University of Hyderabad (UoH) 2011 Ph.D English Entrance for - Question Paper
Department of English
PAGE 1
PH.D. ENGLISH ENTRANCE EXAMINATION, JUNE 2011
Max. Time: 2 Hours Max. Marks: 75
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Do NOT reveal your identity In any manner in any part of the Answer Book.
2. Enter your Hall Ticket Number on the first page of each answer book. There are three sections in all.
3. Write your answers ONLY in the space provided in the question paper. NO additional paper or answer book will be given.
4. This paper is divided into three sections: I, II and III. Sections I, EL
and III contain separate questions for literature and language. You must answer only literature questions if you wish to do your research in literature. You must answer only language questions if you wish to do your research in language.
5. Start your work on Page & .
6. Space for rough work is provided on Pages 20 and 26.
7. This question paper contains 30 pages in all. Ensure that all the pages have been printed before you start answering.
8. At the end of the examination return all three sections of the answer
book to the invigilator.
[Turn to Page 2 for Section I]
SECTION I: POETRY [TOTAL MARKS 25]
ONLY FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO DO A PROJECT IN LITERATURE
Write an essay on the following poem commenting on the form, style, content and context.
From Station Island
Like a convalescent, I took the hand stretched down from the jetty, sensed again an alien comfort as I stepped on ground
to find the helping hand still gripping mine, fish-cold and bony, but whether to guide or to be guided I could not be certain
for the tall man in step at my side
seemed blind, though he walked straight as a rush
upon his ash plant, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
Then I knew him in the flesh
out there on the tarmac among the cars,
wintered hard and sharp as a blackthorn bush.
His voice eddying with the vowels of all rivers came back to me, though he did not speak yet, a voice like a prosecutor's or a singer's,
cunning, narcotic, mimic, definite
as a steel nib's downstroke, quick and clean,
and suddenly he hit a litter basket
with his stick, saying, "Your obligation is not discharged by any common rite.
What you must do must be done on your own
so get back in harness. The main thing is to write
for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust
that imagines its haven like your hands at night
dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous. Take off from here. And don't be so earnest,
let others wear the sackcloth and the ashes.
Let go, let fly, forget.
You've listened long enough. Now strike your note."
It was as if I had stepped free into space alone with nothing that I had not known already. Raindrops blew in my face
as I came to. "Old father, mother's son, there is a moment in Stephen's diary for April the thirteenth, a revelation
set among my stars - that one entry has been a sort of password in my ears, the collect of a new epiphany,
the Feast of the Holy Tundish." "Who cares," he jeered, "any more? The English language belongs to us. You are raking at dead fires,
a waste of time for somebody your age.
That subject people stuff is a cod's game, infantile, like your peasant pilgrimage.
You lose more of yourself than you redeem doing the decent thing. Keep at a tangent.
When they make the tirde wide, it's time to swim
out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency,
echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,
elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea."
The shower broke in a cloudburst, the tarmac fumed and sizzled. As he moved off quickly
the downpour loosed its screens round his straight walk.
- Seamus Heaney
SECTION I [TOTAL MARKS 25]
ONLY FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO DO A PROJECT IN LANGUAGE
ATTEMPT ANY ONE QUESTION
(1) Examine the stress patterns of British and American English as shown in the words below. Are there systematic rules for stress in the two varieties? Formulate the rules independently for each variety and then compare the two varieties.
American British
|
A) advertisement |
[aedvsr' taizmsnt] |
[ad'v3t ismant] |
|
Bernard |
[bar'nard] |
['bsnad] |
|
inquiry |
['iQkw?ri] |
[ig'kwairi] |
|
moustache |
['mAStaeJ] |
[ma'staej] |
|
B) ancillary |
['acnsi.ken] |
[scn'sibn] |
|
capillary |
['kxpi'lxn] |
[kac'pibn] |
|
corollary |
['karaoeri] |
[ka'robn] |
|
laboratory |
['laebar.ton] |
[lae'boratari] |
|
C) commentary |
[kaman.ten] |
['komantan] |
|
category |
['kacDaon] |
['kaetagan] |
|
dictionary |
[dikja.neri] |
['dikjanan] |
|
inventory |
['invan.tan] |
['invantan] |
|
secretary |
['sekro,teri] |
['sekratan] |
|
D) ceremony |
['sera,mouni] |
['seramam] |
|
testimony |
[testa.moum] |
[testimam] |
(OR)
(2) Carefully look at the two sets of sentences given below. Analyze the difference In language use between "a" and "b" in each of the sets. Can you connect the differences to any social phenomenon?
