The Hindu Business Line : Ticking time

The Common Admission Test (CAT) for MBA aspirants was held on November 18. What follows is a selection from the questions that appeared in Section III of the paper (‘verbal aptitude’). See if you can tackle them.

In each question, there are five sentences/paragraphs. The sentence/paragraph labelled A is in its correct place. The four that follow are labelled B, C, D and E, and need to be arranged in the logical order to form a coherent paragraph/passage. From the given options, choose the most appropriate option.

I) A: In America, highly educated women, who are in stronger position in the labour market than less qualified ones, have higher rates of marriage than other groups.

B: Some work supports the Becker thesis, and some appears to contradict it.

C: And, as with crime, it is equally inconclusive.

D: But regardless of the conclusion of any particular piece of work, it is hard to establish convincing connections between family changes and economic factors using conventional approaches.

E: Indeed, just as with crime, an enormous academic literature exists on the validity of the pure economic approach to the evolution of family structures.

(1) BCDE; (2) DBEC; (3) BDCE; (4) ECBD; (5) EBCD

II) A: Personal experience of mothering and motherhood are largely framed in relation to two discernible or “official” discourses: the “medical discourse and natural childbirth discourse”. Both of these tend to focus on the “optimistic stories” of birth and mothering and underpin stereotypes of the “good mother”.

B: At the same time, the need for medical expert guidance is also a feature for contemporary reproduction and motherhood. But constructions of good mothering have not always been so conceived — and in different contexts may exist in parallel to other equally dominant discourses.

C: Similarly, historical work has shown how what are now taken-for-granted aspects of reproduction and mothering practices result from contemporary “pseudoscientific directives” and “managed constructs”. These changes have led to a reframing of modem discourses that pattern pregnancy and motherhood leading to an acceptance of the need for greater expert management.

D: The contrasting, overlapping, and ambiguous strands within these frameworks focus to varying degrees on a woman’s biological tie to her child and predisposition to instinctively know and be able to care for her child.

E: In addition, a third, “unofficial popular discourse” comprising “old wives” tales and based on maternal experiences of childbirth has also been noted.

These discourses have also been acknowledged in work exploring the experiences of those who apparently do not “conform” to conventional stereotypes of the “good mother”.

(1) EDBC; (2) BCED; (3); DBCE; (4) EDCB; (5) BCDE

Edited extracts from CAT 2007 question paper.