Grade 10 - SECOND TERM EXAMINATION - English Language Paper - (Eravur Aligar C.C )
I will give you a reading plan that you can follow, and there are exercises in this lesson for you to practice. Alright, now my teaching experience is mostly with exams like the and , but the tips that I give you in this lesson will help you in any exam situation. So the first thing is: when it comes to reading in an exam, budget your time. That means: you should know how many reading passages there are in the exam, how many exercises there are and how much time you have. In the exam, for example, there are three reading passages and you have one hour to do all of them. So then divide your time amongst those passages – for , you might spend roughly 20 minutes per passage. In some exams,
one passage might be shorter or easier, and another passage might be longer or more difficult. In that case, obviously, you should plan to spend less time on the short passage, and more time on the long passage. And you should time yourself – if you are allowed to wear a watch in your exam, look at your watch and keep track of the time. If you plan for 20 minutes per passage, stick to that plan. Now, if you’re not allowed to wear a watch, then use the clock in the room or hall, or ask the invigilators how much time you have left. Alright, that’s the first thing: budgeting your time. So now the exam starts – and you have the first reading passage in front of you – what do you do? Well, I’ll tell you what you should NOT do – don’t start at the beginning and read slowly to the finish. Many students do this – and the problem is that when you get to the end, you will have forgotten a lot of the details in the middle, and when you read the questions, you have to go back and read the passage again to find the answers. Instead, here’s the plan that you should follow: your first step in reading should be to skim the passage. What does that mean? Well, skimming is actually something that we do with milk.
It’s when you heat or boil milk, and the fat rises to the top in the form of cream. Removing that layer of fat is called skimming. When it comes to reading, skimming means reading the surface of the text quickly to understand the overall message. So if there’s a heading or title to the passage, and if there are subheadings, read all of these first. They will tell you the subject of the text. Then read the first sentence of each paragraph – they will give you a good idea of the overall message. Let’s practice this. You see two paragraphs on the screen, but only the first sentence in each paragraph is visible. Stop the video, read the sentences and try to understand the main topic in each paragraph. Alright, so what do you think the topic of the whole passage might be? It could be the negative effects of social media on children. What about the first paragraph? What is it about? Well, it says that using social media can affect a child’s writing skills.
And the second paragraph? It says that some people don’t agree with this – that is, the first paragraph – for two reasons: scientific reasons and practical reasons (pragmatic means practical). This is what you have to do – in each paragraph, read the first sentence or at most, the first two sentences and ignore all the other information. This should only take one minute or so for all the paragraphs (depending on the length of the passage) – don’t waste a lot of time on this – you’re only reading quickly to understand the main ideas in the passage. We’ll come back to these paragraphs in a moment. OK, now you have a rough idea of what the passage is about. What do you do next? Well, the second step is to find the easiest exercise – this might be the first exercise – if it is, great. Or it might be some other exercise – but find the easiest exercise, and read the questions. This is extremely important – before you read the text in detail, you should always read the questions. Because they will tell you what information you need – so that when you read the passage, you will be able to pick out the answers. As you’re reading the questions – make sure to fully understand what they are saying – read them carefully. Also you should underline the keywords – just two or three important words that can help you to identify answers.
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