(CBSE) FOUR MORE READING COMPREHENSION EXERCISES

 

Q1   Read the following passage carefully.                                                                            

Sponsored Festivals

This is the high noon of the Age of Sponsorship. For several years now, we have become used to all kinds of events being sponsored. In many newspapers, every possible feature, barring the editorials, is sponsored. Even the daily weather report is.

Student organizations, which were once content to hold low-key festivals in their college, now find corporate sponsors and get massive media exposure for such events.

 Ganesh Chaturthi, the festival was once an affair confined to individual homes. Today, in Mumbai it provides competition for rival sponsors   as the size of the idols grows in height and girth every year and the festivities are held with greater gusto and noise

 During Dushera, Mumbai reverberates to the beat of drums. Thousands of young people spend nights dancing to the various versions of the traditional Gujarati ‘garba’ dance- including the mutant-“disco garba”. It is one of those strange twists of irony that dance, which actually liberated women and gave them a legitimate reason to dance their hearts out, has now become a highly sponsored event in which there is no place for traditional ‘garba’ dancers. In the past, the dancing was free of both self consciousness, as it was a women’s dance, and commerce as it was held in the courtyard.

Thus each year something precious is being lost –and the worst part of it is that the majority of us are not even aware of it.

Answer the following questions by selecting the most appropriate options from the ones given below:

1) It is called the age of sponsorship as

a)             there’s too much money in the market

b)            newspapers , festivals in colleges are all commercialized

c)             common man loves the paraphernalia

d)            money attracts the common man

 

2) The role Garba played in the lives of the women in the past was to

a)              help them get rid of their inhibitions

b)             provide a stage for their talent

c)                                                 root them in tradition

    d)        prove  commercially viable for them

 

3) Today Ganesh Chaturthi is a festival that

a)       is confined to individual homes

b)      provides an opportunity for sponsors to invest money

c)       is held with great fanfare

d)      has a few sponsors

 

4) ‘Mutant ’ in para 4 means

a)       crazy

b)      unimaginable

c)       dangerous

d)      adapted or changed

 

5) According to the author the greatest tragedy of sponsorship is

a)       the loss of money

b)      the focus on unnecessary expenditure

c)       the common man is being duped

    d)    the loss of the essence of our culture without realizing it

 

 

 Q2    Read the following poem carefully:                                                                   

   WHAT I LEAVE TO MY SON

No point in leaving you a long list

Of those who have died

Even if I limit it to my friends and your uncles

It won’t do. Who could remember them all?

My son, isn’t it true?

The obituaries leave me indifferent

as the weather. Sometimes they seem to matter

Even less: How can that be, my son?

I’ll leave you , yes,

A treasure I’m always seeking, never finding

Can you guess? Something wondrous

Something my father wanted for me

Although (poor man!) it’s been nothing

But a mirage in the desert

Of my life.

My soul will join his now, praying

That your generation may find it-

Simply peace-

Simply a life better than ours

Where you and friends won’t be forced

To drag grief-laden feet down the road

To mutual murder.

Nguyen Ngoc Bich

 

Answer the following questions by selecting the most appropriate options from the ones given below:

1)  The obituaries and weather

a)        have no significance for the poet

b)       leave the poet depressed

c)    matter a lot to the poet

d)   are an integral part of the poet’s survival

2)   The legacy the poet wishes to leave to his son is

a)       To live a life devoid of hatred

b)      To have a better life than his own generation

c)       To be a happy and responsible citizens

d)      All of the above

3) Mutual murder is an example of

a)       Imagery

b)      Alliteration

c)       Metaphor

d)      Simile

4) The poet‘s father’s wishes have been nothing but

a)       A dream

b)      Something wondrous

c)       Treasure he always is seeking

d)      A mirage in the desert of his life

5)    The expression drag grief laden feet means

a)       A life that has no aim

b)      Being unhappy

c)       Leading a slow life

d)      Leading a life of monotony

 

 

 

 Q3 Read the following passage carefully:                                                                 

 The tree was young and strong and it took a long time to kill. It took two workmen with axes, two days, including tea breaks. Which without conscious irony, they took in the shade of the leafy branches of the tree they were chopping down. It was a Gulmohar I had planted 13 years ago, along with several other saplings, when Bunny and I moved into the National media centre. The NMC is built on a little over 22 acres and many hundreds of the local babul trees that used to cloak that part of the Haryana countryside like smoke from evening chullas must have been cut down to make way for the brick and cement of our colony. I’m not a tree hugger but still felt that some restitution was due. So Bunny and  I planted several saplings.

