Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Correct answer: have a better understanding of other nations

The passage says the fault of the English is to expect the people of other countries to react as they do, and that this would be corrected if we knew the history… of the social and political conditions which have given to each nation its present character. Contact already exists - the passage opens by saying nations are in close and vital contact; what is missing is understanding.

Answer: B

Correct answer: People suffering from imaginary illness

The passage says modern medicine pays very little attention to health but very much attention to those who imagine that they are ill. Promoting good health is exactly what it says medicine neglects.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Health is only means to an end

The passage's thesis is stated twice: we make health an end in itself, forgetting that health is really a means to enable a person to do his work and do it well. The first option is the error the passage identifies, not its view.

Answer: D

Correct answer: Often suffer from imaginary illness

The passage says that although we talk about health all the time, for the most part the only result is more people with imaginary illness. For the most part is a statement of frequency without claiming it always happens, which is what often preserves.

Answer: B

Correct answer: What healthy man should or should not do

The passage ends with a direct prescription: the healthy man should not be wasting time talking about health: he should be using health for work. The medical columns, magazines and television programmes are cited as evidence of the habit being criticised, not as the subject.

Answer: A

Correct answer: His work which good health makes possible

The passage says he should be using health for work and doing the work that good health makes possible. The third option reverses the relation, making work the servant of health rather than health the servant of work.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Slavery to physical nature and from passions

The passage says science is a liberator from bondage to physical nature and in time to come, a liberator from the weight of destructive passions. Both halves must be kept: the option naming only physical nature stops at the first, and fear is not what the sentence says science frees us from.

Answer: D

Correct answer: Eliminate the destruction caused by a superficial knowledge of the physical world

The passage opens by saying it is to the human sciences that we must look to undo the evils which have resulted from a knowledge of the physical world hastily and superficially acquired. That is the reason it gives, and it is a reason about undoing harm rather than about adding knowledge.

Answer: B

Correct answer: The future will be brighter than the present

The passage says the road to a happier world than any known in the past lies open before us if atavistic destructive passions can be kept in leash. The bestial yearning is those passions; the reward for controlling them is a world happier than any yet seen, which is more than merely tolerable.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Are closely linked with the life of modern man

The passage treats both as constant companions of the present moment: fears are inevitable in time, but hopes are equally rational, and we stand on the threshold of utter disaster or unprecedentedly glorious achievement. It calls hopes rational, so they are not irrational, and it is hopes rather than fears that it says will bear good fruit.