STELLA MARIS COLLEGE (AUTONOMOUS) CHENNAI 600 086

(For candidates admitted during the academic year 2019–2020 and thereafter)
SUBJECT CODE: 19EL/FC/LL13

B.A./ B.B.A./B.C.A./B.Com./B.Sc./ B.S.W./B.V.A. DEGREE EXAMINATION, NOVEMBER 2022

FIRST SEMESTER

COURSE : FOUNDATION CORE

PAPER : LANGUAGE THROUGH LITERATURE - I
TIME : 3 HOURS MAX. MARKS: 100
SECTION A

I. Read the following passages and answer the questions given below. (2x15=30)
A.
Everyone at court watched with interest as Snow Night grew up to be a charming young woman.
Particularly interested was her father’s Master of the Hunt, who was called Lord Hunter. He aspired to
improve his rank by marrying a royal princess. Moreover, he found Snow Night exceedingly desirable.
Therefore he made every effort to woo her. He sent her the best flowers plucked from the royal gardens
and very bad poems plucked from his own mind. He subjected her to long monologues about his hunting
successes. He hovered at her elbow in every procession and tried to fill her dance card with his own name
at every grand ball.
Snow Night however, did her best to avoid him. Though he was arrogant and fancied himself a very
gallant gentleman, she found his attentions unwelcome. His touch made her shudder. Lord Hunter was
heavy, coarse, and greasy-haired. His breath stank, his fingernails were dirty, and his speech unrefined.
Snow Night thought him repulsive. “If my father tries to make me marry a hideous old toad like Hunter,”
she confided to her maid, “I’ll run away.”
Lord Hunter also tried to make himself agreeable to the queen, hoping to become her confidant. The
queen called him her huntsman and tolerated him with good grace. She was amused by his constant
flattery and diverted by his gossip. Before long, he came to think of himself as the queen’s intimate
friend, not knowing that she held a rather different view of the matter.
One day Lord Hunter found Snow Night alone in a remote part of the castle gardens, and he seized the
moment. He swept off his hat, bowed, and knelt at her feet (bumping down rather heavily), holding up a
long-stemmed rosebud as an offering.
1. Why did Snow Night reject Lord Hunter’s proposal ? (3 marks)
2. Describe Lord Hunter in your own words. (3 marks)
3. What was Lord Hunter’s ambition ? (3 marks)
4. What was the queen’s opinion of her huntsman? (3 marks)
5. Make sentences of your own with any three of the following words.
Do not copy the sentence from the passage. (3 marks)
woo remote hideous offering repulsive

B.
Four refugees from the ARP & P (Association of Retired Persons and Pensioners ) – they couldn’t play
bridge you see - put their grey heads together and decided to form their own bridge club. They would
teach themselves the game. Etta, short for Martinetta, a former teacher set up the course and was very
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strict. She made learning aids, gave homework and administered tests. Prudence, widow of a former
diplomat, devoted herself to protocol and made sure that they all followed proper bridge etiquette-
everything clockwise and to the right. Hillary, member of a mountaineering club, challenged the group
to go higher and higher while they struggled to master bidding, finessing and ruffing, Felicity kept their
spirits up with amusing tales about Whiskey, her seventeen –year –old cat.

The first time the group met to play bridge the heavens opened up and flooded the whole city. A clever
motor engineer, stalled by the deluge and watching the rising tide outside his window, had a brainwave –
a car with oars or an outboard motor – and was destined to spend the rest of his life trying to design such
a machine.

Felicity and Whiskey looking out of the torrent, were glad that they had brought in the washing before
the downpour. On the following Friday morning, when the group sat down to play, it came down in
buckets again and every Friday after that. Umbrellas and raincoats became essential requirements for a
bridge game. When Hillary went off on a hike and Felicity out of town to a grandchild’s twenty-first
birthday party, they stopped playing for a couple of weeks and the weather was fine.

On the Friday morning that they resumed their sessions, it began to pour again and they were caught
without raincoats and umbrellas. Etta, an avid reader of science fiction, saw in it a paranormal
phenomenon. The following Friday after the women had trooped through Whiskey’s garden carrying
raincoats and umbrellas as had been their wont before the break, and had settled around the card table,
Etta made a dramatic announcement.

1. How did the four members of the bridge club contribute to the bridge game ? (4 marks)
2. What did the engineer plan to invent ? What was his motivation ? (4 marks)
3. What was special about “every Friday”? (4 marks)
4. Make sentences of your own with any three of the following words.
Do not copy the sentence from the passage. (3 marks)

avid devote challenge essential destined

SECTION B
II. Answer any three of the following in about 350 words each. (3x10=30)
1. Describe Raju’s encounter with the whorl.
2. How does Gerald Durrell describe the presence of Achilles and Quasimodo in the house?
3. Which poem, in your opinion, is more humorous – “The Patriot” or “The Muddlehead”? Why?
4. How different is Greek art from Chinese art?
SECTION C
III. Fill in the blanks with the appropriate form of the verb that agrees with the subject.
(1x10=10)
1. Seven miles __________ (is/are) a long distance to run.
2. Each of the girls __________ (has/have) her own laptop.
3. Neither Jack nor Jill ___________ (has/have) gone to work.
4. The curtains ___________ (match/ matches) the wall colour perfectly.
5. Either Jack or Jill __________ (has/have) broken the glass.
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6. Jones ________ (like/likes) to play soccer.

7. The jury ________ (was/were) unanimous in its decision.
8. Peter, the painter and magician __________ (has/have) arrived.
9. The furniture in his shop ________ (was/were) damaged in the floods.
10. Snacks, particularly those sold in unhygienic conditions on the pavements, _________ (is/are)
harmful for our health.

IV. Fill in the blanks using the verbs given in brackets in the appropriate tense.
(1 x 10 = 10)

I ______________ (live) in this locality since 2010 but I _____________ (not / know) about this park
until recently. It _______ (be) the most beautiful park I ____________(see). While I
_____________(walk) on the track, I ____________(see) ducks in the pond, children playing and
adults lounging on the grass. When I _____________(return) home, my father asked me, “Why
_________(be) you late?” It ________(be) then that I realised I _____________ (spend) close to two
hours in the park.

SECTION D

V. Write a paragraph on any one of the following in about 150 words. (1 x 10 = 10)

1. Narrate your first day in college.

2. Narrate a funny experience in your life.

VI. Write a paragraph on any one of the following in about 150 words. (1 x 10 = 10)

1. Describe your favourite actor or a cartoon character.

2. Describe your role model.

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