5

Speaking

Question:

Using some of the expressions given above in exercise II I, talk about an incident when you were very scared. You may have a competition to decide whose story was the most frightening.

Answer:

A Frightening Incident

One day in winter, my parents had gon e to attend a birth day party in the nearby city. I was alone in my home with my younger brother. He was sleeping. It was a chilly night. Suddenly he gave a shriek. I was very frightened. I neared him to give him solace. He told that he was frightened in dream. When he got some relief, I heard a ringi ng of the bell.

The light had gone when the bell rang. The atmosphere was all misty. We were too freeze with fear to move any further. Somehow, we approached the door with torch light. It was mom and dad at the door. Thank God, we heaved a sigh of relief.

Dictation

Question:

The following paragraph is about the Indian cobra. Read it twice and close your book. You r teach er will then dictate the paragraph to you. Write it down with appropriate punctuation marks.

The Indian cobra is the common name for members of the family of venomous snakes, known for their intimida ting looks and deadly bite. Cobras are recognised by the hoods that they flare when angry or disturbed; the hoods are created by the extension of the ribs behind the cobras' heads. Obviously the best prevention is to avoid getting bitten. This is facilitated by the fact that hu mans are not the natural prey of any venomous snake. We are a bit large for them to swallow whole and they have no means of chopping us up into bite-size pieces. Nearly all snakebites in humans are the result of a snake defending itself when it feels threatened. In general snakes are shy and will simply leave if you give them a chance.

f".. Answer:

To write in correct and meaningful sentence, we should use the following punctuation marks: () Bracket

(,) Comma

 (.) Full stop

(!) Exclamation Mark

(?) Question Mark

 (-) Dash

(;) Semicolon

(:) Colon

("") Inverted Commas

Writing

Question:

1.       Try to rewrite the story withou t its humour, merely as a frightening incident. What details or parts of the story woul d you leave out?

2.       Read the description given alongside this sketch from a photogra ph in a newspa per ( Times of

India, 4 September 1999). Make up a story about what the monkey is thinking, or why it is looking into a mirror. Write a paragraph about it.

A monkey preens itself using a piece of mirror, in the Delhi ridge.

('To preen oneself ' means to spend a lot of time making oneself look attractive, and then admiring one's appearance. The word is used in disapproval.)

!:iAnswer:

1.       It the work of creativity, so do yourself.

2.       The Monkey's Delhi Ridge

Once a monkey was sitting on a tree. He saw some sparking thing at the botto m of another tree. He reached to the thing to analyse it and found that it was just a small piece of mirror. It was happy over his face. He just kept it in his hand and come back in the tree. He started admiring his reddish face and eyes. It went on preening into it and thought that it should have a clean and smart face like a human beings. All of sudden, he heard a strange voice. Just as he turned back, the mirror fell down and settled on earth with polished face up. He tried to get the mirror again but it was lost. Finally, all his dreams vanished.

Translation

Question:

The text you read is a translation of a story by a well-known Malayalam writer, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer.

In translating a story from one language to another, a translator must keep the content intact. However, the language and the style differ in different translations of the same text.

Here are two translations of the opening paragraphs of a novel by the Japanese writer, Haruki Muraka mi. Read them and Answer the Questions given below.

A                          B

When the phone rang I was in the kitchen,

boiling a potf ul of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini' s The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.

I wanted to ignore the phone, not only because the spaghetti was nearly done,  but because  Claudio  Abbado  was

I'm  in the  kitchen  cooking spaghetti  when  the

woma n calls. Another momen t until the spaghetti is done; there I am, whistling the prelude to Rossini's La Gazza Ladra along with the FM radio. Perfect  spaghetti-cooking  music!

I hear the telephone ring but tell myself, Ignore it. Let the spaghetti finish cooking. It's almost done, and besides, Claudio Abbado and the

bringing      the     London       Symphony  to      its      London       Symphony  Orchestra          are     coming        to      a musical climax.                               crescendo.

Compare the two translations on the basis of the following points.

•        the tense of narration (past and presen t tense)

•        short, incomplete sentences

•        sentence length

Which of these translations do you like? Give reasons for your choice.

Answer:

I like paragraph B due to the following reasons:

Paragraph B is more comprehensive because it is simple have short sentences in the present tense.

Paragraph B is written in Presen t Tense while paragraph A is in Past Tense.