Model Question with Answer| NEB Grade XII | Major English
Grade: XII
OPT. ENGLISH
F.M.: 75
Time: 3 hrs.
Candidates are required to give their answers in their own words as far as practicable. The figures in the margin indicate full marks.
Attempt all questions.
GROUP A
Multiple Choice Questions [11x1=11]
1) Language can be varied in terms of........................
a) pronunciation
b) Vocabulary
c) grammar
d) all the above
2) Anjana speaks, reads, writes and understands English, Spanish, French and Italian. She is......
a) trilingual
b) bilingual
c) multilingual
d) monolingual
3) Which approach allows learners to acquire a language as babies do, beginning with silent listening?
a) The Communicative approach
b) The natural approach
c) The direct approach
d) Cognitive approach
4) Who is Murmur?
a) A giant
b) A tree
c) Odin's brother
d) The guardian of the Urdar-well
5) What is the main theme of the story "The Lost Child"?
a) Bond between a child and parents
b) Childhood memories
c) Domestic violence
d) Child in difficulty
6) What is the main reason Julian speaks of racial equality?
a) He wants racial equality
b) To impress black people
c) To annoy his mother
d) To meet girls
7) The phrase 'fair as star' is..................
a) metaphor
b) simile
c) alliteration
d) imagery
8) "Autobiography" is........................
a) Reader-oriented text
b) Writer-oriented text
c) Humorous text
d) Factual text
9) New critics are mostly concerned with................
a) the author's background
b) the text's message or moral
c) the text itself
d) there responses to the text
10) The perspective of the margins seeks......................
a) literature of the canon
b) literature of the minority
c) literature of the west
d) literature of the dominant class
11) What item did Larry Keller receive that upset him so greatly?
a) A newspaper
b) A letter from Ann
c) A gift from Kate
d) A false notice that Chris had died
Answers - d,c.c.d.a.a.b,b.b,b,a
GROUP B
Write a short answer to these questions. [8×5=40]
12) What are the major languages of Nepal? Write in short about some of them.
Answer:
Languages are mediums through which people in the world communicate with one another. There are more than 140 Language families and 7,139 Languages in the world. When we talk about Nepal, according to the census of 2068 B.S. There are 129 Languages that have been found to have existed so far. Among them 6 have been extinct, so only 123 are spoken by the people.
The languages of Nepal are not spoken by people in an equal manner. Around 96% of the Nepalese people speak 19 languages among the 123 and rest 4% speak the 104 languages. The major languages of Nepal are: Nepali, Newari, Maithili etc. English is also another language that is spoken by the majority of young people and some older people too. Since English is taught as a major Language in school it is getting quite popular these days.
Nepali is the official language of Nepal. More than half of the Nepali people speak Nepali as their mother tongue and Those who have a different mother tongue also speak Nepali as Nepali is the language of the government as well. Alongside English Nepali is also taught in school. Maithili is the second most spoken language of Nepal. The people who reside mostly in the Terai region speak Maithili on a daily basis. Maithili is also written using Devanagari script.
Newari is spoken mostly by the native Kathmandu dwellers known as Newars. Newari has its own script and has a large number of speakers as well.
13) What do you understand about the technique of translation? List out different techniques of translation.
Answer:
Languages differ lexically, syntactically and culturally. For example, the Nepali and English languages have different sets of vocabulary; they follow different syntactic patterns; and they are culturally distant. Such differences cause gaps between two languages. Gaps cause the loss of meaning. Because of cultural gaps, Nepali words such as samdhi, samdhini, mit, mitini, and phupu cannot be directly translated into English. Translation scholars have proposed different ways or techniques to narrow down the gaps between two languages during translation. Some of them are as follows:
a. Literal translation: While translating literally, the translator aims to reproduce the source text word by word, phrase by phrase or clause by clause by following the grammar of the TL. It is also called one-to-one translation.
For example:
black board : kalopati
b. Borrowing: It is one of the common techniques to fill the gap in the TL. By using this technique, the translator borrows or adopts SL words to the TL. Recently, words such as lockdown, quarantine, CoronaVirus, sanitizer and corona positive have been borrowed from English and used in Nepali.
c. Paraphrasing: In paraphrasing, the translator paraphrases the meaning of the SL word to make it easier to understand. For example:
algae : pani-ma umrane banaspati jastai leu
d. Loan creation: New words are coined in the TL to reflect source concepts or meanings. There are several Nepali words coined as equivalents of English words in science, technology, and communication. For example:
computer : susank yantra
e. Substitution: In substitution, SL words are substituted by TL words. For example:
trousers : suruwal
f. Footnote: A footnote refers to an additional piece of information given at the bottom of a page. For example, Tihar can be explained as a festival of lights that is observed in Nepal for five days.
