More practices on literary type of question (Reading Comprehension)

1. ‘the snow-powder lift and travel like a funeral train’

(i) What does this suggest about the snow?

(ii) Why did the writer describe the snow this way?

2. ‘The blackish sea churned and champed, seeming to bite at the snow’

(i) Which word suggests the sea is a person?

(ii) What effect do the two words ‘churned’ and ‘champed’ create?

Practice Exercise 1

And as you returned over the turf where the short, download cowslips nodded, you saw to the east still another island, a tiny one this time, like the calf of the cow. This tiny island also belonged to the islander.

Thus it seems that even islands like to keep each other company.

Our islander loved his island very much. In early spring, the little ways and glades were a snow of blackthorn, a vivid white among the Celtic stillness of close green and grey rock, blackbirds calling out in the whiteness their first long, triumphant calls.

                                                 The Man Who Loved Islands by D.H. Lawrence

1. ‘like the calf of the cow’

     What does this suggest about the difference between the two islands?

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2. Quote an expression that the expression that suggests that the islands are like     people.

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Practice Exercise 2

I am lost in a snowstorm. The wing shrieks, blows stinging sheets of snow into my eyes. I stagger through layers of shifting white. I call for help but the wind drowns my cries. I fall and lie panting on the snow, lost in the white, the wind wailing in my ears. I watch the snow erase my fresh footprints. I’m a ghost now, I think, a ghost with no footprints. I cry out again, hope fading like my footprints.

                                                                 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

1. Identify the word(s) or phrase which suggest that the wind is

(i) a person

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(ii) very loud

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2. ‘…blows stinging sheets of snow into my eyes.’

(i) Which words have the same sound?

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(ii) Why does the writer describe the snow in this way?

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3. ‘…a ghost with no footprints’

     What does this phrase (metaphor) suggest about the protagonist?

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The End