The Danger of a Single Story Questions and Answers Class 10 English Unit 3 Chapter 3 Kerala Syllabus Solutions

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Kerala State Syllabus 10th Standard English Solutions Unit 3 Chapter 3 The Danger of a Single Story (Speech)

Std 10 English Textbook The Danger of a Single Story Questions and Answers

Question 1.
How does Adichie begin her speech? What is striking about it?
Answer:
She tells the audience that she is story teller. The striking thing about it is that it captures the attention of her listeners or readers.

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Question 2.
How does Adichie describe the characters in herearly writings?
Answer:
Her characters were, white and blue eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples. They talked a lot about the weather and how lively it was that the sun had come out.

Question 3.
How did Adichie feel when she read books authored byAchebe and Laye?
Answer:
When she read books authored by Achebe and Laye, Adichie felt that people like her with chocolate colour and kinky hair could also exist in literature.

Question 4.
How did American and British books help her in her writing?
Answer:
They helped in stirring her imagination and opened up new worlds before her.

Question 5.
Why was Adichie startled when she visited Fide’s village?
Answer:
She had thought that poor people could hardly do anything. But when she visited Fide’s village, Fide’s mother showed her a beautifully patterned basket made from dyed raffia that Fide’s brother had made. Adichie was surprised that a poor boy could make such a beautiful thing.

Question 6.
Why was Adichie’s roommate shocked?
Answer:
Adichie’s roommate was shocked because Adichie spoke English quite well.

Question 7.
Adichie talks about the ‘no possibilities’ in this single story. What does she mean by this?
Answer:
She means that her roommate could never imagine that there was a possibility of people like her in Africa. Her roommate knew only the ‘single story’ of Africa that it is a dark continent.

Question 8.
Why did the professor say that her characters were ‘not authentically African’?
Answer:
He said like that because her characters were like him, educated and middle class. Her characters drove cars and they were not starving. The professor thought that such things are not authentically African.

Question 9.
What is the problem of a single story according to Adichie?
Answer:
The problem with single story is that it creates stereotypes. Stereotypes may not be untrue but they are not complete. Single story gives people a wrong picture of things.

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The Danger of a Single Story (Speech) Textual Activities and Answers

Activity 1

Question 1.
In her speech Adichie says, “All these stories make me who I am.”
Listen to her speech on www.TED.com and pick out the instances of personal stories from it.

One instance is given for you.
The story of her childhood when she started reading the age of 4 and writing when she was 7.
…………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………….
Answer:
Her reading of foreign books, especially American and British.
Her reading of Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye. The coming of Fide as the houseboy when she was 8.
Her mother telling her how poor Fide’s family is. Her visit to the village of Fide.
Her going to the USA when she was 19.
Her experiences with her roommate.
The comment about her characters by a professor who felt that her characters were not authentically African.
The tragedies she experienced – grandparents dying in refugee camps, her cousin Polle dying because of the lack of proper healthcare, her friend Okoloma dying in a plane crash as the fire trucks had no water and how the repressive military governments, which did not give priority to education, did not sometimes even pay salaries to her parents.

Activity 2

→ To be done by students after listening to the TED speech.

Activity 3

Question 2.
Critically analyse the speech of Chimamande Ngozi Adikie and discuss the dangers of a single story in perceiving people and events in the world. Prepare a write-up based on the points of your discussion.
Answer:
The Danger of a Single Story A single story creates stereo types. The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but they are incomplete. The experience of Chimamanda Adichie, while she was a student in the USA, proves the point. Her American roommate was surprised to hear Adichie speak English so well and she liked the songs of Mariah Carey. The American roommate could never imagine that a girl from Nigeria would speak English or listen to singers like Mariah Carey. Many British, Canadians or Australians feel surprised when Indians speak fluent English because they think that Indians can’t speak English well.

misinform and misguide people. They had a servant, whose name was Fide. Her mother always talked about the poverty of Fide. Adichie once visited Fide’s home and found his brother was a fine craftsman who could make beautifully patterned baskets. But she knew only of their poverty and not their artistic skills. This is what happens to many of us. We hear just one thing about a person or about a country. We don’t hear other things about him or the country. And so our opinion about the person and the country remains prejudiced. In India there are many street magicians an snake charmers. Many people in Africa and Europe think that all Indians know magic and they can handle snakes like Vava Suresh.

