DELHI PUBLIC SCHOOL - GANDHIDHAM

(Under the aegis of the Delhi Public School Society, New Delhi)
SAMPLE PAPER FOR HALF-YEARLY EXAM
SUBJECT: ENGLISH CORE
CLASS: 12 DATE:
TIME: 3 Hrs. MAX MARKS: 80
General Instructions:
a. Students are advised that good time management is essential. They have to submit their
Answer Book on time.
b. Read all the questions carefully. All the questions are compulsory. All the answers must
be written in blue ball-pen only.
c. Write answer numbers clearly as given in the question paper and leave a line after
every answer.
d. Ensure the answers of either of the two parts at one place or in one single stretch.

PART A – 40 MARKS

READING SECTION: 20 MARKS

I. Read the below passage and answer the following questions. (ANY TEN) [10X1=10]

1. Through human history, weather has altered the march of events and
caused some mighty cataclysms. Since Columbus did not know where he
was going or where he had arrived when he got there, the winds truly
deserve nearly as much credit as he does for the discovery of America. Ugly
westerlies helped turn the 1588 Spanish Armada away from England in a
limping panic. Napoleon was done in twice by weather: once by the snow
and cold that forced his fearful retreat from Moscow, later by the rain that
bedevilled him at Waterloo and caused Victor Hugo to write: "A few drops of
water ... an unseasonable cloud crossing the sky, sufficed for the
overthrow of a world." In 1944 the Allied invasion of Normandy was made
possible by a narrow interval of reasonably good weather between the bad.
It was so narrow, in fact, that Supreme Allied Commander Dwight
Eisenhower later expressed gratitude to "the gods of war". Paganism dies
hard.
2. Every year brings fresh reminders of the weather’s power over human
life and events in the form of horrifying tornadoes, hurricanes and floods.
These leave behind forgettable statistics and unforgettable images of
devastated towns and battered humanity that can only humble people in
the face of such wrath. Farmers often suffer the most, from the drought
and plagues of biblical times to the hailstorms or quick freezes that even
today can wipe out whole crops in minutes. Icy assaults serve as
reminders of the inescapable vulnerability of life and social well-being to
the whims of the weather. And history is packed with reminders of far
worse. The weather, for example, provoked a major social dislocation in the
United States in the 1930's when it turned much of the South-west into the
Dust Bowl.
3. No wonder, then that man’s great dream has been some day to control
the weather. The first step toward control, of course, is knowledge, and
scientists have been hard at work for years trying to keep track of the
weather. The United States and other nations have created an international
apparatus that maintains some 100 000 stations to check the weather
round the clock in every sector of the globe and, with satellites, in a good
deal of more than 16 billion cubic kilometres of atmosphere. With
computers on top and electronic eyes in the sky, modern man has thus
come far in dealing with the weather, alternately his nemesis and
benefactor. Yet man’s predicament today is not too far removed from that of
his remote ancestors. For all the advances of scientific forecasting, in spite
of the thousands of the daily bulletins and advisories that get flashed about,
the weather is still ultimately capricious and unpredictable. Man’s dream of
controlling it still just that – a dream.

