Below is the AHSEC class 11 English question paper 2016. you can also find here AHSEC CLASS 11 (HS 1st year) past years English question papers with solution
H.S. 1ST YEAR EXAMINATION
2016
English
Full Marks: 90
Time: 3 hours
1. Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:
- My father gets a faraway look in his eye that’s unmistakable. As he looks towards the horizon and his seek out the bright flashes of snow-capped peaks, we all know what he’s thinking. Mountain tops have always had that magnetic effect on him.
- As I grew up I inherited some of my father’s restlessness. I know many people think there must be some compulsion for the son of Edmund Hillary to climb mountains. They assume that I need to compete, or measure up as if there was some strong mark on stone that says, “Thou shalt climb mountains” – and in particular Everest, whether you like to or not. But for me it’s simpler than that. I think families are like factories: some manufacture lawyers while others produce landscape gardeners. The Hillary family is a limited production mountaineering establishment.
- Today, at the age of 48, I am a determined mountain man: love to climb them, love to dream about them. I have been or more than 30 mountaineering expeditions, from the Himalayas to the Antarctic. And yes, I have climbed Everest twice. I treasure the same things that drew my father to climbing – great feeling of friendship and trust among people who work together, sense of pleasure and excitement, especially in dangerous place where your life depends upon making the right call. I guess I am luckier than most because I can fall back on all that my father has taught me. One devastating day in 1995 this advice saved my life.
- Just below the summit of the mountain known as K2 or the “savage mountain” of the Himalayas there is a steep ice channel called “The Bottleneck.” I was among a party of eight climbers heading for the summit, with just 400 meters left to climb. Perched there, 8200 meters above sea-level and looking east along the northern edge of the Karakoram Mountains to the Tibetan Plateau, I noticed curls of ominous cloud began to move in suddenly and quickly with great force.
- As the weather worsened, I became concerned. I stopped. Something didn’t feel right. At that moment I clearly heard my father’s voice. Down. Go down. Stick to your guns, Peter.
- Then from above me, I heard another voice – a women’s. “Come on up. Use the red rope.” Alison Hargreaves, a fellow climber, was encouraging me to join her. Note for you, peter. Was that my father’s voice again? The unsettled feeling in me grew stronger. Finally I told Jeff Lakes, my climbing partner, that I was going down. He too was feeling unsure, but decided to go on ahead. As I looked back at Jeff a couple of time, until a thick, threatening cloud blocked with view, soon the same fast moving cloud would engulf the summit and plunge me into an isolated world of terror.
- Don’t be afraid to make your own decisions. Don’t be afraid to stand alone. That was my father’s voice.
- Alone in body but not in spirit I descended. But with fear tapping upon my shoulders, I was caught in the frightening situation of the rising storm. The flanks of the mountain were out of control and so, perhaps, was I.
- Fear makes you careful. Fear makes you good. Fear, my father told me, is not something you manage. So I seized on what I could control: a well-clipped descender and a taut rope. For hours I continued to go down rope.
- When I awoke in my tent the next morning, it was silent, sunny, still. I alone had successfully descended from the summit pyramid of K2 that night.
The seven above were dead.
- Life in a famous family has its advantages and disadvantages. Lunches with Indira Gandhi or a trip to the North Pole with Neil Armstrong are one – although a rather extraordinary – side of the coin. The other can be a battle with identity and independence. When I am 80 years old myself, I know I will more than likely still be greeted with, “Wait a minute, you’re Ed Hillary’s son!” But my father is quite a man and I am proud of him.
Questions:
(a) Answer the following questions briefly:
(i) What does the son read in his father’s eyes? 1
(ii) What is “The Bottleneck”? 1
(iii) What was the fate of the seven companions who climbed the K2 summit? 1
(iv) In what way does the author consider himself more fortunate than other mountaineers? 1
(v) State any two qualities that the speaker has inherited from his father. 2
(vi) “The Hillary family is a limited production mountaineering establishment.” What does the speaker mean by this? 2
(vii) What was the father’s opinion about ‘fear’? How did it help the author? 2
(b) Pick out words in the passage that mean.
(i) Sitting on a high and dangerous position. (Para 4) 1
(ii) Tight and completely stretched. (Para 3) 1
2. Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
There are two problems that cause great worry to our educationists – the problem of religious and moral instruction in a land of many faiths and the problem arising out of a large variety of languages.
Taking up the education of children we see that they should be trained to love one another, to be kind and helpful to all, to be tender to the lower animals and to observe and think right. The taks of teaching them how to read and write the count and calculate is important, but it should not make us lose sight of the primary aim of moulding personality in the right way.
For this, it is necessary to call into aid culture, tradition and religion. But in our country we have, in the same school, to look after boys and girls born into different faiths and belonging to families that live diverse ways of life and follow different forms of worship associated with different denomination of religion. It will not do to tread the easy path of evading the difficulty by attending solely to physical culture and intellectual education. We have to evolve a suitable teaching method for serving the spiritual needs of school children professing different faiths. We should thereby promote an atmosphere of mutual respect, a fuller understanding and helpful cooperation among the different communities in our society. Again we must remain one people and we have therefore to give basic training in our schools to speak and understand more languages than one and to appreciate and respect the different religions prevailing in India. It is not right for us in India to be dissuaded from this by considerations as to overtaking the young mind.
