Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The keyed device is personification.

'Waving so flower-like / When the winds blow!' shows the spray of the fountain waving, an action of living things, and being compared to a flower swaying in the wind. The key counts this as giving the fountain a living, human-like action, which is personification.

The phrase also contains a comparison with a flower, and strictly 'flower-like' makes it a simile, which is not among the options; that is why metaphor is the nearest rival, but a metaphor would state that the spray is a flower without 'like'. Alliteration needs repeated consonant sounds at the start of nearby words, and hyperbole needs exaggeration, which this line does not have.

Answer: A

The device is alliteration.

Stanza 2 reads 'Into the moonlight, / Whiter than snow, / Waving so flower-like / When the winds blow!'. The sound w is repeated in 'Whiter', 'Waving', 'When' and 'winds', which gives the lines their soft, rippling sound. That repetition of an initial consonant is alliteration.

Oxymoron joins two opposite ideas, and no pair like that appears. A transferred epithet gives an adjective to the wrong noun, which is not the case here. Anaphora is the repeated opening of lines; the poem repeats 'Into the' at the start of stanzas, but not within stanza 2's lines, so it does not describe this stanza.

Answer: A

The words belong to the Adjective class.

'Whiter' (the comparative of white), 'blithesome' (merry, light-hearted) and 'cheerful' all describe nouns, telling what something is like: in a poem about a fountain they describe its water and its mood. Words that qualify nouns are adjectives.

A noun names a person, place or thing; an adverb modifies a verb, adjective or another adverb, often ending in -ly; an interjection expresses sudden feeling, such as 'Oh!' or 'Hurrah!'. None of these fits whiter, blithesome and cheerful.

Answer: B

Students spend their breaks attending camps and workshops like art, music and so on.

Paragraph 1 says the children are doing too much in the holidays, 'given the plethora of classes, camps and workshops involving swimming, art, personality development, music, computers and the like'. That is exactly the keyed option.

Killing time and playing for endless hours is the opposite of the picture drawn, and the passage uses it only as a thing the experts do not mean. Revising weak areas and reading books are what the experts want ('get them back to their books'), not what the passage says children do.

Answer: A

Travel and tours are not a break because they are laden with customised experience, packed into a short period of time.

Paragraph 1 says that the trips taken in the name of holidays 'seem laden with exotic destinations and customised experience packed into a short period of time' and that holidays are now 'an intensified search for experience'. A schedule that crowds experiences into a few days is a pursuit, not a rest.

The second option says the opposite, that they are a break from the search. Investment and savings are never discussed. Memories of 'native places' belong to the old holidays of paragraph 2, whereas the trips described here come back armed with 'digital memories and overflowing suitcases'.

Answer: A

The author implies that summer break was meant to help a child connect to kith and kin and build a strong bond with them.

Paragraphs 2 and 3 explain the line: holidays meant going back to the native place to spend two months with uncles, aunts and cousins, and summer 'was the bridge used to reaffirm one's connectedness with one's larger community'. A joint holds parts together; the break held the extended family together.

Killing time and playing for hours, and the idea that a long break disrupts development, are the experts' view in paragraph 1, which the author does not share. Rejuvenating oneself on exotic trips describes the present-day break, which the author contrasts with the old one.

Answer: B

The author's happiest childhood memories were of visiting one's native place.

Paragraph 2 says: 'The happiest memories of the childhood of a whole generation seemed to be centred around this annual ritual of homecoming', and homecoming meant going back to the native place.

A trip to Europe is part of the modern holiday of paragraph 1 ('We can go Europe in 10 days'). Summer camps belong to the same modern picture, and reading lots of books is what the experts recommend, not a memory the author mentions.

Answer: C

The underlined part is a Principal clause.

In 'It seems such a long break disrupts their development', the main (principal) clause is 'It seems': it has its own subject and verb and carries the main statement. The rest, '(that) such a long break disrupts their development', is a subordinate clause; it completes 'seems' and is a noun clause, with the conjunction 'that' left out.

An adverb clause modifies a verb by telling when, why or how, and an adjective clause describes a noun. 'It seems' does neither. It would be wrong to call the underlined part a noun clause, since that label belongs to the part that is not underlined.

Answer: B

The underlined word 'best' is an Adjective.

In 'Summer was the best time of their lives', 'best' describes the noun 'time', telling what kind of time it was. It is the superlative degree of the adjective 'good' (good, better, best).

'Best' can be an adverb when it modifies a verb, as in 'She sings best', but here it qualifies a noun. It is not a modal, which is a helping verb such as can, may or must, and not a conjunction, which joins words or clauses.

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.