2016
ALTERNATIVE ENGLISH
Full Marks: 100
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:
Some insect societies, at first glance, look like a well-run human city in operation. But, actually, there is very little similarity between a group of insects and a group of humans. (Para 1)
In the insect city there are no private homes. Everything is operated as though everything, even the young, belonged to everyone. Humans have tried that sort of living, but haven’t been able to make it work. Humans like to get off by themselves from time to time and have things that are theirs alone – like babies and books and homes. (Para 2)
In the insect city, most things happen automatically as though all the insects were cogs in some sort of machine. In a human city, every person is different, working differently (or not working at all) and the city operates because thousands of people are doing thousands of jobs for thousands of reasons and not just to survive – the one reason that keeps an insect city going. (Para 3)
But perhaps the most important difference between the insect cities and human cities is even deeper. There are no churches in insect cities, no art galleries, no schools. Beauty and faith and the way of thinking that humans have is not a part of insect life. (Para 4)
So, when people say that we can learn many things from watching insect cities they are right. But what we can learn is not about human cities, it is just about insect cities.
Remembering that, let’s look at some insect cities, for they are fascinating.
An ant colony is a good place to start. Ants live almost everywhere on the earth, and their colonies or cities are pretty easy to find and watch. But because most and cities are under the ground, it takes special effort to see everything that goes on.
The time to start looking for what happens in an ant colony is during the summer when the ants are ready to start having new families. This is the time of year when the ants have wings.
On a certain day (which changes all the time) all the ants in a particular area of many square miles leave their old homes and swarms of them start to fly about in the air. These are the male and female ants, and while they are flying they separate into pairs to mate and make eggs. The ant couple will come together in the air and some of the cells from the male will be taken into the body of the female. After the male has landed back on the ground he usually dies. The female, however, starts looking for a place to set up a nest of her own. While she does this she losses her wings. If they don’t drop off, she chews them off. From the day of the swarming in the air, the ants are earthbound.
When the female ant finds a likely spot for her nest, she digs a pit for herself and settles down. Within a few days she has begun to produce eggs. The eggs hatch and produce larvae which the ant mother feeds. The larvae spin their tiny cocoons and go into the pupa stage. Within just a few weeks, the pupa stage is over, and fully developed ants appear.
It is very fortunate for the ant mother that by now some new ants have come along to help her. Until this point she alone has had the entire job of caring for the eggs and feeding the larvae. But the new workers, her own children, immediately begin to help. They do the job of getting food into the nest and they even start building a better nest which depending upon the particular kind of ant involved, may take the form of a series of passages under the ground, or tunnels in a log or perches on leaves. From this time on, the female that started the nest has no other job but to produce eggs.
Gathering or producing the food for the ant city is one of the most amazing things done by any insects. There are ants that simply go out and gather seeds to eat, but there are others that actually have any farms, others that raise insects the way humans raise cows, and others that go hunting.
You might never guess that some ants grow tiny farms and grow them just as carefully and with as much skill as human farmers. It took many years of careful watching before scientists discovered this. Before that, when a few people said that some ants farmed crops, everybody laughed. Impossible, they said. And yet it is true, and here is how and where it happens.
The farmer ants live far, far to the South of United States. They live in the tropical climate of South America. If you were there to watch these amazing ants, you could hardly miss them. When they go about their business, they go about it by the millions. Out they come from their nest. They march in a broad column and use the same path over and over. If it is through thick grass, the grass is actually trampled down by the marching of the million of ants, despite the fact that each ant is only about as long as your fingernail. This well-trampled path goes straight to the trees from which the ants are taking leaves. Up the trees they go. They work like a well-trained army, each ant heading straight for a leaf with no nonsense and no hesitation.
1) State True or False: ½ x 4 = 2
a) Every insect is different in an insect city.
b) People work only for survival.
c) Eggs ® pupa ® larvae ® ant.
d) By studying ant colonies we can also learn about human cities.
2) What is the most important difference between insect cities and human cities? 1
3) Where do the farmer ants live? 1
4) How do the female ants lose their wings? 2
5) Mention some tasks carried out by ants in their colonies. 2
6) Who helps the mother ant tend to her larvae? How do they help? 2
2. Read the poem given below and on the basis of your reading answer the questions that follow:
ANSWER TO A CHILD’S QUESTION
Do you ask what the birds say? The sparrow, the dove,
The Linnet and the thrush say, “I love and I love !”
In the winter they are silent – the wind is so strong;
What it says I don’t know, but it sings a loud song.
But green leaves and blossoms and sunny warm weather,
And singing and loving – all come back together.
But the lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings and he sings and forever sings he –
“I love my love and my love loves me !”
1) What is the question that the child asks? 1
2) List the various birds mentioned by the poet? 1
3) What does the poet say about the wind’s song? 1
4) What accompanies sunny warm weather? 1
5) What does the lark sing about? 1
UNIT – II
(POETRY)
3. Answer either A or B.
A. Oh, God of May have Mercy,
Bless these withered bodies
With the passion of your resurrection
Make their dead veins flow with bold again.
a) Whose ‘withered bodies’ is the poet referring to? 1
b) What mercy is the poet seeking? 1
Or
What blessing is the poet asking for? 1
c) Describe in your own words the lifeless trees of Autumn. 3
Or
How does the poet personify autumn in the lines quoted above? 3
Or
B. So I have learnt many things son,
I have learned to wear many faces
Like dresses – home face,
Office face, street face, host face
Cocktail face, with all their conforming smiles
Like a fixed portrait smile.
a) From which poem are the above lines taken? 1
b) What does ‘cocktail face’ mean? 1
Or
What does ‘wear many faces like dresses’ mean? 1
c) Why has the poet learnt to wear many faces? 3
Or
What poetic device is the poet using in the quoted lines and what has he achieved by using this device?
