English Reading Comprehension

What conclusion can be drawn from scenario 1?

Directions: Read the following two scenarios and answer the question that follows:

Scenario – 1
Columbus was a resident of Geneva. He was the son of a weaver. At a very tender age, he became a sailor. At the age of twenty seven, he reached Portugal. There he was married to a rich lady. Now Columbus decided to go on a voyage but he could not get any help from any state. Without help, his task was difficult. He kept on making efforts for eight years. At last, the king of Spain agreed to provide all the help.

Scenario – 2
An old farmer was on his death bed, but he was very worried. His sons were quarrelsome and divided. So, he called his sons and gave them a bundle of sticks. He asked them to try to break it. Every one of them tried, but failed. At last, the farmer asked them to untie the bundle and break the sticks one by one. Not to speak of the oldest son, now even the youngest one broke the sticks. Now the father said, “Sons, union is strength and disunion is disaster."

Which word in the third paragraph is a synonym for “disease”?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

The French ministers were not at first willing to make a treaty of alliance, but under Franklin's influence they lent money to the struggling colonies. Congress sought to finance the war by the issue of paper currency and by borrowing rather than by taxation, and sent bill after bill to Franklin, who somehow managed to meet them by putting his pride in his pocket, and applying again and again to the French Government. He fitted out privateers and negotiated with the British concerning prisoners. At length, he won from France recognition of the United States and then the Treaty of Alliance.

Not until two years after the Peace of 1783 would Congress permit the veteran to come home. And when he did return in 1785 his people would not allow him to rest. At once he was elected President of the Council of Pennsylvania and twice re-elected in spite of his protests. He was sent to the Convention of 1787 which framed the Constitution of the United States. There he spoke seldom but always to the point, and the Constitution is the better for his suggestions. With pride he axed his signature to that great instrument, as he had previously signed the Albany Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, and the Treaty of Paris.
Benjamin Franklin's work was done. He was now an old man of eighty-two summers and his feeble body was racked by a painful malady. Yet, he kept his face towards the morning. About a hundred of his letters, written after this time, have been preserved. These letters show no retrospection, no looking backward. They never mention "the good old times." As long as he lived, Franklin looked forward. His interest in the mechanical arts and in scientific progress seems never to have abated.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

At the sight of the author’s bloody wound, his friends

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Our home stood behind the railroad tracks. Its skimpy yard was paved with black cinders. The only touch of green we could see was far away, beyond the track, over where the white folks lived. However, cinders were fine weapons. All you had to do was crouch behind the brick pillars of a house with your hands full of gritty ammunition. And the first woolly black head you saw from behind another row of pillars was your target. It was fun.
One day the gang to which I belonged, found itself engaged in a war with the white boys who lived beyond the tracks. As usual, we laid down our cinder barrage thinking this would wipe the white boys out. But they replied with a steady bombardment of broken bottles. We retreated. During the retreat, a broken milk bottle caught me behind the ear,  opening a deep gash. The sight of blood pouring over my face completely demoralised our ranks. My fellow combatants left me standing paralyzed in the centre of the yard and scurried for their houses. A kind neighbour saw me and rushed me to a doctor.

The Pundit was almost never upset as he

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Ordinarily, nothing upset the equilibrium of the Pundit. But the loss of the necklace, which his wife had borrowed from a neighbour, and the fact that he had to replace it worried him. He spent all his time in devising ways and means to repay the debt. Six months later, he gave his wife a gold necklace. It was exactly what she had yearned for. “There is no need to repay it’, she said. The Pundit was surprised. She explained, ‘the necklace was not stolen. That was the only way I could think of making you get me one’.

The Pundit’s wife had told him a lie in order to

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Ordinarily, nothing upset the equilibrium of the Pundit. But the loss of the necklace, which his wife had borrowed from a neighbour, and the fact that he had to replace it worried him. He spent all his time in devising ways and means to repay the debt. Six months later, he gave his wife a gold necklace. It was exactly what she had yearned for. “There is no need to repay it’, she said. The Pundit was surprised. She explained, ‘the necklace was not stolen. That was the only way I could think of making you get me one’.

