Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

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.

Answer: B

The key says (b) is right and (a) is wrong. I could not make (b) agree with the passage word for word.

(a) is wrong: Gagarin recited half-remembered poetry to himself, but the passage never says he was a poet. For (b), Gagarin describes the room as 'no sound, not even the slightest rustle. No movement of the air'. The key reads this as 'no air', which is what the statement says.

Strictly the passage says there was no movement of the air, not that there was no air, and a room with no air could not have held him for long periods. On that strict reading both statements would be wrong, which is another option. The explanation follows the official key; the reader should note that (b) is a loose paraphrase of the passage.

Answer: D

The key gives to feel like in a space cabin. 'As an experiment' is the nearest rival and is also defensible.

The passage calls the dark, silent room one of the ordeals of his training and says he would shut his eyes and 'imagine himself in a space-cabin in orbit'. The keyed option reads the isolation as meant to give him a taste of the loneliness of space flight.

It was not a punishment: the room is part of the training, and the passage does not say he did wrong. Meditation is not mentioned. 'As an experiment' fits the passage's remark that the training included experiments, so the answer rests on the key's choice of the purpose the passage comes closest to stating.

Answer: C

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

(a) The Bishop asks 'What dost thou do here ?', which is asking the purpose of Robin Hood's visit. (b) Robin Hood replies 'I am a bold harper' and promises no music until he sees the bride and bridegroom. He is not a harper: the ballad has him pretend to be one, so he pretended to be a musician.

Calling either statement wrong, or both, disagrees with those lines.

Answer: A

A wedding was going to take place in the church.

Robin Hood says 'Till the bride and the bridegroom I see', and the knight and the young woman come in. He then protests 'This is no fit match' and says 'The bride she shall choose her own dear'. A bride, a bridegroom and a match are all signs of a marriage ceremony.

A sermon, a baptism or a funeral service would have no bride and bridegroom.

Answer: B

The answer is in the church.

The Bishop is in the church where the wedding is to be held; Robin Hood says 'For since we are come into the church', which tells the reader that both of them are there. The conversation is held there before the bride arrives.

The ballad gives no churchyard, no residence of the Bishop and no market as the place of the meeting.

Answer: A

The device is a simile.

A simile compares two different things directly using 'like' or 'as'. 'Did shine like glistening gold' compares the shine of the young woman to that of gold with the word 'like'.

A metaphor makes the comparison without 'like' or 'as' ('she was gold'), personification gives human qualities to non-human things, and hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration.

Answer: D

Both (a) and (b) are right, as the key says.

(a) The stranger is described as bleeding 'from a cut in his cheek' and is calm enough to ask for a lift and apologise, so he did not seem badly hurt. (b) Bill first 'made to drive round him', that is, drove past him, and only then saw the skidded car and 'brought the Mini-Moris gradually to a stop', so the car went past the stranger and then stopped.

(b) is the weaker of the two, because the passage says Bill braked and then made to drive round, and the key treats the stop as after passing him. The options that call either statement wrong, or both, therefore do not fit the key.

Answer: A

The right statement is that there was snowfall, and a ditch along the road, so Bill was driving very carefully.

The stranger's coat is 'snow-caked', the car had skidded into 'the deep ditch', and Bill says that he braked 'though gently, or I might have followed his car into the ditch'. The conditions and his careful braking show he was driving carefully.

The statement that he was driving very slowly is not stated; he braked gently but the speed is never given. A carefree manner and feeling drowsy contradict the care he shows, and the passage never mentions that he was sleepy or that traffic was absent. Pat's remark that twelve o'clock at night is not a busy time is about the road, not about Bill's manner of driving.

Answer: C

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

(a) Pat is bold and compassionate: she is horrified at the idea of not stopping and urges Bill to help. (b) Bill is protective of Pat and not timid: he worries about hold-ups and says 'I wasn't going to take any chance with Pat, my sister, there', but still stops. (c) is wrong: the stranger's car was not parked by the sidewalk; it 'had skidded right across the road and was hanging nose down in the deep ditch'.

The other options each call (c) right or (a) wrong, which do not match the passage.