English
अङ्ग्रेजी · Class 11 · Code 0031 (CDC Eng.003)
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chapters done
- Literature - Short Stories
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The story
- Characters
- Themes
- Setting, structure and point of view
- Literary devices
- Glossary
Key points
- Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Irish, leader of Aestheticism; "The Selfish Giant" comes from The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888).
- A Giant returns after seven years with the Cornish ogre, drives the children out of his garden, walls it and posts TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
- Spring, Summer and Autumn never come; Snow, Frost, North Wind and Hail settle in — the Giant's selfishness becomes his own punishment.
- A linnet's song and the sight of one small crying boy melt the Giant's heart; he lifts the boy into the tree, breaks down the wall and gives the garden to the children.
- The boy disappears. Years later he returns with nail-prints in his hands and feet, calls them "the wounds of Love", and takes the dying Giant to Paradise.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The story
- Characters
- Themes
- Setting, structure and point of view
- Literary devices
- Glossary
Key points
- Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), American, a founder of Dark Romanticism and of the detective story; "The Oval Portrait" appeared in 1842 as "Life in Death".
- A wounded narrator and his valet Pedro shelter in an abandoned château in the Apennines and take a small turret room hung with paintings.
- Moving the candelabrum at midnight reveals an oval portrait of a young girl whose "absolute life-likeliness of expression" terrifies him.
- A book on the pillow explains it: a painter married a beautiful girl who hated his Art as her rival, then made her sit for weeks in a dark turret.
- Absorbed in his work, he did not see her fading; the colours he laid on the canvas were drawn from her cheeks.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The story
- Characters
- Themes
- Setting, structure and point of view
- Literary devices
- Glossary
Key points
- Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), Russian realist and moral thinker; "God Sees the Truth, but Waits" (1872) takes its title from a Russian proverb.
- Aksionov, a merchant of Vladimir, ignores his wife's warning dream and travels to the Nizhny fair; a fellow merchant is murdered at the inn.
- A blood-stained knife is found in Aksionov's bag; he is flogged and sent to Siberia for twenty-six years, charged with a murder he did not commit.
- His wife's question, "was it not you who did it?", ends his hope of human help; he stops petitioning and turns to prayer.
- In prison he becomes "Grandfather" and "The Saint"; Makar Semyonich, the real murderer, arrives and gives himself away.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The story
- Characters
- Themes
- Setting, structure and point of view
- Literary devices
- Glossary
Key points
- Roald Dahl (1916–1990), British, born in Wales of Norwegian parents, RAF pilot, author of macabre adult stories and famous children's books; "The Wish" is from Someone Like You (1953).
- A small boy alone in the hall picks off a scab, examines the new skin, and then studies the large red, black and yellow carpet.
- He invents a game: black is poisonous snakes, red is red-hot coals, yellow is safe; the prize for crossing is a puppy for his birthday the next day.
- As he crosses, the imagined danger becomes real to him — the snakes seem to stir and watch — and he begins to show the physical signs of real fear.
- A wide band of black forces an enormous stretch; he loses his balance, whirls his arms and puts his hand down on black. He screams.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The story
- Characters
- Themes
- Setting, structure and point of view
- Literary devices
- Glossary
Key points
- Chinua Achebe (1930–2013), Nigerian, author of Things Fall Apart; "Civil Peace" comes from Girls at War and Other Stories (1972) and is set just after the Nigerian Civil War of 1967–70.
- Jonathan Iwegbu counts five "inestimable blessings" — his own head, his wife Maria's and those of three of his four children — and repeats "Nothing puzzles God."
- His buried bicycle survives the war; as a taxi it earns him a hundred and fifteen pounds in two weeks, which takes the family back to Enugu.
- Their small zinc house still stands among ruins; the whole family works — mangoes, akara, a palm-wine bar — since the coal mine will not reopen.
- At the treasury he receives a twenty-pound ex-gratia award, which the crowd calls "egg-rasher".
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The story
- Characters
- Themes
- Setting, structure and point of view
- Literary devices
- Glossary
Key points
- Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893), French Realist and Naturalist, pupil of Flaubert, author of about three hundred stories including "Boule de Suif" and "The Necklace"; he died in an asylum at forty-two.
