Summative Assessment-1 2014-2015
English
Class – X
Time allowed: 3 hours
Maximum Marks: 70
General Instructions:
(i)
(ii)
The question paper is divided into three sections: A, B and C.
Section A:
Reading
20 marks
Section B:
Advance writing skills
25 marks
Section C:
Literature
25 marks
Attempt all questions.
Section A
(Reading: 20 marks)
1. Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
On the way to Stok, the village ten miles outside Leh, there is a suspension bridge that spans
the Indus. From the distance, it looks like a circus tent; it is so covered with prayer flags of
every colour. I am sitting on the seat next to the driver, a young Ladaki, and I ask him, “Why
are there so many prayer flags?” he looks at me as if I am mad. “If there are no prayer flags,
the river would get angry.” It is such a festive and exuberant gesture, covering the steel lines
of the bridge with scarves and mantras and holy dragons that I want to sing. As the bus
crosses the bridge, the prayer flags flap against it. The driver turns to me and smiles. “Every
time I am crossing the bridge I am saying my prayers. It is holy, this bridge.” “How old is this
bridge?” He does not know. It is as if it had always been there like the pile of stones is the
mountains, like the stupas, like the small wayside shrines. The spirit of Ladakh has changed it
into a shrine, an object of worship. Does the bridge have its guardian Buddha? The driver
smiled and did not answer.
The rocks on the sides of the paths are sprinkled with small blue flowers, a fierce wild green
grass grows between the boulders; with every quarter of an hour the heat increases and the
rocks change, growing more and more fantastical, wings of cathedrals, falling into the river
below, large fluted columns, like the hermit perches of Cappadocia, with golden moss spilling
over from their height …. and yet it is not the rocks and their dazzling forms that move me
most.
Resting on the top of a mountain pass, I found that the rock I was sitting on was ringed on by
while stones, heaped there by travelers over many years; walking on and on into the highest
parts of the pass, I found just as I was too tired to go any further, that there was a deserted
shepherd’s hut, with its roof torn off by the wind, and a small rose-bush rowing in the shelter
of one of its walls. I sat in it and ate my bread and cheese. On the wall the shepherd had
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written with charcoal from the fire, ‘Om’, just one letter again and again. And under each
letter he had sketched a rough Buddha’s face.
Answer the following questions briefly:
a) Why does the bridge look like a circus tent from the distance?
b) Why are there so many prayer flags?
c) Why does the narrator want to sing?
d) How old is the bridge?
e) When does the rocks change and grow fantastically beautiful?
f) What was written on the wall of the deserted shepherd’s hut?
g) Give a synonym from the passage for the word ‘abandoned’.
h) Find an antonym from the passage for the word ‘exposed’.
2. Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
One of the world’s great educations, who looked up to a child as an individual and a very
special human being, was Maria Montessori. She gave the very young children the
stimulating Kindergarten, where children grew in an atmosphere of freedom and confidence.
Maria Montessori was born in Chiravalle near Ancona, Italy in 1870. As a little girl, she was a
dull student, unable to grasp and retain what her teacher taught her. At the age of 10, she
suddenly changed. Besides her heightened interest in religion, she felt she had a long way to
go.
Maris began topping her class, and her parents felt that she should become a teacher. But she
was determined to become an engineer. At the age of 14, she attended a technical school for
boys. After a year she took up Biology and decided to study medical. In spite of a strong
opposition from her father, she went ahead with medicine.
Maria became the first Italian woman to receive a medical degree after she graduated from
the University of Rome in 1896. After getting her degree, she joined the university’s
psychiatric clinic. As a part of her duty, she had to visit the city’s metal asylum, where disable
children were housed with the insane. She watched the children shriek, stretching their
hands out, with an urge to reach out or to touch something. Maria felt they needed a normal
and friendlier environment and a contact with the world. She worked out ways by which she
could help the disabled children. Dr. Bacelli opened and experimental state school for
disabled children with Dr. Maria Montessori as its head. Maria spent long hours, almost 12
hours of the day with children, observing them and finding out what could really help them.
After two years of hard work, her students took the normal state school examination. And,
her children proved that they were not hopeless cases. In fact, many did almost as well as the
normal children.
Later, Maria was appointed Professor of Anthropology at the university. After seven years,
she took up another important mission of her life. She started a Kindergarten for the poor,
normal children. She first taught them to become tidy, learn self-discipline and then taught
them to read and write. In her colourful, stimulating Kindergarten, she provided them with
innovative learning objects, like cut out letters of sandpaper, coloured blocks and musical
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bells with different notes. Many more such innovations made her system of education
stimulating, and even inspired the educationists.
i.
On the basis of your reading the passage, answer the following questions:
a) How was Maria as a little girl? How did she change suddenly?
b) What did Maria observe about disabled children? What did she feel about them?
c) What did Maria do for the disabled children? How did they prove that they were
not hopeless cases?
d) What made Maria’s system of education stimulating?
ii.
