Unseen data ENGLISH [Communicative] - Unseen data

1. In a historic moment for India, Mariyappan Thangavelu won a gold medal while compatriot Varun Singh Bhati clinched a bronze in the men's high jump T-42 event at the Rio Paralympics 2016. The 20-year-old Thangavelu made a leap of 1.89 m, while Bhati jumped his personal best of 1.86 m to finish third. USA's Sam Grewe bagged the silver medal. India's other medal prospect Sharad Kumar finished at number six. T-42 is a disability classification in the sport for differently-abled track-and-field athletes with single "above the knee' amputation or a comparable disability.

2. The event witnessed a fierce contest with six of the 12 athletes clearing the 1.74 m mark in their first eight attempts. But Thangavelu became a part of the leading group after his 10th attempt when he cleared the 1.77 m mark along with Lukasz Mamczarz of Poland, China's Zhiqiang Zhing and Kumar. He then went into the lead along with Bhati as both managed to clear the 1.83 m mark. Kumar, however, could not improve his performance and eventually crashed out of medal contention. Grewe pushed Thangavelu and Bhati to the joint second position by clearing 1.86 m to grab the top spot. But both Indians made a strong comeback by equalling the height to share the pole position. Thangavelu eventually made sure of the gold with an effort of 1.89 m in his final attempt while Grewe and Bhati finished with best efforts of 1.86 m.

3. Thangavelu was injured at the age of five, when a bus accident left him with a permanent disability while bronze medal winner Bhati was diagnosed with polio which led to a deformity in his legs.

Questions:
(i) What is the winning of gold and bronze medals by Mariyappan Thangavelu and Varun Singh Bhati respectively is called by the author?

(ii) What is the term T-42 used for in the sports at Rio Olympics?

(iii) Why is the T-42 event regarded as a fierce contest?

(iv) How did the both athletes make a strong comeback at the Rio Olympics 2016?

(v) What led to a deformity in Bhati's legs?

(vi) Sam Grewe belongs to:
a) China
b) England
c) USA
d) Australia

(vii) In his final attempt Thangavelu made sure of the:
a) all of these
b) bronze medal
c) gold medal
d) silver medal

(viii) Thangavelu met with a bus accident at the age of five which left him with________.

(ix) Sharad Kumar's performance in Rio Olympics was not good.
a) True
b) False

(x) Which word in para 2 is the same in meaning to finally?
a) cleared
b) eventually
c) equally
d) witnessed

1. As the Farm grew, it was found necessary to make some provision for the education of its boys and girls. There were, among these, Hindu, Muslim, Parsi and Christian boys and some Hindu girls. It was not possible, and I did not think it necessary to engage special teachers for them. It was not possible, for qualified Indian teachers were scarce, and even when available, none would be ready to go to a place 21 miles distant from Johannesburg on a small salary. Also we were certainly not over-flowing with money. And I did not think it necessary to import teachers from outside the Farm. I did not believe in the existing system of education, and I had a mind to find out by experience and experiment the true system.

2. Only this much I knew that, under ideal conditions, true education could be imparted only by the parents, and that then there should be the minimum of outside help, that Tolstoy Farm was a family, in which I occupied the place of the father, and that I should so far as possible shoulder the responsibility for the training of the young.

3. The conception no doubt was not without its flaws. All the young people had not been with me since their childhood, they had been brought up in different conditions and environments, and they did not belong to the same religion. How could 1 do full justice to the young people, thus circumstanced, even if I assumed the place of pater-families?

4. But I had always given the first place to the culture of the heart or the building of character, and as I felt confident the moral training could be given to all alike, no matter how different their ages and their upbringing, I decided to live amongst them all twenty-four hours of the day as their father. I regarded character building as the proper foundation for their education and, if the foundation was firmly laid, I was sure that the children could learn all the other things themselves or with the assistance of friends.

Questions:

(i) What did Gandhiji find necessary as the Farm grew?

(ii) Why was it not possible to engage special teachers for boys and girls at the Farm?

(iii) What position did Gandhiji enjoy at Tolstoy Farm and how?

(iv) What did Gandhiji consider as the proper foundation for the education of children and why did he think so?

(v) Find a word from the passage which has the same meaning as employ.

(vi) Write the verb form of education.

(vii) Find a word from the passage opposite in meaning to different.

(viii) Write the adverb form of confident.

