Q1Written answer
How old are Margie and Tommy?
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Worked solution
Answer: Margie is eleven and Tommy is thirteen years old.
NCERT · Class 9 · English
Chapter 1: The Fun They Had Poem: The Road Not Taken
Practice each question, then open the answer or worked solution.
Thinking about the Text
20 questionsQ2Written answer
What did Margie write in her diary?
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Answer: Margie wrote in her diary “Today Tommy found a real book!”
Q3Written answer
Had Margie ever seen a book before?
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Answer: No, Margie had never seen a book before.
Q4Written answer
What things about the book did she find strange?
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Answer: The things about the book that she found strange were the following:
i) The pages of the book were yellow and crinkly.
ii) The words stood still instead of moving.
iii) When they turned back to the previous page, it still had the same words on it that it had when they first read it.
Q5Written answer
What do you think a telebook is?
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Answer: I think the telebook must be a book that gets displayed on the screen of the television.
Q6Written answer
Where was Margie’s school? Did she have any classmates?
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Answer: Margie’s school was next to her bedroom. No, she did not have any classmates.
Q7Written answer
What subjects did Margie and Tommy learn?
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Answer: Margie and Tommy learnt Geography, History and Arithmetic.
II. Answer the following with reference to the story.
Q1 (2)Written answer
Question 1. “I wouldn’t throw it away.”
(i) Who says these words?
(ii) What does ‘it’ refer to?
(iii) What is it being compared with by the speaker?
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Worked solution
Answer: (i) Tommy says these words.
(ii) “It” refers to the books.
(iii) The paperback book is being compared with the telebooks by the speaker.
Q2 (2)Written answer
Question 2. “Sure they had a teacher, but it wasn’t a regular teacher. It was a man.”
(i) Who does ‘they’ refer to?
(ii) What does ‘regular’ mean here?
(iii) What is it contrasted with?
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Worked solution
Answer: (i) “They” refers to the students centuries ago.
(ii) “Regular” means the usual for the people in 2157. Here, regular teacher means the mechanical teacher.
(iii) The mechanical teacher is contrasted with humans as teachers of earlier times.
III. Answer each of these questions in a short paragraph (about 30 words).
Q1 (3)Written answer
Question 1. What kind of teachers did Margie and Tommy have?
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Worked solution
Answer: Margie and Tommy had mechanical teachers. The mechanical teachers had big screens on which all the lessons were shown and questions were asked. The children were taught through computer and television screens. They did not have humans as teachers.