CBSE Class 10 English Term 2 Sample Paper
Class – X Exam 2021-22
English – Language and Literature (184)
Time Allowed: 120 minutes
(Maximum Marks: 40)
General Instructions:
1. The Question Paper contains THREE sections-READING, WRITING & GRAMMAR and LITERATURE.
2. Attempt questions based on specific instructions for each part. (09)
SECTION A- READING (10 Marks)
1. Read the passage given below.
1. Other animals move about the world as nature made them. Why then, did man start to adorn himself by hanging things round the neck, arms, waist and legs or putting things on his head.
2. We can imagine many reasons. If an exceptionally strong or brave man succeeded in killing an exceptionally large bear, might he not get the idea of boring a hole through one of its teeth with a sharp flint and lying the tooth round his neck in order to remind himself of his great achievement and to show his friends what a great man he was? Gradually, it might have become the custom in that tribe for all strong and brave hunters to wear a bear’s tooth, and it might be regarded as a disgrace not to wear one and a sign that one was weak or very young.
3. Another man might make an ornament of a coloured shell or stone simply because he liked it or because its shape reminded him of something. Then if he happened to escape from some danger when he was wearing it he might think the ornament had something to do with it- that it had magic qualities. And his friends and relations would not be satisfied until they had an ornament of the same kind.
4. People who wear ornaments would soon learn to arrange them in different ways according to their size and colour in order to make them more decorative and impressive. A necklace found in Italy with the skeleton of young man of the Stone Age was quite elaborate. It consisted of stage’s teeth arranged at intervals with, between them, two upper rows made up of the vertebrae of a fish and row of shells.
5. Another reason why men might tie feathers, horns, skins and all kinds of other things to themselves would be in order to make themselves look fierce and more terrifying to animals or to the men of other tribes.
6. Objects such as sea-shells that came from a distance and were therefore, scarce for people living far inland- would come in time to have a special value and might be worn only by chiefs and their families in order to show that they were particularly important people.
7. Primitive tribes living today often associate themselves with some particular animal or bird, such as an eagle or lion, or with a particular place, such as a mountain or river. Man may have started doing this kind of thing very early in his history. Then, every member of a group of family may have worn something such as feathers, claws or even a stone or wooden object of a certain shape or colour, to represent the animal or mountain or whatever it might be that they believed themselves to be connected with.
Based on your understanding of the passage, answer ANY FIVE questions from the six given below.
i. How did man start to adorn himself?
ii. What was the specialty about the necklace found in Italy?
iii. Why did man tie feather and skin to himself?
iv. What might be regarded as a disgrace?
v. Find the word from the above passage which mean the same as ‘Relating to the earliest times’.
vi. Rewrite the following sentence by replacing the underlined phrase with a word that means the same from para 2.
Over the following decades, the curriculum was slowly over a period of time expanded, with additional offerings in history, government, languages, geology, and geography.
2. Read the case based factual passage given below. 1*5
1. The magnitude 9.0 Japan’s Tohoku Earthquake occurred at 14 :46 local time on Friday. 11 March 2011, 125 km east coast of Honshu and 380 km far from Tokyo and rattled the large parts of Japan and some part of east China and Russia with 30 km depth of the hypocenter. This earthquake that lasted approximately 3 minutes (170 seconds) caused a 130 km long by 159 km wide rupture zone on the pacific plate subduction zone and followed by a huge tsunami with more than 40 meter waves. The destructive aftermaths of this incident made an irreparable disaster not only for the Japan, but also for the whole world because except for the enormous death toll and debris, the damages of nuclear power plants were a hazardous unexpected tragedy.
2. According to the report of the Japanese National Police Agency, 15854 dead. 3167 missing and 26992 injured across twenty prefectures are the result of this devastating earthquake and tsunami which ruined more than 125000 buildings. Moreover. it caused long blackouts for more than 4.4 million buildings and left 1.5 million buildings out of water for days, also large fires were triggered one after another even for weeks after the main quake.