(ix) The narrator did not believe in the existing system of
a) hiring teachers
b) education
c) law and order
d) public welfare

(x) The narrator had always given the first place to the:
a) foundation for their education
c) culture of the heart
b) building of character
d) Both culture of the heart and building of character

(A) Since its formation over 4.5 billion years ago, the Earth has been hit many times by asteroids and comets whose orbits bring them into the inner solar system. These objects, collectively known as ‘Near Earth Objects’ or NEOs, still pose a danger to the Earth today. Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighbourhood. Composed mostly of water or ice with embedded dust particles, Comets are originally formed in the cold outer planetary system while most of the rocky asteroids are formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is largely due to their status as the relatively unchanged remnant debris from the solar system formation process some 4.6 billion years ago. The giant outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) formed from an agglomeration of billions of comets and the leftover bits and pieces from this formation process are the comets we see today. Likewise, today’s asteroids are the bits and pieces left over from the initial agglomeration of the inner planets that include Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

(B) As the primitive, leftover building blocks of the solar system formation process, comets and asteroids offer clues to the chemical mixture from which the planets formed some 4.6 billion years ago. If we wish to know the composition of the primordial mixture from which the planets are formed, then we must determine the chemical constituents of the leftover debris from this formation process-the comets and asteroids. Depending on the size of the impacting object, such a collision can cause massive damage on local to global scales. It is an astronomical certainty that sometime in the future Earth will undergo another cosmic impact. There is strong scientific evidence that cosmic collisions have played a major role in the mass extinctions documented in Earth’s fossil record. That such cosmic collisions can still occur today was demonstrated graphically in 1994 when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart and 21 fragments, some as large as 2 km in diameter, crashed into the atmosphere of Jupiter. If these fragments had impacted on Earth instead, we would have suffered a global catastrophy!

(C) The earth is occasionally hit by craggy remnants of creation known to cross the Earth’s path. These lie in a loose belt between Mars and Jupiter like so much rubble left over from creation. The first asteroid was too faint to be seen by the naked eye. It was discovered by an Italian monk named Giuseppe Piazzi in Palermo, Sicily. The largest found is about 8 km wide.

(D) Slamming into the Earth at roughly 26 km a second, a large asteroid could explode with the force of a million hydrogen bombs, lifting enough rock and dust to block most sunlight. Cold and darkness could last for months, destroying agriculture, leading to the death of a billion or more people from starvation.

(E) The dangers posed by these intruders in the inner solar system are not the subject of serious scientific investigation. “The risk is real” said Dr. David Morrison, Chairman of the study undertaken by nearly 100 scientists of NASA. Dr. Morrison further says that the asteroid threat has dawned on scientists only slowly as it is hard for the layman to comprehend. But the fact, he said, is that mankind lives in a kind of cosmic shooting gallery.

(F) What can be done if one of these surveys finds an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth? Scientists and engineers are looking at ways of using a spacecraft to gently change orbit of an asteroid.

Questions:

(i) What are Near Earth Objects (NEOs)?

(ii) Why is there scientific interest in comets and asteroids?

(iii) Who discovered the first asteroid and where?

(iv) What catastrophic effects could a large asteroid impact have on Earth?

(v) Find a word from the passage which has the same meaning as 'primitive'.

(vi) Write the verb form of 'collision'.

(vii) Find a word from the passage opposite in meaning to 'cold'.

(viii) Write the adverb form of 'massive'.

(ix) What event demonstrated that cosmic collisions can still occur today?
A) The impact of asteroids on Mars
B) The collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter
C) The discovery of the first asteroid by Giuseppe Piazzi
D) The launch of NASA's asteroid survey

(x) What is one proposed method to prevent an asteroid collision with Earth?
A) Using nuclear weapons to destroy the asteroid
B) Evacuating the Earth’s population
C) Using a spacecraft to gently change the orbit of the asteroid
D) Constructing a large shield around the Earth

(A) Rabindranath Tagore lived 80 years, from 1861 to 1941, leaving his mark on both centuries. His oeuvre is massive, spanning over 2,000 songs, 3,000 poems, 2,000 paintings, 90 short stories, dozens of novels, plays and dance-dramas, innumerable essays, creation of his educational experiments in Santiniketan and Sriniketan, engagement in debates on national and international issues, and so on. One may well ask: Is there a central theme in Tagore, or even a small set of themes? This is an important question because if there is, we must not lose sight of it when contemplating the vast range of his outputs. I do believe that there is a central theme, and that is his love of freedom, and non-conformity, which is evident in his works. Apart from being a literary genius, have you ever wondered what else did he love? Have you ever thought of tasting the bard’s favourite dishes

(B) Now Kolkata can boast of a cafeteria-cum-restaurant, ‘Cafe The’, where people can get a taste of Tagore’s culinary indulgences-all under one roof. It was conceived by Ratikanta Basu, who undertook a lot of research to make it a reality.

(C) The restaurant is located on Ho Chi Min Sarani in South Kolkata and is the first cafe-cum-restaurant in India that is exclusively dedicated to Tagore cuisine.

(D) Tagore would encourage the ‘thakurs’ (cooks) in his ancestral palace in the northern part of the city to introduce variations in the platter, by including local versions of Continental and Peshawari cuisine. Thus, the cross over culture ensconced silently in the Kitchens of ‘Thakurbari’ and it was launched, much before the clamour for cross-cultural cuisine actually started. (E) The poet’s innate wanderlust took him to places like Italy, Spain, England, Turkey, and he imbibed the food traditions of respective countries. Since he was exposed to both oriental and continental cuisine, a penchant to blend the two forms came naturally.

