Reading Comprehension (Unseen Passages)
What the section actually asks
Unseen passages in the BSEH Class 10 English paper test three separate skills and mark them separately: locating stated information (MCQ or one-word answers), inferring what is implied but never written, and using vocabulary in context. A discursive passage of roughly 400–450 words usually carries five or six MCQs, and a second passage may ask for note-making or a short summary.
Core rules
- Every answer must be traceable to a line in the passage. Underline that line before you choose.
- Distinguish stated from implied: “The passage says X” and “the writer suggests X” are different questions.
- Track pronoun reference. When a question asks what “this” or “such a step” refers to, look at the sentence immediately before it.
- For “give a word that means…”, choose the sense the word carries in that sentence, not its commonest dictionary sense.
- For “which is NOT true”, verify each option against the text instead of seizing the first plausible one.
Worked example
Passage line: “The corporation’s pilot segregation project was only partly successful; Ward 7 residents separated their waste diligently, but collection vehicles still tipped both bins into one truck.” Question: What limited the project’s success? Answer: The collection stage - the vehicles re-mixed the separated waste. Reasoning: the first clause says “partly successful”, and “but” signals the limiting factor. Residents are described positively, so they cannot be the answer.
Traps that cost marks
Options that are true in real life but absent from the passage; absolute words such as “always”, “never” or “all” that the text does not support; choosing a synonym of the wrong sense; copying an entire sentence instead of answering in one line.