NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 7 Words (poem by Charles Swain) — Learning Beyond the Text

Book page 229–230 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.

I. In groups of six, follow the instructions to play the ‘Non-verbal’ game. · Each student writes or makes an emoji with an expression on one slip and a gesture on the other. · Jumble the slips and keep them upside down. · Pick the slips in turns and enact it in 30 seconds. · The person who can identify the expression or gesture first, gets 10 points. · Continue it for two rounds and find the Non-verbal Champion. For example, an expression to denote tired could be: [a weary face emoji] and a gesture to denote united could be: [a raised fist emoji] This game is like Dumb Charades. Dumb Charades is a word-guessing game where players act out words, phrases, or movie titles using gestures and body language without speaking. One person acts, and their teammates try to guess what’s being mimed.

Answer

This is a game to play, not a question to answer — but it can be played well or badly, and the difference is worth setting out. The book’s two examples are: a weary, half-closed-eyed face for the expression tired, and a raised clenched fist for the gesture united.

How to run it properly:

Two slips per person — one expression (something the face does) and one gesture (something the hands or body does). Keep the two categories separate; that is the point of the exercise.
Fold, jumble, place face down. Draw in turn; 30 seconds per turn; no sound, no lip movement, no writing, no pointing at objects in the room.
First correct identification takes 10 points. Two rounds, then declare the Non-verbal Champion.

Expressions (the face alone)	Gestures (hands and body)
tired, puzzled, delighted, disgusted, suspicious, embarrassed, relieved, terrified, bored, proud	united (a raised fist), welcome (namaste), stop (an open palm), come here, victory, ‘be quiet’, ‘I don’t know’ (a shrug), ‘well done’ (a thumbs-up), ‘after you’, ‘call me’

What the game is actually teaching. Two things, and both matter for the chapter:

How much meaning survives without a single word. You will find that tired, disgusted and welcome are guessed almost instantly, while abstract ideas such as honest or expensive are nearly impossible. That is the real finding: non-verbal communication is superb for feeling and attitude, and helpless for precision. It is exactly why we need words as well.
How much of a gesture is cultural. The Indian head-wobble, the namaste, the thumbs-up — none of these means the same everywhere. A gesture is learnt, like vocabulary.

Try this variation: play one round where the actor may use only the face and one where only the hands may move. Then discuss which was harder and why. It makes the difference between ‘expression’ and ‘gesture’ real instead of theoretical.

Q2.

II. Do you know? The French priest Charles-Michel de l’Épée (1712–89) is recognised as ‘The Father of Sign Language and Deaf Education’.

Answer

Charles-Michel de l’Épée (1712–1789) earned that title because he did two things nobody had done before: he treated the signs deaf people already used as a real language, and he opened a school where deaf children were taught free of charge.

He learnt from the deaf, not the other way round. Meeting two deaf sisters in Paris, he found that they already communicated fluently in signs. Instead of trying to replace their signing with speech — the usual approach at the time — he studied it and built his teaching on it.
He founded a free public school for deaf children in Paris in the 1760s, at his own expense. Before this, deaf education was a private luxury for a few wealthy families; he made it a public good.
He made the method public. He published his system and opened his classes to visitors, so teachers from other countries could learn it and carry it home. His school became the model on which deaf schools across Europe and America were founded.

Why the book places this note here, right after a game of gestures. The Non-verbal game shows that expressions and gestures carry feeling but struggle with precision. Sign language is the answer to that limitation — it is a full language with its own vocabulary and its own grammar, which happens to be made of hand shapes, movement and expression rather than sound. It can express anything spoken language can, including abstraction, tense and argument. India has its own — Indian Sign Language (ISL), standardised by the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre in New Delhi. Note also that a sign language is not a signed version of the local spoken language: ISL is not ‘Hindi on the hands’, and it is different from American Sign Language.

The link back to the poem. Swain complains that words “reach the head, / But never touch the heart”. De l’Épée’s life makes the opposite point about language in general: for the children in his school, gaining a language was gaining a mind’s worth of company. The problem is never language itself — it is language used carelessly.

Q3.

III. You must have read poems and songs in English and in your own language. Now, read and enjoy the poem given below. Weigh Your Words If we would “weigh” the words we say, / And speak but those we mean, / We’d save a lot of talk each day, / And keep our conscience clean. The idle words we often speak, / And promises we make, / If given credence, by the weak, / May cause some heart to ache. We never know the pain and sting / An idle word may start; / We never can erase one thing, / We’ve written on a heart. ‘Tis best to “weigh” each sentence well, / And as I’ve said before, / Tho “we’d not have so much to tell, / ‘Twould mean a whole lot more. — E. F. Hayward

Answer

The instruction is to read and enjoy, so nothing is being tested — but the poem has been chosen as a companion piece to Words, and reading the two together is the real exercise.

What Hayward is saying, stanza by stanza:

Stanza	The point	The key line
1	If we weighed our words and said only what we meant, we would talk far less and have nothing to be ashamed of	“And keep our conscience clean.”
2	Careless words and easy promises are dangerous because someone may believe them — especially someone in a weak position	“If given credence, by the weak, / May cause some heart to ache.”
3	The damage is invisible to the speaker and permanent	“We never can erase one thing, / We’ve written on a heart.”
4	Weigh every sentence: we would have less to say, and it would mean far more	“Tho we’d not have so much to tell, / ‘Twould mean a whole lot more.”

The device that holds the poem together is the metaphor in its title. “Weigh” is in inverted commas both times Hayward uses it, because words have no weight — you weigh grain at the mandi, or gold at the jeweller’s. To weigh a word is to treat it as something of value, to be measured out carefully and not scattered. The third stanza then adds a second, harsher metaphor: an idle word is written on a heart, and “We never can erase one thing” so written. Speech is turned into permanent ink on the one surface that cannot be cleaned.

	Words — Charles Swain	Weigh Your Words — E. F. Hayward
Form	6 stanzas, abab, common metre (8-6-8-6)	4 stanzas, abab, the same common metre
Complaint	Words do too little — they “leave but empty air”	Words do too much damage — they “cause some heart to ache”
Image of the heart	A pilgrim, needing and unfed	A surface written on, which cannot be erased
Remedy	“A little said, and truly said”	“speak but those we mean”; “weigh each sentence well”
Last note	Disillusionment — “One particle of fruit!”	Practical resolve — “‘Twould mean a whole lot more.”

The one line where the two poems become the same poem. Swain: “A little said, and truly said, / Can deeper joy impart / Than hosts of words.” Hayward: “Tho we’d not have so much to tell, / ‘Twould mean a whole lot more.” Both are saying that meaning and quantity pull in opposite directions — but Swain arrives there sadly, having watched words fail, while Hayward arrives there as advice, worried about the harm they do. Read aloud, they even sound alike, because both are in the plain 8-6-8-6 beat of a hymn.

Notice the old spellings: ‘Tis (it is), Tho (though), ‘Twould (it would). The apostrophes mark letters dropped so the line keeps its syllable count — a poet’s way of fitting speech to a metre. You met the same thing in Swain’s oft and Hath.

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