(F) There are not many documents to support that Tagore was a die-hard food lover. But he actually was one, and whenever he attended a lunch or dinner abroad, he used to collect and bring back the menu cards.

(G) A part of the menu card will be a facsimile of the menu laid out for the dinner party hosted by India society, London, in 1912 to felicitate Tagore on the occasion of the publication of ‘Gitanjali’, a collection of his poems. This collection was originally written in Bengali, the poems were based on medieval Indian lyrics of devotion. Their translation to English in 1912 garnered wide popularity among European audiences. The publication of Gitanjali in English led Tagore to become the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. The committee summed up their reasons as follows: “Because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.” Even the decor of the cafe in south Kolkata has been designed to suit the ambience, with large portraits of Tagore at various lunch and dinner parties across the world, his framed write-ups on food, and of course softly played Tagore songs.

Questions:

(i) What is the central theme of Tagore's work according to the passage?

(ii) What is unique about the 'Cafe The' in Kolkata?

(iii) What did Tagore encourage the 'thakurs' in his ancestral palace to do?

(iv) What significant event is commemorated by a part of the menu card at 'Cafe The'?

(v) Find a word from the passage which has the same meaning as 'oeuvre'.

(vi) Write the verb form of 'publication'.

(vii) Find a word from the passage opposite in meaning to  'continental'.

(viii) Write the adverb form of 'innate'.

(viii) What do you understand by “cross-cultural cuisine”?

(ix) Which of the following countries did Tagore visit that influenced his culinary tastes?
A) Italy
B) China
C) Russia
D) Japan

(x) Why did the Nobel Prize committee award Tagore the Nobel Prize for Literature?
A) For his novels
B) For his essays on freedom
C) For his profoundly sensitive, fresh, and beautiful verse
D) For his culinary contributions

(A) In spite of all the honours that were heaped upon him, Pasteur, as it has been said, remained simple at heart. Perhaps, the imagery of his boyhood days, when he drew the familiar scenes of his birthplace and his longing to be a great artist, never wholly left him.

(B) In truth, he did become a great artist, although he abandoned the brush forever after the age of 16. Like every artist of worth, he put his whole soul and energy into his work, and it was this very energy that in the end wore him out. For him, each sufferer was something more than just a case that has to be cured. He looked upon the fight against hydrophobia as a battle, and he was absorbed in his determination to win.

(C) The sight of injured children particularly moved him to an indescribable extent. He suffered with his patients, and yet he would not deny himself a share in their suffering. His greatest grief was when sheer physical exhaustion made him give up his active work. He retired to the estate at Villeneuve Etang, where he had his kennels for the study of rabies, and there he passed his last summer, as his great biographer, Vallery Radot, has said, “practicing the Gospel virtues.” “He revered the faith of his fathers,” says the same writer, “and wished without ostentation or mystery to receive its aid during his last period.”

(D) The attitude of this man to the science he had done so much to perfect can be best summed up in a sentence that he is reputed once to have uttered, concerning the materialism of many of his contemporaries in similar branches of learning to his own: “The more I contemplate the mysteries of Nature, the more my faith becomes like that of a peasant.” But even then, in that pain, he loved to see his former pupils and it was then that he would reiterate his life’s principles, that is ‘never cease to work’. So well had he kept his precept, that he rapidly began to sink from exhaustion.

(E) Finally, on September 27,1895, when someone leaned over his bed to offer him a cup of milk, he said sadly, “I cannot”. With a look of perfect resignation and peace, he seemed to have fallen asleep. He never again opened his eyes to the cares and sufferings of the world, which he had done so much to relieve and to conquer. He was within three months of his seventy-third birthday. Thus passed, as simply as a child, the man whom the French people were to vote plebiscite as the greatest man that France had ever produced. Napoleon, who has always been considered the idol of France, was placed fifth. No greater tribute could have been paid to Louis Pasteur, the tanner’s son, the scientist, the man of peace, the patient worker forfor for humanity.

Questions:

(i) What did Pasteur long to be in his boyhood days?

(ii) At what age did Pasteur abandon using the brush forever?

(iii) Where did Pasteur retire to after giving up his active work?

(iv) What was Pasteur's attitude towards the faith of his fathers?

(v) Find a word from the passage which has the same meaning as 'resignation'.

(vi) Write the verb form of 'contemplation'.

(vii) Find a word from the passage opposite in meaning to 'active'.

(viii) Write the adverb form of 'perfect'.

(ix) When did Pasteur pass away?
A) On his seventieth birthday
B) On September 27, 1895
C) In the summer at Villeneuve Etang
D) Three months after his seventy-third birthday

(x) Who was considered the idol of France before Pasteur was voted as the greatest man?
A) Louis Pasteur   B) Vallery Radot   
C) Napoleon         D) A peasant