2019
ALTERNATIVE ENGLISH
Full Marks: 100
Pass Marks: 30
Time: Three hours
The figures in the margin indicate full marks for the questions.
UNIT – I
(READING AN UNSEEN PASSAGE AND A POEM)
1. Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
It began in a forest rest house. My father died when I was ten, and for the next few years books became a scarce commodity, for my mother and stepfather were not great readers. In may lonely early teens I seized upon almost any printed matter that came my way, whether it was a girls’ class like Little Women, a Hotspur or Champion comic, a detective story or the Naturalist on the River Amazon by Henry Walter Bates. The only books baulked at reading were collections of sermons (amazing how often for turned up in those early years) and self-improvement books, since I had not the slightest desire to improve myself in any way.
I think it all begin in a forest rest houses in the Siwalik Hills, a subtropics range cradling the Doon Valley in northern India. Here my stepfather and gun toting friends were given to hunting birds and animals. He was a photo shot, so he cannot really be blamed for the absence of wildlife today; he did his best to eliminate every creature that came within his sights.
On one of his shikar trips we were staying near the Timil Pass. My stepfather and his friends were after a tiger (you were out of fashion if you weren’t after big game) and set out every morning with an army of paid villagers to be the jungle, that is, to make enough noise with drums, whistles, tin trumpet and empty kerosene thins to disturb the tiger and drive the unwilling bear into the open when he could conveniently be dispatched. Truly bored by this form of sports, I stayed behind in the rest house, and in the course in the morning’s exploration of the bunglow, discovered a dusty but crowded bookshelf half-hidden in a corner of the back veranda.
Who had left them there? A literary forest officer? A memsahib who’d been bored by her husband’s camp-fire boasting? Or someone like me who has no enthusiasm for the ‘manly’ sport of slaughtering wild animals, and has brought his library along to pass the time?
Or possibly the poor fellow had gone into the jungle one day as a gesture towards his more bloodthirsty companions, and been trampled by an elephant or gored by a wild boar, or (more likely) accidently shot by one of his companions – and they had taken his remains away but left his book behind.
Anyway, there they were a shall of some ………………………………………. As for several years. I wiped the durst off the covers and examined the titles. As my reading tastes had not yet formed, I was ready to try anything. The bookshelf was varied in its contents – any my own interests have remained equally wide-ranging.
Anyway, back to the rest house. By the time the perspiring hunters came back late in the evening. I’d started on M. R. James’ Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, which had me hooked on ghost stories for the rest of my life. It kept me awake most of the night, until the oil in the kerosene lamp had finished.
Next morning, fresh and optimistic again, the shikaris set out for a different area where they hoped to locate the tiger. All day I could hear the beaters’ drums throbbing in the distance. This did not prevent me from finishing a collection of stories called. The Big Karoo by Pauline Smith – Wonderfully evocative of the pioneering Boers in South Africa.
My concentration was disturbed only once, when I looked up and saw a spotted deer crossing the open clearing in front of the bunglow. The deer disappeared into the forest and I returned to my book.
Dusk had fallen when I heard the party returning from the hunt. The great men were talking loudly and seemed excited. Perhaps they gave got their tiger ! I came out on the veranda to meet them.
‘Did you shoot the tiger?’ I asked, ‘No Ruskin’, said my stepfather ‘I think we’ll catch up with it tomorrow. But you should have been with us – we saw a spotted deer!.
There were three days left and I knew I would never get through the entire bookshelf. So I chose David Copperfield – my first encounter with Dickens – and settled down in the veranda armchair to make the acquaintance of Mr. Micawber and his family along with Aunty Betsy Trotwood, Mr. Dick, Peggotty and a host of other larger-than-life characters. I think it would be true to say that Copperfield set me off on the road to literature. I identified with young David and wanted to grow up to be a write like him.
But on my second day with the …………… my reading for a little while
I’d noticed, on the previous day, that a number of stray dogs – some of them belonging to watchmen, villagers and forest rangers – always hung about the bungalow, waiting for scraps of food to be thrown away. It was about ten o’clock in the morning (a time when wild animals seldom come into the open), when I heard a sudden yelp coming from the clearing. Looking up, I saw a large, full-grown leopard making off with one of the dogs. The other dogs, while keeping their distance, set up a furious barking, but the leopard and its victim had soon disappeared. I returned to David Copperfield.
