2

Answer two questions

1 The passage below is a favourable review of an American group called White Stripes and
appeared in a broadsheet newspaper.

(a) Comment on how the writer uses language to express her views and feelings in the extract.
[15]

(b) As a music critic for the local paper, you have watched the same performance as the writer of
the original extract. You are far less impressed by what you have seen and intend to say so in
your review of the concert. Basing your answer closely on the extract, write the article
(between 120150 words). [10]

The first thing to say about brother-sister Detroit duo White Stripes is that it has
been some time since a band looked so defiantly, organically odd. At one point,
there was a hot rumour flying around that they were not siblings at all, rather a
divorced couple, which makes you wonder what sort of children they might have
had. Watching their sweaty, intimate show at Brightons Concorde 2, its clear that, 5
even in music-business terms, White Stripes are not your average twentysomethings.
Dressed only in red, white, a touch of black, Jack and Meg Wade resemble
something Andy Warhol and David Byrne might have dreamt up for an art
happening.
Moreover, both remind you of movies. Theres Jack on vocals and guitar, 10
twanging away hypnotically, all raven, mussed hair and screaming paleness. He
resembles one of the lost smalltown teenagers who sat beside the dead body in
Rivers Edge. Then theres Meg, with her drums, bashing away intensely, all long,
drippy pigtails and hillbilly stillness, like she might feel more at home spanking the
banjo in an all-female remake of Deliverance. White Stripess determined visual 15
oddness sets them apart from the common herd maybe because it suggests that,
uniquely for these times, they do not (will not?) exude any stale pop chumminess,
any Were-Just-Like-You-Guys bonhomie (the last refuge of the talentless pop
scoundrel). With White Stripes, it seems to be a case of: Were different, nothing like
you at all. Stare as hard as you like, baby this time it really is all about the music. 20
And what music it is. White Stripes formed in the late Nineties, but it was their
third album, this years White Blood Cells, that got them noticed. And deservedly so.
Listening to White Blood Cells feels like being hypnotised into joining a sinister
religious cult for the 15-track duration. Remarkably, it manages to be insanely,
impertinently derivative without irritating the listener. Everywhere on the album, 25
youre hearing The Stooges, The Pixies, Suicide, Bob Dylan, Sonic Youth, Janes
Addiction, The Kinks, The Cramps, Sonic Youth, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and
pretty much everybody else of note you can think of.
And while at first you laugh and think: Get out of here, you cheeky, thieving little
beggars, something about the way White Stripes mix it all up, then push it all out in 30
a bluesy, garagey, noir-country roar makes you realise that something very special
is happening. Its as if all the best facets of twentieth-century music have been fed
into one of those car-crushing machines and White Stripes are the cube that pops
out at the end. Any fool can listen to music, many a fool actually makes it, but with
White Stripes you get the spooky feeling that without bass-lines, without mincing 35
about with computer trickery they have actually become the music.
The other great thing about White Stripes is that theyre unafraid to tell you
stories. At times, their set at Brighton was less a collection of songs than it was a
series of out-of-towner road movies, part Neil Diamond, part George Formby, part
Willie Nelson, part Nick Cave. Naturally, they never begin or end exactly as youd 40
expect. With Im Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman, you think youre hearing

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some misogynistic upstart sneering at his girlfriend (If I held the door open for you,
it would make your day), but then you realise that the narrator is an icon of
insecurity. Similarly, Little Room turns out to be an essay of how success is the
enemy of creativity, Were Gonna Be Friends is actually childhood reminiscence, 45
while The Union Forever changes from being an anti-love song (It cant be love for
there is no true love) into a musical march against materialism (What would I like to
have been? Everything you hate).
Crucially, while White Stripes are undeniably pretentious (reekingly so), theyre
unafraid to be a bit silly too. Their current single, Hotel Yorba (Grab your umbrella 50
cos Im your favourite fella) is, beneath the layer of white-trash white noise, rather
like dot-to-dot, mumsy Beatles. Elsewhere, I Think I Can Smell A Rat comes
across like Little Richard meets Little Jimmy Osmond, while their leftfield version of
Jolene sounds like Rocky Horror dissolving in a garage acid bath. All this and more
White Stripes pelted out, note-perfect, at the Brighton crowd, with hardly a pause for 55
breath, and certainly very little time-wasting chitchat. In the end, I left, mystified and
amused. White Stripes might not be the future of rock n roll, but they are definitely
a witty, original, gifted take on its past. Its our good luck that were getting to enjoy
them in the present.
White Stripes play the Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall tomorrow, Bristol Anson Rooms 60
on Tuesday, London Astoria on Wednesday, London Forum on 6 December.

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2 The passage below describes the atmosphere on board ship as the Titanic was damaged.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) As a survivor, you are asked many years later to write a magazine article about events at the
time. Basing your answer closely on the passage, write the opening of the article (between
120150 words). [10]

From Thursday noon to Friday noon the Titanic ran 386 nautical miles. Friday to
Saturday 519 miles, and Saturday to Sunday 546 miles. She was making 22 knots.
Everyone agreed she was the most comfortable ship they had travelled in. There
was, though, a vibration, which was most noticeable as one lay in the bath. The
throb of the engines came straight up from the floor through the metal sides of the 5
tub so that one could not put ones head back with any comfort. Throughout her
voyage, the Titanic slightly listed to port, but it was nothing. As the second-class
passengers sat at table in the dining-room they could, if they watched the skyline
through the portholes, see both skyline and sea on the port side but only sky to
starboard. The purser thought this was probably because more coal had been used 10
from the starboard bunkers.
When some passengers went on deck on Sunday morning they found the
temperature had dropped so rapidly that they did not care to stay outside, although
there was no wind, or only that artificial wind created by the passage of the ship.
Both the French liner Touraine and the German Amerika had wirelessed the Titanic 15
reporting ice, and the Titanic had replied thanking them. Sunday dinner was served,
and then coffee. Thomas Andrews, the shipbuilder, strolled down to the kitchens to
thank the baker for making some special bread for him. The passengers went to
bed with the presumption, perhaps already mentally half-realised, as (Lawrence)
Beesley put it, that they would be ashore in New York in forty-eight hours time. At 20
the evening service, after coffee, Rev. Mr Carter had caused the hymn For Those in
Peril on the Sea to be sung, but he had brought the service to a close with a few
words on the great confidence all on board felt in the Titanics great steadiness and
size. At 11.40, in Lat. 41 46 N. Long. 50 14 W. Frederick Fleet, the look-out in the
crows-nest, saw or sensed an iceberg ahead. The Titanic veered to port, so that it 25
was her starboard plates which were glanced open. The engines were stopped.
There was a perfectly still atmosphere. It was a brilliantly starlit night but with no
moon, so that there was little light that was of any use. She was a ship that had
come quietly to rest without any indication of disaster. No ice was visible: the
iceberg had been glimpsed by the look-out and then gone. There was no hole in the 30
ships side through which water could be seen to be pouring, nothing out of place,
no sound of alarm, no panic, and no movement of anyone except at a walking pace.
Within ten minutes the water had risen fourteen feet inside the ship. Mail bags
were floating about in the mail room. The passengers had no idea of danger.
Beesley, who was in bed, noticed no more than what he took to be the slightest 35
extra heave of the engines. What most people noticed first was the sudden lack of
engine vibration. This had been with them so constantly for the four days of the
voyage that they had ceased to be conscious of it, but when it stopped they noticed
the supervening silence and stillness. The only passengers who saw an iceberg
were a few still playing cards in the smoking room. They idly discussed how high it 40
might have been, settled on an estimate of eighty feet, and went back to their cards.
One pointed to a glass of whisky at his side and, turning to an onlooker, suggested
he should just run along on deck to see if any ice had come on board. If so, he
would like some more in his whisky. They laughed. In fact, as the crew discovered,
the decks were strewn with ice, but even then, so unaware were they of danger, that 45
Edward Buley, an able seaman, picked up a handful of it, took it down to his bunk,

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and turned in again. There was no panic because there was no awareness. The
Titanic was assumed to be unsinkable. The shipbuilders had said so. Practically
everyone believed she was as unsinkable as a railway station. A Rothschild, asked
to put on his life-jacket, said he did not think there was any occasion for it, and 50
walked leisurely away. Stewards rode bicycles round and round in the gym. She
was in fact sinking very fast, and by midnight was a quarter sunk already. There was
something unusual about the stairs, a curious sense of something out of balance, a
sense of not being able to put ones foot down in the right place. The stairs were
tilting forward and tended to throw your feet out of place. There was no visible 55
slope, just something strange perceived by the sense of balance. The Titanic was
settling by the head.

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3 In the passage below, Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, explains how the novel developed
in her mind.

(a) In the style of the original passage, continue the account so that it reflects the writers growing
confidence that she will finish the novel (between 120150 words). [10]

(b) Compare the style and language of your piece with those of the original extract. [15]

When I was sure the characters of my new novel were trying to form (or, as I
invariably thought of it, trying to contact me, to speak through me), I began to make
plans to leave New York. Three months earlier I had bought a tiny house on a quiet
Brooklyn street, assuming because my desk overlooked the street and a maple
tree in the yard, representing garden and view I would be able to write. I was not. 5
New York, whose people I love for their grace under almost continual
unpredictable adversity, was a place the people in The Color Purple refused even to
visit. The moment any of them started to form on the subway, a dark street, and
especially in the shadow of very tall buildings they would start to complain.
What is all this anyway? they would say. 10
I disposed of the house, stored my furniture, packed my suitcases, and flew
alone to San Francisco (it was my daughters year to be with her father), where all
the people in the novel promptly fell silent I think, in awe. Not merely of the citys
beauty, but of what they picked up about earthquakes.
Its pretty, they muttered, but us aint lost nothing in no place that has 15
earthquakes.
They also didnt like seeing buses, cars, or other people whenever they
attempted to look out. Us dont want to be seeing none of this, they said. It make
us cant think.
That was when I knew for sure these were country people. So my lover and I 20
started driving around the state looking for a country house to rent. Luckily I had
found (with the help of friends) a fairly inexpensive place in the city. This too had
been a decision forced by my characters. As long as there was any question about
whether I could support them in the fashion they desired (basically in undisturbed
silence) they declined to come out. Eventually we found a place in northern 25
California we could afford and that my characters liked. And no wonder: it looked a
lot like the town in Georgia most of them were from, only it was more beautiful and
the local swimming hole was not segregated. It also bore a slight resemblance to
the African village in which one of them, Nettie, was a missionary.
Seeing the sheep, the cattle, and the goats, smelling the apples and the hay, 30
one of my characters, Celie, began, haltingly, to speak.
But there was still a problem.
Since I quit my editing job at Ms. and my Guggenheim Fellowship was running
out, and my royalties did not quite cover expenses, and lets face it because it
gives me a charge to see people who appreciate my work, historical novels or not, I 35
was accepting invitations to speak. Sometimes on the long plane rides Celie or
Shug would break through with a wonderful line or two (for instance, Celie said once
that a self-pitying sick person she went to visit was laying up in the bed trying to
look dead). But even these vanished if I didnt jot them down by the time my
contact with the audience was done. 40
What to do?
Celie and Shug answered without hesitation: Give up all this travel. Give up all
this talk. What is all this travel and talk anyway? So, I gave it up for a year.
Whenever I was invited to speak I explained I was taking a year off for Silence. (I
also wore an imaginary bracelet on my left arm that spelled the word.) Everyone 45
said, Sure, they understood.

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I was terrified.
Where was the money for our support coming from? My only steady income
was a three-hundred-dollar-a-month retainer from Ms. for being a long-distance
editor. But even that was too much distraction for my characters. 50
Tell them you cant do anything for the magazine, said Celie and Shug. (You
guessed it, the women of the drawers.) Tell them youll have to think about them
later. So, I did. Ms. was unperturbed. Supportive as ever (they continued the
retainer). Which was nice.
Then I sold a book of stories. After taxes, inflation, and my agents fee of ten 55
percent, I would still have enough for a frugal, no-frills year. And so, I bought some
beautiful blue-and-red-and-purple fabric, and some funky old secondhand furniture
(and accepted donations of old odds and ends from friends), and a quilt pattern my
mama swore was easy, and I headed for the hills.
There were days and weeks and even months when nothing happened. 60
Nothing whatsoever. I worked on my quilt, took long walks with my lover, lay on an
island we discovered in the middle of the river and dabbled my fingers in the water. I
swam, explored the redwood forests all around us, lay out in the meadow, picked
apples, talked (yes, of course) to trees. My quilt began to grow. And, of course,
everything was happening. Celie and Shug and Albert were getting to know each 65
other, coming to trust my determination to serve their entry (sometimes I felt re-
entry) into the world to the best of my ability, and what is more and felt so
wonderful we began to love one another. And, what is even more, to feel immense
thankfulness for our mutual good luck.

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Answer two questions

1 In the passage below the writer travels from England to visit her mother in West Africa. She
becomes increasingly aware of cultural differences between her mother and herself.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The mother later writes a letter to another relative discussing the relationship with her
daughter and expressing concerns about her. Basing your answer closely on the extract,
write the opening of the letter (between 120150 words). [10]

I have spent the last ten years trying to slim. I have tried the Slimfast juices that
promised me all but delivered nothing. No sooner would I have gulped one down
than Id be hovering by the fridge. On days when the diet is on full steam, I starve
myself all day and then binge on all manner of food at dawn, a bit like breaking ones
fast to make up for lost time. 5
At times of utter desperation, I would rush out to the nearest supermarket and
stock up on rye bread, cottage cheese and salads. Yes, especially the salads with
the accompanying oil-free dressings. I can hear you say, What about cream
dressing? What about it? The only oil that sneaks into my system during this oil-free
fast is palm oil. You know, it is meant to have real medicinal qualities, is rich in 10
Vitamin A, improves skin texture and aids digestion. No, seriously, palm oil is not
part of the diet, but occasionally one gets these urges to eat some proper food. That
is not to say that one abandons the diet altogether far from it! I mean, dont they
have half-time during football matches? Tennis players get a few minutes to catch
their breath after every two games. And boxers get the odd few minutes to sit down 15
on their tiny stool and work out how to knock their opponent out of the ring. It is in
this manner, of giving myself the odd breather, that the rot sets in and I reach out for
the egusi stew and well, I am sure you would approve of the rest.
When I travelled home to Accra at the height of one of these (stop-start, stop-
start) slimming periods, I felt quite good about myself. As I descended the steps of 20
the Boeing 747 into the familiar smells of hot and humid Accra, I could feel the sweat
trickling down the back of my figure-hugging Monsoon outfit and felt all was well with
the world.
Mama was so pleased to see me, but she was horrified at how thin I looked.
For a few days I couldnt quite work out the reason, I kept catching her eye looking 25
me over. Then, one morning as I took breakfast of koko and koose to her room and
sat on the edge of her bed to have our usual tte--tte (something we have always
done to sort out real problems and share in our joys), she asked if everything was all
right between me and my husband. Taken aback by the deep concern Mama had
shown, I asked why. 30
It all came tumbling out how she had always known me to be big-boned and
well-rounded, with child-bearing hips; a real woman and not one of these sticks
hiding under ntama and kaba, parading around as though representing the image of
new woman, but really looking quite ill. I tried to tell Mama that in my adopted
culture, where I now live and work, it is considered quite beautiful to be thin. Upon 35
which, I was quickly reprimanded and reminded that I might live in that culture, but
home is home, and I mustnt forget the good things I was taught about womanhood.
In the early morning sunshine, I noticed Mamas furrowed brow, and the
realization came to me that not only are we a generation apart but we live in two
different worlds. 40
Then the lecture started: You know, in our culture, at the onset of puberty, a girl
is put in a room for a week and fattened for dipo. She eats, drinks and does nothing
all day, and on the seventh day she is bathed and bedecked in precious beads and
expensive gold jewellery and takes her place among her peer group, shes paraded
through the town square amid a lot of pomp and ceremony in celebration of her 45
transition from girlhood into womanhood. And that my dear, is our culture.
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Her voice trailed off when she said, And I hear the Effiks of Calabar have a
similar culture of the fattening-rooms initiation ceremonies for girls before betrothal.
My immediate reaction was to say to her, Mama but I dont live in Calabar, Dodowa
or Somanya, I live in Oxford. One never argues with Mama, not if one has any 50
sense.
The final blow came when I excused myself to go jogging. I have found jogging
along a sandy beach (something I used to enjoy as a child) a real calorie-burner and
I was eager to take advantage of the cool morning sea-breeze. Mama gave me that
look, which I know so well and recognized instinctively from my childhood, with its 55
coded message: I dont approve.

