School of Institute of Metallurgy and Materials

Engineering
(Muhammad Karim Akhtar)
Lecture No. 3
Comprehension Passages for Practice
Rules for Comprehension Passage
To develop a better level of comprehension one requires certain skills:
 Logical ability
 Analytical ability
 Ability to infer
 Reasoning ability
 Ability to understand the main motive or the idea of the author
 Reading speed
 Vocabulary power
 Remembering some important information from paragraph otherwise, we need to
refer the paragraph again and again which will consume more time.
Important Strategies to Solve Comprehension Passages
 Read the Questions first
 Read the passage and try to grasp the idea
 Get engaged yourself with the paragraph to understand it
 Underline important lines, key words, phrases or parts of the passage to answer the
questions. It will also help to understand the main idea of the passage or the tone or
mood of the author.
 Underline or mark the key words. These will help you to discover the logical
connections in the passage and help in understanding it better.
 Try to understand some certain unfamiliar words by reading the line thoroughly. The
theme of the line will make you understand the meaning of the words.
 Determine the main idea, tone or mood, inferential reasoning and other details from
paragraph.
 Do not assume anything based on your personal belief.
 Look back at the paragraph when in doubt.
 Write the answers in your own words.
Area
Area of the target paragraph(s) varies: Sociology, Psychology, Education, Science,
Narrative etc. Familiarity to the target areas strengthens, yet unfamiliar passages may also
be comprehended with certain techniques.
Magnitude
Magnitude of the paragraph(s) wanders from 150 to 600 words.
Number of questions:
 Generally 4-5 questions, which carry equal marks, are given at the end of the paragraph.
Word Count in answer: (varies according to the content)
The magnitude of the answers varies. The answer should be relevant to the information
given in the target paragraph.
Sniff the Sense
Just like précis, there is no need to know the meaning of every word. To guess the sense
of the content is necessary.
Signification:
The guess work can be efficiently done through signification.
i. Amjad is a masochist, but Javed never tortures himself.
ii. When Ali’s friend rejected his proposal, Ali expressed benignity despite his
anger.
Nature of Questions:
Interpretation (indirect dimensions)
Inference (indirect meaning)
Implication (indirect meaning - text)
Attempt:
a. Write down the entire question with the relevant question number.
b. Write precisely and do not increase the magnitude by giving irrelevant details.
c. Avoid including your background knowledge to the answers. Your target paragraph is
your only frame of reference.
d. If the examiner asks to write down your opinion, you can include your background
knowledge relevantly.
e. Try to being your answer with the reference to the question.
i. Question: What is the difference between an ordinary man and an artist?
Answer: The difference between an ordinary man and an artist lies in their
understanding of the essence of beauty.
Read the Questions First
Read the questions first and it will give you more than 50% understanding of the target
paragraph. Often, questions introduce each other and help reach the target area. Usually,
questions guide readers to focus on the particular lines.
Target Areas:
Reading the paragraph swiftly, determine and mark the target area of every question
which may be sequential or non-sequential.
Competitive Exams Preparatory Institute - CEPI | Lahore
(Muhammad Karim Akhtar)

