NAVY CHILDREN SCHOOL

CLASS XII

ENGLISH

READING COMPREHENSION -1

Read the passage given below.

1. On a serious level, when was the last time you remember keeping your
emotions solely to yourself, when a disaster struck? Or was averted? Agreed,
humans are social beings who need feedback based on their social
interactions. But, in today’s times, where people-men and women alike-thrive
on social approval, it feels like your happiness is on a leash depending on
social media, or society at large. A person could possibly go to any extent to
seek attention. Lying, cheating, manipulating, constantly blabbing or being
intentionally silent, are all a part of the process to be the centre of attention.
Everyone wants to be liked and be popular. Attention gives a pleasurable high
and does wonderful things to one’s ego and selfworth. It is when, seeking
exceeds normalacy that the trouble begins. Both too much of attention and
the lack of it are obvious signs of trouble.
2. Also known as Histrionic Personality Disorder, attention-seeking is an attempt
to desperately attract the attention of other people, typically by disruptive or
excessively extrovert behavior. To find an attention seeker around you, look
for someone who says, “I want to kill myself,” after a mere bad day at work, or
simply throws a tantrum for not being given enough time. Taking on the role of
a victim or a damsel-in-distress is a typical trait of an attention-seeker. Simply
put, attention-seekers are the drama queens we come across frequently in
our life. According to clinical psychiatrist, Dr Harish Shetty, from Hiranandani
Hospital, Mumbai, “Attention-seeking is not exactly a disorder. We all want
approval in some way or the other from the people we are around with. It
massages our ego and therefore, has a feel-good factor to it. Seeking
approval enhances our identity.” He explains how attention seeking, if casual,
can be encouraging, “but once out of control, if the person’s obsession sets in,
the trouble that follows ruins a person’s relationships and eventually their
peace of mind.”
3. Attention-seeking generally happens in a large magnitude to people who
blame others. The blaming is a type of coping mechanism the attention-
mongers feel is essential to justify the mistakes they refuse to own up to. Dr.
Shetty elaborates, “People who are narcissistic will seek attention in a larger
than life manner like dramatizing even the smallest of things that happens to
them. Also, adults who have been spoilt as children will have a lesser sense
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 of responsibility towards other as well as themselves, so are more likely to be
narcissistic.” This behavior can be seen in adults who have had an unpleasant
past, i.e. they have been ignored, neglected, bullied, or abused in many ways
before. They gradually start becoming addicted to it. Their think making up for
all the years of unfairness they have faced as a child is best done by seeking
attention. Their pre-teen years are extremely significant as they mould the
child he or she is to become when they fully grow up. Frustration, anger, and
disturbing relationships ensure if there is an excess of this behavior. The
person can also grow to be extremely anxious and develop a nervous anxiety.
Dr. Shetty adds, “Mostly seen in kids, this behaviour generally tends to die out
with age. But as adults, people suffering from a terminal illness, ones who
have faced a huge loss in business, break-ups or divorces, also portray such
behaviour. If not handled with maturity, it worsens. But, when someone faces
a challenge, they think they are incapable of handling, it can amplify
uneasiness in them and they resort to playing the victim all the time. A lot of
other causes, however are varied and highly subjective.”

Based on your understanding of the passage, answer the questions given below.

i. Cite a point in evidence, from the text, to suggest that, social media is
commanding human happiness?

ii. State any two things that very clearly show what human beings do to be in the
centre of attraction?

iii. According to writer what are the obvious signs of trouble?

iv. What is attention - seeking also known as?

v. (v) What can someone say to seek attention if had a bad day at work?

vi. Rewrite the given sentence by replacing the underlined phrase with another
one, from lines 10 – 20.

Support women's rights and help a woman in need to raise her voice against
discrimination

vii. What do adults face in early life to become narcissist?

viii. What is the opinion of Dr. Harish Shetty?

ix. Attention-seeking generally happens in a large magnitude to people who

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 NAVY CHILDREN SCHOOL

CLASS XII

ENGLISH

READING COMPREHENSION -2
I. Read the following passage carefully.
1. Close at hand is a bridge over the river Thames, an admirable vantage ground for us to
make a survey. We are here to consider facts; now we must fix our eyes upon the
procession—the procession of the sons of educated men. There they go, our brothers who
have been educated at public schools and universities, mounting those steps, passing in
and out of those doors, ascending those pulpits, preaching, teaching, administering justice,
practicing medicine, transacting business, making money. It is a solemn sight always—a
procession, like a caravan crossing a desert. But now, for the past twenty years or so, it is
no longer a sight merely, a photograph, or fresco scrawled upon the walls of time, at which
we can look with merely an aesthetic appreciation.
2. For there, traipsing along at the tail end of the procession, we go ourselves. And that
makes a difference. We who have looked so long at the pageant in books, or from a
curtained window watched educated men leaving the house at about nine-thirty to go to an
office, returning to the house at about six-thirty from an office, need look passively no
longer. We too can leave the house, can mount those steps, pass in and out of those doors,
make money, and administer justice.
3. Nobody will dare contradict us then; we shall be the mouthpieces of the divine spirit—a
solemn thought, is it not? We are here, on the bridge, to ask ourselves certain questions.
And they are very important questions; and we have very little time in which to answer
them. The questions that we have to ask and to answer about that procession during this
moment of transition are so important that they may well change the lives of all men and
women forever. For we have to ask ourselves, here and now, do we wish to join that
procession, or don’t we? On what terms shall we join that procession? Above all, where is
it leading us, the procession of educated men?
4. As you know from your own experience, and there are facts that prove it, the daughters
of educated men have always done their thinking from hand to mouth; not under green
lamps at study tables in the cloisters of secluded colleges. They have thought while they
stirred the pot, while they rocked the cradle. It was thus that they won us the right to our
brand-new sixpence. It falls to us now to go on thinking; how are we to spend that
sixpence? Think we must. Let us think in offices; in omnibuses; while we are standing in
the crowd watching Coronations and Lord Mayor’s Shows; let us think...in the gallery of the
House of Commons; in the Law Courts; let us think at baptisms and marriages and
funerals.
-Adapted from ‘Three Guineas’, Virginia Woolf

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Based on your understanding of the passage answer the questions given below:
(i) The main purpose of the passage is to:
(a) emphasize the value of a tradition.
(b) stress the urgency of an issue.
(c) highlight the severity of social divisions.
(d) question the feasibility of an undertaking
(ii) The author uses the word “we” throughout the passage mainly to:
(a) reflect the growing friendliness among a group of people.
(b) advance the need for candor among a group of people.
(c) establish a sense of solidarity among a group of people.
(d) reinforce the need for respect among a group of people.
(iii) The author calls on women:
(a) to study history of different battles fought.
(b) to develop their talent to keep pace with men.
(c) to obey and respect men.
(d) to demand their rights forcefully.
(iv) The women still lag behind men because:
(a) they lack physical strength.
(b) they are still deprived of participating in education and public sphere.
(c) they are kept engaged in household chores.
(d) they are not given any facilities to grow,
(v) “The daughters of educated men have always done their thinking from hand to mouth.”
The author means here:
(a) they always thought about changes.
(b) they never thought about changes.
(c) they sometimes thought about changes.
(d) they thought about changes with others.
(vi) Why is the author jubilant on looking at the procession?
(vii) What/Who did the procession traditionally consist of?
(viii) What was, according to the author, the purpose of women to be on the bridge?
(ix) How have women learnt to think as different to men?
(x) What do the range of places and occasions in paragraph 4 emphasize?