CDS English · Reading Comprehension
The whole passage: main idea, view, purpose and tone
These questions ask about the passage as a whole: what it is about, what the writer thinks, why a detail is there, and how the writer sounds.
Why this matters
Questions on the whole passage come in many forms: a title, the central theme, what the writer believes or advises, why an example is used, and the tone. They are answered from the opening and closing lines and from the writer's own judgement words, not from one vivid detail. That vivid detail is where most wrong options come from.
Concept 1 of 4: The main-idea test: it covers the whole passage
The main idea covers the whole passage. An example, a detail or one paragraph is too narrow. A big statement about the whole world is too broad. The answer sits between the two: it names the one point every part of the passage serves.
Definition
The terms:
- Main idea / central theme: the one point every part of the passage serves.
- Too narrow: covers one example, one detail or one paragraph.
- Too broad: covers far more than the passage discusses.
The method:
- Read the first and last sentences again. They usually frame the point.
- Name the topic in a few words before you look at the options.
- Test each option: does every paragraph serve it? Does the passage really discuss all of it?
- Examples are not the theme. If the writer uses animals, a story or a person to make a point, the point is the theme.
- For a title: when the passage weighs both sides, a neutral title (the impact of X) beats a one-sided one (the advantages of X).
- For 'the writer is arguing for': choose the step the passage leads to, at its own strength (rethink, not stop completely).
- For 'the passage traces': the answer covers the whole journey, from the first stage to the last.
Worked example
'Our grandparents walked to school, ate food grown nearby and spent their evenings outdoors. Today children ride in buses, eat packaged snacks and spend their evenings at screens. Doctors now see more young patients with weak bones and poor eyesight. The way children live has changed, and their health has changed with it.' The best title is (a) Packaged Snacks (b) School Buses (c) How Changing Habits Affect Children's Health (d) The History of Medicine
Practice this conceptself-check · 4 quick reps
The same idea in a real exam question:
CDS · 2021 · CDS (II) 2021 — English · Q15Hard
Example 1 · Reading Comprehension · Main Idea, Author's View and Tone
Directions: answer the items based on the passage
Passage – I
As to happiness, I am not so sure. Birds, it is true, die of hunger in large numbers during the winter, if they are not birds of passage. But during the summer they do not foresee this catastrophe, or remember how nearly it befell them in the previous winter. With human beings the matter is otherwise. I doubt whether the percentage of birds that will have died of hunger during the present winter (1946-47) is as great as the percentage of human beings that will have died from this cause in India and central Europe during the same period. But every human death by starvation is preceded by a long period of anxiety, and surrounded by the corresponding anxiety of neighbours. We suffer not only the evils that actually befall us, but all those that our intelligence tells us we have reason to fear. The curbing of impulses to which we are led by forethought averts physical disaster at the cost of worry, and general lack of joy. I do not think that the learned men of my acquaintance, even when they enjoy a secure income, are as happy as the mice that eat the crumbs from their tables while the erudite gentlemen snooze. In this respect, therefore, I am not convinced that there has been any progress at all.
Which one of the following is the central theme of the passage?
Choosing the vivid example
Writers make a point with a story, a person or an animal. The example is what you remember, so an option that names it tempts. Ask what the example was there to prove.
A verb stronger than the writer
A writer who questions the record of a practice is arguing for a rethink, not for stopping it completely. Match the strength of the action to the strength of the passage.
Concept 3 of 4: Why the author mentions it: example, irony, device
Every detail has a job. A story, a person or a quotation is usually there to prove or show a point made just before or after it. Some questions name the job directly: what the irony is, what kind of source is cited, what literary device is used.
Definition
The terms:
- Purpose of a detail: the point it supports. Look at the claim just before it.
- Irony: the outcome is the opposite of what is expected, or a thing ends up feeding the very cause that produced it.
- Source: where the writer's evidence comes from: a novel or poem (literary), old records (archival), newspapers (journalistic), experiments (scientific).