Any attempt to do away with or steamroll the differences through governmental coercion and indirect pressure would be us futile as it would be unwise. Any imposition of a single way of life and form of worship on all children or neglect of a section of the pupils in this respect or barren secularization will lead to conflict between school and home life which is harmful. On the other hand, If we give due recognition to the providing prevailing faiths in the educational institutions by providing suitable facilities for religious teaching of boys and girls of all communities, this may itself serve as a broadening influence of great national value.
Questions:
(a) On the basic of your reading of the above passage make notes on it, using recognizable abbreviations wherever necessary. Add a suitable title to it. 5
(b) Make a summary of the above passage in about 80 words. 3
SECTION B – Writing
3. You are arranging a picnic to Kaziranga next Sunday. Describe your preparations to your classmates in about 100 words. 6
Or
A distinguished person visited your school/college recently. Prepare a report on the visit in about 800 words to be published in “The Assam Tribune”. 6
4. Young boys and girl hardly show any respect to rules and regulations these days. They often end up by creating problems for themselves and for their parents. Your Principal has called for a special session to discuss this issue. Prepare a speech to be delivered in the session as a representative of the students. (100 – 150 words) 6
Or
You are concerned about the reckless feeling of trees leading to environment degradation. Write an article on “Crow more trees” to be published in a local newspaper. (100-150 words) 6
Or
You are Ranjana/Ranjan. You have seen advertisement in a local daily for the post of a science teacher in Pub Guwahati High School. Write a letter to the Headmaster of the school in response to the advertisement applying for the post. 8
SECTION C
6. (a) Fill in the blanks with suitable determiners: ½ x 2=1
(i) We have very ____ information. (few/little)
(ii) Do you have ____ question? (Some/Any)
(b) Rewrite the following sentences with the correct form of the verb given in brackets:
½ x 2=1
(i) English (speak) all over the world.
(ii) If it (rain), we will not go.
(c) Fill in the blanks with appropriate model auxiliaries: (The sense of the sentence is indicated in brackets) ½ x 2=1
(i) We ____ love our country, (moral duty)
(ii) I ____ pay my loan. (compulsion)
(d) Correct the following: ½ x 2=1
(i) My mother never listens what I say.
(ii) It is raining since morning.
7. (a) Complete the following piece of conversation by choosing the correct alternative from the brackets: 2
I said to him, “____ (what/when) are you doing now?”
He replied, “I am writing a few essays as part of my ____. (Preparing/Preparation) for the examination.”
(b) Rewrite the following sentences as directed: 1×2=2
(i) She is the most intelligent girl in the class. (use the comparative degree of ‘intelligent’)
(ii) He knows what my name is. (Make it a simple sentence)
8. Rearrange the words in the following to form meaningful sentences: 1×2=2
(i) Slowly and we near silently the target moved.
(ii) Talking please stop you will?
SECTION D – Textual Questions
9. Read one of the stanzas given below and answer the question that follow:
- “And who art thou?” Said I to the soft-falling shower.
Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, as here translated :
“I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of the rain
Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land and the bottomless sea”.
(i) Where do these lines occur? 1
(ii) How does the shower fall? 1
(iii) Where does the rain rise from? 1
(iv) Find a word in the passage that refers to “Something that cannot be touched”? 1
(v) Why does the rain describe itself as the Poem of Earth? 4
Or
- Silence surrounds us. I would have
Him prodigal, returning to
His father’s house, the home he knew,
Rather than see him make and move
His world, I would forgive him too,
Shaping from sorrow a new love
(i) Why does the father say that silence surrounds them? 1
(ii) Does the speaker want his son to belong to a different world? 1
(iii) What can be shaped out of sorrow? 1
(iv) Find a word in the passage that means “Extravagant” 1
(v) What idea do you form about the relationship between father and son from the quoted lines? 4
10. Answer any two of the following questions: 2×3=6
(a) Whose transient feet is the poet talking about? Why are they transient?
(b) Why is the age of eleven so important for the poet?
(c) Why would the poet’s mother laugh at the snapshot?
11. Answer briefly any five of the following questions: 2×5=10
(a) Mention three reasons why the author’s grandmother was disturbed when he started going to the city school?
(b) What did Wu Daozi paint for the Emperor?
(c) What is the Green Movement and what are its aims?
(d) What did Elwin notice about our attitude towards wild animals?
(e) How did the sparrows react to the death of the author’s grandmother?
(f) How is man the most dangerous animal is this world?
12. Compare and contrast the Chinese and the European concepts of painting. 6
Or
“We have not inherited this Earth from our forefathers; we have borrowed it from our children”. Justify this statement. 6
13. Comment on the influence of English – the language and the way of life – on Indian society as reflected in Iyengar’s story “Ranga’s Marriage”. What is the narrator’s attitude to English? 6
Or
“The school system often curbs individual talent” – Discuss with reference to Einstein’s experience at school. 6
14. Answer briefly any two of the following question: 2×3=6
(a) What was Einstein’s idea of education?
(b) What did Ranga think about marriage?
(c) How did Ranga and Ratna react when they saw each other?
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You may also like: AHSEC CLASS 11 (HS 1st year) past years English question papers with solution