Wednesday 25 February 2015

GENERAL ENGLISH - 2004

Time Allowed: 3 hours             Maximum marks: 300
  Candidates should attempt ALL questions:

1.       Write an essay. In about 800 to 1000 words, on any one of the following topics:
(a)    God Helps Those Who Help Themselves
(b)   Some Major Inventions Which Have transformed the World
(c)    The game of Cricket and the Media Hype
(d)   One is not Born a Women, One Becomes a Woman Solving the Problem of Water Scarcity.
(e)   Solving the problem of Water Scarcity

2.       Draft a report for a newspaper on the lack of civic amenities in your locality.
                                                                         OR

Write a letter to your friend who lives abroad, describing an election scene in India. (Sign yourself as X and do not reveal your identity in any manner.)

3.       Attempt a précis on your own words, reducing the passage of 595 words to no fewer than 200 words and no more that 230 words. Mention the exact number of words used. If the précis is not written in the special précis sheet provided, marks will be reduced.

If you want to do something well, whatever it may be, any kind of work, the least thing, play a game, write a book, do painting or music or run a race, anything at ll, if you want to do it well, you must become what you are doing and not remain a small person looking at himself doing it; for if one looks at oneself acting, one is still n complicity with the ego. If, in oneself, one succeeds in becoming what one does, it is a great progress. In the least little details, one must learn this. Take a very amusing instance: your want to fill a bottle from another bottle; you concentrate (you must try it as a describe filled, the bottle from which hone pours, and the movements of pouring as long as you are only this, all goes well. But if unfortunately you think at a given moment: “Ah! It is getting on well, I am managing well,” the next minute it spills over! It is the same for everything, for everything. That is why work is a   good means of discipline, for if you want to do the work properly, you must become the work instead of being someone who works, otherwise you will never do it well. If you remain “Someone who works” and, besides, if your thoughts go vagabonding then you may be sure that if you are handling fragile thinks, they will break, if you are cooking, you will burn something or if you are playing a game, you will miss all the balls! It is here; in this that works is a great discipline. For if truly you want to do it well, this is the only way of doing it.

Take someone who is writing a book, for instance. If he looks at himself writing the book, you can’t imagine how dull the book will become; it smells immediately of the small human personality which is there and it loses all its value. When a painter paints a picture, if he observes himself painting the picture, the picture will never be good, it will always be a kind of projection of the painter’s personality; it will be without life, without force, without beauty. But, it all of a sudden, he becomes the thing he wets to express, if he  becomes the brushes, the painting , the canvas, the subject, the image , the colours, the value, the whole thing, and is entirely inside it & lives it, he will make something magnificent.

For everything, everything, it is the same. There is nothing which cannot be a yogic discipline if one does it property. And if it is not done properly even taoasya will be of no use and it will lead you nowhere. For it is the same thing, if you do your tapasya, all the time observing yourself doing it and telling yourself” “Am I making any progress, is this going to be better, am I going to succeed?” then it is your ego, you know, which becomes more and more enormous and occupies the whole place, and there is no room for anything else.
What  gives one most the feeling of inferiority, of limitation smallness, impotence, is always this turning back upon oneself, this shutting oneself up in the bounds of a microscopic ego. One must widen oneself, open the doors. And the best way is to be able to concentrate upon what one is doing instead of concentration upon oneself.


4.       Rewrite the following sentences correctly, choosing the appropriate words given below.
Trust;    spirits;   survived;   understand; architect
(a)    I  ………. You want a situation.
(b)   Every man is  the …………. Of his own fortune.
(c)    This morning he seemed in good ………..
(d)   …………in God and do what is right.
(e)   Those soldiers who ………..have received medals.

5.       Rewrite as directed:

(a)    Little strokes fell great oaks. (change the voice)
(b)   No man can lose ……………. He never had.
(Fill in the blank with a suitable relative pronoun)

(c)    Umbrella is of no avail against thunderstorm.
(Insert articles wherever necessary)
(d)   I speak the truth. I am not afraid of it.
(Combine the sentences using an infinitive)
(e)   The exercise was written …… e ….. A Parker fountain pen.
(Fill in the blanks with suitable prepositions)
(f)     The news is too good to be true.
(Rewrite the sentence removing ‘too without changing the meaning)

(g)    It is better to starve than beg.
(Change the degree of comparison without changing the meaning)
(h)   The rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
(Express the meaning in a negative form)
(i)      Girl wanted for telephone of nice manners and appearance.
(Rewrite improving the arrangement)

(j)     If I and known you were coming. I (met) you at the station.
(Rewrite putting the verb in the bracked in the correct tense)

6.       Rewrite , using the right tense of the verbs in brackets:
He (throw) over her should the garments he (buy) for them. She (conscious) of this and (anxious) to hurry away lest she should be noticed by others.

7.       Rewrite the following. After correcting the errors, if any:
(a)    Ram, like his brothers, is careful about his work.
(b)   Electricities are expensive these days.
(c)    Little children often need help with his homework.
(d)   Our legal system believes that criminals should be persecuted.
(e)   Paul read the book, wrote a report and returning it to the library.
(f)     When well cooked, grandma served the country to me.

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