My most interesting visitor comes at night, when the lights are still burning — a tiny bat who prefers to fly in through the open door, and will use the window only if there is no alternative. His object in entering the house is to snap up the moths that cluster around the lamps. All the bats I have seen fly fairly high, keeping near the ceiling; but this particular bat flies in low, like a dive-bomber, zooming in and out of chair legs and under tables. Once, he passed straight between my legs. Has his radar gone wrong, I wondered, or is he just plain crazy ? Consider the following statements : 1. The tiny bat flew in low like a dive-bomber. 2. The tiny bat like all bats keeps near the ceiling. 3. It has lost direction because its radar has gone wrong. 4. It wants to entertain the author with its skill in flying. Which of the above statements may be assumed to be true from the information given in the passage ?
- (a)1 only
- (b)1 and 3
- (c)2 and 4
- (d)3 and 4
Correct — A, 1 only. Statement 1 is lifted straight from the passage — 'this particular bat flies in low, like a dive-bomber'. Statement 2 reverses the very contrast the sentence is making, since 'All the bats I have seen fly fairly high, keeping near the ceiling' is set against 'but this particular bat flies in low'. Statements 3 and 4 are nowhere asserted: the author only wonders, 'Has his radar gone wrong, I wondered, or is he just plain crazy?', and he never suggests the bat is performing for him.
- (b)1 and 3 — Statement 1 is right, but statement 3 turns an open question into a settled explanation. The author puts the faulty radar forward as one of two guesses and chooses neither.
- (c)2 and 4 — Statement 2 contradicts the sentence that separates this bat from every other one the author has seen, and statement 4 invents a motive; the passage says the bat's object is to snap up moths.
- (d)3 and 4 — Neither statement is supported anywhere, and this is the only option that leaves out statement 1, which the passage does state.
A statements item on a passage, where each numbered claim has to be checked against a sentence you can point to.
Two habits settle this quickly. First, a claim is true only if the passage asserts it; a question the writer asks himself is not an assertion, which disposes of statement 3. Second, watch the connective — 'All the bats I have seen fly fairly high … but this particular bat flies in low' exists precisely to deny statement 2. Statement 4 supplies a purpose the passage never gives, so only statement 1 survives.
- The passage gives the bat's purpose plainly: its object in entering the house is to snap up the moths that cluster around the lamps.
- 'But' in the middle of the third sentence marks the contrast between this bat and all the others, so anything that makes it fly like the others is wrong.
- The closing line is a question, not a conclusion, so nothing in it can be treated as a fact of the passage.
- Treating a rhetorical question as the author's answer.
- Reading a generalisation about all bats as though it applied to the one bat the passage is about.
Asked as a statements item where one claim is quoted from the passage, one reverses it, and two are never made at all.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
'All the bats I have seen fly fairly high, keeping near the ceiling; but this particular bat flies in low.' The word 'but' here shows that
- (a)this bat behaves like the others
- (b)this bat behaves unlike the others
- (c)the author has seen very few bats
- (d)bats change their habits at night
Answer(b) this bat behaves unlike the others — 'but' marks the contrast.
- practice — not a real PYQ
'Has his radar gone wrong, I wondered, or is he just plain crazy?' This line tells us that the author
- (a)has decided the bat is ill
- (b)is offering two guesses and settling on neither
- (c)has tested the bat's hearing
- (d)is angry with the bat
Answer(b) is offering two guesses and settling on neither.