Vikasbharatipublic School

VikasBharatiPublic School

First TermExamination(2017-2018)

Class XI (sample paper)

Subject-English

Time-3hrsMM-80

General Instructions:

1.The paper is divided into five sections-A, B, C D

2.All the sections are compulsory.

Section A (Reading)

A1.Read the poem carefully and answer the questions that follow:(8)

The gun spell money’s ultimate reason

In letters of lead on the spring hillside.

But the boy lying dead under the olive trees

Was too young and too silly

To have been notable to their important eye,

He was a better target for a kiss.

When he lived, tall factory hooters never summoned him.

Nor did restaurant plate-glass doors revolve to wave him in.

His name never appeared in the papers.

The world maintained its traditional wall

Round the dead with their gold sunk deep as a well’

Whilst his life, intangible as a Stock Exchange rumour, drifted outside.

O too lightly he threw down his cap

One day when the breeze threw petals from the trees.

The unflowering wall sprouted with guns,

Machine-gun anger quickly scythed the grasses;

Flags and leaves fell from hands and branches;

The tweed cap rotted in the nettles.

Consider his life which was valueless

In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, new files.

Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man.

Ask. Was so much expenditure justified

On death of one so young and so silly

Lying under the olive trees, O world, O death? (Stephen Spender)

Answer the following questions by selecting the most appropriate options from the ones given below: 1x6=6

1. According to Stephen Spender, the ultimate reason of powerful people is______

a)power of money

b)lock of factories

c)use of force or violence

d)curb on movement

2. The soldiers killed the young boy because______

a) he was leading the demonstration

b) he was a declared offender

c) he was an important person

d) he was too young and silly to be there

3. The attitude of the poet towards use of force and violence is______

a) full of condemnation

b) full of praise

c) appreciative

d) undefined or vague

4. Which poetic device is used in the line:

‘…. His life, intangible as a Stock Exchange rumour, drifted outside’?

a) irony b)simile c) metaphor d) pun

5. According to the materialistic standards of the world the boy was______

a) ordinary and unimportant

b) a target for a bullet

c) a target for a kiss

d) a potential threat to capitalism

6. The word ‘nettles' in the line 18 means______

a) comfortable position

b) hollow structures

c)annoying grassy fields

d) wild plants which sting if touched

7.Give a suitable title to the poem. (1)

8.Find synonyms of the following:- (3)

(a) called (b) impalpable (c) wrath

9. What is the message given through this poem?(2)

A2. Read the following passage carefully.

1.The secrets of sleep were a mystery for centuries simply because there was neither the means to explore them, nor the need. Only when candles gave way to gaslight, and gas to electricity, when man became able to convert night into day, and double his output by working in shifts round the clock, did people seriously start wondering if sleep could possibly be a waste of time. Our ability to switch night into day is very recent, and it is questionable if we will ever either want, or be able, to give up our habit of enjoying a good night’s sleep. However, a remarkable research project in London has already discovered a few people who actually enjoy insomnia. Even chronic insomniacs often get hours more sleep than they think. But, by placing electric contacts beside the eyes and on the head, it is possible to check their complaint by studying the tiny currents we generate which reveal the different brain waves of sleep and wakefulness. This has shown that for some people seven or eight hours of sleep at night are quite unnecessary.

2.A lot of recent work has shown that too much sleep is bad for you, so that if you are fortunate enough to be born with a body which needs only a small amount of sleep, you may well be healthier and happier than someone who sleeps longer. Every attempt to unravel the secrets of sleep, and be precise about its function, raises many problems. The sleeper himself cannot tell what is going on and, even when he wakes, has only a very hazy idea of how good or bad a night he has had. The research is expensive and often unpopular, as it inevitably involves working at night. Only in the last few years have experts come up with theories about the function of sleep and the laws which may govern it. The real advance in, sleep research came in 1937 with the use of the electroencephalogram.

