Unseen passage or reading comprehension passage is an important element of class 12 English syllabus. We have atleast 1-2 questions in every English exam with unseen passage for class 12. This covers important aspect of reading and writing portion of English language. As you are reading new comprehension passage for the first time, it test your skill as a reader, your vocabulary, and your writing skills. And once you are solving questions from the unseen passage, your writing skills are checked thoroughly.
Students need to do rigorous practice of unseen passage for class 12 exams. They need to solve unseen passage having descriptive questions or mcq questions before going to their exams.
In this article, we have shared some practice unseen passage for class 12 exam. Students can attempt these reading comprehension passages and check their preparedness for the exam.
Unseen passage for class 12
Students can find the unseen passage for class 12 for practice. Please read the passage carefully, and solve the questions. You are also advised to keep a timer while solving such reading comprehension questions.
Unseen passage 1 – Source: Science website
The saying “out of sight, out of mind” doesn’t quite hold true for radioactive materials. Proposed permanent storage facilities for nuclear waste have encountered pushback in countries such as France, Sweden, and the United States—including the latter’s famously contested Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. However, Finland has succeeded in gaining approval for a long-term nuclear waste repository, which is set to open in a few years.
Onkalo, meaning “pit” or “cavity” in Finnish, will shelter spent uranium fuel nearly half a kilometer below Earth’s surface outside the town of Eurajoki. A series of barriers—giant copper casks, water-absorbing bentonite clay, and water-resistant crystalline rock—are expected to protect harmful radionuclides from seeping out of the site and into the local ecosystem. However, the decidedly nonporous rock still contain cracks, and Posiva—the nuclear waste company in charge of the project—had to map and avoid them as workers dug deeper.
The project is crucial to mitigating risk for Finland’s nuclear energy sector, which will account for 40% of the country’s electricity after a fifth reactor comes online this year. If successful, Onkalo’s copper casks will keep spent uranium safe and dry until it has decayed to acceptable levels—at least 100,000 years in the future.
- Question 1: Which countries have received pushback in their effort to store nuclear waste?
- Question 2: Where is nuclear waste storage pit in Finland located?
- Question 3: How is Finland planning to store nuclear waste safely?
Unseen passage 2 – Source: Indian Express
The gravest economic challenge facing India — a young nation where the median age is 28.43 years — is unemployment. Mr Narendra Modi understood this when he bid for power but, over the years, his philosophy seems to have changed. His promise to create 2 crore jobs a year had electrified the youth. Later, he said that selling pakoras was also a job! In the last seven years, unemployment has increased. The pandemic and the lockdown brought in their wake more unemployment. 60 lakh MSMEs were closed down. Millions lost their jobs, that included salaried jobs and non-regular jobs. The self-employed (e.g. tailor, electrician, plumber) lost work. Many of those jobs have not come back. The current unemployment rates are Urban: 8 per cent, Rural: 6 per cent. Besides, those who returned to work faced wage cuts. In the last two years, 84 per cent of households have suffered a loss of income. In this background, the Budget has promised that 60 lakh jobs will be created in the next five years. As against the 12 lakh new jobs a year, the number of persons who enter the workforce every year is 47.5 lakh.
- Question 1: What is the biggest economic challenge which India is facing?
- Question 2: How has pandemic and lockdown impacted job sector in India?
- Question 3: Why does author think that unemployment will keep on rising in coming years?
Unseen passage 3 – Source: The Wire
Scientists have long been warning that extreme weather would cause calamity in the future. But in South America which in just the last month has had deadly landslides in Brazil, wildfire in Argentine wetlands and flooding in the Amazon so severe it ruined harvests that future is already in Rio de Janeiro.
In just three hours on Feb. 15, the city of Petropolis, nestled in the forested mountains above Rio de Janeiro, received over 10 inches of rainfall more than ever registered in a single day since authorities began keeping records in 1932. The ensuing landslides swallowed the lives of more than 200 people, and left nearly 1,000 homeless.
A report published Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) corroborates what many on the ground are witnessing with their own eyes. Global warming is altering the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as El Nino and La Nina, the natural heating and cooling of parts of the Pacific that alters weather patterns around the globe. These events have also become more difficult to predict, causing additional damage, the report said.
Climate change is projected to convert existing risks in the region into severe key risks, the report said.
Until 2020, there was plenty of water, swamps, stagnant lakes and lagoons in Argentina’s Ibera Wetlands, one of the largest such ecosystems in the world. But an historic drought of the Parana River dried much of it out; its waters are in the lowest level since 1944. Since January it has been the stage of raging fires.
- Question 1: How did extreme weather damaged South American countries?
- Question 2: When did city of Petropolis received highest rainfall. How damaging that was?
- Question 3: What are El Nino and La Nina?
- Question 4: Hos has Ibera wetlands in Argentina impacted by climate change?
Unseen passage 4 – Source: Deccan Herald
A few days back, a woman using a wheelchair was denied entry into a club in Gurugram as she could reportedly cause “disturbance” to other customers. The Constitution guarantees a fundamental right to access public places. But does this right also extend to Persons With Disabilities (PWDs)?
It is often the case that whenever an individual feels wronged and violated, they inevitably go back to their Constitution to look for answers and remedies. The Constitution has been an instrument of empowerment for women, Dalits and religious minorities, both inside and outside of courts. This extremely deplorable act of discrimination against the woman in Gurugram warrants an examination of the Constitution to figure out the answers and remedies, it has for the disabled community of the country.
It is hard to gauge the number of persons with disabilities at the time of independence because they were not considered as a different class up till the Census 1981. But they were very much in the room at the time of independence and the drafting and adoption of the Constitution. This is clear from the plethora of scholarship in disability studies that reveal that the British and natives in colonial India saw the PWDs as objects of charity. They felt that making donations for the benefit of the PWDs could bring them a fortune. Resultantly, rich philanthropists funded the construction and maintenance of rehabilitation institutions, schools and hospitals.
- Question 1: How does constitution help in securing rights of a person?
- Question2: What is Gurugram incident about?
- Question 3: How did British in colonial India helps PWD?
Conclusion
In this article, we have shared practice unseen passage for class 12 exams and tests. Student from other classes or those who are preparing for competitive exams can use these passages for practice too (like reading comprehension for IELTS or CAT). In case you want to match your answers for these unseen passage questions, you can mail your answer to us.
In case you are struggling to solve unseen passage questions, you can check how to solve unseen passage article.
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