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2 The passage below describes the writers memories of learning to drive.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) As part of their jobs, the instructor and the examiner had to provide brief notes summarising
the writers driving performance. Basing your answer closely on the material in the extract,
write both sets of notes (between 60 and 75 words for each report). [10]

I dreaded my driving test. I have not forgotten the gloom and horror of my
endless lessons, though they took place over 30 years ago. I was instructed by a
man who, in some previous existence, must have been a Regimental Sergeant-
Major. Following him from his office to his car, I lost confidence even as a
pedestrian. His kerb-drill, shoes gleaming one inch from the pavements edge, eyes 5
swivelling right then left, was a fearsome spectacle. When he turned sharply into
other streets he made strange gestures like hand-signals. Struggling behind him, I
began colliding with people. As pedestrians, my instructor and I did not fraternise
with each other and only when, slightly bruised, I caught up with him at the car itself
did he address me. 10
This, he said, is the car.
The first lesson, I remember, was a very preliminary affair. Like dogs, we circled
the waiting vehicle, while my instructor pointed out features of interest to me:
windows, doors, lights, bumpers and so on. Then we came to the soul of the lesson:
entering, and exiting from, the car. I got in, I got out, and in again and out again. I did 15
this on the near side and on the off side. I also locked and unlocked these doors
from inside and out. It was laborious work. As a mere passenger, I had never
realised before what a complex business this getting in and out of a car should be.
After an hour of it I was exhausted.
DSM next, my instructor said as we marched back to his office. It sounded 20
dangerous work to me, an acquired taste, and I looked forward to my next lesson
with some apprehension.
DSM the following week turned out to be door, seat and mirror. I repeated all I
had performed with the doors, I manipulated endlessly, up and down, the windows
and, like a dentist, I adjusted the seats to their extremities, sitting to attention next to 25
my instructor one minute, then lying adjacent to him the next, and strapping myself
in vigorously at his command. Between these exercises we allowed ourselves short
rest periods during which we would discuss distilled water, tyres and other
interesting matters.
After four lessons, though I had mastered the milometer, speedometer, 30
windscreen wipers, horn, oil-gauge and (rather unnecessarily I thought) the brakes;
we still had not moved. The dust was gathering on us. We were road furniture, never
traffic. I seemed to have no destination.
We did eventually move the car backwards at first (it was hardly progress) and
then forwards at last. Milk-floats overtook us, bicycles, old ladies and gentlemen 35
from a previous century, but I was on my way.
I had booked my test even before my first lesson and when the day eventually
arrived I knew what to do. All I had suffered over those long weeks, all that agony,
humiliation and academic pointlessness threaded over 20 lessons, I concentrated
into 20 minutes and gave back. 40
My examiner was a mild, moustached man. He did not know what he had done
wrong. But I came to his help. As I was able to show, he did everything wrong. He
got into the car wrong, he sat wrong, he was an altogether unskilful passenger. At
every move I put him scrupulously right, bundling him in and out and up and down.
Before we could start, I took it upon myself to prove that his car was worthy of the 45
road. I checked everything from the boot to the bumpers. When asked to drive
forwards, I did so but only after violently adjusting the mirror, operating the window
and giving a display of handsignals any conjuror would have envied. There was so
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much to do, I doubt whether we had time to move more than 30 yards along the
crowded London streets over the next 30 minutes. But it was an aging experience. I 50
had been well-drilled and it was my examiner who cracked. His hand was trembling
as he signed my certificate. I was now equipped, I felt, to advance my career.

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3 The speech below comes from George Orwells novel Animal Farm and is delivered by Major, a
pig, who shares his thoughts with other creatures. In the speech, Major explains how, from the
animals point of view, humans are their enemies.

(a) Basing your answer closely on the style of the passage, write the opening (between 120150
words) of a speech in which a human being identifies a particular enemy or threat and urges
action. [10]

(b) Compare the style and language of your piece with those of the original extract. [15]

Comrades, you have heard already about the strange dream that I had last
night. But I will come to the dream later. I have something else to say first. I do not
think, comrades, that I shall be with you for many months longer, and before I die I
feel it my duty to pass on to you such wisdom as I have acquired. I have had a long
life, I have had much time for thought as I lay alone in my stall, and I think I may say 5
that I understand the nature of life on this earth as well as any animal now living. It is
about this that I wish to speak to you.
Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives
are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as
will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to 10
work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has
come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England
knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in
England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.
But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land of ours is 15
so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who dwell upon it? No, comrades,
a thousand times no! The soil of England is fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of
affording food in abundance to an enormously greater number of animals than now
inhabit it. This single farm of ours would support a dozen horses, twenty cows,
hundreds of sheepand all of them living in a comfort and a dignity that are now 20
almost beyond our imagining. Why then do we continue in this miserable condition?
Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human
beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a
single wordMan. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the
scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever. 25
Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring
from the tyranny of human beings? Only get rid of Man, and the produce of our
labour would be our own. Almost overnight we could become rich and free. What
then must we do? Why, work night and day, body and soul, for the overthrow of the
human race! That is my message to you, comrades: Rebellion! I do not know when 30
that Rebellion will come, it might be in a week or in a hundred years, but I know, as
surely as I see this straw beneath my feet, that sooner or later justice will be done.
Fix your eyes on that, comrades, throughout the short remainder of your lives! And
above all, pass on this message of mine to those who come after you, so that future
generations shall carry on the struggle until it is victorious. 35
And remember, comrades, your resolution must never falter. No argument
must lead you astray. Never listen when they tell you that Man and the animals have
a common interest, that the prosperity of the one is the prosperity of the others. It is
all lies. Man serves the interests of no creature except himself. And among us
animals let there be perfect unity, perfect comradeship in the struggle. All men are 40
enemies. All animals are comrades.

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Answer two questions.

1 In the passage below the writer describes a childhood memory of wandering around her fathers
jewellery shop one evening.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The writer also describes another room in her house. Basing your answer closely on the style
of the extract, write the opening description (between 120 and 150 words). [10]

A quite different world opens before me when I only just push at the heavy door
that separates the shop from our apartment.
It is a door entirely covered with tin. Instead of a latch it has a big key that is
always in the lock. In the dark rear shop, into which I tumble first, I grope along the
walls as though I were blind. Thick yellow sheets of paper rustle underfoot. 5
Wrapped-up wall clocks rest on the floor here. Until they are hung on walls, they
do not move; they lie quiet and soundless, as if buried alive. But the stuffy air of the
dark chamber seems swollen with the voices that seep in from the shop. The voices
crowd against the high wooden wall and recoil from it again. I stand behind it as in
a prison, and listen to what is being said. I want to make out whose voice is talking. 10
And if I catch mothers voice, I am content.
But wait! Is her voice quiet, calm, or, God forbid, angry? Mothers voice will give
me warning, tell me whether to go into the shop or not.
Her high tones encourage me. I touch the curtain of the last door, which leads
to the shop. I become dizzy at once because of the mirrors and glass. All the clocks 15
are being wound in my ears. The shop is full of glitter on every side. The flashing of
silver and gold blinds me like fire; it is reflected in the mirrors, roams over the glass
drawers. It dazzles my eyes.
Two large gas chandeliers burn high up under the ceiling, humming loudly; the
sound becomes a moan of pain. Fire spatters from the close-netted caps on the 20
burners that barely hold back the sparks.
There are two high walls entirely lined from top to bottom with glass cupboards.
The cupboards reach up to the ceiling and are so solidly built that they seem to have
grown into it. Their glass doors slide easily back and forth. Through the glass one
can clearly see all the objects on display, almost touch them with ones hand. 25
On the shelves are goblets, wineglasses, sugar bowls, saucers, braided
baskets, milk and water pitchers, fruit bowls. Everything shines and glitters with a
newly polished look. Whenever I move, all the objects run after me in reflection. The
fire of the lamps and the light of the silver cross each other. Now the silver drowns in
a flash of the lamplight, now it re-emerges with an even sharper glitter. 30
On the opposite wall there is another glass cupboard. Behind its panes are
objects not of silver but of white metal, and their gleam is much more modest, and
quieter.
In the center of the shop, on three sides, there rise, as if from the floor itself,
three inner walls long counters with drawers. They divide the shop into two sections. 35
All laid out with glass, full of gold objects, they glitter like magical arks. Little stones
of all colors, framed in gold rings, earrings, brooches, bracelets, flicker there like
lighted matches.
In this air full of fire it is quite impossible to see that the floor is dark. At the
front, at the very feet of the customers, entire silver services shine through the glass. 40
And so even the customers black shoes glitter and catch reflections along with the
silver.

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 3

The third wall is dim even by day. Overgrown with long hanging clocks, it looks
like a forest of dark trees. There are wall clocks of various sizes. Some have big,
squat cases with thick hanging chains supporting heavy copper weights. Other wall 45
clocks have narrower, slimmer bodies. Their chains are lighter, more movable, with
smaller weights attached. In the bellies of all of them pointed pendulums dangle like
swords, swinging restlessly back and forth.
Among the large wall clocks smaller ones are hiding, and even tiny ones; one
can see only the white dials, their round moon faces. They have no wooden bellies, 50
and their chain legs move in the open, before everyones eyes, up and down.
The whole wall of clocks sighs and breathes heavily. From each box come
smothered groans, as though at every moment someone were being killed on the
dark wall.

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 4

2 The passage below takes a comic look at patriotism. It is set in a fictional place called Lake Wobegon
in America and describes a local custom known as The Living Flag, an annual ceremony created
by shop owner Herman Hochstetter to celebrate the end of World War II.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) As part of his autobiography, Herman writes a chapter outlining his achievement in creating
a ceremony and why it began to go wrong. Basing your answer closely on the material of the
extract, write the opening to the chapter (between 120 and 150 words). [10]

On patriotic days, flags flew all over; there were flags on the tall poles, flags
on the short, flags in the brackets on the pillars and the porches, and if you were
flagless you could expect to hear from Herman. His hairy arm around your shoulder,
his poochlike face close to yours, he would say how proud he was that so many
people were proud of their country, leaving you to see the obvious, that you were a 5
gap in the ranks.
In June 1944, the day after D-Day, a salesman from Fisher Hat called on
Herman and offered a good deal on red and blue baseball caps. Do you have white
also? Herman asked. The salesman thought that white caps could be had for the
same wonderful price. Herman ordered two hundred red, two hundred white, and 10
one hundred blue. By the end of the year, he still had four hundred and eighty-six
caps. The inspiration of the Living Flag was born from that overstock.
On June 14, 1945, a month after V-E Day, a good crowd assembled in front of
the Central Building in response to Hermans ad in the paper:

Honor AMERICA June 14 at 4 p.m. Be 15

proud of Our Land & People. Be part of
the Living Flag. Dont let it be said
that Lake Wobegon was Too Busy. Be on
time. 4 p.m. Sharp.

His wife Louise handed out the caps, and Herman stood on a stepladder and 20
told the people where to stand. He lined up the reds and whites into stripes, then
got the blues into their square. Mr. Hanson climbed up on the roof of the Central
Building and took a photograph, they sang the national anthem, and then the Living
Flag dispersed. The photograph appeared in the paper the next week. Herman kept
the caps. 25
In the flush of victory, people were happy to do as they were told and stand in
place, but in 1946 and 1947, dissension cropped up in the ranks: people complained
about the heat and about Herman what gave him the idea he could order them
around? People! Please! I need your attention! You blue people, keep your hats on!
Please! Stripe number 4, youre sagging! You reds, youre up here! We got too many 30
white people, we need more red ones! Lets do this without talking, people! I cant
get you straight if you keep moving around! Some of you are not paying attention!
Everybody shut up! Please!
One cause of resentment was the fact that none of them got to see the flag they
were in; the picture in the paper was black and white. Only Herman and Mr. Hanson 35
got to see the real Flag, and some boys too short to be needed down below. People
wanted a chance to go up to the roof and witness the spectacle for themselves.
How can you go up there if youre supposed to be down here? Herman said.
You go up to look, you got nothing to look at. Isnt it enough to know that youre
doing your part? 40

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 5

On Flag Day, 1949, just as Herman said, Thats it! Hold it now! one of the reds
made a break for it dashed up four flights of stairs to the roof and leaned over
and had a long look. Even with the hole he had left behind, it was a magnificent
sight. The Living Flag filled the street below. A perfect Flag! The reds so brilliant! He
couldnt take his eyes off it. Get down here! We need a picture! Herman yelled up at 45
him. Unbelievable! I cant describe it! he said.
So then everyone had to have a look. No! Herman said, but they took a vote
and it was unanimous. One by one, members of the Living Flag went up to the roof
and admired it. It was marvellous! It brought tears to the eyes, it made one reflect
on this great country and on Lake Wobegons place in it. One wanted to stand up 50
there all afternoon and just drink it in. So, as the first hour passed, and only forty of
the five hundred had been to the top, the others got more and more restless. Hurry
up! Quit dawdling! Youve seen it! Get down here and give someone else a chance!
Herman sent people up in groups of four, and then ten, but after two hours, the
Living Flag became the Sitting Flag and then began to erode, as the members who 55
had had a look thought about heading home to supper, which infuriated the ones
who hadnt. Ten more minutes! Herman cried, but ten minutes became twenty and
thirty, and people snuck off and the Flag that remained for the last viewer was a Flag
shot through by cannon fire.

