📚 CBSE Grade-10 Study Guide
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Social Science (087) — AI-generated practice question

AI-generated practice question — model-generated for extra practice, not a previous-year CBSE board question.

Q1. [3] medium initial-understanding
Why did printers in early modern Europe include popular ballads, folk tales, and illustrated pictures in their publications along with serious texts?
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · 2026-06-26 13:44 · grounding rag
Model Answer

Printers in early modern Europe included popular ballads, folk tales, and illustrated pictures because literacy rates were very low across most European countries. Since books could only be read by the literate, publishers needed to reach common people as well. Even those who could not read could listen to books being read aloud, watch illustrated pictures, and enjoy ballads and folk tales sung or recited at village gatherings and taverns in towns. This way, oral culture entered print, and the hearing public and reading public became intermingled.

Source: Chapter 5, Section 3.1 – A New Reading Public

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Explanation

The examiner expects three clear points here: (1) low literacy rates were the problem, (2) the solution was reaching non-readers through listening/recitation, and (3) the result — oral and print cultures merged. Avoid writing vaguely about "reaching more people" without explaining why this specific content was chosen. The phrase "oral culture thus entered print" from the textbook is a strong concluding line to include.

Previous-year CBSE Grade 10 board exam questions, organised by subject and chapter, each with a model answer — free to read and print.