3.This machine showed small - 50 microvolt - changes in the brain, so, for the first time, we could observe sleep from moment to moment. Before that time one could put the person to bed, watch him mumble, toss, turn, bring back a few rough memories of dreams, and that was about all. In 1937, it was possible to read out these changes, second by second. Then, in 1959 two other things happened. Kleitman and Aserinsky, as they were looking at eye movements, trying to understand brainwaves, noticed that after about ninety minutes there would be a burst of the EEG (Electroencephalograph), as if the person was awake, and the eyes would move rapidly. It was not hard to guess that may be that was a dream. And indeed it was. Waking people up during that period, they found they were dreaming; waking them up at other periods, they found no dreams.

4.The electroencephalograph shows that when we fall asleep, we pass through a cycle of sleep stages. At the onset of sleep, the cycle lasts about ninety minutes during which you pass through stages one, two and three to stage four. This is the deepest form of sleep, and from it you retreat to stage two, and from there into REM, or rapid eye movement sleep. Here, for ten minutes on the first cycle and then gradually longer, it is thought that we do most of our dreaming. Studies of people who volunteered to be locked up for weeks in an observation chamber with no idea of whether it is night or day, gave remarkable results. We are not, in fact, twenty-four-hour creatures. Put people in such circumstances and, even though the patterns of sleep continue, the day is extended to about twenty ¬five and a half hours. Without any clues to time these people go to sleep the first, after about ten days at three o’clock in the afternoon, thinking that they are still going to sleep at midnight.

(a)Read the passage carefully, then make notes using titles, sub-titles & appropriate abbreviations and give a suitable heading. 5

(b)Make a summary of the passage in about 80 words.3

Section B(Writing skills)

B1.As the Editor of your school magazine, write a notice inviting original entries to be printed for the coming issue of the school magazine. 4

Or

You want an efficient Boxing Trainer for your coaching centre in Rohini area of Delhi. Write an advertisement for the same to be given in a newspaper.

B2.You are Ashima Jain, you read an advertisement for the post of a chef in hotel ‘Oberoi’, Delhi. Write an application for the job giving your complete resume’. 6

B3.Write an article for the newspaper highlighting the pros and cons of real life vs virtual life. (10)

Section C (Grammar)

C1.Edit the following excerpt of a passage . (4)

A good paragraph is the group of sentences a)______

that together deals with a single idea. In b)______

paragraph writting, each paragraph should c)______

talk over a specific idea. d)______

C2.Change the following into interrogative sentences.(beginning with helping verbs) (2)

a) I don’t have any work to do.

b) He obeys his mother willingly.

C3.Re-order the words into a meaningful sentence:(4)

a)my/ if/ first/ selected/ this job/ would be

b) have/ less/ more,/spend/ we/but

c) cut / one / coat / according / to / one’s/ should / one’s/ cloth

d) it /possible/ survive/ only/ is/ to/ then

Section D (Literature)

D1.Read the following extract and answer the questions that follow. 1x3=3

And forever,by day and night,I give back life to my own origin,

And make pure and beautiful it;

(For song,issuing from its birth-place,after fulfillment,wandering

Reck’d or unreck’d,duly with love returns)

i)What does wandering mean?

ii) How does it give back life to its own origin?

iii) How does rain purify and beautify it?

D2 . Answer the following questions in 50-60words.(any 3)(3X 3=9)

a) How did little Jonathan react to the desperate situation they found themselves in on 5 January?

b) How can CT scan prove more effective than the X-ray?

c) How did the grandmother see the narrator off at the railway station?

d) What does the narrator think about Mrs Dorling when she visited her for the first time?

e) How does the rain justify its claim: “ I am the poem of the earth”?

D3. Answer the following questions in 150 words.(any one)(6)

a)Write a note on narrative style in Ranga’s Marriage’.

or

Do you think John Byro recognized his horse? Why did he not accuse the boys of stealing his horse?

D4.Through ‘Canterville Ghost’ Oscar Wilde satirises both the unrefined tastes of Americans and the determination of the British to guard their traditions. Elaborate.(150words) (6)

D5. Write a character sketch of Mr. Otis (6)

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