Reading Comprehension
61 NDA English previous year questions (PYQs) from 10 papers, 2017 to 2025, with answers and worked solutions.
About this chapter
- Difficulty: 32 easy · 25 moderate · 4 hard.
- Most-asked subtopics: Inferential Comprehension (43), Literal Comprehension (14), Vocabulary in Context (4).
- Updated 18 May 2026.
- Set · 3 questionsDirections for the following 6 (six) items : In this section, you have two short passages. Read the passages and answer the items that follow. You are required to select your answers based on the contents of the passage and opinion of the author only. Passage – 1 We had just passed Tenali, where I roused myself in order to hear the name of the station. As I was falling asleep again, a violent jolt shot me into the arms of somebody in the seat opposite. The engine with one wheel broken was lying across the track and beside it was the luggage van, likewise, derailed. Groaning, wheezing, gasping, sputtering in its death agony, the engine was like a fallen horse which, snorting, trembling in every limb, its flanks heaving, its chest labouring, seems incapable of making the smallest effort to struggle on to its legs again.
#1Inferential Comprehension
#2Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Apr 2017 · Q38Moderate
#3Inferential Comprehension
- Set · 3 questionsPassage – 2 I was beginning to tire a little now. I had been cutting steps continuously for two hours, and Tenzing, too, was moving very slowly. As I chipped steps around still another corner, I wondered rather dully just how long we could keep it up. Our original zest had now quite gone and it was turning more into a grim struggle. I then realised that the ridge ahead, instead of still monotonously rising, now dropped sharply away, and far below I could see the North Col and Rongbuk glacier. I looked upwards to see a narrow ridge running up to a snowy summit. A few more whacks of the ice-axe in the firm snow and we stood on top.
- NDA · Apr 2017 · Q39Moderate
#4Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Apr 2017 · Q40Moderate
#5Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Apr 2017 · Q41Moderate
#6Inferential Comprehension
Done a few? Here’s your next move
- Set · 5 questionsDirections : 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. The rule of the road means that in order that the liberties of all may be preserved, the liberties of everybody must be curtailed. When the policeman, say, at a road-crossing steps into the middle of the road and puts out his hand, he is the symbol not of tyranny but of liberty. You have submitted to a curtailment of private liberty in order that you may enjoy a social order which makes your liberty a reality. We have both liberties to preserve — our individual liberty and our social liberty. That is, we must have a judicious mixture of both. I shall not permit any authority to say that my child must go to this school or that, shall specialize in science or arts. These things are personal. But if I say that my child shall have no education at all, then society will firmly tell me that my child must have education whether I like it or not.
- NDA · Apr 2018 · Q36Moderate
#7Inferential Comprehension
#8Inferential Comprehension
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#10Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Apr 2018 · Q40Moderate
#11Inferential Comprehension
- Set · 5 questionsMy most interesting visitor comes at night, when the lights are still burning — a tiny bat who prefers to fly in through the open door, and will use the window only if there is no alternative. His object in entering the house is to snap up the moths that cluster around the lamps. All the bats I have seen fly fairly high, keeping near the ceiling; but this particular bat flies in low, like a dive-bomber, zooming in and out of chair legs and under tables. Once, he passed straight between my legs. Has his radar gone wrong, I wondered, or is he just plain crazy?
