15 English exercises reading comprehension
INSTRUCTIONS: This test comprises fifteen questions
taken from the text below. Read the text carefully and
then mark the alternatives that answer the questions or
complete the sentences presented after it.
The whole affair began so very quietly. When I wrote, that
summer, and asked my friend Louise if she would come
with me on a car trip to Provence, I had no idea that I
might be issuing an invitation to danger. And when we
arrived one afternoon, after a hot but leisurely journey, at
the enchanting little walled city of Avignon, we felt in that
mood of pleasant weariness mingled with anticipation
which marks, I believe, the beginning of every normal
holiday.
I even sang to myself as I put the car away, and when
I found they had given me a room with a balcony. And
when, later on, the cat jumped on to my balcony, there
was still nothing to indicate that this was the beginning of
the whole strange, uneasy, tangled business. Or rather,
not the beginning, but my own cue, the point where I
came in. And, though the part I was to play in the tragedy
was to break and re-form the pattern of my whole life, yet
it was a very minor part, little more than a walk on in the
last act. For most of the play had been played already;
there had been love and lust and revenge and fear and
murder – all the blood-tragedy – and now the killer, with
blood enough on his hands, was waiting in the wings for
the lights to go up again, on the last kill that would bring
the final curtain down.
Louise is tall and fair and plump, with long legs, a
pleasant voice, and beautiful hands. She is an artist,
has no temperament to speak of, and is unutterably and
incurably lazy. Before my marriage to Johnny Selbourne,
I had taught at the Alice Private School for Girls in the
West Midlands. Louise was still Art Mistress there, and
owed her continued health and sanity to the habit of
removing herself out of the trouble zone.
When Louise had gone to her own room, I washed,
changed into a white frock with a wide blue belt, and did
my face and hair very slowly. It was still hot, and the late
sun’s rays fell obliquely across the balcony, through the
half-opened shutter, in a shaft of copper-gold. Motionless,
the shadows of the thin leaves traced a pattern across it
as delicate and precise as a Chinese painting on silk, the
image of the tree, brushed in like that by the sun, had a
grace that the tree itself gave no hint of, for it was merely
one of the nameless spindly affairs, parched and dustladen,
that struggled up towards the sky from their pots
in the hotel out below.
The courtyard was empty: people were still resting,
or changing, or, if they were the mad English, walking
out in the afternoon sun. A white-painted trellis wall
separated the court on one side from the street, and
beyond it people, mules, cars, occasionally even buses,
moved about their business up and down the narrow
thoroughfare. But inside the vine-covered trellis it was
very still and peaceful.
Then fate took a hand. The first cue I had of it was the
violent shaking of the shadows on the balcony. Then
the ginger cat shot on to my balcony and sent down on
her assailant the look to end all looks, and sat calmly
down to wash. From below a rush and a volley of barking
explained everything.
Then came a crash, and the sound of running feet.
The courtyard, formerly so empty and peaceful, seemed
all of a sudden remarkably full of a boy and a large,
nondescript dog. The latter, with his earnest gaze still on
the balcony, was leaping futilely up and down, pouring
out rage, hatred and excitement, while the boy tried with
one hand to catch and quell him and with the other to lift
one of the tables which had been knocked on to its side.
It was, luckily, not one of those which had been set for
dinner.
The boy looked up and saw me. He straightened, pushed
his hair back from his forehead, and grinned.
“My French isn’t terribly good,” I said. “Do you speak
English?”
He looked immensely pleased.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I am English,” he admitted. ”My
name’s David,” he said. “David Shelley.”
Well, I was into the play.
I judged him to be about thirteen – who was lucky enough
to be enjoying a holiday in the South of France.
Before I could speak again we were interrupted by a
woman who came in through the vine-trellis, from the
street. She was, I guessed, thirty-five. She was also
blonde, tall, and quite the most beautiful woman I had
ever seen. The simple cream dress she wore must have
been one of Dior’s favourite dreams, and the bill for it her
husband’s nightmare.
She did not see me at all, which again was perfectly
natural. She paused a moment when she saw the boy
and the dog, then came forward with a kind of eyecompelling
glance which would have turned heads in
Piccadilly on a wet Monday morning.
She paused and spoke. Her voice was pleasant,
her English perfect, but her accent was that of a
Frenchwoman.
“David.”
No reply.
