Reading Comprehension: Steps, Types and Examples

Reading Comprehension

Reading Comprehension: महाराष्ट्रातील तसेच राज्यातील बहुतेक स्पर्धा परीक्षेचा महत्वाचा विषय म्हणजे इंग्लिश. इंग्लिश विषयात जास्तकरून इंग्लिश ग्रामर वर प्रश्न विचारले जातात. नेहमीच्या सरावाने इंग्लिश विषयात चांगले गुण मिळू शकतात. आगामी काळातील सरळसेवा भरती परीक्षांमध्ये इंग्लिश ग्रामरला विशेष महत्त्व आहे. इंग्लिश ग्रामर चे रोज वाचन फायदेशीर ठरते. इंग्लिश ग्रामर मधील एक महत्वपूर्ण घटक म्हणजे Reading Comprehension. यावर परीक्षेत हमखास 1 ते 2 प्रश्न विचारले जाऊ शकतात. या लेखात आपण Reading Comprehension व त्यातील महत्वाचे नियम यावर माहिती पाहणार आहोत.

Reading Comprehension: विहंगावलोकन 

इंग्रजी व्याकरणाचा अभ्यास करतांना Reading Comprehension या घटकाचा अभ्यास करणे महत्वाचे ठरते. या लेखात Reading Comprehension बद्दल सविस्तर माहिती दिली आहे.

Steps For Solving RC:

Steps For Solving RC: Most of you are confused whether to attempt the RC or not. Well RC can actually be your saving glory in the exams, as it does not require any grammar rules or guess work, all you need to do is to look for the answers. Now one RC is expected in the exams, well you obviously cannot immediately read long passages due to lack of time. So what do you do?
So, here are the strategies to follow to get more marks in Reading Comprehension.
1. A complaint which I hear often is that, the students are unable to understand the given reading comprehension. If you belong to this category, you need to understand that you don’t need to understand each and every word of the comprehension. At the same time, you should find the gist (summary) of it. Both these points above may appear contradictory. But the crucial thing is, you need to eliminate the words, phrases, sentences from the Reading Comprehension that are not useful and need to focus on keywords.
2. Find your strengths first: To improve reading comprehension, you need to find your strengths first, read one question and then search for the answer quickly, looking for similar words in the paragraphs. But make sure you do it really quickly. Once you get the needed lines of the answer in the RC, then compare it with the options given in the question. If you are unable to locate an answer then move to the next question, but do not get stuck on any question!! Using this method you will be able to attempt the RC in a short span of time and it will help you score well too. This method seems odd but works beautifully in the exams. You still have time before the exams, try it at home as an experiment to see if it works for you. Also stay away from questions like what is the authors view in this passage, or what is the author trying to say, as these questions are usually quite controversial. So basically, these exams require you to be really smart. And smartness comes from practice.
3. Practice a lot: “Normally, students who believe themselves to be weak in Reading Comprehension, are unwilling to practice. Most of them try to avoid solving at home. They make a lot of excuses. But remember excuses don’t bring you success. Success won’t be available unless you confront your fears and weaknesses. Remember, No one asks you “why didn’t you succeed in life?” They only ask you “Did you succeed or not?”
4.Improve Your Vocabulary: Why you need to improve your vocabulary? Vocabulary means knowledge of words (meaning of words). If you do not have a good vocabulary, you have to stop at every new word in the reading comprehension, and be puzzled what does it mean? So, when you don’t know the meaning of a word, it becomes very difficult to understand the gist of the Comprehension. Having a good vocabulary, makes you understand the reading Comprehension much easier.
How to improve your vocabulary?
Start reading in English, anything Newspapers, stories, comics, text books anything, that keeps you immersed in English. New words gradually sink into your subconscious mind and become familiar. Keep a notebook, Note down the new words you learned today and revise them regularly. Keep a target and a schedule to learn a certain number of new words every day. You are the better person to decide the number,… I am not. Do not deviate from the schedule at any cost.
5.Use a pen while reading: Do not read the Reading Comprehension like a movie novel. While going through the passage, your three body organs should act in collaboration. Eyes, Hand, Brain
6.Focus: It is not unusual for any person to wander somewhere while reading something uninteresting. So, when you find the Comprehension dull, difficult and uninteresting, your eyes run through the sentences, but your mind wanders somewhere else. The result you complete reading, but you grasp nothing.

Solution: Focus on the content. Don’t let your mind go away from there. If it starts daydreaming bring it back into reality. Tell yourself that you have plenty of time to dream after the exam.
7.Improve reading Speed: Do not move your lips while reading, it slows you down.

