CSS Comprehension Practice Set 1
How to use this set (25 minutes)
- Read the passage once without stopping (about 5 minutes).
- Read it a second time and underline, in your own mind, the sentence that states the writer’s main point (about 5 minutes).
- Answer the five questions in your own words without looking at the model answers (about 10 minutes).
- Compare with the model answers and note where your answer added something the passage did not say, or missed the passage’s qualification (about 5 minutes).
Passage — “The Repair Shop on the Corner”
A small repair shop stands on the corner of a busy street, between a bakery and a shop that sells mobile phones. From the outside, it looks unremarkable. A faded sign hangs above the door, a few chairs wait outside for customers, and a narrow counter separates the front of the shop from the workbench at the back. Inside, the air smells faintly of oil and heated metal. Shelves along one wall hold spare parts in labelled boxes, and a row of tools hangs within easy reach of the workbench. Nothing about the place suggests hurry. The owner opens the shop at the same time each morning, arranges the tools in the same order, and begins the day by sweeping the floor before the first customer arrives.
Most customers arrive with something broken and a story about how it broke. A kettle that stopped heating the night before a family gathering. A bicycle whose chain slipped on the way to work. A sewing machine that jammed in the middle of a piece of urgent work. The owner listens to the whole story before touching the object. He turns it over in his hands, asks when the fault first appeared, and asks whether anyone has already tried to fix it. Only then does he open it. This slow beginning frustrates some customers, who want a price and a promise at once. He refuses to give either until he has seen the fault for himself. A quick guess, he says, is more expensive than a careful look, because a wrong repair must be paid for twice: once when it fails, and again when it is done properly.
The repair itself is often less dramatic than the customer expects. A loose wire is tightened. A worn washer is replaced. A clogged filter is cleaned. The owner explains each step as he works, not to impress the customer but so that the customer can recognise the same fault next time. He keeps the replaced parts in a small tray and shows them before throwing them away, so that the customer can see what was actually wrong. When the work is finished, he tests the object in front of the customer rather than behind the counter. If it works, he says so plainly. If it may fail again soon, he says that too, and explains what the customer should watch for. He writes the date of the repair on a small card and tells the customer to bring the card back if the fault returns.
The shop survives because its customers return, and they return because they trust it. Trust here does not come from advertising or from low prices. It comes from a pattern the customer can observe: the same careful questions, the same visible repair, the same honest warning when a repair will not last. Over time, this pattern does work that no advertisement can do. A customer who once came in with a kettle brings in a fan, then a neighbour, then a whole street of neighbours. The shop never grows large. It does not need to. Its reputation travels the way its repairs do: slowly, one object and one satisfied customer at a time.
Questions
- In your own words, what does the writer mean when he says a quick guess “is more expensive than a careful look”?
- Why does the owner listen to the customer’s whole story before touching the broken object?
- According to the passage, why does the owner explain each step of the repair and show the replaced parts?
- What does the passage suggest is the real reason the shop survives? Give one detail from the passage that supports your answer.
- Suggest a suitable title for this passage, and give one reason why your title fits it.
Model answers
- A guess may identify the wrong fault, so the customer pays for a repair that does not work and then has to pay again for the correct repair. Looking carefully first avoids that double cost.
- The story tells him when the fault first appeared and whether anyone has already tried to fix it. That information helps him find the real fault instead of guessing from the symptom alone.
- He explains the steps so the customer can recognise the same fault next time, and he shows the replaced parts so the customer can see what was actually wrong. Both habits make the repair visible rather than a matter of trust alone.
- The shop survives because customers trust it and return. One supporting detail is the pattern the customer can observe: the same careful questions, the same visible repair, and the same honest warning when a repair will not last.
- Any title that captures the shop’s slow, honest method is acceptable — for example, “The Value of a Careful Repair” — because the passage is about trust built through careful, visible work, not about speed or low prices.
Vocabulary — pair of words (5)
For each pair, note the difference in meaning, then read the usage sentence.
- Accept / Except — Accept means to receive or agree to something; except means apart from.
Sentence: She decided to accept the repair job, except for the part she could not test before the customer left. - Advice / Advise — Advice is the suggestion itself (noun); advise is the act of giving it (verb).
Sentence: His advice was to clean the filter first; he would advise any owner to do the same before paying for a replacement. - Principal / Principle — Principal means chief or main (also a sum of money, or the head of a school); principle means a rule or belief.
Sentence: The principal reason the shop kept its customers was a simple principle: never charge for work that was not done. - Stationary / Stationery — Stationary means not moving; stationery means writing materials.
Sentence: The fan stayed stationary on the bench while the owner wrote the repair date on a piece of stationery from the counter drawer. - Affect / Effect — Affect is usually the verb (to influence); effect is usually the noun (the result).
Sentence: Dust can affect a motor’s cooling, and the effect is a machine that stops without warning.
Vocabulary — idioms (5)
Each idiom is given with its meaning and one usage sentence.
- A blessing in disguise — something that seems bad at first but turns out to be good.
Sentence: The kettle breaking the night before the gathering was a blessing in disguise, because it forced the family to find a repairer they now trust. - To cut corners — to do something quickly and cheaply by skipping proper steps.
Sentence: The owner refuses to cut corners, even when a customer is in a hurry. - To burn the midnight oil — to work or study late into the night.
Sentence: She burned the midnight oil before the exam, but she still revised the passage twice in the morning. - To hit the nail on the head — to say exactly the right thing.
Sentence: When he said the fault was the washer and not the switch, he hit the nail on the head. - To turn over a new leaf — to start behaving in a better or more careful way.
Sentence: After paying twice for the same repair, the customer turned over a new leaf and began asking for the replaced parts to be shown.
Common traps
- Adding what the passage does not say. The passage never claims the shop is the cheapest, the fastest, or the only repair shop in the area. Do not import those claims into your answers.
- Copying whole sentences from the passage. The questions ask for answers in your own words. A copied sentence may be accurate and still fail the instruction.
- Ignoring qualifications. “If it may fail again soon, he says that too” is a qualification, not a promise that every repair lasts. Answers that drop the qualification misstate the passage.
- Answering the question you expected instead of the one asked. Question 4 asks for the reason the shop survives plus one supporting detail — a general summary of the shop is not enough.
Timed drill (10 minutes)
Cover the model answers. Re-read the passage once, then answer Questions 1–4 in no more than four sentences each. Check only whether each answer (a) uses your own words, (b) stays inside what the passage actually says, and (c) answers the exact question asked.
Note on the examination
This is original practice material written for csspastpapers.pk. It is not an FPSC paper, it does not reproduce any FPSC passage or question, and no FPSC mark split is claimed. Use it to practise reading, answering in your own words, and checking your answers against a model — not as a prediction of any coming paper.