Art and emotion clash in the English Precis and Composition past paper 2009, the oldest paper in this cluster. The precis passage reports a long charge against art: Plato accuses poetic imagination of feeding lust, anger, and pain, and Tolstoy presses the same suspicion. The comprehension passage flies instead. It celebrates the helicopter as the…
Envy poisons the precis passage of the English Precis and Composition past paper 2010. The passage calls envy the most unfortunate trait of ordinary human nature: the envious person gains pain from the success of others and works to strip their advantages away. The comprehension passage starts with Galileo and his muttered “And still it…
Unhappiness fills the precis passage of the English Precis and Composition past paper 2011. The passage traces unhappy people to a youth that denied them one normal satisfaction, so they chase that single satisfaction ever after and give life a one-sided direction. The comprehension passage separates knowledge from understanding. Knowledge fits a new experience into…
Population opens the English Precis and Composition past paper 2012. The precis passage attacks sociologists for dodging the population question and demands rational regulation of both the quality and the quantity of population. The comprehension passage compares the fear of death to a child’s fear of darkness, fed by stories of ghosts, thieves, and dying…
Culture wears two faces in the English Precis and Composition past paper 2013. The precis passage divides culture into an external, formal aspect and an inner, ideological aspect, and ties both to the structure of a society. The comprehension passage turns to China. It explains how Confucius, five hundred years before Christ, shaped a civilisation…
Kindness directs intelligence in the English Precis and Composition past paper 2014. The precis passage argues that training human intelligence must grow empathy alongside it, so intelligence serves love, social morality, and survival. The comprehension passage compares the American and French revolutions. Two conflicts grew from the same Enlightenment theories a decade apart, yet they…
War breaks civilisations in the English Precis and Composition past paper 2015. The precis passage endorses a historian’s verdict: war has caused the breakdown of every civilisation that has fallen. The comprehension passage weighs reasons for belief and warns that a strong feeling of certainty makes a poor ground for holding a belief. This paper…
A holiday story opens the English Precis and Composition past paper 2016. The precis passage follows a traveller who rejects common flights to Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia and jumps at a friend’s plan to visit Cherokee county in Oklahoma. Narrative precis passages appear rarely in this set, and this year gives candidates one. The…
Idleness gets a defence in the English Precis and Composition past paper 2017. The precis passage argues that busy people who never pause bring most evils into the world, and it pictures the devil himself denouncing laziness. The comprehension passage tells schools to teach students how to love and what to love, since saints, scientists,…
Cold weather does the heavy lifting in the English Precis and Composition past paper 2018. The precis passage credits the cold climate of northern Europe with training human energy, since an obstacle that people can fight sharpens them. The comprehension passage attacks a defect of civilisation: science hands us godlike powers, yet we handle machines…
Children and how adults handle them open the English Precis and Composition past paper 2019. The precis passage argues that modern education theorists praise non-interference too much and undervalue the simple merit of enjoying children’s company. The comprehension passage comes from fiction. It drops the reader at a pit on a common at sunset, in…
Manto stands at the centre of the English Precis and Composition past paper 2020. The precis passage defends Saadat Hasan Manto against charges of vulgarity and obscenity and blames a self-righteous, hypocritical society for dragging him through the courts. The comprehension passage explains globalisation as a force that welds peoples into a single world society…