Types of questions

The questions asked in reading comprehension can be categorised into the following categories. It is wise to be familiar with these categories so that while giving the test you can identify the type of the question and the appropriate approach to ensure accuracy. They are:
1. Central Idea Questions: These types of questions test your understanding of the theme of the passage. These questions include words like, ‘the main idea, central idea, purpose, a possible title, theses, and so on.’ You may be asked to choose the option which best expresses the author’s arguments or conclusion.
How to solve these types of questions?
While solving these questions you will note that in order to answer the central idea question correctly you need to pay attention to the details. You have to comprehend what these details are trying to emphasize or support. The idea is not specifically stated in the passage but it is what every point will support.
2.Specified Idea Questions: As the name suggests, these are the direct questions. The answer of these questions will be specifically given in the passage.

How to solve these types of questions?
In order to answer these types of questions, you need to read the passage carefully and chose the option wisely because sometimes the facts given in the passage are maneuvered to confuse the candidate.
3. Inference Question: These are the indirect questions. Inference questions a candidate to make sustainable inferences based on the facts given in the passage.
How to solve these types of questions?
In order to answer these types of questions, you need to understand the facts given in the passage, observe the logic used by the author and then decide which option can be inferred from the same. Sometimes, you may be requires to identify the option that cannot be inferred. In such types of questions same approach is applied.
4. Tone/ Attitude Questions: While writing on some topic, every author will have some ideas/ character/ attitude towards it.
How to solve these types of questions?
In order to answer these ideas/ attitude questions you need to identify the ideas/ character/ attitude he has towards the subject he is dealing with. This ‘attitude’ can be inferred by a careful reading. Also, his attitude towards the subject will impart a tone to his writing and will explicitly be shown by his choice of words.
5. Vocabulary Based Questions: These questions ask you to choose the MOST SIMILAR/ MOST OPPOSITE option among the given options.
How to solve these types of questions?
There is no hierarchical process which you can follow to answer these types of questions. However, you can refer to the wordlist given in the vocabulary section to improve your vocabulary. Also, try to infer the meaning of the word on the basis of the tone of the sentence.

Reading Comprehension: Examples

Directions (1-10): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases in the passage are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.
In a private journal in 1945, Alfred Kazin said that, “More and more, it is clear to me that what I suffer from is the lack of a working philosophy, of a strong central belief, of something outside to which my ‘self’ can hold and, for once, forget its ‘self.’” In a letter to his editor, Norman Mailer said The Naked and the Dead would feature “troubling terrifying glimpses of order in disorder, of a horror which may or may not lurk beneath the surface of things,” forging into “primitive glimpses of a structure
behind things […] on the edge of a deeper knowledge.” And Frank O’Hara’s search for the essence of the human person in poetry could travel so far to the edge of deeper knowledge that it became a sickening moral crisis. Kazin’s absent working philosophy influenced a private life animated by self-aggrandizing myths of erotic heroism and acts of domestic violence. Mailer only had to look in the mirror to catch glimpses of terrifying disorder. He nearly killed his second wife by stabbing her with a penknife. In the case of O’Hara, the quintessential poet of the avant-garde was so artistically insecure that he could descend into states of depressive alcoholism leading to poetic impotence. These are just a few examples of the inner turmoil and private instability, which Mendelson carefully reveals as the backdrop of literary expression in the 20th century. At a time when the question of human nature was of grave public concern, it proved no less compelling behind closed doors.

