English Language

Reading Comprehension

7,656 Questions
All Explicit Fact Retrieval 2427 Inference and Logical Deduction 1147 Contextual Vocabulary Meaning 845 Main Idea and Title Selection 781 Cause and Effect Extraction 699 Synonym and Antonym Identification 692 Sentence Structure and Discourse Function 336 Author Tone and Perspective 194 Interpretation of Figurative Language 190 Passage Style and Organization 173 Pronoun Referent Identification 49

Reading Comprehension Questions

Multiple choice social science poverty : challenge facing india programmes for poverty eradication poverty as a challenge poverty: an economic challenge for india public health and the government constraints in economic development of rajasthan

'Poverty ismore restrictive and limiting than anything else. If poverty and low standards continue then democracy, for all its fine institutions and ideals; ceases to be a liberating force. It must therefore aim continuously at the eradication of poverty and its companion unemployment. In other words, political democracy is not enough. It must develop into economic democracy also'. 

Which of the following is not implied by the above passage? 

  1. Democracy has ceased to be a liberating force.

  2. Democracy should aim to eliminate poverty.

  3. Poverty and unemployment go hand in hand.

  4. Political democracy should develop into economic democracy.
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

Option (a) states that 'democracy has ceased to be a liberating force'. Thus , option (a) fails to convey the meaning implied in the argument and is incorrect.

Multiple choice business organisation and correspondence industrial pollution and degradation of environment sources of pollution environmental conservation environment and conservation

Read the passage and answer the following questions:
Six pairs of bald vulture were released into the wild in Germany. Four of the pairs of birds successfully nested and raised young. Two of the pairs nested near an industrial complex that released waste products (PCBs) into a nearby lake. These birds laid eggs, but the embryos failed to develop.
Which of the following is the least likely reason for the failure of the embryos to develop?

  1. Mutations in the embryos halted their development.

  2. The adult birds failed to exhibit proper nesting behavior and did not care for the eggs.

  3. The contaminated lake water that the birds consumed affected the development of their young.

  4. The sperm of the males were affected by the PCBs in such a way that they were unable to fertilize the eggs.

  5. Germany is not a good location for bald eagles to mate and reproduce.
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
E Correct answer
Explanation

The release of waste products into the nearby lake caused various problems which led to the failure of the embryo development. This can happen because of the following reasons:

  • The chemicals released from the factory caused some mutations in the embryos which led to the failure in development.
  • The birds might not have taken care of the eggs and they might have failed to exhibit proper nesting behavior.
  • The chemicals in the contaminated lake water might have affected the development of the birds.
  • The chemicals from the lake might have affected the sperms of the males and so they were unable to fertilize the eggs. Thus, the correct answer is option E.

Multiple choice zoology our environment - our concern biomagnification the effects of human activities on ecosystems bioaccumulation and biomagnification

Read the passage and answer the following questions:
Six pairs of bald vulture were released into the wild in Germany. Four of the pairs of birds successfully nested and raised young. Two of the pairs nested near an industrial complex that released waste products (PCBs) into a nearby lake. These birds laid eggs, but the embryos failed to develop.The eggshells of the embryos that failed to develop were tested and were found to contain more PCBs than the nearby plants and insects. This is due to

  1. Biomagnification

  2. Increased levels of PCBs in the lake

  3. The resistance of the insects to PCBs

  4. Failure of the plants to take up PCBs

  5. Absorption of PCBs from the nesting site into the eggshell
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

Slow metabolism and excretion of PCB cause its accumulation in tissues of organisms (plants and insects of that area). Top carnivores exhibit more accumulation of PCBs when they feed on lower trophic levels; the process is called as biomagnification. Vultures are top carnivores and hence their eggshells exhibited the higher amount of PCB due to the process of biomagnification. Thus, the correct answer is option A.

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

Identify the literary device in the following passage:

He had meant the best in the world, and been treated like a dog, like a
very dog. She would be sorry someday, maybe when it was too late. Ah, if
he could only die TEMPORARILY!

