Class 12 English Notes Chapter 11 First Year At Harrow

Class 12, Grade 12 English notes Chapter 11 First Year at Harrow Punjab all boards Grade 12 FSc Pre Engineering include solved exercises, review questions, MCQs, and chapter overview.

Chapter 11 First Year at Harrow Class 12 English Notes

Q 1. The writer says that the examiners ask questions which students cannot answer and not those which they can answer. Is the complaint just?

Answer:
According to the writer, the examiners ask questions which students cannot answer and not those which they can answer. This complaint by him is just from a common student’s point of view only, who do not work hard. He feels that the examiners were always interested not in testing his knowledge but exposing his ignorance. Through his humorous and satirical tone, the writer intends to criticise the examination system whereby his aptitude and interests are not taken into account.

Q 2. What sort of questions are asked by your examiners?

Answer:
The questions asked by our examiners are usually relevant to the subject knowledge because we have a traditional system of examination. Sometimes, they are inferential questions based on the student’s own understanding and point of view about the topic. The level of difficulty of the questions in our exams ranges from easy to difficult and complex.

Q 3. Why did not Churchill do well in examinations?

Answer:
Churchill did not do well in examinations because he felt that the examiners were always interested in exposing his ignorance not testing his knowledge. He would have liked to be examined in the subjects of his interest like History, Poetry and writing essays. On the other hand, the examiners examined Latin and Mathematics.

Q 4. How did he do his Latin paper?

Answer:
The writer could not do well in his Latin paper. He did not answer a single question even. He wrote his name on top of the page and then the number of the question. After thinking a lot, he put a bracket around the question number and could not think of anything relevant to the question to be able to write.

Q 5. Churchill was taught English at Harrow and not Latin and Greek. Was it a gain or a loss?

Answer:
Churchill was taught English at Harrow and not Latin and Greek. It was a gain because he got an advantage over the cleverer boys. They went on to learn Latin and Greek but he was taught English. He got the opportunity to practise English analysis with an efficient teacher, Mr Somervell, who taught it like no one else ever did.

Q 6. What good did his three years stay at Harrow do him?

Answer:
His three year stay at Harrow proved to be fruitful because he remained in Third grade for three years, it provided him an opportunity to learn English analysis three times more than anyone else. He mastered the art of the disintegrating the structure of an ordinary British sentence, which he considered a noble thing.

Q 7. In after years how did the knowledge of English stand him in good stead?

Answer:
In after years, the knowledge of English stood him in good stead because all those students who were capable of writing beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek sayings also had to come down again to common English in order to earn their livelihood.

Q 8. Write an appreciation or criticism of Churchill’s views in regard to the study of Latin, Greek and English and their value in earning a living.

Answer:
According to Churchill, the subjects like Latin and Greek were given more importance in schools while they had little utility in real life. English, on the other hand, was needed in practical life because it had a better scope and provided a better prospect of earning their livelihood.