Patkai Higher Secondary School

Model Examination 2024

XII English
______________________________________________________________

Total Marks: 80 Time: 3 Hours

General Instructions:
I) The question paper consists of 16 questions. All questions are compulsory.
II) Marks are indicated against each question.
III) Internal choice has been provided in some questions.

SECTION – A (Literature)

1. Choose the correct option for the following questions: 4x1=4

a. Read the given extract to attempt the question that follows:
“ It is in memory of a poor fellow who died for me” replied the duke in a voice which trembled
slightly, “do not laugh, my friend, it offends me”.
Who is being referred to here?
(i) Henry de Hardimont
(ii) Jean Victor
(iii) Monsieur de Saulness

b. Who was Wangari Maathai?

(I) Freedom fighter
(II) Social activist
(III) First African woman to receive Nobel Prize for Peace
(IV) President of Liberia

c. How many hours did Susan work at the bee farm?

(i) Twenty hours
(ii) Two hours
(iii) Four hours
(iv) Six hours

d. What was ‘as flat as pancake’?

(i) Sumit
(ii) Illinois
(iii) Summit
(iv) Poplar cove

2. Answer the following questions 3x2=6

a. Why did count de Saulnes laugh at the duke?
b. According to Sirleaf, what are the goals of the young population?
c. One of the stories Susan liked to hear was the story of “the frog that raced up a castle”. How
did this story impact Susan?
3. Answer the following questions in about 150 words.
(a) ‘A Piece of Bread’ is the story of the bond between a duke and a soldier. Justify the title.
Or 5
(b) Elaborate the outcome when the Principal in Harvinder’s school shifted his behaviour away from
‘command and control’ method.

4. Choose the correct answer from the alternative given. 3x1=3

I. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempest and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,….

(a) In the extract, what is ‘ever-fixed?’

(I) Star (II) Time
(III) Love (IV) Marriage

(b) What is ‘wandering bark’ in the excerpt?

(I) Ship (II) Yacht
(III) Ferry (IV) Raft

II. In ‘Prayer Before Birth’ the unborn child does not want the world to _______ his humanity.
( I) Warm (II) Benumb
(III) Freeze (IV) Spill

5. Read lines from the poem and answer the following questions.
I. Mountains frown at me,lovers laugh at me,the white waves call me to folly and the desert
calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses my gift and my children curse me.
a. Why will the mountains frown at the speaker? 1
b. What is the reaction of the beggar and he children to the speaker? 1
C. Why do you think the speaker has decided that all and everything will respond negatively
to him? 1
Or
II. Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why?
Theirs but to do and die

a. What was the blunder the commander made? 1

b. Who is ‘Theirs’ referred to in these lines? 1
c. What are they not to do? 1

6. Answer the following question in about 80-120 words:

(a) Margaret experiences an emotional downturn when she saw the leaves unveiling in the
Goldengrove. Do you think she is too young to understand the concept of one’s own
mortality as expressed by the poet? Express your views.
 Or 4
(b) How does William Shakespeare define true love in ‘let Me Not to the Marriage of True
Minds’.

7. Now let it work: mischief, thou art afoot,

Take thou what course thou wilt!

(a) Who is the speaker in the above lines? 1

(b) What does the above lines suggest to you? 2
(c) Was the speaker successful in instigating the people of Rome against the conspirators? 2
Or
‘This was the most unkindest cut of all; For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,…..’
Discuss how according to you, Mark Antony tactfully used Caesar’s death body in his
speech to turn the citizens against the conspirators. 5

8. Answer any two (2) of the following questions in about 150 words: 5X2=10

(a) The ghost remarked, ‘Death must be so beautiful’. Elucidate the remark made by the ghost.
(b) Give a pen-portrait of Virginia.
(c) In the story ‘The Canterville Ghost’ how is the tension between modernity and tradition
represented?