       Though Dwight Macdonald’s work as a commentator and critic was not celebrated like the novels and poems of his peers, he was instrumental in setting the stakes of the literary and humanistic debate. Raised in the cradle of America’s founding elite, Mendelson says that ‘’ his ancestors were to Yale what the Adams, Eliot and Lowell families were to Harvard.” In each case, the “family produced one or more soberly respectable presidents of the college or the nation,” but they also “produced a volatile and often tormented moralist-aesthete.” Dwight was his family’s Henry (Adams), T. S. (Eliot), and Robert (Lowell), editing for the Partisan Review, founding Politics, and writing for outlets that ranged from The New Yorker to Esquire. Deeply moved by the horrors of the two World Wars, and America’s numerous moral failures (especially in relationship to the descendants of slavery), Macdonald’s response to moral and political ambiguity was an unfailing attempt to establish supreme clarity. His defining statement remains the essay “Masscult and Midcult.”
In it, Macdonald outlined the traditional divide between High Art and Folk Art, which was not fraught with pejorative overtones as it would be today. Rather, it was merely the result of aristocratic hierarchies that made up most of recorded history. For him, the virtue of aesthetic hierarchy was that it emanated from the work of individuals who were expressing the concrete realities of their community. ”Folk Art grew mainly from below,” and was “shaped by the people to fit their own needs, even though itoften took its cue from High Culture.” Obviously high art and culture were curated by the elite, but clear distinctions allowed for cross germination that aspired to move in both directions (for example, Picasso’s immersion in African folklore, or the contemporary sign painting of Steve Powers).
With the advent of Mass Culture — “or better Masscult, since it really isn’t culture at all” — the communal context of artistic expression was overrun by industrial mechanisms to produce and deliver (almost anything) to a freshly minted entity known as the public. Where folk art and high culture were unique and respectable in their own right, masscult was a parody of high culture, conceived in executive boardrooms to sell to the masses (the precursor to the consumer and the tax payer). The result was the semblance of art produced on the basis of behavioral patterns and capitalizing on distraction. In Macdonald’s appraisal, the moral
implications of this aesthetic revolution were high, and the ramifications were deeply political. Anticipating a key feature of late 20th-century American fiction, “the mass man,” he argued, “is a solitary atom, uniform with the millions of other atoms that go to make up ‘the lonely crowd.’” Individuals, he argued, thrive in relationship to community, where economic interests, traditions, humor, controversy, and values can be shared, and from which vibrant artistic and political expressions can emerge. On the flipside, A mass society, like a crowd, is inchoate and uncreative. Its atoms cohere not according to individual liking or traditions or even interests but in a purely mechanical way, as iron filings of different shapes and sizes are pulled toward a magnet working on the one quality they have in common. Its morality sinks to the level of the most primitive members — a crowd will commit atrocities that very few of its members would commit as individuals — and its taste to that of the least sensitive and the most ignorant. Where he thought the blurring of lines between the upper and lower classes was one of America’s great political achievements, it was culturally devastating. Instead of preserving the nation’s organic ethnic plurality, Macdonald saw a hasty assimilation by immigrants (the “huddled masses”) who were made to feel ashamed of their rich artistic and linguistic traditions, rendering many “at the lowest cultural (as well as economic) levels […] ready-made consumers of Kitsch.” Hasty assimilation and consumption of kitsch led to the advent of Midcult, which “pretends to respect the standards of High Culture while in fact it waters them down and vulgarizes them.” According to Macdonald, Midcult could neither sustain cultural plurality, nor challenge conventional wisdom. Arguably a precursor of contemporary phenomena such as trigger warnings, Midcult was predicated on being acceptable, uncontroversial, and inoffensive. It promoted a cultural world of aesthetic, political and intellectual homogenization, where “the fear that wakes publishers in the night is,” not that the quality of their acquisitions, but “that the presses may for a moment stop.” In turn, the fear that silences citizens and artists is that they might offend.
1.According to the given passage, which of the following options is/ are NOT TRUE about Dwight Macdonald?
(i) As a commentator and critic, he wasn’t as successful as his contemporaries.
(ii) According to him, the moral implications of aesthetic revolution were high.
(iii) He was successful in establishing supreme clarity between moral
and political ambiguity.
(a) Only (i)
(b) Only (ii)

(c) Only (iii)
(d) All (i), (ii), (iii)
(e) None of (i), (ii), (iii)
2.According to the given passage, on what aspect(s) was the Midcult based?
(a) On being acceptable
(b) On not being controversial
(c) On being inoffensive.
(d) Both (a) and (c)
(e) All (a), (b) and (c). 3.
3.Who has been referred as a freshly minted entity in the passage?
(a) Artists
(b) Public
(c) Tax Payers
(d) Immigrants
(e) Industrialists
4.According to the given passage, In case of O’Hara, what was the main reason that led to poetic impotence?
(a) Depressive alcoholism
(b) Private instability
(c) Artistic insecurity
(d) Midcult Art
(e) Self-aggrandizing myths
5. On the basis of the given passage, which of the following option(s) is/are TRUE about ‘Folk Art’?
(i) It was a flexible form of art.
(ii) It is a unique art form.
(ii) It was independent of High Culture.
(a) Only (i)
(b) Only (ii)
(c) Both (i) and (ii)
(d) Both (i) and (iii)
(e) Only (ii)
Directions (6-8): Choose the word/group of words which is MOST SIMILAR in meaning to the word/group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.
6. Aggrandizing
(a) Glorify
(b) Mushrooming

(c) Belittling
(d) Empower
(e) Disgracing
7. Ramifications
(a) Repercussions
(b) Flaws
(c) Outcomes
(d) Effects
(e) Drawbacks
8. Assimilation
(a) Absorption
(b) Contraction
(c) Wearing out
(d) Hardwork
(e) Expansion

