મુખ્ય વિષય ૧: ગુજરાતી સમાજમાં પરિવર્તન — family, work and the place of women

A Paper 1 Section B text describes a family in a small Gujarat town over three generations. The question reads: લેખકના મતે પરિવારમાં સૌથી મોટું પરિવર્તન શું આવ્યું છે? તમારા શબ્દોમાં જવાબ આપો. Work out what is actually being asked before you look for an answer.

1. 01Take the question apart word by word

   લેખકના મતે — in the author's opinion. લેખક is the author, and મતે is the postposition phrase meaning in the opinion of; note that લેખક has taken the oblique genitive લેખકના because a postposition follows. પરિવારમાં — in the family, with the locative postposition -માં. સૌથી મોટું — the biggest, a superlative built with સૌથી, from all. પરિવર્તન — change, neuter, which is why the adjective is મોટું and not મોટો. શું આવ્યું છે — what has come. તમારા શબ્દોમાં — in your own words.

2. 02Notice the two instructions hidden in it

   First, લેખકના મતે means the answer must be the author's view, not yours. A candidate who writes what they themselves think has answered a different question and will score nothing on AO2, because AO2 rewards using relevant information from the text. Second, તમારા શબ્દોમાં means you may not lift a sentence from the text. Both instructions are worth marks and both are routinely ignored.

3. 03Find the author's evaluation, not the author's description

   A text like this will describe many changes: a move to the town, a daughter's schooling, a shop replaced by an office job. Only one of them will be marked as the biggest, and it will be marked by an evaluative signal — સૌથી મહત્ત્વની વાત એ છે કે (the most important thing is that), ખરી વાત તો એ છે કે (the real point is that), or a simple પણ (but) turning the paragraph. Scan for the evaluative signal, not for the longest description.

4. 04Write the answer in your own words, in one sentence

   લેખકના મતે સૌથી મોટું પરિવર્તન એ છે કે હવે કુટુંબના નિર્ણયો વડીલો એકલા લેતા નથી, પણ યુવાન પેઢી પણ તેમાં ભાગ લે છે. In the author's view the biggest change is that family decisions are no longer taken by the elders alone; the younger generation takes part in them too. Note ભાગ લે છે, takes part, and નિર્ણય લેવો, to take a decision — both are ordinary collocations you should own.

Result: The mark is earned by obeying the two instructions inside the question — the author's view, in your words — and by locating the evaluative signal rather than the longest passage. One well-formed Gujarati sentence that answers exactly what was asked beats three that restate the text.

Translate into English: પહેલાંના જમાનામાં ગામડાંમાં મોટા ભાગનાં કુટુંબો સંયુક્ત હતાં. દીકરાઓ પરણ્યા પછી પણ માતાપિતા સાથે જ રહેતા. આજે શહેરમાં નોકરી મળતાં યુવાન દંપતી અલગ ઘર માંડે છે, પણ તહેવારોમાં આખું કુટુંબ ભેગું થાય છે.

1. 01Sentence one, and the tense trap in it

   પહેલાંના જમાનામાં — in earlier times; પહેલાં is the adverb formerly, જમાનો is the era, and both are in the oblique because -માં follows. ગામડાંમાં — in the villages, neuter plural oblique. મોટા ભાગનાં કુટુંબો — most of the families; મોટો ભાગ is the greater part and its genitive agrees with the neuter plural કુટુંબો. સંયુક્ત હતાં — were joint, past copula in the neuter plural. So: In earlier times most families in the villages were joint families. Do not render હતાં as have been: it is a plain past and the paragraph depends on the contrast between that past and આજે.

2. 02Sentence two, and the habitual past

   દીકરાઓ પરણ્યા પછી પણ — even after the sons married; પરણવું is to marry, પરણ્યા is its perfective participle, and પછી is the postposition after. માતાપિતા સાથે જ રહેતા — went on living with their parents; રહેતા is the imperfective participle used with an understood હતા to give a habitual past, and જ is the emphatic particle, here best carried in English by the words with their parents themselves or simply still. So: Even after the sons married, they went on living with their parents.

3. 03Sentence three, and a conjunctive participle that English must unpack

   આજે શહેરમાં નોકરી મળતાં — today, when a job is found in the city; મળતાં is a participial form meaning on obtaining, and English has no single word for it, so it becomes a clause. યુવાન દંપતી અલગ ઘર માંડે છે — the young couple sets up a separate home; માંડવું is to set up or establish, and it is the natural verb with ઘર. પણ તહેવારોમાં આખું કુટુંબ ભેગું થાય છે — but at festivals the whole family gathers. So: Today, when a job is found in the city, the young couple sets up a separate home, but at festivals the whole family gathers.