- NDA · Apr 2018 · Q41Moderate
#12Inferential Comprehension
#13Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Apr 2018 · Q43Moderate
#14Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Apr 2018 · Q44Moderate
#15Inferential Comprehension
#16Inferential Comprehension
- Set · 5 questionsDirections : In this section, you have two 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 and mark your response on the Answer Sheet accordingly. You are required to select your answers based on the contents of the passage and opinion of the author only. "Now, ladies and gentlemen," said the conjuror, "having shown you that the cloth is absolutely empty, I will proceed to take from it a bowl of goldfish. Presto!" All around the hall people were saying, "Oh, how wonderful! How does he do it?" But the Quick Man on the front seat said in a big whisper to the people near him, "He-had-it-up-his-sleeve." Then the people nodded brightly at the Quick Man and said, "Oh, of course"; and everybody whispered round the hall, "He-had-it-up-his-sleeve." "My next trick," said the conjuror, "is the famous Hindostanee rings. You will notice that the rings are apparently separate; at a blow they all join (clang, clang, clang)—Presto!" There was a general buzz of stupefaction till the Quick Man was heard to whisper, "He-must-have-had-another-lot-up-his-sleeve." Again everybody nodded and whispered, "The-rings-were-up-his-sleeve." The brow of the conjuror was clouded with a gathering frown. "I will now," he continued, "show you a most amusing trick by which I am enabled to take any number of eggs from a hat. Will some gentleman kindly lend me his hat? Ah, thank you—Presto!" He extracted seventeen eggs, and for thirty-five seconds the audience began to think that he was wonderful. Then the Quick Man whispered along the front bench, "He-has-a-hen-up-his-sleeve," and all the people whispered it on. "He-has-a-lot-of-hens-up-his-sleeve." The egg trick was ruined. It went on like that all through. It transpired from the whispers of the Quick Man that the conjuror must have concealed up his sleeve, in addition to the rings, hens, and fish, several packs of cards, a loaf of bread, a doll's cradle, a live guinea pig, a fifty-cent piece, and a rocking chair.
- NDA · Sep 2018 · Q16Moderate
#17Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Sep 2018 · Q17Moderate
#18Inferential Comprehension
#19Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Sep 2018 · Q19Moderate
#20Inferential Comprehension
#21Inferential Comprehension
- Set · 5 questionsDirections : (Passage 2 — Magda and Mrs. Smiles conversation about weather, Magda's sister visiting, and Magda staying abroad until her sister settles.)
#22Inferential Comprehension
#23Inferential Comprehension
#24Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Sep 2018 · Q24Moderate
#25Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Sep 2018 · Q25Moderate
#26Inferential Comprehension
- Set · 5 questionsDirections : In this section you have a passage. After the passage, you will find some items based on the passage. First, read the 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. I do not wish to suggest that because we were one nation we had no differences, but it is submitted that our leading men travelled throughout India either on foot or in bullock-carts. They learned one another's languages and there was no aloofness amongst them. What do you think could have been the intention of those farseeing ancestors of ours who established Setubandha (Rameshwar) in the South, Jagannath in the East and Hardwar in the North as places of pilgrimage? You will admit they were no fools. They knew that worship of God could have been performed just as well at home. They taught us that those whose hearts were aglow with righteousness had the Ganges in their own homes. But they saw that India was one undivided land so made by nature. They, therefore, argued that it must be one nation. Arguing thus, they established holy places in various parts of India, and fired the people with an idea of nationality in a manner unknown in other parts of the world. And we Indians are one as no two Englishmen are. Only you and I and others who consider ourselves civilized and superior persons imagine that we are many nations. It was after the advent of railways that we began to believe in distinctions, and you are at liberty now to say that it is through the railways that we are beginning to abolish those distinctions. An opium-eater may argue the advantage of opium-eating from the fact that he began to understand the evil of the opium habit after having eaten it. I would ask you to consider well what I had said on the railways.
- NDA · Apr 2019 · Q41Moderate
#27Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Apr 2019 · Q42Moderate
#28Inferential Comprehension
#29Inferential Comprehension
#30Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Apr 2019 · Q45Moderate
#31Inferential Comprehension
- Set · 5 questionsDirections : In this section you have a short passage. After the passage, you will find some items based on the passage. First read the passage and then 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. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning, by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
#32Inferential Comprehension
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#36Inferential Comprehension
- Set · 5 questionsDirections : Carefully read the given passage and answer the questions that follow. You are required to select your answers solely based on the contents of the passage and the opinion of the author only. People by and large are concerned with and pursue self-interest. They are unlikely to be motivated to use renewable resources in a prudent and sustainable fashion. They are unlikely to be motivated under the following conditions: if their resource catchments are vast, so that degradation of any particular portion affects them very little; or if they have open before them possibilities of substitution as any one resource element is depleted; or if their control over the resource base is tenuous, so that others may, at any time, deplete a resource they value, even if they use it in a restrained fashion. Indeed, exhaustive use is highly likely when any one of these three conditions obtains. It is only when people perceive their resource catchments as limited, possibilities of substitution of exhausted resource elements as not readily feasible, and their own control over the resource base as secure, will they be motivated to use the resources in a prudent fashion. People, rooted in a locality, and retaining control over their resource base are most likely to fulfil all three prerequisites for sustainable resource use; and therefore to behave in ways conducive to the conservation of biodiversity within their localities.
