Grade 12 English F.A 1

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow

Can you imagine a college without walls, professors or classrooms? Educator Bunker Roy can. More than 40 years ago, Roy, now 69, founded the Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan. His school admits rural women, often grandmothers and teaches them the basics of solar engineering and freshwater technology. His efforts have yielded enormous benefits. When the women return to their homes, they are trained enough to provide their communities, some of the world’s most lonely places, with electricity and clean water. They also gain something important: a newfound self-confidence. The Barefoot model has already been used to empower women throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Last year, former President, Bill Clinton presented Roy with a Clinton Global Citizen Award, which honours leaders who are solving the world’s problems in effective ways.

2. If you go all over the world, to very remote villages, you will often find only very old people and very young people. The men have already left. So two ideas were put into practice in order to make the Barefoot Model work. First it was declared that men are untrainable, restless, always ready to move, ambitious, and they all want a certificate to show for their efforts. And the moment you give one of them a certificate, he leaves the village looking for a job in the city. That is how, the simple, practical solution of training grandmothers came up. They are sympathetic, tolerant, willing to learn, and patient. All the qualities you need are there. And the second idea was not to give out certificates. Because the moment a certificate is given, a woman, like a man, will see it as a passport for leaving rural areas and going to urban areas to find a job.

3. Barefoot College follows the lifestyle of Mahatma Gandhi: Students eat, sleep, and work on the floor. They can work for 20 years or they can go home the next day. As of today, 604 women solar engineers from 1083 villages in 63 countries have been trained. The engineers have given solar power to 45,000 houses. These were done by women who had never left their homes before. They hate the idea of leaving their families and getting on a plane. When they reach India, sometimes after 19 hours of travel, they are faced with strange food, strange people, and a strange language. All the training is done in sign language. Yet in six months, they will know more about solar engineering than most university graduates. Some women face problems at home for attending college. Most of the husbands do not like their wives going to these colleges and tell them not to come back if they do so. But, on her return when she is able to help provide her village with solar electricity, her husband wants her to get back home. The respect she now has is enormous and she considers herself no less than solar engineers. Bunker Roy dreams of providing the world’s 47 least developed countries with Barefoot College trained grandmothers and solar electrify more than 1,00,000 houses

A. How is barefoot college different from other colleges?

B. What did the women gain from the college apart from technology?

C. Why Were certificates not given out after training?

D. What is the narrator's dream about solar electrification?

E.Find the words from the passage which mean the same has the following

1.Great in size

2. Far off

Your watch is lost in the school premises.write a notice on the school notice board describing the watch and announcing a reward for the finder.

Fill in the blanks by selecting suitable words

1.All efforts of the to find the ________went in _________.(vain,vein)

2.Giving dowry is a bad _________(habit/custom)

Give the American variantsfor the following words used in British English

A.university

B.trousers

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