He was spoilt, mostly because he was

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

Pablo Picasso showed his truly exceptional talent from a very young age. His first word was lapis (Spanish for pencil) and he learnt to draw, before he could talk. He was the only son in the family and he was good looking, so he was thoroughly spoilt. He hated school and often refused to go unless his doting parents allowed him to take one of his father’s pet pigeons with him.
Apart from pigeons, his great love was art, and when in 1891 his father, who was an amateur artist, got a job as a drawing teacher at a college, Pablo went with him to the college. He often watched his father paint and sometimes was allowed to help. One evening his father was painting a picture of their pigeons when he had to leave the room. He returned to find that Pablo had completed the picture, and it was so amazingly beautiful and lifelike, that that he gave his son his own palette and brushes and never painted again. Pablo was just 13.

The reason why the Pundit’s wife refused to return the necklace was that

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Ordinarily, nothing upset the equilibrium of the Pundit. But the loss of the necklace, which his wife had borrowed from a neighbour, and the fact that he had to replace it worried him. He spent all his time in devising ways and means to repay the debt. Six months later, he gave his wife a gold necklace. It was exactly what she had yearned for. “There is no need to repay it’, she said. The Pundit was surprised. She explained, ‘the necklace was not stolen. That was the only way I could think of making you get me one’.

When his father painted in the college, Pablo

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

Pablo Picasso showed his truly exceptional talent from a very young age. His first word was lapis (Spanish for pencil) and he learnt to draw, before he could talk. He was the only son in the family and he was good looking, so he was thoroughly spoilt. He hated school and often refused to go unless his doting parents allowed him to take one of his father’s pet pigeons with him.
Apart from pigeons, his great love was art, and when in 1891 his father, who was an amateur artist, got a job as a drawing teacher at a college, Pablo went with him to the college. He often watched his father paint and sometimes was allowed to help. One evening his father was painting a picture of their pigeons when he had to leave the room. He returned to find that Pablo had completed the picture, and it was so amazingly beautiful and lifelike, that that he gave his son his own palette and brushes and never painted again. Pablo was just 13.

As a boy Pablo Picasso was

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

Pablo Picasso showed his truly exceptional talent from a very young age. His first word was lapis (Spanish for pencil) and he learnt to draw, before he could talk. He was the only son in the family and he was good looking, so he was thoroughly spoilt. He hated school and often refused to go unless his doting parents allowed him to take one of his father’s pet pigeons with him.
Apart from pigeons, his great love was art, and when in 1891 his father, who was an amateur artist, got a job as a drawing teacher at a college, Pablo went with him to the college. He often watched his father paint and sometimes was allowed to help. One evening his father was painting a picture of their pigeons when he had to leave the room. He returned to find that Pablo had completed the picture, and it was so amazingly beautiful and lifelike, that that he gave his son his own palette and brushes and never painted again. Pablo was just 13.

The author was hit by a broken bottle

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.

Our home stood behind the railroad tracks. Its skimpy yard was paved with black cinders. The only touch of green we could see was far away, beyond the track, over where the white folks lived. However, cinders were fine weapons. All you had to do was crouch behind the brick pillars of a house with your hands full of gritty ammunition. And the first woolly black head you saw from behind another row of pillars was your target. It was fun.
One day the gang to which I belonged, found itself engaged in a war with the white boys who lived beyond the tracks. As usual, we laid down our cinder barrage thinking this would wipe the white boys out. But they replied with a steady bombardment of broken bottles. We retreated. During the retreat, a broken milk bottle caught me behind the ear,  opening a deep gash. The sight of blood pouring over my face completely demoralised our ranks. My fellow combatants left me standing paralyzed in the centre of the yard and scurried for their houses. A kind neighbour saw me and rushed me to a doctor.