ENGLISH QUESTION 2024 (Q7 TO Q 11)

 

7. Read the following extracts from the prescribed text and answer the questions that follow:

(a) When my parents were comfortably settled in the city, they sent for us.

That was a turning point in friendship. Although we shared the same room, my grandmother no longer came to school with me. I used to go to an English school in a motor bus. There were no dogs in the streets and she took to feeding sparrows in the courtyard of our city house.

 As the years rolled by, we saw less of each other. For some time she continued to wake me up and get me ready for school. When I came back, she would ask me what the teacher had taught me. I would tell her English words and little things of western science and learning, the law of gravity, Archimedes' principle, the world being round, etc. This made her unhappy. She could not help me with my lessons. She did not believe in the things they taught at the English school and was distressed that there was no teaching about God and the scriptures. One day I announced that we were being given music lessons. She was very disturbed. To her, music had lewd associations. It was the monopoly of harlots and beggars and not meant for gentlefolk. She said nothing but her silence meant disapproval. She rarely talked to me after that.

Questions:   2×5=10

 (i) When did the narrator's parents send for him and his grand-mother?

 (ii) Why did the grandmother not accompany the narrator to school in the city?

 (iii) How did the grandmother feel when the narrator described the subjects he had studied at school?

(iv)Why was the grandmother distressed?

(v) How did the grandmother regard music?

 

b) In the world's broad field of battle,

 In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb,

 driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!

 

 Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!

Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act, act in the living Present!

Heart within, and God o'erhead!

 

Lives of great men all remind us

 We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sand of time;

 

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's main, A forlorn

and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

 

 Let us then be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labour and to wait.

Questions:       2×5=10

(i) How should one act in the battle of Life?

(ii) Why does the poet ask to prefer 'Present' to 'Past' and 'Future?

(iii) What do the lives of great men remind others?

(iv) How do the examples of great men help a person in distress?

(v) What is the poet's advice in the last stanza?

8. Read the following extract from the prescribed text and answer the questions that follow, each in about 70 words:

 I was hardly aware of a father, and do not remember him having lived with us. He too was a vaudevillian, a quiet, brooding man with dark eyes. Mother said he looked like Napoleon. He had a light baritone voice and was considered a very fine artist. Even in those days he earned the considerable sum of forty pounds a week. The trouble was that he drank too much, which Mother said was the cause of their separation.

It was difficult for vaudevillians not to drink in those days, for alcohol was sold in all theatres, and after a performer's act, he was expected to go to the theatre bar and drink with the customers. Some theatres made more profit from the bar than from the box office, and a number of stars were paid large salaries not alone for their talent but because they spent most of their money at the theatre bar. Thus many an artist was ruined by drink-my father was one of them. He died of alcoholic excess at the age of thirty-seven. Mother would tell stories about him with humour and sadness. He had a violent temper when drinking, and during one of his tantrums, she ran off to Brighton with some friends, and in answer to his frantic telegram: "What are you up to? Answer at once!" she wired back: "Balls, parties and picnics, darling!"

 

Questions      5×2=10

 (a) How does the narrator describe his father as known from his mother?

 (b) What account of the vaudevillians do you get from the passage?

9. Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:

An Emperor was told that some of hi subjects in a distant province had risen in revolt against him. "Come then, my men said he, "follow me and I shall destroy my enemies". He marched against the rebels, but they submitted on his approach. All now expected that he would punish them severely. But instead of doing so, he treated them with mildness and humanity. "Sire", said his Chief Minister, "you promised to destroy your enemies; but we see that you have pardoned them all, and even bestowed favours upon some of them. Is this the way you keep your word?" "I promised", replied the Emperor, "to destroy my enemies; but these men are no longer my enemies, I have made friends of them. So my promise has not been broken". Like this Emperor, we also should overcome evil with good and turn our enemies into friends by kindness.

 

Questions:  2×5=10

(a) What was the Emperor told about some of his subjects in a distant province?

(b) What was the instruction of the Emperor to his men?

(c) What happened when he marched against the rebels?

(d) How did the Emperor treat the enemy?

(e) What lesson is learnt from the story?

 

10. (a) Find the words/expressions in the passage in

Q. No. 9, which have the following meanings:   1×3=3

(i) to come nearer

(ii) surrendered

(iii) forgave

(b) Use the following expressions in sentences of your own:                  1×2=2

(i) march against

(ii) no longer

11. The following graph shows prevalence of smoking among those 15 and above in selected countries in 2023, by gender in percentage (%). Write a paragraph, in about 70 words, interpreting the data given in the graph: