Comprehension


Direction: You have a passage with 10 questions. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
Long ago men spent most of their time looking for food. They ate anything they could find. Some lived mostly on plants. They ate the fruit, stems, and leaves of some plants and the roots of others. When food was scarce, they ate the bark of trees. If they were lucky, they would find a bird’s nest with eggs. People who lived near the water ate fish or anything that washed ashore, even rotten whales. Some people also ate insects and small animals like lizards that were easy to kill. Later, men learned to make weapons. With weapons, they could kill larger animals for meat. These early people had big appetites. If they killed an animal, they would drink the blood, eat the meat, and chew the bones. When they finished the meal, there was nothing left. At first men wandered from place to place to find their food. But when they began to grow plants, they stayed in one place and ate what they could grow. They tamed animals, trained them to work, and killed them for meat. Life was a little better then, but there was still not much variety in their meals. Day after day people ate the same food. Gradually men began to travel greater distances. The explorers who sailed unknown seas found new lands. And in these lands they found new food and spices and took them back home. The Portuguese who sailed around the stormy Cape of Good Hope to reach China took back “Chinese apples”, the fruit we call oranges today. Later, Portuguese colonists carried orange seeds to Brazil. From Brazil oranges were brought to California, the first place to grow oranges in the United States. Peaches and melons also came from China. So did a new drink, tea.

  1. What did men eat if there was a shortage of food?









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    The bark of trees

    Correct Option: B

    The bark of trees


Direction: You have a passage with 10 questions following the passage. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
Jazz had its beginnings in song. Its roots lie deep in the tradition of Negro folk singing that once flourished throughout the rural Southland of the United States before the Civil War. The Negro, in those days, owned only a few crude musical instruments which he made for himself from boxes, barrels and brooms. His voice was his principal means of musical expression. Songs of work and play, trouble and hope, rose on rich and rhythmic voices everywhere in the South - from peddlers crying their wares to the countryside, from work gangs on the rail roads, from families gathered at the days’s end to sing away their weariness in their unpainted cottages overlooking the cotton fields, from the wayside churches singing with the sounds of Sabbath praise. These were the voices which the early Negro musicians imitated and transferred to their horns when they taught themselves to play the discarded band instruments that come into hands at the close of the Civil War in the eighteensixties. As played by their proud Negro owners, the instruments became extensions of the human voice - “singing horns” which opened the way to Jazz. For this reason there has always been a strong, singing quality to Jazz.
SOME IMPORTANT WORDS
crude : simple and not very accurate
peddler : a person who travels from place to place to sell small objects
wares : things sold in the streets/at a market weariness : tiredness wayside :the area at the side of a road/path
Sabbath : the holiday of the week that is used for resting and worshipping God. (Jews ⇒ Saturday : Christians ⇒ Sunday)
discarded : got rid of something that you no longer wanted/needed.

  1. Which of the following is the most appropriate title for the passage?









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    The early origins of Jazz

    Correct Option: C

    The early origins of Jazz



  1. The phrase sing away in the passage means









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    sing songs to forget

    Correct Option: B

    sing songs to forget


  1. Which of the following statements is false in the context of the passage?









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    The Negro’s voice was not his principal means of musical expression.

    Correct Option: D

    The Negro’s voice was not his principal means of musical expression.



  1. What opened the way to Jazz?









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    “Singing horns”.

    Correct Option: D

    “Singing horns”.