MAYOOR SCHOOL, NOIDA

PRE BOARD EXAMINATION TERM-2 (2021-22)

CLASS X
ENGLISH
SET A
Time: 2 Hours
Date: 10.03.2022 M M: 40
General Instructions:
(i) This paper is divided into three sections: A, B and C. All the sections are compulsory.
(ii) Separate instructions are given with each section and question, wherever necessary.
Read these instructions carefully.
(iii) Do not exceed the prescribed word limit while answering the questions.

Section A – Reading (10 marks)

Q1. Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:

1. In the summer of 1995, a bakery opened in Montreal, Canada and began to serve
warm, New York-style bagels. Other cities across the world had been thrilled when
New York bagels finally came to town, but the Montrealers were outraged.
Bagelville, the new shop, went out of business and closed its doors in less than a
year.
2. Montreal has a unique bagel tradition that dates back to at least 1919. The Montreal
bagel is chewier, smaller, and less dense, but has a much bigger hole than its
American cousin. Boiled in honey water and then baked in a wood-burning oven, it’s
a little sweet and has a harder exterior. It is hand-rolled in the shape of an oval
hoop; you can wear one around your wrist like a bracelet.
3. People in both cities feel very strongly about their bagels, and there is something of
an ongoing competition between them. Residents of Montreal insist their brand of
bagel is better than the famous New York kind. The Montreal-born astronaut Greg
Chamitoff even brought one-and-a-half dozen bagels, sprinkled with sesame seeds,
with him when he boarded the International Space Station.
4. New Yorkers, however, think the Montreal bagel is too sweet—more like a
doughnut than a genuine bagel should be. They complain that Montreal bagels turn
dry and hard less than a day after they’re baked. “I don’t think a Montreal bagel
place would work in New York,” said Vince Morena, a co-owner of Montreal’s
famous St. Viateur Bagel bakery. “New Yorkers love New York bagels. That’s how it
is.”
5. St. Viateur Bagel is an extremely popular tourist destination. There are no tables or
chairs in the original shop, just a few sweaty men in T-shirts making sesame and

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 poppy seed bagels and a line of customers waiting to eat them. The doughy rings are
arranged in two rows on a long wooden plank and then shoved into a brick, wood-
burning oven. Halfway through the 20-minute cooking process, the bagels are
flipped over. When they’re done, a baker flings them off the plank and into a bin that
reaches right down to the cash register. Forty dozen bagels are produced every
hour.
6. “You have to be an artist to bake in a wood-burning oven,” said Irwin Shlafman,
owner of Fairmount Bagel, one of Montreal’s very first bagel bakeries. “The
temperature in the oven is set by the guy who’s putting the wood in and moving it
around. It’s terribly difficult.” Fairmount’s oven was built by Shlafman’s grandfather,
a bagel-maker, in 1949, and the training process at the shop is extremely tough. “It
takes a year at least before I’ll let anybody bake,” said Shlafman firmly. “No one
comes in here and says, ‘I want to be a baker.’”
7. Shlafman added, “New Yorkers come here and reluctantly try our bagel and enjoy it
somewhat, but when they get back, they feel better about the fact that they’re home
and can get what they call a real bagel.”
8. Most of New York City’s bagels are machine-made rather than hand-rolled and then
cooked in a rotating gas oven. Machines for making bagels were first introduced in
the 1960s by Daniel Thompson, a California inventor and the son of a baker. The
doublebank machine, used now by big production companies, is capable of churning
out 400 dozen an hour. That’s 80 bagels per minute! These New York bagels are
much fluffier than the ones in Montreal and about double the size.
9. “I saw them baking bagels in Montreal,” said Florence Wilpon, co-founder of Ess-a-
Bagel, a bakeshop on 1st Avenue and 21st Street in Manhattan. “When they came
out of the oven they were burnt and hard and sort of misshapen. I said to the man,
‘Why are you throwing them in the fire?!’” She had never seen bagels baked in a
woodburning oven before, or bagels so small; her own are particularly gigantic.
10. So which bagel is better? The answer all depends on where you come from and what
you are used to. The bagel wars are impossible to settle. In truth, there is no
“superior bagel,” just citizens attached to the cultures and traditions of their own
cities. That’s unlikely to keep people from debating about it, though!

Based on your understanding of the passage, answer ANY FIVE questions from the six
given below. (1x5= 5 marks)

i. Why did Bagelville go out of business?

ii. How does the author compare the two different types of bagels?
iii. Imagine that a Montreal baker wanted to argue that Montreal bagels are
superior because of the way they are made. How could the baker argue his or her
point? Use evidence from the passage to support your answer.
iv. Explain how Montreal bagels and New York-style bagels are made.
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 v. The author of the passage says “the bagel wars are impossible to settle.” What
evidence does the author provide to support this conclusion?
vi. Rewrite the following sentence by replacing the underlined word with a word
that means the same from para 3.
I connect staunchly with his concept of making medicine that is both useful for
public health and conducive to building a successful company.

