Read the following poem given below and answer the question.
A GIRL'S GARDEN
A NEIGHBOUR of mine in the village
likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"
In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Or walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."
And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm".
It was not enough of a garden,
Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.
She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,
And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.
A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn.
And even fruit trees.
And yes, she was long mistrusted
That a cider apple tree
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.
On the demand of the girl, father gave her small plot in :
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → a corner
The father looked for a spot: "In casting about for a corner / He thought of an idle bit / Or walled-off ground where a shop had stood". The plot he gave her was an unused corner of walled-off ground.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: a school — Incorrect. Not mentioned: the poem has no school. The plot was ground where a shop had stood.
Option 3: a forest — Incorrect. Contradicted: the plot is a small, walled-off bit of ground on the farm, where a shop had once stood, not a forest.
Option 4: a Church — Incorrect. Not mentioned: a church has no place in the poem.
Note: In the original NTA paper, Option 1 read "a village" and Option 3 read "the garden". NTA accepted these options as correct answers as well. To leave only one correct answer and avoid confusion for students, they have been changed here to "a school" and "a forest" respectively.
Advice for the exam: In the real exam, mark the answer that is grammatically or factually correct. If NTA’s provisional answer key marks a different option, challenge it during the answer-key challenge window and give the reason in one or two lines.