g. Recognized Translation: By this technique, the translator uses the word/expression that has already been accepted by the community. The translation of Sikshya Sastra Sankaya as the Faculty of Education is an example of a recognized translation.
h. Sense-for-sense translation: The translator conveys the overall meaning of the sentence or clause, not the meanings of individual words. For example:
He kicked the bucket : u marnyo
i. Blending or hybrid formation: This technique combines certain parts of source and target words to make a new word in the TL. Examples include Covid-19, kovid mahamari, online kakshya, and gobar gas.
14) Why was Cruz not happy in taking the life of the buck? (Devil Deer)
Answer:
Devil deer is a short story written by Rudolfo Anaya which tells the story of a village filled with hunters who hunted animals for their survival.
The village where the protagonist Cruz dived was known for its courageous people; the people who lived there mostly hunted deer which they brought back for their family. Every night the town people gathered together to have a meal around the fire and told their deeds of bravery. Cruz wanted to go and hunt a deer for his family. He made a plan with his friend Joe to go out and hunt an animal. But since the deer around them had started going scarce due to over hunting, they decided to go to a deeper section of the jungle. That deeper section of jungle contained a chemical factory as well. But a few days before the hunt, Joe broke his leg and couldn't go. So, Cruz went alone to hunt the deer. When Cruz reached the creak he saw the deer he needed. So he killed the deer by firing many shots. After the deer died Cruz went near it and was horrified to find that the deer was so badly deformed. The chemical factory had caused the deer to look like a devil.
Seeing its condition, Cruz felt very bad for killing the deer. The deer had suffered a lot already. So he wasn't thinking that his wife would be happy.
15) How do you take the lady of the poem 'The Three Knights' Do you appreciate or criticize her (The Three Knights)
Answer:
'The three knights' is a poem written by Davies Gilbert which tells the tale of three knights, who propose to the same lady that they all like.
The Lady of the poem is a fair maiden who is liked by three knights. She has a family which consists of her father, mother, sisters, brother and sister-in-law. She is shown to be someone who loves her family as when she is proposed to by the knights, she doesn't make a hasty decision of accepting one of them rather just asks them whether they had talked to her family members or not while travelling with the knights. She gets injured by her strict brother's behavior. While asked what she wants to give her family as a wedding wish, she says that she'll gift a horse to her father, her wedding gown to her mother, a gold ring to her sister along with a fan and her brother a gallows and rope to hang on when her brother is dead, her sister-in-law will have a peaceful life as a gift.
I appreciate the lady for her love of her family and how she thinks of everyone.
16) Why is the main concern of Mandela in the speech? (Speech on Release from Jail)
Answer:
Nelson Mandela was prisoned for nearly 27 years as a political prisoner when he was freed in 1990, he gave a speech in front of all of his supporters and supporters of peace.
In his speech on release from jail, he has started his speech by thanking all of his supporters and the people who have supported the anti-apartheid movement. He said that he is not a preacher of the anti-racism movement but rather a servant of the people who is just trying his best to bring equality in South Africa where there is a domination of whites over blacks. He has said that he wants a world where there is no discrimination and people can live happy life without any war. He preaches about all people living side by side without any domination.
Mandela also thanks all other people in the world who have advocated for all Africans to live better life. He has raised his voice against the apartheid and the entire racist system. He said that hoped to see a world with no racism and thanked all the politicians of Africa for fighting for themselves. He became the President of South Africa in 1994 AD.
17) What are the common traits of modern and postmodern perspectives in literature? How do they differ?
Answer:
Postmodern perspective and modern perspective are both the perspectives that have been used in the modern times especially after the 1950s. Postmodernism means after modernism, which means the postmodern perspective came to the scene after the modernist perspective. Postmodernism also means against modernism. It is generally believed that modernism in art, literature, culture, and philosophy began in the first decade of the 20th century and continued until the end of World War II. The new perspective on life, literature, language, art, and culture replaced that of the modern period. Modernism was based on the belief in perfection, completeness, wholeness, the singularity of meaning, whereas the postmodernist perspective came with a different belief.
Postmodernists reject the notion of centrality, question the relationship between centre and margin, and demolish the conventional boundaries drawn between literary genres such as poetry versus prose. Moreover, postmodernists celebrate the play of signifiers (ie. words), openness, fragmentation, discontinuity in narration, ambiguity, plurality, and indeterminacy of meaning.