The two gulmohars at the rear were foot high saplings when we put them in the soil. In a few years their branches aflame with scarlet flowers in summer, rose above the first floor window, flooding the room with afterglow and screening from view the ugly scars of new construction in what had once been open fields behind our house. I felt the smugness of satisfaction, of having done the right thing. I’d given back, in however small a way, a little bit of what we take away from the earth everyday, everywhere.

Righteousness invites its own revenge. The roots of one of the trees had spread, crushing the sewage system. The handyman gave us the choice of either cutting down the tree or its roots would endanger the foundations of the house.

Answer the following questions by selecting the most appropriate option from the ones given below:

1)      The irony in the first para is that the

a)       The tree was planted by the author but cut by the workmen

b)      The workmen chopped the tree that gave them shade.

c)       It took 13 years for the tree to grow

d)      The author was not passionate about trees yet he planted them

 

2)      When the colony was settled, the author decided to

a)        make  the outskirts  greener

b)      plant a few saplings around the house

c)       sulk in depression

d)      start a movement

 

3)      The feeling  the newly grown gulmohar trees evoked in the author was of

a)       remorse

b)      pride

c)       self - satisfaction

d)      regret

 

 

 

 

4)      The writer had to get the free felled because

a)       he was being righteous

b)      the house was in danger of being destroyed

c)       the tree had grown too tall

d)      the sewage system was damaged

 

 

5)      Being righteous means

a)       Doing things the correct way

b)      Being aware of your rights

c)       Following your heart

d)      Conscious of the ways of the world

 Q4 Read the following passage carefully:                                                                      

Ask any parent anywhere on the planet and they will tell you that there is nothing sinister, nothing as singularly depressing as Arpita’s copy.

Now this is not just a copy where a tidy conscientious child writes in copious details about everything, taking care to label things in boxes and uses eighteen different coloured pencils while describing ‘My favourite holiday’. This is actually a sinister plot hatched to make your parenting skills look bad by rival parents with way too much time, patience and colouring ability on their side. The child is merely an instrument; it is the parents who are graded.

The whole school evaluation process grades parents with a bewilderingly complex classification that involves stars, smileys, goods, very goods, keep it up. Are two smileys better than a ‘good’ and a ‘keep it up’? And what about Arpita? What has she got?

Today the child is seen as an entity that is moldable and the role of the parent is to build a person out of a child. This puts tremendous responsibility on parents who believe that their actions determine their child’s future and hence every small step becomes a BIG PROJECT where a minor mistake would make your child a dribbling sociopath tomorrow.

Hence the persistent belief that enough is not being done for the child inspite of the unfortunate truth that more than enough is being done to him. Children need to perform in order to make parents feel good about themselves. In that sense, not much has changed; children still become instruments for the realisation of some parental goals. If earlier getting Into Science was enough to make parents proud, now almost nothing is good enough. Ninety per cent is too little and one extra-curricular activity too basic. And yes, there is always an Arpita lurking somewhere with her wretched copy.

Answer the following questions by selecting the most appropriate option from the ones given below:

1)      The aspect of parenting that has not changed over the years is

a)      Expectations from children by society

b)      Belief that nothing has changed

c)      Parents using children to realize their dreams.

d)      Parents doing the school assignments for their children

 

2)      The word ‘sinister’ in Para 1 means:

a)      Sinful

b)      Complex

c)      Evil

d)      Bad

 

3)      The role Arpita plays in the writer’s life is that of

a)       someone who provides inspiration

b)      somebody who depresses her

c)      someone who pressurises her to do well

d)      someone who competes with the writer

 

4)        The writer is critical of the parents because

a)      they take their role very seriously

b)      nothing satisfies them

c)      at every step, they worry about their child’s future

d)      all of the above

 

5)      The tone of the passage is

a)      encouraging

b)      remorseful

c)      mocking

d)      sympathetic