Prose (Nasr): Reading the Prescribed Lessons
What Nasr tests
The prose section of the Karnataka II PUC Urdu paper examines the prescribed lessons: didactic essays (mazmoon), character sketches (khaka), short stories (afsana) and biographical writing. Expect four question types: factual (who, where, when), explanatory (why a character acted so), tashreeh of a printed passage, and author-and-theme questions that carry a literary-judgement mark.
Core rules
- For every lesson memorise three anchors: the writer's name, the genre (mazmoon / khaka / afsana / sawaneh) and the markazi khayal in one sentence. Theme questions are answered with that sentence plus one illustration from the text.
- Tashreeh is a two-step operation: restate the passage in your own Urdu, then name the device it turns on (tashbeeh, istiara, mubaligha, kinaya) and say what it adds. The device mark is separate from the meaning mark.
- Distinguish genre features. An afsana needs plot, conflict, climax and often dialogue; a khaka needs two or three defining traits supported by incidents, not a life history.
- Keep to the tense of the question and to the text's own logic; examiners penalise imported morals.
Worked example
Passage: ilm wo roshni hai jo insan ko andhere se nikaalti hai.
Reasoning: first give the sense, knowledge is a light that draws a person out of darkness. Then identify the figure: istiara, with ilm equated to roshni and jahalat implied as andhera. Then link it to the lesson's argument that taleem is the cure for backwardness. A candidate who only paraphrases scores the meaning mark and loses the appreciation mark; one who only writes metaphor without explanation scores nothing.
Traps that cost marks
- Retelling the whole story when the question asks for a cause.
- Mixing characters or authors from two lessons with similar themes.
- Copying a long Urdu sentence from the passage instead of paraphrasing it.