NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 8 Follow That Dream (letter by Irene Chua) — Check Your Understanding
Book page 234 Updated on2026-09-08
Q1.
I. State whether the following sentences are true or false. Share your answers with your classmates and teacher.
1. Reaching the peak of skill in a field typically demands a focused and intense dedication for about a decade.
Answer
True.
The letter states it as a question, which makes it easy to miss as a fact: “Do you know that to reach world-class standard in any field, one has to be singularly and intensively pursuing the subject for at least ten years?”
Match the words.Peak of skill = “world-class standard”; focused = “singularly” (the book glosses it as ‘exclusively’); intense = “intensively”; about a decade = “at least ten years”. Every phrase in the statement has a partner in the sentence, which is what makes it true rather than merely reasonable.
Q2.
I. 2. The mother believes that significant effort and personal sacrifices are essential for turning aspirations into reality.
Answer
True.
This is the letter’s central claim, made in its second sentence: “What differentiates greatness from the ordinary is how much effort and sacrifice people invest to realise their dream.”
She repeats it as an instruction a paragraph later — “Count the cost in years of effort, financial investments and sacrifice” — so the idea appears both as a general law and as advice to Ming personally.
Q3.
I. 3. The path to achieving the deepest desires has very little difficulty or a few obstacles.
Answer
False. The letter says the opposite, twice over.
“The road may be uphill most of the way” (page 232) — not a few obstacles, but a slope that does not end.
“To fulfill them you will need to negotiate a path through a maze of hurdles” (page 233) — a maze is worse than a hurdle, because you can lose your way as well as trip.
Watch the metaphors. Chua never uses a soft word for the journey. Uphill, maze, hurdles, stamina running out — the vocabulary is athletic and hard throughout, and that is deliberate. A statement that makes the road easy cannot be true of this letter.
Q4.
I. 4. The mother is of the opinion that a person’s life goals and hopes can evolve over time.
Answer
True — and she offers herself as the proof.
The claim: “From my own experience, life itself may change a person’s dreams.” (page 233)
The evidence: “publishing this book is a dream I have chased in the last ten years. This was not the dream I had in my youth but my original dream has changed over the years.” (page 234)
Why she insists on it. A changed dream is easily mistaken for a failed one, so she rules that reading out in advance: “These hopes and aspirations are no less than the original dream of younger days.” The later dream is slower and more crowded, not smaller.
Q5.
I. 5. Having a strong network of individuals can be a hurdle in pursuing one’s ambition.
Answer
False. The letter treats a support network as one of the conditions of success, not as an obstacle.
“When you watch the Academy Awards for best actors and actresses and films, the winner always thanks a host of people that formed his/her support network. So, you see that for one winner, there is a group of people who stood by him/her.” (page 233)
Why the book plants this trap. The statement inverts a true idea into a false one, and only a reader who remembers the Academy Awards paragraph can catch it. Notice what Chua does with that paragraph: she picks the one moment in public life when a winner is forced to list the people behind the win — the acceptance speech. It is a shrewd choice of evidence, because the award ceremony looks like the ultimate celebration of a single person, and turns out to be the opposite.
Q6.
I. 6. The mother feels that pursuing a major life goal will not involve any financial expense or sacrifice.
Answer
False, and the word financial is the giveaway — Chua names money explicitly.
“Count the cost in years of effort, financial investments and sacrifice.” (page 232)
She also shows what a shortage of money does to a dream: “I know too, of people who had wished to finish secondary school but they had to go out to work so that they could support their siblings through school.” (page 233) In that sentence money does not merely add a cost — it ends the dream.
Q7.
I. 7. For many individuals, their aspirations remain just wishes because they don’t move beyond mere daydreaming.
Answer
True.
“It is good to be able to fulfil your dreams but for a lot of people, dreams remain dreams. Although everyone at one time or other has wistfully said to oneself, ‘I wish I could be this or the other,’ they have never got beyond just wishful thinking.” (page 233)
Read the whole paragraph before you agree too quickly. Chua gives three different reasons why dreams stay dreams, and only the first is the person’s own doing:
Wishful thinking — never acting at all;
Choice — “They could have preferred to trade their dream for security”;
Circumstance — “Perhaps circumstances changed their lives”: the Japanese invasion during World War II, or the need to earn for younger siblings.
The statement is true because it says “for many individuals”, not “for all”. Chua is careful never to blame everyone whose dream did not survive — a distinction worth noticing, because it is what keeps the letter kind.