English Set A 2017-2018 HSC Commerce (English Medium) 12th Standard Board Exam Question Paper Solution

Read the following extract and answer the questions given
below:
Prominent among the urges that inspire and drive a person in life, is the mge to be a somebody. It is quite human, especially in the early stages of life, to want to do something to win laurels and admiration of all around. There's a pitfall though - the very process of becoming a somebody may subtly reduce yon to a nobody.
American poet Emily Dickinson, who lived in obscurity, has an interesting poem on this theme. "I'm nobody!" she declares, with apparent pride.
"Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?"
Why should anybody be happy about being nobody?
The poem explains :
"How dreaiy to he somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
The word 'bog' is significant. When you become a somebody, you invite adulation :
this then begins to bog you down. The moment you think you have arrived, you begin to stagnate, or, worse, your downslide begins. An endless list of writers, artists, sportsmen, politicians ..... fit this pattern of personal history.
To sustain your development in absolute terms, to become a true somebody, it is important to remain a temporal nobody. Even if destiny makes you a temporal somebody,
you should be able to see yourself as merely an agent of a superior power; no more. This requires an exercise of will. You have to constantly watch out and talk to yourself morning and evening.

(1) What is the main idea of the extract? (1)

(2) Why is it important for one to remain a temporal nobody? How? (1)

(3) What does Emily Dickinson declare with pride? Why? (2)

(4) What would you like to be in your life - Somebody or nobody? Why? (2)

(5) Rewrite the following sentences in the ways instructed
(i) This requires an exercise of will.
(Rewrite it using the Simple Future tense.) (1)

(ii) You have to constantly watch out and talk to yourself.
(Rewrite it using another modal auxiliary showing 'compulsion'.) (1)

(iii) You begin to stagnate.
(Rewrite it using the noun form of the word underlined.) (1)

(6) Find out the words from the extract which mean -

(i) danger  (1/2)

(ii) praise   (1/2)

Do as directed :

He wanted to become _____ artist and live in ____ Himalayas.
(Fill in the blanks with the appropriate articles.)

Do as directed :

 She was able to talk ____ the group______ her experience.
(Fill in the blanks with suitable prepositions.)

Do as directed:

"Why are you crying?" said the woman to a little boy.
"I want a balloon," he said.
(Change it into Indirect Speech.)

Read the following extract and answer the questions given below:
But even in a poverty-free world where every man and woman would earn enough to take care of themselves and their family, there would still be situations of temporary poverty due to a sudden catastrophe or misfortune, a bankruptcy or business downturn leading to failure, or some personal disease or disaster.

A poverty-free world might see a whole group of families, locations, or even regions devastated by some shared disasters, such as floods, tire, cyclones, riots, earthquakes or
other disasters. But such temporary problems could be taken care of by the market mechanism through insurance and other self-paying programmes, assisted of course by social-consciousness-driven enterprises.

There would always remain differences in lifestyle between people at the bottom of society and those at the top income levels. Yet that difference would be the difference between the middle-class and luxury class, just as on trains in Europe today you have only first-class and second-class carriages, whereas in the nineteenth century there were third- class and even fourth-class carriages - sometimes with no windows and just hay strewn on the floor.

Can we really create a poverty-free world? A world without third-class or fourth-class citizens, a world without a hungry, illiterate, barefoot under-class?

(1) What is the extract about?

(2) How will the poverty-free world take care of natural disasters?

(3) According to the writer, what would, 'the world without poverty' be like?

(4) What can we do to help the poor in our society?

(5) Rewrite the following sentences in the ways instructed:
(i) Temporary problems could be taken care of by market mechanisms.
(Rewrite the sentence beginning with 'Market mechanism ........ ')

(ii) In the nineteenth century, there were third-class carriages.
(Form a Wh-question to get the underlined part as an answer.)

(iii) There would still be situations of temporary poverty.
(Rewrite it using 'can'.)

