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Question
Read the following passage:
In India, eating organic food is more of a style statement than due to health worries because the stuff is expensive. But people who can, do indulge in not only organic vegetables but even organic eggs laid by 'happy hens', who are allowed to roam around freely whereas 'unhappy hens' are kept in coops. Then there are companies that have installed music channels in their cowsheds and the milk from those sheds are sold at a marked up price since it has more nutritional value because the animals are happy thanks to lilting 24×7 music. We don't know yet any farmer using music to improve his crop quality, but then you never know : plants are known to respond to music.
Why such pickiness about food ? These days, the huge number of TV shows and articles that we see and read on food provide bread and butter for the specialist. But instead of decoding food, its sources and what has gone into growing it, isn't it much better to enjoy what's on the plate ?
Complete the statements given below by choosing the correct options from those that follow:
(a) According to a Stanford University study, organic food in relation to conventional food is________.
(i) less nutritious
(ii) more nutritious
(iii) very conventional
(iv) as nutritious
(b) The study will not be welcomed by _________.
(i) farmers of conventional food
(ii) makers of pesticides
(iii) all sectors
(iv) exporters of organic food
(c) We can save some hard cash by _________.
(i) buying organic food
(ii) not buying organic food
(iii) going to the shop
(iv) not buying food with pesticides
(d) Music channels are installed in the cowshed because the _________.
(i) cows then give more milk
(ii) milk is sold at a higher price
(iii) milk becomes more pure
(iv) workers becomes happy
(e) In the second paragraph, the author's attitude to the people who eat food sourced from 'happy' animals is that he _________.
(i) is happy with them
(ii) is unhappy with them
(iii) is laughing at them
(iv) wants crops to be grown similarly
(f) One benefit of organic food is that __________.
(i) it is fashionable to eat
(ii) only rich people can afford it
(iii) it is less contaminated with pesticides
(iv) even poor people can afford it
(g) The word 'contaminated' means ________.
(i) adulterated
(ii) for adults
(iii) containing
(iv) not healthy
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Solution
(a) (iv) as nutritious
(b) (iv) exporters of organic food
(c) (ii) not buying organic food
(d) (ii) milk is sold at a higher price
(e) (iii) is laughing at them
(f) (iii) it is less contaminated with pesticides
(g) (i) adulterated
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RELATED QUESTIONS
Read the passage given below:
1. I rested for a moment at the door of Anand Bhawan, on Market Road, where coffee-drinkers and tiffin-eaters sat still at their tables, uttering low moans on seeing me. I wanted to assure them, "Don't mind me, you hugging the cash box − you are a coward, afraid even to breathe. Go on, count the cash, if that is your pleasure. I just want to watch, that's all. If my tail trails down to the street, if I am blocking your threshold, it is because, I'm told, I'm eleven feet tip to tail. I can't help it. I'm not out to kill − I'm too full. I found a green pasture full of food on my way. I won't attack until I feel hungry again. Tigers attack only when they feel hungry, unlike human beings who slaughter one another without purpose or hunger."
2. To the great delight of children, schools were being hurriedly closed. Children of all ages and sizes were running helter-skelter, screaming joyously. "No school, no school. Tiger, tiger!" They were shouting and laughing and even enjoying being scared. They seemed to welcome me. I felt like joining them. So I bounded away from the restaurant door. I walked along with them, at which they cried, 'The tiger is coming to eat us; let us get back to school!"
3. I followed them through their school gate while they ran up and shut themselves in the school hall securely. I climbed up the steps of the school, saw an open door at the far end of a veranda, and walked in. It happened to be the headmaster's room. I noticed a very dignified man jumping on the table and heaving himself up into an attic. I walked in and flung myself on the cool floor, having a special liking for cool stone floors.
4. As I drowsed, I was aware of cautious steps and hushed voices all around. I was in no mood to bother about anything. All I wanted was a little moment of sleep; the daylight was very bright.
On the basis of your reading of the above passage, answer the following questions:
(a) How did the diners at Anand Bhawan react on seeing the tiger?
(b) When do tigers attack? In this context, how are human beings different from tigers?
(c) Why were children happy and even enjoying being scared?
(d) What did the headmaster do on seeing the tiger? What did the tiger like to do in the headmaster's office?
