Reading Comprehension Quizzes, Questions & Answers
Recent Quizzes
Be careful of questions that use words like exception and not.
Remember if you are asked a vocabulary question to read either the sentence in front or behind it to understand the context.
Questions: 20 | Attempts: 692 | Last updated: Aug 21, 2023
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Sample QuestionReview #1 by Garfield A Streetcar Named Desire is a classic of the American theater. Tennessee Williams’ landmark work was a tour de force in its original stage production in 1947 and continues to resonate with audiences and readers today despite—or perhaps because of—its simplistic though layered story. A faded Southern belle, Blanche DuBois, arrives at her sister’s seedy New Orleans apartment where she is tortured by her brutish brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Blanche puts on airs of class and happiness throughout the play, though internally she is miserable and haunted by her tragic and scandalous past. Stanley forces Blanche to face her dolorous reality with his vitriol and, finally, his act of sexual aggression, and in doing so, he causes her to lose her tenuous grip on sanity. Most have argued (correctly) that the play is about the ways the past haunts our present or (again correctly) that it is about the ways class and sexuality impact our lives. However, few have seen the play for what it is: an allegory for the theater itself. Before Williams wrote Streetcar, the theater had been dominated by melodrama. A brief interlude in the 1930s brought political theater to center stage (pardon the pun), but by the 1940s, its principal playwright, Clifford Odets, had left New York for Hollywood, and the sensationalized and maudlin form of melodrama once again flourished. The theater was in limbo, and Williams had a desire to bring something new to the world. It would bring the realism of the political theater of the 1930s but without the political (read: socialist) underpinnings. To that end, he created lifelike characters who spoke in realistic dialect. But to make his point that melodrama was flawed, he added an equally unrealistic character. Blanche, unlike the other characters, speaks theatrically, acts larger than life on stage, and uses floral language and heightened mannerisms. Blanche is a character not to be trusted. She lies about everything, and the only thing that finally exposes her lies is reality itself: Stanley. He finally forces her off the stage and into the insane asylum by forcing himself on her sexually. And with that, realism forcibly removed melodrama from the stage. Review #2 by McKinley It is not possible to imagine A Streetcar Named Desire without the influence of Marlon Brando, the actor who rose to fame playing Stanley Kowalski. On the page, the part is fairly simplistic. Stanley is a monster and a beast without any redeeming qualities. But Brando and the play’s original director, Elia Kazan, imagined the character as having a soft underbelly, rooted in his own sorrow, insecurities, and soulful complexity. Brando’s Stanley is a brute, yes, but he is a brute who hates the fact that he is so awful. He is also unable to control himself and his passions, and this lack of control is equally embarrassing to him, even as it is also threatening to Blanche and alluring to her sister Stella. For instance, after he hits Stella, he comes back to her, famously begging for forgiveness by shouting “Stella” outside their apartment. But in Brando’s depiction on the stage and later on the screen, he is soaked from the rain and looks completely desperate, as though he needs Stella to live. He looks and seems totally helpless and weak, the exact opposite of the brute he appears later when he forces himself onto Blanche. The play is excellent and memorable, even when read. But it is Brando’s interpretation of the male lead role that makes the play indelible. Without Brando, the play would still have a deep meaning, but with Brando’s interpretation, the play becomes even more profound. The first review provides each of the following EXCEPT
Read the statements from the text 'Meeting the newcomers' and answer true or false.
Questions: 10 | Attempts: 355 | Last updated: Mar 20, 2023
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Sample QuestionUkraine is in the Balkan peninsula.
There are a whole lot of questions that go on in somebody's head every moment you interact with new content or environment. Take a shot at this quiz, which will help you, determine your comprehension.
Questions: 10 | Attempts: 1229 | Last updated: Mar 22, 2023
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Sample Question1 Maria has a close relationship with her family.
The 'L.A. 7 Final (semester 2)' quiz assesses comprehension and literary analysis skills through questions on passages, figures of speech, and safety guidelines. It aims to enhance reading, understanding, and critical thinking in...
