CBSE Class 12 English Core Sample Paper 2014 Solved Set A

Section A: Reading 

Q. 1. Read the passage given below and then answer the questions which follow:  

1 In spite of all the honours that we heaped upon him, Pasteur, as has been said, remained simple at heart. Perhaps the imagery of his boyhood days, when he drew the familiar scenes of his birthplace, and the longing to be a great artist, never wholly left him. In truth he did become a great artist, though after his sixteenth year he abandoned the brush forever. Like every artist of worth, he put his whole soul and energy into his work, and it was this very energy that in the end wore him out. For him, each sufferer was something more than just a case that was to be cured. He looked upon the fight against hydrophobia as a battle, and he was absorbed in his determination to win. The sight of injured children, particularly, moved him to an indescribable extent. He suffered with his patients, and yet he would not deny himself a share in that suffering. His greatest grief was when sheer physical exhaustion made him give up his active work. He retired to the estate at Villeneuve Etang, where he had his kennels for the study of rabies, and there he passed his last summer, as his great biographer, Vallery Radot, has said, “practicing the Gospel virtues.”

2 “He revered the faith of his fathers, “says the same writer, “and wished without ostentation or mystery to receive its aid during his last period.”

3 The attitude of this man to the science he had done so much to perfect can be best summed up in a sentence that he is reputed once to have uttered, concerning the materialism of many of his contemporaries in similar branches of learning to his own: “The more I contemplate the mysteries of Nature, the more my faith becomes like that of a peasant.”

4 But even then in retirement he loved to see his former pupils, and it was then he would reiterate his life principles: “Work, “he would say, “never cease to work.” So well had he kept this precept that he began rapidly to sink from exhaustion.

5 Finally on September 27, 1895, when someone leant over his bed to offer him a cup of milk, he said sadly: “I cannot, “and with a look of perfect resignation and peace, seemed to fall asleep. He never again opened his eyes to the cares and sufferings of a world, which he had done so much to relieve and to conquer. He was within three months of his seventy-third birthday.

6 Thus passed, as simply as a child, the man whom the French people were to vote at a plebiscite as the greatest man that France had ever produced. Napoleon, who has always been considered the idol of France, was placed fifth.

7 No greater tribute could have been paid to Louis Pasteur, the tanner’s son, the scientist, the man of peace, the patient worker for humanity. 487 words

1.1 Answer the following questions:

a. Even accolades and honours did not change the simple man that Pasteur was.  Give reasons. 

b. How did Pasteur view those who suffered from diseases? 

c. How did Pasteur engage himself in the estate? 

d. What advice did he always give to his pupils? 

e. How did France, the country of his birth, honour this great scientist? 

1.2 Find the words from the passage which mean the same as: 

a. to give up (para 1)

b. people belonging to the same period (para 3)

c. vote by the people of the country to decide a matter of national importance (para 6)

Q. 2. Read the passage given below: 8 marks Residents of the Bhirung Raut Ki Gali, where Ustad Bishmillah Khan was bornon March 21, 1916, were in shock. His cousin, 94-year -old Mohd Idrish Khan  had tears in his eyes. Shubhan Khan, the care-taker of Bismillah’s land, recalled : “Whenever in Dumaraon, he would give rupees two to the boys and rupees five to the girls of the locality”.  He was very keen to play shehnai again in the local Bihariji’s Temple where he had started playing shehnai with his father, Bachai Khan, at the age of six. His original name was Quamaruddin and became Bishmillah only after he became famous as a shehnai player in Varanasi.

His father Bachai Khan was the official shehnai player of Keshav Prasad Singh, the Maharaja of the erstwhile Dumaraon estate, Bismillah used to accompany him. For Bishmillah Khan, the connection to music began at a very early age. By his teens, he had already become a master of the shehnai. On the day India gained freedom, Bismillah Khan, then a sprightly 31 year-old, had the rare honour of playing from Red Fort. But Bishmillah Khan won’t just be remembered for elevating the shehnai from an instrument heard only in weddings and naubatkhanas to one that was appreciated in concert halls across the world. His life was a testimony to the plurality that is India.

A practising Muslim, he would take a daily dip in the Ganga in his younger days after a bout of kusti in Benia Baga Akhada. Every morning, Bishmillah Khan would do riyaaz at the Balaji temple on the banks of the river. Even during his final hours in a Varanasi hospital, music didn’t desert Bishmillah Khan. A few hours before he passed away early on Monday, the shehnai wizard hummed a thumri to show that he was feeling better. This was typical of a man for whom life revolved around music. Throughout his life he abided by the principle that all religions are one. What marked Bishmillah Khan was his simplicity and disregard for the riches that come

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