1. The writer is of the opinion that Columbus

a) did not discover America
b) stole the credit of the discovery of America from someone else
c) does not deserve to be known as the man who discovered America
d) was not aware he discovered America
2. According to the passage what helped the Allies to carry out a successful
invasion of Normandy in 1944?
a) it was a spell of bad weather
b) it was a short period of fairly good weather
c) it was good weather followed by bad weather
d) it was the excellent weather conditions
3. What is the main topic of the first paragraph?
a) it is the development of history up to modern times
b) it is the part weather played in the progress of events in history
c) it is the way fate influenced the outcomes of events in history
d) it is the idea that success in all past undertakings depended on the
weather
4. In the second paragraph weather is seen as ______________
a) a capricious and unpredictable force
b) man’s benefactor
c) man’s chief enemy
d) a powerful destroyer of human life and property
5. How did the weather cause great upheaval in America a few decades ago?
a) it devastated towns in the form of tornadoes, hurricanes and floods
b) it destroyed crops in the form of hailstorms and quick freezes
c) it turned clod so suddenly that it caught millions of people
unprepared
d) it created a large area of arid land from which people had to move
out
6. How can man stop being the victim of the whims of the weather?
a) he must find ways to control it
b) he must learn all he can about it
c) he must learn to live with it
d) he must protect himself against it
7. In order to be able to control the weather man must first ____________
a) fight it
b) know how to escape from it
c) be able to manipulate it
 d) study it
8. Today, man ______________
a) has the weather under control
b) is still far from being able to control the weather
c) has made no advance whatsoever towards the control of the weather
d) can forecast the weather with great accuracy
9. Weather brings _______________
a) only benefits to man
b) only disadvantages to man
c) both benefits and disadvantages to man
d) nothing but inconvenience to man
10. We can conclude from the passage that __________
a) man is very much at the mercy of the weather
b) man is doomed to be destroyed by the weather
c) man cannot forecast the weather
d) man cannot keep track of the weather
11. Choose the word that means ‘torment or harass’ from paragraph 1.
a) bedevilled
b) paganism
c) invasion
d) overthrow
12. Choose the word that means ‘sudden and unaccountable change of
mood or behaviour’ from paragraph 3.
a) nemesis
b) capricious
c) apparatus
d) none of the above

II. Read the below passage and answer the following questions. (ANY TEN)
[10X1=10]
1. Last summer, to get away from suffocating smog, I drove my family west
from Washington D.C., to Santa Fe, New Mexico. As we crossed the country,
our car radio kept us informed about the ordeal of the big cities and their
faltering machines. Around us, however, the Great Plains told a far different
story. Above all, we marvelled at the sight of working windmills, creaky
sentinels of a bygone age. And the contrast left me with windmills on my
mind.
2. Windmills are much, much more than relics. They are symbols of
sanity for a world that is increasingly hooked on machines with an
inordinate hunger for fuel and a prodigious capacity to pollute.
3. Ecologically, the windmill is one of man's few perfect devices. It
harnesses a completely free resource to pump water under conditions that
respect the laws and limits of nature. Consider this contrast: In Arizona,
western Texas and many other places of the arid South-west ranchers
have long used electric pumps to deplete ground water stored up over the
centuries by geologic processes. The costs of such exploitation are now
tragically evident in shrinking farmlands and in the fast-growing thirst
for "replacement" water from Canada and Alaska. But ranchers who still
use windmills to tap near-surface water for their livestock – taking only
as much as is replaced each year – face no such crisis. They are working
with nature. And therein lies the message of windmills.
4. Like water-wheels and sailing-boats, windmills have Zero Environmental
Impact (ZEI). They remind us that science can save us over the long haul
only if it designs a new generation of machines that come much closer
than their predecessors to achieving ZEI.
5. The automobile is the antithesis of the windmill. It symbolizes our hell-
bent rush to increase production, convenience and mobility, with little
thought for the trade-offs in fouled air, congested cities and highways,
and hundreds of thousands of automobile accidents each year. Like so
much of our present industrial technology, the automobile works at
cross purposes with life.
6. Today the evidence is clear that our high-energy, high-waste society is
making exorbitant demands on the resources of the planet. Largely
because of U.S. consumption, most of the world's petroleum fuels will be
exhausted within a century.
7. I certainly do not propose a return to a windmill economy. In fact,
there is no way for us to achieve a low-pollution technology overnight–and
Zero Environmental Impact has been an impossibility for human societies
ever since they began hunting and burning on the savanna plains of a
million years ago. Belatedly, however, we are beginning to realize that
our technological skills must be bent toward an accommodation with
natural laws – laws such as the recycling of materials. We now see efforts
to ban the use of long-lived pesticides, to remove phosphates from
detergents, to take the lead out of petrol, to clean up or completely
replace the internal-combustion engine. One hopes that these steps mark
the beginning of a historic reversal of our "raid-and-waste" style of
development.
8. As I contemplate my family's trip, I cannot help but wonder if I, like that
dreamer Don Quixote, have merely been tilting at windmills. Is it only
nostalgia that makes me and millions of other Americans hope for a more
modest technology? I do not think so. The issue is nobler than survival. It
is whether we can equip ourselves to live truly decent lives. If we are to
meet this challenge, our inventors and technicians will have to pay homage
to windmills. They will have to build us machines that use, not abuse, the
unearned gifts of nature.