- Personification: giving a human quality to a thing or an idea: 'the wind whispered'.
- Symbolism: a thing stands for an idea (a dove for peace). Allegory: a whole story with a hidden meaning. Paradox: a statement that seems to contradict itself but holds a truth.
The method:
- For 'why does the writer mention X': find the general claim X sits under. The answer restates that claim, not X itself.
- Cut options that say something new about X (what will happen to it, how rich it is).
- For irony: say what was expected and what happened. The answer names the reversal.
- For a device: test each definition on the quoted words.
Worked example
'Small savings add up. My neighbour, a tailor, put aside ten rupees a day for twenty years and paid for his daughter's college without a loan.' Why does the writer mention the tailor? (a) Tailors earn well. (b) To show that small regular savings can grow large. (c) Colleges are expensive. (d) Loans are always bad.
Practice this conceptself-check · 4 quick reps
The same idea in a real exam question:
CDS · 2017 · CDS (II) 2017 — English · Q61Moderate
Example 3 · Reading Comprehension · Main Idea, Author's View and Tone
Directions: In this section you have few short passages. After each passage, you will find some items based on the passage. First, read a passage and answer the items based on it. You are required to select your answers based on the contents of the passage and opinion of the author only.
Passage
According to the civil laws of most countries obedience is no longer the duty of a wife; every woman has the political right to vote; but these liberties remain theoretical as long as she does not have economic freedom. A woman supported by a man is not liberated from the male. It is through gainful employment that woman has travelled most of the distance that separated her from the male; and nothing else can guarantee her liberty in practice.
I once heard a maidservant declare, while cleaning the stone floor of a hotel lobby, “I never asked anybody for anything; I succeeded all by myself.” She was as proud of her self-sufficiency as a Rockefeller, Ford or Birla.
However, the mere combination of the right to vote and a job does not mean complete liberation : working, today, is not a liberty.
A recent study of women workers in a car factory shows that they would prefer to stay in the home rather than work in the factory. The majority of women do not escape from the traditional feminine world. Their jobs at the factory do not relieve them of housekeeping burdens; they get from neither society nor their husbands, the assistance they need to become in concrete fact the equals of men.
Why does the writer talk about the maidservant in the hotel lobby?
Answering about the example, not the claim
When a writer mentions a person, options often say something new about that person: what will happen to them, or what they could become. The question asks what the person proves. Find the claim the example sits under.
Irony is not just bad luck
A sad or unlucky event is not ironic by itself. Irony needs a reversal: the result is the opposite of what was expected, or the cure feeds the disease.
Concept 4 of 4: Tone and attitude words
Tone is how the writer sounds: the feeling behind the words. You find it from judgement words and from what the writer is doing, not from the topic. A passage about a disaster can be calm and factual; a passage about a festival can be bitter.
Definition
The method:
- First ask: does the writer take a side? No side means informational, descriptive or objective. A side means critical, hopeful, and so on.
- Then ask: what feeling? Hope, gloom, gravity, mockery, complaint.
- The topic is not the tone. A sad subject does not by itself make the tone tragic or pessimistic.
- Cut extreme words (impassioned, querulous) unless the passage really shouts or complains.
- For a character in a story, use the actions and body signs the passage gives: a pounding heart and a dry mouth mean nervous.
- For attitude in a phrase, ask what feeling the chosen words carry.
