Reading Comprehension - 9

Rommel was going back to Germany because

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-chief of the German Army Group B—guarding the occupied French coast facing the English Channel—was traveling in a car next to the driver’s seat. He was tired of waiting for the Allied invasion to begin. Leaving on this particular dismal Sunday morning suited Rommel fi ne. The timing of the trip could not have been better for the weather was so bad that the Allies would not even think of a landing. Beside him, on the seat was a cardboard box containing a pair of handmade grey-shade shoes, size 5 (1/2), for his wife Lucie-Maria. There was a special and very human reason why he wanted to be with her on Tuesday, June 6. It was her birthday.

The writer calls the conveyor belt ‘merciless’ because it

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

The jobs do not get changed around from time to time; I started off on one of the nicer ones. I sat at a conveyor belt slipping a piece of cardboard under each cake as it came down the line. At first, it was difficult to keep up. An uneconomic movement, a fumble and four cakes have gone without cards. I got up to chase the four cakes, eight more appeared and for five minutes or so I had to work at twice the speed to work my way back to where I was sitting before. But it takes half a day or so, to learn how it’s done and soon it becomes quite automatic. The frenzy had quite worn off by the end to the first day and then there was only the monotony and the aching arms. Later I moved to another job on the line, as the girl who usually did it had left. I was not surprised. It was the nastiest job in the department. As the cake came out of a machine that had sliced it in three layers, two streams of artificial cream were poured over the layers. I had to stack the layers up again— a messy and very tiring job. The cakes are heavy and the cream is slippery. Anyone who has worked at all in a factory knows how deathly conveyor belt work is. At first, it is difficult to keep up, and when you are tired, it is quite merciless. After a while, when you have become fairly used to it, the fact that you cannot work faster, is also infuriating.

The author observes that the academic life of a university

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Grandchildren at the university  know–how time passes! I wonder if they— or anyone else—would be interested in what student life was like in the 30s? Well, here goes…. The academic part of a student’s life does not change all that through the generation, but the style of social life has changed. (For better or worse—who are we to say?) The ‘English Lit’, more properly, Edinburgh University English literature society, met on Tuesday evenings in the non Soc Hall, which is roundabout where the student shop is now. It was called the Non Soc hall because the meetings there were of Non-Associated Societies being high-and-mighty affairs with a long history, such as the Dialectic, Philomathic and Diagnostic, which, in those days, certainly did not admit women.

The English Literature Society was considered to be a Non-Associated Society because

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Grandchildren at the university  know–how time passes! I wonder if they— or anyone else—would be interested in what student life was like in the 30s? Well, here goes…. The academic part of a student’s life does not change all that through the generation, but the style of social life has changed. (For better or worse—who are we to say?) The ‘English Lit’, more properly, Edinburgh University English literature society, met on Tuesday evenings in the non Soc Hall, which is roundabout where the student shop is now. It was called the Non Soc hall because the meetings there were of Non-Associated Societies being high-and-mighty affairs with a long history, such as the Dialectic, Philomathic and Diagnostic, which, in those days, certainly did not admit women.

Martin Luther’s army

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Martin Luther King’s active career extended from 1957 to 1968. During this brief career, he led numerous protest demonstrations in the South as well as in the North of the USA. He challenged the moral complacency of America and fought for the rights of the Negroes, he hated the eye-for-an-eye method like Gandhiji and fought with the weapon of non-violence, a weapon, said King, that ‘cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals’. In addition, he raised a vast army. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination. It was an army whose allegiance was to God and whose strategic intelligence were the eloquently simple dictates of conscience. His creed of non-violence was criticized and challenged by ‘Black Power’ militants who would not renounce the use of violence to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, his faith in non-violence never wavered.

The contents of the cardboard box had for Rommel

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-chief of the German Army Group B—guarding the occupied French coast facing the English Channel—was traveling in a car next to the driver’s seat. He was tired of waiting for the Allied invasion to begin. Leaving on this particular dismal Sunday morning suited Rommel fi ne. The timing of the trip could not have been better for the weather was so bad that the Allies would not even think of a landing. Beside him, on the seat was a cardboard box containing a pair of handmade grey-shade shoes, size 5 (1/2), for his wife Lucie-Maria. There was a special and very human reason why he wanted to be with her on Tuesday, June 6. It was her birthday.

Rommel was

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-chief of the German Army Group B—guarding the occupied French coast facing the English Channel—was traveling in a car next to the driver’s seat. He was tired of waiting for the Allied invasion to begin. Leaving on this particular dismal Sunday morning suited Rommel fi ne. The timing of the trip could not have been better for the weather was so bad that the Allies would not even think of a landing. Beside him, on the seat was a cardboard box containing a pair of handmade grey-shade shoes, size 5 (1/2), for his wife Lucie-Maria. There was a special and very human reason why he wanted to be with her on Tuesday, June 6. It was her birthday.