(e) Identify the word which means the same as 'hugging'. (Para 1)
(i) counting
(ii) hiding
(iii) rubbing
(iv) holding tightly in the arms
(f) Identify the word which means the same as 'delight'. (Para 2)
(i) pleasure
(ii) fear
(iii) sorrow
(iv) nervousness
(g) Identify the word which means the same as 'dignified'. (Para 3)
(i) tall
(ii) honourable
(iii) terrified
(iv) tired
(ii) jumped forward
(iii) walked with heavy steps
(iv) ran lazily
Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
The most alarming of man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrevocable; the chain of evil it initiates is for the most part irreversible. In this contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world; radiation released through nuclear explosions into the air, comes to the earth in rain, lodges into the soil, enters the grass or corn, or wheat grown there and reaches the bones of a human being, there to remain until his death. Similarly, chemicals sprayed on crops lie long in soil, entering living organisms, passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death. Or they pass by underground streams until they emerge and combine into new forms that kill vegetation, sicken cattle, and harm those who drink from once pure wells.
It took hundreds of millions of years to produce the life that now inhabits the earth and reached a stage of adjustment and balance with its surroundings. The environment contained elements that were hostile as well as supporting. Even within the light of the sun, there were short wave radiations with power to injure. Given time, life has adjusted and a balance reached. For time is the essential ingredient, but in the modern world is no time.
The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature. Radiation is no longer the bombardment of cosmic rays; it is now the unnatural creation of man’s tampering with the atom. The chemicals to which life is asked to make adjustments are no longer merely calcium and silica and copper and all the rest of the minerals washed out of the rocks and carried in the rivers to the sea; they are the synthetic creations of man’s inventive mind, brewed in his laboratories, and having no counterparts in nature.
(a) On the basis of your understanding of the above passage make notes on it using headings and sub-headings. Use recognizable abbreviations (wherever necessary-minimum four) and a format you consider suitable. Also supply a title to it.
(b) Write a summary of the passage in about 80 words.
Read the passage given below :
1. To ensure its perpetuity, the ground is well held by the panther both in space and in time. It enjoys a much wider distribution over the globe than its bigger cousins and procreates sufficiently profusely to ensure its continuity for all time to come.
(ii) in the branches of the trees
(iii) behind the tree trunks
(iv) at its heels
(ii) trains its cubs
(iii) watches the progress of the mother
(iv) is impulsive and impatient
Answer the following questions briefly :
(ii) came down / fell (para 7)
Read the following extract and answer the questions given
below:
Today, at 29, \.1.ichael has discovered the power of another good idea that has helped him rise in just a few years from teen to tycoon.He has become the fourth largest manufacturerof personal computers in America and the youngest man ever to head Fortune 500 Corporation.
Growing up in Houston, Texas. Michael and his two brothers were imbued by their parents. Alexander and Lorraine - he anorthodontist, she a stockbroker- with the desire to learn and the drive to work hard. Even so, stories about the middle boy began to be told early.
Like the time a saleswoman came asking to speak to "Mr. Michael Dell" about his getting a high school equivalency diploma. Moments later. eight-year-old Michael was explaining that he thought it might be a good idea to get high school out of the way.
A few years later Michael had another good idea, to trade stamps by advertising in stamp magazines. With the $2000 he made, he bought his first personal computer. Then he took it apart to figure out how it worked.
In high school Michael had a job selling newspaper subscriptions. Newlyweds, he figured, were the best prospects, so he hired friends to copy rhe names and addresses of recent recipients of marriage licences. These he entered into his computer, then sent a personalized letter offering each couple a free two-week subscription.
This time Dell made $ 18,000 and bought an expensive BMW car. The car salesman was flabbergasted when the 17-ycar-oJd paid cash.
(I) What details does the writer give about Dell's family in the
extract? (1)
(2) How did Dell succeed in earning S2QOQ? (2)
(3) Why was the car salesman flabbergasted? (2)
(41 What do you think you can learn from Dell's story? (2)
{5) Rewrite the following sentences in the ways instmcted:
{i) "He has discovered the power of another good idea."
(Rewrite it beginning with 'The power of another good
idea ...... ... .'.) (1)
.(if) "If you think you have a good idea, try it. "
(Use 'Unless' .) (1)
(iii) '"This time Dell made $18,000 and bought an expensive
BMW car." (1)
(Make it a simple sentence.)
