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10th grade reading comprehension
10th grade (Year 11 in England) · 16 questions · Common Core: RL.9-10.4, RL.11-12.4, RL.9-10.5, RI.9-10.5 · England: GCSE English Language Paper 1 Q2, GCSE English Language Paper 2 Q3, GCSE English Language Paper 1 Q3
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Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)
The harbour did not so much wake as surrender to the morning. Fog lay over the water like a damp grey blanket that someone had forgotten to fold, and the fishing boats nodded at their moorings, half-asleep, their ropes creaking in complaint.
Old Tomas was already there. He was always there. He sat on an upturned crate at the end of the quay, mending a net with fingers that had long ago stopped feeling the cold. His knife flashed, paused, flashed again. Every so often he lifted his head and sniffed the air, as if the sea had written him a letter only he could read.
Behind him, the town stirred reluctantly. A shutter rattled up. A dog barked twice and thought better of it. Somewhere a kettle began its thin, rising whistle. The smell of bread drifted from the bakery on Water Lane and mixed with the older, deeper smells of salt, diesel and fish.
Then the sun arrived. It did not rise so much as break through – one bright blade splitting the fog, then another, until the whole harbour was suddenly ablaze. The water turned from slate to copper. Gulls exploded upward from the harbour wall, screaming. The boats seemed to sit up straighter.
Tomas did not look up. He tied off the last knot, tested it with a sharp tug, and laid the net across his knees like a sleeping cat. Only then did he raise his eyes to the brightening sea, and for a moment, just a moment, his face softened into something very close to a smile.
Question 1
Read "Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)". In paragraph 3, the dog "barked twice and thought better of it". What is the effect?
- A. It adds gentle humour and reinforces the sleepy, reluctant mood.
- B. It shows the dog is dangerous.
- C. It suggests the town is noisy and lively.
- D. It creates fear and panic.
Question 2
Read "Harbour at Dawn (GCSE-style extract)". Which phrase best shows the dramatic change brought by the sun?
- A. "The water turned from slate to copper."
- B. "Old Tomas was already there."
- C. "his knife flashed, paused, flashed again."
- D. "A shutter rattled up."
The Four-Day Week: Promise and Pitfalls
In recent years, a growing number of companies have experimented with a four-day working week, in which employees work about 80 per cent of their usual hours for 100 per cent of their pay, on the condition that they maintain their output. Supporters argue that the model could transform working life. Critics warn that its benefits may be exaggerated.
The most widely reported trials have produced striking results. In one large study involving several dozen organisations, most companies chose to continue the four-day week after the trial ended. Employees reported less stress, better sleep and fewer days off sick, while company revenue remained broadly stable. For businesses struggling to recruit, the promise of an extra day off can be a powerful attraction.
Yet these findings come with important caveats. Companies that volunteer for such trials may already be enthusiastic about flexible working and well suited to it. Their success may not be representative of all workplaces. Moreover, many of the participating organisations were offices or creative businesses, where output is relatively easy to reorganise. In hospitals, schools or factories, where staff must be present to deliver a service, reducing hours without hiring more people may simply be impossible.
There are also questions about what happens in the long term. Early enthusiasm can fade, and the pressure to fit five days of work into four may eventually lead to longer, more intense working days, cancelling out the benefits to wellbeing.
None of this means the idea should be dismissed. It does suggest that the four-day week is less a universal solution than a tool that may suit some sectors far better than others. The challenge for policymakers is to learn from the trials without assuming that what worked for a marketing agency will work for an emergency ward.
Question 3
Read "The Four-Day Week: Promise and Pitfalls". Which finding from the trials is reported in paragraph 2?
- A. Most companies chose to keep the four-day week.
- B. Employees reported more stress.
- C. Revenue doubled.
- D. All hospitals adopted the model.
Question 4
Read the question and choose. "Officials ADMITTED that the project was over budget." How does 'admitted' differ from 'said'?
- A. it suggests a joke
- B. it suggests reluctance or wrongdoing
- C. it is exactly the same
- D. it suggests pride
Inheritance
When my aunt died she left me her piano, which was the one thing in her house I had never wanted. It was an upright of dark, scarred wood, too large for any room it had ever stood in, and it had been out of tune for as long as I could remember. As a child, I had been made to sit at it every Thursday while she counted the beats aloud in a voice like a ruler rapping a desk. I had hated it with the pure, uncomplicated hatred of a nine-year-old.
The removal men groaned it up the three flights to my flat and left it in the hall, where it blocked the light from the only window. For a month I edged around it sideways, as one edges around a guest who has outstayed their welcome. I told friends I would sell it. I photographed it twice for the listing and deleted the pictures both times.
It was during a power cut in February that I finally lifted the lid. I could not have said why. The flat was cold and dark and silent, and perhaps I simply wanted to hear something. I pressed middle C. It was flat, of course – everything about that piano was slightly flat – but the note hung in the hall far longer than I expected, and something in the slowness of its fading undid me.
I played the only piece I still knew, a dull exercise in C major that my aunt had made me repeat a hundred times. My fingers found it before my mind did. Halfway through, I realised I was counting under my breath, in her rhythm, in her voice.
I have not had the piano tuned. People ask me why, and I tell them I haven't got round to it, which is true in the way that most convenient answers are true. The other reason is harder to explain. Every flat note is exactly as she left it. I am not ready to correct her yet.
Question 5
Read "Inheritance". In paragraph 2, the narrator edges around the piano "as one edges around a guest who has outstayed their welcome". What does this suggest?
- A. The piano feels like an awkward, unwanted presence that he avoids confronting.
- B. The piano is too heavy to move.
