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NCERT Solutions for Class 9th English Chapter 8 Follow That Dream (letter by Irene Chua) — Critical Reflection

Book page 235–237 Updated on2026-09-08

Q1.
I. Read the extracts given below and answer the questions that follow. 1. It starts with a passion for a particular interest, then comes the conviction that it is imperative to realise it. Count the cost in years of effort, financial investments and sacrifice. Then if it is still burning in your blood and you are ready to commit yourself to the task, plunge. It could be in any field—sports, science, arts, business, or design. The road may be uphill most of the way and often you are buoyed up only by the knowledge that you are doing what you love best and are doing the right thing. When stamina is running out, the prospect of success will keep you on track. (i) Complete the analogy with a suitable word from the extract. enthusiasm : passion :: belief : _____________
Answer

conviction

enthusiasm : passion :: belief : conviction
(everyday word : the extract’s stronger word)

How the analogy is built. Enthusiasm and passion mean roughly the same thing, but passion is the deeper, more committed word — and it is the word the extract uses. Apply the same relation to the second pair: belief is the everyday word; the extract’s deeper word for it is conviction, in “then comes the conviction that it is imperative to realise it.”

Why conviction is stronger than belief. You can hold a belief and do nothing about it. A conviction has already decided your behaviour — which is exactly why Chua uses it at this point in the sequence. In her order, passion comes first (you love the thing), then conviction (you must have it), and only then does she allow you to count the cost and plunge. Both words in the answer pair are chosen from the extract itself, as the instruction requires.
Q2.
(ii) Choose the correct option to complete the following sentence appropriately. The author says that a realistic assessment of effort, investment and sacrifice is crucial for preventing _____________. A. the need for external support network B. an early abandonment of the dream C. initial excitement from fading over time D. others from questioning one’s commitment
Answer

B. an early abandonment of the dream

The line the question is built on: “Count the cost in years of effort, financial investments and sacrifice. Then if it is still burning in your blood and you are ready to commit yourself to the task, plunge.”

Notice the order of the sentence. The counting comes before the plunge, and the plunge is allowed only if the desire survives the counting. The whole purpose of that arithmetic is therefore to make sure that when you do begin, you begin knowing what it will take — so you do not quit the moment the real cost appears.

OptionVerdictWhy
A. the need for external support networkWrongThe letter wants a support network — “for one winner, there is a group of people who stood by him/her”. Counting the cost does not remove that need.
B. an early abandonment of the dreamCorrectA cost known in advance cannot ambush you later. This is why the “if” clause guards the word plunge.
C. initial excitement from fading over timeWrongChua expects the excitement to be tested, not preserved — “When stamina is running out…”. She never promises the thrill will last; she asks whether the conviction is “still burning”.
D. others from questioning one’s commitmentWrongThe letter is not concerned with what onlookers think. Its entire address is inward — to Ming’s own judgement.
Exam technique: in an extract-based MCQ, the correct option is usually the one you can put back into the passage as a paraphrase. Slot B into the text — “count the cost, so that you do not give up early” — and it fits the sentence exactly. Slot C in and you get a promise the passage never makes.
Q3.
(iii) Complete the following with the correct option from those given in the brackets. The word ‘plunge’ as used in the extract indicates a _____________ (complete/gradual) involvement in a task.
Answer

complete

The book’s own gloss for the word is “throw oneself into the activity”. To plunge is to go in all at once and all the way — a diver plunges into water; nobody plunges slowly.

Read the sentence it sits in. “Then if it is still burning in your blood and you are ready to commit yourself to the task, plunge.” The clause immediately before the word is about total commitment, so plunge is its one-word summary. Chua could have written begin or take it up; she chose a verb that leaves no room for a half-hearted start — which is why gradual is the wrong half of the bracket.
Notice the sentence design. Plunge is placed at the very end of a long conditional sentence, standing alone after the comma. The build-up is slow and careful — passion, conviction, cost, readiness — and then one short word for the leap. The form of the sentence acts out the meaning.
Q4.
(iv) Complete the sentence with an appropriate reason. The author’s emphasis on ‘when you are doing what you love best and are doing the right thing’ works as a form of intrinsic motivation because _____________.
Answer

… because the reward is inside the work itself — the satisfaction of loving what you do and knowing it is right — so it keeps paying you on the days when there is no prize, no praise and no visible progress.