CM Find out the words from the extract which mean :
(i) filled with a quality. (1/2)
(ii) understand. (1/2)
Read the following extract and answer the questions given below.
| A | B |
| (i) valedictorian | (a) feeling of annoyance |
| (ii) frustration | (b) dunce |
| (c) school topper | |
|
(d) validity
|
Read the following extract and answer the questions given below:
Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
| 1 |
As a novelist and storyteller, I have always drawn upon my memories of places that I have known and lived in over the years. More than most writers, perhaps, I find myself drawing inspiration from the past — my childhood, adolescence, youth, early manhood ... But to talk of my early inspiration I must go back to my very beginnings, to the then small, princely state of Jamnagar, tucked away in the Gulf of Kutch. Here my father started a small palace school for princesses. I was there till the age of six, and I still treasure vivid memories of Jamnagar's beautiful palaces and sandy beaches. |
| 2 | Some of these landmarks are preserved for me in photographs taken by my father, which I have to this day. An old palace with pretty windows of coloured glass remained fixed in my memory and many years later gave me the story, “The Room of Many Colours”, which also inspired an episode in a TV serial called Ek Tha Rusty. I spent a memorable year and a half with him in New Delhi, then still a very new city — just the capital area designed by Edwin Lutyens and Connaught Place, with its gleaming new shops and restaurants and cinemas. I saw Laurel and Hardy films and devoured milkshakes at the Milk Bar, even as the Quit India Movement gathered momentum. |
| 3 | When I was seventeen, I was shipped off to the UK to “better my prospects” as my mother put it. Out of longing for India and the friends I had made in Dehra came my first novel — The Room on the Roof — featuring the life and loves of Rusty, my alter ego. In the 1950s everyone travelled by sea, as air services were still in their infancy. A passenger liner took about three weeks from Southampton to Bombay (now Mumbai). After docking in Bombay, I took a train to Dehra, where I stepped onto the platform of the small railway station and embarked on the hazardous journey of a freelance writer. Railway stations! Trains! Platforms! I knew as long as these were there I would never run out of stories. |
| 4 | I also looked for inspiration in tombs and monuments and the ever-expanding city, but did not find it, and my productivity dropped. Escape from Delhi had become a priority for me. I felt drawn to the hills above Dehra. On the outskirts of Mussoorie I found a small cottage, surrounded by oak and maple trees where the rent, thankfully, was nominal. : |
| 5 |
I'm of the opinion that every writer needs a window. Preferably two Is the house, the room, the situation ... important for a writer? A good wordsmith should be able to work anywhere. But to me, the room you live in day after day is all-important. The stories and the poems float in through my window, float in from the magic mountains, and the words appear on the page without much effort on my part. Planet Earth belongs to me. And at night, the stars are almost within reach. |
1. On the basis of your understanding of the above passage, answer any four of the following questions in 30 - 40 words each:
- What does the writer remember about Jamnagar?
- How did he spend time in Delhi?
- What was the inspiration for the first novel and why?
- What was the importance of trains and railway stations in his life?
- What was the importance of a window in the writer’s life?
2. On the basis of your understanding of the above passage, fill in any two of the following blanks with appropriate words/phrases:
- He was shipped off to UK for ______.
- Everyone travelled by sea because ______.
- The productivity dropped because ______.
3. Find out words/phrases from the passage that mean the same as the following. Attempt any two.
- gulped down/swallowed (para 2)
- early stage (para 3)
- attracted to (para 4)
Read the following passage and complete the activities:
A1. Complete the chart on the life stages of fireflies: (2)

|
Fireflies are beetles and go through several life stages, starting out as an egg, then hatching into larvae. At the juvenile stage, they turn into pupae and then, finally adults. Fireflies spend most of their lives in a larval stage, hidden away. There are 2000 different species of fireflies. But they all go through a long juvenile stage and a short adult life, which is mainly about courtship, mating and reproduction. The juveniles living underground or underwater, are very different though-they're hunters, they eat snails and soft-bodied insects and they have very different habitats. Conserving them is essential for human life as fireflies are a key part of the food web. They are predators of agricultural pests. In turn, they are prey for spiders and other insects. They are completely enmeshed in the web of life. In addition, about 70 years ago, scientists unravelled the mystery of fireflies' light-producing talents. Since then, the bio-chemical reactions that fireflies experience have been used in detecting bacterial contamination in foods, testing drugs against cancer, developing drought-resistant crops. They have been used in space exploration. So fireflies give us beauty and inventions. Fireflies carry oxygen, calcium, magnesium and a natural chemical called luciferin. These react together to produce the photons. This is how the fireflies glow. Firefly tourism is growing across the world. In Maharashtra, for example, a particular species monsoon fireflies, emerge before the rains. They're beautiful and a festival is held in Purushwadi, encouraging firefly tourism. Its wonderful that people around the world go to see fireflies in their natural habitat. We need to be cautious. Too many people can disturb adult and larval habitats. Fireflies need darkness to communicate with each other and we need fireflies because they are harbingers of hope. |
A2. Write two reasons for the conservation of fireflies. (2)
A3. Make antonyms of the following words using prefix: (2)
- different × ______
- experience × ______
- bacterial × ______
- natural × ______
A4. Do as directed: (2)
(i) Too many people can disturb adult and larval habitat.
