CMAT Reading Comprehension Questions

Comprehension: The Earth is getting warmer, and the oceans are rising. Why is it happening so? One answer is that it could simply be a part of a natural process. After all, there have been ice ages and long periods of warmth in the past. However, now scientists believe that human activity is the cause. For more than 200 years, human activities have changed drastically (i) (for example, industrial pollution), which have contributed to creating a layer in the atmosphere around the Earth like a giant glass container, affecting the temperatures. Unwariness (ii) of humans may lead to a big global catastrophe in the future, harmful not only to the existence of humanity but to other living and non-living beings too.

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.

Comprehension:
"Everyone in the fort was watching the action below with bated breath. Shivaji dismounted at the first gate and ran up the steps. The cannons were waiting for his signal and everyone was watching him wide-eyed. His white kurta was torn at the back and was blowing in the wind. The front was drenched in blood and his hair was disheveled".

Comprehension:

All the great religious teachers of mankind have insisted on this : that men ought not to live for themselves alone. We ought not, they have said, to spend all our time and energy in getting just what we want for ourselves, power and money and importance in the world; we ought to serve something greater than ourselves, whether a god or a cause or our fellowmen. It is by serving this something greater that men will forget themselves and so achieve happiness. This or something like it is what the great religions have taught, and it is one of the most important of the things that civilization means. It is also the hardest to learn and practise; in fact, most people have found it much too hard.

Comprehension:

All the great religious teachers of mankind have insisted on this : that men ought not to live for themselves alone. We ought not, they have said, to spend all our time and energy in getting just what we want for ourselves, power and money and importance in the world; we ought to serve something greater than ourselves, whether a god or a cause or our fellowmen. It is by serving this something greater that men will forget themselves and so achieve happiness. This or something like it is what the great religions have taught, and it is one of the most important of the things that civilization means. It is also the hardest to learn and practise; in fact, most people have found it much too hard.

Read the following passage and answer the next two questions.

Education, taken in its most extensive sense, is properly that which makes the man. One method of education, therefore, would only produce one kind of man; but the greater excellence of human nature consists in the variety of which it is capable. Instead then, of endeavouring, by uniform and fixed systems of education, to keep mankind always the same, let us give free scope to everything which may bid fair for introducing more variety among us. The varied character of the Athenians was certainly preferable to the uniform character of the brute creation. Among them, every species of bird builds its nest with the same materials and in the same form; the genius and disposition of one individual is that of all, and it is only the education which men give them that raises any of them much above others. But it is the glory of human nature that the operations of reason, through variable and by no means infallible, are capable of infinite improvement. We come into the world worse provided than any of the brutes; but when their faculties are at a full stand and their enjoyments incapable of variety or increase, our intellectual powers are growing apace; we are perpetually deriving happiness from new sources, and even before we leave this world, are capable of tasting the felicity of angels.

Read the following passage and answer the next two questions.

Education, taken in its most extensive sense, is properly that which makes the man. One method of education, therefore, would only produce one kind of man; but the greater excellence of human nature consists in the variety of which it is capable. Instead then, of endeavouring, by uniform and fixed systems of education, to keep mankind always the same, let us give free scope to everything which may bid fair for introducing more variety among us. The varied character of the Athenians was certainly preferable to the uniform character of the brute creation. Among them, every species of bird builds its nest with the same materials and in the same form; the genius and disposition of one individual is that of all, and it is only the education which men give them that raises any of them much above others. But it is the glory of human nature that the operations of reason, through variable and by no means infallible, are capable of infinite improvement. We come into the world worse provided than any of the brutes; but when their faculties are at a full stand and their enjoyments incapable of variety or increase, our intellectual powers are growing apace; we are perpetually deriving happiness from new sources, and even before we leave this world, are capable of tasting the felicity of angels.