  1. Alliteration

  2. Pathos

  3. Parable

  4. Satire
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

The given lines appeal to the emotions of the reader and evoke sympathy. This is usually done by employing pathos. So, the correct answer is option B.

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

Identify the literary device used in the following passage:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darlingmy darlingmy life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

  1. Exaggeration

  2. Metaphor

  3. Pathos

  4. Synecdoche
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

The given lines clearly employ pathos as the lines appeal to the emotions of the reader and evoke sorrow and pity for the poet. The correct answer is option C.

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

Identify the literary style of the following passage:

Sing of the well-quivered, silver-bowed Delian son of Zeus
with an eager heart and a fair sounding tongue. 
Put in your hand the beautiful olive branch of a suppliant
and the glorious bough, young men of Athens. 
And may a faultless hymn sing of the son of Leto
Who once begot the helper against diseases and human misery,
Asclepios, an eager young man.
On the peaks of Pelion a centaur taught him the craft
and wisdom that ward off pains for mortals.
He is the child of Coronis, gentle to men, a most revered deity.

  1. Ode

  2. Paean

  3. Pastoral

  4. Sonnet
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

Option B is correct because a paean is a literary work written to praise or pay tribute to someone. It is a way of praising someone's work or life in a poetic manner. Here, the poet describes the goodness of Asclepios and tries to praise him and his life.
Option A is incorrect; this stanza is not an ode. Odes are written to be sung. They are lyrical and have lots of rhyming syllables, which is not true of the given text.
Option C is incorrect. This stanza is not a pastoral. A pastoral is the defining of one's land, country or the people from a particular region in a poetic manner.
Option D is incorrect. This stanza is not a sonnet. Sonnets are usually composed of 14 lines and are written with rhyming words most of the time. 

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

Identify the genre of the following passage:

A jackdaw saw that the doves were well-fed, so she painted herself white and flew into the dove-cot. The doves thought at first that she was a dove like them, and let her in. But the jackdaw forgot herself and croaked in jackdaw fashion. Then the doves began to pick at her and drove her away. The jackdaw flew back to her friends but the jackdaws were frightened of her, seeing her white, and themselves drove her away.

  1. Fable

  2. Burlesque

  3. Pastoral

  4. Georgic
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

A fable is a simple tale that attributes human-like qualities to animals and presents a moral lesson. The given passage has all these elements. So, the passage is a fable. The correct option is A.

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

Identify the genre of the following passage:

In a field one summers day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its hearts content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.
"Why not come and chat with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?"
"I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the Ant, "and recommend you to do the same."
"Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; "we have got plenty of
food at present." But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil.
   When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food, and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew: "it is best to prepare for the days of necessity."

  1. Satire

  2. Fable

  3. Epigram

  4. Hyperbole
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

A fable is a simple tale that attributes human-like qualities to animals and presents a moral lesson. The given passage has all these elements. So, the passage is a fable. The correct answer is option B.

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

Identify the literary style of the following passage:

   Come ye to this twin-peaked slope of Parnassus with distant views, [where dancers are welcome], and [lead me in my songs], Pierian Goddesses who dwell on the snow-swept crags of Helicon. Sing in honour of Pythian Phoebus, golden-haired, skilled archer and musician, whom blessed Leto bore beside the celebrated marsh, grasping with her hands a sturdy branch of the grey-green olive tree in her time of travail.And the whole vault of heaven rejoiced, [cloudless and bright] and the air subdued to calmness the swift rushing of winds, and the [mighty] deep-thunderous swell of Nereus subsided, and great Oceanus who surrounds and embraces the earth with his waters. 

   Then, leaving the island where Mount Cynthus stands, the god crossed over to the famed land of Attica where the first crops were grown, landing on the earth-peaked headland of the Tritonian goddess.
   And the Libyan aulos, pouring forth a honey-sweet sound, sings forth, mingling its delightful voice with the trilling melodies [of the cithara]; and Echo, who lives among the rocks, cries forth.

