CLAT UG question bank

English Language MCQs for CLAT UG, Page 4

CLAT UG English Language questions 72-95 of 310, with answer keys and explanations covering central ideas, inference, tone, vocabulary in context, paragraph structure, and passage interpretation.

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Practice passage-based CLAT UG questions with answers for English, current affairs, legal reasoning, logical reasoning, and quantitative techniques.

  • Adaptive Reuse of Old Buildings5
  • Authenticity in Building Restoration5
  • Benches and the Design of Rest5
  • Checklists and Professional Judgment5
  • Cinema and Shared Attention5
  • Community Kitchens and Reciprocity5
  • Convenience and the Loss of Skill5
  • Corrections and Trust in Public Records5
  • Defaults and Meaningful Choice5
  • Definitions and Productive Disagreement5
  • Digitising Archives Without Losing Context5
  • Expert Consensus and Honest Dissent5
  • Expertise and Plain Language5
  • Footnotes and Intellectual Honesty5
  • Imitation and Originality in Art5
  • Labels and Changing Categories5
  • Listening and Historical Silence5
  • Lost Objects and Public Stories5
  • Manual Skills and Digital Convenience5
  • Maps and Public Knowledge5
  • Maps and the Appearance of Objectivity5
  • Maps of Distance and Travel Time5
  • Marginal Notes and Active Reading5
  • Margins and the History of Reading5
  • Memory, Archives, and Historical Evidence5
  • Metrics and Classroom Participation5
  • Missing Data and Honest Conclusions5
  • Museum Lighting and Care5
  • Names, Pronunciation, and Belonging5
  • Photographs as Historical Evidence5
  • Public Apologies and Institutional Memory5
  • Public Clocks and Shared Time5
  • Public Dashboards and Legibility5
  • Public Notices and Actionable Clarity5
  • Public Space and Urban Belonging5
  • Queues and Everyday Fairness5
  • Quiet Rooms and Productive Attention5
  • Rankings and the Illusion of Exact Order5
  • Readable Law and Necessary Precision5
  • Reading Aloud and Textual Attention5
  • Reading and Productive Difficulty5
  • Recipes, Measurement, and Judgment5
  • Reconstructing Lost Performances5
  • Recording Endangered Languages5
  • Repair and Public Memory5
  • Repair, Memory, and Material History5
  • Repair, Ownership and Product Design5
  • Restoration and Honest Repair5
  • Revision and the Value of Delay5
  • Scientific Models and Useful Simplification10
  • Seeds and Shared Memory5
  • Silence in Public Memorials5
  • Small Errors and Scientific Credibility5
  • Speed, Technology, and Public Judgment5
  • Standardised Tests as Proxies5
  • Translation and Meaning10
  • Urban Sound and Public Memory5
  • Urban Trees and Public Maintenance5
  • Waiting as Public Infrastructure5
  • Weather Diaries and Ordinary Evidence5
Passage or principleOriginal non-fiction passage

Cities preserve their past mainly through visible objects: monuments, buildings, maps, and photographs. Sound is rarely treated with equal seriousness, although bells, market calls, factory whistles, and railway announcements can shape collective memory. Recording these sounds does not preserve them without change. A microphone selects a position, excludes surrounding noise, and separates a sound from the activity that gave it meaning. An archive may preserve the cry of a street vendor while losing the relationships between vendor, customer, and neighbourhood. This limitation is not a reason to abandon sound archives. It is a reason to document context as carefully as audio. Interviews, maps, dates, and descriptions can show how a sound was produced and heard. The aim should not be to freeze a supposedly authentic city, since cities constantly change. A useful archive instead allows later listeners to examine both continuity and loss.

Question 72HardUrban Sound and Public Memory

Why does the author say that a microphone selects a position?

  1. A

    To show that every recording is shaped by choices about what is captured.

  2. B

    To establish that microphones cannot record street sounds.

  3. C

    To prove that visual records are always more reliable.

  4. D

    To suggest that surrounding noise has no historical value.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: A. To show that every recording is shaped by choices about what is captured.

A follows from the discussion of inclusion, exclusion, and the loss of context.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 8, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 73MediumUrban Sound and Public Memory

What is the function of the street-vendor example?