- Two young Breton soldiers, Luc Le Ganidec and Jean Kerderen, walk every Sunday from their barracks at Courbevoie, over the bridge at Bezons, to a spot near the wood of Champioux that reminds them of home.
- Their ritual is fixed: the pause on the bridge, the cheap provisions, the hidden bricks, the fire, the sausage, the silence on the grass.
- A dairymaid begins to speak to them, gives them milk "to remind them of home", accepts their two sous' worth of sweets, and joins their Sunday meal.
- Luc secretly takes leave twice in one week; on the next Sunday the girl kisses him in front of Jean, and the two go off into the wood together.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The story
- Characters
- Themes
- Setting, structure and point of view
- Literary devices
- Glossary
Key points
- R. K. Narayan (1906–2001), Indian novelist and story writer, creator of the imaginary town of Malgudi; "An Astrologer's Day" is the title story of his 1947 collection.
- The astrologer works under a tamarind tree on Town Hall Road, among other street sellers, lit only by their flares; his ash, vermilion, turban, cowrie shells and charts are pure stagecraft.
- He knows nothing about astrology. He succeeds through observation, flattery and a "working analysis of mankind's troubles: marriage, money and the tangles of human ties".
- A last customer, Guru Nayak, challenges him and they make a wager; a struck match shows the astrologer the man's face and he tries to call the bet off.
- He then tells Guru Nayak, accurately, that he was stabbed, pushed into a well and left for dead, and names him.
- Literature - Poems
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The syllabus asks for
- About the poet
- Summary
- Themes
- Form, structure and rhyme
- Poetic devices
- Glossary
Key points
- "Corona Says" by Vishnu S. Rai is a dramatic monologue in free verse in which the coronavirus speaks to the whole human race.
- Its four movements are: the virus accepts that it is hated; it accuses human beings of far greater destruction; it points out that it alone treats all people equally; and it shows that nature began to heal the moment people stopped.
- Central themes: destruction of the environment, human arrogance and hypocrisy, death as an equaliser, nature's capacity to recover, and the reversal of villain and victim.
- There is no rhyme scheme and no metre — the plain speaking voice of free verse is chosen on purpose.
- The governing device is personification; the governing mode is satire; the governing effect is irony.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the poet
- Summary
- Themes
- Form, structure and rhyme
- Poetic devices
- Glossary
Key points
- "A Red, Red Rose" (1794) by Robert Burns is a four-stanza Scots love song built from older folk material.
- Stanza 1 praises the beloved with two similes (a newly opened red rose; a sweetly played melody); stanzas 2 and 3 swear love until the seas dry, the rocks melt, and the speaker's own life runs out; stanza 4 turns out to be a farewell with a promise to return across ten thousand miles.
- Form: four quatrains in the ballad stanza, alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, rhyming ABCB.
- Central devices: simile, hyperbole, symbolism of the rose, repetition and the chain link between stanzas 2 and 3.
- Themes: the intensity of love, love against time, beauty drawn from nature, constancy in separation, and the folk-song tradition.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the poet
- Summary
- Themes
- Form, structure and rhyme
- Poetic devices
- Glossary
Key points
- The speech is spoken by Jaques in Shakespeare's As You Like It, Act II, Scene vii, in the Forest of Arden. It is a dramatic speech, not a stand-alone poem, and Jaques's gloom is his own, not the play's verdict.
- Its controlling idea is an extended metaphor: the world is a stage, people are actors, birth and death are entrances and exits, and each person plays seven parts.
- The seven ages in order: infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon, second childishness.
- Form: blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter, one unbroken verse paragraph of 28 lines, with feminine endings, caesura and heavy enjambment.
- Themes: life as performance, the speed of time, the circle from childhood to second childhood, bodily decay, and satire on human vanity.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the poet
- Summary
- Themes
- Form, structure and rhyme
- Poetic devices
- Glossary
Key points
- "who are you,little i" is poem 12 of E. E. Cummings's 95 Poems (1958): eight lines, one sentence, no capital letters, no full stop.
- The speaker, an old poet, addresses his own self at five or six, remembered standing at a high window and watching a gold November sunset.