When the writer was moved to another job she wasn’t surprised to find that

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

The jobs do not get changed around from time to time; I started off on one of the nicer ones. I sat at a conveyor belt slipping a piece of cardboard under each cake as it came down the line. At first, it was difficult to keep up. An uneconomic movement, a fumble and four cakes have gone without cards. I got up to chase the four cakes, eight more appeared and for five minutes or so I had to work at twice the speed to work my way back to where I was sitting before. But it takes half a day or so, to learn how it’s done and soon it becomes quite automatic. The frenzy had quite worn off by the end to the first day and then there was only the monotony and the aching arms. Later I moved to another job on the line, as the girl who usually did it had left. I was not surprised. It was the nastiest job in the department. As the cake came out of a machine that had sliced it in three layers, two streams of artificial cream were poured over the layers. I had to stack the layers up again— a messy and very tiring job. The cakes are heavy and the cream is slippery. Anyone who has worked at all in a factory knows how deathly conveyor belt work is. At first, it is difficult to keep up, and when you are tired, it is quite merciless. After a while, when you have become fairly used to it, the fact that you cannot work faster, is also infuriating.

When the author was a student at Edinburgh, English literature society used to meet

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Grandchildren at the university  know–how time passes! I wonder if they— or anyone else—would be interested in what student life was like in the 30s? Well, here goes…. The academic part of a student’s life does not change all that through the generation, but the style of social life has changed. (For better or worse—who are we to say?) The ‘English Lit’, more properly, Edinburgh University English literature society, met on Tuesday evenings in the non Soc Hall, which is roundabout where the student shop is now. It was called the Non Soc hall because the meetings there were of Non-Associated Societies being high-and-mighty affairs with a long history, such as the Dialectic, Philomathic and Diagnostic, which, in those days, certainly did not admit women.

According to Sir Mohan Lal, a well-bred person would

Directions: Read the folowing passage and answr the question.

The arrival of the train did not disturb Sir Mohan Lal’s sang-froid. He continued to sip his scotch and ordered the bearer to tell him when he had moved the luggage to a first class compartment. Excitement, bustle, and hurry were exhibitions of bad breeding, and Sir Mohan was eminently well bred. He wanted everything ‘ticket boo’ and orderly. In his five years abroad, Sir Mohan acquired the manners and attitudes of the upper classes. He rarely spoke Hindustani. When he did, it was like an Englishman’s—only the very necessary words and properly anglicized. But he fancied his English, finished and refined at no less a place than the University of Oxford. He was fond of conversation and like a cultured Englishman he could talk on almost any subject—books, politics, and people. How frequently had he heard English people say that he spoke like an Englishman?

Rommel was keen to be with his wife on 6th June because it was

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-chief of the German Army Group B—guarding the occupied French coast facing the English Channel—was traveling in a car next to the driver’s seat. He was tired of waiting for the Allied invasion to begin. Leaving on this particular dismal Sunday morning suited Rommel fi ne. The timing of the trip could not have been better for the weather was so bad that the Allies would not even think of a landing. Beside him, on the seat was a cardboard box containing a pair of handmade grey-shade shoes, size 5 (1/2), for his wife Lucie-Maria. There was a special and very human reason why he wanted to be with her on Tuesday, June 6. It was her birthday.

The writer found it a messy job to

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

The jobs do not get changed around from time to time; I started off on one of the nicer ones. I sat at a conveyor belt slipping a piece of cardboard under each cake as it came down the line. At first, it was difficult to keep up. An uneconomic movement, a fumble and four cakes have gone without cards. I got up to chase the four cakes, eight more appeared and for five minutes or so I had to work at twice the speed to work my way back to where I was sitting before. But it takes half a day or so, to learn how it’s done and soon it becomes quite automatic. The frenzy had quite worn off by the end to the first day and then there was only the monotony and the aching arms. Later I moved to another job on the line, as the girl who usually did it had left. I was not surprised. It was the nastiest job in the department. As the cake came out of a machine that had sliced it in three layers, two streams of artificial cream were poured over the layers. I had to stack the layers up again— a messy and very tiring job. The cakes are heavy and the cream is slippery. Anyone who has worked at all in a factory knows how deathly conveyor belt work is. At first, it is difficult to keep up, and when you are tired, it is quite merciless. After a while, when you have become fairly used to it, the fact that you cannot work faster, is also infuriating.

The similarity between Martin Luther King and Gandhiji was that both

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Martin Luther King’s active career extended from 1957 to 1968. During this brief career, he led numerous protest demonstrations in the South as well as in the North of the USA. He challenged the moral complacency of America and fought for the rights of the Negroes, he hated the eye-for-an-eye method like Gandhiji and fought with the weapon of non-violence, a weapon, said King, that ‘cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals’. In addition, he raised a vast army. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination. It was an army whose allegiance was to God and whose strategic intelligence were the eloquently simple dictates of conscience. His creed of non-violence was criticized and challenged by ‘Black Power’ militants who would not renounce the use of violence to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, his faith in non-violence never wavered.