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 6

3 In the passage below the writer describes how the ship he was travelling on was affected by the
weather.

(a) You have been asked to contribute an article to a travel magazine. Basing your answer closely
on the style and structure of the passage, write the opening (between 120 and 150 words) to
the article about another journey by a different means of transport. [10]

(b) Compare the style and structure of your piece with those of the original extract. [15]

They laid the tables in our saloon for dinner. We sat tightly packed at benches.
There were three or four small children who were fed at the table. Two ragged
servants cooked and served a very bad dinner. The captain collected the money.
Presently he passed round a list of those to whom he had given cabins. I was not
among them, nor was the American missionary nor any of the Greeks. We should 5
have slipped him a tip with our tickets, I learned later. About a dozen of us were left
without accommodation. Six wise men laid themselves out full length on the saloon
benches immediately after dinner and established their claim for the night. The rest
of us sat on our luggage on the deck. There were no seats or deck-chairs. Luckily it
was a fine night, warm, unclouded, and windless. I spread an overcoat on the deck, 10
placed a canvas grip under my head as a pillow and composed myself for sleep. The
missionary found two little wooden chairs and sat stiff backed, wrapped in a rug,
with his feet up supporting a book of Bible-stories on his knees. As we got up steam,
brilliant showers of wood sparks rose from the funnel; soon after midnight we sailed
into the lake; a gentle murmur of singing came from the bows. In a few minutes I was 15
asleep.
I woke up suddenly an hour later and found myself shivering with cold. I stood
up to put on my overcoat and immediately found myself thrown against the rail. At the
same moment I saw the missionarys two chairs tip over sideways and him sprawl on
the deck. A large pile of hand luggage upset and slid towards the side. There was a 20
tinkle of broken china from the captains quarters. All this coincided with a torrential
downpour of rain and a tearing wind. It was followed in a second or two by a blaze
of lightning and shattering detonation. A chatter of alarm went up from the lower
deck, and various protests of disturbed livestock. In the half-minute which it took
us to collect our luggage and get into the saloon we were saturated with rain. And 25
here we were in scarcely better conditions, for the windows, when raised, proved not
to be of glass, but of wire gauze. The wind tore through them, water poured in and
slopped from side to side. Women passengers came up squealing from their cabins
below, with colourless, queasy faces. The saloon became intolerably overcrowded.
We sat as we had at dinner, packed in rows round the two tables. The wind was so 30
strong that it was impossible, single-handed, to open the door. Those who were ill
the American missionary was the first to go under were obliged to remain in
their places. The shriek of the wind was so loud that conversation was impossible;
we just clung there, pitched and thrown, now out of our seats, now on top of one
another; occasionally someone would fall asleep and wake up instantly with his 35
head thumped hard against table or wall. It needed constant muscular effort to avoid
injury. Vile retchings occurred on every side. Women whimpered at their husbands
for support. The children yelled. We were all of us dripping and shivering. At last
everyone grew quieter as alarm subsided and desperation took its place. They sat
there, rigid and glum, gazing straight before them or supporting their heads in their 40
hands until, a little before dawn, the wind dropped and rain ceased beating in; then

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some of them fell asleep, and others slunk back to their cabins. I went out on deck.
It was still extremely cold, and the little boat bobbed and wallowed hopelessly in a
heavy sea, but the storm was clearly over. Soon a green and silver dawn broke over
the lake; it was misty all round us, and the orange sparks from the funnel were just 45
visible against the whiter sky. The two stewards emerged with chattering teeth and
attempted to set things in order in the saloon, dragging out rolls of sodden matting
and swabbing up the water-logged floor. Huddled groups on the lower deck began
to disintegrate and a few cocks crowed; there was a clatter of breakfast cups and a
welcome smell of coffee. 50

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 2

Answer two questions.

1 The passage below is an extract from the first speech given by the American President Franklin
D. Roosevelt. In it, he urges people to have hope for the future despite the economic situation the
country is in.

(a) Basing your answer closely on the language and style of the passage, write the opening
(between 120150 words) to a speech in which you try to persuade an audience that a
particularly difficult situation can be overcome. [10]

(b) Compare the style and language of your piece with those of the original extract. [15]

This is a day of national consecration, and I am certain that my fellow-Americans

expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor
and a decision which the present situation of our nation impels.
This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and
boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This 5
great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.
So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is
fear itself nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts
to convert retreat into advance.
In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has 10
met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential
to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these
critical days.
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They
concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; 15
taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen, government of all kinds is faced by
serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of
trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no
markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are
gone. 20
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of
existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist
can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no
plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered 25
because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for.
Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our
doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.
Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankinds goods have
failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted 30
that failure and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand
indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True, they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an
outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of
more money. 35
The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad
chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they
teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves
and to our fellow-men.

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 3

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes 40

hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high
political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal
profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too
often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.
Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, 45
on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance.
Without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This nation asks for
action, and action now.
Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their 50
false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored
confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.
They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our
civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. 55
The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values
more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of
achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

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 4

2 The passage below describes a hotel with a particularly distinctive image.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The hotel decides to publish a brochure for potential customers. Basing your answer closely
on the material of the extract, write the opening (between 120150 words) to the brochure.
[10]

He found himself in a tall brilliant lobby. Thick wands of sunlight shone through
vast overhead windows onto a marble floor. There appeared to be numerous
entrances. The one through which he had emerged was clearly not the most
significant. Various doormen and bellhops stood around in stylised cavalry uniforms:
boots, hats, gold epaulettes, even dinky sabres at their belts. At the rear of the lobby 5
was what appeared to be a dense wood of twenty-foot high trees. In front of this
forest was a long reception desk. This Henderson approached with due reverence
and awe. The experience was, he thought, akin to appearing at Heavens gate with
the sin-virtue equation still in balance.
Dores, he said to the tanned cavalryman. D,O,R,E,S. I have a reservation. 10
Good afternoon, sir, he said. Welcome to Monopark 5000. He tapped out the
name on a computer keyboard. There was a whirring and clicking and the machine
fed out a piece of plastic with holes punched in it.
Whats this? Henderson asked. A credit card?
Your key, sir. Need some help with your case? The smile never budged. 15
No thanks. I can manage.
You are in suite 35J. Follow this path, he gestured at an opening in the forest
wall, go through the atrium and take the scenic elevator to the thirty-fifth floor. Enjoy
your stay in Monopark 5000.
Right. Henderson picked up his bag and looked dubiously at the path, which 20
was signposted To the atrium. He felt like an explorer leaving base camp. Goodbye,
he said to the man and set off.
He had imagined that the trees were merely a decorative screen but he was
wrong. He found himself in a copse, a grove, a veritable spinney of weeping figs,
silver birches and stands of bamboo. A soft greenish light filtered down from above, 25
xylophonic music burbled from hidden speakers. Other paths bifurcated from his.
Convention reservation he saw, To the Indian village and Swimming Creek. These
signs were deliberately olde west: chunks of varnished wood with the message
burnt on with a branding iron. The frontier theme was enhanced by the sudden
appearance from behind a tree of a waitress in fringed buckskin waistcoat and 30
miniskirt. Henderson gave a shrug of alarm. There were stripes of warpaint on her
cheeks and forehead.
Cocktails, sir? she asked. At the Indian village.
What? Oh, no. Im looking for the atrium.
Keep right on to the end of this path. She slipped away into the trees. He 35
followed her instructions and broke out into a towering atrium some twelve or
fourteen stories high. Before him stretched a lake, blocking his way, some thirty
yards across, dotted with islands furnished with seats and sprouting plants. Over on
the left of the far bank was a cluster of wigwams which on closer inspection turned
out to be a large restaurant and bar area. On the balconied far wall, a dozen scenic 40
elevators rose up and down, some of them disappearing into holes in the roof like
silent glass scarabs.
Henderson let out a spontaneous gasp of surprise. He had heard of this new
breed of American hotel: the hotel as wonderland, as secular cathedral, as theme
park but his imagination had been deficient. Plants grew everywhere, fountains 45
splashed, the light was pale, neutral and shadow-free.

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 5

A cowboy wandered over and handed him a wooden paddle.

Good God, whats this for?
For the canoe, sir.
Henderson looked to his right. Sure enough, a dozen canoes were tethered to 50
the concrete bank.
Do you mean Ive got to paddle my way across to the elevators?
I can do it for you, sir, but a lot of our guests like to make their own way.
He saw an intrepid couple set off, little shrieks of delight coming from the wife.
Oh. Right. 55
The cowboy let him down to a canoe, deposited his bag in the bow and helped
him in. Henderson settled down.
Listen are you sure these things are stable? Perhaps youd better
The cowboy pushed him off. Enjoy your stay at Monopark 5000, sir.

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 6

3 The passage below was written by a European journalist while he was based in Hong Kong. In it,
he describes to his newborn son, Daniel, his thoughts and feelings about Daniels birth.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Daniels mother briefly records her reactions to the birth of her son in her diary but she
mainly expresses concern about the behaviour and state of mind of her husband. Basing
your answer closely on the material of the original extract, write the opening to her diary entry
(between 120150 words). [10]

My dear son, it is six oclock in the morning on the island of Hong Kong. You are
asleep cradled in my left arm and I am learning the art of one-handed typing. Your
mother, more tired yet more happy than Ive ever known her, is sound asleep in the
room next door and there is soft quiet in our apartment.
Since you arrived, days have melted into night and back again and we are 5
learning a new grammar, a long sentence whose punctuation marks are feeding and
winding and nappy changing and these occasional moments of quiet.
When youre older well tell you that you were born in Britains last Asian colony
in the lunar year of the pig and that when we brought you home, the staff of our
apartment block gathered to wish you well. Its a boy, so lucky, so lucky. We Chinese 10
love boys, they told us. One man said you were the first baby to be born in the block
in the year of the pig. This, he told us, was good Feng Shui, in other words a positive
sign for the building and everyone who lived there.
Naturally your mother and I were only too happy to believe that. We had wanted
you and waited for you, imagined you and dreamed about you and now that you are 15
here no dream can do justice to you. Outside the window, below us on the harbour,
the ferries are ploughing back and forth to Kowloon. Millions are already up and
moving about and the sun is slanting through the tower blocks and out on to the
flat silver waters of the South China Sea. I can see the contrail of a jet over Lamma
Island and, somewhere out there, the last stars flickering towards the other side of 20
the world.
We have called you Daniel Patrick but Ive been told by my Chinese friends
that you should have a Chinese name as well and this glorious dawn sky makes me
think well call you Son of the Eastern Star. So that later, when you and I are far from
Asia, perhaps standing on a beach some evening, I can point at the sky and tell you 25
of the Orient and the times and the people we knew there in the last years of the
twentieth century.
Your coming has turned me upside down and inside out. So much that seemed
essential to me has, in the past few days, taken on a different colour. Like many
foreign correspondents I know, I have lived a life that, on occasion, has veered close 30
to the edge: war zones, natural disasters, darkness in all its shapes and forms.
In a world of insecurity and ambition and ego, its easy to be drawn in, to take
chances with our lives, to believe that what we do and what people say about us
is reason enough to gamble with death. Now, looking at your sleeping face, inches
away from me, listening to your occasional sigh and gurgle, I wonder how I could 35
have ever thought glory and prizes and praise were sweeter than life.
And its also true that I am pained, perhaps haunted is a better word, by the
memory, suddenly so vivid now, of each suffering child I have come across on my
journeys. To tell you the truth, its nearly too much to bear at this moment to even
think of children being hurt and abused and killed. And yet looking at you, the images 40
come flooding back. Ten-year-old Andi Mikail dying from napalm burns on a hillside
in Eritrea, how his voice cried out, growing ever more faint when the wind blew dust
on to his wounds. The two brothers, Domingo and Juste, in Menongue, southern
Angola. Juste, two years old and blind, dying from malnutrition, being carried on
seven-year-old Domingos back. And Domingos words to me, He was nice before, 45
but now he has the hunger.
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 7

Last October, in Afghanistan, when you were growing inside your mother, I met
Sharja, aged twelve. Motherless, fatherless, guiding me through the grey ruins of her
home, everything was gone, she told me. And I knew that, for all her tender years,
she had learned more about loss than I would likely understand in a lifetime. 50
Daniel, these memories explain some of the fierce protectiveness I feel for you,
the tenderness and the occasional moments of blind terror when I imagine anything
happening to you. But there is something more, a story from long ago that I will tell
you face to face, father to son, when you are older. Its a very personal story but its
part of the picture. It has to do with the long lines of blood and family, about our lives 55
and how we can get lost in them and, if were lucky, find our way out again into the
sunlight.

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 2

Answer two questions.

1 In the passage below the writer takes a comic look at how a man whom he would expect to be
ashamed of his situation appears to prosper and grow in status.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The writer publishes a further portrait of another type of character who provokes strong
feelings in him. Basing your answer closely on the style of the extract, write the opening
(between 120-150 words) of his description. [10]

The bankrupt man dances. Perhaps, on other occasions, he sings. Certainly

he spends money in restaurants and tips generously. In what sense, then, is he
bankrupt?
He has been declared so. He has declared himself so. He returns from the
city agitated and pale, complaining of hours spent with the lawyers. Then he pours 5
himself a drink. How does he pay for the liquor inside the drink, if he is bankrupt?
He is dancing at the Chilblains Relief Association Fund Ball. His heels kick high.
The mauve spotlight caresses his shoulders, then the gold. His wifes hair glistens
like a beehive of tinsel above her bare shoulders and dulcet neck. Where does she
get the money, to pay the hairdresser to tease and singe and set her so dazzlingly? 10
We are afraid to ask but cannot tear our eyes from the dancing couple.
The bankrupt man buys himself a motorcycle. He is going to hotdog it all the
way to Santa Barbara and back. He has a bankrupt sister in Santa Barbara. Also,
there are business details to be cleared up along the way, in Pittsburgh, South
Bend, Dodge City, Santa Fe, and Palm Springs. Being bankrupt is an expansionist 15
process; it generates ever new horizons.
We all want to dance with the bankrupt mans wife. Sexual health swirls from
her like meadow mist, she sparkles head to toe, her feet are shod in slippers of
crystal. How do you manage to keep up ap ? We drown our presumptuous
question murmurously in her corsage; her breasts billow, violet and gold, about our 20
necktie.
The bankrupt man is elected to high civic office and declines, due to press of
business. He can be seen on the streets, rushing everywhere, important-looking
papers flying from his hands. He is being sued for astronomical amounts. He wears
now only the trendiest clothes unisex jumpsuits, detachable porcelain collars, 25
coat sleeves that really unbutton. He goes to the same hairdresser as his wife. His
children are all fat.
This galls us. We wish to destroy him, this clown of legerity1, who bounces
higher and higher off the net of laws that would enmesh us, who weightlessly
spiders up the rigging to the dizzying spotlit tip of the tent-space and stands there in 30
a glittering trapeze suit. We spread ugly rumors, we mutter that he is not bankrupt at
all, that he is as sound as the pound, as the dollar, that his bankruptcy is a sham. He
hears of the rumour and in a note, with embossed letterhead, he challenges us to
meet him on West Main Street, by the corner of the Corn Exchange, under the iron
statue of Cyrus Shenanigan, the great Civil War profiteer. We accept the challenge. 35
We experience butterflies in the stomach. We go look at our face in the mirror. It is
craven and shrivelled, embittered by ungenerous thoughts.
Comes the dawn. Without parked cars, West Main Street seems immensely
wide. The bankrupt mans shoulders eclipse the sun. He takes his paces, turns,
swiftly reaches down and pulls out the lining of both pants pockets. Verily, they are 40
empty. We fumble at our own, and the rattle of silver is drowned in the triumphant
roar of the witnessing mob. We would have been torn limb from limb had not the
bankrupt man with characteristic magnanimity extended to us a protective embrace,
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 3

redolent of cologne and smoking turf and wood violets.

In the locker room, we hear the bankrupt singing. His baritone strips the tiles 45
from the walls like cascading dominoes. He has just shot a minus sixty-seven,
turning the old course record inside out.
He ascends because he transcends. He deals from the bottom of the deck. He
builds castles in air. He makes America grow.