Directions (9-10): Choose the word/group of words which is MOST OPPOSITE in meaning of the word/group of words printed in bold as used in the passage.
9.Inchoate
(a) Vulgar
(b) Prudent

(c) Inceptive
(d) Matured

(e) Firm

10. Slavery
(a) Thralldom
(d) Confinement
(c) Braggadocio
(b) Vassalage
(e) Carte blanche

Solutions:

1. (e); The statement ‘…..Dwight Macdonald’s work as a commentator and critic was not celebrated like the novels and poems of his peers….’ suggests that he was not as successful commentator and critic as his contemporaries. Hence, (i) is true.
In the fourth paragraph, it is clearly given that ‘…….In Macdonald’s appraisal, the moral implications of this aesthetic revolution were high…….’ Hence, (ii) is also true. The author has called McDonald’s response to moral and political ambiguity an unfailing attempt. Hence (iii) is also true. Hence, (e) is the correct answer.

2. (e); In the last paragraph it is given that ‘Midcult was predicated on being acceptable, uncontroversial, and inoffensive’. From which we can easily infer that ‘Midcult’ is based on all three aspects given in the options (a), (b) and (c).

3. (b); It is clearly given in the passage that ‘…the communal context of artistic expression was overrun by industrial mechanisms to produce and deliver (almost anything) to a freshly minted entity known as the Public. Hence, (b) is the correct answer.

4. (c); It is given in the second paragraph that ‘…..In the case of O’Hara, the quintessential poet of the avant-garde was so artistically insecure that he could descend into states of depressive alcoholism leading to poetic impotence….‘ It is clear from this statement that (b), (d) and (e) can’t be the correct answer. Now, one may get confused between options (a) and (c) but, it is given in this statement that it
was actually artistic insecurity that descended him into the depressive alcoholism. Hence, the main reason that led to poetic impotence is ‘Artistic Insecurity’. Hence (c) is the correct answer.

5. (d); It is given in the third paragraph that ‘Folk Art grew mainly from below,” and was “shaped by the people to fit their own needs,’. Hence we can infer that Folk art was flexible enough be shaped by the people. Hence, (i) is true. In the same paragraph, it is given that ‘…..Where folk art and high culture were unique and respectable in their own right, masscult was a parody of high culture………..’. On the basis of which, we can conclude that option (ii) is also true. Now, it is mentioned in the same paragraph that Folk art took its cue from High Culture. Hence we can’t conclude that it was independent of High Culture. Hence (ii) is not true. Hence, (d) is the correct option.

6. (d); Aggrandizing means ‘increase the power or status of something’. Hence, ‘empower’ is the word which is most similar in meaning to it.
Look at the meaning of the given options
Glorify: Describe or represent as admirable
Disgracing: Bring shame or discredit on
Empower: Make (someone) stronger and more confident
Mushrooming: Increase, spread, or develop rapidly.
Belittling: Dismiss (someone or something) as unimportant.

7. (a); Ramifications means ‘a complex or unwelcome consequence of an action or event’. Hence, ‘repercussions’ is the word which is most similar in meaning to it.
Look at the meaning of the given options.
Repercussions: An unintended consequence of an event or action, especially an unwelcome one.
Outcome: The way a thing turns out
Drawbacks: A feature that renders something less acceptable
Flaws: A shortcoming, imperfection, or lack.
Effects: A change which is a result or consequence of an action or other cause.

8. (a); Assimilation means ‘The process by which a person or persons acquire the social and psychological characteristics of a group’. Hence, ‘absorption’ is the word which is most similar in meaning to it.
Look at the meaning of the given options.
Absorption: The state of being engrossed in something.
Wearing out: Totire or exhaust
Hard work: A great deal of effort or endurance.
Contraction: The process of becoming smaller.
Expansion: The action of becoming larger or more extensive.

9. (e); Inchoate means ‘just begun and so not fully formed or developed’. Hence, ‘matured’ is the word which is most opposite in meaning to it.
Look at the meaning of the given options
Vulgar: Lacking sophistication or good taste.
Inceptive: Relating to or marking the beginning of something; initial.
Firm: Strongly felt and unlikely to change.
Prudent: Acting with or showing care and thought for the future.
Matured: Become fully grown or developed.

10. (e); Slavery means ‘the state of being a slave.’. Hence ‘Carte blanche’ is the word which is most opposite in meaning to it.
Look at the meaning of the given options.
Thralldom: The state of being under the control of another person
Vassalage: Bondage
Braggadocio:Boastful or arrogant behaviour
Confinement: The action of confining or state of being confined
Carte blanche: Complete freedom to act as one wishes.

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