The phrase ‘move but not maul’ refers to an army that would

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Martin Luther King’s active career extended from 1957 to 1968. During this brief career, he led numerous protest demonstrations in the South as well as in the North of the USA. He challenged the moral complacency of America and fought for the rights of the Negroes, he hated the eye-for-an-eye method like Gandhiji and fought with the weapon of non-violence, a weapon, said King, that ‘cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals’. In addition, he raised a vast army. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination. It was an army whose allegiance was to God and whose strategic intelligence were the eloquently simple dictates of conscience. His creed of non-violence was criticized and challenged by ‘Black Power’ militants who would not renounce the use of violence to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, his faith in non-violence never wavered.

Martin Luther King appealed to the conscience of white Americans by

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Martin Luther King’s active career extended from 1957 to 1968. During this brief career, he led numerous protest demonstrations in the South as well as in the North of the USA. He challenged the moral complacency of America and fought for the rights of the Negroes, he hated the eye-for-an-eye method like Gandhiji and fought with the weapon of non-violence, a weapon, said King, that ‘cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals’. In addition, he raised a vast army. It was an army that would move but not maul. It was an army to storm bastions of hatred, to lay siege to the fortress of segregation, to surround symbols of discrimination. It was an army whose allegiance was to God and whose strategic intelligence were the eloquently simple dictates of conscience. His creed of non-violence was criticized and challenged by ‘Black Power’ militants who would not renounce the use of violence to achieve their goals. Nevertheless, his faith in non-violence never wavered.

Sir Mohan Lal is portrayed as

Directions: Read the folowing passage and answr the question.

The arrival of the train did not disturb Sir Mohan Lal’s sang-froid. He continued to sip his scotch and ordered the bearer to tell him when he had moved the luggage to a first class compartment. Excitement, bustle, and hurry were exhibitions of bad breeding, and Sir Mohan was eminently well bred. He wanted everything ‘ticket boo’ and orderly. In his five years abroad, Sir Mohan acquired the manners and attitudes of the upper classes. He rarely spoke Hindustani. When he did, it was like an Englishman’s—only the very necessary words and properly anglicized. But he fancied his English, finished and refined at no less a place than the University of Oxford. He was fond of conversation and like a cultured Englishman he could talk on almost any subject—books, politics, and people. How frequently had he heard English people say that he spoke like an Englishman?

Rommel considered June 4, as a good time to leave because

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, Commander-in-chief of the German Army Group B—guarding the occupied French coast facing the English Channel—was traveling in a car next to the driver’s seat. He was tired of waiting for the Allied invasion to begin. Leaving on this particular dismal Sunday morning suited Rommel fi ne. The timing of the trip could not have been better for the weather was so bad that the Allies would not even think of a landing. Beside him, on the seat was a cardboard box containing a pair of handmade grey-shade shoes, size 5 (1/2), for his wife Lucie-Maria. There was a special and very human reason why he wanted to be with her on Tuesday, June 6. It was her birthday.

According to the passage, a cultured Englishman is able to talk effortlessly on

Directions: Read the folowing passage and answr the question.

The arrival of the train did not disturb Sir Mohan Lal’s sang-froid. He continued to sip his scotch and ordered the bearer to tell him when he had moved the luggage to a first class compartment. Excitement, bustle, and hurry were exhibitions of bad breeding, and Sir Mohan was eminently well bred. He wanted everything ‘ticket boo’ and orderly. In his five years abroad, Sir Mohan acquired the manners and attitudes of the upper classes. He rarely spoke Hindustani. When he did, it was like an Englishman’s—only the very necessary words and properly anglicized. But he fancied his English, finished and refined at no less a place than the University of Oxford. He was fond of conversation and like a cultured Englishman he could talk on almost any subject—books, politics, and people. How frequently had he heard English people say that he spoke like an Englishman?

When Sir Mohan Lal spoke Hindustani, it was

Directions: Read the folowing passage and answr the question.

The arrival of the train did not disturb Sir Mohan Lal’s sang-froid. He continued to sip his scotch and ordered the bearer to tell him when he had moved the luggage to a first class compartment. Excitement, bustle, and hurry were exhibitions of bad breeding, and Sir Mohan was eminently well bred. He wanted everything ‘ticket boo’ and orderly. In his five years abroad, Sir Mohan acquired the manners and attitudes of the upper classes. He rarely spoke Hindustani. When he did, it was like an Englishman’s—only the very necessary words and properly anglicized. But he fancied his English, finished and refined at no less a place than the University of Oxford. He was fond of conversation and like a cultured Englishman he could talk on almost any subject—books, politics, and people. How frequently had he heard English people say that he spoke like an Englishman?