NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 8 Believe in Yourself (poem by Robert Langley) — Writing Task

What the examiner is checking: the four-paragraph structure exactly as printed, a greeting and self-introduction, an opening hook (quotation, question or surprising fact), two distinct main points — not one point twice — supported by anecdote or evidence, transition words between paragraphs, at least one rhetorical question in the persuasive tone the guideline names, and a close that thanks the audience. Formal language throughout: no contractions, no slang.

Turning Challenges into Opportunities

Respected Principal, teachers and my dear friends — a very good morning to all of you. I am Aarav Menon of Class IX-A, and I have been asked to speak this morning on the subject ‘Turning Challenges into Opportunities’.

May I begin with a question? How many of us, on hearing that the annual examination has been advanced by a fortnight, feel a small drop in the stomach? Almost everybody, I imagine — and there is nothing shameful in it. Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, who once delivered newspapers before dawn so that he could pay his school fees, said, “Dream is not that you see in sleep, dream is something that does not let you sleep.” This morning I wish to argue two things: first, that our fear of difficulty is natural but misleading; and second, that a challenge, met squarely, gives us something no comfortable term can give.

Let me begin with why change frightens us. It frightens us because the future is unknown, and the mind treats the unknown as a danger — we can picture failing far more vividly than we can picture succeeding. There is, besides, such ease in comfort; a familiar routine asks nothing of us. But consider what comfort actually costs. A student who never speaks in the assembly is spared the shaking hands, certainly — and is also, four years later, the person who cannot speak at an interview. The safe choice is never free; its bill simply arrives later. Don’t you agree that we would rather pay in nervousness now than in regret afterwards?

My second point is this: a challenge gives us what ease cannot — skill, determination and, above all, evidence about ourselves. Permit me one example. Last year, our class was asked at four days’ notice to take over the annual day play when the senior batch fell ill. Three of us had never acted; two lines of the script had to be rewritten because nobody could pronounce them. We were, frankly, poor. Yet by the end of that week I had learnt to memorise quickly, to speak so that the last row could hear me, and to stand still on a stage while three hundred people looked at me — and I am able to stand here this morning largely because of it. The play was not a triumph. The opportunity was not the play; it was what four difficult days made of us. Dr B. R. Ambedkar faced humiliation at school and became the chairperson of the drafting committee of our Constitution; Lal Bahadur Shastri walked miles barefoot to reach his classroom and rose to be Prime Minister. In each case the difficulty was real, and in each case it was also the training.

To conclude, then: fear of change is natural, but comfort has a price we pay later; and every challenge carries an opportunity that is usually not the one we were looking for. So when the next hard thing arrives — a subject that will not yield, a match against a stronger team, a stage you would rather not walk on to — I would ask you to remember one line from the poem we read in class this week: The first step is the hardest. The hardest, my friends — and therefore the only one you truly have to worry about. Thank you very much for your attention, and I wish you all a very good day.