Reading Comprehension: Articles
Complete the exercises online or print the worksheet for offline practice.
Exercise 1: Article 1 — The Quiet Rise of Repair Cafes
Read the article, then answer the questions. ARTICLE: Every month, in a church basement in east Vancouver, volunteers gather with screwdrivers, sewing machines, and soldering irons. They are not being paid; they are fixing things. Toasters, lamps, torn jackets, wobbly chairs — visitors bring broken household items, and skilled neighbors repair them for free. This is a repair cafe, part of a movement that began in Amsterdam in 2009 and has since spread to more than 3,000 locations worldwide. Organizers say the goal is not only to keep objects out of landfills, although that matters: the Vancouver group estimates it has diverted over four tonnes of waste in five years. The deeper purpose is social. Many visitors are newcomers or seniors who leave with more than a working kettle — they leave with a conversation, a new skill, and sometimes a friend. Critics argue that repair cafes let manufacturers off the hook for building products that fail too soon. Supporters respond that the movement is exactly what pushes governments toward right-to-repair laws, which several Canadian provinces are now considering.
1.What is the main purpose of the article?
2.Where did the repair cafe movement begin?
3.According to the article, what is the DEEPER purpose of repair cafes?
4.What do critics of repair cafes say?
5.The phrase "let manufacturers off the hook" is closest in meaning to:
6.What can we infer about right-to-repair laws in Canada?
Exercise 2: Vocabulary from Article 1
Find the word in Article 1 that matches each definition and write it in the blank.
A word meaning "people who work without pay": .
A word meaning "redirected away from" (used about waste): .
A word meaning "people who recently arrived in a country": .
A word meaning "places where garbage is buried": .
A word meaning "unsteady, moving from side to side" (about a chair): .
A word meaning "people or groups that organize an event": .
Exercise 3: Article 2 — True or False?
Read the second article, then decide if each statement is True or False. ARTICLE: When 19-year-old Amara Diallo started posting three-minute videos explaining her small town's council meetings, she expected a few dozen views from bored classmates. Eighteen months later, her channel has 90,000 followers, and local officials admit that public attendance at meetings has tripled. Researchers who study civic engagement are paying attention. A 2025 survey by a Halifax university found that adults under 30 were twice as likely to follow local politics through short videos as through newspapers. But the same survey carried a warning: viewers who relied only on short videos scored lower on detailed knowledge of the issues than newspaper readers. Diallo herself agrees with the concern. She now ends every video with the same sentence: "This was the summary — the full story is in the council minutes, linked below." About one viewer in ten clicks the link. That number sounds small, she says, but it represents thousands of people reading primary documents who never did before.
1.Amara Diallo expected her videos to become popular quickly.
2.Attendance at the town's council meetings has tripled.
3.The survey found young adults prefer newspapers for local politics.
4.Video-only viewers knew the issues in less detail than newspaper readers.
5.Diallo disagrees with the researchers' concern.
6.Roughly ten percent of her viewers click the link to the council minutes.
Exercise 4: Summarize and Respond
Use evidence from the articles in your answers. Quote or refer to specific details.
Summarize Article 2 in four or five sentences: who, what happened, what the research found, and how Diallo responded.
Respond with your opinion (five to seven sentences): Are short videos good or bad for how people understand the news? Use one detail from Article 2 as evidence.