Reading Comprehension Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The statement that is not true as per the passage is that man's inner spirit tells him to be on the look out for newer and higher wants.

The passage says the opposite: the spirit within him is 'ever exhorting him to cut down his needs and learn to be happy with what he has'.

The other three agree with it: the spirit of inventiveness helps with every new problem (A); man is the subject of needs (B); and man caters to his desire for beauty and grace, which makes some of the needs he creates good or beautiful (C).

Answer: C

The Little Black Boy was born in the southern wild.

The first line of the extract says 'My mother bore me in the southern wild', which gives the boy's birthplace. The 'desert wastes', 'the servants' house' and 'the east coast' do not appear in the lines given; the east is mentioned only when his mother points towards the rising sun.

Answer: D

The key gives white.

The extract does not state the boy's wish in so many words. It sets his colour against the English child, 'White as an angel', and says he is 'black as if bereav'd of light', and the poem as a whole is about the boy's longing to be like the white child. Of the four options, only white follows from this contrast.

Nothing in the lines given suggests that he wanted to be educated, older or free.

Answer: A

The mother says God put people on earth to learn to endure his love.

In the third stanza she says 'we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love'. To bear the beams of love is to learn to endure God's love, which is option A.

Working off sins, preparing for trials and learning equality are not given as reasons anywhere in the extract.

Answer: D

The mother says his dark skin and face are a cloud.

The last two lines read 'these black bodies and this sun-burnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.' So she calls his dark skin a cloud, a temporary covering through which light can still shine, and not a blessing, a veil or a curse.

Answer: B

The phrase 'like a shady grove' is a simile.

A simile compares two unlike things directly, using 'like' or 'as'. Here the child's dark body is compared with a shady grove through the word 'like'.

A metaphor makes the comparison without 'like' or 'as' (saying one thing is another). Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds, and personification gives human qualities to something non-human; neither describes this phrase.

Answer: D

The key gives All of the above.

'As if bereav'd of light' most plainly refers to the colour of the boy (C): his dark skin makes him look as if deprived of light. The speaker also contrasts himself with the English child who is 'White as an angel', which suggests that he thinks less of himself (A), and being bereaved suggests loss and a lack of hope (B). The key accepts all three readings.

This is an interpretive item. Read literally, the phrase speaks of colour alone, so an examinee choosing C has a fair case; the key counts the other readings as well.

Answer: D

The function that is not expressed in the passage is keeping knights' best horses.

The passage names four functions: bases for offensive attacks and defence in military operations, offices from which the lord administered his fiefdom, important social centres in medieval England, and symbols of power. Options A, B and C restate these, in the same words as the passage.

Horses and knights are never mentioned, so option D is the one that is not a function as expressed in the passage, whatever may be true of castles in general.

Answer: B

Paragraph 2 explains why castles were first built in England and the military purposes they served.

The paragraph opens with the Norman invaders of 1066, says William the Conqueror fortified key positions to secure the land he had taken, and then says castles were bases for offensive attacks and also served defensive roles. That is the reason for the first castles plus their military uses, which is option B.

Option A is too narrow, because the paragraph is about what castles did, not how William took control. Nothing is said about Norman lords being scared or retreating (C). The full list of purposes, including administration and social life, comes in paragraph 3, so D is wrong for paragraph 2.

Answer: A

The key gives it takes a lot more time and energy to build a stone castle.

The passage says only that the first castles were made of earth and timber and were later replaced by stone, which strengthened them. It gives no reason for the first choice of material, so the question has to be answered by inference. Of the four options, only A is a plausible practical reason that the passage does not contradict: a Norman army securing newly taken land needs quick fortifications, and wood and earth take less time and labour than stone.

Option B and C describe what people did or did not realise, which the passage does not say, and D is about looks, which is not mentioned. The passage does say wooden castles were highly susceptible to fire, but that is given as their weakness, not as a thing people failed to see.