Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: C

In the second stanza the poet is observing his father digging potatoes.

The second stanza (the indented lines, from 'My father, digging, I look down') has the speaker looking down at his father, whose back bends low 'among the flowerbeds' and who comes 'up twenty years away / Stooping in rhythm through potato drills'. He is watching one man, his father, digging.

'Potato growers in the countryside' and 'farmers in the fields' make it a group of people in a field, but the poem has one man, seen from a window ('Under my window'). 'A gardener tending flower beds' picks up the word flowerbeds, but the flowerbeds are only where he is bending; what he is doing is digging potato drills.

Answer: D

The speaker is referring to the potatoes.

The sentence runs 'To scatter new potatoes that we picked, / Loving their cool hardness in our hands'. 'Their' points back to 'new potatoes', and cool hardness is how a freshly dug potato feels to the hand.

The potato drills are the furrows, not something held in hands. The gun is only the simile for the pen in line 2, and the spade handle is not described as cool or hard here. The potatoes are the only noun in the line that 'their' can refer to.

Answer: D

The answer is (A) and (B) are correct, (C) is incorrect.

(A): the passage says 'It is located at an altitude of 3696 feet', so it is correct. (B): 'also known as "Queen of Chota Nagpur"', so it is correct as well.

(C) says Netarhat has verdant banyan forests. The passage speaks of 'verdant forests' and 'gorgeous pine trees' and 'pine forests', never banyan, so (C) adds a detail that is not in the passage and is incorrect. Hence the options that include (C) as correct cannot be right.

Answer: A

'Brings solace' implies that it brings peace and comfort.

'Solace' means comfort or consolation in a time of distress or strain. A place that brings solace calms and soothes its visitors.

The other options describe different effects, breathlessness, repeated visits and curiosity, none of which is the meaning of solace.

A related word, 'console', comes from the same root, and both describe easing someone's sorrow or anxiety.

Answer: B

The hill station gives peace and calm because visitors can be away from hectic city life.

Paragraph 1 says the quaint hill station 'brings solace and gives visitors much-deserved refuge from the hustle and bustle of cities'. A refuge from the bustle of cities is the same as being away from hectic city life.

Paragliding from hill tops, fishing in the lake and train rides are never mentioned in the passage. The lake is described only for boating and picnics, and no railway or paragliding appears, so those options invent activities.

Answer: A

The Sunrise Point offers a breathtaking view of the sunrise.

Paragraph 3: 'the Sunrise Point which offers a spectacular view of the sunrising that resembles an oil painting'. The thing viewed is the sunrise; the oil painting is only a comparison for how it looks, so (B) is wrong.

Option (D), 'both sunrise and lush vegetation', is the tempting one, because the next sentence says the sun's rays emerge from 'valleys covered in lush vegetation'. That sentence describes the setting of the sunrise, not a second view that the Point is said to offer, and the question follows the first sentence. So the sunrise alone is the keyed answer, with option (D) a plausible over-reading.

Answer: B

The underlined words are a noun, adjective.

'Sunrises' is the subject of the sentence, modified by the adjective 'Fabulous', so it is a noun. 'Awestruck' describes the visitors, completing the verb 'leave' (leave them awestruck), so it is an adjective.

'Sunrises' is not a verb here, and 'awestruck' describes a noun, not an action, so it is not an adverb.

Answer: B

The view that is not found in Netarhat is refugee camps.

The passage describes sunrises and sunsets, forests and tall pine trees, lakes and valleys: 'fabulous sunrises and stunning sunsets', the Sunrise Point, and 'cluster of tall trees'. It nowhere mentions any camp, let alone refugee camps, which would also not fit a tourist retreat described as a perfect getaway in the heart of nature.

'Scintillating views of sunrises', 'beautiful sunrises and sunsets' and 'clusters of tall pine trees' are all scenes the passage itself describes, so each of them is found in Netarhat.

Answer: A

'Hustle and bustle of cities' implies busy and noisy cities.

The phrase describes the crowded, noisy, hurried activity of city life, people and traffic always on the move.

It has nothing to do with beauty, sights or scenes, and 'peace and calm' is its opposite, the very thing people leave the cities to find.

Writers use the phrase to contrast the restless pace of cities with the quiet of a place like a hill station.

Answer: C

Both underlined words are adjectives.

'Wild' and 'dangerous' follow the linking verb 'was' and describe the subject 'He', so they are predicative adjectives. 'A little' modifies 'dangerous', telling us to what degree.

Neither word modifies a verb, so neither is an adverb, and neither names a person, place or thing, so neither is a noun.