Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The correct order is (c) → (a) → (b) → (d).

Paragraph 1 tells the story in this sequence: a plane crash landed into the Hudson River (c); Jim, who was nearby, watched it and immediately tweeted (a); people then contacted him and asked what was happening (b); and it was 15 minutes before the news broke on official news channels (d).

The other orders cannot be right. Two of them put an event before the crash itself, either people contacting Jim (b) or the broadcast (d). The first option puts the broadcast and the contacting before Jim had even tweeted, though the passage says the news spread from his tweet.

Answer: C

Only statement (a) is correct, so the answer is (a) is correct, but (b) and (c) are incorrect.

(a) matches the passage: 'On 15 January 2009 ... A plane crash landed into the Hudson River'.

(b) is wrong because the passage says 'The pilot, crew and 155 passengers escaped safely'; the pilot did not lose his life.

(c) is wrong because Jim tweeted about the crash; it was other people on the street who took photos and videos and posted them online, and Facebook is not mentioned in this part of the story.

The options that call (b) or (c) correct, or call (a) incorrect, are therefore ruled out.

Answer: B

According to the passage, news on social media travel fast.

Paragraph 3 opens: 'News travels fast on social media, but false stories spread just as quickly as the truth.' The Hudson crash example makes the same point, since Jim's tweet spread the news 15 minutes before official channels had it.

The passage does not call such news reliable; it warns that not everything posted is reliable. It says some stories are deliberate hoaxes, not that all of them are. And far from being insignificant, social media news is shown helping people during the Haiti earthquake.

Answer: A

It means they started posting news-bits, pictures and videos on social media.

The sentence comes right after the passage says that people on the street 'took photos and videos with their phones and posted them online'. By recording and sharing what they saw, ordinary people did the work of journalists, reporting the news before official channels did.

Nothing in the passage says anyone sought employment at media houses or left their jobs; the phrase is figurative, not about careers. Contacting Jim for details is what other people did, and asking for news is not reporting it.

Answer: A

The key marks 'The narrator's home town was in a remote area' as true.

The passage opens: 'My home town in the mid-1970s was a laid-back place, resembling a remote rural area, except in having some amenities.' The key treats this as the home town being in a remote area.

The other statements go beyond the passage. 'Life was comfortable in all respects' contradicts the 'except in having some amenities' limit. The annual fair was held in a small village about 15 km from the home town, so the town itself was not known for it, and the people who visited the fair were devotees going to that village, not to the home town. Strictly, 'resembling a remote rural area' is not the same as 'being in a remote area', but it is the closest of the four.

Answer: C

The answer is both (a) and (b) are right.

(a) The writer tells how 'whenever the cart jerked or sped away, I would hold my pockets tightly so that coins would not spill out', so he was careful in the cart. (b) He looked forward to the journey every year 'as though it was a journey of a life-time and worth enjoying every minute of it', so despite the jerks and jolts it was enjoyable.

Calling either statement wrong, or both, would go against those lines.

Answer: D

The answer is (a) and (b) are wrong but (c) is right.

(a) is wrong: the passage says money saved for the fair was in the narrator's pockets, which is not the same as being given enough pocket money on the day. (b) is wrong: 'We children will be in a separate cart' is about the children travelling apart from the adults, not small children with their parents. (c) is right: the writer's father's clients 'used to arrange bullock carts for us' for the family, showing a willingness to oblige him.

Any option calling (a) or (b) right misreads these lines.

Answer: D

The answer is (a) and (b) are wrong but (c) is right.

(a) is wrong: the passage says 'Gagarin rose at 5.30', not 5.00. (b) is wrong: he wore a complicated space-suit, on top of which went a pale blue fibre suit and finally an orange one, so the outer suit was orange. (c) is right: 'he entered the cabin (named Vostok)'.

The other options each count (a) or (b) as right, which the details above rule out.

Answer: A

Gagarin was a space traveller.

The passage describes his training for space flight and the morning on which he is launched in the Vostok capsule from the nose of a rocket. He is the first person to travel in space.

An adventure tourist travels for pleasure, which is not the case. He did parachute training, but that is one part of his training and does not describe what he was. The Moscow University building is only where its lift was used for the weightlessness experiment, so he was not a physicist there.

Answer: C

The benefit was that he experienced zero gravity.

The passage says the express lift of Moscow University was used for experience of weightlessness: 'At a certain high speed the passenger would find himself suspended between the floor and ceiling of the lift without support. This was a convenient and inexpensive way of reproducing "zero gravity".'

The passage calls the method inexpensive, but not that he paid nothing. Whether it was thrilling is not stated, and coming down in less time is not the aim of the lift ride.