1. a. "If you're going to town, get Rupert a new April from you-know-where."
b. "If you are going into Bedford, please get a new toy for Rupert the dog from the pet-shop (which we can't name because if the dog hears it he will go mad), to replace the one which we have come to call "April", which he has almost chewed to bits."
2. a. They're playing football and he kicks it and it goes through there it breaks the window and they're looking at it and he comes out and shouts at them because they've broken it so they run away and then she looks out and she tells them off.
b. Three boys are playing football and one boy kicks the ball and it goes through the window and the ball breaks the window and the boys are looking at it and a man comes out and shouts at them because they've broken the window so they run away and then that lady looks out of her window and she tells the boys off.
(OR)
(3) Look at the short story given below and frame two interactive tasks - one for "speaking" and the other for "writing". Pitch them for a group of adult learners who need to be trained in communication skills.
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD - A POLITICALLY CORRECT FAIRY TALE
Jim Gamer
There once was a young person named Red Riding Hood who lived with her mother on the edge of a large wood. One day her mother asked her to take a basket of fresh fruit and mineral water to her grandmothers house not because this was women's work, mind you, but because the deed was generous and helped engender a feeling of community. Furthermore, her grandmother was not sick, but rather was in full physical and mental health and was fully capable of taking care of herself as a mature adult.
So Red Riding Hood set off with her basket of food through the woods. Many people she knew believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place and never set foot in it. Red Riding Hood, however, was so confident in her own budding sexuality that such obvious Freudian imagery did not hinder her.
On her way to Grandma's house, Red Riding Hood was accosted by a Wolf, who asked her what was in her basket. She replied, "Some healthful snacks for my grandmother, who is certainly capable of taking care of herself as a mature adult."
The Wolf said, "You know, my dear, it isn't safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone."
Red Riding Hood said, "I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop your own, entirely valid worldview. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be on my way."
Red Riding Hood walked on along the main path. But, because his status outside society had freed him from slavish adherence to linear, Westem-style thought, the Wolf knew of a quicker route to Grandma's house. He burst into the house and ate Grandma, an entirely valid course of action for a carnivore such as himself. Then, unhampered by rigid, traditionalist notions of what was masculine or feminine, he put on Grandmas nightclothes and crawled Into bed.
Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said, "Grandma, I have brought you some fat-free, sodium-free snacks to salute you in your role of a wise and nurturing matriarch."
From the bed, the Wolf said softly, "Come closer, child, so that I might see you."
Red Riding Hood said, "Oh, I forgot you are as optically challenged as a bat. Grandma, what big eyes you have!"
"They have seen much, and forgiven much, my dear."
"Grandma, what a big nose you have only relatively, of course, and certainly attractive in its own way."
"It has smelled much, and forgiven much, my dear."
"Grandma, what big teeth you have!"
The Wolf said, "I am happy with who I am and what I am," and leaped out of bed. He grabbed Red Riding Hood in his claws, intent on devouring her. Red Riding Hood screamed, not out of alarm at the Wolfs apparent tendency toward cross-dressing, but because of his willful invasion of her personal space.
Her screams were heard by a passing woodchopper-person (or log-fuel technician, as he preferred to be called). When he burst into the cottage, he saw the melee and tried to intervene. But as he raised his ax, Red Riding Hood and the Wolf both stopped.
"And what do you think youre doing? asked Red Riding Hood.
The woodchopper-person blinked and tried to answer, but no words came to him.
"Bursting in here like a Neanderthal, trusting your weapon to do your thinking for you! she said. "Sexist! Spetiesist! How dare you assume that women and wolves can't solve their own problems without a man's help!"