  1. Sonnet

  2. Epigram

  3. Paean

  4. Ode
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

The passage is definitely not a sonnet (a fourteen line poem); it is not an ode (a three part lyrical poem); its also not an epigraph (a short quotation at the beginning of a book or a chapter). The only option left is Paean- a song of praise or triumph and "Sing in honour of Pythian Phoebus, golden-haired, skilled archer and musician, whom blessed Leto bore beside the celebrated marsh, ..." supports the claim that the passage is a Paean. Option C is the answer.

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

Identify the genre that the following passage belongs to:

Meliboeus.
You, Tityrus, 'neath a broad beech-canopy
Reclining, on the slender oat rehearse
Your silvan ditties: I from my sweet fields,
And home's familiar bounds, even now depart.
Exiled from home am I; while, Tityrus, you
Sit careless in the shade, and, at your call,
"Fair Amaryllis" bid the woods resound.

Tityrus.
O Meliboeus, 'twas a god vouchsafed
This ease to us, for him a god will I
Deem ever, and from my folds a tender lamb
Oft with its life-blood shall his altar stain.
His gift it is that, as your eyes may see,
My kine may roam at large,

  1. Satire

  2. Allegory

  3. Pastoral

  4. Sonnet
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

Meliboeus and Tityrus present a idealized version of the country life as evidenced by lines and phrases like "my sweet fields". It is evident from the passage that Meliboeus is exiled from the fields that he used to cultivate and he is asking Tityrus how he alluded exile and is free to cultivate his fields.  This classifies the passage as pastoral literature. So, the answer is option C.

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

Identify the literary device used in the following passage:

The Farmer

A farmer, bent on doubling the profits from his land,
Proceeded to set his soil a two-harvest demand.
Too intent thus on profit, harm himself he must needs:
Instead of corn, he now reaps corn cockle and weeds.

  1. Metonymy

  2. Parable

  3. Satire

  4. Tragedy
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

The Farmer is a short , simple story that preaches a moral- greed is never good. This story being a  short, simple tale that teaches a moral lesson makes it a Parable. So, option B is the answer.

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

Identify the genre to which the following passage belongs:

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the Rocks,
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow Rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

  1. Satire

  2. Allegory

  3. Pastoral

  4. Comedy
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

"...we will all the pleasures prove, 
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, 
Woods, or steepy mountain yields." - these lines from the given poem idealize the countryside and so the poem qualifies as pastoral. The given poem is definitely not satiric or allegoric (a poem with an implied moral lesson) and it also does not belong to the genre of comedy. So, the answer is option C. 

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english
Identify the literary device used in the following passage:

   This was early in March. During the next three months, there was much secret activity. Majors speech had given to the more intelligent animals on the farm a completely new outlook on life. They did not know when the Rebellion predicted by Major would take place, they had no reason for thinking that it would be within their own lifetime, but they saw clearly that it was their duty to prepare for it. The work of teaching and organizing the others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally recognized as being the cleverest of the animals.  
   Pre-eminent among the pigs were two young boars named Snowball and  Napoleon, whom Mr. Jones was breeding up for sale.... Several nights a week, after Mr. Jones was asleep, they held secret meetings in the barn and expounded the principles of Animalism to the others.

  1. Simile

  2. Allusion

  3. Allegory

  4. Satire
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

The passage given belongs to the genre of allegory. Allegory generally refers to a story that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning which usually turns out to be  either moral or political. This passage is allegoric as it has a moral lesson: animalism. The principle of Animalism is that all animals are friends. So, option C is the answer.

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

Identify the literary device used in the following passage:

Jesus said: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.

  1. Synecdoche

  2. Irony

  3. Parable

  4. Satire
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

A Parable is a short, simple tale that is used to teach a moral or spiritual lesson - as done by Jesus in the Gospels. The given passage is a parable. So, option  C is the answer.

Multiple choice techniques of style reading comprehension english

They marched until dusk, then dug their holes, and that night Kiowa kept explaining how you had to be there, how fast it was, how the poor guy just dropped like so much concrete. Boom-down, he said. Like cement.

The passage above contains an instance of

  1. hyperbole

  2. synecdoche

  3. indirect dialogue

  4. fable
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

The passage uses the statement "Bow-down, he said." which is an example of indirect dialogue. So, the answer to the question asked is option C.