  1. A

    It recommends removing vendors from neighbourhoods.

  2. B

    It shows that interviews are less useful than maps.

  3. C

    It illustrates how a preserved sound may lose its social setting.

  4. D

    It establishes that commercial sounds are inauthentic.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: C. It illustrates how a preserved sound may lose its social setting.

C directly explains the gap between recording a sound and preserving its relationships.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 8, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 74EasyUrban Sound and Public Memory

Which description best fits the tone of the passage?

  1. A

    Nostalgic and uncritical

  2. B

    Dismissive and impatient

  3. C

    Celebratory and absolute

  4. D

    Reflective and qualified

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: D. Reflective and qualified

The author supports sound archives while carefully recognising their limits.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 8, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 75HardUrban Sound and Public Memory

Which statement would the author most likely agree with?

  1. A

    An archive should prevent all urban change.

  2. B

    Historical evidence can remain valuable even when it is incomplete.

  3. C

    Context is unnecessary when an audio file is clear.

  4. D

    Authenticity requires reproducing every past detail.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: B. Historical evidence can remain valuable even when it is incomplete.

B follows from the author's defence of contextualised but necessarily selective archives.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 8, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Passage or principleOriginal literary non-fiction passage

When the library repaired its oldest reading table, the carpenter refused to hide every crack. Some trustees objected that visible repairs made the table appear unfinished. The carpenter replied that imitation age would be less honest than a careful repair. Restoration often begins with a conflict between two wishes. We want an object to function again, but we also want it to look untouched by time. Pursued too far, the second wish can erase the very history that made the object worth preserving. A new surface may copy an old style while concealing years of use. This does not mean that every stain must remain or that decay should be romanticised. Repair requires judgment about which marks contain evidence and which merely threaten the object. The restored table finally bore a narrow line of lighter wood. Readers soon stopped noticing it, but the line quietly recorded that preservation had required intervention.

Question 76MediumRestoration and Honest Repair

What is the passage mainly concerned with?

  1. A

    Why old furniture should never be repaired

  2. B

    Why new objects are superior to restored ones

  3. C

    How restoration can preserve function and history without pretending that no repair occurred

  4. D

    How trustees should select library furniture

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: C. How restoration can preserve function and history without pretending that no repair occurred

C reflects the passage's argument for functional but honest restoration.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 8, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 77MediumRestoration and Honest Repair

What does the carpenter mean by saying that imitation age would be less honest?

  1. A

    A repair should not disguise new work as if it were original.

  2. B

    Old wood is always stronger than new wood.

  3. C

    Carpenters should reproduce every stain.

  4. D

    The table should be replaced by an imitation.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: A. A repair should not disguise new work as if it were original.

A expresses the contrast between visible intervention and falsely simulated age.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 8, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 78HardRestoration and Honest Repair

Why can making an object look untouched erase its history?

  1. A

    Historical objects have no practical function.

  2. B

    A flawless new surface may conceal evidence of use and change.

  3. C

    All restoration destroys the original material.

  4. D

    Readers remember only visible cracks.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: B. A flawless new surface may conceal evidence of use and change.

B follows directly from the warning about copying an old style while hiding years of use.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 8, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 79HardRestoration and Honest Repair

Which claim is qualified by the third paragraph?

  1. A

    Libraries contain old tables.

  2. B

    Trustees sometimes disagree with carpenters.

  3. C

    Repairs may use lighter wood.

  4. D

    Evidence of age should be preserved in every case.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: D. Evidence of age should be preserved in every case.

The third paragraph rejects the absolute view that every stain or sign of decay must remain.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 8, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 80MediumRestoration and Honest Repair

What does the line of lighter wood represent?

  1. A

    The failure of the carpenter's method

  2. B

    The trustees' preference for new furniture

  3. C

    A visible record of the intervention needed to preserve the table

  4. D

    Proof that readers disliked the repair

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: C. A visible record of the intervention needed to preserve the table

C matches the final sentence and the passage's theme of honest repair.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 8, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Passage or principleOriginal non-fiction passage

Libraries once treated handwritten notes in books mainly as damage. Modern scholars often read them as evidence. A complaint beside a political speech, a correction beside a recipe, or a date written near a poem can reveal how an earlier reader used the text. Marginal notes are not transparent records of thought. A reader may copy another person's remark, write for an imagined audience, or change an opinion later. Silence is equally ambiguous. An unmarked page may have been accepted, ignored, or read with intense disagreement. The value of annotation therefore lies less in providing final answers than in opening questions about reading. When notes are studied alongside ownership records, letters, and other copies of the same book, they can connect a printed work with the social life surrounding it.

