ICSE CLASS 10

PRELIM
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OF BEST SCHOOLS FOR 2018 BOARD EXAMS

FREE SAMPLE PAPER – ENGLISH I

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 ICSE Sample Papers for 2018 Board Exams

GREENLAWNS HIGH SCHOOL

PREMINARY EXAMINATION 2017
SUBJECT: ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASS X
TIME: 2 HOURS MARKS: 80
You will not be allowed to write during the first 15 minutes.
This time is to be spent reading the question paper.
The time given of the head of this paper is the time allowed for writing the answers.
Attempt all four questions.
The intended marks for questions or parts of questions are given in brackets ().
You are advised to spend no more than 35 minutes in answering Question 1 and 20 minutes in answering
Question 2
Question 1 (25)
Write a composition (350-400 words) on any one of the following:
a) Indian culture has always laid emphasis on the value of a family. Discuss the changes, both good
and bad that have resulted from the breakup of the traditional joint family.
b) Narrate an incident when you were woken up in the middle of the night by a loud know on the door,
only to open the door and find an alien at your doorstep.
c) Describe a construction site next to your school and its impact on the school activities.
d) Write an original story based on the proverb, ‘No man is an island’.
e) Study the picture given below. Write a story or a description or an account of what it suggests to
you. Your compositions may be about the subject of the picture or you may take suggestions from
it; however, there must be a clear connection between the picture and your composition.

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 ICSE Sample Papers for 2018 Board Exams

Question 2 (10)
Select one of the following:
(a) You are in charge if a group, which is to go camping next month. Your friend, who is unwell at
present, will join later. Write a letter to the same friend informing him/her when and where all the
members have to meet, how you will travel to your destination, what things you should carry with
you and how you will return home.
(b) Write letter to the manager of New Creations, a leading fashion house in New Delhi, applying for
the post of an Assistant Sales Executive.
Question 3
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow: (25)
It is exciting to stand on a railways platform beside the great Trans-Siberian express and to know that it is
about to take you on eight days of solid travel. The trades reach out into the distance those eight days will
carry you only to the borders of China. You will have travelled across one mighty continent to another,
from West to East.

It is a very different journey from the comparatively short-timed, swift leaps across continents that airplanes
make. The airplane lets you see little of the world around you as it speeds high above the earth. On board
the train you can settle back in your seat while the desert plains sweep past your window or are replaced by
great forests that come crowding into the edge of the track. Each day passes in a lazy examination of the
land outside. Indeed, you cannot escape from it.
I had made the journey two years before and knew what to expect. As soon as I stepped aboard, familiar
details met me. The dust of two continents, of West and East, still dung of the tables in the dining car. Each
table carried two bottles of wine (expensively priced, as always) never opened, it seemed. The menu was
still the same and no doubt just as fictitious, even if the prices were real enough. But at least the sleeping
berth was comfortable. Soon I would have to settle into an enforced, simple timetable of living.
Breakfast brings you your first encounter with the dining car, and the struggle to make yourself understood
in a foreign language. You want to order a boiled egg; in the end you have to do so in sigh-language. The
attendants appear to carry out your request with eagerness, but it is nearly an hour before they return, not
with an egg, but a whole chicken, crisply roasted. Experienced travelers learn to take essential foods along
with them, as well as plenty of books. Time can hang heavily on your hands, especially in the dining car.
And there will be many hours ahead besides with nothing to district you, no interruptions.
The further the train takes you on your journey, the more you forget those longing for activity and exercises
that usually bother you on other long distance travel. Perhaps it is the airless atmosphere of the train that
make you less pleasantly inactive. The windows are always shut, either because it is too cold on the outside
or too hot and dusty. You are a prisoner, it seems, enclosed in a narrow compartment, in a compartment, in
a completely different world. Somehow the energy with all its sameness, hypnotizes you. Even attempts to
read are impossible for you cannot take your ??? away from the window in case there is something outside
you might miss. At last evening comes; you peer into the surrounding forests until the window shows you
nothing but your face. It is time to try the dining car again, if only to asks for eggs.

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 ICSE Sample Papers for 2018 Board Exams

