Question 1 (i) - CBSE Sample Paper for English Class 12 - 2022 Boards [Term 2] - Solutions to CBSE Sample Paper - English Class 12 - English Class 12

Read the passage given below.

I saw ‘Jaws’, the popular shark movie, the summer it came out, in 1975 and became paranoid about sharks. Though I kept swimming after Jaws, it was always with the vague fear that a shark’s teeth could tug on my leg at any moment. Never mind that there’d been only two shark bites since 1900 on the Connecticut coast, where I lived. 

So, when I got this assignment for the National Geographic magazine, I decided to accept and do what I’d never wanted to do: swim with the sharks. I had to go to a place in the Bahamas known as Tiger Beach and dive with tiger sharks, the species responsible for more recorded attacks on humans than any shark except the great white. It was to be my first dive after getting certified—which meant it would be my first dive anywhere other than a swimming pool or a quarry—and without a diver’s cage. Most people who got wind of this plan thought I was either very brave or very stupid. 

But I just wanted to puncture an illusion. The people who know sharks intimately tend to be the least afraid of them, and no one gets closer to sharks than divers. The divers who run operations at Tiger Beach speak lovingly of the tiger sharks the way people talk about their children or their pets. In their eyes, these sharks aren’t man-eaters any more than dogs are.

The business of puncturing illusions is never just black and white. My fellow divers had hundreds of dives under their belt and on the two-hour boat ride to the site in the morning of our first dive, they kept saying things like, 

“Seriously, I really can’t believe this is your first dive.” All this was okay with me until I reached the bottom and immediately had to fend off the first tiger shark, I had ever laid eyes on. However, when I watched the other divers feeding them fish and steering them gently, it became easy to see the sharks in a very benign light. 

I think it would be unfair not to mention that though tiger sharks are apex predators. They act as a crucial balancing force in ocean ecosystems, constraining the numbers of animals like sea turtles and limit their behavior by preventing them from overgrazing the sea grass beds. Furthermore, tiger sharks love warm water, they eat almost anything, have a huge litter and are the hardiest shark species. If the planet and its oceans continue to warm, some species will be winners and others will be losers, and tiger sharks are likely to be winners.

i.Cite a point in evidence, from the text, to suggest that the writer's post-Jaws fear was not justified.

Answer

The Writer’s fear of sharks was not justified . There had been only 2 reported shark attacks in the last 75 years (1900-1975) on the Connecticut coast so it was highly unlikely that he would get bit by one. It was an irrational fear.