Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The speaker is referring to the potatoes.

The sentence runs 'To scatter new potatoes that we picked, / Loving their cool hardness in our hands'. 'Their' points back to 'new potatoes', and cool hardness is how a freshly dug potato feels to the hand.

The potato drills are the furrows, not something held in hands. The gun is only the simile for the pen in line 2, and the spade handle is not described as cool or hard here. The potatoes are the only noun in the line that 'their' can refer to.

Answer: B

The underlined words are an adverb, noun.

'Actually' modifies the verb 'helps', telling us how truly or really it helps, so it is an adverb. 'Feeling' is the object of 'create' and is preceded by 'the spacious', an article and an adjective, so here it is a noun.

'Feeling' can be a verb form elsewhere ('I am feeling tired'), but not in this sentence, and 'actually' is neither a conjunction nor a preposition nor a verb.

Answer: D

The answer is (A) is correct, but not (B).

Paragraph 2 gives the ways to break monotony: 'One of the ways would be to blend light and dark colours. Or to paint two opposite sides in a lighter shade than the other two.' So blending light and dark shades is a way to break the monotony, and (A) is right.

(B) is the opposite of the writer's advice. The paragraph opens by contrasting imaginative colour with 'a plain monotonous colour on all four walls', so painting all four walls in plain colours is the monotony itself. That rules out 'both (A) and (B)'. Options (A) alone and (B) alone are partial or wrong: the keyed choice is the one that accepts (A) and rejects (B).

Answer: A

'To think out of the box' does not mean to think traditionally.

The idiom means to think creatively, beyond the usual limits and conventions: to come up with original, unusual ideas.

Thinking creatively and imaginatively, about novel ideas, and in unusual ways all describe the idiom. Thinking traditionally, following established patterns, is its opposite.

For example, a teacher who thinks out of the box might teach fractions through cooking instead of only through textbook exercises.

Answer: C

The writer says it is important to pay attention to the colour scheme because it reflects the personality of the owner.

Paragraph 3 states: 'Every room reflects the personality of the occupant, hence it is important to pay attention to every detail.' The word 'hence' links the reason (the room reflects its occupant) to the advice.

'Monotonous shades add life to the rooms' reverses the passage, which treats plain monotonous colour as the thing to avoid. 'The ambience created makes it look boring' also reverses it, since the ambience is made right by good colour. 'The walls reveal the secrets of your life' is an exaggeration the passage never makes; it says only that the room shows the occupant's personality.

Answer: B

The answer is (A) and (C) are correct, (B) is incorrect.

(A) matches the first paragraph: 'if used right, they can give a perfect look', and the second paragraph shows imaginative uses. (C) matches the idea of colour creating a spacious feeling on walls and ceiling: the writer says right use of colours 'helps you create the spacious feeling', blending light and dark on walls and painting the false ceiling a light blue to add height.

(B), 'Space is abundant nowadays', contradicts the opening: 'when there is an abundance of everything but space'. So (B) is the incorrect statement. The options that call (B) correct, or all three correct, therefore fail, and so does the one calling (A) and (C) incorrect.

Answer: C

People draw colourful sceneries on their walls to bring nature into their homes.

Paragraph 3 says: 'Some people draw an entire scenery on one side of the wall to give the feeling of bringing the outdoors inside.' Bringing the outdoors inside is the same as bringing nature into the home.

Blending dark and light colours and creating a sense of space belong to the earlier ideas in paragraph 2, where they are done with shades and ceilings, not with painted scenery. 'Give a deeper significance to their home' echoes the first sentence of the passage about colours in general, but it is not the reason the passage gives for drawing scenery.

Answer: C

The modern home owner is longing for space.

Paragraph 1 says: 'In today's time, when there is an abundance of everything but space, colour plays an important role in creating the right ambience and perhaps the space that you crave for.' To crave is to long for, so space is what is wanted.

Imagination is something the writer asks the reader to use ('Just let your imagination flow'), not something the owner longs for. Colours are the means of getting the effect, and 'sheer appeal' is the appeal to the senses that colour has. Neither is named as the thing craved.

Answer: C

The narrator left because he did not want to live a lazy life.

He says he planned to spend his days at Baghdad, but it was not long ere I grew weary of an indolent life. Indolent means lazy, so he wished to avoid an idle life. He was weary of idleness, not of the city, so the first option misreads the sentence, and the second adds a wish to visit another city that the passage does not state.

As the first option is wrong, the combined 'both (1) and (3)' is wrong too.

Answer: D

The narrator was shocked.

When he woke the ship was no longer in view, and he says, 'In this sad condition, I was ready to die with grief.' He is left alone on an island with no sign of anyone. That is shock and distress, not relief, calm or amusement.