Comprehension practice: passage and questions
Practise the method on one original passage: read the questions, skim, locate, eliminate, and answer only from the text.
Passage, paragraph 1
When a school in a dry district began measuring the rainwater that fell on its own roof, the exercise was meant to teach arithmetic. Within a year it had changed the village. Students calculated that the roof collected nearly twice the water the school bought each summer, and the headteacher built a storage tank. Parents who visited the tank asked the children to measure their own roofs. Soon, a dozen homes had tanks, and the panchayat repaired an old pond that had silted up decades ago.
Passage, paragraph 2
Environmental education often fails because it is taught as a list of distant threats: melting glaciers, vanishing forests, rising seas. Such lessons may inform, but they rarely move learners to act, because the problem seems too large and too far away. The roof project worked for the opposite reason. The problem was local, the data were the students' own, and the result was visible within one season. Knowledge that learners produce themselves tends to persuade more than knowledge handed to them, and it travels, as here, from classroom to community.
Before you answer
- Note the structure: paragraph 1 tells a story; paragraph 2 makes an argument about it.
- Mark the signal words: but, because, opposite.
- Note the numbers and quantities: within a year, nearly twice, a dozen homes, one season.
- Ask who did what: students, headteacher, parents, panchayat.
- Ask what the author wants the reader to believe after both paragraphs.
Words that may be new
| Word | Meaning here |
|---|---|
| Silted up | Filled with fine soil and mud, so it holds little water |
| Panchayat | The elected local government body of a village |
| Distant threats | Problems far away in place or time, such as melting glaciers |
In the exam the passage sits on screen beside the questions. NET mixes central idea, factual, inference, title and tone items; this set covers all of them, plus vocabulary and a statement-based item.
Typical MCQ: “What does the roof project show about environmental education, according to the passage?” That a local problem, learners' own data and quick, visible results move people to act more than lessons on distant threats.
Typical MCQ: “Which word in paragraph 2 signals the contrast between the two kinds of lesson?” 'Opposite', in 'worked for the opposite reason', which sets the roof project against lessons on distant threats.
The story paragraph tells you what happened; the argument paragraph tells you why. Central-idea and title questions live in the why.