1legerity cunning, trickery

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 4

2 The extract below is taken from an autobiography and describes the narrators first visit to a circus.
He is accompanied by his less than enthusiastic older brother.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) In his own autobiography the narrators brother describes his memory of this experience.
Basing your answer closely on the original extract, write the opening section (between 120-
150 words) of his version of events. [10]

When the day came for the early-evening first show, my mother had not
changed her mind and my brother had not been able to talk his way out of taking
me. His two friends had loyally agreed to suffer the boredom and indignity with him
and all four of us made our way to the field where the Big Top had been put up. As
we passed through the gate into the playing-field, the mingled scents of crushed 5
grass and canvas gave an extra tingle of excitement. There was a pleasurable
agony of waiting in the queue to get in before we finally entered the tent where
the air was thick with the smell of sawdust and animals. My brother and his friends
draped themselves languidly along the bench and discussed their foreign trip with
an air of ostentatious indifference to the ring before them and the trapeze above. I 10
sat alongside my brother with my jacket rolled up beside me so Id have more room
to see if someone big sat down in front of me.
The show began when a tall, handsome Ringmaster with moustaches and whip
and top hat announced the first act and the clowns came on. They fell over, they
burst balloons, they poured buckets of water over themselves and each other; they 15
threatened the audience, fell over, threw pies at each other and their trousers fell
down. They were outrageous, hilarious, anarchic, entrancing. I loved them. I roared
and I hooted and I guffawed and shrieked. My brother and his friends watched with
a stony and cynical aloofness.
Then the acrobats performed dizzy deeds of daredevilment that put my heart 20
in my mouth and my mouth into a state of fixed openness. The lissom-limbed
lovelies and the lean-thighed men swooped and spun and clasped and swung until
my chest ached with holding my breath. There were other acts too, and a shrewd
observer might have noticed that the clowns and acrobats and animal-trainers all
bore a curiously shared identity, but I was not a shrewd observer. The best act of 25
all was the last one, and it had me enthralled. The Ringmaster announced Chief
Cochise, the Apache warrior, the bare-back riding lethal expert with the bow and
arrow. As his words died away there came thundering into the ring a magnificent
figure, resplendent in head-dress and leggings, his face savagely streaked with war-
paint and his muscular, fronded legs gripping the sides of a noble, piebald stallion. 30
He whooped and war-cried his way round the ring and my whole heart went out to
him. He was fierce and bronzed; he was frightening and exciting: I had never seen
anything so stirring before. With a yell and a flourish he began to circle the central
pole, loosing arrow after arrow into the balloons suspended there. Horse-sweat and
sawdust, hoof-beats and balloon-bursts filled the next magical minutes until, with 35
a wave and a blood-curdling, triumphant yell he vanished on his valiant steed. I
cheered myself hoarse and I clapped until it hurt, hoping the heroic Cochise would
appear once more, but he didnt. It was the last act and the audience was leaving
and I had to scramble to keep up with my brother and his friends. As I worked my
way through the jostle of the crowd, my head was full of Chief Cochise. Gone were 40
the dreams of being sheriff or homesteader gone were the dreams of being lone
shotgun on the rickety stage. From now on and forever, it was Chief Cochise and
the bareback archer who was the idol of my dreams.
My brother and his friends, having waited long enough for me to catch up,
moved ahead again slowly. They had just shared a light from my brothers cupped 45
hands around his new gas lighter when I reached them, breathless with my efforts
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 5

and my memory. I adjusted my pace and fell in behind them. My brother was talking
between drags on the cigarette which he held between his thumb and his third
finger.
What a washout, he was saying. What a pathetic washout. Did you see that 50
phoney Indian at the end? He hardly hit any of the balloons and you could hear
someone bursting them behind the flap to make it sound as if he hit them. And he
wasnt riding bareback you could see the saddle if you looked.
Yes, said one of his friends. And he wasnt a real Indian anyway. I reckon he
was that first clown with make-up on. 55

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 6

3 The passage below describes two English writers experience of renting a room in Spain from a
French woman they meet on a bus.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The French woman decides to advertise her property in a tourist brochure. She wishes to
describe its surroundings and facilities in the best possible light. She asks you to write the
advertisement. Basing your answer closely on the material of the extract, write the opening
section (between 120-150 words) of the advertisement. [10]

Her house, facing the cool blue blaze of the bay, was more than we had
dreamed; we fell in love immediately with the smallest room, its french window-
doors opening onto a balcony-terrace, perfect for writing: vines wove green leaves
in the railing; a palm and a pine tree grew alongside shading one side, and a slatted
bamboo awning could be drawn out to form a little roof as shelter from the direct 5
noon sun. We knocked her down from the first price to 100 pesetas a night, figuring
we could save immensely by doing our own marketing and cooking. From her rapid
babble of French, mangled by a strong Spanish accent, we gathered that she would
trade Spanish lessons for English lessons, that she had been a teacher, and lived in
France for three years. 10
As soon as we moved in, it became clear that Madame was not used to running
a maison1 for boarders. There were three other empty rooms on the second floor
which she evidently hoped to let out, for she spoke continually of how we must
manage for les autres, when they arrived. She had amassed a great quantity of
white china plates, cups and saucers in the formal dining room, and an equally large 15
amount of aluminium pots and pans hung on hooks lining the kitchen walls, but
there was absolutely no silver tableware. Senora seemed shocked that we did not
carry knives, forks and spoons about with us, but brought out, finally, three elaborate
place-settings of her best silver which she laid out, saying that this was only for the
three of us, and she would soon go to Alicante to buy some simple kitchen silver for 20
us and put her best silver away. Also, the problem of a small bathroom, fine for the
two of us, but hardly fitted for eight, and the trouble of arranging cooking and dinner
schedules on one petrol burner, seemed not to have occurred to her either.
We held our breath and wished fervently that she would have no customers
when she put up the sign: Apartments for rent, on our balcony-terrace. We had, 25
at least, made sure that she would not use our balcony, which adjoined another
larger room, as a selling point, by explaining that it was the only place we could
write in peace, since our room was too small for a table, and the beach and garden
were fine for vacationers, but not for writers workrooms. Occasionally, from our
balcony (where we soon took to eating meals: steaming mugs of caf con leche 30
in the morning, a cold picnic of bread, cheese, tomatoes and onions, fruit and milk
at noon, and a cooked dinner of meat or fish with vegetables, and wine, at twilight
under the moon and stars ) we could hear Senora conducting people around the
house, speaking in her rapid staccato French. But during the first week, although
she had conducted several potential roomers about, no one had come. We had fun 35
hazarding on the objections they might make: no hot water, one small bathroom,
only an antique petrol burner with such modern hotels in town, probably her
price was too high: what wealthy people would be willing to market and cook? who
but poor students & writers like us? Perhaps the roomers might decide to eat out
in the expensive restaurants; that was a possibility. We had found out, too, that 40
although she had made wild, extravagant gestures when showing us about the
house pointing to an empty ice-less icebox, motioning out an imaginary electrical
machine for making the freezing shower-water warm that none of these comforts
were forthcoming. We found the water from the taps was unpalatable and strange
to taste; when the Senora miraculously produced a glass pitcher full of delicious 45

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 7

sparkling water for our first dinner, we asked incredulous if it came from the taps.
She burbled on evasively about the health-giving qualities of the water, and it was
a full day before I caught her drawing up a pail of it from a cistern sunk deep in the
kitchen, covered by a blue board.

1maison guest house

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 2

Answer two questions.

1 The passage below describes the writers experience in Burma when he was serving as a police
officer at a time when the British ruled the country. He has been ordered to deal with a possible
threat posed by an elephant.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Later that day, a member of the crowd records her thoughts and feelings in her diary about
how the officer and the crowd behaved. Basing your answer closely on the material of the
original extract, write the opening section (between 120150 words) of the diary entry. [10]

But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of
grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants
have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not
squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted
to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal). Besides, there was the 5
beasts owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred
pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly.
But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had
been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving.
They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he 10
might charge if you went too close to him.
It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say,
twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behaviour. If he charged, I could shoot;
if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout* came back.
But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle 15
and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant
charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a
steam-roller.
There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and
lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, 20
happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from
innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a
beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an
elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole.
I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his 25
ear-hole; actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be
further forward.
When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick one never does
when a shot goes home but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the
crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet 30
to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither
stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken,
shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed
him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time it might
have been five seconds, I dare say he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth 35
slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have
imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second
shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood
weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was
the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock 40
the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment
to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like
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 3

a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the
first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that
seemed to shake the ground even where I lay. 45
I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud. It was
obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was
breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side
painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open I could see far down into
caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did 50
not weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his
heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die.
His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued
without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world
remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt that I had 55
got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast
lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to
finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and
down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued
as steadily as the ticking of a clock. 60
In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away.

*mahout: an elephant owner or keeper

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 4

2 The passage below describes the writers experience of visiting Venice, in Italy.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) A travel guide invites the writer to contribute an article about another tourist location. The
guides editor wants the writer to convey her detailed impressions of the atmosphere of the
place. Basing your answer closely on the style and language of the original extract, write the
opening (between 120150 words) of the article. [10]

There, next to the shuttered kiosk, was the first bridge: stepped, the black night
water slopping beneath it, a rakish police launch moored to one side. Beyond, half-
visible through the thick fog, lay a stone path, a portico, another bridge.
At that moment, a group of students came running across the bridge, through the
portico, down the stone path. It was two in the morning, but I could see immediately 5
that there was nothing sinister or fugitive in their speed: this was high spirits. Human,
energetic, timeless: they could have been Capulets*. Their voices filled the air, stilled
by the fog. Then they were gone in a tumble of footsteps which fell away like blown
leaves. At last: the city of voices and footsteps. Id waited forty years for this.
The next day, somewhere near the post office, I found myself following a path 10
between high buildings. It became a dark, covered alleyway; I stopped, for perhaps
the sixth time, to check my map. A man with a stick was following me, swaddled
in a heavy black coat; I could tell at a glance his soul was unquiet. As he clattered
past me, he muttered what sounded like curses. His nose was aquiline*; his face
imperious and sinewy. He wore sandals, though; his feet were bare. I watched him 15
hobble into the darkness, bent on endurance, and realised that nothing in this field
of vision would have altered in five hundred years. The paving slabs, the building
stones, the January gloom, the human figure wrapped in dark wool and clutching a
wood stick: I was gazing into the past. Venice is time travel.
The fog hushed what was already a quiet city further; you could hear the citys 20
fearless sparrows squabble with each other in the vaporetto* shelters. Eventually
a lumbering boat would loom, groaning, reverse and thump the wharf posts. There
would be an exchange of shuffling, muffled passengers, and it would wallow off
again. The only trace the great Greek ferries left now was a dull moan; fog had
swaddled up their improbable bulk as they inched across the basin and down the 25
Giudecca towards the Maritime Station. Boatmen still sing in Venice, since theres a
chance the song will be heard. A gondola is black and lacquered, like a grand piano;
the passengers sat on little thrones beneath thick, embroidered blankets, mute with
the strangeness of it all.
The top of the Campanile in San Marco had disappeared into the fog, and at 30
night the floodlights which were meant to strafe it and play on the arched faade of
the basilica floundered lamely in the pewter vapour. On Saturday morning was it
morning? I seemed to be almost alone in the Piazza. Then the bells began. The
fog didnt snuff the sound so much as trap it at ground level. Bell strike melted into
bell strike, amplified by the stone slabs under my feet; I began to feel the resonance 35
in my bones, my liver, my heart. Any louder, I thought, and internal bleeding might
begin. Perhaps I would be the first tourist ever to be murdered by the bells of San
Marco. I hurried into Florians, where not only could I choose my table, but also sit,
if I wished, in an entirely empty room. A white-coated waiter brought me chocolate
as thick as tree resin. I ate it rather than drank it, revelling in its bittersweet luxury, 40
looking out at the January misery of the pigeon-food salesmen.
Unless your stay is very short, too, the fog will eventually lift. The noise and
horizons will return; you will see that Venice has gasworks and pylons and pollution.
The insidious damp cold will ebb a little, as will the taste of the past. The bells will
no longer threaten to break your frame, and you will see that you are not alone with 45
your maps and your guidebook; you will realise, indeed, that Venice has no such
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 5

thing as out-of-season. The rewards of a sunlit Venice have been amply conveyed
elsewhere. As you watch the barges and lighters swarm across the basin, skipping
between the serenity of San Giorgio and the sensuality of La Salute as they deliver
the post and the beer and lug the vegetables of Catania and Umbria up to the Rialto, 50
youll find the busy pretty intricacy of the scene has barely changed, only the means
of propulsion. Even fogless, there is no better place for those with an antipathy to
the modern than Venice.

*Capulets: a family in the play Romeo and Juliet, also set in Italy

*aquiline: hooked

*vaporetto: a ferry

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 6

3 In the extract below the writer describes her shopping habits and the feelings they bring out in
her.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The writers mother has become concerned about her daughters great interest in buying
old clothes. In a letter to a friend she outlines her thoughts and feelings about it. Basing your
answer closely on the material of the original extract, write the opening to the letter (between
120150 words). [10]

I feel history when I walk into a vintage-clothes store. Sometimes, I can see
history too. I imagine the heel catching on that ripped tweed skirt and the young
woman fighting tears as she rushes past her annoyed-but-patient father to change.
She climbs two steps at a time, her mind already rifling through her sisters closet
for a plan B outfit. He reaches for another cigarette, exhaling any hopes of that 5
steadying drink before meeting the man of her dreams.
I imagine the wine splashing on that filmy high-neck pale-pink blouse and the
perfumed and powdered owner laughing it off, her attentions on the handsome
soldier courting her. The next day, she hugs the blouse close to her heaving heart,
soaking in the memories of their one evening together the short sweet memories 10
that will have to sustain her through the lonely months ahead.
I see the flushed cheeks and shining eyes of the young-and-in-love bride as her
new husband secures this string of pearls around her neck. Her reflection in the tall
moonlit looking glass shows a girl becoming a woman. He sees it too
Theres romance in vintage. 15
Theres courting, love, sex, sadness, and pain in vintage.
Its not always obvious from the dusty crowded windows, but its there the
weddings, the funerals, the parties, the disgraces, the secrets, the celebrations, the
lives. Sometimes, the storied pieces call to me from across the street, forcing me to
just take a quick look. Other times, I have to comb and climb through overcrowded 20
racks of patterned polyesters, 80s mistakes, and moth eaten wool. But when I find
that special something, I get goose bumps.
In evaluating the condition of a piece, I cant help but wonder at the life it had
before me. Sometimes the past lingers in the fabric, the secrets stuffed deep in the
pockets or shoved up stiff sleeves. Holding a dress to the light, you can often see the 25
form of its previous owner. Its most obvious with vintage shoes, where in the scuffed
soles, the worn heels, and the wrinkled tow-cap, you can see the footprint of a path
once walked.
I live in a New York City apartment so, unfortunately, I cant adopt every little
embroidered hankie, laugh-lined shoe, or patterned shift dress I think has a story. 30
My wallet is always flexible but my closet is not. So I look for unique pieces.
In searching for vintage dresses or unique patterns, Ive recently taken to
trolling eBay*. Ive found some reliable vintage stores, but my few experiences have
reinforced what Ive always known to be true: theres a very fine line between vintage
and costume. With the right styling and photography, any vintage item can be made 35
to look like a find. I recently purchased a vintage belted cream lace dress that I was
very excited about.
It had a square neck and balloon sleeves and it looked special in the photograph.
I ordered the dress and when it arrived, I noticed the frayed hem was not as edgy
as it had appeared in the photo, and the collar and sleeves made me look like a 40
Renaissance fair worker. I knew even before I tried it on that it was a nice dress, but
it would make a beautiful cushion cover.
Had I found it in person and physically handled it before purchasing, I would
have paid less, with that cushion not my cushy backside in mind. So now, I remind
myself to make careful decisions when shopping vintage online, especially when it 45

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comes to budget. The thrill of the vintage-store find is a rush but it can be tempered
with a few step-away-and-step-back moves and a slow front-and-back reality check
in front of a mirror. The thrill of the online auction however is more difficult to reign in.
Take it from me that virtual-shopping can cloud your judgment and youll suddenly
find yourself needing and willing to pay anything for that vintage Chanel skirt 50
that you cant even be sure will fit. Im not afraid of eBay though, just aware. When
used appropriately, its a great resource for vintage fabrics, scarves, beads, shoes,
jewelry, and other accessories.
I prefer to stumble not click upon my special blouses, dresses, and tees. I
want to spot them nestled between the polyester disco dress and the satin nightie. I 55
want to feel my pulse pick up as I cross to the rack, wondering if that pattern is as I
imagine, if the fit is as I dream. I want to hear them separate from the rack, shaking
loose their creases and tales. I want to take them home and introduce them to my
other storied finds.
Then I want to add a new chapter. 60

*eBay: an online auction site

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 2

Answer two questions.