Question 81MediumMargins and the History of Reading

Which statement best captures the central idea of the passage?

  1. A

    All writing in books should be treated as damage.

  2. B

    Annotations can illuminate reading history when interpreted cautiously and with other evidence.

  3. C

    Unmarked books were never read carefully.

  4. D

    Marginal notes provide complete records of private thought.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: B. Annotations can illuminate reading history when interpreted cautiously and with other evidence.

B captures both the evidentiary value and the limits of annotations.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 9, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 82HardMargins and the History of Reading

Why is an unmarked page described as ambiguous?

  1. A

    The absence of notes can correspond to several different reader responses.

  2. B

    Unmarked pages contain no printed text.

  3. C

    Libraries erase all marks before preserving books.

  4. D

    Only disagreement produces annotation.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: A. The absence of notes can correspond to several different reader responses.

A follows from the different explanations given for silence.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 9, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 83MediumMargins and the History of Reading

Why does the author mention a political speech, a recipe, and a poem?

  1. A

    To rank literary forms by importance

  2. B

    To show that recipes are more reliable than speeches

  3. C

    To prove that all readers write corrections

  4. D

    To illustrate the varied uses that annotations may reveal

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: D. To illustrate the varied uses that annotations may reveal

D explains the range of examples in the first paragraph.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 9, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 84EasyMargins and the History of Reading

Which description best fits the author's tone?

  1. A

    Mocking and dismissive

  2. B

    Certain and celebratory

  3. C

    Analytical and cautious

  4. D

    Personal and regretful

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: C. Analytical and cautious

The author recognises value while repeatedly qualifying what the evidence can establish.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 9, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 85HardMargins and the History of Reading

Which method would the author most likely support?

  1. A

    Treating every note as the reader's settled belief

  2. B

    Comparing notes with records and other copies before drawing conclusions

  3. C

    Ignoring the ownership history of annotated books

  4. D

    Assuming that silence indicates agreement

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: B. Comparing notes with records and other copies before drawing conclusions

B reflects the contextual method recommended in the final paragraph.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 9, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Passage or principleOriginal non-fiction passage

Public services are often measured by what they deliver, while the experience of waiting receives less attention. Yet a queue without shade, information, seating, or a predictable order imposes costs before the service itself begins. These costs are uneven. A delay of one hour may be inconvenient for a salaried worker and financially damaging for a daily-wage worker. A person with a disability may be affected less by the length of a wait than by the absence of a chair or an accessible place in the queue. Reducing every delay may be impossible. Institutions can still make waiting more intelligible and less burdensome by giving accurate updates, honouring appointments, providing basic facilities, and allowing people to retain their place without standing continuously. Waiting is therefore not empty time outside public administration. Its design forms part of whether a service is genuinely accessible.

Question 86MediumWaiting as Public Infrastructure

What is the main argument of the passage?

  1. A

    Public services should eliminate every queue.

  2. B

    Waiting has no relation to service accessibility.

  3. C

    Institutions should treat the conditions of waiting as part of service design.

  4. D

    Only salaried workers are affected by delays.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: C. Institutions should treat the conditions of waiting as part of service design.

C states the passage's central claim.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 9, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 87MediumWaiting as Public Infrastructure

Why does the author compare salaried and daily-wage workers?

  1. A

    To show that waiting creates unequal costs for different users

  2. B

    To argue that salaried workers should receive priority

  3. C

    To prove that daily-wage workers never use appointments

  4. D

    To measure the exact value of one hour

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: A. To show that waiting creates unequal costs for different users

The comparison illustrates the unequal burden of the same delay.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 9, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 88HardWaiting as Public Infrastructure

Which claim does the third paragraph qualify?

  1. A

    Public administration delivers services.

  2. B

    Every delay can and must be eliminated.