Where the extract shows this. Look at the word only: “often you are buoyed up only by the knowledge that you are doing what you love best and are doing the right thing.” Only tells you that at that point everything external has failed — no results yet, no applause, no money. What is left is the work and your reason for doing it, and Chua says that is enough to keep you afloat (the book glosses buoyed up as “kept afloat”).

Intrinsic motivationExtrinsic motivation
Where the reward sitsIn doing the thingOutside it — marks, medals, money, praise
In the extract“doing what you love best … doing the right thing”“the prospect of success”
When it failsOnly if you stop caring about the workThe moment the reward is delayed or denied
Why Chua needs both. She does not pretend the inner reward is sufficient at every stage. In the very next sentence she brings the outer one back for the hardest moment: “When stamina is running out, the prospect of success will keep you on track.” Love of the work carries you through the long middle; the hope of success carries you through the last stretch. The uphill road needs two engines, and she gives you one for each kind of exhaustion.
Q5.
(v) Mention one motivating factor besides ‘prospect of success’, that might keep a person on track, despite running out of stamina.
Answer

The knowledge that you are doing what you love best and what is right — the extract’s own alternative, and the strongest one, because it does not depend on any outcome. Chua puts it plainly: you are “buoyed up only by the knowledge that you are doing what you love best and are doing the right thing.”

Other defensible answers, each grounded in the letter:

  • The support network. “for one winner, there is a group of people who stood by him/her” (page 233). When your own stamina fails, other people’s belief carries you for a while.
  • The conviction itself. “if the burning conviction is still coursing through your veins, then go ahead and do something about it” (page 233) — the sheer sense that the thing must be done.
  • The investment already made. Having counted the cost and paid several years of it, a person is unwilling to waste what has been spent.
  • Visible progress in the skill. Chua’s ten-year rule implies steady improvement; noticing that you play, run or write better than last year is fuel that costs nothing.
How to answer this type in an exam: the question says “Mention one”. Give one, name it in the first four words, and add a single sentence of justification — preferably in the writer’s own vocabulary. Listing five motivations without explaining any of them scores less than one explained well.
Q6.
I. 2. From my own experience, life itself may change a person’s dreams. These hopes and aspirations are no less than the original dream of younger days. To fulfil them you will need to negotiate a path through a maze of hurdles. The dream will take a much longer time to realise, and the people who are participants in your dreamscape would be many more. (i) Complete the sentence appropriately. The phrase ‘life itself may change a person’s dreams’ suggests that dreams are not static but rather__________. (evolving/dynamic)
Answer

evolving

Why not ‘dynamic’ — the two are not interchangeable here.
  • Dynamic means full of energy, lively, constantly in motion. It describes the character of a thing at any moment.
  • Evolving means changing gradually into something different over a stretch of time, usually in response to what happens around it.
The subject of Chua’s sentence is life, and its verb is change — “life itself may change a person’s dreams.” That is slow, external, cumulative alteration, which is exactly what evolving names. Her own example proves it: the book she is publishing “was not the dream I had in my youth but my original dream has changed over the years.”
Also note the pairing with ‘static’. The sentence is built as not static but rather ___, so the blank must be the true opposite of static (= unchanging over time). The opposite of unchanging-over-time is evolving; the opposite of still-and-lifeless would be dynamic. The word before the blank decides the word in it.
Q7.
(ii) What does the author mean by, ‘hopes and aspirations are no less than the original dream of younger days’?
Answer

She means that a dream you arrive at later in life is worth just as much as the one you began with — a changed dream is a different dream, not a lesser one.

The phrase no less than is a defence, and it tells you what she is defending against. There is a common assumption that the ambitions of youth are the pure, real ones, and that whatever replaces them is a compromise — settling. Chua rejects that. The later hope deserves the same seriousness, the same effort and the same name.

