Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The device is Personification.

Personification gives human or animal qualities to something non-living. Tickets cannot squirm; squirming is the wriggling of a living thing that is uncomfortable or restless. By saying the tickets 'were squirming in our pockets', the writer transfers the boys' own nervous impatience to the tickets, as if the tickets themselves were eager to get to the play.

There is no comparison using 'like' or 'as', so it is not a simile. No run of words begins with the same sound, so it is not alliteration, and no contradictory words are paired, so it is not an oxymoron.

Answer: C

The sound comes from a contingent of soldiers.

The first speaker asks what the sound is, and the reply is 'Only the scarlet soldiers, dear, The soldiers coming.' The drumming is the soldiers marching down the valley. A crowded street, a group of commoners or a market place are never mentioned.

Answer: D

The poem is a conversation between two persons.

It runs in question and answer: each stanza opens with a question beginning 'O what ...' or 'O why ...', and the next lines answer it, closing with 'dear'. The same two voices alternate throughout, one anxious and asking, the other reassuring. The last line, 'Why are you kneeling ?', is addressed to the one who questioned.

Nothing suggests a third speaker, a crowd or a larger group.

Answer: C

The poem is written in the form of a ballad.

A ballad tells a story in short stanzas, often in dialogue and with repeated words and lines. This poem is four quatrains of question and answer, with repeated words ('drumming, drumming', 'brightly, brightly') and a story of approaching soldiers that builds to a threat, all marks of the form.

An elegy is a lament for the dead, an epic is a long narrative poem about heroic deeds, and a lyric expresses a speaker's own feeling. This short narrative in dialogue is none of them.

Answer: D

The rhyme scheme is abab.

In the first stanza the line endings are 'ear' (a), 'drumming' (b), 'dear' (a), 'coming' (b). The other stanzas follow the same pattern: 'clear' and 'dear' rhyme, 'brightly' and 'lightly' rhyme, then 'gear' and 'dear', 'morning' and 'warning', and 'there' and 'dear'. Lines one and three rhyme with each other, and lines two and four with each other.

'baba' would put the second line's rhyme first, and 'abcb' and 'abdc' leave lines that do not rhyme.

Answer: C

Kneeling reflects anxiety.

The questions get more worried as the stanzas go on. The soldiers have left the road, and the last question, 'Why are you kneeling ?', shows the person asking the questions has dropped to his or her knees, in fear or prayer, as the danger comes close. Kneeling here is a sign of dread, not calm.

Indifference, anger and jubilation do not fit a person who has been asking nervous questions about armed men approaching.

Answer: A

The right choice is (A) is True but (B) is False.

(A) is true: Taiji thought she herself had been brought up with almost no liberty or latitude and felt it a pity that the girls should be similarly constrained, and she got for them what they could not get by a direct approach. Compared with the strict Tauji she was relatively liberal. (B) is false: 'Lata and Malati both managed to get tickets.'

So the options making (B) true, or (A) false, fail.

Answer: B

'prone to' means likely to have/get.

To be prone to something is to have a tendency towards it, to be likely to suffer from or do it, usually something undesirable: 'prone to colds', 'prone to accidents'. So 'the countless kinds of mischief that boys are prone to' means the kinds of mischief that boys are likely to get into.

'Sure to' is too strong, since prone indicates a tendency, not a certainty. 'Impossible to' and 'not likely to' reverse the meaning.

Answer: D

'had thus succeeded' is in the Past Perfect Tense.

The past perfect is formed with had + past participle, here had succeeded (the adverb thus sits between them without changing the tense). It shows an action completed before another past moment: they had already secured the car before they went around town collecting their friends.

The simple past would be 'succeeded' alone. The present perfect uses has/have ('have succeeded'), and the simple present would be 'succeed' or 'succeeds'. None of these uses had.

Answer: D

His duty was to keep a strict watch on the youngsters' activities.

Tauji was responsible for the well-being and reputation of the girls and had to make sure the boys did not get into mischief; he is described as a strict elder member of the family. His duty was watching over the young people, not marrying them off, cooking for them or teaching them.