SAMPLE QUESTION PAPER (2019-20)
ENGLISH- Language and Literature (code 184)
CLASS-X
Time allowed : 3 Hrs Maximum Marks : 80
General Instructions:
1.This Paper is divided into three sections. All questions are compulosry.
2. Separate instructions are given with each section and question, wherever necessary. Read these instructions very carefully and follow them.
3. Do not exceed the prescribed word limit while answering the questions.
Section : A 20 Marks
Q.1. Read the following passage carefully and answers the following questions: (12 Marks)
A Sleepy Little Town
It was at Gunupur, a sleepy little town in Koraput, that I had gained my first acquaintance with any river. It was the Vamsadhara. It remained shallow and as transparent as glass almost all through the season that I was there. Numerous tiny fish swam with or against its placid current and played hide and seek amidst the pebbles at its bottom.
Gazing at them for hours on end, sitting on the sandy river bank, was a great help to me. I could wash away my anguish and disgust over life. The anguish and disgust were caused by my guardians. They insisted on my taking to as irrational an occupation as learning how to read and write. I had already lived five long years without facing the slightest challenge to my existence on account of my innocence of reading and writing. What was their relevance then? Would the sweetmeats taste sweeter if I could read? Would the rainbow or the hills or the river look more charming if I could write?
I had gained a delightful acquaintance a few days earlier. He was Appu. We talked on several vital issues such as how a little imp residing in an old, abandoned well behind Appu’s hut popped up from time to time at night with the sole purpose of making faces at Appu, or how a shooting star which had fallen on the hilltop was still smouldering when Appu’s father went up and Lighted a bidi from the last flame coming from it, and so on and so forth, in the course of which I asked him, ‘Have you Learnt the alphabet?’
‘Which son of a father in this wide world would dare to make me do that sort of thing ?‘ he challenged his arms akimbo. The next moment he shouted, ‘Runaway boy, escape with your dear Life!’ and sprinted off like a shooting star.
Surprised, I looked in every direction. There was no sign of any wolf or tiger or demon or ghoul anywhere around. The only living soul, birds and a few animals apart, was a tall, fair and heavily moustached man. Holding something like a sword, he walked through the bushy meadow beyond the sand. He took no notice of me and entered a solitary one-room house with a tin roof, surrounded by shrubs.
Appu, back in a few minutes, enlightened me about the stranger. Inside that little house detached from the locality, the man engaged in the strange act of butchering goats; once in a while, for a change, he caught hold of a boy and dragged him in and finished him off in a trice. Appu stared and caressed his neck while passing on the last bit of information in a whisper.
One day at noon, Appu and I proceeded towards that dreadful cabin. We practically rolled all the way on the ground so that nobody saw us. The door was ajar. We peeped in, the floor was swampy with a thick plaster of blood. The sight and smell were depressing. Who knew how much blood had flowed from the goats, and how much from the missing boys?
1.Answer the following questions briefly: 2*4=8
(a) How old was the narrator?
(b) What was the reason for his anguish and disgust?
(c) Write the phrase in para 3 that tells that Appu was a friend of the narrator whose company made him happy.
(d) What do you think ‘a little imp’ is? (choose) A tiny creature with magical powers/A wizard with a dirty face.
2.Complete the following sentences: 1*2=2
(a) The narrator was able to see numerous tiny fish playing hide and seek inside the river because
(b) He spent hours
3. Find words/phrases that mean the same as: 1*2=2
(a) Calm, undisturbed (para 1)
(b) With the hands on the hips and elbows bent outwards (para 4)
Q2.Read the Passage Carefully and answers the Following Questions : – (8 Marks)
Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827)
The composer came of a musical family; for his grandfather was Kapellmeister, and his father, a tenor singer, filled a small musical post at Cologne. He was born at Bonn in December 1770. His father had become a confirmed toper, and the boy suffered in consequence. The father had heard of the prodigy Mozart, and the money he had brought his parents, and he conceived the notion of exploiting his own son in the same way. Thus he kept him slaving at the piano and thrashed him when he did not practice long enough. There are stories of the sot coming home late and dragging the little fellow out of bed to go to the keyboard. This degraded specimen ended his life by his own hand, but not before his conduct had cast a gloom over his son’s youth which greatly affected his after years.
Beethoven seems to have had no regular course of instruction in Bonn, but when he was seventeen he went to Vienna and had some lessons from Mozart. Later on, he had lessons from Haydn; but the two did not get on well together, their natures being totally different. Beethoven finally left Bonn when he was twenty-two, and settled in Vienna, where he gradually made a name for himself. He began to appear in public as a player and in 1796 played before the King in Berlin, but he soon gave up playing for composing.
His first works were roundly abused by the critics—even some that we now regard as among his. greatest creations. Weber said of the Seventh Symphony that its composer was “quite ripe for the madhouse”. Then, when deafness came upon him—the tragedy of his life—the sapient fellows found that the “horrors of sound” in his works were due to the fact that he could not hear them himself. When “Fidelio” was first performed, it was said that never before had anything so incoherent, coarse, wild, and ear-splitting been heard! Of course, the deafness had nothing to do with it. Beethoven, like all really great composers, was simply before his time.