Questions: 47 | Attempts: 131 | Last updated: May 7, 2024
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Sample QuestionRead the following passage From “The Log Jam” from River Notes: the Dance of the Herons by Barry Holstun Lopez and answer the question below: A storm came this year, against which all other storms were to be measured, on a Saturday in October, a balmy afternoon. Men in the woods cutting firewood for winter, and children outside with melancholy thoughts lodged somewhere in the memory of summer. It built as it came up the valley as did every fall storm, but the steel-gray thunderheads, the first sign of it anyone saw, were higher, much higher, too high. In the stillness before it hit, men looked at each other as though a fast and wiry man had pulled a knife in a bar. They felt the trees falling before they heard the wind, and they dropped tools and scrambled to get out. The wind came up suddenly and like a scythe, like piranha after them, like seawater through a breach in a dike. The first blow bent trees in half to the ground, the second caught them and snapped them like kindling, sending limbs raining down and twenty-foot splinters hurling through the air like mortar shells to stick quivering in the ground. Bawling cattle running the fences, a loose lawnmower bumping across a lawn, a stray dog lunging or a child racing by. The big trees went down screaming, ripping open holes in the wind that were filled with the broken-china explosion of a house and the yawing screech of a pickup rubbed across asphalt, the rivet popping and twang of phone and electric wires It was over in three or four minutes. The eerie sucking silence it left behind seemed palpably evil, something that would get into the standing timber, like insects, a memory. No one was killed. Roads were cut off, a bridge buckled. No power. A few had to walk in from places far off in the steep wooded country, arriving home later than they’d ever been up. Some said it pulled the community together, others how they hated living in the trees with no light. No warning. The next day it rained and the woods smelled like ashes. It was four or five days before they got the roads opened and the phones working, electricity back. Three sent down to the hospital in Holterville. Among the dead, Cawley Besson’s dog. And two deer, butchered and passed quietly in parts among neighbors. Of the trees that fell into the river, a number came up like beached whales among willows at the tip of an island. From “The Log Jam” from River Notes: the Dance of the Herons by Barry Holstun Lopez. Copyright © 1976 by Barry Holstun Lopez. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of SSL/terling Lord Literistic, Inc. Before the storm, people are _________________.
Read the text and decide if the statements are true (T) or false (F).
Questions: 8 | Attempts: 355 | Last updated: Mar 18, 2023
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Sample QuestionThe story of Robin Hood has been known for 600 years.
Choose the best answer(S) for the following. You MAY use your returned questions (they must have a grade from me on them!!) and vocabulary words to help you answer the questions ---you may NOT use your text.......if you...
Questions: 27 | Attempts: 1119 | Last updated: Mar 21, 2023
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Sample QuestionWhich adjective does NOT characterize Grady?
Read the following questions carefully. You may look back at the section to help find the answer to each question.
Questions: 17 | Attempts: 1847 | Last updated: Mar 22, 2023
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Sample QuestionAt the beginning of the story , why would the merchant not let the parrot go?
Mrs. Ponte's Macbeth Act III Reading Comprehension Quiz assesses understanding of key plot points and character motivations in Act III. It evaluates comprehension of Macbeth's kingship, the plot against Banquo, and significant...
Questions: 5 | Attempts: 235 | Last updated: Mar 21, 2023
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Sample QuestionWhen Macbeth says, "To be thus is nothing," To what does "thus" refer?
Read the following questions carefully and all the answers before answering ----you MAY use your work from class with the story to help you answer the questions!
Questions: 26 | Attempts: 1299 | Last updated: Mar 19, 2023
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Sample QuestionWhat is meant by the word VILENESS?
Comprehension test for "When Crowbar Came."
Questions: 10 | Attempts: 596 | Last updated: Mar 21, 2023
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Sample QuestionThe author said that Crowbar was going to be "deeply imprinted" on the family. What does this mean?
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