TSPM – MBA CET questions with solutions

Approach: Title — must cover the passage's main point, neither too narrow nor too broad.

Solution: The passage moves from the hazards of indoor chemicals to its real point: ferns and palms (common houseplants) can pull these chemicals from the air. 'Common Houseplants May Purify Your Home' captures both the subject and the claim, with an appropriately tentative 'may' (the author says 'perhaps', 'seem to be').

Why the other options are wrong:
A: Too broad and vague.
B, E: Cover only the problem half.
D: 'Finds the Cure' overstates; NASA is a single supporting example.

Cetking shortcut: Title = main idea in headline form; reuse your answer to the main-idea question (D).

Answer: C

Approach: Primary purpose — the option must cover the whole passage.

Solution: Para 1: pain travels through complex circuitry. Para 2: prostaglandins sensitise nerve endings; aspirin blocks their synthesis. Para 3: impulses go to the spinal cord, substance P relays them; local anaesthetics block transmission. Para 4: endorphins block signals in the brain. So the passage describes how pain signals are conveyed and the ways they can be blocked — option C.

Why the other options are wrong:
A: 'Pleasure' is never discussed.
B: Endorphins help the body — the passage never calls them harmful.
D: Acupuncture blocks pain; pleasure is not mentioned.
E: The passage is about one signal pathway, not 'kinds' of pain.

Cetking shortcut: 'Completely' in the stem = the option must cover both halves (transmission + blocking).

Answer: C

Approach: Title — find what most of the passage discusses.

Solution: Diseases and Zika are only the opening context. The bulk of the passage explains how GM A. aegypti mosquitoes are made (lethality gene tTAV, fluorescence gene, tetracycline antidote), how their offspring die, and the Brazil release that cut the population by 80–95%. Title: 'Genetically modified mosquitoes'.

Why the other options are wrong:
A: Zika is only the motivation, too narrow.
C: Symptoms take one line.
D: Brazil is only the study site.
E: Honey bees are never mentioned.

Answer: B

Approach: Purpose of punctuation: why the author puts quotation marks around 'pure'.

Solution: The author writes 'the errors of "pure" art and of commercialized art are identical' and then says 'True art, on the other hand, is not merely a matter of pleasure'. The quotation marks show that so-called pure art (Art for Art's Sake) is not genuinely pure, which sets it against the true art Shaw values.

Why the other options are wrong:
B: the quotes add a negative tone; they do not strip one away.
C: the passage equates the errors of the two, not the words themselves.
D, E: the quotes are sceptical, not emphatic or approving.

Cetking shortcut: Quotation marks around an approving word usually mean 'so-called'; look for the contrasting word nearby ('True').

Answer: A

Approach: Purpose of an analogy.

Solution: The analogy sits right after 'True art… is not merely a matter of pleasure. It may be unpleasant.' Even under laughing gas (some pleasure), the tooth is still pulled (the real, possibly painful, purpose). So art's purpose goes beyond pleasure.

Why the other options are wrong:
A: a lasting effect is not the point of the analogy.
B: dating of art belongs to the next paragraph.
C: extracting moral relevance from an epoch is not stated.
E: 'may be unpleasant' does not mean art is always painful.

Cetking shortcut: Read the sentence just before the analogy; it states the point the analogy illustrates.

Answer: D

Approach: Purpose question: why the author defines what should properly be an individual's object of pride.

Solution: The author opens by rejecting racial kinship ('I eschew the notion of racial kinship') and claiming the unencumbered self. Saying that pride should rest on one's own accomplishments, not on one's race, prepares the ground for his case against racial solidarity and race pride.

Why the other options are wrong:
A: he openly claims the unencumbered self; he is not trying to hide that yearning.
B: 'gain professional sops' has no basis in the passage.
C: he supports the unencumbered self; he does not undermine it.
D: the Frederick Douglass reference is outside the given text, and the definition serves his own thesis.

Cetking shortcut: Purpose questions about a definition usually point to the author's main thesis; here, rejecting racial kinship.

Answer: E