Her evidence is her own life. “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. I am really quite excited about it.” The excitement is the proof — she is not making do; she is genuinely eager, at an age when she is old enough to have a teenage daughter.

Look at what she says the later dream demands. In the very next lines it needs a path “through a maze of hurdles”, “a much longer time to realise”, and “many more” participants. A dream that costs more cannot be the smaller dream. That is the quiet logic underneath ‘no less than’ — she proves the claim by showing the price, not by insisting on the sentiment.
Why this matters for a fifteen-year-old reader. Ming is at the age when a first dream feels final. The mother is telling her, in advance, that changing course later will not be a defeat — which is a far more useful thing to hear at fifteen than at forty.
Q8.
(iii) Identify the phrase from the extract that indicates a complex and challenging journey.
Answer

“negotiate a path through a maze of hurdles” — or, if a shorter phrase is asked for, “a maze of hurdles”.

Why this phrase and no other. The question asks for complex and challenging, and the phrase supplies one word for each:

mazethe complexity — a maze has many turnings, dead ends and wrong choices; you can be defeated by confusion alone, without ever meeting an obstacle
hurdlesthe challenge — barriers that must each be cleared by effort
negotiatethe skill — you do not smash through a maze, you work your way through it, choosing at every turn
Two metaphors welded together. A maze and a hurdles race are separate images from separate worlds — one from a garden or a puzzle, one from athletics — and Chua fuses them. The effect is a journey that is simultaneously confusing and exhausting: you must find the way and clear the barriers on it. Compare it with the simpler metaphor she used for the young person’s dream on page 232 — “The road may be uphill most of the way”. An uphill road is hard but at least it is one road going one way. The later dream has no such clarity, and the change of metaphor is how she shows that.
Q9.
(iv) Complete the sentence with an appropriate reason. The author says, ‘people who are participants in your dreamscape would be many more’ because_________________.
Answer

… because a dream taken up in adult life is larger, slower and more entangled with other people — it needs collaborators, institutions and a family’s consent, and by then your own life is already tied to theirs, so its success or failure is shared by many more people than a schoolchild’s private ambition ever is.

Read it against her own example. The dream she is describing is “publishing this book”. Count who has to be in that dreamscape: an editor, a publisher, a designer, a printer, the people whose stories fill the letters — and Ming herself, whose childhood the book is made of. Compare that with a fifteen-year-old’s dream of becoming a doctor, which at the start requires exactly one person to study.

The three reasons the extract itself supplies.
  • Time. “The dream will take a much longer time to realise” — the longer a project runs, the more people pass through it.
  • Complexity. “a maze of hurdles” — each hurdle usually needs a different person’s help to clear.
  • Position in life. An adult already has dependants, colleagues and obligations, so the cost of the dream is paid partly by other people — which is precisely why the word she chooses is participants, not supporters. A supporter cheers from outside. A participant is in it with you, and shares the outcome.
Link it back: this is the same idea as the Academy Awards paragraph on page 233 — “for one winner, there is a group of people who stood by him/her” — but sharpened. There the group stood by; here they are in the dream.
Q10.
(v) What is the tone of the author in this extract? A. appreciative and celebratory B. excited and cheerful C. optimistic and encouraging D. eager and inquisitive
Answer

C. optimistic and encouraging

How the extract earns both words. The passage does two things at once, and option C is the only one that names both:

  • Optimistic — it insists on a positive reading of a hard fact. Dreams change; she calls the changed ones “no less than the original”, and admits the maze and the longer time without once suggesting the dream will fail.
  • Encouraging — it is addressed to “you”, and it is written to make Ming go on: “To fulfil them you will need to negotiate a path…” That is the grammar of encouragement, not of description.
OptionWhy it fails
A. appreciative and celebratoryNothing is being praised or celebrated. No achievement is complete in this extract — the dream is still being chased.
B. excited and cheerfulThe excitement comes later, in “I am really quite excited about it.” This extract speaks of hurdles and long years — the mood is steady and serious, not cheerful.
D. eager and inquisitiveInquisitive means questioning or curious. The extract asks nothing; it states and advises.
Method for a tone question: test each adjective separately against the passage. An option is wrong if either of its two words fails. Here B collapses on “cheerful” and D collapses on “inquisitive”, which leaves the field to C before you even weigh A.
Q11.
II. Answer the following questions. 1. The letter begins thus, ‘By all means follow that dream’. What do you think Ming must have written to her mother about?
Answer

Ming must have written to her mother describing a dream or ambition she wanted to pursue — one she was unsure of, and for which she was quietly seeking her mother’s approval.

