Embibe Experts Solutions for Chapter: Reading Comprehension, Exercise 1: Reading Comprehension

Read the following passage carefully and answer the question given below it.

As my train was not due to leave for another hour, I had plenty of time to spare. After buying some magazines to read on the journey, I made my way to the luggage office to collect the heavy suitcase I had left there three days before. There were only a few people waiting, and I took out my wallet to find the receipt for my case. The receipt did not seem to be where I had left it. I emptied the contents of the wallet, and the railway tickets, money, scraps of paper, and photographs tumbled out of it; but no matter how hard I searched, the receipt was nowhere to be found.

I explained the situation sorrowfully to the assistant. The man looked at me suspiciously as if to say he had heard this type of story many times and asked me to describe the case. I told him that it was an old, brown looking object no different from the many suitcases I could see on the shelves. The assistant then gave me form and told me to make a list of the contents of the case. If they were correct, he said, I could take the case away. I tried to remember all the articles I had hurriedly packed and wrote them down.

After I had done this, I went to look shelves. There were hundreds of cases there and for one dreadful moment, it occurred to me that if someone had picked the receipt up, he could easily have claimed the case already. Fortunately this had not happened, for after a time, I found the case lying on its side high up in the corner. After examining the articles inside, the assistant gave me the case. I took out my wallet to pay him. I pulled out a ten shilling note and out slipped my 'lost' receipt with it! I could not help blushing. The assistant nodded his head knowingly, as if to say that he had often seen this happen too !!

The writer took out his wallet the first time to

Read the following passage carefully and answer the question given below it.

As my train was not due to leave for another hour, I had plenty of time to spare. After buying some magazines to read on the journey, I made my way to the luggage office to collect the heavy suitcase I had left there three days before. There were only a few people waiting, and I took out my wallet to find the receipt for my case. The receipt did not seem to be where I had left it. I emptied the contents of the wallet, and the railway tickets, money, scraps of paper, and photographs tumbled out of it; but no matter how hard I searched, the receipt was nowhere to be found.

I explained the situation sorrowfully to the assistant. The man looked at me suspiciously as if to say he had heard this type of story many times and asked me to describe the case. I told him that it was an old, brown looking object no different from the many suitcases I could see on the shelves. The assistant then gave me form and told me to make a list of the contents of the case. If they were correct, he said, I could take the case away. I tried to remember all the articles I had hurriedly packed and wrote them down.

After I had done this, I went to look shelves. There were hundreds of cases there and for one dreadful moment, it occurred to me that if someone had picked the receipt up, he could easily have claimed the case already. Fortunately this had not happened, for after a time, I found the case lying on its side high up in the corner. After examining the articles inside, the assistant gave me the case. I took out my wallet to pay him. I pulled out a ten shilling note and out slipped my 'lost' receipt with it! I could not help blushing. The assistant nodded his head knowingly, as if to say that he had often seen this happen too.

In this passage 'situation' means

Direction: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows the passage. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.

Superstitions are universal phenomena having their own peculiar place in the cultural ethos and milieu of a people. They epitomize man’s fear of the unknown, fear of evil, blind faith in omens and portents. Superstitions are inter-woven with myth, legend, unnatural phenomena and disasters, customs and traditions, and are mainly the outcome of ignorance. They are unreasoned and irrational beliefs that gradually become matters of faith. When certain things and happenings are rationally inexplicable people, tend to assign mysterious and supernatural reasons for their operation. Thus, a natural disaster is explained in terms of God’s wrath and the failure of one’s project is assigned to the black cat which crossed the path just as one set out on the errand.
Primitive human beings were mainly governed by superstitions. Superstitions were widespread before the dawn of civilization when science had not advanced. Thus, ignorance of the primitive people and the resultant growth of superstitions were the direct outcomes of the lack of scientific advancement. Unenlightened people always tend to be superstitious. The belief in the sanctity of time and old traditions of the ancestors bind the people into knots of superstitious thought. Besides, the unscrupulous priests and religious officials exercise a dominating, unhealthy effect upon the people believing in religious orthodoxy. They encourage superstitions for their own ulterior motives.
Superstitions are not only universally prevalent but even have strikingly common features whether believed in India or in as far off a place like Canada. There are some common superstitions that are shared by people all over the world. Beliefs in spirits, ghosts and witches and reincarnation are quite common among all the peoples of the world. Belief in witches still prevails in India, France, Scotland, England and many other countries. In countries of the East, especially in India, belief in ghosts and spirits still exists. The cries of certain birds like owls and ravens and the howl of cats are regarded with superstition as portents of evil throughout the world. Then there is a very common belief that the sighting of comets portends the death of kings or great men or some unforeseen catastrophe. Shakespeare refers to such a superstition in his Julius Caesar, Halley’s Comet in the twentieth century evoked a similar response in many a mind.

