CRACK IBPS PO : New Pattern Reading Comprehension Day 45

Directions (1-10): Read the following passage carefully and answer these questions given below it. Certain words/phrases have been printed in BOLD to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.

“The American Dream is back.” President Trump made that claim in a speech in January.

They are ringing words, but what do they mean? Language is important, but it can be slippery. Consider that the phrase, the American Dream, has changed radically through the years.

Mr. Trump and Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, have suggested it involves owning a beautiful home and a roaring business, but it wasn’t always so. Instead, in the 1930s, it meant freedom, mutual respect and equality of opportunity. It had more to do with morality than material success.

This drift in meaning is significant, because the American Dream — and international variants like the Australian Dream, Le Rêve Français and others — represents core values. In the United States, these values affect major government decisions on housing, regulation and mortgage guarantees, and millions of private choices regarding whether to start a business, buy an ostentatious home or rent an apartment.

Conflating the American dream with expensive housing has had dangerous consequences: It may have even contributed to the last housing bubble, the one that led to the financial crisis of 2008-9.

These days, Mr. Trump is using the hallowed phrase in pointed ways. In his January speech, he framed the slogan as though it were an entrepreneurial aspiration. “We are going to create an environment for small business like we haven’t seen in many many decades,” he said, adding, “So, essentially, we are getting rid of regulations to a massive extent, could be as much as 75 percent.”

Mr. Carson has explicitly said that homeownership is a central part of the Dream. In a speech at the National Housing Conference on June 9, he said, “I worry that millennial may become a lost generation for homeownership, excluded from the American Dream.”

But that wasn’t what the American Dream entailed when the writer James Truslow Adams popularized it in 1931, in his book “The Epic of America.”

Mr. Adams emphasized ideals rather than material goods, a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.” And he clarified, “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and recognized by others for what they are.”

His achievement was an innovation in language that largely replaced the older terms “American character” and “American principles” with a forward-looking phrase that implied modesty about current success in giving respect and equal opportunity to all people. The American dream was a trajectory to a promising future, a model for the United States and for the whole world.

In the 1930s and ’40s, the term appeared occasionally in advertisements for intellectual products: plays, books and church sermons, book reviews and high-minded articles. During these years, it rarely, if ever, referred to business success or homeownership.

By 1950, shortly after World War II and the triumph against fascism, it was still about freedom and equality. In a book published in 1954, Peter Marshall, former chaplain of the United States Senate, defined the American Dream with spiritually resounding words: “Religious liberty to worship God according to the dictates of one’s own conscience and equal opportunity for all men,” he said, “are the twin pillars of the American Dream.”

The term began to be used extensively in the 1960s. It may have owed its growing power to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, in which he spoke of a vision that was “deeply rooted in the American Dream.” He said he dreamed of the disappearance of prejudice and a rise in community spirit, and certainly made no mention of deregulation or mortgage subsidies.

But as the term became more commonplace, its connection with notions of equality and community weakened. In the 1970s and ’80s, home builders used it extensively in advertisements, perhaps to make conspicuous consumption seem patriotic.

1) What are the two pillars of the American Dream ?

(a) Religious infirmity

(b) Community Spirit

(c) Own Conscience

(d) Drowning Economy

(e) Equal opportunity for all

(a) Only (c) & (d)

(b) Only (b) & (c)

(c) Only (a) & (e)

(d) Only (c) & (e)

(e) Only (a) & (d)

2) Which is a trajectory to a promising future, a model for the United States and for the whole world ?

(a) Trump’s extravagance

(b) Patriotic Citizens

(c) Equal Opportunity

(d) American Dream

(e) Prejudice Disappearance

3) The core values affect which decision of the government according to the above passage ?

(a) Housing

(b) Power

(c) Advertisement

(d) Religion

(e) Books

4) What did Martin Luther King dreamed of according to the author as said in the passage ?

(a) Disappearance of Prejudice

(b) Rise in Community Spirit

(c) Conspicuous Consumption

(d) Vision with a wide acceptance

(e) Re spiritual resounding words

(a) Only (A) & (E)

(b) Only (B) & (C)

(c) Only (D) & (E)

(d) Only (E) & (C)

(e) Only (A) & (B)

5)Which is a central part of the Dream as said explicitly said by Mr. Carson ?

(a) Independence

(b) Equality

(c) Advertisements

(d) Homeownership

(e) Innovation

6) Choose the word which has the OPPOSITE in MEANING as the word

Conflating

(a) Converge

(b) Exasperate

(c) Divide

(d) Network

(e) Coalesce

7) Choose the word which has the OPPOSITE in MEANING as the word

Drift

(a) Stack

(b) Allusion

(c) Ditch

(d) Wholesome

(e) Consternation

8) What can be the apt title for the given passage ?

(a) The Transformation of the American Dream

(b) New President’s dream of new America

(c) Convergence of the old community ideas

(d) Existence of the radical thoughts in the transformation

(e) None of the above

9) Choose the word which has the SAME MEANING as the word

Prejudice

(a) Tolerance

(b) Information

(c) Respect

(d) Approval

(e) Tolerance

10) Choose the word which has the SAME MEANING as the word

MODESTY

(a) Impropriety

(b) Conceit

(c) Pride

(d) Inhibit

(e) Simplicity

Other Related English Quiz :

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CRACK IBPS PO : READING COMPREHENSION DAY 41