Odisha CHSE +2 Compulsory English cheat sheet

Skimming gives the gist: read the first and last sentence of each paragraph before answering any question.

Scanning targets a specific fact: numbers, names, dates and capitalised words are located by eye movement, not by full reading.

A 'main idea' answer must cover the whole passage; an option that is true but limited to one paragraph is a distractor.

Inference questions are answered from textual evidence only; an option needing outside knowledge is wrong even if factually true.

Vocabulary-in-context questions are solved by substituting each option into the sentence and checking that the surrounding grammar and tone still fit.

'Not true' / 'except' questions invert the logic: three options must be verifiable in the passage and one must contradict it.

Pronoun reference (it, they, this) is resolved by looking at the nearest preceding noun phrase that agrees in number.

Tone words for CHSE passages: critical, sympathetic, ironic, nostalgic, objective, persuasive; a passage with facts and no judgement is objective.

Word-limit instructions are binding: an answer exceeding the stated limit loses marks even when the content is correct.

Notice format: the word NOTICE centred at the top, then date, heading, body of 50 words or so, and the writer's name and designation at the bottom left.

Formal letter layout: sender's address, date, receiver's address, subject line, salutation, body in 3 paragraphs, subscription (Yours faithfully / Yours sincerely), signature.

'Yours faithfully' pairs with 'Dear Sir/Madam'; 'Yours sincerely' pairs with a named recipient such as 'Dear Mr Mohanty'.

Report writing uses past tense, third person and passive voice where the doer is unknown; it carries a headline, a byline and dated paragraphs.

Paragraph structure rule: one topic sentence, supporting sentences with examples or reasons, and a concluding sentence that does not introduce new ideas.

Essay types in the CHSE paper are usually argumentative, expository or reflective; an argumentative essay needs a clear stand in the introduction and a restated stand in the conclusion.

Email register: subject line under ten words, no postal addresses, salutation and closing kept short, and no SMS abbreviations.

Cohesive devices to place deliberately: however, therefore, moreover, in addition, on the other hand, consequently, as a result.

Word-limit discipline: a 150-word composition should be 140-160 words; padding beyond the limit is penalised, not rewarded.

Tense sequencing: after 'since' or 'for' with a present perfect main clause, the subordinate clause takes past simple ('He has lived here since he was ten').

Conditionals: Type 1 if + present, will; Type 2 if + past simple, would; Type 3 if + past perfect, would have + past participle.

Reported speech shifts tense one step back and changes time and place words: now becomes then, today becomes that day, here becomes there.

Passive voice is formed with the correct form of 'be' plus past participle; the object of the active sentence becomes the subject.

Subject-verb agreement traps: 'one of the boys is', 'each of the students has', 'neither of them was', 'the number of applicants is'.

Articles: 'a' before consonant sounds, 'an' before vowel sounds (an hour, a university), 'the' for something already specified or unique.

Preposition collocations to memorise: depend on, insist on, apologise for, consist of, comply with, prefer to, married to, capable of.

Modals: 'must' expresses obligation or strong deduction; 'should' expresses advice; 'might' expresses weak possibility; 'need not' expresses absence of obligation.

Synonyms and antonyms are tested in context: choose the option that fits the sentence's register as well as its meaning.

'The Gold Frame' by R.K. Laxman: the frame-maker Datta damages the portrait of the client and substitutes a cheap print, exposing vanity and the gap between appearance and reality.

'The Open Window' by Saki (H.H. Munro): Vera invents the story of the open window and the returning hunters, and Framton Nuttel flees in panic; the twist is 'romance at short notice'.

'The Verger' by W. Somerset Maugham: Albert Edward Foreman is dismissed for illiteracy, opens a tobacco shop, and ends wealthy, so the story satirises the equation of literacy with worth.

'The Selfish Giant' by Oscar Wilde: the Giant walls his garden, winter stays until the children return, and the Christ-child leads him to paradise; the theme is redemptive love.

'The Last Leaf' by O. Henry: the painted leaf by old Behrman saves Johnsy's life and costs him his own; the leaf is the 'masterpiece' of self-sacrifice.

'The Bet' by Anton Chekhov: the lawyer's fifteen-year solitary confinement and his renunciation of the two million roubles argue that worldly goods are worthless beside inner freedom.

'The Doctor's Word' by R.K. Narayan: Dr Raman's word keeps Gopal alive and its withdrawal kills him, so the story asks whether a doctor's assurance is medicine or deception.

Character questions are answered with the character's actions and one or two quoted details, not with adjectives alone.

'The Ballad of Father Gilligan' by W.B. Yeats: an exhausted priest's unanswered prayer is taken up by God himself, and the dying man is comforted; the ballad stanza is quatrain with abcb or abab rhyme.

'The Listeners' by Walter de la Mare: the Traveller knocks on a moonlit door, gets no answer, and leaves; the phantom listeners hear his footfalls, and the atmosphere is the subject as much as the event.

'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost: the two roads are 'really about the same', and the final stanza's 'sigh' is a retrospective invention, not a clear moral about choosing the rarer path.

'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley: the ruined statue with the boast 'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' demonstrates the irony of time defeating power.

'The Tyger' by William Blake: the unanswered question of the final stanza ('Did he who made the Lamb make thee?') holds the poem's meaning open.

'Daffodils' by William Wordsworth: the inward eye and the bliss of solitude make the memory, not the sight, the poem's real gift.

'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost: 'But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep' turns the poem from scene to duty.

'La Belle Dame sans Merci' by John Keats: the knight is left on the cold hill's side, and the poem's ballad form and dream-vision place it within Romantic medievalism.

Figures of speech: simile uses like/as, metaphor names one thing as another, personification gives human traits to non-human things, alliteration repeats initial consonants, onomatopoeia imitates sound.

'Julius Caesar' by Shakespeare: Brutus joins the conspiracy for the republic, not for envy, and says 'I love the name of honour more than I fear death'.

Mark Antony's funeral speech ('Friends, Romans, countrymen') uses irony ('Brutus is an honourable man') and the will of Caesar to turn the crowd, and its power is rhetorical, not factual.

'The Merchant of Venice': Portia's casket test rewards the lead casket and the motto 'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath'; the trial scene turns on 'the quality of mercy'.

Shylock's 'Hath not a Jew eyes?' speech is the play's central appeal for shared humanity, and its demand for the bond is a demand for legal equality.

'The Bishop's Candlesticks' by Norman McKinnel: the Bishop's gift of the candlesticks to the convict converts him, and the play dramatises mercy over justice.

'The Monkey's Paw' by W.W. Jacobs: the paw grants wishes with terrible consequences, and the story's horror lies in suggestion rather than in visible violence.

Character motivation in drama is traced through soliloquy and aside, where a speaker reveals private thought to the audience alone.

Tragic structure: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, catastrophe; the catastrophe in 'Julius Caesar' is the defeat at Philippi and the deaths of Brutus and Cassius.

Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something a character on stage does not, as when the conspirators' courtesy to Caesar conceals their intent.