Prescribed Textbook: Prose and Poetry
What this section asks
Questions come from the prescribed Bliss texts and test three things: close reading of a printed extract, knowledge of character and incident, and grasp of theme or title. Answers must come from the text, not from a summary website.
Core rules
- Extract questions are answered from the printed lines plus the immediate context - do not retell the whole lesson.
- "Who said this and to whom?" needs three parts: speaker, listener, and the situation in one clause.
- Character answers give two traits, each with an incident as evidence ("Swami is imaginative: he invents a story about a boy being attacked by a tiger").
- Theme or title answers state the idea in one sentence, then support it with two textual references.
- For 3-mark answers, use point → evidence → comment in about 50–60 words.
- Quote exactly. A misquoted phrase weakens the whole answer.
Worked example
From "Fable" by Ralph Waldo Emerson: the mountain calls the squirrel "a little prig", and the squirrel answers that "talents differ; all is well and wisely put".
Question (3 marks): What is the squirrel's argument?
Model: The squirrel argues that size is not the measure of worth. Although it cannot carry forests on its back, the mountain cannot crack a nut; each creature has its own gift, and this unequal distribution of talents is both fair and wise.
Reasoning: the answer states the idea (size is not worth), proves it with the poem's own contrast of abilities, and closes on the poem's final phrase - a compact shape that fits three marks without padding.
Traps that cost marks
- Retelling the entire poem or story instead of answering.
- Confusing the mountain's words with the squirrel's.
- Writing the author's biography when asked about a character.
- Inventing quotations to sound literary.
- Answering a "why" question with a "what".