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2000
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
The vitality of any teaching, or historical movement, depends upon what it affirms rather than
upon what it affirms rather than upon what it denies, and its survival and continued power will
often mean that its positives are insufficiently regarded by opposing schools. The grand positives
of Bentham were benevolence and veracity: the passion for the relief of man’s estate, and the
passion for truth. Bentham’s multifarious activities, pursued without abatement to the end of a
long life, were inspired by a “dominant and all-comprehensive desire for the amelioration of
human life”; they were inspired, too, by the belief that he had found the key to all moral truth.
This institution, this custom, this code, this system of legislation-- does it promote human
happiness? Then it is sound. This theory, this creed, this moral teaching – does it rightly explain
why virtue is admirable, or why duty is obligatory? The limitation of Bentham can be gauged by
his dismissal of all poetry (and most religion) as “misrepresentation’; this is his negative side.
But benevolence and veracity are Supreme Values, and if it falls to one of the deniers to be their
special advocate, the believers must have long been drowsed. Bentham believes the Church
teaches children insincerity by making them affirm what they cannot possibly understand or
mean. They promise, for example, to fulfill the undertaking of their god---parents, that they will
“renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world” etc. ‘The
Devil” Bentham comments: “ who or what is he, and how is it that he is renounced?” Has the
child happened to have any dealings with him? Let the Archbishop of Canterbury tell us, and let
him further explain how his own “works” are distinguished from the aforesaid “Pomps and
Vanity”. What king, what Lords Temporal or Spiritual, have ever renounced them? (Basil
Willey)
Questions
(a) What does the writer mean by the following expressions?
Multifarious activities, amelioration of human Life, it is sound, be their special advocate,
Renounce the devil, drowsed, gauged, aforesaid.
(a) On what grounds does Bentham believe that the Church teaches children insincerity?
(b) What is Bentham’s philosophy based upon?
(c) What according to the writer is Bentham’s limitation? Teaches children insincerity?
(d) In what context has the Archbishop of Canterbury been quoted i.e. is he praised or
condemned?
INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS
ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2001
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
Poetry is the language of imagination and the passions. It relates to whatever gives immediate
pleasure or pain to human heart & mind. It comes home to the bosoms and business of men: for
nothing but what comes home to them in the most general and intelligible shape can be a subject
of poetry. Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who
has a contempt for poetry cannot have much respect for himself or for anything else. Whatever
there is a sense of beauty, or power, or harmony, as in the motion of the waves of the sea, in the
growth of a flower, there is a poetry in its birth. If history is a grave study, poetry may be said to
be graver, its materials lie deeper, and are spread wider. History treats, for the most part,
cumbersome and unwieldy masses of things, the empty cases in which the affairs of the world
are packed, under the heads of intrigue or war, in different states, and from century to century but
there is no thought or feeling that can have entered into the mind of man which he would be
eager to communicate to others, or they would listen to with delight, that is not a fit subject for
poetry. It is not a branch of authorship: it is “the stuff of which our life is made”. The rest is mere
oblivion, a dead letter, for all that is worth remembering gin life is the poetry of it. Fear is Poetry,
hope is poetry, love is poetry; hatred is poetry. Poetry is that fine particle within us that expands,
refines, raises our whole being; without “man’s life is poor as beasts”. In fact, man is a poetical
animal. The child Is a poet when he first plays hide and seek, or repeats the story of Jack the
Giant Killer, the shepherd – boy is a poet when he first crowns his mistress with a garland of
flowers; the countryman when he stops he stops to look at the rainbow; the miser when he hugs
his gold; the courtier when he builds his hope upon a smile; the vain, the ambitious the proud, the
choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar and the king, all live in a world of their own
making; and the poet does no more than describe what all others think and act. Hazlitt

Questions
(a) In what sense is poetry the language of the imagination and the passion?
(b) How is poetry the Universal Language of the heart?
(c) What is the difference between history and poetry? (His (story)
(d) Explain the phrase: “Man is a poetical animal”.
(e) What are some of the actions which Hazlitt calls poetry and its doers poet?
(f) Explain the followings underlined expression in the passage.
(i) It relates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to human heart
(ii) A sense of beauty, or power, or harmony.
(iii) Cumbersome and unwieldy masses of things.
 (iv) It is the stuff of which our life is made.
(v) The poet does no more than describe what all others think and act.

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2002
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
There is indeed, something inexpressibly pleasing in the annual renovation of the world and the
new display of the treasures of nature. The darkness and cold of winter with the naked deformity
of every object, on which we turn our eyes, make us rejoice at the succeeding season, as well for
what we have escaped, as for what we may enjoy. Every budding Flower, which a warm
situation brings early to our view, is considered by us a messenger to notify the approach of more
joyous days. The spring affords to a mind free from the disturbance of cares or passions almost
everything that our present state makes us capable of enjoying. The Variegated Verdure of the
fields and woods, the succession of grateful odours, the Voice of pleasure pouring out its notes
on every side, with the gladness apparently conceived by every animal from the growth of liis
food and the clemency of the weather, throw over the whole earth an air of gaiety, significantly
expressed by Smile of nature. (Samuel John Son)

Questions:
(a) Give meanings of the underlined expressions in the passage in your own words.
(b) Say how an early budding flower becomes a messenger of happy days?
(c) Who, according to the writer can make the best of the spring season?
(d) Why are all animals glad at the approach of spring?
(e) Suggest a title for the passage.