When she heard Red Riding Hood's speech, Grandma jumped out of the Wolfs mouth, took the woodchopper-person's axe, and cut his head off. After this ordeal, Red Riding Hood, Grandma, and the Wolf felt a certain commonality of purpose. They decided to set up an alternative household based on mutual respect and cooperation, and they lived together in the woods happily ever after.
[TURN TO PAGE 8 FOR ANSWER SPACE]
[TURN TO PAGE 9]
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HALL TICKET NUMBER
Department of English
Page 13
PH.D. ENGLISH ENTRANCE EXAMINATION, JUNE 2011
SECTION II: ESSAY [TOTAL MARKS 35]
LITERATURE TOPICS ONLY FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO DO A PROJECT IN LITERATURE
Write an essay on any ONE of the following in the space provided on pages 15-19. Credit will be given for essays which are sharply focused and suitably illustrated.
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literature. |
[TURN TO PAGE 14 FOR LANGUAGE TOPICS] [TURN TO PAGE 15 FOR ANSWER SPACE]
Ph.D. Section II lAN<?MAgE_TQEK
ONLY FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO DO A PROJECT IN LANGUAGE
Write an essay on any ONE of the following in the space provided on pages 15-19. Credit will be given for essays which are sharply focused and suitably illustrated.
|
1. |
Needs Analysis and its importance |
|
2. |
ELT and the Indian corporate world |
|
3. |
Remedial courses: Implications, consequences |
|
4. |
The politics of curriculum design |
|
5. |
Use of bilingual methods in teaching secondary school English |
|
6. |
The sub-regional varieties of English in India |
|
7. |
The importance of Phonetics in English language education |
|
8. |
Effective versus affected English speakers |
|
9. |
A lesson-plan for teaching the continuous (progressive) form in English |
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10. |
Some linguistic essentialisms |
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11. |
Process writing versus product writing |
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12. |
Why Indians need English |
[TURN TO PAGE 16]
HALL TICKET NUMBER
PAGE 21
Department of English
PH.D. ENGLISH ENTRANCE EXAMINATION, JUNE 2011
SECTION III [TOTAL MARKS: 15]
Research Aptitude and Language Skills
ONLY FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO DO A PH.D. PROJECT IN LITERATURE
Read the following passage carefully. In response to the ideas in it, formulate a research project on the role of English in the Humanities curriculum. You may focus on English in India or any other part of the world. Develop your argument, identify and state possible sources, critical approaches, and methodology relevant to the project. Credit will be given to an essay that goes beyond mere summary and restatement of the ideas below, and displays creative and critical engcnement with the ideas.
PASSAGE
Humanists are specialists in an activity upon which we daily depend, consciously or not, in everything we do: the making and assessment of meaning. The making of such meaning shapes the world of the arts; it is the operating principle of politics and understanding of the law; it rules our religious belief; it lies at the core of higher education and the development and spread of new knowledge.
Those who belong to the university community know that such knowledge often arrives in unassimilated forms that are unintelligible, unusable, or inapplicable to the purposes for which it was sought and that must, sooner or later, be rendered communicable. Science observes and compiles raw data that may predict the way the body or the universe behaves, yet the meaning and especially the ethical uses of such information depend upon verbal understanding and logical sequences that are the stuff of humanistic interpretation. The neurologist may locate the places where synapses fire in the brain of a subject pronouncing a particular word, looking at a painting, or listening to a piece of music, but the physiological event is mute. The experimenter cannot make it meaningful without the interpretative skills of the linguist, art historian, or music theorist The old debate over creation and evolution is now defined by "intelligent design," an idea which itself has expanded the borders of science to accommodate what historically has belonged to the realm of religion or the supernatural. The origin of life, in other words, has been transformed into a question that neither theologians nor scientists can parse without the help of semanticists and students of natural theology from Plato's "demiurge," to Aristotle's and Aquinas's "unmoved mover," to the natural theology of the nineteenth century, which eventually led to Drawin.
