1. Write a Précis of the following passage and suggest suitable title: 25

The touring companies had set up their stages, when playing for towns-folk and not for the nobility in the large inn yards where the crowd could sit or stand around the platform and the superior patrons could seat themselves in the galleries outside the bedrooms of the inn. The London theatres more or less reproduced this setting, though they were usually round or oval in shape and stage was more than a mere platform, having entrances at each side, a curtained inner stage and an upper stage or balcony. For imaginative Poetic drama this type of stage had many advantages. There was no scenery to be changed, the dramatist could move freely and swiftly from place to place. Having only words at his command, be had to use his imagination and compel his audience to use theirs. The play could move at great speed. Even with such limited evidence as we possess, it is not hard to believe that the Elizabethan audience, attending a poetic tragedy or comedy, found in the theatre an imaginative experience of a richness and intensity that we cannot discover in our own drama.

2. Read the following passage and answer any two questions given at the end: 20

Another intellectual effect of almost all teaching, except the highest grade of university tuition, is that it encourages docility and the belief that definite answers are known on questions which are legitimate matters of debate. I remember an occasion when a number of us were discussing which was the best of Shakespeare’s plays. Most of us were concerned in advancing arguments for unconventional opinions but a clever young man, who, from the elementary schools, had lately risen to the university, informed us, as a fact of which we were unaccountably ignorant, that Hamlet is the best of Shakespeare’s plays. After this the subject was closed. Every clergyman in America knows why Rome fell: it was owing to the corruption of morals depicted by Juvenal and Petronius. The fact that morals became exemplary about two centuries before the fall of the Western Empire is unknown or ignored. English children are taught one view of the French Revolution, French children are taught another, neither is true, but in each case it would be highly imprudent to disagree with the teacher, and few feel any inclination to do so. Teachers ought to encourage intelligent disagreement on the part of their pupils, even urging them to read books having opinions opposed to those of the instructor. But this is seldom done, with the result that much education consists in the instilling of unfounded dogmas in place of spirit of inquiry. This results, not necessarily from any fault in the teacher, but from a curriculum which demands too much apparent knowledge, with a consequent need of haste and definiteness.

a) What is the main defect of teaching? Describe in your own words.
b) What are the causes of the instilling of unfounded dogmas in the mind of students?
c) Briefly describe the main points presented by the writer of this passage.

3. Write an essay about 200 words on any one of the following: 20
a) Competition in Education
b) Science and Religion
c) My View of Life

4. Use any five of the following idioms in your sentences: 15
a) As cool as a cucumber.
b) Have your cake and eat too.
c) In a Pickle.
d) Take a cake.
e) Sell like hot cakes.
f) As flat as a Pancake.
g) Take something with a grain of salt.
h) Like two peas in a pod.

5. Use any five of the following pairs of words in your sentences to differentiate their meaning: 10

1. Custom, habit,
2. deface, efface,
3. differ ,defer,
4. conduct, character,
5. considerate, considerable,
6. complement, compliment,
7. feet, feat,
8. fair, fare,
9. enviable, envious.

6. Transform any five of the following sentences into indirect form: 10
a) The boy said to his teacher, “I do not know the answer”.
b) The beggar said, “May you live long and grow rich”
c) "It is very hot today, “cried the boys, “we cannot play.”
d) She said, “what a fine morning it is!”
e) She said, “I am not telling a lie.”
f) He said, "I will come to see you tomorrow.”
g) He said to him, “I really need your help.”
h) She said. “Can you tell me what the time is.”

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