Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT-K) 2010 M.Sc Human Development English for communication - Question Paper
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, KHARAGPUR
Date:...............FN/SN Time:2 Hrs Full Marks: 60 No. of students: 700
END(Autumn) Semester 2010-11, Dept: All Sub. No. HS13001
Subject Name: English for communication
Summary: This exam is conducted in the name of basic engineering to every Undergraduate learner who entered IIT on the basis of JEE.This helps the learner for the personality development and also provide basic English knowledge.
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, KHARAGPUR
Full Marks 60 No of Students 700
Date
FN/AN Time: 2 Hrs
Autumn/Spring Semester 2010-11 Deptt. Ail
Sub No HS13001
Yr B.Tech(H)/B.Arch{H)/M.Sc
Sub Name
English for Communication
Instructions: Section A and B are compulsory. Answer any two questions from Section C in not more than 350 words each choosing at least one from prose and one from poetry.[ Speaking and Listening components of the exam were completed before the commencement of the end semester examination.]
A
l.Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow at the end:(10xl)
1 I have yet to meet a poetry-lover under thirty who was not an introvert, or an introvert who was not
2 unhappy in adolescence. At school, particularly, maybe, if, as in my own case, it is a boarding school, he
3 sees the extrovert successful, happy, and good and himself unpopular or neglected; and what is hardest
4 to bear is not unpopularity, but the consciousness that it is deserved, that he is grubby and inferior and
5 frightened and dull. Knowing no other kind of society than the contingent, he imagines that this
6 arrangement is part of the eternal scheme of things, that he is doomed to a life of failure and envy. It is
7 not till he grows up, till years later he runs across the heroes of his school days and finds them grown
8 commonplace and sterile, that he realizes that the introvert is the lucky one, the best adapted to an
9 industrial civilization the collective values of which are so infantile that he alone can grow, who has
10 educated his fantasies and learned how to draw upon the resources of his inner life. At the time,
11 however, his adolescence is unpleasant enough. Unable to imagine a society in which he would feel at
12 home, he turn away from the human to the nonhuman: homesick he will seek, not his mother, but
13 mountains or autumn woods, and the growing life within him will express itself in a devotion to music
14 and thoughts upon mutability and death. Art for him will be something infinitely precious, pessimistic,
15 and hostile to life. If it speaks of love it must be love frustrated, for ail success seems to him noisy and
16 vulgar; if it moralizes, it must counsel a stoic resignation, for the world he knows is well content with
17 itself and will not change.
18 Deep as first love and wild with all regret,
19 O death In life, the days that are no more.
20 Now more than ever seems it sweet to die
21 To cease upon the midnight with no pain.
22 That to the adolescent is the authentic poetic note and whoever is the first in his life to strike it, whether
23 Tennyson, Keats, Swinbume, Housman or another, awakens a passion of imitation and an affectation
24 which no subsequent refinement or sophistication of his taste can entirely destroy. In my own case it
25 was Hardy in the summer of 1923; for more than a year I read no one else and I do not think that I was
26 ever without one volume or another or the beautifully produced Wessex edition in my hands: I
27 smuggled them into class, carried them about on Sunday walks, and took them up to the dormitory to
28 read in the early morning,
29 45 though they were far too unwieldy to be read in bed with comfort. In the autumn of 1924 there was
30 a palace revolution after which he had to share his kingdom with Edward Thomas, until finally they were
31 both defeated by EHiot at the battle of Oxford in 1926. Besides serving as the archetype of the Poetic,
32 Hardy was also an expression of the contemporary scene. He was both my Keats and my Sandburg.
33 To begin with, he looked like my father: that broad unpampered moustache, bald forehead, and deeply
34 lined sympathetic face belonged to that other world of feeling and sensation. Here was a writer whose
35 emotions, if sometimes monotonous and sentimental in expression, would be deeper and more faithful
36 than my own, and whose attachment to the earth would be more secure and observant.
