Unseen Reading Comprehension Strategy

Read the passage and answer the questions.

Teenagers are often accused of laziness for sleeping late, but the accusation misreads the biology. At about the age of thirteen the body clock shifts. The hormone that signals the brain to sleep begins to be released roughly two hours later than it does in a child or in an adult, so a fifteen-year-old who is wide awake at eleven at night is not being difficult; she is being fifteen.

The consequences are not trivial. Sleep is not an interruption of learning but a part of it. During the night the brain replays the day's new material and files it, and experiments consistently show that a student who sleeps after studying remembers more than one who studies for the same length of time and stays awake. Cutting sleep, then, does not buy extra study; it spends the study already done.

Most adolescents need between eight and ten hours. Few get them, and the reasons are familiar: homework, coaching classes, and a screen that is bright, absorbing and within arm's reach. Light in the evening tells the clock that the day is not over, and a phone held close to the face is a small, insistent sun.

Some school systems have responded by starting the day later, and where they have, attendance has improved and accidents on the way to school have fallen. Such changes are expensive and unpopular with parents and bus operators. But the alternative is a classroom in which the first period is taught to bodies that, biologically speaking, are still asleep.

Questions

1. At what age does the body clock begin to shift? [1]
2. Why does the writer say a fifteen-year-old awake at eleven is "not being difficult"? [1]
3. What does it refer to in "Sleep is not an interruption of learning but a part of it"? [1]
4. Find a word in the third paragraph that means "holding the attention completely". [1]
5. State whether each is True, False or Not Given.(a) Students who sleep after studying remember more than students who stay awake.(b) Most adolescents in Nepal sleep fewer than eight hours. [2]
6. Explain the phrase "a small, insistent sun". [1]
7. Suggest a suitable title for the passage. [1]

Answers

1. At about the age of thirteen.
2. Because at that age the sleep hormone is released about two hours later than in a child or an adult, so staying awake is biological, not wilful.
3. It refers to learning. (Substitute: Sleep is a part of learning — sense. A part of sleep — nonsense.)
4. Absorbing. (One word, copied in the form used.)
5. (a) True — the passage says experiments consistently show it.(b) Not Given — the passage says most adolescents and few get them, but it never mentions Nepal. Knowing the answer from your own life is exactly the trap.
6. The phone's screen acts like a small sun held near the face: its light keeps telling the body clock that daylight has not ended, so sleep is delayed. Insistent shows the light will not be ignored.
7. Why Teenagers Sleep Late or Sleep, Screens and the School Day. Three to six words; covers the whole passage; not a sentence.

Read the passage and answer the questions.

The porter who carried our kit to Ghorepani was called Dhan Bahadur, and he was, he told us on the first morning, fifty-one. He said it the way a man states a price, without complaint and without invitation to admire him, and then he picked up a load I could not have lifted to my knee and walked up the hill at a speed that made conversation impossible for the rest of us.

At the first tea shop he did not sit with the guides. He drank his tea standing, looking back down the valley at the way we had come, and when I asked him what he was looking at he said, my village is behind that ridge; I have not been home since Dashain. Then he put down the glass and lifted the load again before anyone had suggested moving.

I have been told since that the trekking season is short and that a porter who rests is a porter who is not paid. I did not know it then. What I knew then was only that I had been carrying a small day-pack and complaining about it, and that I had asked him, that morning, whether the work was hard, and that he had smiled and said it was all right.

Questions

1. How old was Dhan Bahadur? [1]
2. What does the comparison "the way a man states a price" tell us about how he spoke? [1]
3. Why did Dhan Bahadur drink his tea standing, do you think? [2]
4. Find a word in the passage that means "the long ridge of high ground". [1]
5. What is the writer's feeling in the last paragraph? Support your answer. [2]

Answers

1. Fifty-one.
2. It tells us he spoke flatly and factually, as a matter of information — neither complaining about his age nor asking to be praised for working at it.
3. Two acceptable lines, each needing evidence. Either: he did not regard the stop as his rest, because a porter who rests is a porter who is not paid — he stood so as to be ready to move, and indeed lifted the load again before anyone had suggested moving. Or: he did not sit with the guides because he did not see himself as one of them; the sentence he did not sit with the guides is placed first for that reason.
4. Ridge.
5. Shame, or self-reproach — not pity. The evidence is the contrast he draws between Dhan Bahadur's load and his own small day-pack which he had been complaining about, and the remembered question whether the work was hard, which he now sees was a thoughtless thing to ask. The writer never states the feeling; the reader is left to draw it, which is why the answer must quote.