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2003
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
My father was back in work within days of his return home. He had a spell in the shipyard,
where the last of the great Belfast liners, the CANBERRA, was under construction, and then
moved to an electronics firm in the east of the city. (These were the days when computers were
the size of small houses and were built by sheet metal workers). A short time after he started in
this job, one of his colleagues was sacked for taking off time to get married. The workforce went
on strike to get the colleague reinstated. The dispute, dubbed the Honeymoon Strike, made the
Belfast papers. My mother told me not long ago that she and my father, with four young sons,
were hit so hard by that strike, that for years afterwards they were financially speaking, running
to stand still. I don't know how the strike ended, but whether or not the colleague got his old job
back, he was soon in another, better one. I remember visiting him and his wife when I was still
quite young, in their new bungalow in Belfast northern suburbs. I believe they left Belfast soon
after the Troubles began.
My father then was thirty-seven, the age I am today. My Hither and I are father and son, which is
to say we are close without knowing very much about one another. We talk about events, rather
than emotions. We keep from each other certain of our hopes and fears and doubts. I have never
for instance asked my father whether he has dwelt on the direction his life might have taken if at
certain moments he had made certain other choices. Whatever, he found himself, with a million
and a half of his fellows, living in what was in all but name a civil war. As a grown up 1 try often
to imagine what it must be like to be faced with such a situation. What, in the previous course of
your life, prepares your for arriving, as my father did, at the scene of a bomb blast close to your
brother's place of work and seeing what you suppose, from the colour of the hair, to be your
brother lying in the road, only to find that you arc cradling the remains of a woman? (Glciin
Patterson)
Questions:
(a) From your reading of the passage what do you infer about the nature of the 'Troubles” the
writer mentions.
(b) What according to the writer were the working conditions in the Electronics firm where his
father worked?
(c) Why was his father's colleague sacked?
(d) How does the writer show that as father and son they do not know much about each other?
(e) Explain the underlined words/phrases in the passage: Made the Belfast papers, had a spell,
dubbed, was sacked, hit hard.

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2004
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
We look before and after, wrote Shelley, and pine for what is not. It is said that this is what
distinguishes us from the animals and that they, unlike us, live always for and in the movement
and have neither hopes nor regrets. Whether it is so or not I do not know yet it is undoubtedly
one of our distinguishing mental attributes: we are actually conscious of our life in time and not
merely of our life at the moment of experiencing it. And as a result we find many grounds for
melancholy and foreboding. Some of us prostrate ourselves on the road way in Trafalgar Square
or in front of the American Embassy because we are fearful that our lives, or more
disinterestedly those of our descendants will be cut short by nuclear war. If only as” squirrels or
butterflies are supposed to do, we could let the future look after itself and be content to enjoy the
pleasures of the morning breakfast, the brisk walk to the office through autumnal mist or winter
fog, the mid-day sunshine that sometimes floods through windows, the warm, peaceful winter
evenings by the fireside at home. Yet all occasions for contentment are so often spoiled for us, to
a greater or lesser degree by our individual temperaments, by this strange human capacity for
foreboding and regret - regret for things which we cannot undo and foreboding for things which
may never happen at all. Indeed were it not for the fact that over breaking through our human
obsessions with the tragedy of time, so enabling us to enjoy at any rate some fleeting moments
untroubled by vain yearning or apprehension, our life would not be intolerable at all. As it is, we
contrive, everyone of us, to spoil it to a remarkable degree.
Questions:
1.What is the difference between our life and the life of an animal?
2. What is the result of human anxiety?
3. How does the writer compare man to the butterflies and squirrels?
4. How does anxiety about future disturb our daily life?
5. How can we make our life tolerable?
6. Explain the underlined words/phrases in the passage.

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2005
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
My father loved all instruments that would instruct and fascinate. His place to keep things was
the drawer in the ‘library table’ where lying on top of his folder map was a telescope with brass
extensions, to find the moon and the Big Dripper after supper in our front yard, and to keep
appointments with eclipses. In the back of the drawer you could find a magnifying glass, a
kaleidoscope and a gyroscope kept in black buckram box, which he would set dancing for us on
a string pulled tight. He had also supplied himself with an assortment of puzzles composed of
metal rings and intersecting links and keys chained together, impossible for the rest of us,
however, patiently shown, to take apart, he had an almost childlike love of the ingenious. In
time, a barometer was added to our dining room wall, but we didn’t really need it. My father had
the country boy’s accurate knowledge of the weather and its skies. He went out and stood on our
front steps first thing in the morning and took a good look at it and a sniff. He was a pretty good
weather prophet. He told us children what to do if we were lost in a strange country. ‘Look for
where the sky is brightest along the horizon,’ he said. ‘That reflects the nearest river. Strike out
for a river and you will find habitation’. Eventualities were much on his mind. In his care for us
children he cautioned us to take measures against such things as being struck by lightening. He
drew us all away from the windows during the severe electrical storms that are common where
we live. My mother stood apart, scoffing at caution as a character failing. So I developed a strong
meteorological sensibility. In years ahead when I wrote stories, atmosphere took its influential
role from the start. Commotion in the weather and the inner feelings aroused by such a hovering
disturbance emerged connected in dramatic form.
Questions:
a. Why did the writer’s father spend time studying the skies?
b. Why the writer thinks that there was no need of a barometer?
c. What does the bright horizon meant for the writer’s father?
d. How did her father influence the writer in her later years?
e. Explain the underlined words and phrases in the passage.