3. Explosion and demolition of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant (Fukushima Daiichi), which generated radioactive contamination near the plant’s area with irreversible damages to the environment, was one the most significant issues of this catastrophe and ranked 7 (the most severe level for nuclear power plant) based on the International Nuclear Event Scale, similar to the Chernobyl disaster on 26 April 1986. Therefore, it is not strange to consider to this earthquake as the most important destructive seismic event of the beginning of the twenty first century in the advanced industrial world. Division of total 19100 death and missed people by the reason as of 10th March 2012.
(CATDAT) is as follows:
4. Losses intensified by hit of the tsunami as the statistics shows it was more fatal (figure given above) and also more buildings destroyed by its strike. However, the quake was the main cause of the partial damage of buildings. On the basis of your understanding of the Passage, answer ANY FIVE questions from the six given below.
i. “The destructive aftermaths of earthquake followed by tsunami made an irreparable disaster not only for the Japan, but also for the whole world.” Why?
ii. Write any two destructive aftermaths of the 11 March, 2011 disaster.
iii. What can be considered as the most important destructive seismic event of the beginning of the twenty first century in the advanced industrial world?
iv. According to the passage, what was the main reason of maximum people died on 11 March, 2011?
v. According to the data as of 10 March 2012, how many people died and missed because of the 2011 disaster?
vi. What was the main cause of the partial damage of buildings?
SECTION B- WRITING & GRAMMAR (10 Marks)
3. Attempt ANY ONE from i and ii. 5
i. Given below is a newspaper report on the state of cancer prevailing in India. You have been asked to write an analytical paragraph on ‘Cancer – a silent killer’ Taking information from the clipping given below together with your own ideas, write this paragraph in not more than 120 words.
“In India, cities are more cancer-prone than rural areas. In the early 1990’s, we expected one out of 10-15 urban Indians to get cancer in their life -time, that is every second or third family would have to face this disease.
This is partly due to high levels of benzene in the air and also that the metros are exposed to high levels of pesticides in their foods. In order to check the steady growth of cancer in the country, the Government shall have to give priority to preventive action. At the same time measures to undertake improvement in facilities for the treatment of cancer shall have to be adopted.”
ii. You are interested in a short term course in personality development. Write a letter to the Director, Personal
are, Pune, Enquiring about the details about the course. You are Manoj/Meeta of 13, Shivaji Road, Pune.
4. The following paragraph has not been edited. There is one error in each line. Identify the error and write its correction against the correct blank number. Remember to underline the correction. The first one has been done for you.
| Error | Correction | |
| Being with her give one | E.g. give | gave |
| the new kind of energy. When she | (a) | |
| put his hand on your head | (b) | |
| to blessed you or you touched | (c) | |
| her you could feel her love. |
5. Read the following dialogue between Gardener and Dev and complete the passage that follows.
| Gardener: Did you water the plant today? Dev: No, but I will, today. Gardener: Then tomorrow I will get a sapling of sunflower. |
The Gardener asked Dev (a) _____. Dev replied negatively but said he would that day. Then the gardener said
that (b) _____.
SECTION C- LITERATURE (20 Marks)
6. Answer ANY SIX questions in 30-40 words each. 2*6
i. What was the most fascinating thing that Valli saw on the street?
ii. What justification did Lomov give to Natalya and Chubukov to prove that he is the rightful owner of Meadows?
iii. Is the purpose of someone constantly giving instructions to Amanda being fulfilled? Explain.
iv. Why do humans keep awake in the dark and weep for their sins while animals never do such things?
v. How did Belinda, Ink, Blink and Mustard react on seeing the pirate?
vi. What other interests besides science did Richard Ebright pursue?
vii. Why did Bishamber’s marriage with Bholi not take place?
7. Answer ANY TWO of the following in about 120 words each. 4*2
i. Bread and cakes were an integral part of Goan life in olden days. Describe the memories that author recollects about good old Portuguese days and their loaves of bread.
ii. ‘Mme Forestier proved to be a true friend’. Elaborate this point in a paragraph and then end the story “The Necklace” the way you want to.
iii. Valli was so overcome with sadness to see the dead cow that she lost all enthusiasm. Do you feel the same way? If you feel concerned about the plight of animals falling prey to the fast moving traffic, what efforts will you make to make road travel safer?