Post-modern and modern perspectives both have the characteristics of believing in only factual and & evidence having stuff. It doesn't believe in god and spirits so much. The Postmodern perspective and modern perspective try to demolish the already set boundaries of literary writing by adding various new elements such as meta-fiction, demolishing literary genres, unreliable narration, and fusion between fact and fiction.
A modern perspective where on the other hand doesn't do all of these to this extent.
18) What is meta-language? Why does the author think metalanguage is not a new concept?
Answer:
Meta-language is an essay written by Lisa Tran that gives people a basic concept of what meta-language is. It and how people don't know about it despite it being here for so long.
Meta-language is a language that is used to describe another language. Metalanguage can be a language that describes another language or the same language. For example: Instead of 'It's raining' you can explain it as 'the clouds are crying' which explains the language for it to be understood. Mata-language is not a new concept at all Meta Language has been prevailing in literature for so long but not much talk about it, which is why it feels like a new concept. The concept of Mise-en-scene, foregrounding and many more methods of movie-making is also meta-languages. When a scene forebodes something or gives context to do something else it too is meta-language.
Meta language needs to be taught to children because it will help them learn to write better answers during exams as well.
19) Explain the lines with reference to context:
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that should would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
(No Second Troy)
Answer:
The above lines are taken from the poem sonnet 'No second Troy' written by William Butler Yeats. The poem is about the poet's unrequited love for Maud Gonne, an Ireland Revolutionist.
The above lines explain WB Yeats's agony because of Maud Gonne. He says that Maud Gonne is the reason why he should blame her- for filling his days with misery. He is blaming her for why the war was introduced to the innocent Irish men. It was her blind ambition that ruined their lives. The agents of nationalism therefore for him should have been noble and valiant of the upper class rather than the 'ignorant men', who have no physical or moral 'courage equal to desire.'
He mentions that Maud Gonne was diverging people towards violence against Britain. For this, William Butler accuses Maud Gonne of a reason for class warfare. William Butler was a non-violence supporter and wanted to make Ireland an independent country without any violence. But Maud Gonne was in favour of violence. The innocent people didn't have a desire of their own, it was Maud Gonne who destroyed their lives.
GROUP C
Write a long answer to these questions. [3x 8-24]
20) Arthur Miller's "All My Sons- A play in three acts" shows the destructive effect of dishonesty. Discuss this statement in relation to one of the main characters in the play.
Answer:
'All my sons' is a three-act play written by the very famous dramatist Arthur Miller. The play is set a few years after the Second World War and tells the story of a rich white family in a suburban area.
All my son's play in three acts shows the destructive effect of dishonesty. The play tells the story of a famous businessman Joe Keller who earned a lot of money during the world war by selling fighter jet plane parts. Joe Keller lives with his wife Kate Keller and his younger son Chris Keller. His elder son and younger son both had taken part in the war but only one of them had returned home alive.
His elder son Larry Keller had died in the war and his younger son had returned with a lot of pain and sufferings of the war. Since a few years had passed by, the family was trying their best to cope with their losses. But Joe's wife, Kate, believed that her son had only gone missing as his body was never found. She keeps looking at the news, hoping to find her son. She had also used to get Larry's horoscope checked to see when he would come back.
Despite everyone being fed up with her not accepting Larry's death, nobody said anything to her because believing Larry is alive was the only way she was able to cope with his loss. Kate too probably understood that her son was never coming back but thinking that he is alive was much easier than grieving to his death.
As Joe Keller was a businessman who had earned his money during the war, he hadn't done it in an honest way. The fighter jet parts that he had sold were faulty plane parts that killed 21 pilots. But Joe Keller instead of accepting his mistake and getting punished for it, blamed his subordinate Steve Deever who was also his long-time friend. Since Joe was a big shot he got out free of any criminal charges but innocent Steve got prosecuted.
When Joe had been living his best life with his wife and son George and Ann Deever and Steve Deever's son and daughter came back to Keller's family house. Ann had fallen in love with Chris after Larry's death. George had become a big lawyer. George completely believed that his father was innocent. Ann had her doubts. But when Kate Keller unknowingly mentions that Joe was the real perpetrator, everyone gets shocked. Kate despite knowing everything from the start still doesn't acknowledge her son's death which causes Ann to reveal a letter that Larry had sent her before dying which mentioned his death cause being his dad
Reading the letter, Kate, Chris and Joe all three get heartbroken. Unable to let go of his guilt, Joe at the very end commits suicide.
21) Why do you think Paul gets in trouble at school? What about Paul bothers his teacher the most?