Q2. Read the following excerpt from a case study titled “Save Animals” and answer
the questions that follow:

1. Usually, you would need to visit a national park or sanctuary to sight beautiful wild
animals such as the wild boar, blue bull (Nilgai), spotted deer, chinkara, blackbuck,
Indian hare, or monkeys. Today, just go round to any agricultural field and you may
find plenty of wild herbivores roaming the grounds freely and feeding on the crops
and natural palatable plants therein.
2. When forests were abundant, ecologically sound and self-sufficient, the movement
of wildlife inside the Protected Areas/forests in search of food would extend no
further than the buffer zone meant for environmental protection. Over time,
however, the alarming rise in human population has put maximum pressure on
forest wealth, leading gradually to large swathes of the forest, including the buffer
zone and corridors, being converted into agriculture fields and industries, and
cleared for the construction of urban zones, big dams, railway tracks, roads and
highways, mining corridors, electricity transmission lines and other development
works that massively reduce forest area and shrink good-quality wildlife habitats.
3. Resultantly, as wild herbivores made to move or migrate, through natural corridors,
from one forest to another in search of food, they found themselves in agricultural
fields, which are full of easily accessible feeding material. This has been the gradual
effect of encroachment into the homes of wildlife by humans, compounding the
human-wild animal conflict to rise. Exposed, such animals also come as easy prey
for poachers or become road kill. As per Delhi-based NGO Wildlife Protection
Society of India (WPSI), over 1,000 tigers have been killed in the country by
poachers over the last two decades. Over 650 instances of road kill have been
recorded in the last five years.
4. So, on the one hand, wildlife outside the protected areas is in great peril. On the
other, farmers and locals in and around the forest-fringe areas are at a loss due to
crop damage and the danger posed to human and livestock lives. The Ministry of
Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEF & CC) estimates that between 2014
and 2017, one death took place every day due to human-animal conflict. It is
observed that the wild herbivores damage between 15-50% of the standing crops in
the field and may affect 50-75% of the total agricultural area. Hence, a balanced
solution in the form of a ‘Special Management Plan’ (SMP) is a need of hour, not only
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 to protect wildlife outside protected areas and forests but also to safeguard human
lives and livelihoods.

On the basis of your reading and understanding of the above passage, answer ANY
FIVE questions from the six given below the following: (1x5= 5 marks)

a) What is buffer zone?

b) What is the most important reason behind the massively reduced forest area?
c) What compounds the human-animal conflict?
d) State two reasons which have led to the decrease of animal population especially
tigers? Refer to the statistics provided in the passage.
e) Where would one find wild herbivores like Nilgai nowadays?
f) According to the data provided in the passage for the years between 2014 and 2017,
how can you say that the situation is worrying?

Section B: Writing Skills & Grammar (10 marks)

Q3. Attempt ANY ONE from i and ii. (5 marks)

i. Human life is becoming more stressful day by day. With the help of the Stress
Mind Map given below, write a paragraph in not more than 120 words analyzing
the major causes behind this stress, its effects and how stress can be resolved.

OR

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 ii. You are Vaijanthi/Vijay from Prakasham Nagar, Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh.
Write a letter to Book Haven Store, S.M. Road, Secunderabad requesting home
delivery of the books, stationery and art materials you had ordered telephonically.
Share the reason for being unable to pick up the goods in person. Confirm your
address details and a convenient time slot.

Q4. The following paragraph has not been edited. There is one error in each line.
Identify the error and write its correction against the correct blank number.
Remember to underline the correction. (1x3= 3 marks)

Incorrect Correct
Neha: I wish to know about the tour
programme your company offers.
Also kindly let me knows the (a) _________ _________
amount what I have to pay. Also (b) _________ _________
let me know if there was any discount (c) _________ _________
available.

Q5. Read the conversation between the gardener and Suyash and complete the
passage that follows. (1x2= 2 marks)

Gardener: Did you water the plant today?

Suyash: No, but I will do this work tomorrow.
The gardener asked Suyash (a)__________________________________________. Suyash replied
negatively and further said (b) ___________________________________.

Section C: Literature (20 marks)

Q6. Answer ANY SIX questions in 30-40 words each. (2x6= 12 marks)

a) Grief is often seen as a measure of love. Do you think the Buddha’s sermon
undermines a mother’s love? Justify your response.
b) Would you call Amanda a disrespectful child? Provide one reason to justify your
opinion.
c) Does Whitman believe that animals and humans are essentially similar? Provide one
reason to support your opinion.
d) Why is it fair to say that Custard could be the ‘poster-boy’ for the belief that the real
nature of a person is revealed at times of the greatest difficulty?
e) The young man earned for himself the ire of his office people on his return from
New Mullion. Explain why.

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 f) Albert Einstein said, ‘The important thing is to never stop questioning.’ Richard was
a genius who proved this quote true. Justify.
g) Writer Gary Paulsen had famously said, “I owe everything I am and everything I will
ever be to books.” Explain this quote in context of Richard Ebright’s life.

Q7. Answer ANY TWO of the following in about 120 words each. (4x2= 8 marks)

a) Valli had an exciting trip to the town on the bus. One of her friends Vidya also wants
to go on the same adventure and asks Valli for advice. Valli shares her planning and
learnings from the trip. Write the dialogue between Valli and Vidya. You may begin
like this…
Vidya - Valli, you took such a big risk in going to the town on the bus alone. Even I
want to ride the bus. It is my dream too. Can you help me?
Valli - It was an unbelievable trip! But you must remember…

b) Read the following quote by an American author, E. E. Hale. “I am only one but, I am
one. I cannot do everything but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot
do interfere with what I do.” Bholi’s evolution from a ‘dumb cow’ to a ‘masterpiece’
supports the given quote. Justify.

c) Class-consciousness, selfishness, pride and narcissism are the common themes

found explicitly showcased through the characters of Matilda from ‘The Necklace’
and Natalya, Stephan and Ivan from ‘The Proposal’. Critically examine.