CBSE students who took the Class X English board exam on Monday said that while the paper was largely easy, errors in the question paper left them concerned.
Nandini Chandak, a student, said that an exercise that required them to find synonyms from a passage in the comprehension section had errors. “The question gives us words for which we have to find synonyms and specifies the paragraph number. The paragraph numbers given were mixed up and we couldn’t find the corresponding synonyms in those paras,” she said.
In another section, students were left confused after the instructions for attempting a choice question seemed unclear.
The CBSE syllabus specifies that schools could choose between two texts — ‘Diary of a young girl’ by Anne Frank or ‘Story of my life’ by Helen Keller — and students had to attempt any one question for 10 marks in the boards. “There were two questions given from both the texts but there was a mix up in the instructions for us to answer just one in the question paper as the word ‘Or’ had been omitted . Many of us panicked and thought that we had to answer both questions and were worried since we have read just one of the texts,” said S. Srimathi, another student.
An exam invigilator, however, said that the regional office had reached out to most of the exam centres by 11 a.m., half hour after the exam began and that the students were informed that they had an option to pick any one question.
The Class X students have their Science examination next on March 16.
