Reading Comprehension

How do the people in urban areas express their surplus energy?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the following question.

In the modern world, sports have assumed a very horrible shape and form. They play a very wild, savage and dangerous role. There is cut-throat competition in almost all the games and sports played today. Every player plays to win. Victory by hook or crook is the be-all and end-all of every sport. Some of the rural sports give vent to animal passions and involve a lot of cruelty to animals. Rural folk enjoy the pleasure of fishing, cock fighting, bear-baiting and rat-hunting. In the Middle ages, games were played in a very brutal and cruel manner. In a big town, only group activities provide an outlet to a person's surplus energy and animal passions. Organized games flourish in urban areas. Modern sporting contests and competitions provide sadistic pleasure by causing pain to others. To a great extent, George Orwell is right when he relates animal like psyche with the modern, competitive sports. Players turn into devils. They make every possible effort to hit, wound and maim the opponents. It is wrong to believe that international sporting competitions promote friendship and good will. On the other hand, they create hatred, bitterness, hostility and revenge. For a time, it seems that running, jumping and kicking a ball are the tests of national character. Brutal is the behavior of the players. Wild is the attitude of the spectators, and shocking is the behavior of the nations behind the spectators.

The existing atmosphere of scientific dogmatism can be corrected by ________________.

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question given after it.

What does the author feel about the “rational interpretations” of science?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question given after it.

According to the author science should be taught _____________.

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question given after it.

While teaching science in schools, which of the following options should be emphasised?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question given after it.

Science teaching will be most fruitful and purposeful when _______________.

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question given after it.

In which year were the 'Fundamental Articles' drawn up?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

Not until many a year after Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson conducted their followers to the Narragansett country was Rhode Island granted an agreement of inclusion (1663) by the crown. Not until long after the congregation of Thomas Hooker from Newtown paved the way into the Connecticut River Valley did the king of England give Connecticut a charter of its own (1662) and a place among the colonies. Half a century passed before the towns laid out beyond the Merrimac River by emigrants from Massachusetts were formed into the royal province of New Hampshire in 1679.
The towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield had long lived happily under their "Fundamental Orders" drawn up by themselves in 1639. Similarly, the settlers dwelt peacefully at New Haven under their "Fundamental Articles" drafted in the same year. The pioneers on the Connecticut shore had no difficulty in agreeing that "the Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men."

Why did the Admiral circumnavigate Africa?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions that follows.

Before telling how the ancients got to know that part of the world with which they finally became acquainted when the Roman Empire was at its greatest extent, it is as well to get some idea of the successive stages of their knowledge, leaving for the next chapter the story of how that knowledge was obtained. As in most branches of organised knowledge, it is to the Greeks that we owe our association with ancient views of this subject. In the early stages, they possibly learned something from the Phœnicians, who were the great traders and sailors of ancient times and who coasted along the Mediterranean, passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, and traded with the British Isles, which they visited for the tin found in Cornwall. It is even said that one of their admirals, at the command of Necho, King of Egypt, circumnavigated Africa, for Herodotus reports that on the homeward voyage, the sun set in the sea on the right hand. But the Phœnicians kept their geographical knowledge to themselves as a trade secret, and the Greeks learned, but little from them.

What gave England an immense advantage in the war?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

According to the passage, what is thought to be sunk beneath the ocean?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

It may be objected to this description, that the Egypt which it presents to the reader is not the Egypt of the maps. Undoubtedly, it is not. The maps give the name of Egypt to a broad rectangular space, which they mark out in the northeastern corner of Africa, bounded on two sides by the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and on the two others by two imaginary lines, which the map-makers kindly draw for us across the sands of the desert. But "this Egypt", as has been well observed, is a fiction of the geographers, as untrue to fact as the island Atlantis of Greek legend, or the Lyonnesse of medieval romance, both sunk beneath the ocean to explain their disappearance. The true Egypt of the old monuments, of the Hebrews, of the Greeks and Romans, of the Arabs, and of its own people in this day, is a mere fraction of this vast area of the maps, nothing more than the valley and plain watered by the Nile, for nearly seven hundred miles by the river's course from the Mediterranean southwards.

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

Bini Aru had used this secret many times, but not to cause evil or suffering to others. When he had wandered far from home and was hungry, he would say: "I want to become a cow — Pyrzqxgl!" In an instant, he would be a cow, and then he would eat grass and satisfy his hunger. All beasts and birds can talk in the Land of Oz, so when the cow was no longer hungry, it would say: "I want to be Bini Aru again: Pyrzqxgl!" and the magic word, properly pronounced, would instantly restore him to his proper form.

What was the special thing all beasts and birds were able to do in the Land of Oz?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

In the centre of the Emerald City of Oz, the capital city of Ozma's dominions, is a vast and beautiful garden, surrounded by a wall inlaid with shining emeralds, and in the centre of this garden stands Ozma's Royal Palace, the most splendid building ever constructed. From a hundred towers and domes floated the banners of Oz, which included the Ozmies, the Munchkins, the Gillikins, the Winkies and the Quadlings. The banner of the Munchkins is blue, that of the Winkies yellow; the Gillikin banner is purple, and the Quadling's banner is red.

What was there in the centre of the beautiful garden?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

I was sitting in the meadows one day, not long ago, at a place where there was a small brook. It was a hot day. The sky was very blue, and white clouds, like great swans, went floating over it to and fro. Just opposite me was a clump of green rushes, with dark velvety spikes, and among them one single tall, red cardinal flower, which was bending over the brook as if to see its own beautiful face in the water. But the cardinal did not seem to be vain.

Who was bending over the brook to see its own face?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

Aunt Izzie was a small woman, sharp-faced and thin, rather old-looking, and very neat and particular about everything. She meant to be kind to the children, but they puzzled her much because they were not a bit like her when she was a child. Aunt Izzie had been a gentle, tidy little thing, who loved to sit as Curly Locks did, sewing long seams in the parlour, and to have her head patted by older people, and be told that she was a good girl; whereas Katy tore her dress every day, hated sewing, and did not care a button about being called "good", while Clover and Elsie shied off like restless ponies when anyone tried to pat their heads. It was very perplexing to Aunt Izzie, and she found it hard to quite forgive the children for being so "unaccountable", and so little like the good boys and girls in Sunday-school memoirs, who were the young people she liked best, and understood most about.

Which word in the passage means the same as 'very puzzling'?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

It is that teachers have learned from bitter experience how little history their pupils retain as they pass along the regular route. No teacher of history will deny this. Still, it is a standing challenge to existing methods of historical instruction. If the study of history cannot be made truly progressive like the study of mathematics, science, and languages, then the historians assume a grave responsibility in adding their subject to the already overloaded curriculum. If the successive historical texts are only enlarged editions of the first text — more facts, more dates, more words — then history deserves most of the sharp criticism which it is receiving from teachers of science, civics, and economics.

According to the passage, what does the history subject receive from the teachers of other subjects?