English Set A 2015-2016 HSC Commerce (English Medium) 12th Standard Board Exam Question Paper Solution

Read the following extract and answer the questions given below:

Do as directed:
Rewrite the following sentence by inserting the appropriate articles wherever necessary :
I read interesting story from Mahabharata.

Do as directed:
Rewrite the following sentence using the appropriate prepositions :
One of the things that distinguishes man....... other animals is the power........... speech.

Do as directed:
Change the following into indirect speech:
Mother said, “Sunita, what did you buy from the market?” She said, “I bought a dictionary.”

Read the following extract and answer the questions given below:

Researchers recently announced the earth could actually withstand up to 200,000 times the current population. They arrived at this figure by calculating the amount of heat a human body emits, and only at 1·3 million billion would the earth be too hot to be habitable. And though it would feel like being ina can of sardines if that figure were ever reached, the earth is capable of comfortably sustaining a population several times the current 6·5 billion.
In fact, fertility is actually on the decline worldwide. Though the population has grown, the rate of growth has fallen sharply. Twenty years ago, the UN projected that the population would reach 11·I6 billion in 2050, today they say it will reach only 9·3 billion. Moreover, the human population will stabilize at about 11·5 billion. While this figure is almost twice the current one, it is hardly claustrophobic.
True, the demands on resources are heavy even now, but this is more due to the manner in which these resources are being used. In fact, figures show that a bigger population does not amount to greater consumption. Over 20% of the world's people in the highest-income countries account for 86% of total private consumption expenditure - the poorest 20% a tiny 1·3%. With just 5% of the world's population, the US consumes about 40% of the world's resources. Would you say the US is overpopulated?
  Concerns on the scarcity of food are equally baseless. In fact, global food production has actually kept up with population growth. If people starve in many countries it is not because food is becoming scarce; it is because those people cannot afford it.

Questions:
(1) What conclusions did the researchers arrive at?

(2) How does the writer explain that fertility is on the decline?

(3) What does the extract predict about the fear of scarcity of food?

(4) How will the population become a gift in the global market scene?

(5) Rewrite the following sentences in the ways instructed:
(i) The earth could withstand up to 200,000 times the current population.
(Rewrite the sentence using the modal auxiliary showing 'certainty'.)
(ii) The earth would be too hot to be habitable.
(Remove 'too' and rewrite the sentence.)
(iii) These resources are being used.
(Rewrite the sentence beginning with, 'We ........... .')

(6) Write the antonyms of:
(i) habitable
(ii) stabilize

Read the following extract and complete the table given below :
   Computer Assisted Language Leaming (CALL) materials come in two main formats: CD/DVD RO Ms and Web-based. Some are tailored to the content to be used in the classrooms whereas others can be used independently. CALL materials allow you to work at your own pace.
   Multimedia materials offer you the opportunity to take part in other computer-assisted activities, such as text-based gap-filling, multiple-choice and text reconstruction activities. Language teachers often develop such text-based CALL activities to accompany a particular course. CALL materials can be regularly updated.
   Because CALL learning activity types are usually designed from a template, they can sometimes be repetitive.
   A major advantage of CALL materials is that they offer instant feedback on your spoken or written performance. However, such feedback can be limited. If you are more interested in creating your own responses or elaborating on your ideas, you may find this type of Facebook frustrating. Web-based CALL materials can offer more variety through the use of hyperlinks, but feedback is still limited.
Just as representations of the cultures of the target language offered by courses using books; audio and videotapes can perpetuate stereotypes.

(A) Read the following extract and answer the questions given below:
   Chronic floods during the monsoon, on average, affect more than 30 million Indians annually Ironically, 60% of India's farmland, 66% of its livestock and its entire forest area depend on rains for survival.
   According to a recently released Central Water Commission (CWC) report, on an average, 7·21 million hectares (roughly 72,000 sq. km.) go under floodwater. This water typically ravages 3·78 million hectares of agricultural land, damaging crops worth Rs. 1, 118 crores annually.
   Heavy rains and floods account for nearly 1,700 lives lost annually. Apart from this, I ·25 lakh houses are annually damaged by torrential rains that also wipe out nearly 96,000 livestock.
   Floods are the most recurrent natural calamity, hitting India almost every year. According to the CWC's report on financial aspects of flood control, anti-sea erosion and drainage projects, it is not possible to provide absolute protection instantly to all flood-prone areas. It says that such an attempt will neither be practical nor economically viable.
   The CWC's analysis of floods in India from 1953 to 2011 shows a marginal decline in flood-affected areas over the years, the data shows 1977 1978 and 1979 were the worst-hit. The 1977 floods killed over 11,000 people, six-time the average for the 59 years, between 1953 and 2011. In terms of area and population affected, the floods of 1978 were the most destructive.
  In terms off the financial loss, recent floods have been far more destructive. The total loss of crops, houses and public utilities in 2009 was Rs. 32541 crores, the highest for any year.

Question
(1) What is the above extract about?

(2) How do floods adversely affect India?

(3) Why is it not possible to provide absolute protection to all flood-prone areas?

(4) How would you help the flood-affected people?

