The English paper in the CBSE board exams for class XII on Thursday seemed to be a cakewalk for most students. They said it was easier than expected with no questions meant to challenge their thinking.
Many students, making their way out of the examination centres, said their performance in the first paper will help increase their aggregates as scoring high in English seemed likely now. CBSE statistics reveal that English has become a scoring subject over the last few years. While 659 students scored above 95% in 2008, the number of those in the same bracket was 605 in 2009. However,there was manifold increase in this number with as many as 3,788 students scoring 95% or above in English in 2010. While CBSE did not release the figures for 2011, the sky-high cutoffs at Delhi University were seen as an indicator of inflated class XII scores.
Though students are obviously happy that their board exams began on a positive note, teachers are a bit disappointed with the standard of the paper. They insist that exams should not be such a throwaway. “The paper was easy though a bit lengthy,” said Koninica Dasgupta, a humanities student from Ryan International School, Vasant Kunj. Shipra Bihani, another class XII student from The Indian School, said, “The writing and comprehension sections were not tough though a lot of attention had been given to the chapters in literature. Anyone who had read the chapters well could have answered those questions.”
Most teachers too got a positive feedback from their students. Feroze Bakht Ahmed, who teaches English at Modern School, Barakhamba Road, was confident that any student, who attempted all the questions properly, can easily score between 80% and 90%. “I think Thursday’s paper was the easiest in the last five years. “There was no problem in the paper and the literature section was a cakewalk. In fact, many of my students, who had prepared well, were not too excited to see an easy paper. They didn’t have to face any challenge.” He said, “I think there should be some difficulty in the paper so that only those, who deserve, can score high.”
Others blamed the trend of getting a high score on ‘run-ofthe-mill’ questions.
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