1. The description of the windmills as ‘creaky sentinels of a bygone age’

tells us that the windmills are _________
a) broken-down machines
b) old machines of past era
c) machines that were once used for defence
d) old and useless machines
2. In the second paragraph, the writer implies that he _______
a) admire windmills because they are relics
b) thinks highly of windmills because they need no fuel to operate
c) considers windmills a solution to energy and pollution problems
d) favours windmills above other contemporary machines which
consume fuel and pollute the world
3. The main virtue of the windmill in the south-west of the United States is
that _____________
a) it uses a completely free source of energy
b) it taps only near-surface water
 c) it is inexpensive and easy to operate
d) it does not electricity to operate it
4. What has caused the decrease in the farming area of the south-west of the United
States?
a) it has been caused by the extensive use of the windmills
b) it has been caused by the depletion of underground water supplies
c) it has been the result of keeping too much of livestock
d) it has been the result of the geologic processes over the centuries
5. The statement ‘windmills have Zero Environmental Impact’ means that windmills
______
a) do not damage or harm the environment
b) make no impression on the surroundings at all
c) are inefficient when compared with other machines
d) are useless
6. The automobile works at cross purposes with life in that _____________
a) it brings convenience and mobility to man
b) it is a product of our present industrial technology
c) it has brought more harm than good to man
d) it kills its drivers
7. In the passage, the writer says our present industrial technology ____________
a) should make way for windmill technology
b) should make way for a less wasteful technology
c) must achieve Zero Environmental Impact
d) should be completely abolished
8. It is implied in the passage that ideally man’s technology should ________________
a) work side by side with the laws of nature
b) concentrate on the process of recycling
c) make only limited use of petrol and other fuels
d) produce no waste materials
9. ‘The issue’ refers to __________
a) man’s survival in the future
b) man’s ability to live a truly decent life
c) modern technology
d) windmills
10. int eh last paragraph, the writer is ____________
a) contemplating man’s past
b) being nostalgic
c) looking ahead hopefully towards a better future
d) thinking of survival
11. Choose the word that means ‘unreasonably high’ from paragraph 6.
a) high-waste
b) exorbitant
c) both a) and b)
d) exhausted
12. Choose from the following meanings that best fits for the word ‘arid’
used in paragraph 3.
a) unexciting
b) being dry
c) both a) and b)
d) none of the above
LITERATURE SECTION: 20 MARKS

III. Read the below extracts and answer the following questions. (ANY TWO) [8X1=8]

A. This morning, Saheb is on his way to the milk booth. In his hand is a steel canister. “I
now work in a tea stall down the road,” he says pointing in the distance. “I am paid 800
rupees and all my meals.” Does he like the job? I ask. His face, I see, has lost the
carefree look. The steel canister seems heavier than the plastic bag he would carry so
lightly over his shoulder. The bag was his. The canister belongs to the man who owns the
tea shop. Saheb is no longer his own master!

1. Who is Saheb here?

a) a student
b) a rag picker
c) a milkman
d) a juvenile tramp
2. What is the symbolic meaning of the ‘steel canister’?
a) duality
b) alienism
c) slavery
d) self-reliance
3. The anonym of ‘carefree’ is ____________
a) blithe
b) bubbly
c) careworn
d) sweet
4. Which belongs to Saheb?
a) steel canister
b) plastic bag
c) both a) and b)
d) none of the above

B. Yet I had residual doubts. At my first opportunity I hurried west, went up the Tieton
to Conrad Meadows, up the Conrad Creek Trail to Meade Glacier, and camped in the
high meadow by the side of Warm Lake. The next morning, I stripped, dived into the
lake, and swam across to the other shore and back – just as Doug Corpron used to do. I
shouted with joy, and Gilbert Peak returned the echo, I had conquered my fear of water.
The experience had a deep meaning for me, as only those who have known stark terror
and conquered it can appreciate. In death there is peace. There is terror only in the fear
of death, as Roosevelt knew when he said, “All we have to fear is fear itself.” Because I
had experienced both the sensation of dying and the terror that fear of it can produce,
the will to live somehow grew in intensity.
At last I felt released – free to walk the trails and climb the peaks and to brush aside
fear.

