Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Statement (a) is correct and (b) and (c) are incorrect, which is option (4).

(a) The passage says that farming households producing food for their own consumption are protected from market fluctuations, 'thus ensuring that they can afford healthy food'. The key takes this as correct for a significant number of households, though the passage speaks specifically of farming households.

(b) is incorrect: such households are 'not impacted by food inflation either', so household food production has a strong effect, not a limited one. (c) is incorrect: food insecurity is called 'a nagging constant' in countries like India, not an occasional phenomenon.

Answer: B

The correct statement is 'better nutritional intake'.

Paragraph 3 says people growing their own food consume more, 'thus adding to nutrition levels', and that there was a reduction in child stunting and underweight conditions.

Malnourished and stunted children are what the study found reduced, so (1) and (3) are the opposite of the finding. Women attained a normal body mass index, not a higher one, so (4) is wrong.

Answer: B

The series of events is (c) extreme weather conditions, then (a) increase in prices of food items, then (d) reduced food consumption, then (b) detrimental effect on nutritional security.

Paragraph 1 starts with extreme weather events and erratic seasons, which cut farmers' earnings and agricultural output and add to food inflation (higher prices). It then says that high prices could make people slash consumption, 'which adversely impacts nutritional security'. That fixes the order c, a, d, b.

The other orders put an effect before its cause, for example reduced consumption before the rise in prices, or the harm to nutrition before the reduction in consumption.

Answer: D

The households have stayed out of the food insecurity crisis by adopting home production systems.

Paragraph 2 says that in a country like India, where food insecurity is a nagging constant, such households 'have used the home production system to remain out of this crisis'.

High food prices and climate change conditions are the threats, not what the households adopted, and protection from extreme weather is not described as something they adopted.

Answer: D

The incorrect statement is 'Increase in number of malnourished children'.

The study reported a reduction in child stunting and underweight conditions in households with their own food production.

The other three statements are in the passage: nutritional intake improved, such households consumed more, and women attained a normal body mass index.

Answer: C

The poet thinks himself fortunate because he has light at night by his door.

The poem says, 'For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door; / And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more'. The luck is the lamp at the door, which the lamplighter lights.

His father is a banker, but the poem does not give that as the reason for his luck. The poet wishes to go round lighting lamps with Leerie, so (2) is not what he says, and nothing is said about being strong enough to avoid choices.

Answer: D

The phrase indicates that it is evening time.

The poem begins with tea nearly ready and Leerie coming up the street 'every night at tea time' with a lantern and ladder. A lamplighter lights the lamps when it grows dark, so the sun having left the sky means that evening has come.

Morning, forenoon and afternoon are all times when the sun is up, and no lamps are lit.

Answer: C

Only statement (c) is correct, so the answer is '(a) and (b) are incorrect, (c) is correct'.

(c) is correct: the poet watches for Leerie, says he will go round at night and light the lamps with him, and asks him to 'nod to him tonight', which shows he is fascinated by the profession.

(a) is incorrect: Leerie comes 'every night', so the light is not occasional. (b) is incorrect: the poet mentions that his papa is a banker, but his own wish is to go round lighting lamps with Leerie, not to become a banker.

Answer: D

The word that completes the analogy is banker.

Leerie is the lamplighter, a person and his job. In the poem the poet says, 'my papa's a banker', so the father is a banker.

A driver is what Tom would like to be ('Tom would be a driver'). Maria may go to the sea, which does not make her father a sailor, and 'rich businessman' describes the father's wealth loosely, not his occupation as the poem gives it.

Answer: B

The rhyme scheme of lines 5 to 8 is aabb.

Lines 5 to 8 end in 'sea', 'be', 'do' and 'you'. Lines 5 and 6 rhyme with each other (a, a) and lines 7 and 8 rhyme with each other (b, b), which gives a a b b.

The patterns abba, abab and aaba would need the first and fourth, or the first and third, lines to rhyme, which they do not here.