Reading Manual

READING MANUAL SESSION (2017-18) CLASS: XI ____________________ This manual belongs to: Name : Class : Roll No. : PREFACE The Central Board of Secondary Education professes the importance of reading as an indispensable skill in the development of language proficiency in students. Inculcating good reading habits in students has always been considered a stepping stone for creating individuals who not only decode information but also interpret critically, analyse effectively and evaluate objectively. In this technology savvy world where reading as an activity is considered time consuming and thus is potentially endangered to fade into insignificance, the Reading Manual serves to facilitate the students’ perception of the world by offering a wide variety of write ups. The learning material chosen for the manual went through a rigorous process of scanning, selection and deselection, and compilation taking into account the relevance and contemporariness of the content. The selection aims to provide exposure to a variety of issues ranging from the domains of education, psychology, medicine, resource management and environment, to social, ethical, political and visionary. It takes into account the interest, learnability and feasibility of learners while sensitising them about the immediate environment and developing language skills. All selected texts have been taken from authentic and reliable sources including leading newspapers, magazines and websites, and have been meticulously edited to suit the needs of the learners. It is hoped that this manual acts as a catalyst in enabling learners to comprehend, reorganise and synthesise information as part of the larger objective of learning and imbibing language. WORKSHEET 1 Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow. 1. The New Year is the time for resolution. Mentally, at least most of us could compile formidable lists of ‘do’s and ‘don’ts’. The same old favourites recur year in and year out with the children, do a thousand and one job about the house, be nice to people we don’t like, drive carefully, and take the dog for a walk every day. Past experience has taught us that certain accomplishments are beyond attainment. If we remain deep rooted liars, it is only because we have so often experienced the frustration that results from failure. 2. Most of us fail in our efforts at self improvement because our schemes are too ambitious and we never have time to carry them out. We also make the fundamental error of announcing our resolution to everybody so that we look even more foolish when we slip back into our bad old ways. Aware of these pitfalls, this year I attempted to keep my resolution to myself. I limited myself to two modest ambitions, to do physical exercise every morning and to read more in the evening. An overnight party on New Year’s Eve provided me with a good excuse for not carrying out either of these new resolutions on the first day of the year, but on the second, I applied myself assiduously to the task. 3. The daily exercise lasted only eleven minutes and I proposed to do them early in the morning before anyone had got up. The self discipline required to drag myself out of bed eleven minutes earlier than usual was considerable. Nevertheless, I managed to creep down into the living room for two days before anyone found me out. After jumping about in the carpet and twisted the human frame into uncomfortable positions.I sat down at the breakfast table in an exhausted condition. It was this that betrayed me. 4. The next morning the whole family trooped into watch the performance. That was really unsettling but I fended off the taunts and jibes of the family good humouredly and soon everybody got used to the idea. However, my enthusiasm waned, the time I spent at exercises gradually diminished. Little by little the eleven minutes fell to zero. By January 10th, I was back to where I had started from. I argued that if I spent less time exhausting myself at exercises in the morning. I would keep my mind fresh for reading when I got home from work. Resisting the hypnotizing effect of television, I sat in my room for a few evenings with my eyes glued to a book. 5. One night, however, feeling cold and lonely, I went downstairs and sat in front of the television pretending to read. That proved to be my undoing, for I soon got back to the old bad habit of dozing off in front of the screen. I still haven’t given up my resolution to do more reading. In fact, I have just bought a book entitled ‘How to Read a Thousand Words a Minute’. Perhaps it will solve my problem, but I just have not had time to read it. WORKSHEET 1 A. On the basis of your reading the passage, answer the following questions: a. Why, according to the author, most of us fail in our efforts for self-improvement? b. Why is it a mistake to announce our resolution to everybody? c. Why did the writer not carry out his resolution on New Year’s Day? d. What effect does television have on the narrator? e. Does the narrator find his resolution too ambitious to be fulfilled? Comment. B. Answer the following questions by writing the most appropriate option in your answer scripts: a. Having experienced the frustration that results from failure, we have become i. deep rooted liars ii. shallow believers iii. more perceptive iv. strengthened our imagination b. Keeping a resolution seems, to the narrator, a very i. vital commitment ii. interesting exercise iii. tedious task iv. rewarding experience c. The narrator’s attitude at the end of the passage is i. uninterested and bored ii. bright and optimistic iii. hesitant and irresolute iv. condescending and derogatory d. The name of the book which the narrator plans to read suggests i. irony ii. comedy iii. tragedy iv. pun C. Find words from the passage which are closest in meaning to the following: a. Achievements (para 1) b. Drawbacks (para 2) c. Offered (para 3) d. Draining (para 4) D. Make notes of the above passage using an acceptable format including abbreviations and suitable headings and subheadings. Write a summary of the above passage in not more than 80 words. WORKSHEET 2 Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow. 1. The rapid growth of the Indian economy over the past three decades has led to a substantial expansion of India’s “middle class”. This has triggered a robust debate over who in India actually belongs to the “middle class”, its size, composition, and political and social behaviour. This is a debate with serious implications for economic growth and governance since a range of scholarship in diverse settings has shown that the middle class is an important driver of a country’s economic, political and social development.But is the middle class anything more than simply a large group whose income makes it neither rich nor poor? Are differences within the middle class, especially in income, education and cultural and social capital, so wide as to render moot any ideological or behavioural coherence to this group? 2. This also happens to be a debate with no easy answers because social class is a conceptually complex measure; there is neither a universally accepted definition of middle class nor widely available data on the income of Indian households, as opposed to their consumption patterns. But even if acceptable measures and hard data could be marshalled, they would still be ill-equipped to nail down a rather elusive concept: whether Indians actually believe and behave as if they are part of the middle class. Self-identification of class status is important because it suggests the possibility that Indians may behave in ways that are actually at odds with material realities. 3. To investigate this, the latest Lok survey asked respondents from across the country whether they considered their family to be a “middle class” family. Nearly half (49 per cent) of all survey respondents believed their family is a middle class family. There was, as one would expect, great variation in responses across states. For instance, while 68 per cent of respondents in Karnataka believed their family belonged to the middle class, just 29 per cent of respondents in Madhya Pradesh felt the same. Self-identification as middle class is expectedly more prevalent among urban respondents (56 per cent) but the share of rural individuals claiming to be middle class is also remarkably high (46 per cent). 4. Historically, the “middle class” construct has been a production of the forces of industrialisation and urbanisation.Middle class belonging also increases with educational attainment: the more educated one is, the more likely they are to claim to be middle class. However, 47 per cent of individuals with less than 10th standard education—those we typically do not associate with middle class status—still claim such an affiliation. Those numbers are surprisingly large and, as with income, urban-rural differences are notable. 5. When asked whether they believed their household’s economic conditions are getting better, 62 per cent of self-proclaimed “middle class” respondents answered in the affirmative, compared to 48 per cent for those who feel they are not among the middle class. Three structural changes occurring in India — service- sector led economic growth, rapid expansion of urbanisation and higher education — are undoubtedly resulting in a massive expansion of the middle class, however defined. The political and social consequences will depend on whether this middle class emerges simply as a social formation or as a self- conscious political force, whether progressive or possibly even reactionary.

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