CBSE(NCERT) GRADE 10 ENGLISH 2025 COMPARTMENT SET1

(1) On a Sunday full of possibilities, I’m confused by too many choices. I unlock my phone and innumerable choices pour : movies, music, podcasts, games, and this truly perplexes me. Amidst my indecision, a dust-ridden copy of ‘The Bell Jar’ falls from the bookshelf. My guilt finds respite in the puddle of addictive videos online. (2) In a hyperconnected world, books are left to age pale yellow. Reading is seen by the newer generations as mundane. Though the benefits of reading are common knowledge, the privilege of choice overpowers. Many publishers and bookstores have now shut down. (3) ‘The blast of the digital’ has made everything catering to shrinking attention spans, with overwhelming choices from online poetry to captions to tweets. The reading fabric of Gen Z is brief. They are reading rapidly and recklessly. Reading for sole bliss seems to be a thing of the past. Though digital reading might be a new avenue for words, studies suggest that printed text develops better comprehension. (4) The Reading Manifesto of October 2023 rightly argues that digital reading is ‘superficial’ and confined to mere text decoding. Reading text, on the other hand, helps cultivate better cognitive abilities, attention span and vocabulary. We live in an age where fake news prevails. The much required ability to distinguish between fact and fiction can only be developed by critical reading of printed texts.

(1) Among the most visible effects of environmental global warming are rising seas around the world : since 1880, the global mean sea level (GMSL) has increased by 20 cm. There’s no easy way to halt or reverse this change. Earth’s oceans and ice sheets respond slowly to changes in the heat they receive from the atmosphere. They hold onto heat for decades to centuries. As a result, sea levels globally will continue to rise well beyond the 21 st century. (2) The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that it is very likely that the climate-induced sea level will affect much of the world’s coasts in the coming decades. An estimated 800 million people will experience impacts of high tide flooding. In many coastal settings, even a small increase in baseline sea level can increase the frequency and magnitude of flooding during high tides, storm surges and extreme weather. (3) The direct impact of all this will be on communities, infrastructure, natural resources and biodiversity on all the world’s coastline. It is already unavoidable that many communities will be displaced and forced to migrate as climate refugees. The need for counter measures against the adverse impacts of climate change is imperative.

NOODLE : (bowing) O Great and Mighty Think -Tank, most powerful and intelligent creature in the whole universe, what are your orders ? THINK-TANK : (peevishly) You left out part of my salutation, Apprentice Noodle. Go over the whole thing again. (The Book That Saved the Earth)

NATALYA : Forgive us, Ivan Vassilevitch, we were all a little heated. I remember now: Oxen Meadows... really are yours. LOMOV : My heart’s beating awfully. My Meadows... My eyebrows are both twitching.... NATALYA : The Meadows are yours, yes, yours. Do sit down. [They sit] We were wrong. (The Proposal)

The trees inside are moving out into the forest, the forest that was empty all these days where no bird could sit no insect hide no sun bury its feet in shadow (The Trees)

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him, No one mourned for his pirate victim. Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate Around the dragon that ate the pirate. (The Tale of Custard the Dragon)