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2006
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
“Elegant economy!” How naturally one fold back into the phraseology of Cranford! There
economy was always “elegant”, and money-spending always “Vulgar and Ostentation;” a sort of
sour grapeism which made up very peaceful and satisfied I shall never forget the dismay felt
when certain Captain Brown came to live at Cranford, and openly spoke of his being poor not in
a whisper to an intimate friend, the doors and windows being previously closed, but in the public
street! in a loud military voice! alleging his poverty as a reason for not taking a particular house.
The ladies of Cranford were already moving over the invasion of their territories by a man and a
gentleman. He was a half-pay captain, and had obtained some situation on a neighbouring rail-
road, which had been vehemently petitioned against by the little town; and if in addition to his
masculine gender, and his connection with the obnoxious railroad, he was so brazen as to talk of
his being poor why, then indeed, he must be sent to Coventry. Death was as true and as common
as poverty; yet people never spoke about that loud on the streets. It was a word not to be
mentioned to ears polite. We had tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom we associated on
terms of visiting equality could ever be prevented by poverty from doing anything they wished.
If we walked to or from a party, it was because the weather was so fine, or the air so refreshing,
not because sedan chairs were expensive. If we wore prints instead of summer silks, it was
because we preferred a washing material; and so on, till we blinded ourselves to the vulgar fact
that we were, all of us, people of very moderate means.

Questions:
(a) Give in thirty of your own words what we learn from this passage of Captain Brown.
(b) Why did the ladies of Cranford dislike the Captain?
(c) What reasons were given by the ladies of Cranford for “not doing anything that they
wished”?
(d) “Ears Polite”. How do you justify this construction?
(e) What is the meaning and implication of the phrases?
(1) Sour-grapeism
(2) The invasion of their territories
(3) Sent to Coventry
(4) Tacitly agreed
(5) Elegant Economy

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2007
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
Strong section of industrials who still imagine that men can be mere machines and are at their
best as machines if they are mere machines are already menacing what they call “useless”
education. They deride the classics, and they are mildly contemptuous of history, philosophy,
and English. They want our educational institutions, from the oldest universities to the youngest
elementary schools, to concentrate on business or the things that are patently useful in business.
Technical instruction is to be provided for adolescent artisans; book keeping and shorthand for
prospective clerks; and the cleverest we are to set to “business methods”, to modern languages
(which can be used in correspondence with foreign firms), and to science (which can be applied
to industry). French and German are the languages, not of Montaigne and Gorthe, but of Schmidt
Brothers, of Elberfeld and Dupont et Cie., of Lyons. Chemistry and Physics are not explorations
into the physical constitution of the universe, but sources of new dyes, new electric light
filaments, new means of making things which can be sold cheap and fast to the Nigerian and the
Chinese. For Latin there is a Limited field so long as the druggists insist on retaining it in their
prescriptions. Greek has no apparent use at all, unless it be as a source of syllables for the hybrid
names of patent medicines and metal polishes. The soul of man, the spiritual basis of
civilization- what gibberish is that?

