Question

READ THE PASSAGE AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS (8)

Do children really need such long summer breaks, was a question posed by some experts recently.

Apparently, such a long break distructs their development and comes in the way of the learning

process. Let’s get them back to their books, is perhaps the experts view, if not in so many words.

One would have thought the children are doing too much during their vocations and not too little,

even the plethora of classes , camps and workshops involving swimming, art, personality

development, music, computers and like that seem to cram their calendar. Even the trips taken in

the name of holidays seem laiden with exotic destinations and customized experience that into a

short period of time. We can do Europe in ten days and Australia in a week and come back armed

with digital memories and over flowing suitcases. Holidays are in some ways, no longer a break but

an intensified search for experience not normally encountered in everyday life.

It is a far cry from summer holidays one experienced while growing up. For holidays every year

meant one thing and one thing alone – you went back to your native place, logged in with the

emotional headquarters of your extended family and spent two months with a gaggle of uncles,

aunts and first and second cousins. The happiest memories of the childhood of a whole generation

seem to be centred around this annual ritual of home coming and of affirmation. We tended tacit

apologies for the separateness entailedin being individuals even as we scurried back into the

cauldron of community and continuity represented by family. Summer vocation was a time sticky

with oneness, as who we were an what we owned ozzed out from our individual selves into a

collective part.

QUESTIONS

1. How do long summer breaks disrupt children?

2. What is the expert view about utilizing summer vocation?

3What are the different activities that seem to cram children’s calendar?

4. Even the trips taken in the name of holidays do not help children. Why?

5. If holidays are no longer a break, then what are they?

6. How do children usually spend their summer holidays?

7. Explain the phrase- ‘ Annual ritual of home coming’.

8. What does the author want to say in the end?​

Answer 1

Answer:

(i) Because they disrupt their development and come in the way of their learning process.

(ii) They are given the plethora of courses, classes or camps and workshops. These works involve swimming, art, personality development, music and computers.

(iii) The writer’s happiest memories mainly hinge on annual ritual of homecoming and of affirmation.

(iv) The present summer breaks want to detach students from a new source of identity temporarily.

(v) It was an attempt to underline the power of the old and ordinary.

2.(i) (a) plethora

(ii) (d) intensified

(iii)(b) summer

(iv) (a) work

(v) (c) temporarily