SECTION –B (Reading)

9. A baby learns its mother tongue by the age of five. Does it ‘learn’ this language or
does it ‘acquire’ it by some natural means? Many immigrants to such countries as Britain
and America learn English without studying it in any formal sense. Do such learners ‘learn’
the second language or, like the infant child with its mother tongue, do they ‘acquire’ it by
some natural means? Many people, like those immigrants, ‘pick up a language’ without
studying it.

This hypothesis claims the adults have two distinct ways of developing competence
in second languages. The first way is via language acquisition, that is, by using language for
real communication. Language acquisition is the ‘natural’ way to develop linguistic ability,
and is a subconscious process; children for example are not necessarily aware that they are
acquiring language, they are only aware that they are communicating.

The result of language acquisition, acquired linguistic competence, is also

subconscious. We are not generally ‘aware’ of the rules of languages we have acquired.
Instead, we have a ‘feel’ for correctness; when we hear an error we may not know exactly
what rule was violated, but somehow ‘know’ that an error was committed.

The second way to develop competence in a second language is by language

learning. Language learning is ‘knowing about’ language, or ‘formal knowledge’ of a
language. While acquisition is subconscious, learning is conscious. Learning refers to having
an ‘explicit knowledge’ of rules, which is quite different from language acquisition, which
could be termed ‘implicit’.

The acquisition-learning hypothesis claims that adults can still acquire second
languages, that the ability to ‘pick-up’ languages does not disappear at puberty, as some
have claimed, but is still with us as adults. The acquisition learning hypothesis does not
imply a native level of performance in second languages. It also does not specify what
aspects of languages are acquired and what are learned or how adult performer uses
acquisition and learning in performance. It only states that the processes are different and
that both exist in the adult.

Language teaching has quite different effects on acquisition and on learning. If we

examine language teaching in grammar-based approaches, which emphasize explanation of
rules and corrections of errors; it appears that teaching is directed totally at learning and not
acquisition. In fact, conscious language learning is thought to be helped a great deal by
teaching; its goal is that the learner arrives at the ‘right’ form of the rules. For example, a
student of English says ‘I goes to school every day’ and is corrected and forced to repeat the
utterance correctly, the student is supposed to alter his mental vision of the third person
singular rule and realize that the –s ending only goes with third person and not the first
person.

Teaching, as defined above, does not facilitate acquisition. Error correction in

particular does not seem to help. Researchers have found that parents actually correct only
a small portion of the child’s language. They conclude from their research that parents
attend more to the truth value of what the child is saying rather than to the form. For
example, a sentence such as ‘Her curl my hair’ was not corrected by a parent since its
meaning was clear in the context. While ‘Walt Disney comes on television on Tuesdays’ was
corrected since Walt Disney actually was on television on Wednesdays.

Based on your reading of the passage, answer the following questions given bellow:

(I) Complete the sentence by choosing an appropriate option.

The method of developing competence in second language with our subconscious
mind is through_____________. 1
A. Learning B. Acquisition
C. Knowing D. Teaching

(II) Select the option that conveys the opposite of ‘inability’, from words used in
paragraph two (2). 1
B. Ignorance B. Acquiring
C. Competence D. Develop

(III) Which of the following would not be considered as learning a language? 1

A. Pick up a language without studying it.
B. Using a language for real communication.
C. Language learning is knowing about language.
D. Unconventional knowledge of language.