1 The following passage describes the writers experience on an island off the coast of Australia.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) On his return home, Craig (the writers friend) writes an article for a travel magazine. He offers
a much more positive view than his friend of some aspects of his visit to the island. Write the
opening to Craigs article (between 120-150 words). Base your answer closely on the material
of the original extract. [10]

It is eight-thirty at night and we have finally arrived slap bang in the middle
of a wild south-easterly squall, five hours north of Brisbane, Queensland, on the
northern edge of Fraser Island. The maps call it Waddy Point, but I think badlands
is more fitting. The ocean is a wasteland. The hundred miles of beach we have just
banged our way up is a lunar landscape, and the coarse dune forest around us is a 5
deafening wall of white-static noise.
The ferocious downpour does not let up as we struggle to shape the tarpaulin
into a crude umbrella over the banksias*. We string the hammocks between the
beach buggys roll bar and the trees using twenty feet of rope tied with truck driver
hitches, and yanked until the beds are as tight as guitar strings. By the time we 10
have finished, we are drenched, as ravenous as bush pigs, and hover like solemn,
dishevelled ghosts aimless as to what to do next. The buggy looks as though it has
been looted by madmen.
Exhausted, we squelch into our slings as the rain clatters on the tarpaulin like a
million shot nails, and occasionally flushes soaking waterfalls around our heads. 15
I fell into a doze, amazed that I actually felt sleepy, and wondered what would
become of us tomorrow, in this place at the edge of the world. The winds that hung
from our hammocks slammed through the ancient forest like a horde of spoilt
children. The tarpaulin flapped as frantic as a beast trying to fly but I was too tired
to care, and slowly the rampage around me found a rhythm, and I drifted into gentle 20
and rocking hands.
I woke on the coldness of pre-dawn to an odd greyness that had been cast
down, as if from another world. The ocean shivered like no-mans land, cruel and
unforgiving, and the magnitude of this island left me feeling somewhat frail and
destitute. I glanced around the campsite, as if in a dreamland, and wondered what 25
the hell I had let myself in for. The scrub dune the camp is burrowed into is a bunker
of perfect lawn beneath a brittle skylight of banksias. The worn tarpaulin wobbled
with lakes. My mate Craig stirred and smiled up from his cocoon, and I set to task
for a heart-starter of coffee using every trick in the book to light a wet fire. I finally
resorted to melting my eyebrows with a bucketful of petrol and a tossed match. 30
Shirtless, and in our damp and smelly jeans (and me reeking of scorched hair),
we wandered like street kids onto the rim of the dunes. We squatted in the wet sand
and drank from our hot metal mugs, and smoked, and watched the world become.
The fumes from our fire were a paler blue-black trail in the mornings watercolors.
It was like sitting on the edge of a prehistoric rawness. There was to be no going 35
back today. The storms of the previous night had reduced the southern beach into a
swamp.
At that time of day and staring into the surf it was easy to imagine the sight
of a huge grey dorsal fin cruising through the shoreline gutter. This was big shark
country and it would not be the first time that I had seen a fin glide effortlessly in 40
the ocean rip, faster than any racehorse. Then, under a blanket of foam, it would be
gone. I finished my smoke and contemplated the significance of the word foodchain
in a place like this.
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 3

Tiger sharks cruise here, Craig whispers.

Tiger shark? I reply flatly. Craig giggles. 45
Wild, isnt it? he says.
Frightening, I correct him again. He looks at me, laughs, and then stares back
out to sea and says quietly, Youll be right, though you could probably fill a football
field with the number of four-wheel drives that are buried here. He sipped more
coffee and after a while said, Lets go fishing. 50
I mumbled sourly, wondering what was on the box back home, and about the
state of my lawns. I lit another smoke, thinking that I had heard it all before and
not wanting to be here. An hour later, while we were scraping a panful of burnt
bacon onto our blistered fried eggs and sandy-grit rolls, we watched as the first
whales of the day blew geysers of steam within a hundred yards of shore. The day 55
ablaze under a sapphire blue-fire sky, and utterly cloudless. The late October heat
climbed into the high twenties. The energy-sapping humidity made me feel like I was
staggering around in a sauna, and it was barely eight oclock in the morning.

*banksias: evergreen bushes

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2 The following passage is taken from a novel set at the start of the twentieth century. It describes
how a group of immigrants search for work in the USA.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Write the opening (between 120-150 words) of another descriptive piece about a visitors
experience of arriving in a new city. Base your answer closely on the style and language of
the original extract. [10]

It was in the stockyards* that Jonass friend had gotten rich, and so to Chicago
the party was bound. They knew that one word, Chicago, and that was all they
needed to know, at least, until they reached the city. Then, tumbled out of the cars
without ceremony, they were no better off than before; they stood staring down
the vista of Dearborn Street, with its big black buildings towering in the distance, 5
unable to realize that they had arrived, and why, when they said Chicago, people
no longer pointed in some direction, but instead looked perplexed, or laughed, or
went on without paying any attention. They were pitiable in their helplessness; above
all things they stood in deadly terror of any sort of person in official uniform, and
so whenever they saw a policeman they would cross the street and hurry by. For 10
the whole of the first day they wandered about in the midst of deafening confusion,
utterly lost; and it was only at night that, cowering in the doorway of a house, they
were finally discovered and taken by a policeman to the station. In the morning an
interpreter was found, and they were taken and put upon a car, and taught a new
word stockyards. Their delight at discovering that they were to get out of this 15
adventure without losing another share of their possessions it would not be possible
to describe.
They sat and stared out of the window. They were on a street which seemed to
run on forever, mile after mile thirty-four of them, if they had known it and each
side of it one uninterrupted row of wretched little two-story frame buildings. Down 20
every side street they could see, it was the same never a hill and never a hollow,
but always the same endless vista of ugly and dirty little wooden buildings. Here
and there would be a bridge crossing a filthy creek, with hard-baked mud shores
and dingy sheds and docks along it; here and there would be a railroad crossing,
with a tangle of switches, and locomotives puffing, and rattling freight cars filing by; 25
here and there would be a great factory, a dingy building with innumerable windows
in it, and immense volumes of smoke pouring from the chimneys, darkening the air
above and making filthy the earth beneath. But after each of these interruptions, the
desolate procession would begin again the procession of dreary little buildings.
A full hour before the party reached the city they had begun to note the 30
perplexing changes in the atmosphere. It grew darker all the time, and upon the
earth the grass seemed to grow less green. Every minute, as the train sped on,
the colors of things became dingier; the fields were grown parched and yellow, the
landscape hideous and bare. And along with the thickening smoke they began to
notice another circumstance, a strange, pungent odor. They were not sure that it 35
was unpleasant, this odor; some might have called it sickening, but their taste in
odors was not developed, and they were only sure that it was curious. Now, sitting
in the trolley car, they realized that they were on their way to the home of it that
they had traveled all the way from Lithuania to it. It was now no longer something
far off and faint, that you caught in whiffs; you could literally taste it, as well as smell 40
it you could take hold of it, almost, and examine it at your leisure. They were
divided in their opinions about it. It was an elemental odor, raw and crude; it was
rich, almost rancid, sensual, and strong. There were some who drank it in as if it
were an intoxicant; there were others who put their handkerchiefs to their faces. The
new emigrants were still tasting it, lost in wonder, when suddenly the car came to a 45
halt, and the door was flung open, and a voice shouted Stockyards!
UCLES 2010 8693/11/M/J/10
 5

They were left standing upon the corner, staring; down a side street there were
two rows of brick houses, and between them a vista: half a dozen chimneys, tall as
the tallest of buildings, touching the very sky and leaping from them half a dozen
columns of smoke, thick, oily, and black as night. It might have come from the center 50
of the world, this smoke, where the fires of the ages still smolder. It came as if self-
impelled, driving all before it, a perpetual explosion. It was inexhaustible; one stared,
waiting to see it stop, but still the great streams rolled out. They spread in vast clouds
overhead, writhing, curling; then, uniting in one giant river, they streamed away down
the sky, stretching a black pall as far as the eye could reach. 55

*stockyards: yards where livestock are kept before being sold, slaughtered, or shipped on

UCLES 2010 8693/11/M/J/10 [Turn over

 6

3 The following speech was delivered by Thabo Mbeki (later to become President of South Africa) in
1996.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Write the opening (between 120-150 words) of a speech in which a public figure (real or
imaginary) from a different country describes her or his sense of pride and identity. Base your
answer closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

So, let me begin.

I am an African.
I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the
rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons
that define the face of our native land. 5
My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in
the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the midday sun. The crack
and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening, have been a
cause both of trembling and of hope.
The fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to us as the sight of the wild 10
blooms to the citizens of the veld.*
The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the Lekoa,
iGqili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all been panels of the set on
the natural stage on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of our day.
At times, and in fear, I have wondered whether I should concede equal 15
citizenship of our country to the leopard and the lion, the elephant and the springbok,
the hyena, the black mamba and the pestilential mosquito.
A human presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native land
thus defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say I am an African!
I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the 20
great expanses of the beautiful Cape they who fell victim to the most merciless
genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in
the struggle to defend our freedom and independence and they who, as a people,
perished in the result.
Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of 25
the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to
obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should
teach us not and never to be inhuman again.
I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native
land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me. 30
In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East.
Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The
stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder
embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.
I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune 35
led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers
Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.
My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the
jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum,
as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert. 40
I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena
and the Bahamas, who sees in the minds eye and suffers the suffering of a simple
peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in
ruins.

UCLES 2010 8693/11/M/J/10

 7

I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world 45

markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my stomach yearns.
I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being
resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught
me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human
existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human 50
existence.
Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that
assertion, I shall claim that I am an African!

*veld: open grassland

UCLES 2010 8693/11/M/J/10

 2

Answer two questions.

1 The following passage describes the writers experience of travelling in Colombia, in South
America.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The bus company is publishing a brochure to attract more tourists for this route. Write the
opening of the brochure (between 120-150 words), presenting the positive features of the
companys vehicles and the attractiveness of the local scenery. Base your answer closely on
the content of the original extract. [10]

As we descend into the valley between the Cordillera Oriental and the Cordillera
Central, the vegetation starts to change and soon the last vestiges of the cold of
Bogot are obliterated as the bus begins to heat up like an oven.
We stop at unmarked points to pick more people up, and the conductor is kept
busy as this small bus rapidly loses not only its empty seats but its gangway as well. 5
I chivalrously stand for a woman, but am immediately pulled down by Leo who asks
what do I think I am doing? His normally confident face is clouded by incredulity. He
insists we keep together, and take turns to sleep so as to minimise the danger of
robbery and, what is more, we have paid for our seats. Very well, I think, the man is
right, this is not England, and we have many hours to go before we get off this bus. 10
We start to climb the Cordillera Central, where we begin a long and tortuous
ride along a thin ribbon of road that clings precariously to the mountainside. I watch
in awe as the depth of the drop at the edge of the road is revealed. There would be
quite simply no chance at all of survival if we went over. Seemingly, many buses
do just that, and are never heard of again. The upper side of the mountain has 15
equally as cheerful a disposition, as landslides, common in the wet season, assist
the departure from this life of any bus, such as this one. Clearly, there is absolutely
no point in worrying about this, so I get on with enjoying the view.
Sadly, passengers throw empty glass bottles out of the window without regard.
I wonder if they would be equally as carefree if our bus tyres were to blow-out at 20
speed on the edge of the mountainous precipice.
Some time later, the uninterrupted broad vista of Nature takes a kick as an
unmistakable sign of the times rears its very sad head. It is a large red hoarding
placed in the middle of nowhere advertising the virtues of a particular brand of
cigarettes. In an area devoid of habitation, and indeed some way off the road, you 25
have to ask Why?
On the facing mountainside we can see the road we have already driven down.
It is some four to five miles away, as the condor flies, yet to cover this distance,
we have spent hours hugging the steep slopes. When we finally reach Medelln, I
marvel at its location in what seems to be the bottom of a huge rocky cauldron. We 30
are well above the city and can look down, almost as an aircraft passenger, at the
myriad streets and buildings. High above Medelln, a mirror-smooth pale purple and
blue ghostly lake of air seems to extend all the way down to the city. It is the curse
of smog. The pollution is trapped in this vast cauldron leaving the people of Medelln
smothered in their own exhaust fumes. 35
Our exact moment of entry into this sea of smog is clear as the bus descends,
but no-one seems to notice. Yet for me it is palpable, and it is very soon afterwards
that the acrid smell and taste envelops me. My eyes and throat feel tainted and
irritated. Its horrible. How can anyone be fit and healthy in that?
We are in Medelln for only two hours, and stay within the confines of the bus 40
waiting for the bus to Turbo. When it does come, I am horrified at the two bald tyres

UCLES 2010 8693/12/M/J/10

 3

at its rear. As we set off on the second leg of the journey we soon return to the
ribbon mountain roads, and I try not to think about the tyres.
We sleep fitfully on the bus and when daylight comes we are in a much flatter
environment. Tropical vegetation surrounds us as we begin to stop quite frequently. I 45
wonder at what point the conductor will declare the bus to be full. I now cannot believe
the number of people who are stuffed into every bit of available space, and still they
clamber on. Now they are hanging off the sides of the bus. The conductor continues
to collect the fares from everybody no matter where they have found themselves,
and sweat pours from his patient and determined face. What a job. There is no way 50
I will relinquish my seat now. I am constantly crushed from the gangway side by
several uncomplaining people. The discomfort they must be feeling appears to be
neither here nor there. We travel like this for hours, and feel like it is not just the
chickens on the bus who are in cages. Finally, we get to a larger settlement and
many people get off. 55

UCLES 2010 8693/12/M/J/10 [Turn over

 4

2 The following passage describes the real and fantasy worlds of an American man, Walter Mitty. He
is not as special as he likes to imagine.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Mrs. Mitty writes to Dr. Renshaw to express her concerns about her husband. Write her
letter (between 120-150 words). Base your answer closely on the material of the original
extract. [10]

Were going through! The Commanders voice was like thin ice breaking. He
wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly
over one cold gray eye. We cant make it, sir. Its spoiling for a hurricane, if you
ask me. Im not asking you, Lieutenant Berg, said the Commander. Throw on
the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! Were going through! The pounding of the 5
cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander
stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of
complicated dials. Switch on No. 8 auxiliary! he shouted. Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!
repeated Lieutenant Berg. Full strength in No. 3 turret! shouted the Commander.
Full strength in No. 3 turret! The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, 10
hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. The Old
Manll get us through, they said to one another. The Old Man aint afraid of hell!
Not so fast! Youre driving too fast! said Mrs. Mitty. What are you driving so
fast for?
Hmm? said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with 15
shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who
had yelled at him in a crowd. You were up to fifty-five, she said. You know I dont
like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five. Walter Mitty drove on toward
Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty
years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. Youre tensed 20
up again, said Mrs. Mitty. Its one of your days. I wish youd let Dr. Renshaw look
you over.
Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have
her hair done. Remember to get those overshoes1 while Im having my hair done,
she said. I dont need overshoes, said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. 25
Weve been all through that, she said, getting out of the car, Youre not a young
man any longer. He raced the engine a little. Why dont you wear your gloves?
Have you lost your gloves? Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the
gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he
had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. Pick it up, brother! snapped a 30
cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead.
He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital
on his way to the parking lot.
... Its the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan, said the pretty nurse. Yes?
said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. Who has the case? Dr. Renshaw and 35
Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and
Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over. A door opened down a long, cool
corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. Hello, Mitty,
he said. Were having the devils own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and
close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish youd 40
take a look at him. Glad to, said Mitty.
In the operating room there were whispered introductions: Dr. Remington, Dr.
Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty. Ive read your book on streptothricosis, said
Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. A brilliant performance, sir. Thank you, said
Walter Mitty. Didnt know you were in the States, Mitty, grumbled Remington. Coals 45
to Newcastle,2 bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary. You are very kind,
UCLES 2010 8693/12/M/J/10
 5

said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with
many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The
new anesthetizer is giving away! shouted an intern. There is no one in the East
who knows how to fix it! Quiet, man! said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang 50
to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. He
began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. Give me a fountain pen! he
snapped. Someone handed him a pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine
and inserted the pen in its place ...
Back it up! Look out for that Buick! Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. Wrong 55
lane, said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. Gee. Yeh, muttered
Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked Exit Only. Leave her sit
there, said the attendant. Ill put her away. Mitty got out of the car. Hey, better leave
the key. Oh, said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into
the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged. 60