The words below have all appeared in CDS tone and attitude questions, as the answer or as a wrong option.
| Word | Meaning | Signs in the passage | Tested as | Sitting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| objective | fair and factual, not swayed by feeling | facts and balanced wording, no 'I feel' | Answer, as 'objective and critical'; wrong option, as 'objective but querulous' | 2017 (II) |
| critical | points out faults or harms | judgement words: defect, folly, harm, misuse | Answer; also a wrong option | 2017 (II), 2022 (I), 2023 (I) |
| querulous | complaining, whining | grumbling and self-pity | Wrong option | 2017 (II) |
| impassioned | full of strong feeling | exclamations, emotional appeals | Wrong option | 2017 (II) |
| argumentative | quarrelsome; arguing for its own sake | attacks on other people's views | Wrong option | 2017 (II) |
| descriptive | paints a scene or says how something looks | sense details, little or no judgement | Wrong option | 2017 (II), 2023 (I) |
| sombre | grave and serious | a heavy problem discussed with weight, no lightness | Answer | 2018 (I) |
| humorous | funny | jokes, comic exaggeration | Wrong option | 2018 (I) |
| didactic | preaching; teaching a moral lesson | 'we must', 'one ought to', a lesson for the reader | Wrong option | 2018 (I) |
| tragic | about great suffering, usually a story of loss or death | a downfall or a death told as a story | Wrong option | 2018 (I) |
| optimism | hope that things will get better | recovering, improving, a positive outlook | Answer | 2021 (II) |
| pessimism | expecting the worst | decline, gloom, nothing will work | Wrong option | 2021 (II) |
| fatalism | belief that events are fixed and cannot be changed | fate, 'it was bound to happen' | Wrong option | 2021 (II) |
| defeatism | giving up before trying | 'there is no point', surrender | Wrong option | 2021 (II) |
| informational | gives facts and explains, takes no side | definitions, how something works | Answer; also a wrong option | 2022 (I), 2023 (I) |
| satirical | mocks something to criticise it | praise that is really a jab, mock-serious wording | Wrong option | 2022 (I) |
| analytical | breaks a problem into parts and examines each | causes, effects, first and second points | Wrong option | 2022 (I) |
| demonstrative | showing feelings openly | open displays of emotion | Wrong option | 2023 (I) |
| nervous | anxious and uneasy | pounding heart, dry mouth, frozen in place | Answer, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| cautious | careful to avoid risk | checking, waiting, moving slowly on purpose | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| imaginative | full of new ideas and pictures | fancies and inventions | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| observant | quick to notice things | small details noticed and named | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| calm and courageous | steady and brave | acting steadily in danger | Answer, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| cunning and crafty | sly and tricky | tricks and deceit | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| noisy and dangerous | loud and a threat to others | shouting, harming others | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| active and jumpy | restless and easily startled | sudden starts and fidgeting | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| concrete jungle | a crowded city of buildings that replaced fields and forests | a phrase that shows regret for lost nature | Attitude: regret | 2017 (I) |
Decide first whether the writer takes a side, then which feeling. The topic alone never decides the tone.
Practice this conceptself-check · 4 quick reps
The same idea in a real exam question:
CDS · 2018 · CDS (I) 2018 — English · Q52Moderate
Example 4 · Reading Comprehension · Main Idea, Author's View and Tone
Directions: In this section you have few short passages. After each passage, you will find some items based on the passage. First, read a passage and answer the items based on it. You are required to select your answers based on the contents of the passage and opinion of the author only.
Passage
Over-population is the most pressing of India’s numerous and multi-faceted problems. In fact it has caused equally complex problems such as poverty, under-nourishment, unemployment and excessive fragmentation of land. Indisputably, this country has been facing a population explosion of crisis dimensions. It has largely diluted the fruits of the remarkable economic progress that the nation has made during the last four decades or so. The entire battle against poverty is thwarted by the rapid increase in the population. The tragedy is that while over-population accentuates poverty, the country’s stark poverty itself is in many areas a major cause of over-population.
What is the general tone of the passage?
The topic is not the tone
A passage about a flood or a famine can be calm and informational. 'Tragic' fits a story of suffering told as a story, not a serious discussion of a problem.
Critical or informational?
If the writer judges anything (a defect, a misuse, a harm), the tone is not purely informational. Informational writing explains and takes no side.
Extreme words
Impassioned, querulous and argumentative need a passage that shouts, complains or quarrels. A calm passage that points out harm is critical, not argumentative.
