Comprehension Passage

Reading comprehension passage :

Solving English Reading Comprehension is an inevitable part of examination in English. Whereas the paper is of 80 marks, comprehension passage is having weight-age of 12 marks and the best thing is that the answers are there with you. Just you are to find the right word/line/phrase. The question that lingers in every student’s mind is “How to improve Reading comprehension?” There are some hurdles in the way. The biggest one is that sometimes we are unable to understand the vocabulary (meaning of words) and concept of the passage, many students become dull and uninterested in this section. 

I would like to share some important tips and tricks to solve all the questions of Comprehension passage so as to score these 12 out of 12 marks in English. This strategy / tips are useful for each level of students. I would like to tell you that there is no shortcut to the success but exercise and hard work.

Step – I (Finding the Answers)

1. First read the questions given after the passage so as to find the answers while reading the passage.

2. Now read the passage carefully and keeping questions in mind. It will be easier to find the answers as you may be known to the facts you are to find in the passage. Just matching the vocabulary of the question may give you 50% answers at class XII level. This is called “word by word approach”. But this trick won’t work every time. The aim of the comprehension is to check your ability to find the most correct answer only. Avoid partially correct option and read again the portion of the passage for better answer.

3. When reading override the incomprehensible words or phrases. Students are always scared of the difficult words used in the passage and thus gets mislead. I would like to suggest that theses 2-3 words are not the whole passage. It is not necessary that everybody knows the whole dictionary. The need is to find the summary / meaning of the passage to answer the questions given below. Sometimes your wild guess may help you or you may get an idea of the meaning of the word/s by the contextual meaning of the whole sentence / passage. Remember that the meanings of the words joined with “and”, “or”, “comma(,)” almost the same. But try to improve your vocabulary by reading a lot. You should read English newspaper every day and note down atleast 5 new words along with their meaning that came across your reading in your diary.

4. Try to improve your reading speed, as it will be quite helpful to find the answers quickly and will save your time in the examination. Many a student of mine has made complaints that English Core paper is very lengthy. But the fact is that generally the students are in a habit of over attempting answers or exceeding the word limit fixed for the specific question.

5. Don’t draw outside knowledge while answering the comprehension questions. This is not a show of your knowledge, just you are to answer the questions from the input passage and score these 12 marks. You are supposed to stick to the information supplied through the passage itself.

6. After 1st read, again read the questions and then go for second reading of the passage. This is very important. The questions will give you the idea from which part the questions are asked. If you do not know the exact answer to the question then you need to read that part of the passage again. It will make answering the questions easily and correctly.

7. Always there is a logical sequence in the questions based on the gist of the passage. I am hopeful you will be able to find the gist and the logical order of the passage for better answers and score as well.

7. You can underline the answers with pencil so that it will be easier while answering.

8. This is a high scoring portion of the paper and don’t leave it to be attempted at the end.

9. The reading part Section ‘A’ needs a great deal of practice. I hope that after practice of previous year CBSE papers will be quite helpful in developing the skill of handling comprehension passages.

Step – II (Writing the answers)

Presentation is very important to score high. In pen and paper examination pattern you are to present your answers in your answer sheets. So following tips will surely help you to present your answers in a beautiful manner and score high.

1. Don’t write the question sentence. The number of the question is sufficient.

2. For MCQ type questions, write the correct option i.e. (iii) and the sentence of the option as well so as to make it easier for the examiner to award you full mark.

3. For SAQ don’t copy the whole sentences from the passage. You have found the correct facts from the passage, underlined them as well. Now you are to write the answers in your own language, but within the word limit. You can use the vocabulary of the passage in framing your answer.

4. Always leave a line between two questions.

Some solved Examples from the CBSE Papers :

2015              Q. 1&2 with CBSE Answer Key

2016              Q. 1&2 with CBSE Answer Key

2017              Q. 1&2 with CBSE Answer Key

2018              Q. 1&2 with CBSE Answer Key

2019              Q. 1 with CBSE Answer Key SET 1-1-1

                      Q. 1 with CBSE Answer Key SET 1-2-1

                      Q. 1 with CBSE Answer Key SET 1-3-1

                      Q. 1 with CBSE Answer Key SET 1-4-1

                      Q. 1 with CBSE Answer Key SET 1-5-1

2020              Q. 1 with CBSE Answer Key