NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 1 How I Taught My Grandmother to Read (prose) — Speaking Activity

Sample answer — ‘For’ (about one minute):
To begin with, I would like to speak for the topic. A second language is a second doorway into the world. My first argument in favour is opportunity: most of what is written on science, medicine and law in this country is not available in every mother tongue, and a student who reads only one language reads only one shelf of the library. Secondly, a new language changes the person who learns it. Research on multilingual children shows better memory and sharper attention, and anyone who has struggled with Sanskrit grammar knows why — you are forced to notice how meaning is built. Most importantly, I want to mention that India runs on translation. A Kannada speaker who learns Hindi, or a Hindi speaker who learns Tamil, is not losing a culture; she is gaining a neighbour. That is why I strongly feel every student should carry a second language.

Sample answer — ‘Against’ (about one minute):
On the contrary, I am not sure a second language should be compulsory for everyone. There are two sides to this topic. First, depth matters more than breadth. A child who half-learns three languages may write none of them well, and it is the mother tongue that carries her thinking, her jokes and her grandmother’s stories. Second, time in school is limited. An hour spent on a third script is an hour not spent on mathematics, music or reading widely in the language she already commands. If I could make a point here — translation tools now do at a keystroke what once took years of study, so the practical argument is weaker than it was. And there is a cost we rarely count: children pushed into a prestige language often begin to feel ashamed of their own. So, to put it in a few words, learn a second language by choice and with joy — but not by force.

Sample answer — ‘For’ (about one minute):
To begin with, I would like to speak for the topic. There is no doubt that childhood is built for learning. My first argument is biological: a young brain forms connections faster, which is why a child picks up an accent perfectly and an adult almost never does. My second is practical — a school child has time, a teacher, a syllabus and no responsibilities, while an adult learns in the gaps between work and family. I am pretty sure most of us have watched a parent give up on a new phone after two attempts. In addition to that, habits of study, handwriting and memory are formed early and are hard to build later. So the years we spend in school are not one opportunity among many; they are the best one we will get.

Sample answer — ‘Against’ (about one minute):
On the other hand, I have a reason to believe this topic is simply false, and the proof is in our own textbook. Krishtakka was sixty-two, grey-haired, wearing spectacles and busy all day in the kitchen — and she learnt the Kannada alphabet in a few months, well enough to read a novel by Saraswati Puja day. Her own answer was, “For learning there is no age bar.” Well, I am not sure you can really call the young brain the only one that works: adults learn faster in one crucial way, because they know why they are learning. My second point is that skills now change every decade, so an adult who cannot learn is an adult who cannot work. And every literacy mission in this country exists precisely because adults do learn. So, to put it in a few words, youth makes learning easier — it does not make it exclusive.