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We all have heard the story of six blind men going to ‘see’ the elephant. Each of them felt with their hands a different hart of the elephant. The person who felt the leg of the elephant said that an elephant is like a pillar. The one who felt the ear said that an elephant is like a hand-fan. To the one who felt the tail an elephant was like a stick! They all were right in their own limited way, but they were all wrong about their concept of the elephant.

So before coming to conclusions we should hear not a single story about something, but different stories about it. Otherwise we will remain prejudiced like the blind men in the story.

Let’s find out how language elements work.

Activity 1

Question 2.
Consider the following sentence from the story “The Best Investment I Ever Made”:
“Excuse me, doctor, I wonder if I might introduce myself.”
This is a very formal way of introducing oneself.
Can you complete the following table with formal and informal expressions wherever necessary?

Language function Formal Informal
Making a request I would like to have a word with you.
Offering help I’ll help you.
Giving advice You’d better consult a doctor. Consult a doctor today.
Asking for permission Can I have a pen?
Asking for direction
Giving options
Agreeing
Disagreeing HSSLive.Guru

Answer:

Language Function Formal Informal
Making a request I would like to have a word with you. I want to talk to you.
Offering help May I help you? I’ll help you.
Giving advice You’d better consult a doctor. Consult a doctor today.
Asking per permission May I borrow your pen? Can I have a pen?
Asking for direction Would you mind telling me how to get to the railway station? How can I get to the railway station?
Giving options You may choose this or that. Take what you like.
Agreeing I do agree with you. I quite agree.
Disagreeing I beg to differ on this. I don’t agree here.

Question 3.
Now, complete the following conversation between Mr and Mrs John and DrCronin using formal expressions.
Mr John : Excuse me, doctor, I wonder if I might introduce myself.
Dr. Cronin : Of course. _____________________________________________.
Mr.John : ________________________________________. I am afraid you
may not remember me.
Dr.Cronin : _____________________________________________________________
Mr John : By the way, may I take the privilege of introducing my wife?
Dr.Cronin : _______________________________ Mrs. John.
Mrs. John : Good morning doctor ____________________________________
Dr.Cronin : _______________________________________________________
Mr.John : _______________________________________________________
Answer:
Mr. John : Excuse me, doctor, I wonder if I might introduce myself,
Dr. Cronin : Of course, you may do so.
Mr. John : I am John whom you once helped. I am afraid you may not remember me.
Dr. Cronin : Oh Yes, now I remember. That was long ago, isn’t it? How are you now?
Mr. John : By the way, may I take the privilege of introducing my wife?
Dr. Cronin : Pleased to meet you, Mrs. John.
Mr. John : Good morning doctor. John has always been speaking about you.
Dr. Cronin !t is good of him. I didn’t do anything great for him.
Mr. John : No, doctor. You did really something great for me. You changed my life entirely for the better.

Activity 2

Question 4.
1. f you spare a few minutes with me, I can convey the message.
2. If the sergeant refused to oblige, the young man would go to the prison.
3. If I had prepared well, I would have performed well on the stage.

Discuss:
Can split the above sentences into two? Yes, I can.

  • Is there a subject and a verb in both the parts? Yes, there is.
  • What will you call the two parts with verbs in each of them? Clauses.
  • Identify the verb forms in both the parts of the sentences:
    1. spare – simple present; can convey – future
    2. refused – simple past; would go – conditional
    3. had prepared – past perfect; would have performed – conditional perfect

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Now complete the following sentences suitably:
Answer:

  1. If you had enough money, you would buy a car.
  2. I will come if you invite me.
  3. If you had informed me, I would have come in time.
  4. If she comes, I will be happy.
  5. If he had known about it, he would not have said such things.
  6. If they tried, they would succeed.

Activity 3

Question 5.
Read the following sentence from the story “The Best investment I ever Made”.
No sooner had the sergeant banged the door than he saw the doctor hurriedly coming down.

  • Which event happened first? banging the door.
  • What was the second event? the coming of the doctor.
  • Did the second event happen immediately or after some time? Immediately after.
  • How have we linked the two events?

By using no sooner…. than.

Note: When the second event occurs immediately after the first, they can be connected with “No sooner …. than”. “No sooner” should be added to the event that occurred first. ‘Had’ or ‘did’ is used along with ‘No sooner’.

Read the following sentences and complete them suitably:
1. No sooner had I reached the station than the train left.
No sooner did I reach the station than the train left.

2. No sooner had we heard the sound than we rushed to the spot.
No sooner did ____________________________________________________.

3. No sooner had ____________________________________________________.
No sooner did she finish the project than she started a new one.

4. ___________________________ I received her call ___________ I left the house.
__________________________________________________________________.
Answer:
1. No sooner had I reached the station than the train left.
No sooner did I reach the station than the train left.

2. No sooner had we heard the sound than we rushed to the spot.
No sooner did we hear the sound than we rushed to the spot.

3. No sooner had she finished the project than she started a new one.
No sooner did she finish the project than she started a new one.

4. No sooner had I received her call than I left the house.
No sooner did I receive her call than I left the house.

Question 6.
It is possible to express the same idea using ‘hardly/ scarcely… when’.
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Answer:

  1. Hardly had I reached the station when the train left.
  2. Scarcely had we heard the sound when we rushed to the shot.
  3. Hardly had she finished the project when she started a new one.
  4. Scarcely had I received her call when I left the house.

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Question 7.
Now, read the following sentence and see how it is different from the previous one. You may rewrite the other sentences too.
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
Answer:

  1. As soon as I reached the station, the train left.
  2. As soon as we heard the sound, we rushed to the spot.
  3. As soon as she finished the project she started a new one.
  4. As soon as I received her call I left the house.

Activity 4

Read the following sentences from the story The Best Investment I Ever Made.
I was awakened by a loud banging on the door.
He had taken a sum of money from the office safe for a final gamble.

You have learnt about noun phrases and verb phrases in the earlier units. Now, let’s have a look at the prepositional phrases. The words given in bold in the above sentences are prepositional phrases.

The preposition is followed by an object. The preposition and the object together form a prepositional phrase.
I am going into the forest.
Kerala Syllabus 10th Standard English Solutions Unit 3 Chapter 3 The Danger of a Single Story 1

Now, read the following sentences and identify the prepositional phrases in each sentence.
1. Come into the garden with me.
____________________________________________________________

2. She wanted to go to the movies.
____________________________________________________________

3. The girl from the nearby city left her purse in the lab.
____________________________________________________________

4. The stories in that book were translated by my friend.
____________________________________________________________

5. She was looking for a man with money.
____________________________________________________________
Answer:

  1. Come into the garden with me.
    (into the garden, with me)
  2. She wanted to go to the movies,
    (to the movies)
  3. The girl from the nearby city left her purse in the pub.
    (from the nearby city, in the pub).
  4. The stories in that book were translated by my friend,
    (in that book, by my friend)
  5. She was looking for a man with money,
    (for a man, with money)

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The Danger Of A Single Story About the author:

Kerala Syllabus 10th Standard English Solutions Unit 3 Chapter 3 The Danger of a Single Story 2
– Chimamanda Adichie

Chimamanda Adichie (b. 1977) is a Nigerian novelist, non-fiction writer and short story writer. She occupies an important place among the young English writers of Africa. Her works include Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah.

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The Danger Of A Single Story Summary in English

Page – 95
I am a story teller. I would like to tell you a few personal stories to show you the danger of a single story. I grew up in a university campus in Eastern Nigeria. My mother says I started reading at 2. But I think I did it when I was 4.1 am a reader and I used to read mostly British and American children’s books.

I was also an early writer. I started writing when I was 7.1 wrote stories in pencil with crayon drawings. My poor mother had to read them. I wrote exactly like the kind of stories I read. All my characters were white and blue-eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples. They talked a lot about the weather and how lovely it was when the sun came out. I had never been outside Nigeria. We did not have snow. We ate mangoes and we never talked about the weather as there was no need to.

Page – 96
This shows how impressionable and vulnerable we are to a story, especially when we are children. Since I read books whose characters were foreign, I thought books should have foreigners in them and should be about things I could not personally identify. Things changed when I found African books. Not many were available and they were not easy to find. When I read Chinua Achebe (Nigerian writer) and Camara Laye (writer from Guinea), I realised that people like me could also exist in literature. We have skin colour like chocolate and hair kinky which could not form pony tails. Now I started writing about things I recognized. I loved the American and British books I read. They stirred my imagination and opened a new world for me. African writers showed me that books can be about different things.

Kerala Syllabus 10th Standard English Solutions Unit 3 Chapter 3 The Danger of a Single Story 3

Page – 97
I come from a conventional middle-class family. My father was a professor. My mother was an administrator. We had a live-in domestic help, who came from a village nearby. Wheh I was 8, we got a new houseboy, Fide. My mothertold us that his family was very poor. My mother sent yams (“kachil”), rice and old clothes to his family. When I could not finish my food, my mother would say. “Finish it. Don’t you know that people like Fide’s family have nothing to eat?” I felt pity for Fide’s family.

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One Saturday we went to Fide’s village. His mother showed us a beautifully patterned basket of dyed raffia that his brother had made. I was surprised. I never thought a member of his family could make something. I had heard enough of their poverty, I simply knew only one thing about them – they were poor. Their poverty was my single story of them.

Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to study in the USA. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked me where I had learned to speak English so well. She was confused when I told her that English was the official language of Nigeria. She asked me to play for her some ‘tribal music’ and was disappointed to see that my tape had Mariah Carey.

She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. She had pity for me as I was an African. My roommate had a single story of Africa. I n this single story she could not imagine that anybody in Africa could be like her in anyway.

Page – 98
Before I went to the US, I did not consciously identify as African. But in the US whenever Africa has mentioned people turned to me. I got the identity of an African. But I get angry when people refer to Africa as if it is just one country. After living for some years in the US, I understood my roommate’s response to me. If I did not grow up in Nigeria and if all I knew about Africa was from popular images I too would think like her. To people like her Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, animals and incomprehensible people. The Africans, they thought, were unable to think for themselves. They were waiting to be saved by some white foreigners. They saw Africa, in the same way, I saw Fide’s family when I was young.

My American roommate must have heard different versions of a single story about Africa. A professor once told me that my novel was not ‘authentically African’. He told me that my characters were too much like him, educated and middle class. My characters drove cars. They were not starving. Therefore, he thought, they were not authentically African.

I learned that writers were to have unhappy childhoods to be successful. If that is true, I had to invent horrible things my parents had done to me. But the truth is I had a happy childhood full of love and laughter. Mine was a close knit family.

But I also had grandfathers who died in refugee camps. My cousin Polle died because he could not get adequate healthcare. One of my closest friends, Okoloma, died in a plane crash because our fire trucks did not have water. I grew up under repressive military governments that devalued education so that sometimes my parents were not paid their salaries.

All of these stories make me who I am. Giving importance only to the negative things is not good. The single story creates stereotypes. Stereotypes . may be true, but they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

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The Danger Of A Single Story Summary in Malayalam

Kerala Syllabus 10th Standard English Solutions Unit 3 Chapter 3 The Danger of a Single Story 6
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The Danger Of A Single Story Glossary

Kerala Syllabus 10th Standard English Solutions Unit 3 Chapter 3 The Danger of a Single Story 4

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