- The child's thought — if the day has to become night, this is a beautiful way — is an acceptance of endings, and by extension of death.
- Rhyme: A B A B in lines 1–4 (i/high, old/gold) and C D E D in lines 5–8 (day/way). The poem is otherwise free verse, with short, nearly equal lines and continuous enjambment.
- The typography is the meaning: the lower-case "i" makes the self small and humble; the missing spaces crowd the words; the brackets make a private inner voice; the missing full stop leaves the moment open.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the poet
- Summary
- Themes
- Form, structure and rhyme
- Poetic devices
- Glossary
Key points
- "The Gift in Wartime" by Tran Mong Tu (b. 1943, Vietnam; in the United States since 1975) is spoken by a young widow at the grave of her soldier.
- It is built as an exchange of gifts: she offers roses, her wedding ring, her youth and the rest of her life; he gives back the smell of blood, his body, official medals, and a lifetime of mourning.
- The central device is irony — the word "gift" is made to cover both lists — supported by anaphora, symbolism and understatement.
- Form: free verse, no metre, no rhyme scheme, read in English translation; the rhythm comes from parallel syntax, not from feet or rhyme.
- Themes: the waste of war, the cost paid by survivors (especially women), love continuing after death, the emptiness of official honour, and protest by irony rather than by argument.
- Literature - Essays
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- Summary
- The central argument
- Themes
- Style and technique
- Glossary
Key points
- Frank LaPena (1937–2019), a Nomtipom Wintu artist, dancer and professor, writes from inside the tradition he describes.
- Thesis: tradition is a living practice, not a collection of facts or objects; it belongs to a community; and receiving it creates the duty to live it and pass it on.
- A "traditional person" is defined by participation — ceremony, obligation, discipline — not by knowledge or ownership.
- Tradition is learnt from elders, orally and by doing; knowledge is earned, and some of it is sacred and restricted.
- Ceremonial art is made for use, not display. An object in a museum has been separated from the only setting that gave it meaning.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The speech
- What the speech argues
- Themes
- Style and technique
- Glossary
Key points
- "How to Live Before You Die" is Steve Jobs's commencement address to Stanford University, delivered on 12 June 2005 by a speaker who never graduated from college himself.
- It has a tripartite structure: three autobiographical stories, announced in advance, each ending in a rule for living.
- Story one, connecting the dots: adopted at birth, Jobs drops out of Reed College, sits in on a calligraphy class with no practical use, and ten years later builds that typography into the Macintosh. Lesson — trust that the dots will connect, because you can only join them looking backward.
- Story two, love and loss: he builds Apple from a garage, is publicly fired at thirty, and finds that his love of the work has survived. NeXT, Pixar and a return to Apple follow. Lesson — find what you love, and don't settle.
- Story three, death: a wrong diagnosis of incurable pancreatic cancer, one day lived under sentence, then a curable tumour and successful surgery. Lesson — remembering that you will die clears away pride, fear and other people's expectations.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The context of the essay
- The essay, step by step
- The argument
- Themes
- Style and technique
- Glossary
Key points
- "What I Require from Life" (1940) is a short first-person essay by the geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, first published in the British communist newspaper the Daily Worker.
- Haldane begins by refusing utopia: he will accept the universe as it is and ask only for what is possible.
- He contrasts the peaceful age into which he was born with the heroic age that began in 1914, and resolves to make the best of the time he actually lives in.
- Assuming food, water, clothes and shelter, he requires four things: work with a decent wage, freedom (especially of speech), health, and friendship between equals. For himself alone he adds adventure — which he distinguishes sharply from a mere thrill.
- He separates desire from demand: a car, books, a bath, a garden are pleasant, and he is content without them.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The context
- The essay, paragraph by paragraph
- The definition Parker arrives at
- Themes
- Style and technique
- Glossary
Key points
- "What is Poverty?" (1971) is an anonymous American definition essay sent from West Virginia to the editor George Henderson with a request that no author's biography be printed. Nothing is known about "Jo Goodwin Parker".
- The narrator is a young woman, made old by hardship, living eight miles from town with three children on seventy-eight dollars a month.
