Sample Reading Comprehension - 5 | English Language for Grade 10 PDF Download

Passage - 1

Dear Editor,

Should thieves be treated differently according to their crimes? I don’t understand why state senators always seem to pass laws that help the rich get richer instead of helping those who really need help. The FBI says that this year, more than 20,000 people in this city will have their cars broken into or stolen. They will suffer thousands of dollars in damages, not to mention mental anguish and the loss of items that hold sentimental value.
When law enforcement officers from across the state lobbied behind a bill to make these kinds of break-ins a felony, the lawmakers couldn’t see past how much it might cost to lock the criminals up.
Then the Senate turns around and approves a bill that fights illegal copying of CDs and DVDS. Although both these crimes are wrong, which one hurts the average person more? Whom are our state congress people looking out for?

Sincerely,
Bettina Suleman

Surely leaf blowers seem innocent enough, right? Other than the noisiness of those things, I can't really complain. I'm all about getting things done quickly and efficiently. These garden power tools can blow at up to 200 miles per hour. With speed like that, they have to work better than a rake or a broom.
At first I thought the yard workers in our neighborhood were using the leaf blowers to blow leaves and trash into a pile to make them easier to pick up. When I actually sat down to watch them one day, the workers were just blowing the trash from the yard they were working on into another.
I did some research on exactly what was being blown through the air by the leaf blowers. Some call this potent mixture "fugitive dust," and it includes everything from carbon monoxide, mold, and pesticides to bird and animal droppings. Mmm! Doesn't that sound like the most appetizing thing to have on your picnic table? Let's not even think about how that mixture will impact the elderly, children, and people with breathing problems.
Are leaf blowers even all they are cracked up to be? A study conducted in California had a 50-year-old grandmother to compete against gas and battery-operated blowers. Using a rake and broom, she was able to beat the battery-powered leaf blower. She was almost as fast as the gas-powered machines. And, in fact, she did a better job than either of them because she was able to get the small nuts and twigs they couldn't.
You may be surprised to learn that some cities, like Los Angeles, have made it illegal to use leaf blowers near homes. It turns out that using a leaf blower for one hour produces the same amount of pollution as driving a car 50 miles.
As homeowners, should we take the steps to have regulations against leaf blowers in our neighborhoods, too? Should the city ban the use of leaf blowers? Should we be willing to pay a little extra for our yard crews to remove leaves and debris from our yards manually instead of using the blowers? Or, could we just ask the workers to use lower power levels when using them? Until we come to a consensus, it's safe to say whoever removes leaves from their yard last has the cleanest yard. 

Technology has changed our lives. The fast-paced world we live in has come with its own ways of communication. The text message, the email, the instant message—they’re all quick ways for us to contact each other. People are able to instantly communicate their thoughts on things as trivial as the long checkout line in front of them to things as important as breaking news events.
We live in the age of multitasking. Why sit down and talk to one friend when you can Facebook, instant message, and text five friends while ordering dinner, cleaning up, and watching your favorite television show? We keep in contact with each other constantly. But do we really communicate? I believe all the mindless messages we send to each other on a daily basis create a false sense of closeness. Our relationships are shallow, at best.
When was the last time you wrote a letter? I mean sat down with a pen and a piece of paper and scratched out a note to a friend or family member? I can count on one hand the number of letters I have sent and received this year: None. How many emails have I dashed off from my phone without stopping whatever activity in which I was engaged? Too many to count.
Writing your thoughts on paper takes time and requires your full attention. Taking a handwritten letter to post office and sending it someone shows that you are thinking of them. All it takes is a few minutes out of your hectic schedule to make someone feel valued and appreciated. He or she will appreciate the time you spent writing the letter and feel like you regard or think highly of them. It also takes patience to wait for your friend or family member to receive the letter and respond to it. Write a loved one a letter today. I promise you won’t regret it. 

Have you ever Googled yourself? These days, blogs and social-networking sites have made information more available—and that includes everything that you or your friends have posted. Did your friend tag you in a recent photo? Did you just twitter a random thought about your favorite teacher? If so, you might want to ask yourself whether you’re truly ready to share these images and thoughts with the rest of the world. In a world where information is available with a single click, keeping your personal information secret isn’t quite as easy as it used to be.
Take Kate Smith, a local tenth-grader and an avid blogger. Last year, Kate wrote a blog about her favorite English teacher. Pretty harmless, right? Well, not exactly. Within a few days, Kate’s blog entry received ten comments, and not all of them were nice. Several anonymous comments went so far as to ridicule Kate’s teacher with profanity. News of Kate’s blog then spread to her high school, and before she knew it, she ended up in the principal’s office. Though Kate wasn’t necessarily responsible for the comments to her blog, she said she learned a lesson. “Online information spreads fast,” she said. “Next time I’ll probably keep that sort of discussion private.”
The sooner that you can learn to control the spread of personal information online, the better. Leaked personal information can be damaging in more ways than one, and no one is more at risk than recent graduates. A recent study conducted by careerbuilder.com revealed that as many as twenty percent of employers have reviewed candidates’ profiles on social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace before making hiring decisions. Of this group, thirty-three percent decided not to hire a candidate based on the candidate’s online profile.
Granted, privacy settings and password-protected sites have become commonplace. But we’re all learning to use the Internet at an increasingly young age—sometimes as early as kindergarten. Thus, the ability to tell the difference between a harmless post and a potentially damaging one must be instilled at a young age. That’s why we must demand that today’s educators make Internet privacy a central part of the public school curriculum. Not only will this allow us to protect our reputations as students, but also it will ensure that we remain competitive in the future job market.