SEE Model Paper 1

1. Read the text given below and do the tasks.

Sushila’s Breakfast

Sushila Tamang is in Grade 10 at a school in Dhulikhel. Last month, she started skipping breakfast so that she could study for another half hour before the school bus came. Soon she felt tired by the third period every day and could not follow the lessons. One morning she fainted during the assembly. The school nurse, Mrs. Shrestha, gave her a glass of milk and some beaten rice and asked what she had eaten. “Your brain runs on the food you give it,” she said. “Half an hour of study is worth nothing if you are too weak to remember it.” Now Sushila gets up twenty minutes earlier and never leaves home without breakfast.

A. Choose the correct answer. (5 × 1 = 5)

2. Read the text given below and do the tasks.

The Temple of Five Roofs

In Taumadhi Square, in the heart of Bhaktapur, stands the Nyatapola, the tallest temple in Nepal. Its name, in Nepal Bhasa, speaks of its five roofs, which rise one above the other over a base of five stone platforms.

King Bhupatindra Malla had the temple built, and it was finished in 1702. An old record of the building work still survives. It lists the workers who came in groups from Panauti, Dhulikhel, Nala and other towns, the days they worked and what they were paid.

Climbing the steep stairs, visitors pass five pairs of stone guardians. At the bottom are two famous wrestlers, said to be ten times stronger than ordinary men. Above them stand two elephants, then two lions, then two griffins, and at the top two goddesses. Each pair is believed to be ten times stronger than the pair below it.

The goddess of the temple, Siddhi Lakshmi, is hidden from the public, and only the priests may go inside. Yet the Nyatapola belongs to everyone. It has stood through several great earthquakes, including the one in 2015, which damaged many buildings in Bhaktapur. More than five hundred small bells still ring from its roofs in the wind, as they have for over three hundred years.

A. Write ‘True’ for the true statements and ‘False’ for the false ones. (5 × 1 = 5)

B. Answer the following questions. (5 × 1 = 5)

3. Read the text given below and do the tasks.

Flying over Phewa: An Interview with Anjali Gurung

Anjali Gurung, 24, is one of the few women who fly tandem paragliders in Pokhara. We met her after a morning flight.

How did you start?

I grew up in a village above Pokhara, watching the paragliders from our family’s field. At nineteen, I spent my savings on a basic course. My parents were worried, but my mother came to see my first solo flight, and she cried with joy.

What does a tandem pilot do?

I fly with a passenger, usually a tourist, who sits in front of me. We take off from Sarangkot and land beside Phewa Lake about thirty minutes later. Before every flight, I check the wing, the lines and the weather.

What is the hardest part of the job?

The weather. In the monsoon we hardly fly at all, so I must save money from the busy months, from autumn to spring. Also, some passengers are frightened at take-off. I talk to them calmly and tell them to run with me and not to sit down.

What would you say to girls who want to fly?

Train properly, respect the weather, and never let anyone tell you the sky is only for men.

A. Fill in the blanks with the correct words from the text above. (5 × 1 = 5)

B. Answer the following questions. (5 × 1 = 5)

4. Read the science article given below and do the tasks.

The Birds That Clean Our Land

Forty years ago, the skies over Nepal and the rest of South Asia were full of vultures. In the early 1980s, there were about 40 million of just three kinds: the white-rumped, the long-billed and the slender-billed vulture. These large birds are scavengers. They feed on the carcasses of dead animals and clean them very quickly, and in this way they stop the spread of disease.

In the 1990s, people began to notice that the birds were disappearing. Their numbers plummeted: between 1992 and 2007, the number of white-rumped vultures fell by more than 99 percent. At first, nobody knew why. Then, in 2003, scientists found the culprit. It was diclofenac, a painkiller given to sick cattle, which had come into wide use in the 1990s. When a vulture ate the meat of an animal that had been treated with it shortly before death, its kidneys failed and it died.

Without vultures, carcasses were left to rot in the fields. In India, where the birds had almost vanished, the number of stray dogs, which spread rabies, rose by millions.

Nepal banned the use of diclofenac on animals in 2006, the same year as India. Farmers and vets now use meloxicam, a drug that is harmless to vultures. In some places, communities run “vulture restaurants”, where the birds can feed on meat that is free of the drug. In 2017, white-rumped vultures that had been reared in captivity were released into the wild in Nepal.

The vultures are not out of danger yet, but in parts of Nepal their numbers have stopped falling. Perhaps one day our skies will be full of them again.

A. Match the words from the text in Column A with their meanings in Column B. There is one extra meaning that you do not need. (5 × 1 = 5)

B. The sentences below tell what happened to the vultures. Write the number of each sentence’s place in the order in which the events happened (1–5). (5 × 1 = 5)

C. Answer the following questions. (5 × 1 = 5)

9. Reproduce the following sentences as instructed in the brackets. (6 × 1 = 6)

10. Choose and copy the best answer for the numbered blanks below. Rewriting is not compulsory. (10 × 0.5 = 5)

Last winter Lakpa, (a) ………. (a, an, the, no article) eighteen-year-old herder from Solukhumbu, lost one of his yaks in a snowstorm. He searched (b) ………. (in, at, for, on) three days. On the fourth day, an old woman (c) ………. (who, whom, which, whose) lived near the monastery told him that she (d) ………. (sees, is seeing, had seen, has seen) a yak near the river the evening before. Lakpa ran there at once, (e) ………. (but, so, because, unless) the yak was gone. “If I (f) ………. (find, found, had found, will find) it, I will never leave it alone again,” he thought. That night, the yak walked home by itself, (g) ………. (tired, tiredly, more tired, tiredness) but safe. The next week, Lakpa had a bell (h) ………. (tie, to tie, tied, tying) around its neck. Now every yak in his herd (i) ………. (wear, wears, are wearing, have worn) a bell. “Yaks are clever animals, (j) ……….?” (are they, aren’t they, don’t they, isn’t it) he says with a smile.