- She defines poverty not as a lack of money but as a total condition: a permanent smell, permanent tiredness, dirt that cannot be washed away without soap or hot water, insects, illness, and danger.
- Working made her poorer — twenty-two dollars a week against twenty dollars for childcare — and left her children injured, so she had to stop. Poverty is a trap, not a choice.
- Asking for help costs shame: the wrong office, the repeated story, the waiting, "the red cloud of shame."
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The context: the Cold War and the test ban
- The essay, step by step
- The argument in summary
- Themes
- Style and technique
- Glossary
Key points
- The essay is by Vladimir Keilis-Borok (1921–2013), a Russian mathematical geophysicist of the Russian Academy of Sciences, later at UCLA, and founder and co-director of the earthquake-prediction programme at the ICTP in Trieste.
- It opens with the taunt "If you are so clever, why are you so poor?" and answers with Tolstoy: a scientist, like a writer, is someone who cannot live without the work. In place of money come freedom, camaraderie, independence, self-earned promotion and the joy of discovery.
- In 1960, at the height of the Cold War, the author was summoned from Moscow to Geneva because the American scientist Frank Press had quoted his work.
- The problem: if the powers ban nuclear tests and one of them cheats with a secret underground explosion, how can the others detect it? The answer lay in seismology — explosions and earthquakes shake the ground differently.
- Experts from both sides of the Iron Curtain succeeded because they were all scientists, sharing a language built on hard evidence, ranking by expertise alone, and persistent self-criticism. Their solution let politicians reach the nuclear test ban.
- Literature - One Act Plays
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The characters
- The play, scene by scene
- The chain of clues
- The characters in detail
- Symbolism
- Setting, structure and technique
- Themes
- Glossary
Key points
- Trifles (1916) is Susan Glaspell's first play, based on a murder trial she covered as a young reporter in Des Moines; she later rewrote it as the story A Jury of Her Peers.
- John Wright has been strangled with a rope in his bed; his wife Minnie, who says she "slept sound", is in custody. Neither of them appears on stage.
- The Sheriff, the County Attorney and the neighbour Hale search upstairs and in the barn for evidence of a motive and find nothing, dismissing the kitchen as holding "nothing here but kitchen things" and women's "trifles".
- Left in the kitchen, Mrs Hale and Mrs Peters read the room: unfinished work, a burst jar of preserves, shabby clothes, an empty rocking chair, and a quilt whose last block is stitched wildly.
- They find a birdcage with its door broken and then, in a pretty box, the canary with its neck wrung. The motive is complete: a hard, silent husband killed the one thing that sang, and his wife answered in kind.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the authors
- The characters
- The play, step by step
- The shape of the morning
- The two central questions
- Themes
- Humour, irony and technique
- Glossary
Key points
- A Sunny Morning (Mañana de sol, 1905) is a one-act comedy by the Spanish brothers Serafín (1871–1938) and Joaquín (1873–1944) Álvarez Quintero of Andalusia, translated by Lucretia Xavier Floyd.
- Setting: a retired corner of a park in Madrid, on a sunny autumn morning; a single bench; four characters; continuous action.
- Dona Laura, seventy, is feeding pigeons when Don Gonzalo, seventy and gouty, scatters them. They quarrel over the bench and the birds; a pinch of snuff makes peace.
- He reads Campoamor aloud; she recites "Twenty years pass. He returns…" without glasses, knowing it by heart.
- Mentions of Valencia, the villa Maricela, Laura Llorente and "The Silver Maiden" bring the past back. Speaking of "my cousin" and "my friend", they retell their own love story: the flowers thrown to the balcony, the merchant, the insult, the duel at sunrise.
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The syllabus asks for
- About the author
- The characters
- The play, step by step
- The double trap
- Themes
- Satire, humour and technique
- Glossary
Key points
- Refund (1938) is a one-act farce by the Hungarian satirist Fritz (Frigyes) Karinthy (1887–1938), adapted for English-speaking audiences by Percival Wilde.
- Wasserkopf, a bearded man under forty, jobless and broke, returns to his old school after eighteen years and demands his tuition fees back, saying he learned nothing and is now good for nothing.
- The idea came from his old classmate Leaderer, who was making money speculating in foreign exchange and told Wasserkopf that if he did not understand how, he should go and get his fees back.