The evidence is in the sentence itself. Three details give the earlier letter away:

  • “By all means” is a phrase of permission granted. Nobody uses it unless permission has been asked for. Ming had put a question, not merely shared news.
  • “that dream” — not a dream. The definite word shows the mother is answering something specific that Ming has already named and described.
  • The permission comes first, before any argument. A mother who begins with “yes” is answering someone she believes is anxious about the answer. Ming must have expected doubt or refusal.

What the rest of the letter tells you about the dream’s nature. The mother immediately raises ten years of exclusive practice, “financial investments”, sacrifice and an uphill road; she adds that “It could be in any field—sports, science, arts, business, or design.” That list is her way of saying whatever your field is, the rule holds — which suggests Ming named something demanding and probably unconventional, the kind of ambition where a parent might reasonably ask “and how will you live?” The obvious candidates are one of the arts, sport, or design.

What the letter never does — and why that is the strongest clue of all. Chua never corrects Ming’s choice, never proposes an alternative career and never mentions a “safe option” for her daughter. Her only worry is the cost, never the choice. That tells you Ming had made a serious, thought-out case; the mother is replying to a considered letter, not to a whim.
Q12.
II. 2. How can one attain an international level of skill in any field? Mention any two ways.
Answer

Two ways, both stated in the letter:

  1. By pursuing one subject exclusively and intensively for at least ten years. “to reach world-class standard in any field, one has to be singularly and intensively pursuing the subject for at least ten years” (page 232). Two conditions are packed in there — singularly (the book glosses it as ‘exclusively’, so no scattering across many interests) and intensively (depth of practice, not merely hours logged).
  2. By investing heavy effort and sacrifice, after honestly counting what it will cost. “What differentiates greatness from the ordinary is how much effort and sacrifice people invest to realise their dream” (page 232), and “Count the cost in years of effort, financial investments and sacrifice. Then … plunge.” The counting is part of the method, not a preliminary to it: it is what makes the commitment survivable.
A third way the letter implies, if you are asked for more. Build a support network. The Academy Awards paragraph exists precisely to make this point — “for one winner, there is a group of people who stood by him/her.” World-class skill is reached inside a system of coaches, teachers, families and institutions, never alone.
Answer discipline: the question says “any two”. Name the two in the first line, then quote for each. Do not give four half-answers — the marks are for the quotation that proves the point, not for the number of points.
Q13.
II. 3. What differentiates the mere dreamers from actual achievers?
Answer

Effort and sacrifice — what a person is willing to spend. Chua answers this in her own words: “What differentiates greatness from the ordinary is how much effort and sacrifice people invest to realise their dream.”

The mere dreamerThe achiever
Where the dream stopsAt the wish — “I wish I could be this or the other”At the plunge — “ready to commit yourself to the task”
Relation to costNever counts it, or counts it and retreats: “They could have preferred to trade their dream for security.”Counts it “in years of effort, financial investments and sacrifice” and pays it anyway
Behaviour over time“never got beyond just wishful thinking”“singularly and intensively pursuing the subject for at least ten years”
On the uphill stretchStops when it stops being pleasantIs “buoyed up only by the knowledge that you are doing what you love best”
Notice the word invest. Chua does not write how much they want it — wanting is equal on both sides of the table; the dreamer wants it just as badly. She writes how much they invest, which is a word from finance: something measurable, paid out in advance, at risk. The difference between the two groups is not the size of the desire but the size of the payment.
Be fair to the dreamers, as the letter is. Chua immediately adds that for some, “circumstances changed their lives” — the Japanese invasion, or the need to earn for younger siblings. Those are not people who failed to invest; they are people who were never given the chance to. A complete answer says so.
Q14.
II. 4. How does Ming’s mother use critical questions and personal anecdotes to persuade Ming and convey her message effectively?
Answer

She avoids instructing her daughter. Instead she asks a question that makes Ming work out the hard fact herself, and then tells four stories that let the warning arrive as evidence rather than as a lecture.