1 overshoes: rubber or plastic shoes worn over an ordinary shoe for protection
2 Coals to Newcastle: a phrase meaning something done unnecessarily

UCLES 2010 8693/12/M/J/10 [Turn over

 6

3 The following speech was delivered by Jomo Kenyatta, a future leader of Kenya. He was speaking to
the Kenya African Union (KAU) at a time when it was promoting non-violent calls for independence
from Britain. Kenyatta was suspected of being a member of the Mau Mau, a rival organisation
calling for more violent forms of protest against British rule.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Basing your answer closely on the style and language of the original extract, write the opening
(between 120-150 words) of a speech in which the leader of another organisation (real or
imaginary) calls for certain demands to be met. [10]

I want you to know the purpose of KAU. It is the biggest purpose the African
has. It involves every African in Kenya and it is their mouthpiece which asks for
freedom.
KAU is you and you are the KAU.
If we unite now each and every one of us and each tribe to another we 5
will cause the implementation in this country of that which the European calls
democracy. True democracy has no colour distinction. It does not choose between
black and white.
We are here in this tremendous gathering under the KAU flag to find which
road leads us from darkness into democracy. In order to find it we Africans must 10
first achieve the right to elect our own representatives. That is surely the first
principle of democracy. We are the only race in Kenya which does not elect its
own representatives in the Legislature and we are going to set about to rectify this
situation. We feel we are dominated by a handful of others who refuse to be just.
God said this is our land. Land in which we are to flourish as a people. We are 15
not worried that other races are here with us in our country, but we insist that we are
the leaders here, and what we want we insist we get. We want our cattle to get fat on
our land so that our children grow up in prosperity; we do not want that fat removed
to feed others.
He who has ears should now hear that KAU claims this land as its own gift from 20
God and I wish those who are black, white or brown at this meeting to know this.
KAU speaks in daylight. He who calls us the Mau Mau is not truthful. We do
not know this thing Mau Mau. We want to prosper as a nation, and as a nation we
demand equality, that is equal pay for equal work. Whether it is a chief, headman or
labourer he needs in these days increased salary. He needs a salary that compares 25
with a salary of a European who does equal work. We will never get our freedom
unless we succeed in this issue. We do not want equal pay for equal work tomorrow
we want it right now. Those who profess to be just must realize that this is the
foundation of justice. It has never been known in history that a country prospers
without equality. 30
We despise bribery and corruption, those two words that the European
repeatedly refers to. Bribery and corruption is prevalent in this country, but I am not
surprised. As long as a people are held down, corruption is sure to rise and the only
answer to this is a policy of equality. If we work together as one, we must succeed.
Our country today is in a bad state for its land is full of fools and fools in a 35
country delay the independence of its people. KAU seeks to remedy this situation
and I tell you now it despises thieving, robbery and murder for these practices ruin
our country. I say this because if one man steals, or two men steal, there are people
sitting close by, lapping up information, who say the whole tribe is bad because a
theft has been committed. 40
Those people are wrecking our chances of advancement. They will prevent us
getting freedom.

UCLES 2010 8693/12/M/J/10

 7

If I have my own way, let me tell you I would butcher the criminal, and there are
more criminals than one in more senses than one ...
I want to touch on a number of points, and I ask you for the hundredth time to 45
keep quiet whilst I do this. We want self-government, but this we will never get if
we drink beer. It is harming our country and making people fools and encouraging
crime. It is also taking all our money.
KAU is not a fighting union that uses fists and weapons. If any of you here think
that force is good, I do not agree with you: remember the old saying that he who is 50
hit with a rungu1 returns, but he who is bit with justice never comes back. I do not
want people to accuse us falsely that we steal and that we are Mau Mau. I pray to
you that we join hands for freedom and freedom means abolishing criminality. Beer
harms us and those who drink it do us harm and they may be the so-called Mau
Mau. Whatever grievances we have, let us air them here in the open. The criminal 55
does not want freedom and land he wants to line his own pocket. Let us therefore
demand our rights justly.

1 rungu: a weapon made of wood

UCLES 2010 8693/12/M/J/10

 2

Answer two questions.

1 The following passage describes the writers experience of travelling in Colombia, in South
America.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The bus company is publishing a brochure to attract more tourists for this route. Write the
opening of the brochure (between 120-150 words), presenting the positive features of the
companys vehicles and the attractiveness of the local scenery. Base your answer closely on
the content of the original extract. [10]

As we descend into the valley between the Cordillera Oriental and the Cordillera
Central, the vegetation starts to change and soon the last vestiges of the cold of
Bogot are obliterated as the bus begins to heat up like an oven.
We stop at unmarked points to pick more people up, and the conductor is kept
busy as this small bus rapidly loses not only its empty seats but its gangway as well. 5
I chivalrously stand for a woman, but am immediately pulled down by Leo who asks
what do I think I am doing? His normally confident face is clouded by incredulity. He
insists we keep together, and take turns to sleep so as to minimise the danger of
robbery and, what is more, we have paid for our seats. Very well, I think, the man is
right, this is not England, and we have many hours to go before we get off this bus. 10
We start to climb the Cordillera Central, where we begin a long and tortuous
ride along a thin ribbon of road that clings precariously to the mountainside. I watch
in awe as the depth of the drop at the edge of the road is revealed. There would be
quite simply no chance at all of survival if we went over. Seemingly, many buses
do just that, and are never heard of again. The upper side of the mountain has 15
equally as cheerful a disposition, as landslides, common in the wet season, assist
the departure from this life of any bus, such as this one. Clearly, there is absolutely
no point in worrying about this, so I get on with enjoying the view.
Sadly, passengers throw empty glass bottles out of the window without regard.
I wonder if they would be equally as carefree if our bus tyres were to blow-out at 20
speed on the edge of the mountainous precipice.
Some time later, the uninterrupted broad vista of Nature takes a kick as an
unmistakable sign of the times rears its very sad head. It is a large red hoarding
placed in the middle of nowhere advertising the virtues of a particular brand of
cigarettes. In an area devoid of habitation, and indeed some way off the road, you 25
have to ask Why?
On the facing mountainside we can see the road we have already driven down.
It is some four to five miles away, as the condor flies, yet to cover this distance,
we have spent hours hugging the steep slopes. When we finally reach Medelln, I
marvel at its location in what seems to be the bottom of a huge rocky cauldron. We 30
are well above the city and can look down, almost as an aircraft passenger, at the
myriad streets and buildings. High above Medelln, a mirror-smooth pale purple and
blue ghostly lake of air seems to extend all the way down to the city. It is the curse
of smog. The pollution is trapped in this vast cauldron leaving the people of Medelln
smothered in their own exhaust fumes. 35
Our exact moment of entry into this sea of smog is clear as the bus descends,
but no-one seems to notice. Yet for me it is palpable, and it is very soon afterwards
that the acrid smell and taste envelops me. My eyes and throat feel tainted and
irritated. Its horrible. How can anyone be fit and healthy in that?
We are in Medelln for only two hours, and stay within the confines of the bus 40
waiting for the bus to Turbo. When it does come, I am horrified at the two bald tyres

UCLES 2010 8693/13/M/J/10

 3

at its rear. As we set off on the second leg of the journey we soon return to the
ribbon mountain roads, and I try not to think about the tyres.
We sleep fitfully on the bus and when daylight comes we are in a much flatter
environment. Tropical vegetation surrounds us as we begin to stop quite frequently. I 45
wonder at what point the conductor will declare the bus to be full. I now cannot believe
the number of people who are stuffed into every bit of available space, and still they
clamber on. Now they are hanging off the sides of the bus. The conductor continues
to collect the fares from everybody no matter where they have found themselves,
and sweat pours from his patient and determined face. What a job. There is no way 50
I will relinquish my seat now. I am constantly crushed from the gangway side by
several uncomplaining people. The discomfort they must be feeling appears to be
neither here nor there. We travel like this for hours, and feel like it is not just the
chickens on the bus who are in cages. Finally, we get to a larger settlement and
many people get off. 55

UCLES 2010 8693/13/M/J/10 [Turn over

 4

2 The following passage describes the real and fantasy worlds of an American man, Walter Mitty. He
is not as special as he likes to imagine.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Mrs. Mitty writes to Dr. Renshaw to express her concerns about her husband. Write her
letter (between 120-150 words). Base your answer closely on the material of the original
extract. [10]

Were going through! The Commanders voice was like thin ice breaking. He
wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly
over one cold gray eye. We cant make it, sir. Its spoiling for a hurricane, if you
ask me. Im not asking you, Lieutenant Berg, said the Commander. Throw on
the power lights! Rev her up to 8500! Were going through! The pounding of the 5
cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander
stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of
complicated dials. Switch on No. 8 auxiliary! he shouted. Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!
repeated Lieutenant Berg. Full strength in No. 3 turret! shouted the Commander.
Full strength in No. 3 turret! The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, 10
hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. The Old
Manll get us through, they said to one another. The Old Man aint afraid of hell!
Not so fast! Youre driving too fast! said Mrs. Mitty. What are you driving so
fast for?
Hmm? said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with 15
shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who
had yelled at him in a crowd. You were up to fifty-five, she said. You know I dont
like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five. Walter Mitty drove on toward
Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty
years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. Youre tensed 20
up again, said Mrs. Mitty. Its one of your days. I wish youd let Dr. Renshaw look
you over.
Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have
her hair done. Remember to get those overshoes1 while Im having my hair done,
she said. I dont need overshoes, said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. 25
Weve been all through that, she said, getting out of the car, Youre not a young
man any longer. He raced the engine a little. Why dont you wear your gloves?
Have you lost your gloves? Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the
gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he
had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. Pick it up, brother! snapped a 30
cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead.
He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital
on his way to the parking lot.
... Its the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan, said the pretty nurse. Yes?
said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. Who has the case? Dr. Renshaw and 35
Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and
Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over. A door opened down a long, cool
corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. Hello, Mitty,
he said. Were having the devils own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and
close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish youd 40
take a look at him. Glad to, said Mitty.
In the operating room there were whispered introductions: Dr. Remington, Dr.
Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty. Ive read your book on streptothricosis, said
Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. A brilliant performance, sir. Thank you, said
Walter Mitty. Didnt know you were in the States, Mitty, grumbled Remington. Coals 45
to Newcastle,2 bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary. You are very kind,
UCLES 2010 8693/13/M/J/10
 5

said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with
many tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The
new anesthetizer is giving away! shouted an intern. There is no one in the East
who knows how to fix it! Quiet, man! said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang 50
to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. He
began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. Give me a fountain pen! he
snapped. Someone handed him a pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine
and inserted the pen in its place ...
Back it up! Look out for that Buick! Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. Wrong 55
lane, said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. Gee. Yeh, muttered
Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked Exit Only. Leave her sit
there, said the attendant. Ill put her away. Mitty got out of the car. Hey, better leave
the key. Oh, said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant vaulted into
the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged. 60

1 overshoes: rubber or plastic shoes worn over an ordinary shoe for protection
2 Coals to Newcastle: a phrase meaning something done unnecessarily

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3 The following speech was delivered by Jomo Kenyatta, a future leader of Kenya. He was speaking to
the Kenya African Union (KAU) at a time when it was promoting non-violent calls for independence
from Britain. Kenyatta was suspected of being a member of the Mau Mau, a rival organisation
calling for more violent forms of protest against British rule.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Basing your answer closely on the style and language of the original extract, write the opening
(between 120-150 words) of a speech in which the leader of another organisation (real or
imaginary) calls for certain demands to be met. [10]

I want you to know the purpose of KAU. It is the biggest purpose the African
has. It involves every African in Kenya and it is their mouthpiece which asks for
freedom.
KAU is you and you are the KAU.
If we unite now each and every one of us and each tribe to another we 5
will cause the implementation in this country of that which the European calls
democracy. True democracy has no colour distinction. It does not choose between
black and white.
We are here in this tremendous gathering under the KAU flag to find which
road leads us from darkness into democracy. In order to find it we Africans must 10
first achieve the right to elect our own representatives. That is surely the first
principle of democracy. We are the only race in Kenya which does not elect its
own representatives in the Legislature and we are going to set about to rectify this
situation. We feel we are dominated by a handful of others who refuse to be just.
God said this is our land. Land in which we are to flourish as a people. We are 15
not worried that other races are here with us in our country, but we insist that we are
the leaders here, and what we want we insist we get. We want our cattle to get fat on
our land so that our children grow up in prosperity; we do not want that fat removed
to feed others.
He who has ears should now hear that KAU claims this land as its own gift from 20
God and I wish those who are black, white or brown at this meeting to know this.
KAU speaks in daylight. He who calls us the Mau Mau is not truthful. We do
not know this thing Mau Mau. We want to prosper as a nation, and as a nation we
demand equality, that is equal pay for equal work. Whether it is a chief, headman or
labourer he needs in these days increased salary. He needs a salary that compares 25
with a salary of a European who does equal work. We will never get our freedom
unless we succeed in this issue. We do not want equal pay for equal work tomorrow
we want it right now. Those who profess to be just must realize that this is the
foundation of justice. It has never been known in history that a country prospers
without equality. 30
We despise bribery and corruption, those two words that the European
repeatedly refers to. Bribery and corruption is prevalent in this country, but I am not
surprised. As long as a people are held down, corruption is sure to rise and the only
answer to this is a policy of equality. If we work together as one, we must succeed.
Our country today is in a bad state for its land is full of fools and fools in a 35
country delay the independence of its people. KAU seeks to remedy this situation
and I tell you now it despises thieving, robbery and murder for these practices ruin
our country. I say this because if one man steals, or two men steal, there are people
sitting close by, lapping up information, who say the whole tribe is bad because a
theft has been committed. 40
Those people are wrecking our chances of advancement. They will prevent us
getting freedom.

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If I have my own way, let me tell you I would butcher the criminal, and there are
more criminals than one in more senses than one ...
I want to touch on a number of points, and I ask you for the hundredth time to 45
keep quiet whilst I do this. We want self-government, but this we will never get if
we drink beer. It is harming our country and making people fools and encouraging
crime. It is also taking all our money.
KAU is not a fighting union that uses fists and weapons. If any of you here think
that force is good, I do not agree with you: remember the old saying that he who is 50
hit with a rungu1 returns, but he who is bit with justice never comes back. I do not
want people to accuse us falsely that we steal and that we are Mau Mau. I pray to
you that we join hands for freedom and freedom means abolishing criminality. Beer
harms us and those who drink it do us harm and they may be the so-called Mau
Mau. Whatever grievances we have, let us air them here in the open. The criminal 55
does not want freedom and land he wants to line his own pocket. Let us therefore
demand our rights justly.