- Wasserkopf demands a re-examination to prove he knows nothing, and threatens the Ministry of Education.
- The Principal calls a staff conference. The Mathematics Master proposes the plan: "Whatever his answers, we agree beforehand that they are correct" — because "if he fails he succeeds", and one refund would bring a queue of others.
- Grammar
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The syllabus asks for
- The eight word classes
- Nouns: countable, uncountable and the forms Nepali learners mix up
- Pronouns
- Verbs: main, auxiliary and the five forms
- Adjectives and adverbs
- Words that change class
- Contracted forms
- Using a dictionary
Key points
- The eight classes are noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and determiner; class is decided by the job the word does in that sentence, not by its spelling.
- Uncountable nouns — information, advice, furniture, luggage, equipment, news, work, traffic — have no plural and take no a/an; count them with a piece of.
- Every verb has five forms: V1, -s, V2, V3, -ing. Learn irregulars as a row.
- Only transitive verbs have objects, and only transitive verbs can be made passive.
- Do not add prepositions English does not want: discuss, return, reach, enter, marry, resemble, emphasise, comprise take a direct object.
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The syllabus asks for
- The twelve tenses at a glance
- The present tenses
- The past tenses
- The future tenses and other ways of talking about the future
- Signal words — the fastest way to spot the tense
- Worked transformations
Key points
- Tense = time; aspect = simple / continuous / perfect / perfect continuous. Three times × four aspects = twelve forms.
- Structures: V1(+s) · am-is-are + V-ing · have/has + V3 · have/has been + V-ing · V2 · was/were + V-ing · had + V3 · had been + V-ing · will + V1 · will be + V-ing · will have + V3 · will have been + V-ing.
- Third-person singular takes -s in the simple present, and loses it after does/doesn't.
- After did / didn't / does / doesn't, the main verb is always V1.
- A finished past time word (yesterday, ago, last year) forces the simple past; since, for, just, already, yet force the present perfect.
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The syllabus asks for
- The noun phrase and the order of determiners
- The indefinite article: a and an
- The definite article: the
- The zero article — where students actually lose the mark
- Demonstratives and possessives
- Quantifiers
Key points
- A singular countable noun needs a determiner: a/an, the, a possessive or a demonstrative. A bare singular countable noun is almost always an error.
- a/an = first mention or one of a class; the = the listener knows which one.
- an goes before a vowel sound (an hour, an MA), a before a consonant sound (a university, a one-rupee coin).
- the with: second mention, unique things, superlatives, ordinals, rivers, seas, mountain ranges, plural country names, newspapers, nationalities, instruments.
- No article with: general plurals, general uncountables, names, languages, subjects, meals, games, festivals, by + transport, and places used for their purpose (go to school, in hospital, in bed).
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The syllabus asks for
- The complete modal table
- Ability: can, could, be able to
- Permission, requests, offers and suggestions
- Obligation, necessity and their negatives
- Degrees of certainty — deduction
- Past forms of modals and what they criticise
- Semi-modals
Key points
- A modal takes the bare infinitive, never adds -s, needs no do for questions and negatives, and cannot be joined to another modal.
- Ability: can (now), could (past, general), was/were able to (one past success), be able to (all other forms).
- Permission rises in formality: can → could → may → might.
- Obligation: must (from the speaker), have to (from outside), had to (past), should / ought to / had better (advice).
- mustn't = forbidden; needn't and don't have to = not necessary. They are opposites, not synonyms.
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The syllabus asks for
- The five steps of the transformation
- The passive of every tense
- Modals, infinitives and gerunds in the passive
- Verbs with two objects
- Questions, imperatives and other special sentences
- When and why the passive is used
- Causative verbs
Key points
- Passive = subject + correct form of be + V3 (+ by + agent). Only transitive verbs have a passive.
- The tense never changes in a voice transformation; only the form of be does.
- Passive forms: is/are + V3 · is/are being + V3 · has/have been + V3 · was/were + V3 · was/were being + V3 · had been + V3 · will be + V3 · will have been + V3.
- The four continuous-perfect and future continuous tenses have no passive.
- Modals: modal + be + V3; past modals: modal + have been + V3.