( 6) What do the following words in the extract mean -

(i) devastated

(ii) hay

Read the following extract carefully and present the information in the form of notes with the help of the given clues :
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was the first Vice President and second President of India.
He was a teacher, a philosopher and 'an author. He had introduced the thinking of Western idealist philosophers like Plato, Plontinus, Bergson into Indian thought.
He was born on 5th of September, 1888 in a poor Brahmin family. As his father could not afford his education expenses, Radhakrishnan supported most of his education
through scholarships. He completed his B.A. and M.A. with majors in philosophy. He went on to become a professor of philosophy. He showed that Indian Philosophy, once translated into standard academic jargon, is worthy of being called philosophy by Western standards.
He thus, placed Indian Philosophy on world map.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan had established a strong relationship with the Soviet Union when he w Is appointed as the ambassador to the Soviet Union.
He has been honoured with many awards for his achievements nationally and internationally. He was honoured with the Bharat Ratna in 1954. He is also acknowledged with the Templeton Prize, Peace Prize of German Book Trade, Order of Merit and many other honours.
Title : Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Birth : 5th September, 1888
Qualifications : B.A. ___________
Introduced thinking of : _________,_________and ____ into Indian thought.
Work : Translated_____________ into standard____________
Ambassador : __________________________________
Honours : National___________
                International Order of Merit

(A) Read the fo llowing extract and answer the questions given below :

Kalpana Chawla was extremely proud other birth-place and made every effort to bring it into the lime-light. During space flights she vit, (mid prondk point it out to her Fellow-astronauts. Once, during the second Hight she remembered her closest friend, Dais Chawla, who died in a road accident. In fact, despite her celebrity status, she took pains to track down her former teachers, classmates and friends in India and showed a keen desire to stay in touch with them.

Her affectionate and humble nature won the hearts of all who came in contact with her. Although Kalpana had a strong desire to go to Mars, fly over its canyons she was equally concerned about the well-being of the earth. She always urged young people to listen to the sounds of nature and take care of our fragile planet. During, her space trips, she took many breatlitakilig photographs of the earth for various terrestrial studies later on the ground. When she was in space, she always felt a sense of connection with everyone on the earth.

It was Kalpana's cherished desire to visit India again. But that was not to be. A few months after her tragic death, Harrison visited India. He went to her school and college, met her family, teachers and friends and scattered her ashes over the Himalayas.

(1) What is the extract about? (1)

(2) How was Kalpana connected with India and Indians? (2)

(3) How was Kalpana concerned about the well-being of the earth? (2)

(4) What would you like to do For India? (2)

(5) Rewrite the following sentences in the ways instructed:

(i) She took many breathtaking photographs of the earth.
(Rewrite it using the Present Perfect Continuous tense.) (1)

(ii) He scattered her ashes over the Himalayas.
(Rewrite it beginning with 'Her ashes ...... ')(1)

(iii) Kalpana was extremely proud of her birth-place and made every effort to bring it into limelight.
(Rewrite it using 'not only ...... but also'.)(1)

( 6) Give the antonyms from the extract for -

(i) collected                           (1/2)
(ii) forgot                              (1/2)

(B) Summary :
Write a summary of the above extract with the help of the following
points and suggest a suitable title :
Points : Kalpana's affection towards India and Indians her humble - nature her love for the earth Harrison's visit to India. (4)

Read the following extract and answer the questionsgiven below:
By this time, I felt very small
And now my tears began to fall.
I quietly went and knelt by her bed;
"Wake up, little girl, wake up," I said.
"Are these the flowers you picked I'm me?"
She smiled, "I found' em, out by the tree.
I picked'em because they're pretty like you.
I knew you would Iike'em, especially the blue."
I said, Daughter, I'm sorry for the way I acted today;
I shouldn't have yelled at you that way"

(1) Why did the mother go to her daughter "s room? (1)

(2) How can the mother be a friend to her daughter' (1)

(3) Name and explain the figure of speech in the following line
" ..... they're pretty like you". (1)

(4) What is the effect of dialogues in the poem? (1)

Read the following extract and answer the questions given below:
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
We watched in terror and fascination this slaughter
As a raw mythology revealed to us its age
Soon afterwards we left Baroda for Bombay
Where there are no trees except the one
Which grows and seethes in one's dreams, its aerial roots Looking for ground to strike.