1 rungu: a weapon made of wood

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Answer two questions

1 The following passage is part of a speech delivered in China in 1995 by Hillary Clinton, wife of the
American president at the time. In it she considers the issue of womens rights.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same speaker delivers another speech to an international audience. In it she considers
the rights of children. Write the opening of her speech (between 120150 words). Base your
answer closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

I would like to thank the Secretary General of the United Nations for inviting me
to be part of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. This is truly a
celebration a celebration of the contributions women make in every aspect of life:
in the home, on the job, in their communities, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters,
learners, workers, citizens and leaders. 5
It is also a coming together, much the way women come together every day in
every country.
We come together in fields and in factories. In village markets and supermarkets.
In living rooms and board rooms.
Whether it is while playing with our children in the park, or washing clothes in a 10
river, or taking a break at the office water cooler, we come together and talk about
our aspirations and concerns. And time and again, our talk turns to our children and
our families.
However different we may be, there is far more that unites us than divides us.
We share a common future. And we are here to find common ground so that we 15
may help bring new dignity and respect to women and girls all over the world and
in so doing, bring new strength and stability to families as well.
By gathering in Beijing, we are focusing world attention on issues that matter
most in the lives of women and their families: access to education, health care, jobs,
and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights and participate fully in 20
the political life of their countries.
There are some who question the reason for this conference. Let them listen to
the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces.
There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to
economic and political progress around the globe. Let them look at the women 25
gathered here and at Huairou the homemakers, nurses, teachers, lawyers,
policymakers, and women who run their own businesses.
It is conferences like this that compel governments and peoples everywhere to
listen, look and face the worlds most pressing problems.
Wasnt it after the womens conference in Nairobi ten years ago that the world 30
focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?
Earlier today, I participated in a World Health Organization forum, where
government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are working on ways to address
the health problems of women and girls.
Tomorrow, I will attend a gathering of the United Nations Development Fund for 35
Women. There, the discussion will focus on local and highly successful programs
that give hard-working women access to credit so they can improve their own lives
and the lives of their families.
What we are learning around the world is that, if women are healthy and
educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families 40
will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in
society, their families will flourish.
And when families flourish, communities and nations will flourish.
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That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation
on our planet has a stake in the discussion that takes place here. 45
Over the past twenty-five years, I have worked persistently on issues relating
to women, children and families. Over the past two-and-a-half years, I have had the
opportunity to learn more about the challenges facing women in my own country
and around the world.
I have met new mothers in Indonesia, who come together regularly in their 50
villages to discuss nutrition, family planning, and baby care.
I have met working parents in Denmark who talk about the comfort they feel
in knowing that their children can be cared for in creative, safe, and nurturing after-
school centers.
I have met women in South Africa who helped lead the struggle to end apartheid 55
and are now helping build a new democracy.
I have met with the leading women of the Western Hemisphere who are
working every day to promote literacy and better health care for the children of their
countries.
I have met women in India and Bangladesh who are taking out small loans 60
to buy milk cows, rickshaws, thread and other materials to create a livelihood for
themselves and their families.
I have met doctors and nurses in Belarus and Ukraine who are trying to keep
children alive in the aftermath of Chernobyl.
The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women everywhere 65
whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard.
Women comprise more than half the worlds population. Women are seventy
percent of the worlds poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and
write.
Women are the primary caretakers for most of the worlds children and elderly. 70
Yet much of the work we do is not valued not by economists, not by historians, not
by popular culture, not by government leaders.

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2 The following passage describes the writer moving from Istanbul (in Turkey) to Geneva (in
Switzerland).

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Later, the writers brother publishes an autobiography. In one chapter, he recalls the behaviour,
thoughts and feelings of both brothers during their stay in Geneva, Switzerland. Write the
opening of the chapter (between 120150 words). Base your answer closely on the material
of the original extract. [10]

In 1959, when I was seven years old, my father went missing under mysterious
circumstances. This was how my father joined the long line of penniless and
miserable Turkish intellectuals who had been walking the streets of Paris for a
century already. My father became one of Europes first Turkish guest workers. My
mother soon joined him, leaving my older brother and me in our grandmothers plush 5
and crowded home. We were to follow our mother to Geneva after school had closed
for the summer, which meant that we needed to get passports.
I remember having to pose for a very long time while the old photographer
fiddled, under a black cloth, with a three-legged contraption with bellows. To cast
light onto the chemical plate, he had to open the lens for a split second, which he 10
did with an elegant flick of his hand, but, before he did this, he would look at us and
say, Yeeeees, and it was because I found this photographer truly ridiculous that
my first passport picture shows me biting my cheeks. The passport notes that my
hair, which had probably been combed for the first time that year in preparation for
the photograph, was chestnut brown. I must have flipped through the passport too 15
quickly back then to notice that someone had got my eye color wrong; it was only
when I opened it thirty years later that I picked up on the mistake. What this taught
me was that, contrary to what Id believed, a passport is not a document that tells us
who we are but a document that shows what other people think of us.
As we flew into Geneva, our new passports in the pockets of our new jackets, 20
my brother and I were overcome with terror. The plane banked as it came in for
a landing, and to us this country called Switzerland seemed to be a place where
everything, even the clouds, was on a steep incline that stretched to infinity. The
streets in Switzerland were cleaner and emptier than those at home. There was
more variety in the shop windows, and there were more cars. The beggars didnt 25
beg empty-handed, as in Istanbul; instead, theyd stand under your window playing
the accordion. Before we threw money to our local beggar, my mother would wrap it
in paper.
Our apartment had been rented furnished. This was how I came to
associate living in another country with sitting at tables where others had sat 30
before, using glasses and plates that other people had drunk from and dined
on, and sleeping in beds that had grown old after years of cradling other
sleeping people. Another country was a country that belonged to other people.
We had to accept the fact that the things we were using would never belong to
us, and that this country, this other land, would never belong to us, either. 35
My mother, who had studied at a French school in Istanbul, sat us down at the
empty dining-room table every morning that summer and tried to teach us French.
Only when we were enrolled in a state primary school did we discover that we had
learned nothing. My parents hoped that we would learn French simply by listening to
the teacher day in and day out, but we didnt. When recess began, my brother and I 40
would wander among the crowds of playing children until we found each other and
could hold hands. This foreign land was an endless garden full of happy children. My
brother and I watched that garden with longing, from a distance.

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Although my brother couldnt speak French, he was top in his class at counting
backward by threes. The only thing I was good at in this school where I couldnt 45
understand the language was silence. Just as you might struggle to wake up from
a dream in which no one speaks, I fought not to go to school. As it did later, in
other cities and other schools, my tendency to turn inward protected me from lifes
difficulties, but it also deprived me of lifes riches. One day, my parents took my
brother out of school, too. Putting our passports in our hands, they sent us away 50
from Geneva, back to our grandmother in Istanbul.
I never used that passport again: it was a reminder of my first failed European
adventure, and such was the vehemence of my decision to turn inward that it would
be another twenty-four years before I left Turkey again. When I was young, I always
gazed with admiration and envy at those who acquired passports and travelled to 55
Europe and beyond, but, despite the opportunities that were presented to me, I
remained fearfully certain that it was my lot to sit in a corner in Istanbul

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3 In the following passage the writer describes two different experiences of searching for tigers in
India.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) On another expedition, the writer goes with Prasad and Neem to search for a different kind
of animal and writes an article about his experience. Write the opening of the article (between
120150 words). Base your answer closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

We had just regained the path on the far side of the stream when Prasad
stopped. So far our tiger hunt had been unsuccessful. A group of Malabar pied
hornbills clattered through a tall fruit-bearing tree above us. Further away there was
another sound, an urgent and repetitive bark. Prasad used his stick to draw two
circles in the dirt around some marks. Neem translated his whispers. 5
Leopard tracks they are about fifteen minutes ahead of us. A mother and
cub. The barking is the langur monkeys giving warnings.
We went forward. The jungle was tinderbox dry. It was almost impossible to
move without snapping a twig under a pile of crackling leaves and there were four of
us: myself, two park guides and Neem, naturalist and translator. Through the trees 10
we caught occasional glimpses of the main ridge that makes up Satpura national
park, a 1,400-square-kilometre patch of jungle in the central Indian state of Madhya
Pradesh. That morning, Neem had told me, I was the only tourist in all those acres
of wild forest.
Where the path cleared a little, Prasad pointed out more tracks: Indian wild dog 15
very rare animal. And nearby something else: a pile of whitened droppings. Tiger.
I felt the adrenaline kick through me. In my imagination the thickets around
us parted and a massive orange and black killer came hurtling out. An adult royal
Bengal tiger can weigh up to 35 stone. It sprints at 50 miles per hour. How fast could
I climb a tree? My assignment was to investigate whether tourism can benefit tiger 20
conservation, but now I wondered if I was about to increase the tigers food supply.
It was nonsense, of course. Any tiger that sensed our presence would be quietly
moving in the opposite direction. One cannot, however, always be rational about
such things.
Neem grinned, as if he guessed my thoughts. Its old, he said. A couple of 25
weeks.
Further down the track, Prasad and his partner, Ashish, held a whispered
conversation. The warning cries had stopped and so had the leopard tracks. They
were trying to second-guess the cats direction. We moved forward again, cutting
through the forest past a pile of white bones. An old kill a gaur, or Indian bison. 30
Then suddenly Prasad crouched down, motioning us to do likewise. There was
a whispered conversation and a single glistening drop of liquid on a dry grass blade
was pointed out to me. Indian wild dog. It must be very close.
Prasad slowly raised his head over the line of the undergrowth and I copied.
Almost immediately I saw them: a pack of chestnut and white coloured hounds, 35
more like a long-legged fox than a dog, loping directly towards us. In seconds they
would be on top of us. I ducked down and got the camera ready.
The dogs, however, had sensed our presence and altered course. All I got was
a brief glimpse through the trees to our left, a single adult that had paused briefly to
watch us. Then, in a flick of chestnut tails, they were gone. 40
We stood up and relaxed. Unbelievable, said Neem. There were eighteen of
them Ive never seen so many. Very rare sighting.
I was shocked to find that forty minutes had passed since encountering the
leopard tracks. The concentration had been so intense. And what had we seen?
No tigers. No more than a few seconds of a wild dog, but I was buzzing with the 45
adrenaline.
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Breakfast? Neem suggested. We moved on to some smooth flat-topped

boulders, brushed aside a few porcupine poos and sat down. Neem took a lunch
box out. Cucumber sandwich anyone?
Now cut away to a week earlier. This time I am in Kanha National Tiger Reserve, 50
again in Madhya Pradesh. Kanha provides visitors with the classic Indian wildlife
experience, the one most tour companies offer and the one that usually guarantees
a tiger sighting.
At 6 a.m. we are in a queue of about fifty jeeps at the park gates, awaiting entry
to the core zone of the reserve. Most of the vehicles are filled with Indian families, 55
kids excited and chattering, ladies in bright saris. We have passed through the broad
buffer zone where villagers are allowed to live inside a protected forest. Its also the
zone where privately run tourist lodges are springing up in profusion to cater for this
explosion in domestic tourism. We pick up our local guide and the gate opens.
There is no tracking, however. No one is allowed down from the open-topped 60
jeep and no deviation from the dirt road is permitted. The net result is that the local
guide contributes very little, his ground-level knowledge locked away in the front
seat of the jeep.

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Answer two questions

1 The following passage is part of a speech given by Barack Obama, future president of the United
States, to his political party in 2004. In it he considers the rights children should have.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same speaker delivers another speech to his political party. In it he considers the rights
of women. Write the opening of the speech (between 120150 words). Base your answer
closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

Tonight is a particular honor for me because, lets face it, my presence on this
stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small
village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His
father my grandfather was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and 5
perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that
shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.
While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the
other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through
most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for 10
duty; joined Pattons army, marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother
raised a baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they
studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through F.H.A., and later moved west all the
way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.
And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two 15
continents.
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith
in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or
blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.
They imagined They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even 20
though they werent rich, because in a generous America you dont have to be rich
to achieve your potential.
Theyre both passed away now. And yet, I know that on this night they look
down on me with great pride.
They stand here and I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my 25
heritage, aware that my parents dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I
stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a
debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is
my story even possible
That is the true genius of America, a faith a faith in simple dreams, an 30
insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that
they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write
what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an
idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in
the political process without fear of retribution; and that our votes will be counted 35
at least most of the time.
And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I say to
you tonight: We have more work to do more work to do for the workers I met in
Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant thats moving
to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay 40
seven bucks an hour; more to do for the father that I met who was losing his job
and choking back the tears, wondering how he would pay 4500 dollars a month for
the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on; more to do
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for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the
grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesnt have the money to go to college. 45
Now, dont get me wrong. The people I meet in small towns and big cities, in
diners and office parks they dont expect government to solve all their problems.
They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the collar
counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they dont want their tax money
wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. Go in Go into any inner city 50
neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone cant teach our kids to
learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children cant achieve unless we
raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander
that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.
People dont expect people dont expect government to solve all their problems. 55
But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we
can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the
doors of opportunity remain open to all.
They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

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2 The following passage describes the writers relationship with his father.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Later, the writer finds part of his fathers autobiography in the suitcase. In one chapter the
father describes his thoughts and feelings about his relationship with his son. Write the
opening of the chapter (between 120150 words). Base your answer closely on the material
of the original extract. [10]

Two years before my father died, he gave me a small suitcase filled with his
manuscripts and notebooks. Assuming his usual jocular, mocking air, he told me that
he wanted me to read them after he was gone, by which he meant after his death.
Just take a look, he said, slightly embarrassed. See if theres anything in there
that you can use. Maybe after Im gone you can make a selection and publish it. 5
We were in my study, surrounded by books. My father was searching for a place
to set down the suitcase, wandering around like a man who wished to rid himself of
a painful burden. In the end, he deposited it quietly, unobtrusively, in a corner. It was
a shaming moment that neither of us ever quite forgot, but once it had passed and
we had gone back to our usual roles, taking life lightly, we relaxed. We talked as we 10
always did about trivial, everyday things, and our countrys never-ending political
troubles, and my fathers mostly failed business ventures without feeling too much
sorrow.
For several days after that, I walked back and forth past the suitcase without
ever actually touching it. I was already familiar with this small black leather case, 15
with a lock and rounded corners. When I was a child, my father had taken it with him
on short trips and had sometimes used it to carry documents to work. Whenever he
came home from a trip, Id rush to open this little suitcase and rummage through
his things, savoring the scent of cologne and foreign countries. The suitcase was a
friend, a powerful reminder of my past, but now I couldnt even touch it. Why? No 20
doubt because of the mysterious weight of its contents
When I did finally touch my fathers suitcase, I still could not bring myself to
open it. But I knew what was inside some of the notebooks it held. I had seen my
father writing in them. My father had a large library. In his youth, in the late nineteen-
forties, he had wanted to be a poet but he had not wanted to live the sort of life that 25
came with writing poetry in a poor country where there were few readers. My fathers
father my grandfather was a wealthy businessman, and my father had led a
comfortable life as a child and a young man; he had no wish to endure hardship for
the sake of literature, for writing. He loved life with all its beauties: this I understood.
The first thing that kept me away from my fathers suitcase was, of course, a 30
fear that I might not like what I read. Because my father understood this, too, he had
taken the precaution of acting as if he did not take the contents of the case seriously.
By this time, I had been working as a writer for twenty-five years, and his failure to
take literature seriously pained me. But that was not what worried me most: my real
fear the crucial thing that I did not wish to discover was that my father might be 35
a good writer. If true and great literature emerged from my fathers suitcase, I would
have to acknowledge that inside my father there existed a man who was entirely
different from the one I knew. This was a frightening possibility. Even at my advanced
age, I wanted my father to be my father and my father only not a writer
So this was what was driving me when I first opened my fathers suitcase: 40
Did my father have a secret, an unhappiness in his life that I knew nothing about,
something that he could endure only by pouring it into his writing? As soon as I
opened the suitcase, I recalled its scent of travel and recognized several notebooks
that my father had shown me years earlier, though without dwelling on them for long.
Most of the notebooks I now took in my hands he had filled when he was in Paris as 45
a young man. Although, like so many writers I admired writers whose biographies
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I had read I wished to know what my father had written, and what he had thought,
when he was the age I was now, it did not take me long to realize that I would find
nothing like that here. What disturbed me most was when, now and again, in my
fathers notebooks, I came upon a writerly voice. This was not my fathers voice, I 50
told myself; it wasnt authentic, or, at least, it didnt belong to the man Id known as
my father. Beneath my fear that my father might not have been my father when he
wrote was a more profound fear: the fear that, deep inside, I was not authentic.