4. Answer any one of the following questions in about 80 words. 5
What impact do the daffodils have on Wordsworth?
Or
Describe in your own words the experience of the traveler of “The Listeners”.
5. Answer any three of the following within 25 words each: 3x2=6
a) What happens to the leaves in Autumn?
b) What does the Traveler tell the Listeners?
c) What does the poet compare the daffodils with?
d) Give an example of hypocrisy in modern life as described by Gabriel Okara.
e) Where were the daffodils growing?
6. Answer any two of the following in about 30 words: 2x3=6
a) How do people laugh nowadays?
b) Describe in your own words the house that the traveler visited.
c) Describe in your own words the landscape which inspired the poet to write “The Daffodils”.
7. Answer any three of the following in one sentence each: 3x1=3
a) Who is the one man left awake in ”The Listeners”?
b) How did the people laugh once upon a time?
c) What does the word ‘jocund’ mean in “I could not but be gay/In such a jocund company”.
d) What happens to the poet when he is lying on his couch in a pensive mood?
e) Who are the ‘them” referred to in “Anyone could trample them out of shape.”
8. Answer either A or B.
A. “As I wrestled with clauses and sections, his voice rose like a gale, and his family history, the deeds of his sons in the war, and his criticisms of the generals and the politicians submerged my poor attempts to hang onto my job.”
a) Who is the “I” referred to in the above quoted lines? 1
Or
Who is the “his” referred to? 1
b) What ‘clauses and sections” are being referred to? 1
c) Describe in your own words the situation inside the railway carriage. 3
Or
What were the topics that the speaker was discussing? 3
B. “Ah, then you mean to say, that this gentleman’s smoke, instead of emulating the example of all other sorts of smoke, and going up the chimney, thinks proper to affect a singularity …..”
a) Who is the “you” referred to in the above quoted lines? 1
Or
Who is ‘this gentleman”? 1
b) What is the “singularity” being referred to? 1
c) What incident causes the speaker to make this comment? 3
Or
What does “emulating the example of all other sorts of smoke” mean? 3
9. Answer any one of the following questions in about 80 words: 5
Do you think the writers’ comparison of the ship losing nuts to the loss of bio-diversity is apt? Why do they make this comparison?
Or
Why did Pyotr’s friend ask for a stag party? From where did people get the idea that Pyotr was getting married?
10. Answer any two of the following within 25 words each: 2x2=4
a) Why does Fituyev refuse to certify Pyotr as mad?
b) What does Gardiner mean by “the rule of road”?
c) What are ‘flagship” species of animals?
d) Why does Cox want Mrs. Bouncer to change his bolster?
11. Answer any two of the following questions within 30 words each: 2x3=6
a) Attempt a brief character sketch of Mr. Cox.
b) What is bio-piracy? What challenges is India facing from it?
c) Narrate the incident of the old lady walking down the middle of the road in Petrograd.
d) List any three excuse that Pyotr makes to Kondrashkin to convince the later that he is not a suitable suitor for Anastasia.
12. (a) “I might like to practice on the trombone”.
What does ‘trombone’ mean?
(b) Give the synonyms and antonyms of any two of the following words. 2+2=4
1) Chaos.
2) Peril.
3) Liberty.
4) Aggressive.
UNIT – III
(GRAMMAR)
13. Make sentences with any two pairs of words to illustrate the difference in meaning between them. 2+2=4
Pore, pour; vain, vein; cereal, serial; heard, herd; flew, flu.
14. Fill in the blanks with suitable form of the verbs given in brackets: (any three) 1x3=3
a) I _______ (go) if I had known.
b) If may car _______ (not break) down, I should have caught the train.
c) If they had waited, they _______ (find) me.
d) If it _______ (be) fine tomorrow, I shall play tennis.
e) If Johnny _______ (eat) another cake, he will be sick.
15. Add tag questions to the following: (any four) ½ x 4 = 2
a) Let’s go, _______?
b) I am right, _______?
c) It’s not very warm today, _______?
d) Few people knew the answer, _______?
e) Let’s go for a walk, _______?
f) None of the food was wasted, _______?
16. Fill in the blanks with appropriate prepositions: (any six) ½ x 6 = 3
a) All the players shook hands _______ the end of the match.
b) The bus was late this morning but it’s usually _______ time.
c) She’s standing _______ a queue.
d) Write your name _______ the top of the page.
e) Can you meet me _______ the station?
f) I was delighted _______ the present you gave me.
g) We are excited _______ going on holiday tomorrow.
h) They invited only a few people _______ the party.
17. Fill in the blanks with appropriate articles where necessary. ½ x 6 = 3
a) _______ Gold is a precious metal.
b) If you will pay for _______ bread, I’ll pay for _______ meat.
c) Where do you have _______ dinner.
d) London is on _______ Thames.
e) By _______ united effort we may achieve success.
18. Identify any five nouns and five adjectives in the passage given below: ½ x 10 = 5
I regarded Grandma’s room as a dark den. She had two wobbly old candlesticks. There was a plain rocking chair under a lamp on which she could sit and read. She kept for room clean and tidy.
UNIT – IV
(CREATIVE WRITING SKILL)
19. Write a paragraph of about 180 – 200 words on any one of the following: 5
a) Swachh Bharat Mission.
b) Importance of Spoken English.
c) Ideal Citizen.
20. Write a substance of para 1 to para 4 of the passage given in questions 1. 5
21. Develop a story from the given outline – 5
Ram carelessly throwing stones – breaks windows of a shop – he confesses – no money to pay for damage – agrees to work at shop to make up for damage – grocer agrees – happy with Ram’s work – give permanent job.
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