- C. He enjoys having visitors.
- D. The piano belongs to a friend.
Question 6
Is the proposed answer correct? "She ran. She didn't look back. She couldn't." What is the effect of the short sentences? → they slow the pace to relax the reader
- A. yes, it is correct
- B. no, it is not correct
Question 7
Which appeal does this sentence mainly use? If the library closes, 2,000 people will lose free internet access, and the nearest alternative is twelve miles away.
- A. ethos (credibility)
- B. pathos (emotion)
- C. logos (logic and evidence)
The Flood
The river had been rising for three days, but in the village nobody spoke of it. People hung out washing, argued about football and queued at the bakery as if the brown water swelling beneath the bridge were simply another neighbour, loud but harmless.
Nadia noticed. From her bedroom window she watched the river swallow the lowest step of the old jetty, then the second, then the third. At night she lay awake listening to it muttering against the stones, a low, endless grumble that seemed to grow hungrier by the hour.
On the fourth morning, the sky was the colour of a bruise. Rain did not fall so much as hang in the air, soaking everything it touched. Nadia's grandmother, who had lived in the village for seventy years, stood at the door, sniffing the wind like an old dog. "Pack a bag," she said quietly. "Now."
They were halfway up the hill when they heard it.
A roar. A crack. Then silence, which was worse.
Below them, the bridge had gone. Where it had stood, the river surged on, carrying fence posts, garden chairs and a single red umbrella, spinning slowly, like a flower.
Question 8
Read "The Flood". What is the effect of the sentence forms in paragraph 5 ('A roar. A crack. Then silence, which was worse.')?
- A. they slow the pace to relax the reader
- B. they give a long description of the bridge
- C. they explain the science of floods
- D. the fragments make the disaster sudden and shocking
Question 9
Type the poetic term (in English) that matches this description. A strong pause in the middle of a line, usually marked by punctuation.
Answer
Question 10
Scientists studying the Arctic fox noticed something odd: one fox had walked more than 3,500 kilometres in 76 days, from Norway to Canada. What is the main purpose of the specific figures?
- A. to show the scientists made errors
- B. to explain why foxes migrate
- C. to make the fox's journey vivid and impressive
- D. to compare Norway and Canada
Beavers Come Home
Four hundred years after they were hunted to extinction in Britain, beavers are back. Small populations now live wild in parts of Scotland and England, and several other European countries have reintroduced them too.
Ecologists describe beavers as "ecosystem engineers". By building dams, they create ponds and wetlands that slow the flow of water, trap sediment and provide homes for insects, amphibians and birds. In one Devon study, the amount of water flowing downstream during heavy rain was noticeably lower below beaver dams than above them, suggesting that dams can help reduce flooding.
Not everyone is delighted. Some farmers report flooded fields and felled trees, and they worry about the cost. Their concerns are real, and schemes in some areas now compensate landowners or move beavers whose dams cause serious damage.
Supporters argue that the benefits outweigh the costs. Wetlands created by beavers can store water during droughts, improve water quality and attract visitors. Yet researchers caution that results vary from river to river, and long-term data are still limited.
What is clear is that the return of beavers forces us to ask a broader question: how much room are we willing to make for wild animals in a crowded country?
Question 11
Read "Beavers Come Home". Why does the writer include the sentence 'Yet researchers caution that results vary from river to river'?
- A. to prove that beavers are harmful
- B. to praise the farmers
- C. to introduce a new animal
- D. to show that the evidence is not yet conclusive
The Gardener's Ledger
My father kept two books. The first was the ledger in which he recorded every coin that passed through the shop: the price of flour, the cost of the new awning, the debts that customers swore they would settle by Friday. He wrote in it every evening, in a small, upright hand, and he never let anyone else touch it.
The second book I did not discover until after he died. It was a cheap school exercise book, its cover soft with handling, hidden at the back of the shed behind the seed trays. Inside, in the same upright hand, he had recorded something quite different: the date the first snowdrop appeared each year; the night a fox had dug up the tulips; the morning, in 1987, when "M. laughed at the robin on the spade and said it was the bravest bird in England." M. was my mother. I had never heard my father mention her laugh.
For forty years, it seemed, he had been keeping accounts of another kind – of small, unprofitable things that added up to a life. The shop ledger balanced to the penny. The garden book did not balance at all. There were gaps of months, sometimes years. In 1993, the year my mother died, there is only one entry: "Rain."
I used to think my father was a man who cared only for what could be counted. I sat in that cold shed until the light went, reading his small, careful sentences, and understood that I had been reading the wrong book.
Question 12
Read "The Gardener's Ledger". What does the narrator mean by "keeping accounts of another kind"?
- A. counting the plants for sale
- B. recording things that mattered emotionally rather than financially
- C. running a second shop
- D. hiding money from the family
Question 13
Is the proposed answer correct? An older narrator looks back on her childhood in the past tense. What does this allow? → reflection: she can comment on what she understands now that she didn't then
- A. yes, it is correct
- B. no, it is not correct
The Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln, 1863)
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Question 14
Read "The Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln, 1863)". Which appeal is MOST prominent in 'these honored dead… gave the last full measure of devotion'?
- A. none
- B. ethos
- C. logos
- D. pathos
Question 15
Her words were a slap across the silence. What is the effect of the metaphor?
- A. It shows the room was noisy.
- B. It shows her words were sudden, shocking and hurtful.
- C. It shows she was whispering.
- D. It suggests she was being kind.
Question 16
Type the rhyme scheme of this stanza using capital letters (for example ABAB). The stars came out One by one Without a doubt The day was done
Answer
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