Questions:
a) What kind of education does the writer deal with?
b) What kind of education does the writer favour? How do you know?
c) Where does the writer express most bitterly his feelings about the neglect of the classics?
d) Explain as carefully as you can the full significance of the last sentence.
e) Explain the underlined words and phrases in the passage.
INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS
ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2008
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
These phenomena, however, are merely premonitions of a coming storm, which is likely to
sweep over the whole of India and the rest of Asia. This is the inevitable outcome of a wholly
political civilization, which has looked upon man as a thing to be exploited and not as a
personality to be developed and enlarged by purely cultural forces. The people of Asia are bound
to rise against the acquisitive economy which the West have developed and imposed on the
nations of the East. Asia cannot comprehend modern Western capitalism with its undisciplined
individualism. The faith, which you represent, recognizes the worth of the individual, and
disciplines him to give away all to the service of God and man. Its possibilities are not yet
exhausted. It can still create a new world where the social rank of man is not determined by his
caste or colour or the amount of dividend he earns, but by the kind of life he lives, where the
poor tax the rich, where human society is founded not on the equality of stomachs but on the
equality of spirits, where an untouchable can marry the daughter of the king, where private
ownership is a trust and where capital cannot be allowed to accumulate so as to dominate that
real producer of wealth. This superb idealism of your faith, however, needs emancipation from
the medieval fancies of theologians and logists? Spiritually, we are living in a prison house of
thoughts and emotions, which during the course of centuries we have woven round ourselves.
And be it further said to the shame of us—men of older generation—that we have failed to equip
the younger generation for the economic, political and even religious crisis that the present age is
likely to bring. The while community needs a complete overhauling of its present mentality in
order that it may again become capable of feeling the urge of fresh desires and ideals. The Indian
Muslim has long ceased to explore the depths of his own inner life. The result is that he has
ceased to live in the full glow and colour of life, and is consequently in danger of an unmanly
compromise with force, which he is made to think he cannot vanquish in open conflict. He who
desires to change an unfavourable environment must undergo a complete transformation of his
inner being. God changes not the condition of a people until they themselves take the initiative to
change their condition by constantly illuminating the zone of their daily activity in the light of a
definite ideal. Nothing can be achieved without a firm faith in the independence of one’s own
inner life. This faith alone keeps a people’s eye fixed on their goal and save them from perpetual
vacillation. The lesson that past experiences has brought to you must be taken to heart. Expect
nothing form any side. Concentrate your whole ego on yourself alone and ripen your clay into
real manhood if you wish to see your aspiration realized.
Questions:
1. What is the chief characteristic of the modern political civilization?
2. What are possibilities of our Faith, which can be of advantage to the world?
3. What is the chief danger confronting the superb idealism of our Faith?
4. Why is the Indian Muslim in danger of coming to an unmanly compromise with the Forces
opposing him?
5. What is necessary for an achievement?
6. Explain the expression as highlighted/under lined in the passage.
7. Suggest an appropriate title to the passage.

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2009
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
It is in the very nature of the helicopter that its great versatility is found. To begin with, the
helicopter is the fulfillment of one of man’s earliest and most fantastic dreams. The dream of
flying – not just like a bird – but of flying as nothing else flies or has ever flown. To be able to
fly straight up and straight down – to fly forward or back or sidewise, or to hover over and spot
till the fuel supply is exhausted. To see how the helicopter can do things that are not possible for
the conventional fixed-wing plane, let us first examine how a conventional plane “works.” It
works by its shape – by the shape of its wing, which deflects air when the plane is in motion.
That is possible because air has density and resistance. It reacts to force. The wing is curved and
set at an angle to catch the air and push it down; the air, resisting, pushes against the under
surface of the wing, giving it some of its lift. At the same time the curved upper surface of the
wing exerts suction, tending to create a lack of air at the top of the wing. The air, again resisting,
sucks back, and this gives the wing about twice as much lift as the air pressure below the wing.
This is what takes place when the wing is pulled forward by propellers or pushed forward by jet
blasts. Without the motion the wing has no lift.
Questions:
(i) Where is the great versatility of the helicopter found?
(ii) What is the dream of flying?
(iii) What does the wing of the conventional aircraft do?
(iv) What does the curved upper surface of the wing do?
(v) What gives the wing twice as much lift?

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERINGCreative Writing & Comprehension
Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2010
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
And still it moves. The words of Galileo, murmured when the tortures of the Inquisition had
driven him to recant the Truth he knew, apply in a new way to our world today. Sometimes, in
the knowledge of all that has been discovered, all that has been done to make life on the planet
happier and more worthy, we may be tempted to settle down to enjoy our heritage. That would,
indeed, be the betrayal of our trust. These men and women of the past have given everything ---
comfort, time, treasure, peace of mind and body, life itself --- that we might live as we do. The
challenge to each one of us is to carry on their work for the sake of future generations. The
adventurous human mind must not falter. Still must we question the old truths and work for the
new ones. Still must we risk scorn, cynicism, neglect, loneliness, poverty, persecution, if need
be. We must shut our ears to the easy voice which tells us that ‘human nature will never alter’ as
an excuse for doing nothing to make life more worthy. Thus will the course of the history of
mankind go onward, and the world we know move into a new splendour for those who are yet to
be.
Questions:
(i) What made Galileo recant the Truth he knew?
(ii) What is the heritage being alluded to in the first paragraph?
(iii) What does the ‘betrayal of our trust’ imply?
(iv) Why do we need to question the old truths and work for the new ones?
(v) Explain the words or expressions as highlighted/underlined in the passage.

