Comprehension of unseen passages and words often confused
English · Unit III · Topic 16 of 16 · 6 min read
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Cases checked to exist. Read the judgment before quoting a holding.
Every case cited here has been checked to exist — the citation resolves and names the right parties. The propositions attributed to each case have not been verified line by line against the judgment. Case names link through to the full judgment: read it before quoting a holding in an examination answer, and never carry a proposition from notes into court on trust.
The examinable core. The comprehension passage is the alternative to the letter
(10 marks: five questions of two marks each). The answers are all in the passage; marks are lost
by copying whole sentences, by adding outside opinions, and by answering in one word. The
syllabus also prescribes “words often confused” (David Green, Contemporary English
Grammar, pp. 281–287); they are covered in section 4.
1. Method
- Read the questions first, then the passage. You will read with a purpose.
- Mark the lines that answer each question. The questions usually follow the order of the passage.
- Answer in your own words, in one to three complete sentences, using the passage’s key terms. Begin with the subject of the question: “People believe poverty is a great evil because …”
- For “why” questions give the reason the passage gives, with because. For “how” questions give the steps.
- Do not add facts or views not in the passage, even if true.
- If asked for a title, choose a short phrase covering the whole passage, not one paragraph.
2. January 2026 (80 marks): the computer passage
- What is a computer? A computer is an electronic device that accepts data, processes information in a pre-defined way according to the instructions given to it, and produces the desired output. To a layman it is like a super calculator with a big display.
- What is its usefulness? It is perhaps the most useful tool ever invented. It can do, to a certain extent, all that a human being can do, but much faster and with great accuracy.
- How does it process information? The user feeds instructions through software using a keyboard, mouse or scanner (the input). These go to the Central Processing Unit, which carries them out. The result (the output) is sent to the screen or printer.
- How can information be stored? It can be stored for future use on the hard disk or on other storage devices such as floppy disks.
- How are programs used? Computers have memory but no brain and do only the work they are programmed for. Programs, written as a sequence of words called commands, are entered through the keyboard and tell the computer what to do.
3. Two more set passages
January 2026 (100 marks): poverty
- Why do people believe poverty is a great evil? Because they assume that with plenty of money they would be happy and useful and get more out of life.
- Why should the children of the rich be pitied? Because they are brought up by servants and governesses and miss the love, unity and simple happiness of a poor home, without even knowing what they have missed.
- Why is a poor man’s home sweet and happy? It is free from perplexing cares and from social envy and jealousy, and its members are loving and united in the common task of supporting the family.
- Where have strong and eminent men come from, and why? From the ranks of the poor; honest poverty trains them in self-reliance, effort and self-denial, which is why most of the “immortals” were born poor.
- Why should one be willing to abolish luxury? The writer says we may abolish luxury, but not honest, industrious and self-denying poverty, because that poverty is the soil in which the virtues of mankind grow and which can carry the race to a higher civilization; luxury produces no such virtues.
June 2025 (80 marks): pollutants and science
- What does the scientists’ disagreement suggest? That we took the risks of DDT, smog and fallout before we knew what harm they might do.
- How has man interfered with nature? He has loaded the air with chemicals that damage the lungs and the water with substances that interfere with the blood, and burdened our bodies with strontium and DDT, to build nuclear bombs and kill mosquitoes.
- Why are we like the sorcerer’s apprentice? Because, like the apprentice who started magic he could not control, we act on dangerously incomplete knowledge and set off effects we cannot predict or reverse; we are conducting a huge experiment on ourselves.
- What is the grand purpose of science? To move into unknown territory, to explore and to discover.
- How do we differ from the past? Past risks, such as boiler explosions on early steamboats or injuries from radium, were confined to a small place and a short time; the new hazards are neither local nor brief.
4. Words often confused
| Pair | Distinction and example |
|---|---|
| accept / except | receive / leave out: He accepted all terms except the last. |
| advice / advise | noun / verb: I advise you to take legal advice. |
| affect / effect | verb, influence / noun, result: The ruling will affect thousands; its effect is immediate. |
| adapt / adopt | adjust / take up as one’s own: They adopted a child. |
| beside / besides | next to / in addition to |
| council / counsel | a body / a lawyer or advice: The council hired counsel. |
| complement / compliment | complete / praise |
| principal / principle | chief, head; also the capital sum / a rule: The principal stood by his principles. |
| stationary / stationery | not moving / writing material |
| persecute / prosecute | harass / bring a criminal case against |
| judicial / judicious | of a court / wise: a judicious use of judicial power |
| statue / statute | a carved figure / an Act of the legislature |
| ceiling / sealing | top of a room / closing with a seal: sealing of premises by court order |
| lose / loose | be deprived of / not tight |
| its / it’s | possessive / it is |
| human / humane | of man / kind |
| eligible / illegible | qualified / unreadable |
| alternate / alternative | every second / another choice |
| between / among | two / more than two |
| lie / lay | recline (intransitive) / put down (takes an object): Lay the papers on the table. |
| imply / infer | suggest / conclude: The witness implied it; the court inferred it. |
| illusion / allusion | false impression / indirect reference |
Trap. In a comprehension answer, “According to the passage,” followed
by a copied paragraph is not an answer. Pick out the two or three facts the question needs and put
them in one or two sentences of your own.
How this is examined
The January 2026 and June 2025 papers both offered an unseen passage (computers, January 2026; pollution, June 2025) as the OR to the letter, with five questions. The 100-mark paper sets the same choice. Words often confused are not set as a separate question in recent papers, but the pairs above (especially council/counsel, principal/principle, statue/statute, affect/effect) are the ones most often misspelt in answer scripts, so use them correctly.
Now try the real questions: English past question papers.