English Reading Comprehension Questions
Reading Comprehension Practice Test. Reading Comprehension based on different editorial like; The Hindu, Economics Times, Times of India etc. Welcome to the Let’s Study Together online English section. If you are preparing for Banking and Insurance Exams, you will come across Reading Comprehension Test in English language section. Here we are providing you English Reading Comprehension Test for Banking Exams , based on the latest pattern of your daily practice.
Reading Comprehension Test will help you learn concepts on important topics in English Section. This “English Reading Comprehension Test for Banking Exams” is also important for other banking exams such as SBI Clerk, IDBI Executive and Syndicate PO, IBPS PO, IBPS Clerk, SBI Clerk, IBPS RRB Officer, IBPS RRB Office Assistant, IBPS SO, SBI SO and other competitive exams.
Reading Comprehension Test for Banking Exams | Set –3
Directions:(1-5) Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions.
In the comings days, a team of scientists, technicians and other specialists will gather onboard the SA Agulhas II, a 13,500-tonne ice-breaker moored off the coast of Antarctica, and make final preparations for one of the most ambitious polar expeditions in decades. Guided by satellite imagery and drones flown from the research ship, the vessel will set off on New Year’s day through the pack ice of the Weddell Sea, part of the Southern Ocean in the Antarctic. The ship’s destination is the Larsen C ice shelf where a trillion tonne iceberg, four times the size of Greater London, calved away in July 2017.
Antarctica has a way of dashing even the best laid plans. But if the Weddell Sea expedition can reach the Larsen C ice shelf, the fourth largest on the continent, the researchers will have an unprecedented chance to study how it and others like it melt, fracture and collapse, and what life ekes out an existence in the sheltered waters beneath. But there is more to the expedition than science. The Weddell Sea is infamous in Antarctic history as the place where, in 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance became trapped in ice for 10 months. The crushed vessel finally sank in more than two miles of water. One the way home, pack ice permitting, the Agulhas will head for the spot where Endurance went down and, for the first time, hunt for the wreckage with autonomous robotic submarines.
“Antarctica is a place of extremes. You never know what the conditions will be like,” said Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, in Cambridge, and chief scientist on the Weddell Sea expedition. “But if we are that close to one of the most iconic vessels in polar exploration, we have got to go and look for it.” So far, satellite images of the Weddell Sea show that ice coverage is low for the time of year, tipping the odds in favour of the Agulhas reaching its goal. The massive iceberg, known as A68, which broke off the Larsen C ice shelf is helping out too. There is a clockwise gyre in the Weddell Sea that brings sea ice west and north, but the iceberg has swung out to block the flow, leaving the northern waters clearer for expedition’s approach. If the expedition reaches the Larsen C ice shelf, researchers will launch two autonomous robotic submarines which will dive under the ice and map the shelf with upward-looking sonar. Scientists will look out for cavities in the underside of the ice, created when the relatively warm sea water melts the shelf from beneath. Coupled with measurements of sea temperature and salinity, the data will be fed into computer models showing ice shelf melt, fracture and collapse.
Ice shelves form when inland glaciers bearing ice that has built up over thousands of years reach the coast and extend over the water. Some can go hundreds of miles offshore. Because ice shelves themselves are floating, sea levels are not directly affected when they melt or collapse. Instead, the ice shelves act as buttresses and when they disintegrate the glaciers on the land flow more quickly into the sea. The glaciers held at bay by the Larsen C ice shelf contain enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 10 cm. The robotic submarines will also map the seabed under the ice shelf with downward-looking sonar. If the Larsen C ice shelf has disintegrated before as part of a natural cycle of growth and collapse, researchers should find scars called “ploughmarks” on the seafloor, created as the icebergs are dragged around by ocean currents. No ploughmarks will be bad news: it will suggest that the recent breakup of the Larsen C shelf is unprecedented over the past 20,000 years.