Which of the following is INCORRECT with respect to the passage?

Direction: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows the passage. Your answer should be based on the passage only.

Stuttering is a habit disorder linked with a lack of self-confidence. Basically, for a child to understand a language, there are four stages. The first is learning to understand the spoken language and the second is speaking. Both of these usually develop around the age of two. The third stage is speaking complex sentences, which develops at around 3 and the fourth is when the child recognizes the written alphabet. In 80% of children, while the third and fourth stages are at play, the first two get disturbed because something new is being incorporated into the mind. This is absolutely normal. But what over-cautious mothers do is fret a lot and the child develops a fear which later manifests itself as stuttering. In fact, most textbooks on the stuttering state in bold that, "Had there not been any over-cautious mothers, hardly anyone would have suffered from stuttering". Fluency can be incorporated in the speech of such patients through hypnosis.

Which of the following marks the second stage of a child's understanding of the language?

Direction: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows the passage. Your answer should be based on the passage only.

Stuttering is a habit disorder linked with a lack of self-confidence. Basically, for a child to understand a language, there are four stages. The first is learning to understand the spoken language and the second is speaking. Both of these usually develop around the age of two. The third stage is speaking complex sentences, which develops at around 3 and the fourth is when the child recognizes the written alphabet. In 80% of children, while the third and fourth stages are at play, the first two get disturbed because something new is being incorporated into the mind. This is absolutely normal. But what over-cautious mothers do is fret a lot and the child develops a fear which later manifests itself as stuttering. In fact, most textbooks on the stuttering state in bold that, "Had there not been any over-cautious mothers, hardly anyone would have suffered from stuttering". Fluency can be incorporated in the speech of such patients through hypnosis.

Who is basically responsible for developing fear in the child's mind?

Direction: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows the passage. Your answer to this item should be based on the passage only.

Speech is a great blessing, but it can also be a great curse, for a while it helps us to make our intentions and desires known to our fellows, it can also if we use it carelessly, make our attitude completely misunderstood. A slip of the tongue, the use of an unusual word, or an ambiguous word, and so on, may create an enemy where we had hoped to win a friend. Again, different classes of people use different vocabularies, and the ordinary speech of an educated may strike an uneducated listener as pompous. Unwittingly, we may use a word which bears a different meaning to our listener from what it does to men of our own class. Thus, speech is not a gift to use lightly without thought, but one which demands careful handling. Only a fool will express himself alike to all kinds and conditions to men.

A ‘slip of the tongue’ means something said _____.

Direction: Read the following passage carefully and answer the question given below it. 

Another marvel on the far side of the lake was a little farm that felt like a secret in the city. Some of the gaunt Karnataka labourers even looked away when children came to dig and eat. But the greatest pleasure, this side of the lake, was the jamun tree. A few months back, Kalu and Sunil had a feast in the branches, shaking down a few berries for Mirchi. That's when they came to know the second-coolest thing about the jamun tree: There were parrots nesting in it. Since then, some other road boys had been capturing the parrots one by one to sell at the Marol Market, but Sunil had brought Kalu around to the belief that the birds should be left as they were. Sunil listened for their squawks each morning, to make sure they hadn't been abducted in the night.
Kalu's expertise was in the recycling bins inside airline catering compounds. Private waste collectors emptied these dumpsters on a regular basis, but Kalu had mastered the trash truck's schedules. The night before pickup, Kalu would climb over the barbed-wire fences and raid the overflowing bins.
Kalu's routine had become known by the local police, however. He kept getting caught until some constables proposed a different arrangement. Kalu could keep his metal scrap if he'd pass on information he picked up on the road about local drug dealers.  

What did Sunil think of parrots?

Direction: Read the following passage carefully and answer the question given below it.

Another marvel on the far side of the lake was a little farm that felt like a secret in the city. Some of the gaunt Karnataka labourers even looked away when children came to dig and eat. But the greatest pleasure, this side of the lake, was the jamun tree. A few months back, Kalu and Sunil had a feast in the branches, shaking down a few berries for Mirchi. That's when they came to know the second-coolest thing about the jamun tree: There were parrots nesting in it. Since then, some other road boys had been capturing the parrots one by one to sell at the Marol Market, but Sunil had brought Kalu around to the belief that the birds should be left as they were. Sunil listened for their squawks each morning, to make sure they hadn't been abducted in the night.
Kalu's expertise was in the recycling bins inside airline catering compounds. Private waste collectors emptied these dumpsters on a regular basis, but Kalu had mastered the trash truck's schedules. The night before pickup, Kalu would climb over the barbed-wire fences and raid the overflowing bins.
Kalu's routine had become known by the local police, however. He kept getting caught until some constables proposed a different arrangement. Kalu could keep his metal scrap if he'd pass on information he picked up on the road about local drug dealers.  

How did Kalu manage to raid the airline recycling bins before they were emptied?