So the journey goes on. It was almost over or that second trip of mine and the train was puffing slowly up
towards the great mountain passes of Mongolia. The next day we would be as the Chinese frontier. I settled
down for the night but sleep would not come I tried reciting all the names of the stations we had passed
through with their strangely similar sounds even their monotony failed to send me off to sleep. My thoughts
drifted back to my ??? outside the window. I suddenly remembered I had an appointment I was going to be
late, dashed down the stairs. They began to move and twist about and finally flung me off my feet. There
was a sound of shrieking metal followed by a fearful cash.
I sat upright. From high above, my heavy suitcase thundered down, catching me on the legs. The sides of
my compartment were at an alarming angle. The window showed mostly sky, with just a small edge of
green. I scrambled into my clothes and out of the carriage to find a chaotic scene in front of me. The mail-
van and the dining-car lay on their sides at the bottom of a grassy slope. Behind them the sleeping-cars
formed a zigzag down the embankment, although the last one had managed somehow to remain proudly
and firmly on the track. The engine, which had parted from the train lay some fifty yards ahead, steam
snorting from its funnel. It, too, had left the rails and was dug into the grass verge of the track. It looked as
though it was trying to keep innocently apart from all confusion.
Gradually I discovered what had happened. The great Trans-express is not famous for its speed but for once
it had excelled itself. It had been encouraged by a long drop downhill to show what it could do, spurred on
by a strong wind at its tail. It gathered speed. At the bottom of the hill the single track we were travelling
on had another, shorter track leading from it. Trains were expected to obey signals, warning them to move
into that section to let any train approaching from the opposite direction pass though. The driver noticed
too late the warning red gleam of the signals ahead. He applied the brakes: nothing happened. The
emergency brakes failed too. Still the train gathered speed.
The man on duty at the signals realized that we were set to go speeding on, right into the path of an
approaching train. He threw his lever over, switching our rails, at the last minute, to send us into that little
side track; it had been designed no doubts to serve as an emergency escape route also. However, that section
of track was ancient. The timbers supporting the rails had largely rotted away as our train swung into that
section it began to rip up the track the timber supports flew up like so many flimsy matches. The train left
the track and went tumbling down the embankment.
All this was a starting end to the eight previously uneventful days. No one was hurt. The mighty Trans-
Siberian express lay sprawled in an untidy heap.
(a) Give the meanings of the following words as used in the passage. (3)
One word answer or short phrases will be accepted.
(i) solid
(ii) chaotic
(iii) snorting
(b) How has the narrator described the journey by an airplane? (2)
(c) What familiar details did the narrator notice upon entering the carriage? (2)
(d) Why does the author use sign-language to order his meal? How do we know that the author order
was been badly misunderstood? (2)
(e) What does the author mean when he says ‘Time can hang heavily on your hands? What do the
experienced travelers do? (2)

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 ICSE Sample Papers for 2018 Board Exams

(f) Why does the narrator say ‘you are a prisoner’? (2)
(g) What did the narrator do to help him to get to sleep? Explain why he felt this action would be sure
successful: Give evidence to show that he went to sleep. (3)
(h) i) In not more than 60 words summarize what had housed or the last right of the train journey (3)
ii) Give a title to your summary above and else give a reason to justify your answer.
Question 4
(a) Fill in each of the numbered blanks with the correct form of the word given in brackets. Do not copy
the passage, but write in the correct serial order the word or phrase appropriate to the blank space. (4)
Example:
(0) came
From the dense jungle, the man-eater ____ 0 ____ (come) forth, a huge male in his prime, but with a limp,
the legacy of a porcupine whose quills ____ 1 ____ (still double) into his flesh and ____2 ____ (turn) him
man-eater. For years he ____ 3 ____ (hunt) men by day, because they ____ 4 _____ (be) more plentiful
then than at night, but human being ___ 5 ____ (become) scarce in the jungle now. Now the tiger ____ 6
___ (swing) his great head round towards the far village of Chauk. He ____ 7 ____ (kill) there once before.
Yes, that ____ 8 _____ (be) the place.
(b) Fill in the blanks with an appropriate word. (4)
(i) A dispute arose ____________ the landlord and the tenant.
(ii) He is a Brahmin ___________ caste
(iii) Nehru was born __________ rich parents
(iv) I was enlisted _________ the army in 2006.
(v) We must guard ourselves _________ vices.
(vi) Hard work is indispensable ________ success.
(vii) The social workers labour ________ a just cause.
(viii) Let us not meddle ___________ the affairs of others.
(c) Join the following sentences without using and, but or so. (4)
(i) The telephone rang often. Each time my brother answered it.
(ii) The police arrived. The thief had fled by then.
(iii) I will come on Saturday. If not, I will come in Sunday.
(iv) She cannot win a prize. She may work day and night.
(d) Re-write the following sentences according to the instructions given after each. Make other changes
chat may be necessary, but do not change the meaning of each sentence. (3)
(i) We reached the house but could not find what we were looking for. (End……house)
(ii) “Are you sure this man in the green shirt is our new teacher?” lack asked Ben. (Begin Jack…)

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 ICSE Sample Papers for 2018 Board Exams

(iii) You can stay in this room until someone wants to use it … (Begin As long as ….)
(iv) Both the answers are wrong (Begin Neither…)
(v) He is too young to travel alone. (Remove too)
(vi) you need patience to learn how to spea a new language. (Begins: In order…)
(vii) She will never learn to be polite. (Change into interrogative)
(viii) He said, “I was writing a letter.” (Write in reported speech)

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 ICSE Sample Papers for 2018 Board Exams

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MORE INFORMATION ABOUT PRELIM PAPERS
WHAT ARE PRELIM PAPERS?

ICSE Prelim papers are question papers from pre-board exams conducted in
various ICSE schools few months before the final board exam. These
question papers provide a great way to practice questions that are expected
to come in the Board exams.

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 ICSE Sample Papers for 2018 Board Exams

WHO PREPARES THESE PRELIM PAPERS?

Prelim papers are prepared by senior teachers of ICSE Schools who are
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Prelim Papers brings together all the rich experience and expertise of these
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The questions are usually given in variety of tricky, twisted and turned
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