Class 8 English Chapter 7 Practice Question Answers - A Visit to Cambridge

Direction: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions as follows:

I haven’t been brave,” said his disembodied computer-voice, the next afternoon. “I’ve had no choice.” Surely, I wanted to say, living creatively with the reality of his disintegrating body was a choice? But I kept quiet, because I felt guilty every time I spoke to him, forcing him to respond. There he was, tapping at the little switch in his hand, trying to find the words on his computer with the only bit of movement left to him, his long, pale fingers. Every so often, his eyes would shut in frustrated exhaustion. And sitting opposite him I could feel his anguish, the mind buoyant with thoughts that came out in frozen phrases and sentences stiff as corpses. “A lot of people seem to think that disabled people are chronically unhappy,” I said. “I know that’s not true myself. Are you often laughing inside?”

Q1: What do you get about Stephen when he spoke ‘I have had no choice’?
Ans: Stephen Hawking accepted his disability. He tried to be brave.

Q2: How did he manage to express himself?
Ans: Stephen Hawking was tapping at the little switch in his hand, trying to find the words on his computer with the only bit of movement left to him.

Q3: What is the general opinion about disabled?
Ans: The general opinion about the disabled people are that they chronically unhappy.

Q4: How did Stephen take his visitors?
Ans: Stephen found it amusing when others patronize him and get annoyed when someone comes and disturb him.

Q5: Change the word ‘patron’ into a verb.
Ans: Patronise.

Direction: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions as follows:

Passage - 2

“Stay.” I waited. “Have some tea. I can show you the garden.” The garden was as big ks a park, but Stephen Hawking covered every inch, rumbling along in his motorised wheelchair while I dodged to keep out of the way. We couldn’t talk very much; the sun made him silent, the letters on his screen disappearing in the glare. An hour later, we were ready to leave. I didn’t know what to do. I could not kiss him or cry. I touched his shoulder and wheeled out into the summer evening. I looked back; and I knew he was waving, though he wasn’t. Watching him, an embodiment of my bravest self, the one I was moving towards, the one I had believed in for so many years, alone, I knew that my journey was over. For now.
Q1: Why did Stephen say ‘stay’?
Ans: Stephen wanted him to stay with him and to show him the garden.

Q2: Why did ‘the sun made him silent’?
Ans: The letters on his screen couldn’t be displayed because of the sunlight. So he couldn’t communicate. It made him silent.

Q3: What did the narrator So to did bade him goodbye?
Ans: The narrator touched his shoulder and wheeled out into the summer evening.

Q4: How was the narrator’s journey?
Ans: The narrator’s journey was inspiring and thought provoking.

Q5: Find the superlative adjective of‘brave’ from the above lines?
Ans: Bravest.

Direction: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions as follows:

Passage - 3

“Yes,” he said; it was a disadvantage of his voice synthesiser that it could convey no inflection, no shades or tone. And I could not tell how enthusiastically he agreed with me. Every time I shifted in my chair or turned my wrist to watch the time – I wanted to make every one of our thirty minutes count — I felt a huge relief and exhilaration in the possibilities of my body. How little it mattered then that I would never walk, or even stand. I told him how he had been an inspiration beyond cliche’ for me, and, surely, for others — did that thought help him? “No,” he said; and I thought how foolish I was to ask. When your body is a claustrophobic room and the walls are growing narrower day by day, it doesn’t do much good to know that there are people outside smiling with admiration to see you breathing still.

Q1: What was the disadvantage of his voice synthesizer?
Ans: The disadvantage of his voice synthesizer was that it could convey no infection, no shade or tone.

Q2: Why was he worried about time?
Ans: He wanted to make every minute of meeting count.

Q3: How was his body a ‘Claustrophobic Room’?
Ans: As he was dependent on others and confined to a wheel chair, he called his body to be a suffocating place.

Q4: How did he feel after seeing admiring people?
Ans: He didn’t get to know that there are people outside smiling with admiration to see him breathing still.

Q5: Choose a word that means the same as follows.
‘Phrase or idea used so often that it loses it meaning”
Ans: cliche.

Direction: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions as follows:

Passage - 4

It was on a walking tour through Cambridge that the guide mentioned Stephen Hawking, ‘poor man, who is quite disabled now, though he is a worthy successor to Issac Newton, whose chair he has at the university.’ And I started, because I had quite forgotten that this most brilliant and completely paralysed astrophysicist, the author of ‘A Brief History of Time’, one of the biggest best-sellers ever, lived here.
When the walking tour was done, I rushed to a phone booth and, almost tearing the cord so it could reach me outside, phoned Stephen Hawking’s house. There was his assistant on the line and I told him I had come in a wheelchair from India (perhaps he thought I had propelled myself all the way) to write about my travels in Britain. I had to see Professor Hawking – even ten minutes would do. “Half an hour,” he said. “From three-thirty to four.”

Q1: Why did the guide call Stephen Hawking a ‘poor man’?
Ans: The guide called Stephen Hawking a ‘poor man’ because he was a differently-abled man.

Q2: What did ‘I’ speak about Stephen Hawking?
Ans: He said that Stephen Hawking is the most brilliant and completely paralysed astrophysicist, author of a best seller ‘A brief History of Time’ lived in Cambridge.

Q3: Why had he ‘almost tearing the cord’?
Ans: He rushed to a phone booth to take an appointment with Stephen Hawking and as he was on a wheel chair, he found it difficult to reach to the telephone.

Q4: What time slot was given to him?
Ans: He was given half an hour from three thirty to four to meet Stephen Hawking.

Q5: Who is astrophysics?
Ans: Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that employs the principles of physics and chemistry “to ascertain the nature of the heavenly bodies, rather than their positions or motions in space.”