- NDA · Sep 2023 · Q46Moderate
#37Inferential Comprehension
- NDA · Sep 2023 · Q47Moderate
#38Literal Comprehension
#39Inferential Comprehension
#40Literal Comprehension
#41Vocabulary in Context
- Set · 5 questionsDirections : Read the following passage carefully and answer the items based on it. You are required to select your answers based solely on the contents of the passage and the opinion of the author. The grouping or assemblage of plants, animals and microbes we observe when we study a natural forest, a grassland, a pond, a coral reef or some other undisturbed area, is referred to as the area's biota or biotic community. The plant portion of the biotic community includes all vegetation, from large trees down through to microscopic algae. Likewise, the animal portion includes everything from large mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians through to earthworms, tiny insects and mites. Microbes encompass a large array of microscopic bacteria, fungi and protozoans. Thus, the biotic community comprises a plant community, an animal community and a microbial community. The particular kind of biotic community found in a given area is, in large part, determined by abiotic factors such as the amount of water or moisture present, the temperature, the salinity, or the type of soil in the area. These abiotic factors both support and limit the particular community. For example, a relative lack of available moisture prevents the growth of most species of plants, but supports certain species, such as cacti; these kinds of areas are deserts. Land with plenty of available moisture and a suitable temperature supports forests. The presence of water is the major factor that sustains aquatic communities. The first step in investigating a biotic community may be simply to catalogue all the species present. Species are the different kinds of plants, animals and microbes in the community. A given species includes all those individuals which have a strong similarity in appearance to one another and which are distinct in appearance from other such groups. Each species in a biotic community is represented by a certain population — that is, by a certain number of individuals that make up the interbreeding, reproducing group.
#42Literal Comprehension
- NDA · Apr 2024 · Q42Moderate
#43Literal Comprehension
#44Literal Comprehension
#45Literal Comprehension
#46Literal Comprehension
- Set · 4 questionsDirections : In this section, you have a short passage. After the passage, you will find some items based on the passage. Read the passage carefully and answer the items based on it. You are required to select your answers based on the contents of the passage and the opinion of author only. We live in a time when globalisation is rapidly encompassing travel, information, trade and investment. The internet ties people together in ways unimagined a few years ago. The globalisation of health, however, remains an elusive goal, similar to the globalisation of economic well-being. Laurie Garrett, in The Coming Plague, describes an unwelcome form of globalisation: the globalisation of disease. Garrett examines the recent history of emerging diseases such as AIDS, Ebola, Hantavirus, Rift Valley Fever, Legionnaires' disease, and others. She also explains the resurgence of familiar diseases like tuberculosis, cholera, and pneumonia as a consequence of the widespread and unwise use of antibiotics. Many of the new diseases are clearly linked to changes in land use, which brings humans into close contacts with rodents or other animals that harbour viruses previously unknown to medicine and often deadly to humans. Resurgent diseases, by contrast, are a creation of our medical practice. By treating people with antibiotics without restraint, we unknowingly select strains that are immune to the antibiotics and that pass on their resistant genes to unrelated bacteria by way of plasmid transfer. The heroes of her book are the women and men on the frontlines of epidemiology. Garrett makes a plea for a greater commitment from our universities, medical schools, and government agencies to train workers who will be capable of recognizing new diseases and who will be able to move about equally well in the laboratory, the hospital and the field in pursuit of knowledge and public-health intervention around the world.
#47Literal Comprehension
- NDA · Sep 2024 · Q42Moderate
#48Literal Comprehension
- NDA · Sep 2024 · Q43Moderate
#49Literal Comprehension
#50Literal Comprehension
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