The humanities teach students to recognize a significant question, to make crucial distinctions in the articulation of its terms, to draw consequential conclusions, to assess conclusions in human terms, and to communicate the procedures and results of inquiry. These are all elements necessary for the making of right meaning, and meaning Is a singularly powerful shaper of deeds.
The humanities also have the power to shape the human community. Offering a vision of that which is common to mankind, the humanities at their best capture the shared elements of human experience. In an increasingly globalized world, they have the potential to bring diverse cultures together through that which the great works have In common. We read Homer, the Canon of Songs, the Analects of Confudus, the Pancatantn, the-Aeneid, The Ring of the Dove, the Heike monogatarf, the Divine Comedy, The Dream of the Red Chamber, Faust, Pride and Prejudice, The Prelude, Moby-Dick, Leaves of Grass, War and Peace, To the Lighthouse not only for information about the ancient Greek or Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Japanese, or medieval Italian, Victorian, Russian, English, or American world. We read them for what they continue to reveal about the enduring questions of war and peace, love and marriage, anger and forgiveness, wandering and homecoming, loyalty and betrayal, nature and nurture, good and evil, the limits and consequences of overarching pride and ambition, the enticements and constraints even of literary creation. These are but a very few of the many literary works that are part of an expanded canon of the humanities around which culture itself is constituted by the global community of readers, who may converge nowhere else but in the shared experience of the written page.
On the model of our common humanity, a common humanities holds the promise of uniting the diverse cultures of a globalized world. Leaving aside the very real differences of language and culture, history and tradition, In favour of what is shared by all, one could imagine a humanities oriented around a set of common questions and forms, not present at all times everywhere, but sufficiently enduring to constitute a core of common inquiry and concern. Almost every culture shares in musical forms that include collective and individual instrumental performance, lament, song, and dance; visual artefacts that include two-dimensional representation, sculpture, and architecture; literature that indudes some version of lyric, epic, novel/romance, and theatrical performance. What we consider to be philosophic speculation is somewhat more problematic in that it may be a function of systems of broad and efficient social organization, but the place and questions of philosophy may be taken up elsewhere by the matter of religion, In which case the intersection of the two becomes its own interesting question. There is no culture that does not have some way of recounting its past, whether that be oral or written, legend or chronicle, universal history or local record, official charter or journal entry account.
[TURN TO PAGE 24 FOR LANGUAGE PROJECT] [TURN TO PAGE 26 FOR ROUGH WORK SPACE] [TURN TO PAGE 27 FOR ANSWER SPACE]
SECTION m [TOTAL MARKS 15]
ONLY FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO DO A PH.D. PROJECT IN LANGUAGE
ATTEMPT EITHER QUESTION (1) QR QUESTION (2)
1. The following is the course content at the Undergraduate level, for General English. Look at it carefully and suggest what kind of research problem you would like to frame around it. Think in terms of a probable hypothesis and a tentative research plan to study the problem.
Course objectives-
To give the students a feel of the English language in its different forms
Enable them to express themselves and interact with their surroundings in English.
Course content-
Prose.
Jawaharlal Nehru - Discovery of India (extracts)
Robert Lynd - "On forgetting"
Bertrand Russel - "Education and the social order" (adapted)
A.G. Gardner - "On saying please"
R.K. Narayan - "Snake in the grass"
James Thurber - "University days"
Short story
O. Henry - "After twenty years"
Poem
Sylvia Plath - "Mirror"
Robert Frost - "Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening"
A.K. Ramanujam - A river"
Nizzim Ezekiel - "Night of the scorpion"
Kamala Das - "My grandmother's house"
All these items are followed by 10 comprehension questions, one question on creative or extended writing, and some grammar questions on various items like tenses, agreement, active/passive, etc. Each of the lessons also has topics for discussion in the classroom.
(OR)
You need to establish if there are substantial differences between the features of British and American English. Choosing either syntax or vocabulary, formulate a research hypothesis, state the methodology that you will adopt to arrive at the final conclusions.
[TURN TO PAGE 26 FOR ROUGH WORK SPACE] [TURN TO PAGE 27 FOR ANSWER SPACE]
Ph.D. English Entrance June 2011 Page 26 FOR ROUGH WORK
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| Earning: Approval pending. |