4. 04Check the points-based scheme is satisfied

   Section A gives one mark for each correct individual section of language, so the marking runs across the sentence in short stretches. Reread your English against the Gujarati in chunks: earlier times; most families; in the villages; were joint; even after marrying; the sons; went on living with their parents; today; a job in the city; the young couple; a separate home; but at festivals; the whole family gathers. Every chunk present and correct is a mark; a chunk quietly dropped because it was awkward is a mark gone, however fluent the rest reads.

Result: In earlier times most families in the villages were joint families. Even after the sons married, they went on living with their parents. Today, when a job is found in the city, the young couple sets up a separate home, but at festivals the whole family gathers. Fluency is not the criterion in Section A; completeness chunk by chunk is.

In Paper 3 Section B you hear a recorded interview in which a woman in her sixties talks about her son's household, and you read a written column by a younger writer on the same sub-theme. The first task is to summarise the different points of view in each source. Work out what a summary of a viewpoint is, and write one.

1. 01Separate the two things the sources contain

   Every source of this kind carries content — what happened, who lives where, what was said — and a viewpoint — what the speaker thinks about it. Section B asks for the viewpoints, and the mark grid for the extended response is titled understand and respond to spoken language and understand and respond to written language, with band descriptors about judgement on the viewpoints in the source. A retelling of the content, however accurate, sits at the bottom of the grid because it strays into description without evaluation, which is the exact phrase the grid uses.

2. 02Find the evaluative language in the spoken source

   Listen for the words that carry attitude rather than fact. મને લાગે છે કે (it seems to me that), મારા મતે (in my view), દુઃખની વાત એ છે કે (the sad thing is that), સારું થયું કે (it is a good thing that), પહેલાં તો… પણ હવે (formerly, but now). Because you have individual control of the recording, you can replay the passage specifically to collect those markers, which is a use of the control provision that most candidates never think of.

3. 03Write the spoken summary as a claim plus its ground

   વક્તાના મતે યુવાન દંપતીનું અલગ રહેવું સ્વાભાવિક છે, પણ તેમને લાગે છે કે વૃદ્ધ માતાપિતાની જવાબદારી હવે કોઈ ઉપાડતું નથી. In the speaker's view it is natural for the young couple to live separately, but she feels that nobody now takes on the responsibility for elderly parents. That is a viewpoint, with its ground attached, in one sentence. Note વક્તાના મતે, in the speaker's opinion, which is the phrase to keep ready.

4. 04Write the written summary so the contrast is visible

   લેખકના મતે અલગ ઘર માંડવું એ જવાબદારીથી ભાગવું નથી, પણ જવાબદારી નિભાવવાની નવી રીત છે. In the writer's view setting up a separate home is not running away from responsibility but a new way of discharging it. Written second, this sentence answers the first: the two summaries now sit on the same axis, which is exactly what the evaluation in part (c) will need.

Result: Two one-sentence summaries, each a claim with its ground, deliberately written on the same axis so that the evaluation can weigh them against each other. The habit to build is that a summary of a viewpoint always contains an attribution phrase — વક્તાના મતે, લેખકના મતે — and a because.

Translate into Gujarati: Many young people in Gujarat now look for work in the cities. Their parents worked in agriculture or in a family business, but the children have studied and want a different kind of job. When work is not found, some of them return to the village.

1. 01Sentence one: word order, and the postposition that carries in

   Gujarati is verb-final, so the English order must be dismantled. Many young people becomes ઘણા યુવાનો, with the adjective ઘણા agreeing with the masculine plural. In Gujarat becomes ગુજરાતમાં, with the locative -માં suffixed directly. Now becomes હવે or આજકાલ. Look for work in the cities becomes શહેરોમાં કામ શોધે છે — literally in-the-cities work seek. Result: ગુજરાતમાં ઘણા યુવાનો હવે શહેરોમાં કામ શોધે છે। The verb શોધે છે is present habitual, third person plural, and needs no agreement change for gender.

2. 02Sentence two: the ergative decision, made twice

   Their parents worked is a past intransitive-like statement of habit, and the natural Gujarati is the imperfective past: તેમનાં માતાપિતા ખેતીમાં કે કૌટુંબિક ધંધામાં કામ કરતાં હતાં. Note that માતાપિતા takes neuter plural agreement here, hence કરતાં હતાં. But the children have studied is a perfective transitive with no expressed object, and Gujarati marks the agent with the ergative -એ: પણ સંતાનોએ ભણ્યું છે. The moment a perfective transitive appears, the subject takes -એ. Then and want a different kind of job returns to the present and drops the ergative entirely: અને તેમને જુદા પ્રકારની નોકરી જોઈએ છે — with તેમને in the dative, because જોઈએ છે, to be wanted or needed, takes its experiencer in the dative rather than as a subject.