1. What returned the echo of the author’s voice?

a) Tieton Meadows
b) Conrad Creek
c) Meade Galcier
d) Gilbert Peak
2. Who said the words, “All we have to fear is fear itself.”?
a) William Douglas
b) Doug Corpron
c) Roosevelt
 d) none of the above
3. With his hard work, Douglas had ______________
a) conquered his fear of water
b) conquered Gilbert Peak
c) got a good job
d) got a promotion
4. What was the feeling of William at the end oof the experience?
a) tensed
b) released
c) partly tensed and partly released
d) none of the above

C. The clerk figured the fare – he glanced at my fancy hatband, but he figured the fare –
and I had enough for two coach tickets, one way. But when I counted out the money and
looked up, the clerk was staring at me. He nodded at the bills. “That ain’t money mister,”
he said, “and if you’re trying to skin me, you won’t get very far,” and he glanced at the
cash drawer beside him. Of course, the money was old-style bills, half again as big as the
money we use nowadays, and different-looking. I turned away and got out fast. There’s
nothing nice about jail even in 1894.

1. Which two people involved in the passage?

a) Sam and Charley
b) Charley and ticket counter in-charge
c) Sam and ticket counter in-charge
d) none of the above
2. What was very interesting to the man sitting in the booth?
a) Charley’s hatband
b) Charley’s tan gabardine suit
c) Charley’s straw hat
d) none of the above
3. What was the time of this happening?
a) 1884
b) 1874
c) 1894
d) 1984
4. How many tickets did the man in the passage want to buy?
a) 1
b) 3
c) 4
d) 2

IV. Read the below extracts and answer the following questions. (ANY ONE) [4X1=4]

A. Far far from gusty waves these children’s faces.

Like rootles weeds, the hair torn round their pallor:
The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The Paper –
Seeming boy, with rat’s eyes. The stunted, unlucky heir
Of twisted bones, reciting a father’s gnarled disease,
His lesson, from his desk. At the back of the dim class
One unnoted, sweet and young. His eyes live in a dream,
Of squirrel’s game, in a tree room, other than this.

1. How many children specifically referred to here in the passage?

a) 1
 b) 2
c) 3
d) 4
2. ‘Paper-seeming’ means _________
a) like paper
b) very thin
c) sick
d) all the above
3. Which child is different from the rest?
a) 3rd
b) 1st

c) 4th
d) 2nd
4. The poetic device used in ‘rat’s eyes’ is ________
a) metaphor
b) simile
c) personification
d) anaphora
B. ……… my childhood fear,
but all I said was, see you soon,
Amma,
all I did was smile and smile and
smile……

1. Who is ‘I’?
a) Kamla Das
b) Kamla Das’ mother
c) Kamla Das’ father
d) Kamla Das’s husband
2. The poetic device used in the last two lines is ____________
a) alliteration
b) repetition
c) consonance
d) all the above
3. The childhood fear was ______________
a) going to school
b) going abroad
c) separating from the mother
d) none of the above
4. Where was ‘I’ at this moment?
a) at the railway station
b) at the bus station
c) in the car
d) at the airport

V. Answer the following questions in a word or phrase. (ANY EIGHT) [8X1=8]

1. From where would the father of Roger Skunk return?

2. Where is Saheb basically from?
3. Who accompanied the poetess in “My Mother at Sixty-six”?
4. Which station is mentioned in the story ‘The Third Level’?
5. What is the tone of the poet in the last stanza “An Elementary School Classroom in a
Slum”?
6. Which President’s picture was found on the ‘first-day cover’?
7. Which river that referred to in “Deep Water” was treacherous?
8. Name any two other Roger animals than ‘Skunk’, that were used by Jack to narrate
his stories.
9. The dream of Mukesh is to ____________
10. Where was William with his father when he tasted the fear of water for the first time?