(Rewrite using 'as well as')
(ii) These react together to produce photons.
(Pick out the infinitive from the given sentence)
A5. Can you think of any other insect that teaches us some values of life? Explain with examples. (2)
Read the following passage and do the activities.
A1. Complete the following sentences.
- Vegetarianism has not spread as desired because ______.
- Vegetarians are of various types ______.
|
Vegetarianism promotes a natural way of life. But despite its implicit message of universal love and nonviolence, it has not spread as it should have. This may be because it usually is an inward looking habit and is best cultivated in the mind. Leading a vegetarian way of life helps the animal kingdom to coexist with man. The animals supply milk, manure and energy. This has been central to Indian culture for thousands of years. A vegetarian lifestyle is natural, multifaceted and helps preservation in a healthy way. Food and health are closely related. Vegetarians are of various types. There are lacto-vegetarians who consume dairy products; Lacto-ovo-vegetarians include eggs in addition to dairy products. Vegans are pure vegetarians who do not consume any food derived from animals. The Western science of food considers food as something to sustain only the human body, whereas Indian science considers food as something which sustains not only the body, but also maintains the purity of heart, mind and soul. Thus, an item of food which is injurious to the mind is not considered to be fit for consumption, even if it is otherwise beneficial to the body or satisfies the taste. Indian food science does not give so much importance to protein or even to a balanced diet but it gives importance to food that increases the strength of the body and its vitality. Vegetarian foods provide an infinite variety of flavours whereas non-vegetarian foods have hardly any taste of their own. In fact, non-vegetarian foods have to be seasoned with ingredients from the vegetable kingdom to make them palatable. |
A2. What is the importance of eating vegetarian food?
A3.
- Pick out two adjectives from the given passage.
- Find words in the passage which mean the following:
- Indirect
- Tasty
A4. Convert the following sentence to negative without changing the meaning.
Leading a vegetarian way of life helps the animal kingdom to coexist with man.
A5. Why do you think vegetarianism is being promoted on a global level? Justify with your response.
Read the following passage and do the activities:
|
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar who was born on 24th April 1973 in Mumbai is a former Indian International Cricketer and a former captain of the Indian National Team. He is regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time and is often referred as the ‘God of cricket’ by Indian Cricket followers. He made his debut on 15th November 1989 against Pakistan in ‘Karachi’ at the age of sixteen. He is the only player to have scored one hundred international centuries and only player to complete more than 30,000 runs in international cricket. He was trained under the able guidance of Ramakant Achrekar Sir. He received the Arjuna Award in 1994, Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1997, Padma Shri and Padma Vibhushan Awards in 1999 and 2008 respectively, fourth and second highest civilian awards of India. He was also awarded the Bharat Ratna, highest civilian award of India in 2013. He is a devotee of the deity Ganesha. |
A1. Complete the following sentences from the passage: (2)
- Sachin was born on _____.
- Sachin is a devotee of the deity ______.
- He was trained under the able guidance of ______.
- He made debut on ______.
A2. Complete the web diagram: (2)

A3. Match the ‘Synonyms’: (2)
| ‘A’ | ‘B’ | ||
| i. | debut | a. | previous |
| ii. | received | b. | God |
| iii. | former | c. | got |
| iv. | deity | d. | first performance |
A4. Do as directed: (2)
- He made his debut. (Make ‘Simple Future Tense’.)
- He received the Arjuna Award. (Choose the correct Q-tag.)
- did he?
- didn’t he?
- doesn’t he?
A5. Do you like to play games? Why? (2)