  3. C

    Accurate updates can help users.

  4. D

    Some queues lack seating.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: B. Every delay can and must be eliminated.

The author accepts that eliminating every delay may be impossible before proposing improvements.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 9, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 89HardWaiting as Public Infrastructure

What is the purpose of the example concerning disability?

  1. A

    To show that queue length is the only relevant factor

  2. B

    To recommend separate services in every case

  3. C

    To argue that chairs remove all barriers

  4. D

    To show that the physical conditions of waiting can matter independently of duration

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: D. To show that the physical conditions of waiting can matter independently of duration

D captures why accessibility is not measured only in minutes.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 9, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 90MediumWaiting as Public Infrastructure

What does making waiting more intelligible mean in the passage?

  1. A

    Making delays longer but quieter

  2. B

    Providing information and a predictable process that users can understand

  3. C

    Removing all staff from service areas

  4. D

    Replacing appointments with informal queues

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: B. Providing information and a predictable process that users can understand

B follows from the measures proposed in the third paragraph.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 9, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Passage or principleOriginal non-fiction passage

A footnote is often mistaken for a storage room where writers place details that would interrupt the main argument. At its best, however, a footnote does more than hold information. It shows where a claim came from, records disagreement, or admits that an issue remains unsettled. This can make footnotes appear hesitant. Readers accustomed to confident prose may prefer a single uninterrupted voice. Yet visible uncertainty can strengthen an argument by allowing others to inspect its limits. Concealing doubt does not remove it. Footnotes can also be abused. A long list of sources may create an appearance of authority without showing that any source supports the claim. Citation is therefore not a substitute for reasoning. Its value lies in making reasoning traceable. The footnote is most useful neither as decoration nor as an escape from clarity. It is a compact record of the conversation within which a claim should be judged.

Question 91MediumFootnotes and Intellectual Honesty

Which statement best captures the central idea of the passage?

  1. A

    Footnotes should contain every detail omitted from a text.

  2. B

    Footnotes are valuable when they make claims and their limits traceable.

  3. C

    An argument becomes correct once it cites many sources.

  4. D

    Uncertainty should remain hidden from readers.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: B. Footnotes are valuable when they make claims and their limits traceable.

B captures the author's account of responsible citation.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 10, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 92HardFootnotes and Intellectual Honesty

Why may visible uncertainty strengthen an argument?

  1. A

    It prevents disagreement among sources.

  2. B

    It guarantees that every conclusion is true.

  3. C

    It removes the need for a main text.

  4. D

    It permits readers to examine the argument's boundaries and evidence.

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: D. It permits readers to examine the argument's boundaries and evidence.

D follows from the author's defence of inspectable limits.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 10, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 93MediumFootnotes and Intellectual Honesty

What is the purpose of discussing long lists of sources?

  1. A

    To prove that longer footnotes are always better

  2. B

    To recommend citation without explanation

  3. C

    To reject the use of scholarly sources

  4. D

    To show that the appearance of authority can exist without genuine support

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: D. To show that the appearance of authority can exist without genuine support

D explains the warning in the third paragraph.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 10, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 94EasyFootnotes and Intellectual Honesty

Which description best fits the tone of the passage?

  1. A

    Playful and careless

  2. B

    Hostile and accusatory

  3. C

    Analytical and balanced

  4. D

    Entirely nostalgic

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: C. Analytical and balanced

The author weighs both the value and misuse of footnotes.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 10, prepared in the official passage-based format.

Question 95HardFootnotes and Intellectual Honesty

What does it mean to make reasoning traceable?

  1. A

    To make every argument longer

  2. B

    To move all reasoning into footnotes

  3. C

    To allow readers to follow the sources and qualifications supporting a claim

  4. D

    To replace judgment with citation counts

View answer and explanation

Correct answer: C. To allow readers to follow the sources and qualifications supporting a claim

C reflects the connection between citation, evidence, and inspection.

Source note: Original LexMentor CLAT UG Batch 10, prepared in the official passage-based format.

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Current Affairs including General Knowledge310 questions with explanationsLegal Reasoning310 questions with explanationsLogical Reasoning310 questions with explanationsQuantitative Techniques310 questions with explanations