(1) What did the rings of the trunk of the tree reveal about its age? (1)

(2) According to you, how do trees help the mankind? (1)

(3) Give an example of 'Repetition' from the extract. (1)

(4) The poem has picturesque expressions. They make the poem lively. Pick out such expressions from, the extract. (1)

Read the following extract and rewrite it from the point of view of the mother: [you may begin with : My son never saw the skeleton in the cupboard ]
Yes, there was a skeleton in the cupboard, and although
I never saw it, I played a small part in the events that followed its discovery. I was fifteen that year, and I was back in my boarding school in Simla after spending the long winter holidays in Dehradun. My mother was still managing the old Green's hotel in Dehra - a hotel that was soon to disappear and become part of Dehra's unrecorded history. It was called Green's not because it purported to the spread of any greenery (its neglected garden was chocked with lantana), but because it had been started by an Englishman, Mr Green, back in 1920, just after the Great War had ended in Europe. Mr Green had died at the outset of the Second World War. He had just sold the hotel and was on his way back to England when the ship on which he was travelling was torpedoed by a German submarine. Mr Green went
down with the ship.
The hotel had already been in decline, and the new owner, a Sikh businessman from Ludhiana, had done his best to keep it going. But post-War and post-Independence, Dehra was going through a lean period. My stepfather's motor workshop was also going through a lean period - a crisis, in fact -- and my mother was glad to take the job of running the small hotel while he took a job in Delhi. She wrote to me about once a month, giving me news of the hotel, some of its more interesting guests, the pictures that were showing in town.

Read the following extract and convert it into a dialogue between Charles and Oliver in  about 120 words
[You may begin with: Charles: Hi Orlando! I am a famous wrestler ..... ]

   Frederick had a very famous wrestler, called Charles, in his court. He was champion of the country and had fought many brave and strong young men. Now, Orlando was a fine wrestler, too, and decided to try his strength against Charles. Charles came to see Oliver about this, asking him to persuade Orlando to give up his idea.
   'I am a professional wrestler, sir,' Charles explained to Oliver, 'and I must always fight to win, in order to keep my reputation. Anyone who fights me runs the risk of being badly hurt, Please warn your younger brother, and persuade him to change his mind.
   But the wicked Oliver thought this was a good opportunity to get rid of Orlando, so he told Charles all kinds of lies about the young man. lie pretended that Orlando was bad and ungrateful, and deserved any punishment which Charles could give him. I would rather you broke his neck than his finger,' Oliver said, 'and you have my permission to do. what you like with the boy.'
So Charles promised to do his best to kill Orlando. 'If he comes to the fight tomorrow, I'll give him his payment,' Charles said. 'If he can walk away after I have finished with him, never wrestle again.'

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

Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity,
put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics.
Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957, I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.
One day my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. " I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date."
A blind date? Nah that wasn't for me.
But Sid kept pestering me and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma.

Letter Writing :
Write a letter of application in response to the following advertisement with the help of the given C. V. (Resume):                 

C. V. (Resume)

Name :Aruna Anil Shinde
Address : Bl-104, Rose Parade, S. B. Road, Nagpur.
Educational Qualifications :

Other qualifications : Successfully completed
Computer Diploma from NIIT, Nagpur 2014.
Work Experience : Worked as the Purchase Officer in
Login Private Ltd., Nagpur.
Interest/Hobbies : Reading, music, swimming, chess.
Languages Known: English, Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati.

Write a letter to the Editor of a Newspaper drawing attention to the noise pollution in your locality. Suggest some solutions.

Write a short tourist's leaflet about any Hill Station that you know with the help of
the following points :
• How to reach there
• Accommodation facilities
• What to see
• Shopping attractions
• Anything special about the place.

Imagine that your college arranged a Cleanliness Drive in which your Principal, social activist, the local MLA, doctors, teachers and students participated on a large scale. The event was a grand success as it made people aware of cleanliness and social hygiene. Prepare a short report for your college magazine with the help of the following points :
Venue, chief guddest, inauguration, unique participation, and conclusion.

Read the following tree diagram about 'Morphemes' and write a short paragraph on it.

Prepare a paragraph with an appropriate title to be used for the Counter-View Section on the following topic in about 120 words :
"Facebook is a user-friendly device."
You may take help of the following points included in the View Section:

Answer the following question as per instructions:
Framing Questions :
            On the occasion of 'Annual Sports Prize Distribution' programme a well-known sports personality is invited in your college as a chief guest. As a sports secretary you have got an opportunity to interview him/her. Frame a set of 8-10 questions regarding his/her achievements, inspirations, best moment and prizes he/she has won.

Answer the following question as per instruction:
Speech Writing :
Imagine that your college has organised an 'elocution competition' and the topic of the competition is 'Save Trees, Trees Save'. Prepare a short speech with the help of the points given below :
Providers of human needs, ecological balance, rain showers, etc.