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERINGCreative Writing & Comprehension
Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2011
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
Knowledge is acquired when we succeed in fitting a new experience in the system of concepts
based upon our old experiences. Understanding comes when we liberate ourselves from the old
and so make possible a direct, unmediated contact with the new, the mystery, moment by
moment, of our existence. The new is the given on every level of experience – given perceptions,
given emotions and thoughts, given states of unstructured awareness, given relationships with
things and persons. The old is our home-made system of ideas and word patterns. It is the stock
of finished articles fabricated out of the given mystery by memory and analytical reasoning, by
habit and automatic associations of accepted notions. Knowledge is primarily a knowledge of
these finished articles. Understanding is primarily direct awareness of the raw material.
Knowledge is always in terms of concepts and can be passed on by means of words or other
symbols. Understanding is not conceptual and therefore cannot be passed on. It is an immediate
experience, and immediate experience can only be talked about (very inadequately), never
shared. Nobody can actually feel another’s pain or grief, another’s love or joy, or hunger. And
similarly nobody can experience another’s understanding of a given event or situation. There
can, of course, be knowledge of such an understanding, and this knowledge may be passed on in
speech or writing, or by means of other symbols. Such communicable knowledge is useful as a
reminder that there have been specific understandings in the past, and that understanding is at all
times possible. But we must always remember that knowledge of understanding is not the same
thing as the understanding which is the raw material of that knowledge. It is as different from
understanding as the doctor’s prescription for pencitin is different from penicillin.

Questions:
(i) How is knowledge different from understanding?
(ii) Explain why understanding cannot be passed on.
(iii) Is the knowledge of understanding possible? If it is, how may it be passed on?
(iv) How does the author explain that knowledge of understanding is not the same thing as the
understanding?
(v) How far do you agree with the author in his definitions of knowledge and understanding?
Give reasons for your answer.

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERING
Creative Writing & Comprehension Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2012
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
Human Beings feel afraid of death just as children feel afraid of darkness; and just as children’s
fear of darkness is increased by the stories which they have heard about ghosts and thieves,
human beings’ fear of death is increased by the stories which they have heard about the agony of
the dying man. If a human being regards death as a kind of punishment for the sins he has
committed and if he looks upon death as a means of making an entry into another world, he is
certainly taking a religious and sacred view of death. But if a human being looks upon death as a
law of nature and then feels afraid of it, his attitude is one of cowardice. However, even in
religious meditation about death there is something a mixture of folly and superstition. Monks
have written books in which they have described the painful experience which they underwent
by inflicting physical tortures upon themselves as a form of self-purification. Such books may
lead one to think that, if the pain of even a finger being squeezed or pressed is unbearable, the
pains of death must be indescribably agonizing. Such books thus increase a Man’s fear of death.
Seneca, a Roman Philosopher, expressed the view that the circumstances and ceremonies of
death frighten people more than death itself would do. A dying man is heard uttering groans; his
body is seen undergoing convulsions; his face appears to be absolutely bloodless and pale; at his
death his friends begin to weep and his relations put on mourning clothes; various rituals are
performed. All these facts make death appear more horrible than it would be otherwise.
Questions:
(1) What is the difference between human beings’ fear of death and children’s fear of darkness?
(2) What is a religious and sacred view of death?
(3) What are the painful experiences described by the Monks in their books?
(4) What are the views of Seneca about death?
(5) What are the facts that make death appear more horrible than it would be otherwise?