It was getting late when the shikaris returned. They looked dirty, sweaty and disgruntled. Next day, we were to return to the city, and none of them had anything to show for a week in the jungle.
‘I saw a leopard this morning.’ I said modestly.
No one took me seriously. ‘Did you really?’ said the leading shikaris, glancing at the book in my hands. ‘Young Master Copperfield said he saw a leopard!’
‘Too imaginative for his age’, said my stepfather, ‘Comes from reading so much, I expected.’
I went to bed and left them to their tales of the ‘good old days’ when rhinos, cheetahs and possibly even unicorns were still available for slaughter. Camp broke up before I could finish Copperfield, but the forest ranger said I could keep the book. And so I became the only member of the expedition with a trophy to take home.
Questions:
a) State True or False: ½ x 4 = 2
1) Writer’s stepfather was an expert shooter.
2) The writer imagined that he had seen the leopard.
3) At that time animals hunting was a fashion.
4) The narrator wanted to become a writer like Dickens.
b) In which place of India the forest rest house was situated? 1
c) What did the paid villagers do in a shikaris troop? 2
d) Mention the names of two characters from David Copperfield. 2
e) How did the narrator become the only member of that expenditure to take a trophy? 2
2. Read the poem given below and on the basis of your reading answer the questions that follow:
Fable
The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel,
And the former called the latter ‘Little Prig’.
Bun replied,
‘You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place
If I’m not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry
I’ll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forest on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.
Questions:
a) Who is ‘Bun’ referred to here? 1
b) Find a word in the poem which means “active or lively”. 1
c) What do the last two lines of the poem signify? 1
d) Write down from the following statements the one that does not tell us the theme of the poem:
1) Mere size is not everything.
2) None is superior or inferior in this world.
3) It is all right to judge merely by appearances.
4) Everyone is gifted with different talents.
UNIT – II
(POETRY AND PROSE)
3. Answer either (a) or (b):
a) The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not be but gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed – and gazed – but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought;
I. Answer any two of the following: 1x2=2
1) Who is the “I” here?
2) What does the word “waves” refer to here?
3) What is the meaning of the word ‘sparkling’?
Or
Describe the ‘wealth’ mentioned in the above lines. How does the ‘wealth’ benefit the speaker?
b) And he smote upon the door a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveler;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still,
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men
I. Answer any two of the following: 1x2=2
1) What did the traveler ask while knocking at the door?
2) Who are the listeners to the traveler’s call?
3) What is the meaning of the word ‘perplexed’?
II. What was the response to the traveler’s call? 3
Or
What time of the day is described in the poem? Mention one word from the poem which suggests the time.
a) Write a note on Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s attitude to nature as revealed in his poem “When Autumn Came”.
b) State how the poem “Once Upon a Time” mocks and ridicules some of the common behavioural patterns of modern life.
5. Answer any three of the following within 25 words each: 3x2=6
a) What resemblance does the poet find between the starts and the daffodils?
b) What happens to the birds when autumn comes?
c) What was the effect of the traveler’s second call?
d) What frightens the poet when he sees his smile in the mirror?
6. Answer any two of the following: 3x2=6
a) Why has the poet described solitude as being blissful?
b) What does the phrase “Grey Eyes” implicate in the poem “The Listeners”?
c) What is the poet’s experience when he goes for the ‘twice’ to anyone’s home?
7. Answer any three of the following in one sentence each: 1x3=3
a) Who was dancing along with the daffodils?
b) What did scatter over the ground in the poem “When Autumn Came”?
c) To whom does the poet appeal for help in the poem “Once Upon a Time”?
8. Answer either (a) or (b):
a) “The truth is that I never read Blue-books for pleasure. I read them for the very humble purpose of turning an honest penny out of them.”
1) Who is “I” referred to here? 1
2) What is the ‘Blue-book’? Why does he read them? 1+1=2
3) What is meant by ‘turning an honest penny out of them’? 2
b) “The loss of bio-diversity is a direct attack on their very survival. For this part of humanity, the ship is already sinking.”
1) Who are the people being suffered by this loss? 1
2) What does the word ‘ship’ signify here? 1
3) How does the bio-diversity help those people? 3
9. Answer any one of the following: (80 words) 5x1=5
a) Who does Mr. Cox suspect is using his staff? Quote evidence from the play to support your answer.
b) Kondrashkin.
c) Do you believe that ‘individual liberty leads to social anarchy’? Give reasons for your answer.
