences form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd one out.

A. Bees communicate the location of food through a 'waggle dance' performed inside the hive.

B. The angle of the dance tells other bees the direction of the food relative to the sun.

C. The length of the waggle tells them how far away it is.

D. Honey has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, still edible after thousands of years.

E. Researchers have shown that bees can follow these instructions accurately over several kilometres.

Four of the following five sentences form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd one out.

A. Many small firms do not survive their first five years.

B. A common reason is not a lack of customers but a lack of cash at the wrong moment.

C. A firm can be profitable on paper and still be unable to pay its suppliers this month.

D. Large firms often have access to cheaper loans than small ones.

E. Careful forecasting of cash flow is therefore as important as making sales.