(5) Rewrite the following sentences in the ways instructed :
(i) The floods of 1978 were the most destructive.
(Change the sentence into the 'positive degree'.)
(ii) Floods are the most recurrent natural calamity hitting India almost every year.
(Make it a complex sentence.)
(iii) Floods have been far more destructive.
(Rewrite the sentence using the Simple Present tense.)

(6) Give the meanings of:
(i) entire
(ii) calamity

(B) Write a brief summary of the above extract with the help of the points given below and suggest a suitable title.
Floods - natural, recurrent calamity in India - destroy life and property - no absolute protection - neither practical nor economically viable- floods in 1977 and 1978. 

Read the following extract and answer the questions given below:
Old women once
were continents.
They had deep woods in them,
lakes, mountains, volcanoes even,
even raging gulfs.
When the earth was in heat
they melted, shrank,
leaving only their maps.
You can fold them
and keep them handy:
who knows, they might help you find
your way home.

Question
(1) What does the geographical imagery used in this extract suggest?
(2) Who do you think should take care of your grandparents? Why?
(3) Name and explain the figure of speech in the following lines: Old women once were continents.
(4) Find out the expressions that show how old women are still capable of caring for others, despite their old age?

Read the following extract and answer the questions given below: 
The banyan tree was three times as tall as our house
Its trunk had a circumference of fifty feet
Its scraggly aerial roots fell to the ground
From thirty feet or me>re so first they cut the branches
Sawing them off for seven days and the heap was huge
Insects and birds began to leave the tree
And then they came to its massive trunk
Fifty men with axes chopped and chopped
The great tree revealed its rings of two hundred years

Questions:
(1) What revealed the age of the banyan tree?

(2) How would you save the natural habitat of wildlife?

(3) Find from this extract an example of 'Repetition'.

(4) Pick out any two lines from the extract showing the pictorial quality of human action.

Read the following extract and rewrite it from the point of view of O.W. Harrison:

[You may begin as: My appeal was dismissed by the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Scoope ............. ]

The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Scoope have dismissed the appeal of O.W. Harrison, who was charged with the murder of Mr. W. P. Elder in July and confirmed the sentence of death passed on him by the Sessions Judge of Manbhun.
"Nothing to do with our skeleton, of course, because Mr. Elder was buried at Jamshedpur, while Marrisln occupies an unknown grave. And in any case, our skeleton is a woman's. But I remember the case. Harrison was having an affair with Mr. Elder's wife. When confronted by the outraged husband, Harrison took out his revolver and shot the poor man. All very sordid. No mystery there for you. Concentrate on your studies. Second term exams must be near I am sending you a parcel of socks. I know they don' t last very long on you."
     Two weeks later, I wrote: "Dear Mum, thanks for the socks. But I wish you had sent me a food parcel instead. How about some guava cheese? And some mango pickle. They don't give us pickle in school. Headmaster's wife says it heats the blood.
"About that skeleton. If a dead body was hidden in that
cupboard after 1930- must have been, if the newspapers of that year were under the skeleton - it must have been someone who disappeared around that time or a little later. Must have been before Tirloki joined the hotel, or he'd remember. What about the registers- would they give us a clue?"

Read the following extract and convert it into a dialogue between ORlando and the Duke Senior in about 8 to 10 sentences:

[You may begin with:  Orlando: Stop and eat no more! ]

The duke senior and his followers were sitting down to a meal one day when Orlando rushed out from among the trees, his sword in his hand. ‘stop, and eat no more !’ he cried
The duke and his friend asked him what he wanted. ‘food,’ said Orlando. ‘I am almost dying of hunger.’
    They asked him to sit down and eat, but he would not do so. He told them that his old servant was in the wood, dying of hunger. ‘I will not eat a bite until he has been fed,’ Orlando said.
  So the good duke and his followers helped him to bring Adrian to their hiding-place, and Orlando and the old man were fed and taken care of. When the duke learned that Orlando was a son of his old friend Sir Manuel de Roys, he welcomed him gladly to his forest court.
Orlando lived happily with the duke and his friends, but he had not forgotten the lovely Rosalind. She was always in his thoughts and everyday he wrote poetry about her, pinning it on the trees in the forest. ‘These trees shall be my books,’ he said, ‘so that everyone who looks in the forest will be able to read how sweet and good Rosalind is.’

Read the following extract and extend it by adding an imaginary paragraph of your own about 120 words:

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.
"Don't return," I told the girl that day. "We're leaving."
I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the girl whose name I'd never learned ... the girl with the apples.
We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.

Write an application in response to the following advertisement using information given in the CV provided :

Write a letter to the editor of a newspaper high lighting in it the importance of cleanliness and the need of public participation in the cleanliness drive in your district.

Write short paragraph in about 120 words to be used for the Counter - View section on the following topic:
“Science and Technology development have helped us in all walks of life”.
You may take help of the following points from the View section.

Imagine you have to interview an old woman who lives in an ‘old - age home’. Write a set of 8 to 10 questions for the interview. You may take help of the following points:

• Her family, reasons for being in an old-age home, her feelings and expectations, her advice, etc.

Imagine you have to give a speech on the topic ‘India’s Changing Villages’. Write a speech on it about 100 words.