English Class X Sample Paper 3

Section A
A1. Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that following:
1. When television became widespread after World War II, some people thought that television will replace reading. They believed that only a few people might still have any reason to reed and that television would become the number one educational tool.
2. We know now that this prediction was incorrect There has been no decline in most people’s need to read. In fact surveys shows that more books than ever are being sold and the amount of time that the students spend reading is greater than in the days before television. Unfortunately, however, many students are doing little or no voluntary reading. Most of the reading that they do is assigned by their teachers.
3. Just think about how much you read every day in order to complete your school work. How often can you finish an assignment or your home-work without doing any reading? Is there any class in your school that does not require you to do some reading? You have to home-economies -directions and recipes, if nothing else- in shop and auto mechanic classes, in the Science lab and certainly in such courses as Social Studies and English. There is no denying the fact that most academic and vocational courses rely heavily on text books.
4. Not too long ago, a group of teachers made a study of the students and learning problems. A curious fact came out of this study. The teachers discovered that the students who did poorly in subjects such as Maths or Art could still do very well in other subjects. But the students who did poorly hi reading, almost always did poorly in all their others courses.
5. For a while the teachers who made the study were puzzled by this, but they soon had an answer to this puzzle. The teachers looked at the subjects that the students were failing in and discovered that even subjects like Maths and Science were based on reading.
6. Of course there were also other skills involved such as learning to add and subtract in Maths class most of the explanation of how to do things had to be read by the students. Much of the home-work assignments required students to read long sets of directions and tests and, problems in class often involved story problems, problems that were explained in words and had to be read and understood before they could be solved. Your success or failure in these classes will depend of your ability to read the required material. Finally, if you go to college, almost all your study time will be spent reading. You need more and more information and most of this information comes from the printed material you have to read. Even if you could get tapes or movies containing all the information, you need to know that they would not be of much help until and unless you know how to read.
7. Magazines and books may all be on microfilm in the next few years, but they will still have to be read. The same is true of most of what you have to learn in school. Your school is probably not going to throw all printed material out of the window very soon.
8. Success in school courses still depends on an ability to read and those students, who cannot read or at least read well enough to master material, are in trouble.
9. You are moving into a world where eve day more and more technical reading is required Instructions for using applications are becoming more complex. There are written instructions to follow,-for food preparations, traffic signs, travel directions and safety information, all requiring the ability to read. People in modern society read hundreds and even thousands of words every day.
10. Also your ability to get and keep a job is directly related to your ability to read. Even the simplest jobs require some reading ability, and many people advance to more important and better paying jobs by getting additional knowledge and skills through reading. The more spéciailsed the job, the need to read confidently, quickly and efficiently. Doctors read professional journals so that they can use the latest medical knowledge in treating patients while pharmacists have to read the prescriptions the doctors write. Lawyers spend their days rending briefs. The number of semi-skilled and professional occupations that require high reading ability is increasing rapidly. Today a person who cannot read is almost unemployable. (About 750 words)

(a) Based on your understanding of the above passage answer the following questions:
(i) What prediction concerning television is referred to by the author and why does he say that it is incorrect? (1+3)
(ii) What were the findings of the teachers regarding the poor performance of the students? (2)
(iii) What do you understand from the term ‘technical reading’? (2)
(iv) Do you think audio-visuals and microfilms can replace reading in modern? Why? Why not? (4)