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERINGCreative Writing & Comprehension
Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2013
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
The civilization of China - as everyone knows, is based upon the teaching of Confucius who
flourished five hundred years before Christ. Like the Greeks and Romans, he did not think of
human society as naturally progressive; on the contrary, he believed that in remote antiquity
rulers had been wise and the people had been happy to a degree which the degenerate present
could admire but hardly achieve. This, of course, was a delusion. But the practical result was the
Confucius, like other teachers of antiquity, aimed at creating a stable society, maintaining a
certain level of excellence, but not always striving after new successes. In this he was more
successful than any other man who ever lived. His personality has been stamped on Chinese
Civilization from his day to our own. During his life time, the Chinese occupied only a small part
of present day China, and were divided into a number of warring states. During the next three
hundred years they established themselves throughout what is now China proper, and founded an
empire exceeding in territory and population any other that existed until the last fifty years. In
spite of barbarian invasions, and occasional longer or shorter periods of Chaos and Civil War,
the Confucian system survived bringing with it art and literature and a civilised way of life. A
system which has had this extra ordinary power of survival must have great merits, and certainly
deserves our respect and consideration. It is not a religion, as we understand the word, because it
is not associated with the super natural or with mystical beliefs. It is purely ethical system, but its
ethics, unlike those of Christianity, are not too exalted for ordinary men to practise. In essence
what Confucius teaches is something is very like the old-fashioned ideal of a ‘gentleman’ as it
existed in the eighteenth century. One of his sayings will illustrate this: ‘The true gentleman is
never contentious………he courteously salutes his opponents before taking up his
position,……..so that even when competing he remains a true gentleman’.
Questions:
(1) Why do you think the author calls Confucius’ belief about the progress of human society as a
delusion? (04)
(2) How did Confucius’ thought affect China to develop into a stable and ‘Proper’ China? (04)
(3) Why does the author think that Confucian system deserves respect and admiration? (04)
(4) Why does the author call Confucian system a purely ethical system and not a religion? (04)
(5) Briefly argue whether you agree or disagree to Confucius’ ideal of a gentleman. (04)

INSTITUTE OF METALLURGY AND MATERIALS

ENGINEERINGCreative Writing & Comprehension
Skills
Comprehension Passage - 2014
Q2. Read the following passage and answer the questions given at the end in your own
words. (20)
In the height of the Enlightenment, men influenced by the new political theories of the era
launched two of the largest revolutions in history. These two conflicts, on two separate
continents, were both initially successful in forming new forms of government. And yet, the two
conflicts, though merely a decade apart, had radically different conclusions. How do two wars
inspired by more or less the same ideals end up so completely different? Why was the American
Revolution largely a success and the French Revolution largely a failure? Historians have
pointed to myriad reasons—far too various to be listed here. However, the most frequently cited
are worth mentioning. For one, the American Revolution was far removed from the Old World;
that is, since it was on a different continent, other European nations did not attempt to interfere
with it. However, in the French Revolution, there were immediate cries for war from neighboring
nations. Early on, for instance, the ousted king attempted to flee to neighboring Austria and the
army waiting there. The newly formed French Republic also warred with Belgium, and a conflict
with Britain loomed. Thus, the French had the burden not only of winning a revolution but also
defending it from outside. The Americans simply had to win a revolution.
Secondly, the American Revolution seemed to have a better chance for success from the get-go,
due to the fact that Americans already saw themselves as something other than British subjects.
Thus, there was already a uniquely American character, so, there was not as loud a cry to
preserve the British way of life. In France, several thousands of people still supported the king,
largely because the king was seen as an essential part of French life. And when the king was first
ousted and then killed, some believed that character itself was corrupted. Remember, the
Americans did not oust a king or kill him—they merely separated from him. Finally, there is a
general agreement that the French were not as unified as the Americans, who, for the most part,
put aside their political differences until after they had already formed a new nation. The French,
despite their Tennis Court Oath, could not do so. Infighting led to inner turmoil, civil war, and
eventually the Reign of Terror, in which political dissidents were executed in large numbers.
Additionally, the French people themselves were not unified. The nation had so much
stratification that it was impossible to unite all of them—the workers, the peasants, the middle-
class, the nobles, the clergy—into one cause. And the attempts to do so under a new religion, the
Divine Cult of Reason, certainly did not help. The Americans, remember, never attempted to
change the society at large; rather, they merely attempted to change the government.
Questions:
(1) Why and how did the Reign of Terror happen?
(2) In what ways does the author suggest that the American Revolution was easier to complete
than the French Revolution?
(3) Of the challenges mentioned facing the French revolutionaries, which do you think had the
greatest impact on their inability to complete a successful revolution? Why?
(4) Of the strengths mentioned aiding the American revolutionaries, which do you think had the
greatest impact on their ability to complete a successful revolution? Why?