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The syllabus asks for
- The reporting verb and the link word
- The complete backshift table
- Pronoun changes
- Changes of time and place
- Reporting statements
- Reporting questions
- Reporting commands, requests, advice and suggestions
- Reporting exclamations and wishes
Key points
- Four changes, in order: reporting verb and link → tense → pronouns → time and place words.
- Tell needs a person after it; say does not take one unless you add to.
- No backshift when the reporting verb is present or future, when the statement is a universal truth or still true, when a past time is stated, or in unreal conditionals and wish clauses.
- Backshift ladder: present → past; present perfect and simple past → past perfect; will → would; can → could; may → might; must → had to. Past perfect does not move.
- Statements take that; wh- questions keep the wh- word; yes/no questions take if/whether; commands and requests take to / not to + V1.
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The syllabus asks for
- The shape of a conditional sentence
- The five types in one table
- Type 0 — the zero conditional
- Type 1 — the real future conditional
- Type 2 — the unreal present conditional
- Type 3 — the unreal past conditional
- Mixed conditionals
- Other ways of expressing a condition
- Leaving out if — inversion
- Unreal forms related to conditionals
Key points
- Type 0: if + present, present — always true.
- Type 1: if + present, will + V1 — a real future possibility.
- Type 2: if + past (were for all persons), would + V1 — unreal present.
- Type 3: if + had + V3, would have + V3 — unreal past, regret.
- Mixed: if + had + V3, would + V1 (past cause, present result); if + past, would have + V3 (present cause, past result).
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The syllabus asks for
- Relative pronouns
- Defining relative clauses
- Non-defining relative clauses
- When the relative pronoun may be left out
- Whose, where, when and why
- Prepositions in relative clauses
- Reduced relative clauses
- Connectives by function
Key points
- A relative clause goes immediately after the noun it describes.
- who/whom for people, which for things, whose for possession, where/when/why for place, time and reason.
- Defining clause: identifies the noun, no commas, that allowed, object pronoun may be dropped.
- Non-defining clause: extra information, commas both sides, that forbidden, pronoun never dropped.
- Do not repeat the noun or its pronoun inside the relative clause.
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The syllabus asks for
- The four kinds of question
- Yes / no questions
- Wh- questions
- Indirect and embedded questions
- Question tags — the basic rule
- Special tags you must memorise
- Subject–verb agreement: the core rules
Key points
- Questions invert the auxiliary and the subject; without an auxiliary, insert do / does / did and use V1.
- A subject question (Who came?) takes no do / does / did and no inversion.
- An embedded question keeps statement word order and needs no question mark.
- A tag = auxiliary + (n't) + pronoun, with the polarity reversed.
- Memorise: I am → aren't I, Let's → shall we, imperative → will you, There is → is there, everyone → they, nothing → it.
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The syllabus asks for
- Prepositions of time
- Prepositions of place and direction
- Prepositions fixed to a word
- Adjectives: kinds and order
- Degrees of comparison
- Adverbs
Key points
- Time: at a clock time, on a day or date, in a month, season or year; since + point, for + length, by = not later than, until = up to.
- Place: at a point, on a surface, in an area; between two, among more than two; beside = next to, besides = in addition.
- Many verbs, adjectives and nouns have a fixed preposition — learn the pair.
- Discuss, enter, marry, reach, resemble, answer, request, attack take no preposition; avoid return back, cope up with, repeat again.
- Adjective order: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose.
- Writing and Skills
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The syllabus asks for
- What the guided-writing question asks
- Turning an outline into a story
- The language of narrative
- Reading a chart, a graph or a table
- The language of describing data
- Checking your own answer
Key points
- Guided writing (Q4, 7 marks) supplies the material; you supply the sentences. Content 3, organisation 2, language 2. Write 150–200 words in about 15 minutes.
- A story from an outline: read all the notes first, invent a who / where / when, write in the simple past and third person, expand each note into two to four sentences, paragraph by stage, title and moral last.
- Direct speech: comma before the speech, capital letter inside, punctuation inside the closing marks, and a new line for each new speaker.
- Describing data: paraphrase the title, give an overview with the highest and lowest values, then the details with figures, then one closing sentence.