3. 03Sentence three: a passive-like construction and a conditional

   When work is not found is best rendered with the intransitive મળવું, to be got, rather than with a true passive: જ્યારે કામ મળતું નથી. જ્યારે is the temporal when, correlating with ત્યારે if you want the pair. Some of them return to the village becomes તેમાંના કેટલાક ગામ પાછા ફરે છે — તેમાંના, of them, કેટલાક, some, પાછા ફરવું, to return. Result: જ્યારે કામ મળતું નથી, ત્યારે તેમાંના કેટલાક ગામ પાછા ફરે છે।

4. 04Reread against the points scheme

   Paper 2 Section A is marked one mark per correct individual section of language, exactly like Paper 1 Section A but in the other direction. So the risk is not clumsiness but omission and agreement. Check three things in order: every English chunk is present; every adjective and participle agrees with its noun in gender and number; and every perfective transitive has its ergative -એ. Those three checks catch the majority of lost marks in this section.

Result: ગુજરાતમાં ઘણા યુવાનો હવે શહેરોમાં કામ શોધે છે। તેમનાં માતાપિતા ખેતીમાં કે કૌટુંબિક ધંધામાં કામ કરતાં હતાં, પણ સંતાનોએ ભણ્યું છે અને તેમને જુદા પ્રકારની નોકરી જોઈએ છે। જ્યારે કામ મળતું નથી, ત્યારે તેમાંના કેટલાક ગામ પાછા ફરે છે। The three decisions worth remembering are verb-final order, the ergative on every perfective transitive, and the dative experiencer with જોઈએ છે.

The unseen text is a Gujarati newspaper feature about a district in Gujarat where secondary-school retention among girls has improved, quoting a head teacher and a parent. The statement to respond to is: કેળવણી મળવાથી જ સ્ત્રીઓની સામાજિક પ્રતિષ્ઠા વધે છે. (Social standing rises for women only through gaining education.) Plan and open the answer.

1. 01Read the statement for the word that lets you disagree

   The load-bearing word is જ, the restrictive particle meaning only or precisely. The statement is not education raises standing, which is easy to accept; it is education alone raises standing, which is contestable. Section C's AO4 grid rewards critical analysis of the statement, so find the word that makes the claim strong and argue about that word. Here it is જ, and the whole essay can be organised around whether it survives.

2. 02Allocate the three grids to a shape

   AO4 is 20 marks and rewards research; AO2 is 10 and rewards use of the unseen text; AO3 is 10 and rewards accuracy and range. In 300 to 350 words that argues for roughly four paragraphs: an opening that states your position on જ; a paragraph drawing chiefly on your research; a paragraph drawing chiefly on the unseen text and setting it against or alongside the research; and a conclusion. The specification says explicitly that more emphasis is expected on AO4 than on AO2, which is why research gets the larger share and the text gets one deliberate, well-used paragraph rather than a running commentary.

3. 03Write the opening so it commits

   આ વિધાન અંશતઃ સાચું છે, પણ તેમાં રહેલો શબ્દ જ તેને વધુ પડતું કડક બનાવે છે। કેળવણી ચોક્કસ મહત્ત્વનું પરિબળ છે, પરંતુ કાયદો, રોજગારી અને સ્થાનિક રાજકારણમાં ભાગીદારી — આ ત્રણેય પણ સ્ત્રીઓની પ્રતિષ્ઠા ઘડે છે। This statement is partly true, but the word only in it makes it too strong. Education is certainly an important factor, but law, employment and participation in local politics also shape women's standing. Note અંશતઃ, partly, and પરિબળ, factor: both are exactly the register the grid wants.

4. 04Feed research and text into separate paragraphs, and label the source of each

   The research paragraph names mechanisms and dates: the 2005 amendment to the Hindu Succession Act on daughters' property rights, the reservation of local council seats after the 1992 constitutional amendments, and one named Gujarati woman whose documented work you can describe. The text paragraph does something the research cannot — it supplies a voice: લેખમાં એક આચાર્યાના શબ્દો ટાંકવામાં આવ્યા છે કે… (the article quotes the words of a head teacher that…). Marking the source of every claim is not padding; AO2 is awarded specifically for using relevant information from the text, and the examiner must be able to see which is which.

5. 05Close by resolving the word you opened on

   ટૂંકમાં, કેળવણી પ્રતિષ્ઠાનું પ્રવેશદ્વાર છે, પણ એકમાત્ર દ્વાર નથી; કાયદો અને આર્થિક સ્વતંત્રતા વિના તે અધૂરું રહે છે। In short, education is the gateway to standing, but not the only gate; without law and economic independence it remains incomplete. A conclusion that answers the exact word you challenged is what the grid means by convincing conclusions consistent with the argument.

Result: A four-paragraph shape driven by one contested word, with research and unseen text kept visibly separate so that AO4 and AO2 can each be credited. The transferable habit: in Section C, find the strongest word in the statement and build the essay around whether it holds.