CBSE Class 10 English Communicative SA 1 2010 (4). Students can download the last year question papers using the link below. Free download of examination question papers with solutions. Last 10 year question papers should be practised to get better marks in examinations.

 SECTION  - A

(Reading - 20 Marks)

1.   Read the passage carefully. 

The story begins  with  an escaped convict  threatening  to slit  the throat of a youngorphan boy named Pip. Much later  we discover  a bond between these two unlikely characters and cannot help  but admire  Charles Dicken's  masterpiece Great Expectations.

Bizarre and eccentric characters litter the novel from beginning to end but none match the strangeness of elderly  Havisham.  She is  a woman who, jilted  at the altar years before, is heartbroken and unbalanced. She lives the rest of her life dressed in her bridal gown. The cobweb covered wedding cake and other food remain undisturbed  on the table, reminding her of the life she has missed.

A work of fiction? Well for Dickens perhaps not. In 1856, five years before the publication of Great Expectations, Eliza Donnithorne from Newtown,  Sydney, was left standing at the altar when her husband-to-be failed  to show up. For the next 30 years, she never left her house again and lived the life of a hermit. Food and decorations from the wedding celebrations  were left  to rot on the table  right  up until Miss  Donnithorne's  death in1886.

It would seem the story of poor Miss Donnithorne's situation might have reached Dickens was in Londan during the time he was thinking about and writing his novel, and may have helped  form the basis  of one of literature's  most remarkable  characters.

Choose the most appropriate  option

(A)    Great Expectations  is  probably  best known as :

(i)     a file.                                               

(ii)    a short  story.

(iii)   a  play.                                             

(iv)    a novel.

(B)    The passage probably comes from :

(i)      a history book.                               (ii)    a newspaper.

(iii)   a book about Eliz  Donnithorne.     (iv)    an articles about Great Expectations.

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