- Change verbs — rose, climbed, doubled / fell, dropped, halved / remained steady, levelled off — with sharply, steadily, gradually, slightly.
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The syllabus asks for
- The forms, and how formal each one is
- The formal letter: the parts and where they go
- Kinds of formal letter, and the envelope
- Emails
- Applications, and the curriculum vitae
- Notices
- Checking your own answer
Key points
- Q5, functional writing, 8 marks: roughly half for format, half for language and register. Fix the skeleton before you write.
- Formal letter, block style, in order: sender's address · date · receiver's address · subject · salutation · three body paragraphs · close · signature, name, post.
- Dear Sir / Madam → Yours faithfully; Dear Mr Rai → Yours sincerely. Only the first word of the close is capitalised.
- Formal register: I should be grateful if you would…, I regret any inconvenience caused, I look forward to hearing from you. No contractions.
- Avoid Myself Ram, kindly do the needful, reply back, Your's faithfully, request for leave.
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The syllabus asks for
- What Question 6 asks
- The paragraph: the unit an essay is built from
- The shape of a whole essay
- Four kinds of essay, and how each is organised
- The memoir
- Critical writing
- Language that lifts a free-writing answer
- Checking your own answer
Key points
- Question 6 is worth 10 marks: about 4 for content, 3 for organisation, 3 for language. Plan five minutes, write twenty, check five.
- A paragraph is one idea: topic sentence, supports in a chosen order, closing sentence. Unity and coherence are what the organisation mark measures.
- An essay is a funnel: general opening, a one-sentence thesis, body paragraphs that defend it, a conclusion that widens out and adds nothing new.
- The four kinds — narrative, descriptive, expository, argumentative — are distinguished by their order. Take the kind from the wording of the question.
- A memoir is one remembered slice of time in the first person, built on concrete detail, turning on a single moment, and ending with reflection on what it meant.
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The syllabus asks for
- What Question 1 looks like
- Two reading speeds: skimming and scanning
- The five-step method
- The question types, and what each one wants
- Worked passage A
- Worked passage B
- The traps, and the checklist
Key points
- Question 1 is 15 marks on an unseen passage of 350–500 words, with six to nine mixed questions, in about 30–35 minutes.
- Read the questions first. Then skim for shape, then read closely with a pencil, marking where each answer lives.
- Skimming finds the shape of a passage; scanning finds one item in it. They are different speeds for different jobs.
- Each question type has its own rule: substitute-and-test for reference, one exact word for vocabulary, evidence-plus-answer for inference, silence-means-Not-Given for true/false, three to six words for a title.
- Every answer must be defensible from the passage. Outside knowledge is the commonest cause of lost marks.
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The syllabus asks for
- What Question 8 asks
- Sounds and spelling
- Word stress
- Prefixes
- Suffixes, and the spelling rules for adding them
- Building words: prefix + root + suffix
- Synonyms, antonyms and words that are nearly the same
- Idioms and phrasal verbs
- Working out a word you do not know
Key points
- Question 8 is five one-mark items on vocabulary. Word class and spelling must both be right; there are no part marks.
- Silent letters often reappear when a suffix is added (sign → signature), which is a clue to word families.
- Stress matters: two-syllable noun/verb pairs stress the first syllable as a noun and the second as a verb; the endings -ion, -ity, -ic, -ical, -graphy pull the stress onto the syllable before them.
- A prefix changes meaning; a suffix changes word class. The negative prefix is im- before b, m, p; il- before l; ir- before r; in- elsewhere.
- Four spelling rules cover adding suffixes: drop silent e before a vowel suffix, y → i after a consonant, double the final consonant when the stress is at the end, and -ful has one l.
No chapter matches. Try another word.
Objective questions
Compulsory English: Unit-wise Objective Question Bank
Subjective questions
Compulsory English: Unit-wise Subjective Question Bank
Model sets and predicted questions
Compulsory English: Model Question Sets and Predicted Questions
Exam guide
The NEB Grade 11 Examination: Pattern, Grid and Strategy
The paper
3hr, FM 75 written (+25 internal)
| Section | Questions | Marks each | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| No Group A/B/C. 8 questions: | — | — | — |