1. The question that does the work of a lecture. “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?”

Written as a statement — You will have to work for ten years — this is a discouragement, and a teenager would resist it. Written as a question beginning “Do you know…?”, it becomes information offered, and Ming has to do the sum for herself: ten years from fifteen means twenty-five. The reader arrives at the discouraging part unaided, which is the only way she will believe it.

2. The four anecdotes, and what each is for.

AnecdoteIts job in the argument
The Academy Awards winner who “thanks a host of people that formed his/her support network”Proves you cannot succeed alone — using the one public occasion when winners are made to list their helpers
People whose Raffles College dream ended with “the Japanese invasion during World War II”Shows that history can cancel a dream through no fault of the dreamer
Those who “had wished to finish secondary school but they had to go out to work so that they could support their siblings”Shows that poverty and duty can do the same — and does it without a word of pity
Her own book, “a dream I have chased in the last ten years”Turns the whole letter from advice into testimony

3. Why the order of the anecdotes matters. The two dark ones are placed in the middle, between “By all means follow that dream” at the start and “I wish at least one of your dreams comes true too” at the end. The bad news is surrounded by permission and blessing, so it can never be mistaken for refusal — and she says so outright: “No, I am not going to put a wet blanket on your dreams.”

The single most effective choice in the letter. The last anecdote is about herself, and it is an anecdote of a dream that changed — “This was not the dream I had in my youth.” By ending with her own unfinished, altered, ten-year project rather than with a success story, she gives up the authority of the parent who has already arrived. She is not standing at the finish line telling Ming how to run; she is on the road herself. That is what makes “I wish at least one of your dreams comes true too” land as solidarity rather than as instruction.
Q15.
II. 5. How does Ming’s mother balance encouragement with caution in her advice?
Answer

She structures the letter so that every caution is enclosed by encouragement, and she makes each piece of encouragement conditional on the caution being faced. The balance is built into the shape of the letter, not just into its content.

EncouragementCaution
“By all means follow that dream.” — the opening line“Count the cost in years of effort, financial investments and sacrifice.”
“It could be in any field—sports, science, arts, business, or design.”“The road may be uphill most of the way”
“you are buoyed up … by the knowledge that you are doing what you love best”“When stamina is running out…”
“No, I am not going to put a wet blanket on your dreams,”“… but you will also have to consider the years you need to chase your dream.”
“then go ahead and do something about it.”“After all the obstacles are considered, if the burning conviction is still coursing through your veins…”
“I wish at least one of your dreams comes true too.” — the closing line“a path through a maze of hurdles”; “a much longer time to realise”

The device that holds the balance: the word if. Chua never gives an unconditional green light after the first line. “Then if it is still burning in your blood and you are ready to commit yourself to the task, plunge.” “After all the obstacles are considered, if the burning conviction is still coursing through your veins, then go ahead.” Every permission is a first conditional — and it is no accident that the grammar section on page 239 asks you to study exactly this structure in exactly this sentence.

Why this is more than politeness. A caution given without encouragement is discouragement; encouragement given without caution is flattery. By making the go-ahead depend on the warning, Chua ensures Ming cannot take the “yes” without also taking the arithmetic. And by putting “I am not going to put a wet blanket on your dreams” in the middle — naming the very accusation a teenager would throw at her — she disarms the objection before it can be made. The single word “but” that follows is where the whole letter turns.
Q16.
II. 6. In the letter, Ming’s mother specifically addresses the challenges people face in pursuing their dreams. Do you think this advice is still relevant in contemporary society? If yes, why? If no, why not?
Answer

Yes — the advice is still relevant, because every obstacle Chua names in 1995 still exists; but its emphasis needs updating, because the route to a dream has changed even where the cost has not. A strong answer takes a position and then concedes the honest exception, which is what is done below.