10. Answer any two of the following questions within 25 words each: 2x2=4
a) Why did Fituyev refuse to certify Pyotr as insane, despite being his friend?
b) Why should we not feel offended when stopped by a traffic policeman?
c) What is referred to as ‘flagship’ species?
d) Though both Box and Cox start cooking breakfast, neither of them gets to eat anything. Why?
11. Answer any two of the following questions within 40 words each: 3x2=6
a) How is Mrs. Bouncer’s idea of renting out the same room to two sets of lodgers ‘a capital idea’?
b) How did the narrator feel to the motorists’ deliberately bullying horn?
c) “When are you going to throw your stag party?” Who is the speaker here? What is a ‘stag party’?
12. Give the meaning of any five of the following words: 1x5=5
a) Appalled.
b) Banality.
c) Resilience.
d) Aggravating.
e) Bravado.
f) Accommodate.
UNIT – III
(GRAMMAR)
13. Make sentences with any two pairs of words to illustrate the difference in meaning between them. 2x2=4
Accept, except; refuge, refuse; tamper, temper; loan lone; amiable, amicable; die, dye.
14. Fill in the blanks with suitable form of the verbs given in brackets: (any three) 1x3=3
a) The train _______ (start) before I reached the station.
b) If I _______ (be) rich, I could own that bunglow.
c) If it _______ (rain), I shall not go out.
d) We _______ (live) in this place for the last ten years.
e) I met him while he _______ (go) to his office.
15. Add tag questions to the following: (any four) ½ x 4 = 2
a) He won’t mind if I use his laptop, _______?
b) She speaks English fluently, _______?
c) The boy can play football, _______?
d) Everyone liked the movie, _______?
e) You weren’t listening, _______?
f) She has no interest for western music, _______?
g) Neither of them approached the Principal, _______?
16. Fill in the blanks with appropriate prepositions: (any six) ½ x 6 = 3
a) He has no ability _______ had work.
b) We should not boast _______ our fortunes.
c) Perseverance is the key _______ success.
d) One must abide _______ one’s promise.
e) I have not seen him _______ February.
f) Out school starts _______ 10 a.m.
g) He congratulated her _______ her success.
h) Last night a thief broke _______ my house.
17. Fill in the blanks with appropriate articles where necessary. ½ x 6 = 3
a) _______ monkey is a clever animal.
b) She is _______ M. A. in English.
c) _______ cows are useful animals.
d) There is _______ university in Shillong.
e) _______ Brahmaputra flows through Assam.
f) This is _______one rupee note.
g) There is _______ hotel nearby.
h) I met _______ Mr. Baruah yesterday.
18. Identify any five nouns and five adjectives in the passage given below: ½ x 10 = 5
The soft rhythm of liturgical chanting wafted through the breeze, making him turn to his right. A small group of people walked solemnly in the distance, wearing robes of blue, the holy colour of the divine. It was a unusual sight these days. Along with wealth and power, the citizens of the Sapt Sindhu had also lost their spiritual ardor. Many believed their goes abandoned them. Why else would they suffer so?
UNIT – IV
(CREATIVE WRITING SKILL)
19. Write a paragraph about in 180 to 200 words on any one of the following: 8
a) Asian Games, 2018.
b) The profession you want to take up.
c) The role of social media in the present society.
d) Facebook.
20. Develop a story from the given outline: 7
A king thought he was sick – doctors found nothing wrong with his health – they were punished – a doctor said the king would be cured if he wore the shirt of a happy man – no happy man was found – a beggar said he was happy – he had no shirt.
21. Write a substance of para 1 to para 4 of the passage given in questions. 8
Reading daily is one of the best habits one can possess. It develops your imagination and provides you with a fortune of knowledge. Once you start reading, you experience a whole new world.
Reading can help you grow and give a new perspective about life. Good books can influence you positively and guide you towards the right direction in life. Reading develops language skills and vocabulary. Reading books is also a way to relax and reduces stress.
Reading increases creativity and enhances your understanding of life. It also inspires you to write and one can fall in love with writing as well. Reading plays a vital role in the optimistic growth and development of a person.
Reading leads to self-improvement. One heeds to read to experience the joys of reading.
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