SECTION A – READING
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below.
I recently heard a story from a man named Malcolm Dalkoff. He is 48 years old. For the last 24 years he has been a professional writer, mostly in advertising. Here is what he told me. As a boy, Dalkoff was terribly insecure and shy. He had a “few friends and no self confidence. One day in October I965, his high-school English teacher, Ruth Branch gave the class an assignment The students had been reading “To Kill a Mocking Bird”. Now they were to write their own chapter that would follow the chapter of the last novel. Today he cannot recall anything special about the chapter that he wrote, or what grade Mrs. Bauch gave him. What he does remember what he will never forget are the four words Mrs. Bauch wrote in the margin of the paper. “This is good writing.”
Four words changed his life. “Until I read those words, I had no idea of who I was or what I was going to be,” he said. “After reading her note, I went home and wrote a short story, something I had always dreamed of doing but never believed I could do." Over the rest of the year in school, he wrote many stories and always brought them to school for Mrs. Bauch to evaluate. She was encouraging, rough and honest. “She was just what I needed,” Dalkoff is convinced that none of this would have happened had that woman not written those four words in the margin of his paper. For his 30th high-school reunion, Dalkoff went back and visited Mrs. Bauch, who had retired. He told her what her four words had done for him. He told her that because she had given him the confidence to be a writer, he had been able to pass that confidence on to the woman who had become his wife, who became a writer herself. He also told Mrs. Bauch that a woman in his office,
who was working in the evenings towards a high school equivalency diploma, had come to him for advice and assistance. She had respected him because he was a writer. Mrs. Bauch was specially moved by the story of helping the young woman. “At that moment I think we both realized that Mrs. Bauch had cast an incredibly long shadow,” he said. Few words can change everything !!
(a) What was the assignment given by Ruth Brauch to her students?
(b) When did Dalkoff meet Mrs. Brauch and thank her?
(c) Mention the words which Dalkoff will never forget in his life.
(d) Why did the woman come to see him in the office?
(e) What kind of a teacher was Mrs. Brauch?
SECTION B – WRITING AND GRAMMAR
3.Taking help from the information given below and with your own ideas, write an article on ‘Violence among Youth’.
Hints: Social media/main cause violence/is glamorised/shown as basic/tempts the youthtowards violence/TV. and films also glorify violence/increases tendency towards violence 'among young people.
4. Write a factual description on the Diwali Assembly held in your school to promote green and smoke-free Diwali.
Value points- What, When , Where, Why / objective, how, special events, conclusion
5. Fill in the blanks with any suitable word.
Gravitation is the force (a) _________ holds us all down (b) __________ the surface of the earth. Anything (c) ________ upwards falls back to the also everything else in the universe.
6. In the passage given below, there is an error in each line. Write the incorrect word and the correction against the correct blank number in your answer sheet.
Incorrect Correct
Oats are a species with cereal grains. (a) ____ ____
Oats consumption by human being (b) ____ ____
date back to 400 BC. They are (c) ____ ____
mainly consumed by breakfast and as snacks. (d) ____ ____
Oats is best grown in temperate regions. (e) ____ ____
They have a low summer heat requirement (f) ____ ____
and greater tolerance in rain than other serials (g) ____ ____
such like wheat and barley. (h) ____ ____
7. Rearrange the jumbled words to form meaningful sentences :
(a) eat / food items / are water / fruits / and / that / as / content / high / vegetables / in / such
(b) of mankind / the habit / reading is / one of / resources / of / the greatest
(c) your / after / health / always / look
SECTION C - LITERATURE
8.a) Read the following extract and answer the questions that follow:
b)‘Our hells of fire and dust outrage the innocence Of air that is everywhere our own…’
(a) Name the poem and the poet.
(b) Who is „our‟ in the above lines?
(c) Explain the line, „dust outrage the innocence‟.
OR
‘The bleeding bark will heal
And from close to the ground
Will rise curled green twigs,
Miniature boughs
Which if unchecked will expand again’
(a) Name the poem and the poet.
(b) Name the poetic device used in the above lines?
(c) Why has the poet used the line, „Which if unchecked will expand again..‟?
9. Answer any two of the following questions briefly in about 30-40 words.
(a) Describe the theme of the story „The Last Leaf‟.
(b) How did the duck convince the Kangaroo?
(c) Describe the turning point in Santosh‟s journey towards success.
(d) Who was finally held guilty by the king in the story, „In the Kingdom of Fools‟?
10. Answer any one question in about 100 -120 words.
(a) What does Jerome K. Jerome convey about human nature through the narrator in the chapter, „Packing‟?
OR
(b) Describe the tone and language of the poem, „On Killing a Tree‟.
11. Answer any one question in about 150-200 words.
(a) What does the chapter, „Weathering the Storm in Ersama‟ show about nature expressing its fury against disaster caused by human callousness?
OR
(b) Describe how the painted leaf brings hope for Johnsy? What does it signify?
Please click on below link to download CBSE Class 9 English Worksheet Set B