(IV) Complete the given sentence with an appropriate inference with respect to the
following:
The writer states that the ability to pick up languages does not disappear at puberty
(paragraph 5), because__________________________. 1

(V) Comment on the writer’s reference to having an ‘explicit knowledge’ of rules, in

paragraph 4. 1
(VI) Give the most suitable title for the above passage. 1
(VII) What do you understand by acquisition of language through subconscious? 2
 10. Read the following passage and prepare notes on the contents of the passage and
summarize in about 80 words using the notes that you have made: 4+3=7
The great defect of our civilization is that it does not know what to do with its
knowledge. Science has given us power fit for the Gods yet we use them like small children.
For example, we do not know how to manage our machines. Machines were made to be
man’s servants. Yet he has become so dependent on them that they are in a fair way to
become his masters. Already most men spend most of their lives looking after and waiting
upon machines. And the machines are very stern master. They must be kept at the right
temperature. And if they do not get their meals when they expect them, they grow sulky and
refuse to work or burst with rage and blow up and spread ruin and destruction all around
them.
So we have to wait upon them very attentively and do all that we can to keep them in
a good temper. Already, we find it difficult either to work or play without the machines and a
time may come when they will rule us together just as we rule the animals.
And this brings me to the point at which I asked, what we do with all the time which
the machines have provided us and the new energy they have given us? On the whole, it
must be admitted, we do very little. For the most part we use our time and energy to make
more and better machines which will give us still more time and still more energy. And what
are we to do with them? The answer I think is that we should try to become more civilized.
For the machines themselves and the power which the machines have given us, are not
civilization but aids to civilization. But you will remember that we agreed at the beginning that
being civilized meant making and liking beautiful things, thinking freely and living rightly and
maintaining justice equally between each of us.
Man has a better chance today to do things than he ever had before; he has more
time, more energy, less to fear and less to fight against. If he gives his time, and everything
his machines have won for him, for the making of more beautiful things, finding out more and
more about the universe, and removing the causes of quarrels between nations, discovering
how to prevent them, then I think our civilization would undoubtedly be greater as it would be
more lasting than it has ever been.

SECTION-C (Writing)

11. You are the General Manager of Ivy Software Solutions, Mon. You need a software
engineer for your organization. Draft and advertisement in about 50 words to be published in
‘The Eastern Times’.
Or 4
Read the following paragraph and express your opinion on whether you agree or disagree
with the ideas mentioned in it.

Dictators are out of fashion these days- everyone wants democracy instead. But
does democracy work? At election time politicians make big promises, once elected, they
break or forget them. Everyone knows that popular legislation are passed just before an
election! Dictators may be good or bad, but they at least are free to do what they think needs
to be done and not spend their time worrying election polls.

12. You had attended a workshop on personality development for students. Many eminent
personalities had been present. Write a report in 150-200 words on how the workshop
proved beneficial. You are Loreni/ Lusha.

Or 5
 Mental illness is on the rise everywhere affecting adults, teenagers and children. However,
only half of the affected receive treatment, often because of the stigma attached to it and the
society we live in. draft a speech discussing the importance of mental health awareness and
effective strategies to promote mental health in about 150-200 words.

13. You are Aren/ Ketu staying at 33, Lerie Street, Kiphire. Last month, you bought a cordless
electric iron from Sheetal Electrical Goods, Dimapur against a warranty of 2 years. Now after
two weeks, you have discover that there is something wrong with the iron. Its heat lasts
hardly for a few seconds after it is taken off the mains. Write a letter to the dealer
complaining about it. Also request him to change this defective iron against the warranty that
goes with it. 6

SECTION-D (Grammar)

14. Rewrite the following as directed: 3X1=3

(a) I walked for ten minutes. Then I noticed that I had forgotten to take my wallet.(Combine
the sentence using Past Perfect Continuous Tense)
(b) She ____________(hate) dogs. (Simple Present Tense)
(c) Shelly______________ (visit) the park to oversee the arrangements. (Future Continuous
Tense)

15.Write the meaning of the following idioms and phrases and make sentences of your own: 3X1=3

(a) A curate’s egg

(b) Catch-22
(c) Put the cart before the horse

16. Insert the blanks with correct modals: 4X1=4

(a) Excuse me,_________ I just say something?

(b) I__________ go on holiday to Japan next year.
(c) You_____________ take your umbrella. It is not raining.
(d) _____ you mind if I borrow your laptop