Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Direction for [ Question No: 11 To 11 ] :

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

Tourism has emerged as the world's largest industry. Growing rapidly in the last two decades, today it accounts for 6% of world output and employs some 100 million people around the globe. Tourism – the travel-based recreation – provides people with a change of place and a break from the monotony of daily life. It brings people of different nations together, allowing them to come into close contact with each other's customs and other aspects of life. It reveals the scenic beauty and past heritage of a country, of people belonging to other nations. The knowledge and experience gained in the process can lead to greater understanding and tolerance, and can ever foster world peace.The contribution to tourism can be nowhere felt more clearly than on the economic front. A study conducted by the United Nations has shown that developing countries, in particular, can reap handsome benefits out of tourism which greatly boosts national income.Tourism generates employment, and adds to the entrepreneurial wealth of nation. While tourism's advantages are many, its undesirable side effects have raised fresh problems.Tourism can cause social, cultural or environmental disruption. Of the greatest concern is the damage to the environment. In order to attract more tourists, sprawling resorts are built which take neither the local architectural styles nor the ecology into consideration. Natural systems come to be destroyed as a result of indiscriminate construction to provide water and waste disposal facilities and recreational arrangement to tourists. Overuse of environmental wealth disturbs the ecological balance.Damage is most in wildlife parks which remain the foremost sites of tourist attraction. Tourist vans and the visitor's feet destroy the ground vegetation, thus affecting the feeding habits of the animals and the landscape as well. Overcrowding brings about congestion, leading to environmental and health hazards.The Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the world, has suffered a lot of wear and tear from the trampling feet of tourists.Some socio-culture effects of tourism have been damaging. Tourism often ushers in new lifestyles, arrangements as desired by tourists are provided in order to make them feel at home. The emergence of this 'other' culture in various places has caused dissatisfaction among the local people. The concern is that the local people tend to imitate the foreign values, breaking away from their own traditions.To promote safe tourism while ensuring that it remains a profitable industry, it is imperative to understand the factor that hamper the growth of tourism and check them effectively.

Direction for [ Question No: 12 To 16 ] :

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

Of all the birds in the air, the magpie builds the very best nest. Long ago, all the birds came to Magpie and asked her to teach them how to build nests. So Magpie got them all together and began to show them how to do it. First, she took some mud and patted it into the shape of a pancake. "Ah ha!" said Thrush, and away she flew. So Thrush still builds her nest out of mud. Then Magpie arranged some twigs around in the mud. "Well of course," said Owl, and away she flew. Owls have never made better nests than that. Magpie turned the edges of the pancake up into a bowl shape, and put more twigs around the outside. "What a good idea!" said Sparrow, and Sparrow makes messy nests to this day. And so it went on. Each bird took away some knowledge of how to build nests, but none of them waited to the end. Finally, only silly Turtle-dove was left, and she hadn't been paying any attention all along. She had just been sitting there saying her silly cry. "Take two, take two-o-o-o. Take two, take two-o-o." Magpie was adding the last twig to her lovely nest. "Take two, take two-o-o" cried Turtle-dove. Magpie looked at Turtle-dove. "One's enough," she said. But the Turtle-dove kept on saying, "Take two, take two-o-o." Then Magpie got angry. "One's enough, I tell you." Still Turtle-dove repeated, "Take two, take two-o-o. Take two, take two-o-o." At last, Magpie got even angrier. No one but silly Turtle-dove was left to see her lovely nest that she had worked so long to build. She flew away to find some worms, and refused to show the birds how to build a nest again. And that is why different birds build their nests differently.

Direction for [ Question No: 17 To 20 ] :

Read the given passage and answer the questions that follow.

As many as 24 elephants enjoyed 'mahua', a traditional country liquor, and slept for hours in an Odisha forest. When people of a nearby village went inside the forest to prepare the liquor, they found that a herd of elephants had already devoured the water fermented with the intoxicating flowers and were in deep sleep.

The villagers living near Shilipada cashew forest in Keonjhar district saw that a total of 24 jumbos, who were apparently drunk, were sleeping near the place where mahua flowers were kept in water in large pots for fermentation.

"We went into the jungle at around 6 am to prepare mahua and found that all the pots were broken and the fermented water was missing. We also found that the elephants were sleeping. They consumed the fermented water and got drunk," Naria Sethi, a villager, told PTI.

"That liquor was unprocessed. We tried to wake up the animals but failed. The forest department was then informed," he added.

Forest department personnel, after reaching the spot in the jungle under the Patana forest range, had to beat drums to wake the herd up. The elephants then went deep inside the forest, said Ghasiram Patra, the forest ranger.

The forest official, however, is not sure whether the elephants got drunk after consuming fermented mahua. Perhaps they were just resting there, he said.

Villagers, on the other hand, insisted that they spotted the elephants sleeping in intoxicated conditions at various places close to the broken pots on Tuesday.