Summary — formulas & gotchas at a glance
A revision cheat-sheet for the formulas and gotchas above. Click any concept name to jump back to its full explanation.
Reference tables (1)
Tone and attitude words27 rows
| Word | Meaning | Signs in the passage | Tested as | Sitting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| objective | fair and factual, not swayed by feeling | facts and balanced wording, no 'I feel' | Answer, as 'objective and critical'; wrong option, as 'objective but querulous' | 2017 (II) |
| critical | points out faults or harms | judgement words: defect, folly, harm, misuse | Answer; also a wrong option | 2017 (II), 2022 (I), 2023 (I) |
| querulous | complaining, whining | grumbling and self-pity | Wrong option | 2017 (II) |
| impassioned | full of strong feeling | exclamations, emotional appeals | Wrong option | 2017 (II) |
| argumentative | quarrelsome; arguing for its own sake | attacks on other people's views | Wrong option | 2017 (II) |
| descriptive | paints a scene or says how something looks | sense details, little or no judgement | Wrong option | 2017 (II), 2023 (I) |
| sombre | grave and serious | a heavy problem discussed with weight, no lightness | Answer | 2018 (I) |
| humorous | funny | jokes, comic exaggeration | Wrong option | 2018 (I) |
| didactic | preaching; teaching a moral lesson | 'we must', 'one ought to', a lesson for the reader | Wrong option | 2018 (I) |
| tragic | about great suffering, usually a story of loss or death | a downfall or a death told as a story | Wrong option | 2018 (I) |
| optimism | hope that things will get better | recovering, improving, a positive outlook | Answer | 2021 (II) |
| pessimism | expecting the worst | decline, gloom, nothing will work | Wrong option | 2021 (II) |
| fatalism | belief that events are fixed and cannot be changed | fate, 'it was bound to happen' | Wrong option | 2021 (II) |
| defeatism | giving up before trying | 'there is no point', surrender | Wrong option | 2021 (II) |
| informational | gives facts and explains, takes no side | definitions, how something works | Answer; also a wrong option | 2022 (I), 2023 (I) |
| satirical | mocks something to criticise it | praise that is really a jab, mock-serious wording | Wrong option | 2022 (I) |
| analytical | breaks a problem into parts and examines each | causes, effects, first and second points | Wrong option | 2022 (I) |
| demonstrative | showing feelings openly | open displays of emotion | Wrong option | 2023 (I) |
| nervous | anxious and uneasy | pounding heart, dry mouth, frozen in place | Answer, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| cautious | careful to avoid risk | checking, waiting, moving slowly on purpose | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| imaginative | full of new ideas and pictures | fancies and inventions | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| observant | quick to notice things | small details noticed and named | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| calm and courageous | steady and brave | acting steadily in danger | Answer, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| cunning and crafty | sly and tricky | tricks and deceit | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| noisy and dangerous | loud and a threat to others | shouting, harming others | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| active and jumpy | restless and easily startled | sudden starts and fidgeting | Wrong option, for a character | 2017 (I) |
| concrete jungle | a crowded city of buildings that replaced fields and forests | a phrase that shows regret for lost nature | Attitude: regret | 2017 (I) |
Decide first whether the writer takes a side, then which feeling. The topic alone never decides the tone.
Watch out for (9)
- Choosing the vivid example→ The main-idea test: it covers the whole passage
- A verb stronger than the writer→ The main-idea test: it covers the whole passage
- A reported view taken as the author's→ The author's view and advice
- Absolute options→ The author's view and advice
- Answering about the example, not the claim→ Why the author mentions it: example, irony, device
- Irony is not just bad luck→ Why the author mentions it: example, irony, device
- The topic is not the tone→ Tone and attitude words
- Critical or informational?→ Tone and attitude words
- Extreme words→ Tone and attitude words
Test yourself on Reading Comprehension
25 past CDS questions from this chapter, timed at 25 minutes and marked the way the exam marks it. You see your score and every answer the moment you finish. Free to start.