(Adapted from an article written by W H Auden)
1.According to the author, poetry lovers under thirty generally
A. have a strong sense of their own inferiority during school years
B. are always products of boarding schools
C. have an unhappy home life
D. are outgoing as adolescents
E. long to return to early childhood
2. The author's main purpose is apparently to
A. describe what lead to his being an introvert
B. explore the reasons for his early taste in poetry
C. explain what lead to his becoming a poet
D. account for the unhappy adolescent's aesthetic sense
E. criticize a system that makes young people feel unhappy and neglected
3. The author regards the introverted adolescent as ultimately lucky because he has
A. become financially successful in an industrialized society
B. ceased to envy others
C. cultivated inner resources that he will need in modern society
D. a better genera) education than those who were envied in school
E. learned to appreciate nature
4. To the adolescent the 'authentic poetic note' is one of
A. pain and affirmation
B. hostility and vulgarity
C. contentment and peace
D. purity and love
E. melancholy and acceptance
5. It can be inferred that, for the author, the poetry of Hardy is
A. something with which he is not entirely comfortable
B. a temporary interest soon supplanted by other poetry
C. a secret obsession that he is reluctant to confess
D. his first poetic love that time has not entirely erased
6. The poetry quoted (lines 18-21) is most likely included as
A. extracts from the author's own poetry
B. extracts from Hardy's poetry
C. examples of poetry that appeals to the unhappy adolescent
0. the type of poetry much admired by all poetry lovers
E. examples of schoolboy poetry
7. It can be inferred that Edward Thomas
A. was once held in high esteem by the author
B. was a better poet than Hardy
C. was writing in 1924
D. had views opposed to Eliot
E. wrote poetry similar to that of Hardy
8. The author mentions Carl Sandburg (line 32) as
A. an example of a modern poet
B. an example of a traditional figure
C. having a poetic appearance
D. a poet to appeal to young people
E. resembling his father
9. The author qualifies his appreciation of Hardy by pointing out that Hardy's poetic techniques were
A. sometimes unmoving
B. not always deeply felt
C. occasionally lacking in variety
D. always emotional
E. irrelevant to certain readers
10. The author feels that Hardy's physical appearance suggested
A. deep and lasting feelings
B. paternal values
C. careworn old age
D. a contemporary writer
E. fatherly concern
B
1. Explain the following passages with reference to context:(10 xl)
a.they tell each other how
Old King Harsha's men
beat soft gongs
to stand a crowd of ten
thousand monks
in a queue, to give them
and the single visiting Chinaman
a hundred pieces of gold a pearl, and a length of cloth; so, miss another bus, the eighth and begin to work, for King Harsha's monks had nothing but their own two feet.
X. Who are the 'they' in the poem?
2. Who is Old King Harsha?
3. Who is the single visiting Chinaman?
4. What does pearl and a length of cloth stand for?
5. What does the author mean by saying "miss another bus"?
b. There was an element of irony in our living in Dhaka as 'foreigners', for Dhaka was in fact our ancestral city: both my parents from families which belonged to the middle-class Hindu community that had once flourished there. But long before the Muslim majority state of Pakistan was created my ancestors had moved westwards, and thanks to their wanderlust we were Indians now, and Dhaka was foreign territory to us although we still spoke its dialect and still had several relatives living in the old Hindu neighbourhoods in the heart of the city.
1. What was the irony in the author's living in Dhaka as 'foreigners'?
2. On what basis was Pakistan created?
3. To which city did the author's ancestors move?
4. How did the author's family become Indians?
5. What relationship does dialect have with belonging to a place?
C
Answer any two of the following questions in not more than 350 words each taking care to choose one from poetry and the other from prose.(20 x2)
1. Who were the strangers who fitted up the author's house and why were they given shelter by the author's father in In an Antique LancR Why was the boy not allowed to mix with them on one particular night?
2. What was the image of 'the negro' in the minds of white people? How does Langston Hughes' poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers change that image?
3. What was the relationship of English to African languages during the imperial era according to Ngugi wa thiong'o? How did the mirror of English prevent African people from seeing themselves and others?
4. Compare the lives of ordinary citizens in the poems Some Indian Uses of History and An Unknown Citizen.
5. "The Two Friends," and "The Butterfly" belong to two mystical traditions but they convey the same message. Discuss.
6. Is the cage without birds a real masterpiece? Discuss in the light of your reading of "Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon."
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