Arts (English Medium) इयत्ता ११ - CBSE Question Bank Solutions

Number the points.

Combine the following sets of ideas to show the contrast between them.

(i) European art tries to achieve a perfect, illusionistic likeness.

(ii)Asian art tries to capture the essence of inner life and spirit.

Combine the following sets of ideas to show the contrast between them.

(i)The Emperor commissions a painting and appreciates its outer appearance.

(ii)The artist reveals to him the true meaning of his work.

Combine the following sets of ideas to show the contrast between them.

(i) The Emperor may rule over the territory he has conquered.

(ii) The artist knows the way within.

Read the text below and summarise it.

The Great Desert Where Hippos Once Wallowed

The Sahara sets a standard for dry land. It’s the world’s largest desert. Relative humidity can drop into the low single digits. There are places where it rains only about once a century. There are people who reach the end of their lives without ever seeing water come from the sky.

Yet beneath the Sahara are vast aquifers of fresh water, enough liquid to fill a small sea. It is fossil water, a treasure laid down in prehistoric times, some of it possibly a million years old. Just 6,000 years ago, the Sahara was a much different place.

It was green. Prehistoric rock art in the Sahara shows something surprising: hippopotamuses, which need year-round water.

“We don’t have much evidence of a tropical paradise out there, but we had something perfectly liveable,” says Jennifer Smith, a geologist at Washington University in St Louis.

The green Sahara was the product of the migration of the paleo-monsoon. In the same way that ice ages come and go, so too do monsoons migrate north and south. The dynamics of earth’s motion are responsible. The tilt of the earth’s axis varies in a regular cycle — sometimes the planet is more tilted towards the sun, sometimes less so. The axis also wobbles like a spinning top. The date of the earth’s perihelion — its closest approach to the sun — varies in cycle as well.

At times when the Northern Hemisphere tilts sharply towards the sun and the planet makes its closest approach, the increased blast of sunlight during the north’s summer months can cause the African monsoon (which currently occurs between the Equator and roughly 17°N latitude) to shift to the north as it did 10,000 years ago, inundating North Africa.

Around 5,000 years ago the monsoon shifted dramatically southward again. The prehistoric inhabitants of the Sahara discovered that their relatively green surroundings were undergoing something worse than a drought (and perhaps they migrated towards the Nile Valley, where Egyptian culture began to flourish at around the same time).

“We’re learning, and only in recent years, that some climate changes in the past have been as rapid as anything underway today,” says Robert Giegengack, a University of Pennsylvania geologist.

As the land dried out and vegetation decreased, the soil lost its ability to hold water when it did rain. Fewer clouds formed from evaporation. When it rained, the water washed away and evaporated quickly. There was a kind of runaway drying effect. By 4,000 years ago the Sahara had become what it is today.

No one knows how human-driven climate change may alter the Sahara in the future. It’s something scientists can ponder while sipping bottled fossil water pumped from underground.

“It’s the best water in Egypt,” Giegengack said — clean, refreshing mineral water. If you want to drink something good, try the ancient buried treasure of the Sahara.

Notice the italicized sentence placed at the top of the article which tells us at a glance what the article is about.

Divide the article into four sections based on the shifts in the sub-topics and give a suitable sub-heading for each section. One has been done for you in the article as an example.

There are two voices in the poem. Who do they belong to? Which lines indicate this?

Look for pictures in newspapers and magazines that depict the urban civic problems discussed in the text. Cut them out and pin them to the text at appropriate places.

What does the phrase “strange to tell” mean?

There is a parallel drawn between rain and music. Which words indicate this? Explain the similarity between the two.

How is the cyclic movement of rain brought out in the poem? Compare it with what you have learned in science.

Why are the last two lines put within brackets?

List the pair of opposites found in the poem.

Notice the following sentence patterns.

And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling shower.

Rewrite the above sentences in prose.

Notice the following sentence patterns.

 I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain.

Rewrite the above sentences in prose.

Notice the following sentence patterns.

Eternal I rise

Rewrite the above sentences in prose.

Notice the following sentence patterns.

For song…duly with love returns

Rewrite the above sentences in prose.