HPSC Mains Previous Year Question Papers: English and Essay 17-18

HCS Mains 2017-18: English and English Essay

ENGLISH AND ENGLISH ESSAY 

HCS mains previous year question papers: In this topic, we will analyze HCS mains previous year English and English-essay paper 2017-18.

Time : 3 Hours                                                                                              Maximum Marks: 100

Note: All questions are compulsory. Number of marks carried by each question is indicated against the same. Mention question number and the part number clearly before attempting the question. The parts of the same questions must be answered together and must not be interposed between answers to other questions.

1. Make a precis of the following passage reducing it to one-third of its length. Also assign a suitable title: 20 marks                                                                                                                          
If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick bed. How the patient Lords it there? What caprices one acts without control? How king like he sways his pillow tumbling and tossing, and shifting and lowering and the thumping and flatting and moulding it, to the ever-varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. He changes sides oftener than politicians. Now he lies in full length, then half-length, obliquely, transversely, head and feet quite across the bed; and none accuses him of tergiversation. Within the four curtains, he is absolute. They are his mare clausum.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfish is included upon him as his only duty. He is the two tables of the Law of him. He has nothing to think of but how to get well. What passes out of the doors, or within them, so he hears not the jarring of them, affects him not.

2. Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow in your own words: 20 marks
                                                                                                                                                   
In the later half of the seventeenth century and practically the whole of the eighteenth century- The Augustan age, as they are called - the classics came to exercise a complete hold over English literature. It was even believed that they represented the highest standards of literary beauty which English writers had only to follow to attain perfection in their art. To this end therefore they directed all their energies, conveniently forgetting what their own predecessors - Chaucer, Spender, Shakespeare had achieved without any direct aid from them. There were two chief reasons for it. One was the excess of the Metaphysical poets and the other the unprecedented influence of the French Literary modes on the English.

(a) What is the period of Augustan age and Why?

(b) How do they differ from their predecessors?

(c) What are the two reasons behind the Augustan Age?

(d) Give the meaning of the following words and use them in sentences :
     Classics, attain, predecessors, metaphysical, unprecedented

3.   Write an essay in about 300 words on any one of the following topics:  30 marks 
(a) Beauty is truth, truth beauty 
(b) Mob Lynching
(c) New Education Policy in India
(d) Triple Talaq

4.   Rewrite the following sentences as directed:     5 marks
(a) Shut the door (Change the voice)
(b) We ought to hurry (negative form)
(c) As soon as he came, he fell on the ground (Replace as soon as with no sooner).
(d) He is too weak to walk (Remove too).
(e) He said, “Get out of my way.”(Change narration)

5.   Mention one-word substitute:    5 marks
(a) A person appointed by two parties to solve a dispute.
(b) One who leads an austere life.
(c) One who does a thing for pleasure and not as a profession.
(d) Person living at the same time.
(e) A person who is mentally sick.

6. Use the following idioms into sentences to bring out their meaning: 5 marks
(a) Hit the nail on the head
(b) Blessing in disguise
(c) Beat around the bush
(d) Kill two birds with one stone
(e) Cry over spilt milk

7.   Fill in the blanks with suitable words from the list given below:  5 marks                                          
      fish, trauma, water, monster, part
(a) Critics dislike T.S. Eliot’s ……….of the language.
(b) He is …….. in the flower garden.
(c) The ……… department was established in 1995.
(d) The …….... movement brought ………. experiences in India.

8.    Correct the following sentences:  10 marks 
(a) She greeted us in a very friendly manner.
(b) That pair of scissors belong to me.
(c) Have you lived at Varanasi long?
(d) When to you come to see us.
(e) I have had my dinner an hour ago.
(f) This is the car in that we came.
(g) Apples are good to be eaten.
(h) Do you have read his latest novel?
(i) I should like to travel in the abroad.
(j) I go there very seldomly.