Reading Comprehension — Grade 8

🔊 ListenI was a poor orphan, raised in the house of my aunt, Mrs. Reed, who never let me forget that I was unwanted. Her own children mocked me, and I was punished for faults I had not committed.

🔊 ListenFor years I swallowed my anger in silence. But on this day, after being locked away and falsely blamed once more, something inside me would no longer stay quiet.

🔊 Listen“I am not deceitful!” I cried, my voice shaking. “If I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you. You have treated me with cruelty, and I will tell anyone who asks exactly how.”

🔊 ListenMrs. Reed's hands fell idle in her lap, and she stared at me as though I were a stranger. Never before had a child in her house dared to speak to her so plainly.

🔊 ListenI trembled afterward, frightened by my own boldness — yet for the first time, I felt strangely free. I had spoken the truth, and no punishment could take that from me.

🔊 ListenWhen the ground suddenly shifts along a crack in Earth's crust called a fault, it releases energy as an earthquake. Scientists use special tools to measure how strong each quake is.

🔊 ListenA device called a seismograph records the shaking. A pen or sensor traces the waves onto a moving chart, creating a record called a seismogram that shows how violently the ground moved.

🔊 ListenFor many years, scientists used the Richter scale to rate an earthquake's size. Each step up the scale means about ten times more shaking, so a magnitude 6 quake shakes about ten times harder than a magnitude 5.

🔊 ListenToday many scientists prefer the moment magnitude scale, which better measures the total energy of very large quakes. Either way, a higher number means a more powerful earthquake.

🔊 ListenBy studying these measurements, scientists learn where quakes are likely and how to design safer buildings — knowledge that saves lives in earthquake-prone regions.

🔊 ListenShall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

🔊 ListenSometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

🔊 ListenBut thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

🔊 ListenSo long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

🔊 ListenIt looked like an easy plan. Two down-on-their-luck men, Bill and Sam, decided to kidnap the son of a wealthy man in a small town and demand a ransom of two thousand dollars.

🔊 ListenThe boy they snatched — a freckled ten-year-old — turned out to be a wild terror. He pelted Bill with rocks, called himself “Red Chief,” and treated the whole kidnapping as the greatest adventure of his life.

🔊 ListenWithin a day, the boy had nearly driven the two men mad. He scalped Bill in play, kept them awake all night, and showed no fear at all. The kidnappers, not the victim, were the ones who suffered.

🔊 ListenDesperate, Sam wrote to the boy's father demanding the ransom. But the father wrote back with a counter-offer: he would take his son off their hands — if THEY paid HIM two hundred and fifty dollars.

🔊 ListenWorn out and defeated, Bill and Sam agreed. They paid the father, left the boy, and ran from that town as fast as their legs could carry them.

🔊 ListenEarth stays warm enough for life because of the greenhouse effect. Certain gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide and methane, trap some of the Sun's heat instead of letting it all escape into space.

🔊 ListenThis works much like a greenhouse or a parked car: sunlight passes in and warms the inside, and the trapped heat keeps the space warmer than the air outside. Without any greenhouse effect, Earth would be frozen and lifeless.

🔊 ListenThe problem today is balance. Burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas releases extra carbon dioxide, thickening the blanket of gases and trapping more heat than before.

🔊 ListenAs a result, average global temperatures are slowly rising. Scientists link this warming to melting ice, rising seas, and more extreme weather in many regions.

🔊 ListenPeople can reduce the extra warming by using cleaner energy, wasting less, and protecting forests, which absorb carbon dioxide. Small choices, multiplied by billions of people, add up.

🔊 ListenI met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

🔊 ListenAnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

🔊 ListenAnd on the pedestal, these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

🔊 ListenOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

🔊 ListenThe man traveled alone through the frozen Yukon, where the cold was far below zero — so cold it could kill. An old-timer had warned him never to travel alone in such weather, but the man had only laughed.

🔊 ListenHe was new to the land and lacked imagination. He noticed the facts — the terrible cold, the numbing of his fingers — but he did not grasp what they truly meant for a creature as fragile as himself.

🔊 ListenWhen his feet broke through thin ice into freezing water, he knew he must build a fire at once or lose his feet. With numb hands he gathered twigs and, after great effort, coaxed a small flame to life.

🔊 ListenBut he had built the fire beneath a snow-laden tree. As he fed it, the heat loosened the snow above, which suddenly slid down and smothered the flame. The fire was blotted out.

🔊 ListenToo late, the man understood the old-timer's warning. Alone, freezing, and without fire, he finally grasped the lesson nature had been teaching all along: in the wild, pride and ignorance can be fatal.

🔊 ListenO Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

🔊 ListenBut O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

🔊 ListenA mighty oak tree grew beside a river, where slender reeds bent in every breeze. The proud oak mocked the reeds for bowing so easily to the wind.

🔊 Listen“You bend at the slightest puff,” boomed the oak, “while I stand firm and tall against any storm.” The reeds answered quietly, “We bend so that we will not break.”

🔊 ListenThat night a violent storm roared in. The reeds bent low and let the wind pass over them. But the stiff oak, refusing to bend, was torn up by its roots and crashed to the ground.

🔊 ListenEngineers know that the strongest structures are not always the stiffest. Skyscrapers are built to sway slightly in high winds, and bridges are designed to flex, because rigid structures can crack under stress.

🔊 ListenThe same idea applies to people. Those who can adapt — adjusting their plans when conditions change — often succeed where stubborn, inflexible people fail.

🔊 ListenLike the reeds in the old fable, knowing when to bend is not weakness. It can be the very thing that helps a structure, or a person, survive a storm.