wy 2. The Inferential Question (i) The typical inferential question requires you to use clues found in the text to make certain deductions. It requires you to read between the lines, and figure out what the author is implying or suggesting by what he has written, Evidence |» | Deduction i'm afraid there's a tumour in your right lung. (ii) | Deduction | <— Evidence | (ji) However, you may also encounter inferential questions that require you to reverse this thought process: Given the deduction, you are asked to find the evidence in the text that supports that deduction (This is an example of a Proof of Evidence Question, which is discussed towards the end of this chapter).Exercise 2 Read the following texts and answer the inferential questions that follow. 1. As the journey to my new ‘home’ stretched hour after hour into the night, | began to wonder if | might have been better off staying at home. The cart offered hardly an ounce of comfort as its wheels jolted in and out of the Potholes in the muddy road, keeping me wide awake for fear of being flung off the cart and into a muddy puddle, At long last, we arrived at the manager's house. | was exhausted, ravenous, and thoroughly dazed after my ordeal of a journey, but my heart sank when the manager merely surveyed me from top to toe, his eyes filled with contempt, and then bellowed, “Why on earth did you have to come at such an ungodly hour?” {a) How do you think the author expected the manager to treat him upon his arrival? Give three possible answers.) (Clue: “Iwas exhausted, ravenous and thoroughly dazed after my ‘ordeal’ of a journey ...”) —— [3] 2. _ The surgeon spread the old sari over the dying woman, Then he took off his blouse soaked in blood and carefully folded it up. He arranged his instruments in their box and put everything into his canvas attaché case. And he too lett. Selima remained alone with the employee of the ‘clinic’. Above the grinding ‘of the fan the sounds of voices could be heard coming from outside. The piece of cotton impregnated with ether still concealed her face. The employee was a stunted little man with bushy eyebrows and a hooked nose, like an eagle's beak. To him the bloodless body on the table was worth more than all the Dhiwali card parties put together. He knew a useful address where they cut. up unidentified corpses to recover the skeletons for export. From: City of Joy bby Dominique Lapierre (2) Why do you think the word ‘clinic’ is given in quotation marks? (Clue 1: The surgeon abandons his patient and leaves her there to die.) (Clue 2: “And he too left.” implies that there were others in the clinic, who abandoned Selima as well.) 11] ‘© 2013 Marshall Cavendish international (Singapore) Privat Limited(b) Why was the “bloodless body ... worth more than all the Dhiwali card parties put together”? (Clue: The last sentence) — (2) 3. The train stopped at every station. As it did, all passengers got out to fulfil their bodily needs, to wash, to cook their food, in the middle of a teeming mass of vendors, bearers, cows, dogs and crows. "| looked around me and did as the others did,” Stephen Kovalski was to relate in a letter to his mother. ‘After purchasing an orange, however, he was to discover that he wasn't quite as the others were. He paid for the fruit with a one-rupee note but the vendor failed to give him any change. His request for it was met with an expression of fury and disdain: “How could a sahib* be short of cash?” "I peeled the orange and had broken off a quarter of it when a little girl planted herself in front of me, her big eyes black with kohl. Of course | gave her the fruit and she scampered off. | followed her. She had taken it to share with her brothers and sisters.” A moment later, Stephen Kovalski had nothing but a smile to offer a young shoeshine boy who was circling around him; but a smile does not fill ‘an empty stomach. Kovalski foraged in his knapsack and offered the boy the banana he had promised himself he would eat out of anybody's sight. “At that rate | was condemned to die of starvation very rapidly,” he would recall. *sahib: a respectful name formally reserved for the white foreigners From: City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre (a) What assumption did the orange vendor make about sahibs? 1] (b) Why do you think the little girl planted herself in front of Kovalski? a (© Why do you think the young shoeshine boy was circling around Koval: -———{] {© 2013 Marshall Cavendish international (Singapore) Private timited Distine in Eaglsh 0" Level Comprehens(4) Why do you think Kovalski promised himself he would eat the banana ‘out of anybody's sight? = (@) “At that rate | was condemned to die of starvation very rapidly,” he would recall. Why did Kovalski say this? _— Bj Bonus Language Use for impact Question: (What is effective about the phrase “teeming mass” (lines 2 - 3)? - [2] ‘Why don't you find yourself a nice girl to settle down with and have a family? Just look at your two brothers ...”” Ob no, Jega groaned inwardly, there she goes again, And as his ageing mother Prattled on and on about how he was depriving her of the opportunity to spend her winter years with his children bouncing happily on her lap, his mind wandered to his two brothers, Siva and Raju, both of whom had been married for eight years. Siva was married to Shantini, a beautiful woman, who bore him a child every 15 months, and Raju to Nandini, a woman of shocking hideousness, who was, ‘mercifully, barren, (a) What evidence is there to show that Jega considered his mother's point about him depriving her of “the opportunity to spend her winter years with his children bouncing happily on her lap” an unimportant matter? poe ———_—_ [1] (b) What do you think the author is suggesting when he uses the word “mercifully” in the last line? — 2) {© 2013 Marsholl Cavendish Intemational (singapore) Private Limited