Unseen Passage Comprehension and Vocabulary
Mine the shared vocabulary
A large share of words in an unseen Persian passage are Arabic loanwords that also live in Hindi and Urdu: 'ilm, kitab, madrasa, duniya, sabr, insan, waqt, zindagi, hukumat, 'adalat. Read twice: first for these anchors, second to fill the gaps from context.
Parse what you do not know
- Prefixes: be- (without: be-iman), na- (un-: na-ummid), ham- (co-: ham-dard), bar- (up, upon), baz- (back).
- Suffixes: -i forms abstracts and adjectives (mard → mardi; Iran → Irani); -mand (possessing: danishmand); -gar, -kar, -ban, -dar; -stan, -khana, -gah for places.
- Verb families let you guess a noun: from danistan you can reach danish, danishmand, danishmandi.
Question types
Expect unvan (suitable title), markazi khayal, word meanings, mutaradif (synonym) and mutazadd (antonym), fill-in-the-blank, and two or three short answers lifted straight from the text.
Worked example
Sentence: «ظلم و ستم را برانداخت و عدل را گستراند.» Unknown: bar-andakht. Reasoning: bar- is an up/away prefix and andakhtan means "to throw"; throwing zulm-o-sitam away yields "abolished, uprooted". The contrast gusterand, from gusterdan "to spread", completes the antithesis: injustice uprooted, justice spread. Answer "removed" and "promoted" respectively.
Useful antonym pairs
shab / ruz, sust / qawi, dana / nadan, khanda / girya, dust / dushman, ummid / na-ummidi, garm / sard.
Traps
- Trusting a Hindi look-alike whose sense has drifted.
- Answering a one-word question with a whole sentence.
- Filling a blank with a synonym that breaks number or gender agreement.
- Offering a title that names the topic rather than the passage's claim.
- Leaving a blank empty - a plausible word earns more than nothing.