Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The symptom of heat exhaustion is excessive sweating.

The passage lists clammy skin, fatigue, nausea, dizziness, profuse perspiration and sometimes fainting for heat exhaustion. Profuse perspiration is the same thing as excessive sweating.

A rapid pulse, hot and dry skin and a high body temperature are given as characteristics of heat stroke. Hot, dry skin is in fact the opposite of the sweating seen in heat exhaustion. Fever is not among the symptoms listed for exhaustion in the passage.

Answer: A

Heat stroke is more serious because its victims do not sweat.

The passage names 'a blocked sweating mechanism' and 'hot and dry skin' among the features of heat stroke. Sweating is how the body gets rid of excess heat, so when it stops the temperature keeps rising, which makes the condition life-threatening.

The passage does not say that the victims have no salt in their bodies or cannot take in water, and muscle cramps are not mentioned, so options B, C and D have no support in the text.

Answer: B

The person most likely needs to be given more salt water.

Nausea and dizziness are listed among the symptoms of heat exhaustion, which results from losing water and salt through sweating. The first-aid treatment described includes giving the victim sips of salt water over a 1-hour period, together with lying down, raised feet and cool, wet cloths.

Immersion in a tub of water (C) is the treatment for heat stroke. An immediate hospital transfer (A) is not what the passage prescribes for exhaustion, and sweating more (D) would lose still more water and salt, the very cause of the condition.

Answer: B

The one who lived beyond his salary was the shirastedar.

The last sentence of the passage says the shirastedar's income was reputed to be more than the sahib's, and that although this may be an exaggeration, he certainly lived beyond his salary.

The sahib is the officer being criticised for temper, not for money. The sahib's peon is only mentioned as someone who had to be cajoled, and the passage does not say that the officers lived beyond their salaries.

Answer: A

The ones ready to lend their ears to sycophants were the Princes.

The passage says: 'Princes were always at the mercy of others and ready to lend their ears to sycophants.' That sentence names no one else.

Sahibs, shirastedars and officers appear in the following lines, as people who had to be cajoled or who held power, but they are not described as listening to flatterers.

Answer: D

What had intoxicated him was power.

The first paragraph says the officer could have politely asked the writer to go, 'but power had intoxicated him to an inordinate extent'. His impatience and anger came from his sense of authority.

Wealth, physical strength and money and property are never mentioned in connection with him; the passage speaks only of his rank and temper.

Answer: C

The key gives Doubtful as the tone of the poet.

The poet looks back on a journey that began with high hopes ('exalting minds, making all the burden light') and ended with the travellers barely knowing 'why we were there', their faces darkened and their deeds 'neither great nor rare'. The speaker is questioning what the journey was worth, which the key reads as doubt.

'Pessimistic' is close, but the poem ends on a quiet resolution, 'Home is where we have to gather grace', which is not despair. 'Positive' fails because of the loss and disillusion, and 'Philosophical' names a manner of reflection and not an attitude to the events.

Answer: D

The key says the poet is referring to moral concerns.

The pilgrimage is the surface story, but the poem is about conduct: a quarrel over how to cross a desert, the loss of a friend, deeds that were 'neither great nor rare', and a closing line that places grace in home life. These are questions of right living, so the key reads them as moral concerns.

'Religious matters' is the tempting answer because of the word pilgrimage, yet the poem sets no creed or rite, and the pilgrimage is the vehicle for the lesson. Daily prayers and political issues are not mentioned at all.

Answer: B

The key says the first two lines of the last stanza deal with a dilemma.

The lines read: 'When, finally, we reached the place, / We hardly knew why we were there.' The travellers arrive but cannot say what the arrival was for, and are left puzzled between the purpose they started with and the emptiness they find. The key reads that puzzlement as a dilemma.

An observation, a plain report of what happened, is the nearest alternative reading, and a candidate could defend it; the key does not. 'An irony' would need a gap between expectation and result that the lines state outright, and 'an assertion' would need a claim argued for, which these lines do not make.

Answer: D

The poet longs for homely stay.

The closing line, 'Home is where we have to gather grace', is the poem's answer to the failed journey. After the effort and quarrels of travel, grace is to be found at home, so what the poet longs for is a settled life at home.

Outings and tourist places are the kind of travel the poem has just found empty. Friendship appears only as a loss on the road ('We lost a friend'), and the closing line does not turn to it.