Answer:
'Paul's Case' is a short story written by Willa Cather which accounts for the life of a very troubled young boy who makes some bad decisions which end up costing him his life. At the very beginning of the story, we are introduced to a young boy named Paul who is called into the principal's office because of his unruly behaviour with his teachers. His teachers are completely fed up with his behaviour of disrespecting his teachers and not obeying them had resulted in that day.
The teachers who taught Paul somehow understood why Paul acted the way he did. Paul wasn't just a trouble in school; he was a bad kid in his house as well. This bad attitude of his mostly resulted from his absent father and dead mother. Paul was in a very young age when his mother died and after his mother's death, Paul's father had become busy as well. He drank heavily and was not able to give love but rather made distance.
Paul did all of his antics as a way to cope with his failing family. He wanted the attention of his father in his life and he got that by behaving as a bad kid. As most of the teachers knew about Paul's background that wasn't the thing that bothered them the most. The thing that bothered them the most was how Paul always refused to get help.
Whenever they tried to help by being a bit more understanding of his situation. Paul always turned them down and never tried to get better or be a better person. He always ignored his teacher's help, who attempted to understand him better. He had built a wall around that could never be penetrated by anyone even if they tried their hardest.
Even when standing in the principal's office in front of all of his teachers, Paul didn't pay any attention to them. He behaved as if none of that affected him even a bit. The principal's warning of restricting him from school also didn't have any effect on him. He had been suspended before and he didn't mind it happening again. So, when he was suspended for the second time he just left the school without caring for anything.
22) Write short notes on
i) New Criticism
Answer:
New Criticism regards a literary text as a primary object of analysis. In other words, its ultimate focus is on the text itself disregarding the author's biography and the socio-cultural context of the text. Similar to Formalists, New Critics advocate objective and text-centred criticism. Both criticisms direct the reader's attention to the language of the text, the interplay of literary devices, and formal properties. However, New Criticism is broader and more liberal than the Formalist perspective. Unlike Formalists, New Critics do not remove the theme of the text from its analysis. For them, the formal properties of a literary work are inseparable from its theme. Theme and form are interconnected like body and soul.
For a text to be organic, each part is necessary and should fit well with other parts, and all parts should work together to contribute to the overall theme and organization of the work. Every character, every event, every image, every tension, and every ambiguity is supposed to contribute to the overall theme of the work. New Critics assert that we need to explore the complex interplay of formal elements such as symbolism, ambiguity, irony, and imagery to understand the theme.
New Critics take the form and the meaning (content) of a poem inseparable. The role of the reader is to read the poem closely in order to reveal how words, figures of speech, irony, symbolism, paradox, and ambiguity reveal the multiple layers of meaning of the poem. For this, the reader should carry out a word-by-word analysis of a poem to find out the denotative and connotative meanings of words, to understand figurative, symbolic, and ambiguous meanings. Of the properties of a literary text, we discuss the use of figures of speech, symbolism, and imagery.
ii) Cultural Criticism and New Historicism
Answer:
Literature reflects cultural forms and practices which are guided by certain cultural norms and values. Cultural forms refer to the concrete manifestation of culture. Examples include material cultures such as food, clothes, houses and towns, and transport; social cultures such as work and leisure, pub life, group singing, dances; fairs and festivals; social customs and activities; and gestures and habits. These are the observable forms of culture through which members of a community express their identity as a distinct cultural group. Cultural forms also help them to express mutual feelings of solidarity. Likewise, cultural practices are also the manifestation of a tradition or custom within a particular culture.
New historicism, a form of literary theory which aims to understand intellectual history through literature and literature through its cultural context, follows the 1950s field of history of ideas and refers to itself as a form of cultural poetics. Stephen Greenblatt coined the term new historicism when he collected a bunch of essays and then, out of a kind of desperation to get the introduction done, he wrote that the essays represented something called a 'new historicism'.
Cultural criticism and New Historicism view a text from the point of culture and History. A text is a byproduct of the history and culture that it belongs to. A culture is a way of living in a society and cultural criticism also believes that. A person can't write by going far from a culture that one belongs to whatever one sees or experiences comes as a byproduct in the text.
The same goes for history. A person can't separate themselves from the history they belong to; whatever they read or have seen in history is what they write in the text that they produce. Cultural criticism and New Historicism view a text as a byproduct of history and culture. As there is a saying that history repeats itself, the same goes with Literature. Whatever the person has consumed in the past is what he or she writes about it in the present. No one can go far from the society they live in. The entire concept of literature is the mirror of society also comes true here.
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