PART B – 40 MARKS

WRITING SECTION: 16 MARKS

I. Every year on Children’s Day, an exhibition of Science projects is held at the Indira
Gandhi Indoor Stadium. Your school has received an invitation from the Education
Minister of Delhi inviting the students of your school to visit it. Write a notice in about
50n words informing the students about the display, advising them to go and enjoy it.
You are Sunil/ Sunita Sahoo, Head Boy/ Head Girl, Bright Minds Public School, New
Delhi. [1X3=3]
(OR)
You have planned to organise a summer camp for the children of age group 10-13 years
for developing their creative skills in art and craft, clay modelling, music etc. in your
school. Draft a notice in not more than 50 words for your notice-board giving details.
You are Reena/ Roshan, Secretary Art and Craft Club, B. V. Public School, Chandigarh.

II. You are Lalit/ Lalita. You have just cleared your NIFT admission test and wish to
throw a party for your friends. Write an informal invitation in about 50 words for your
friends giving all details. [1X3=3]
(OR)

On Your school, Cameral School, Okhla, New Delhi is going to organise the Annual
English Debate Competition. You wish to invite a noted journalist, Mr Vikram Rana to
judge the competition. Write a formal invitation in 50 words to Mr Vikram Tana
requesting him to judge the debate. You are Karan/ Karuna, Secretary, English Club.

III. You are Sourab/ Sweta, 15, Shashi Gardens, Ghaziabad. You saw an advertisement
inviting applications for the post of a ‘Librarian’. Write a letter in 120-150 words to the
Principal giving your detailed resume. [1X5=5]
(OR)
Your school, KKR Senior Secondary School, is situated in the heart of the city of
Mangalore. Many stray animals roam on the school road causing traffic jams as well as
accidents. Write a letter in 120-150 words to the Editor of The Indian Express drawing
the attention of the municipal authorities to this nuisance. Sign as Rukamni/ Rakesh,
Head Girl/ Head Boy.

IV. You are Nitin/ Navya of Bluebells Academy, Delhi. As the reporter for your school
magazine, write a report in 150-200 words on the Annual Inter School Singing
Competition held recently. [1X5=5]
(OR)
The Lions Club and Apollo Hospital, Chennai organised blood donation camp in your
school. You reached there as a reporter. Write a report to be published in your school
magazine, in 150-200 words.
LITERATURE SECTION: 24 MARKS

V. Answer the following questions in 30-40 words. (ANY FIVE) [5X2=10]

1. What does the reference to chappals in ‘Lost Spring’ tell us about the economic
condition of the ragpickers?
2. What does the poet want for the children of the slums? How can this change be
affected?
3. What is the misadventure that William Douglas speak about?
4. ‘Garbage to them is gold.’ Why does the author say so about the ragpickers?
5. What were the poetess’ feelings when she was driving?
6. Why was YMCA pool safer?

VI. Answer the following questions in 30-40 words. (ANY TWO) [2X2=4]

1. How did wizard help Roger Skunk?

2. What did the psychiatrist think when Charley told him about the third level?
3. Why does Jo want wizard to hit mommy?

VII. Answer the following questions in 120-150 words. (ANY ONE) [1X5=5]

1. “It is his Karam, his destiny” that made Mukesh’s grandfather go blind. How did
Mukesh disapprove this belief by choosing a new vocation and making his own destiny?
2. How did the instructor make Douglas a good swimmer?

VII. Answer the following questions in 120-150 words. (ANY ONE) [1X5=5]

1. Why did Charley think that Grand Central was growing like a tree, pushing out new
corridors and staircases like roots?
2. The same situation can be viewed through two different perspectives. How does
“Should Wizard Hit Mommy?” establish this point through the views of Jack and Jo?