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Comprehension
Comprehension

A comprehension passage is an unseen passage upon which some questions are given to
check a student’s ability to understand its content.

The unseen passage tests the comprehension skills of the students.

Factual comprehension: The student is asked wh questions or True and False questions to
test the recall, retention, and reception of the facts and data available in the passage.
Inferential comprehension: The student is tested on his/her capacity to derive meaning
from the passage and understand between the lines.

Evaluative comprehension: The student is asked questions which test his/ her capacity to
judge the text based on appropriateness of facts, reasons, causes, effects, validity, etc.

Extrapolative comprehension: This student is asked open-ended questions. The extrapolative
questions demand from the students to answer on the basis of what they project by using
reference to certain values, imagery, etc.
Vocabulary comprehension: There are two kinds of vocabulary tests—literal and contextual.
The contextual meaning derives its sense from the passage itself and not dictionary.

A. Read the following passage carefully.
Once there was a little boy who had a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told
him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first
day, the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learnt to control
his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it
was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally, the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it, and
the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day, that he was able to hold
his temper. The days passed and the boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were
gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “You have done
well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say
things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can’t put a knife in a man and draw it Comprehension
out. It won’t matter how many times you say: I’m sorry. The wound is still there.”

Tick () the correct options.
1. Father gave the boy a bag of nails:

a. to sell them in the market.
b. to hammer them into a table.

c. to hammer them in the fence when he was happy.
d. to hammer them in the fence when he was angry.
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