Chapter 1: The Fun They Had – NCERT Class 9 English Questions and Answers (Complete Guide)
If you are looking for NCERT Class 9 English Chapter 1 “The Fun They Had” questions and answers, you’re in the right place. Below is a complete, exam-ready solution including short answers, reference-based questions, paragraph answers, grammar exercises, and conditionals — all organized for easy revision.
Chapter 1: The Fun They Had
I. Answer these questions in a few words or a couple of sentences each.
1. How old are Margie and Tommy?
- Answer: Margie is eleven years old and Tommy is thirteen years old.
2. What did Margie write in her diary?
- Answer: On the page headed 17 May 2157, Margie wrote, “Today Tommy found a real book!”.
3. Had Margie ever seen a book before?
- Answer: No, she had never seen a “real” paper book before; she only knew of telebooks.
4. What things about the book did she find strange?
- Answer: She found it strange that the words stood still instead of moving on a screen. She also found it funny that when they turned back to a previous page, it had the same words on it as before.
5. What do you think a telebook is?
- Answer: A telebook is a digital book displayed on a television or computer screen, capable of containing millions of books that can be read by scrolling through the text.
6. Where was Margie’s school? Did she have any classmates?
- Answer: Margie’s school was right next to her bedroom in her own house. No, she did not have any classmates; she learned alone with a mechanical teacher.
7. What subjects did Margie and Tommy learn?
- Answer: Margie learned Geography and Arithmetic, and Tommy learned History.
II. Answer the following with reference to the story.
1. “I wouldn’t throw it away.”
- (i) Who says these words? Answer:Tommy says these words.
- (ii) What does ‘it’ refer to? Answer:’It’ refers to the television screen (telebooks).
- (iii) What is it being compared with by the speaker?
- Answer:It is being compared to the real paper book Tommy found.
2. “Sure they had a teacher, but it wasn’t a regular teacher. It was a man.”
- (i) Who does ‘they’ refer to?Answer:’They’ refers to the students who lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
- (ii) What does ‘regular’ mean here?
- Answer:Here, ‘regular’ refers to the mechanical or robotic teacher that Margie and Tommy are used to.
- (iii) What is it contrasted with?
- Answer:It is contrasted with a human teacher.
III. Short Paragraph Questions (about 30 words)
1. What kind of teachers did Margie and Tommy have?
- Answer: Margie and Tommy had mechanical teachers. These were large, black, and “ugly” robots with big screens that showed lessons, asked questions, and had slots for inserting homework.
2. Why did Margie’s mother send for the County Inspector?
- Answer: Margie’s mother sent for him because the mechanical teacher had been giving Margie test after test in geography, and Margie’s performance was getting worse.
3. What did he do?
- Answer: The County Inspector took the mechanical teacher apart and slowed down the geography sector to an average ten-year-old level to match Margie’s learning pace.
4. Why was Margie doing badly in geography? What did the County Inspector do to help her?
- Answer: She was doing badly because the geography sector was “geared a little too quick” for her level. The Inspector adjusted the settings to a slower level suitable for a ten-year-old.
5. What had once happened to Tommy’s teacher?
- Answer: Tommy’s teacher was once taken away for nearly a month because the history sector had blanked out completely.
6. Did Margie have regular days and hours for school? If so, why?
- Answer: Yes, she had school every day except Saturday and Sunday because her mother believed little girls learned better if they learned at regular hours.
7. How does Tommy describe the old kind of school?
- Answer: Tommy describes it as a “special building” where all the kids from the neighborhood went together to learn the same things.
8. How does he describe the old kind of teachers?
- Answer: He describes them as “men” (humans) who told the children things, gave them homework, and asked questions, rather than being machines.
IV. Thinking about Language: Adverbs
1. Use these adverbs to fill in the blanks:
(awfully, sorrowfully, completely, loftily, carefully, differently, quickly, nonchalantly)
- (i) The report must be read carefully so that performance can be improved.
- (ii) At the interview, Sameer answered our questions nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders.
- (iii) We all behave differently when we are tired or hungry.
- (iv) The teacher shook her head sorrowfully when Ravi lied to her.
- (v) I completely forgot about it.
- (vi) When I complimented Revathi on her success, she just smiled loftily and turned away.
- (vii) The President of the Company is awfully busy and will not be able to meet you.
- (viii) I finished my work quickly so that I could go out to play.
2. Make adverbs from these adjectives:
- (i) angry → angrily
- (ii) happy → happily
- (iii) merry → merrily
- (iv) sleepy → sleepily
- (v) easy → easily
- (vi) noisy → noisily
- (vii) tidy → tidily
- (viii) gloomy → gloomily
V. Conditional Sentences (If Not / Unless)
Complete the following conditional sentences:
- If I don’t go to Anu’s party tonight, she will be very upset.
- If you don’t telephone the hotel to order food, we will go hungry.
- Unless you promise to write back, I will not send you any more letters.
- If she doesn’t play any games, she will not stay fit.
- Unless that little bird flies away quickly, the cat will catch it.
Final Note
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