The east coast of the Antarctic peninsula once had four main ice shelves, named Larsen A, B, C and D. The Larsen A and B shelves collapsed in weeks during 1995 and 2002 respectively. “With those already gone and with A68 cleaving off Larsen C, there is a concern something similar may happen there,” said John Shears, the expedition’s voyage leader. “It could be a precursor for something big.” If the seafloor is clear of the huge boulders that glaciers have a habit of dragging to the sea, the robotic submarines will dive down and film the sea bed for the biologists on the expedition. The submarines may spot starfish, brittle stars, corals and sponges, and perhaps the odd passing toothfish.
1. As per the passage, which of the following statements are correct?
1. Larcen C ice shelf is located on the east coast of the Antarctic peninsula.
2. The iceberg A68’s location has helped the researchers in conducting the expedition.
3. Sea levels are directly affected when ice shelves melt and collapse.
2. As per the passage, Weddell Sea is part of which ocean? 3. As per the passage, what is the use of robotic submarines? 4. Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage? 1. Larcen C ice shelf is the third largest ice shelf of Antarctica. 2. The current mission by Agulhas will be the first time Larcen C ice shelf will be studied in such detail. 3. Sea temperatures and salinity can be used to predict ice shelf melt and collapse. 5. As per the passage, when did Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance sink? Directions:(6-10) Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions. At present, most business owners use just 0.5% of all the big data at their possession. The bigger chunk of data remains siloed in proprietary software and external tools. However, as machine learning technologies are getting significantly better at retrieving and transforming scattered data into actionable insights, e-commerce companies are finally starting to unclog their data pipe. The typical customer buying journey is no longer linear. They switch between website, search Google for promo codes and then drift to trusted online sources for reviews, before returning to a website and making a purchase through another device. Capturing and analyzing all those interactions is a challenging task for human analysts. But it hardly present any difficulties for an intelligent algorithm. By gauging and churning all those online behaviors, new-gen analytics tools can compile comprehensiveuser personas – data-rich profiles of different audience segments. The depth of such profiles goes beyond the general demographics data. They capture all the interactions a user previously had with a brand – products viewed, clicks, past purchases etc. – and deliver personalized product recommendations based on everything the system knows about a particular customer. Data analytics platforms can supply you with all those insights for a fraction of the cost. You just need to learn how to interpret that data. Brands that manage to capture that data and apply it to product development and how they hire their staff succeed better in the long run.Big data analytics unlocks access to more granular insights, allowing you to surge or drop the prices depending on individual customer’s tolerance just like Uber does. Data-backed price management initiatives bring significant results in the short terms perspective: 2%-7% increase in business margins and a 200-350% average growth in ROI over a 12-month period according to Deloitte data. Automation tools can also enable better on-the-spot decision making, for instance showing your sales teams how discounting a certain product line will impact your profitability or how likely customer segment A will respond to a 15% discount. Big data analytics allows your business to become more agile and instantly respond to market changes – surge the price for shovels during heavy snowfall. Large e-commerce players have already become notoriously successful in creating elaborate pricing strategies, derived from the recorded customer purchasing interactions. Software engine is built to manage consumers’ perception of price. The software identifies the goods that loom largest in consumers’ perception and keeps their prices carefully in line with competitors’ prices, if not lower. The price of everything else is allowed to drift upward. Clearly, not all shoppers are thrilled with such tactics. So brands that are yet to venture into algorithmic price optimization should carefully balance their desire to maximize the revenue with the growing customer’s demand for transparency and fair market practices. 6. As per the passage, what advantage does Big data analytics provide to a business?
7. Refer to the sentence: Automation tools can also enable better on-the-spot decision making, for instance showing your sales teams how discounting a certain product line will impact your profitability or how likely customer segment A will respond to a 15% discount.
The author has given the example to illustrate ________
8. How does a software engine manage the customers’ perception of price? 9. What course of action has the author suggested to the new brands that are yet to venture into algorithmic price optimization? 1. The author has suggested the companies to strike a balance between profit making and the customer’s demand for transparency. 2. The author has suggested the companies to educate the consumers of their rights and responsibilities. 3. The author has suggested the sharing of information that a business has collected with its customers. 10. Which of the following word is similar in meaning to the word “comprehensive” as used in the passage? Note:
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