“Mon fils... “
Her son? He did not glance up. “Don’t you know what
time it is? Hurry up and change. It’s nearly dinner time.”
Without a word the boy went into the hotel, trailing
a somewhat subdued dog after him on the end of a
string. His mother stared after him for a moment, with
an expression half puzzled, half exasperated. Then she
gave a smiling little shrug of the shoulders and went into
the hotel after the boy.
I picked my bag up and went downstairs for a drink.
STEWART, Mary. Madam, will you talk?. Hodder and
Stoughton: Coronet Books, 1977, p. 5-14 (Edited).
Question 26
The story is supposed to be about:
A) a girl with his son.
B) a play on a theatre.
C) a summer holiday
D) an afternoon on the beach.
Question 27
The narrator is comparing the story she is about to tell to:
A) a lifetime.
B) a play.
C) a school.
D) a short story.
Question 28
We, readers of the text, know that the narrator is a woman
because:
A) her friend Louise has a separate room in the hotel.
B) she has a woman friend in her holiday trip.
C) she says she had married a Johnny Selbourne.
D) she talks about the role she will play in the tragedy.
Question 29
The narrative shows that the narrator was expecting to:
A) be mixed in a dangerous adventure.
B) be an actor in a theatre play.
C) have a very agreeable holiday trip.
D) meet a French boy and his dog.
Question 30
All adjectives below apply to the narrator’s friend Louise,
EXCEPT:
A) artistical.
B) fair and plump.
C) hard working.
D) long-legged.
Question 31
According to the excerpt of the text, the story will include
A) a killing.
B) a theatre play.
C) a flight
D) a love story.
Question 32
The narrator looked at the boy and thought:
A) he should be able to control his unruly dog.
B) he was about 13 years old and very lucky.
C) he was very untidy in his dirty clothes.
D) she would like to have a boy just like him.
Question 33
The reason the blonde woman’s dress, according to
the narrator, was Dior’s favourite dream and the bill the
husband’s nightmare is that:
A) it had the colour to match the woman’s hair.
B) it was very beautiful and very expensive.
C) the bill for it had not been paid yet.
D) the woman wore it as a provocation to her
husband.
Question 34
Why did the narrator guess the blonde woman was
French? Because:
A) she recognized the woman’s accent.
B) she spoke to the boy in English.
C) she wore a cream coloured dress.
D) the woman was the boy’s mother.
Question 35
When the blonde woman came in, why didn’t she see the
narrator? Because:
A) she had no eyes for her son and his dog.
B) she was not interested in anything around her.
C) she was very worried about dinner.
D) the narrator was upstairs in the balcony.
Question 36
“When Louise had gone to her own room, I washed,
changed into a white frock with a wide blue belt, and did
my face and hair very slowly.”
In the sentence above, we can find many modifiers. Mark
the alternative that does NOT represent a modifier in this
context.
A) Her own.
B) When.
C) White.
D) With a wide blue belt.
Question 37
In the sentence “Louise was still Art Mistress there”,
found in the text, the particle there stands for:
A) Alice Private School for Girls.
B) Louise’s room in the hotel.
C) the city of Avignon.
D) the hotel in Provence.
Question 38
Mark the alternative in which the word is NOT formed
with a suffix:
A) balcony.
B) formerly.
C) obliquely.
D) quietly.
Question 39
When I wrote, that summer, and asked my friend Louise
if she would come with me on a car trip to Provence, [...]
To reproduce the dialogue shown in the sentence above,
found in the beginning of the text, we will have:
A) I asked my friend Louise in a letter which summer
she would like to come to Provence with me on
a car trip.
B) Last summer I wrote to my friend Louise and
asked: “Will you come with me on a car trip to
Provence?”
C) “Louise, last summer I went on a car trip to
Provence. Would you come too?”
D) “Would you come to me last summer to a car trip
to Provence?” I asked Louise in a letter.
Question 40
Mark the correct form for the reported speech of the
sentence found in the text: “Well, as a matter of fact, I am
English,” he admitted.
A) He said that as a matter of fact he is English.
B) He admitted that he was in fact English.
C) He spoke of his English as a matter of fact.
D) “I said I was English”, he admitted as a matter of fact.
Answer - English exercises reading comprehension
26 C
27 B
28 C
29 C
30 C
31 A
32 B
33 B
34 A
35 D
36 B
37 A
38 A
39 B
40 B
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