But the deafness had a great deal to do with Beethoven himself. It turned him into a wretched misanthrope and well-nigh caused him to end his life. Indirectly it prevented him from marrying. In the theatre, he had to lay his ears close to the orchestra in order to understand the actors, and the higher notes of the instruments and voices he could not hear at as when only a little distance away. “Fidelio’ was begun in 1804 and the affliction, first evidenced in 1798, had become acute four years before that. We need not dwell on it. From the time of his deafness onwards, he was constantly adding to the world’s stores of the best in music. His humour was of the sardonic kind, as when he sent a tuft of hair from a goat’s bearded to a lady admirer, who had asked for a strand from his own leonine locks. When lying on his death-bed he had to be tapped. “Better water from the body than from the pen,” he observed to the doctor. When he realized that his end was near, he said to those around him: “Clap hands, friends; the play is over.” And so, on the 26th of March, 1827, this great master of tone went out to the darkness of the Silent Land.
1. On the basis of your reading of the above passage, complete the following statements briefly: 1*4=4
(a) Beethoven’s father _____________
(b) The father ended his life by
(c) The effect it had on Beethoven’s youth was _____________
(d) The response to Fidelio was _____________
2.Answer the following questions briefly: 1*2=2
(a) What effect did Beethoven’s deafness have on him?
(b) What kind of a person Beethoven was?
3. Find words from the passage which mean the same as the words given below: 1*2=2
(a) Great musician (para 1)
(b) Scornful or bitter (para 4)
Section : B 30 Marks
Q.3) You are Anoop Ahuja resident of 76-Majestic Apartments, Worli Road, Saket. Write a letter to the Health Officer of Municipal Corporation. Delhi, complaining about insanitary conditions in your locality. (100-150 Words) (8)
Or
Taking help from the information given below and inventing your own ideas, write an article on ‘Books—Our Best Companions’.
Hints: • Human relations can be deceptive and unreliable • Books—our best companions • Our friends and guides • Educative as well as informative.
Q.4) “……….Ultimately I won it as I was determined to achieve my goal.” The closing of the story is given above. You can start your own story but you cannot change the end. Write the story in 200- 250 words. (10)
Hints- humble family background – no guidance or support – ambition – difficulties – didn’t give up – long struggle paved the way for success
Q.5 )Complete the following passage by choosing the most appropriate option from the ones given below. Write your answers in the space given below : 1*4=4
When electricity flows (1.1)…………… a wire, tiny particles called electrons (1.2)……………… wire. Each electron has a very small electric charge. (1.3) ………….. the electrons arrive, they (1.4) electricity.
1.1 (a) in (b) through (c) from (d) into
1.2 (a) move into (b) move in (c) move through (d) move from
1.3 (a) As (b) Because (c) Anyhow (d) When
1.4 (a) produced (b) have produced (c) produce (d) is producing
Q.6 )The following passage has not been edited. There is an error in each line against which a blank is given. Write the incorrect word and the correction in your answer sheet against the correct blank number. The first one has been done for you as an example. 1*4=4 Incorrect Correct
An inter-school football match is been eg. been being
organised among our school and City (a) …………….. ……………..
Montessori School. The match will be playing
(b)……………… ……………
on 18th March on are school grounds (c) ………………. ……………
since 5 p.m. onwards. (d) ……………… ……………
Q.7 )Look at the words and phrases below. Rearrange them to form meaningful sentences to make readable passage. Write the correct sentences in the space provided.1*4=4
(a)a very / Vidyasagar / and / was / man / generous / charitable
(b)years he / from his / the poor / earliest / and the needy / of his power / to the utmost / helped
(c)would nurse / if one / sit by / him and / his bed / of his school-fellows / fell ill he
(d)hundreds of / when he / poor widows / grew rich / supported / and orphans / were / by him
Section : C 30 Marks
Read the extracts and answer the questions that follow. 1*4=4
Q.8 ) . The house—the only one in the entire valley—sat on the crest of a low hill. From this height, one could see the river and the field of ripe corn dotted with the flowers that always promised a good harvest. The only thing the earth needed was a downpour or at least a shower. Throughout the morning Lencho who knew his fields intimately had done nothing else but see the sky towards the north-east.
(a) What did the earth need?
(b) What did Lencho do throughout the morning?
(c) Why had Lencho kept looking towards the north-east?
(d) What promised a good harvest?
Or
When I opened the door, Tricky trotted out and was immediately engulfed by Joe, the greyhound, and his friends. After rolling him over and thoroughly inspecting him, the dogs moved off down the garden. Tricky followed them, rolling slightly with his surplus fat.
(a) What happened when the door was opened?
(b) What did they do?
(c) Who is ‘I’ in these lines?
(d) Where did the dogs go after inspecting Tricky?
Q.9) Answer any Five of the following Questions in 30-40 words each. 2*5=10
a.Why did Hari Singh decide to come back to Anil?
b. Why was it difficult for Han Singh to rob Anil?
c. How does Anne feel about her father, grandmother, Mrs Kuperus and Mr Keesing?
d. A ball is an easily available, inexpensive thing. Then, why is the boy so sad to lose it?
e. How did Think-Tank interpret the poem ‘The Cat and the Fiddle “.
Q.10 .’Pride has a fall’. Justify this statement giving relevant points from how Think-Tank reacted to the readings from Mother Goose. (8)
OR
What does the girl yearn for? What does this poem tell you about Amanda?
Q 11. Although Bholi never got the deserved love, care and acceptance from her family, she is ready to reciprocate like all daughters in Indian society. Discuss the character of Bholi in the light of the above-mentioned (8)
OR
Give a pen-portrait of a baker in Goa.