Answer the following questions by choosing the best option from the ones given
below:
a) Maria was determined to become
(i)
A teacher
A doctor
(ii)
(iii) An engineer
(iv) A psychiatrist
b) After getting her medical degree Maria joined:
(i)
Experimental State school
(ii)
Psychiatric clinic of University of Rome
(iii) Mental asylum of the city
(iv) As Professor of Anthropology
c) Maria was appointed Professor of Anthropology at
(i)
A Kindergarten School
(ii)
University of Italy
(iii) School for disabled children
(iv) University of Rome
d) In the school for poor and normal children Maria fist taught the children to
(i)
Become tidy
(ii)
Learn self-discipline
(iii) Both a) and b)
(iv) Read and write
Section – B
(Writing and Grammar: 25 Marks)
3. Write a letter to the Editor of a local newspaper drawing the attention of the concerned
authorities towards the number of schools that have either scarcity of competent teachers or
no subject teacher at all; which is affecting the studies and future of the young generation
directly. You are Anil Kumar of Kanpur. (100-120 words)
Or
As Karuna Avasti write an article for a popular health magazine on “Compulsory Health
Education and Meal Courses in Schools”.(100-120 words)
You may refer to the unit ‘Health and Medicine’ and use the clues give below:
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•
Most children have no stamina-fall unconscious during morning assembly-do not take
breakfast – Eat fast/junk food
• No exercise of outdoor game-love compute, TV-becoming lazy
• Health education ensures healthy future
• Meal planning provides nutritious and sufficient amount of food
4. Look at the visual given below carefully. Now write a story using the clues in it and your own
ideas. Give a suitable title to it. (Word limit: 150-200 words)
5. Fill in the blanks in the following passage choosing the most appropriate words out of the
given options:
At markets or at country-fairs in the old days, the customer had to be on guard against a
dishonest trader. A house wife, for example, wanting (a)_______________ (for, from, into, to) buy
a live piglet might be offered a discount if she bought (b) _______________ (a, an, the, some)
packed one, tied up in a small sack called a poke. Anyone who agreed to (c) _______________ (eat,
give, buy, sell) a pig in a poke was naturally (d) ____________________ (making, getting, sitting,
taking) a risk. The pig might be ill (e) __________________ (but, taking, or, to) even dead: Or it
might turn (f) ___________________ (on, out, in, into) to be not a piglet at all.
6. In the passage given below, there is an error in each line. Edit the passage and write the
incorrect word and the correction against the correct blank number in your answer sheet:
Designing toys for children is challenge yet
stimulating. Considering the low attentive span
of today’s kids, toys with higher played value are able to
engaged them longer. Young minds are also quite
e.g.: challenge - challenging
a) _______________
b) _______________
c) _______________
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impressionable. So, toy designer has to been conscious
d) _______________
about ethics and values but also aid their cognitive, physical,
e) _______________
emotional and social skills. But above it, fun is the primary
f) _______________
objective of play. Another crucial factor are eco-friendliness.
g) _______________
Some of a best pro-environment design processes can
h) _______________
Actually be found in the Indian handicrafts industry.
7. Rearrange the jumbled words and phrases to form meaningful sentences:
a) a student / for / walking / exercise / the best / is
b) cause / loud noise / mental / can / and / illness / deafness
c) health / lead to / happiness / early / and / rising
Section – C
(Literature and Long Reading Text: 25 Marks)
8. Read the extract given below and answer the questions that follow:
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is,
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon,
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
a) Why does the mirror feel that it is a lake?
b) What are the liars here and why?
c) Find a word in the stanza has a similar meaning as ‘replicate’.
Or
Mrs. Slater: That public-house that John Shorrock’s widow keeps. He is always hanging about
there. Oh, if he hasn’t paid itBen: Do you think he hasn’t paid it? Was it overdue?
Mrs. Slater: I should think it was overdue.
a) Who is ‘he’ here in the first line? What hasn’t ‘he’ paid?
b) What impression do you form about both the speakers?
c) Find a word in the stanza that has a similar meaning as ‘unpaid’.
9. Answer the following questions in about 30-40 words each: (any foru)
a) Describe the appearance of Nicolas and Jacopo.
b) What were the preparations made for tiger shoot?
c) What kind of life did Ali lead as a young man? When and why did he change his attitude?
d) How did the frog kill the nightingale without being blamed?
e) How does the poet immortalize his beloved in the poem ‘Not Marble, Nor the Gilded
Monuments’?
10. After the brother’s visit, Lucia writes a page in her dairy about her past life and her present
situation. As Lucia write the diary entry in about 80-100 words.
Or
As a reader of ‘The Dear Departed’ write your impressions about various characters and
what the intention of the playwright is behind them. (80-100 words)
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11. Answer the following question in about 150-200 words:
What type of a child was Helen before she met Miss Sullivan? How was Miss Sullivan able to
teach her and changed her life?
Or
Give a character sketch of Miss Anne Mansfield Sullivan, Helen’s teacher.
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