Why it holds (four of her claims, tested against today)

  • The ten-year rule. Nothing has shortened it. A doctor still needs roughly a decade from Class 12 to independent practice; a classical musician, a chess grandmaster and a fast bowler all still count their preparation in years, not months. If anything, competition has made the standard higher.
  • “Financial investments”. Still decisive, and arguably more so — coaching fees, entrance-test attempts, equipment, a laptop, city rent. Chua’s single word financial covers most of what stops an Indian student today.
  • “Circumstances changed their lives”. Her examples were a war and a family’s poverty. Ours are a parent’s illness, a lost job, a flood, a pandemic that shut schools for two years. The category has not emptied.
  • The support network. Truer than ever, and more visible: read any Olympic medallist’s or IAS topper’s interview and you get Chua’s Academy Awards paragraph almost word for word.

Where the advice needs revising

  • “Singularly” is now a riskier instruction. Chua tells you to pursue one subject exclusively for ten years. In an economy where whole occupations appear and disappear inside a decade, betting everything on one narrow skill is more dangerous than it was in 1995; many careers now reward a main skill plus a second one.
  • The trade between dream and security has softened. She writes of people who “preferred to trade their dream for security”, as though it were one or the other. Today a person can hold a job and build the dream in parallel — evening classes, online degrees, a channel, freelance work, a start-up on weekends. The choice is less often all-or-nothing.
  • Information is no longer scarce. In 1995 a teenager needed a well-read mother to learn that world-class skill takes ten years. Today that fact is a search away. What is scarce now is not information but attention — the ability to stay with one thing while the phone offers a new one every minute. Chua could not have anticipated that obstacle, and it may now be the largest.
The part of the letter that has not aged at all. Its deepest claim is not about ten years or money — it is “life itself may change a person’s dreams” and those later dreams “are no less than the original dream of younger days.” In a world of career changes, second degrees and mid-life restarts, that sentence is more useful in 2026 than it was in 1995. The specifics date; the psychology does not.
Q17.
II. 7. What ‘costs’ in terms of effort, sacrifice, and time are you willing or unwilling to invest to pursue your goals?
Answer

This is a personal question, so no answer can be marked right or wrong — but a weak answer here is easy to spot, and it is worth knowing why.

What a good answer must contain.
  • Both columns. The question says willing or unwilling. An answer that lists only sacrifices you are prepared to make is not honest — Chua’s own point is that some people rightly “preferred to trade their dream for security”. Naming a limit is a sign of thought, not of weakness.
  • Specific costs, with figures where you can. “I will work hard” is not a cost. “Two hours of practice before school, six days a week, for the next three years” is a cost, because you can fail to pay it.
  • Use Chua’s three headings — effort, financial investment, sacrifice — and add her fourth, time, which the question adds. Sorting your answer under them keeps it from becoming a general resolution.
  • A reason for each limit. Why are you unwilling? “Because my mother is alone at home” or “because I want to keep playing football” are real reasons; “because it is too hard” is not.

Sample answer: My goal is to qualify as a physiotherapist and work with school sports teams.

Willing to investUnwilling to invest
EffortNinety minutes of Biology and Physics every evening, and giving up my phone from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.I will not give up the two hours of kabaddi practice on Saturdays — the sport is half the reason I chose this field.
TimeFour and a half years of college, plus a year of internship — about six years from now.I am not willing to spend three years repeating an entrance exam. If I do not get through in two attempts, I will take a related course and continue from there.
FinancialCoaching fees, if I take a scholarship test and tutor two juniors in Maths to earn part of it myself.I will not ask my parents to take a loan against the house. That cost would be paid by my sister as much as by me.
SacrificeStudying away from home for four years, and missing most family functions during exam months.I will not stop visiting my grandmother in the holidays; she is eighty-one, and those weeks will not come again.
Notice what the last row is doing. Chua ends her letter on the same idea — the dream that is worth having is the one that still lets you be a person. Writing down what you will not trade is how you make sure the dream serves your life instead of eating it.
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