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3 The following passage describes an English writers visit to a place of religious study in Tarim,
Yemen.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Later, the writer visits another group of women studying in another country. She writes a
magazine article describing the place and some of the people she met. Write the opening of
the article (between 120150 words). Base your answer closely on the style and language of
the original extract. [10]

On my flight from Dubai to the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, every other woman is
wearing a black face veil. After the glitz and hustle of Dubai, Sanaas mud-brick
old city feels dark, quiet and ancient. It is the summer monsoon and in the late
afternoon the sunken street past the old city is suddenly waist-deep with rushing
grey water, submerging a taxi. Four men with curved daggers thrust into their wide, 5
gold-embroidered belts hitch up their white robes and wade in to heave it out. A
crowd gathers, but the few women hurrying past, draped in black, do not stop. In
Yemen the streets overwhelmingly belong to men.
Tarim is remoter still, three hundred miles south-east across the desert in a vast
canyon, the Wadi Hadhramaut. Descending towards the canyons little airport, the 10
plane plunges into a landscape of tiny emerald-green fields set with date palms and
crumbling mud-brick towers. Where the irrigation stops, the valley sides are dotted
with the whitewashed tombs of local saints. The Hadhramaut tribe converted to
Islam around the time of the Prophets death and it has been famous for its scholars
and holy men ever since. 15
The place of miracles turns out to be a nondescript grid of square concrete
buildings under the high canyon walls. One of them conceals a tall, galleried white
courtyard, where a dark-eyed Briton in black robes, Asma, is waiting for me.
Salaam, welcome to Dar al-Zahra, she says, taking my hands. Little girls in
coloured gowns bring metal cups of iced water and wave palm leaf fans while the 20
older students, all in black, press round to wish me peace. They have been sent
from Indonesia, East Africa and the Arab world to complete their years of Islamic
study. But I have come to meet the Dowra girls, western Muslims on a forty day
programme introducing them to a beginners version of life in the centre. In the
windowless hallway of their separate home, a dozen twentysomething women in 25
bright ankle-length house-gowns and headscarves are sitting on thin mattresses
with their textbooks. They look tired and hot.
This is Rachel, our guest, says Asma.
The warmth of the girls welcome surprises me. They jump up, smiling, to wish
me peace, hurry to bring tea and carry my bags earnestly striving to live up to 30
the religious virtue of hospitality. Aziza, a lively girl with heavy kohl rings around her
dark eyes, introduces me.
Many of my new housemates are, like Aziza, from Urdu-speaking British-
Pakistani families, but there are also a handful of converts, including a South
African lawyer called Samira, a Canadian student, Sara, and a blue-eyed English 35
girl who has taken the Arabic name Nur, Light. When they head off, chattering, to
the afternoon prayer, I explore the Dowra house. It is less like an austere religious
retreat than a boarding school: it smells of shampoo, perfume and sweaty nylon,
and the shared bathroom is a cheerful girly clutter of pink razors and make-up. But
on the door someone has stuck a note in felt-tip pen: the duas or special prayers 40
to be repeated before and after using the shower or toilet
We have been sitting cross-legged and barefoot on the floor for two hours and
my knees and back are burning. Even the other girls are wincing.
Is it too strict? I ask.

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 7

No, no, says Aziza. And the more you suffer, the more it proves your himma. 45
Himma is the virtue of spiritual aspiration, and the girls are keen to encourage each
other in its feats.
When were really tired, I say, Come on, girls, explains Aziza. Remember
that the darkness on the way to the mosque in the morning will be repaid with light
on Judgment Day, when everyone else is in the dark. 50
As we trail slowly back along the dust road, the girls describe the rules for
students. They are based on the strict codes of behaviour that apply to Yemeni
women, who are among the least educated and most cloistered in the world. Away
from the concrete boxes of its outskirts, Tarim is an exotically beautiful town of
merchants palaces and mud-brick mosques. But, unlike the male students, the girls 55
are not allowed to visit the fruit and vegetable market, drink Fanta in the couple
of grill cafes or visit the tumbledown outdoor teahouse in the shade of the date
palms. They leave the house only for short walks along the dust roads to prayer
halls or lecture rooms, rarely after dark, and never alone. Outside, they wear the
abeyya, a voluminous black robe, and the niqab, a double-layered black face-veil. 60
The unmarried women have no contact with men.
Late that night, as the girls prepare for bed or sit softly reciting the Quran,
Iman, an American convert, takes me aside.
You should wear niqab like we do. Then you wont draw so much attention to
yourself. None of us wear it at home, but when were here 65

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 2

Answer two questions

1 The following passage is part of a speech given by Barack Obama, future president of the United
States, to his political party in 2004. In it he considers the rights children should have.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same speaker delivers another speech to his political party. In it he considers the rights
of women. Write the opening of the speech (between 120150 words). Base your answer
closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

Tonight is a particular honor for me because, lets face it, my presence on this
stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small
village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His
father my grandfather was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and 5
perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that
shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.
While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the
other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through
most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for 10
duty; joined Pattons army, marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother
raised a baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they
studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through F.H.A., and later moved west all the
way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.
And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two 15
continents.
My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith
in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or
blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.
They imagined They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even 20
though they werent rich, because in a generous America you dont have to be rich
to achieve your potential.
Theyre both passed away now. And yet, I know that on this night they look
down on me with great pride.
They stand here and I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my 25
heritage, aware that my parents dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I
stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a
debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is
my story even possible
That is the true genius of America, a faith a faith in simple dreams, an 30
insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that
they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write
what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an
idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in
the political process without fear of retribution; and that our votes will be counted 35
at least most of the time.
And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I say to
you tonight: We have more work to do more work to do for the workers I met in
Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant thats moving
to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay 40
seven bucks an hour; more to do for the father that I met who was losing his job
and choking back the tears, wondering how he would pay 4500 dollars a month for
the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on; more to do
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 3

for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the
grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesnt have the money to go to college. 45
Now, dont get me wrong. The people I meet in small towns and big cities, in
diners and office parks they dont expect government to solve all their problems.
They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the collar
counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they dont want their tax money
wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. Go in Go into any inner city 50
neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone cant teach our kids to
learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children cant achieve unless we
raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander
that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.
People dont expect people dont expect government to solve all their problems. 55
But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we
can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the
doors of opportunity remain open to all.
They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

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 4

2 The following passage describes the writers relationship with his father.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Later, the writer finds part of his fathers autobiography in the suitcase. In one chapter the
father describes his thoughts and feelings about his relationship with his son. Write the
opening of the chapter (between 120150 words). Base your answer closely on the material
of the original extract. [10]

Two years before my father died, he gave me a small suitcase filled with his
manuscripts and notebooks. Assuming his usual jocular, mocking air, he told me that
he wanted me to read them after he was gone, by which he meant after his death.
Just take a look, he said, slightly embarrassed. See if theres anything in there
that you can use. Maybe after Im gone you can make a selection and publish it. 5
We were in my study, surrounded by books. My father was searching for a place
to set down the suitcase, wandering around like a man who wished to rid himself of
a painful burden. In the end, he deposited it quietly, unobtrusively, in a corner. It was
a shaming moment that neither of us ever quite forgot, but once it had passed and
we had gone back to our usual roles, taking life lightly, we relaxed. We talked as we 10
always did about trivial, everyday things, and our countrys never-ending political
troubles, and my fathers mostly failed business ventures without feeling too much
sorrow.
For several days after that, I walked back and forth past the suitcase without
ever actually touching it. I was already familiar with this small black leather case, 15
with a lock and rounded corners. When I was a child, my father had taken it with him
on short trips and had sometimes used it to carry documents to work. Whenever he
came home from a trip, Id rush to open this little suitcase and rummage through
his things, savoring the scent of cologne and foreign countries. The suitcase was a
friend, a powerful reminder of my past, but now I couldnt even touch it. Why? No 20
doubt because of the mysterious weight of its contents
When I did finally touch my fathers suitcase, I still could not bring myself to
open it. But I knew what was inside some of the notebooks it held. I had seen my
father writing in them. My father had a large library. In his youth, in the late nineteen-
forties, he had wanted to be a poet but he had not wanted to live the sort of life that 25
came with writing poetry in a poor country where there were few readers. My fathers
father my grandfather was a wealthy businessman, and my father had led a
comfortable life as a child and a young man; he had no wish to endure hardship for
the sake of literature, for writing. He loved life with all its beauties: this I understood.
The first thing that kept me away from my fathers suitcase was, of course, a 30
fear that I might not like what I read. Because my father understood this, too, he had
taken the precaution of acting as if he did not take the contents of the case seriously.
By this time, I had been working as a writer for twenty-five years, and his failure to
take literature seriously pained me. But that was not what worried me most: my real
fear the crucial thing that I did not wish to discover was that my father might be 35
a good writer. If true and great literature emerged from my fathers suitcase, I would
have to acknowledge that inside my father there existed a man who was entirely
different from the one I knew. This was a frightening possibility. Even at my advanced
age, I wanted my father to be my father and my father only not a writer
So this was what was driving me when I first opened my fathers suitcase: 40
Did my father have a secret, an unhappiness in his life that I knew nothing about,
something that he could endure only by pouring it into his writing? As soon as I
opened the suitcase, I recalled its scent of travel and recognized several notebooks
that my father had shown me years earlier, though without dwelling on them for long.
Most of the notebooks I now took in my hands he had filled when he was in Paris as 45
a young man. Although, like so many writers I admired writers whose biographies
UCLES 2011 8693/13/M/J/11
 5

I had read I wished to know what my father had written, and what he had thought,
when he was the age I was now, it did not take me long to realize that I would find
nothing like that here. What disturbed me most was when, now and again, in my
fathers notebooks, I came upon a writerly voice. This was not my fathers voice, I 50
told myself; it wasnt authentic, or, at least, it didnt belong to the man Id known as
my father. Beneath my fear that my father might not have been my father when he
wrote was a more profound fear: the fear that, deep inside, I was not authentic.

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 6

3 The following passage describes an English writers visit to a place of religious study in Tarim,
Yemen.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Later, the writer visits another group of women studying in another country. She writes a
magazine article describing the place and some of the people she met. Write the opening of
the article (between 120150 words). Base your answer closely on the style and language of
the original extract. [10]

On my flight from Dubai to the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, every other woman is
wearing a black face veil. After the glitz and hustle of Dubai, Sanaas mud-brick
old city feels dark, quiet and ancient. It is the summer monsoon and in the late
afternoon the sunken street past the old city is suddenly waist-deep with rushing
grey water, submerging a taxi. Four men with curved daggers thrust into their wide, 5
gold-embroidered belts hitch up their white robes and wade in to heave it out. A
crowd gathers, but the few women hurrying past, draped in black, do not stop. In
Yemen the streets overwhelmingly belong to men.
Tarim is remoter still, three hundred miles south-east across the desert in a vast
canyon, the Wadi Hadhramaut. Descending towards the canyons little airport, the 10
plane plunges into a landscape of tiny emerald-green fields set with date palms and
crumbling mud-brick towers. Where the irrigation stops, the valley sides are dotted
with the whitewashed tombs of local saints. The Hadhramaut tribe converted to
Islam around the time of the Prophets death and it has been famous for its scholars
and holy men ever since. 15
The place of miracles turns out to be a nondescript grid of square concrete
buildings under the high canyon walls. One of them conceals a tall, galleried white
courtyard, where a dark-eyed Briton in black robes, Asma, is waiting for me.
Salaam, welcome to Dar al-Zahra, she says, taking my hands. Little girls in
coloured gowns bring metal cups of iced water and wave palm leaf fans while the 20
older students, all in black, press round to wish me peace. They have been sent
from Indonesia, East Africa and the Arab world to complete their years of Islamic
study. But I have come to meet the Dowra girls, western Muslims on a forty day
programme introducing them to a beginners version of life in the centre. In the
windowless hallway of their separate home, a dozen twentysomething women in 25
bright ankle-length house-gowns and headscarves are sitting on thin mattresses
with their textbooks. They look tired and hot.
This is Rachel, our guest, says Asma.
The warmth of the girls welcome surprises me. They jump up, smiling, to wish
me peace, hurry to bring tea and carry my bags earnestly striving to live up to 30
the religious virtue of hospitality. Aziza, a lively girl with heavy kohl rings around her
dark eyes, introduces me.
Many of my new housemates are, like Aziza, from Urdu-speaking British-
Pakistani families, but there are also a handful of converts, including a South
African lawyer called Samira, a Canadian student, Sara, and a blue-eyed English 35
girl who has taken the Arabic name Nur, Light. When they head off, chattering, to
the afternoon prayer, I explore the Dowra house. It is less like an austere religious
retreat than a boarding school: it smells of shampoo, perfume and sweaty nylon,
and the shared bathroom is a cheerful girly clutter of pink razors and make-up. But
on the door someone has stuck a note in felt-tip pen: the duas or special prayers 40
to be repeated before and after using the shower or toilet
We have been sitting cross-legged and barefoot on the floor for two hours and
my knees and back are burning. Even the other girls are wincing.
Is it too strict? I ask.

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 7

No, no, says Aziza. And the more you suffer, the more it proves your himma. 45
Himma is the virtue of spiritual aspiration, and the girls are keen to encourage each
other in its feats.
When were really tired, I say, Come on, girls, explains Aziza. Remember
that the darkness on the way to the mosque in the morning will be repaid with light
on Judgment Day, when everyone else is in the dark. 50
As we trail slowly back along the dust road, the girls describe the rules for
students. They are based on the strict codes of behaviour that apply to Yemeni
women, who are among the least educated and most cloistered in the world. Away
from the concrete boxes of its outskirts, Tarim is an exotically beautiful town of
merchants palaces and mud-brick mosques. But, unlike the male students, the girls 55
are not allowed to visit the fruit and vegetable market, drink Fanta in the couple
of grill cafes or visit the tumbledown outdoor teahouse in the shade of the date
palms. They leave the house only for short walks along the dust roads to prayer
halls or lecture rooms, rarely after dark, and never alone. Outside, they wear the
abeyya, a voluminous black robe, and the niqab, a double-layered black face-veil. 60
The unmarried women have no contact with men.
Late that night, as the girls prepare for bed or sit softly reciting the Quran,
Iman, an American convert, takes me aside.
You should wear niqab like we do. Then you wont draw so much attention to
yourself. None of us wear it at home, but when were here 65

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 2

Answer two questions

1 In the following passage, from a travel website, the writer describes his first experience of a
wedding in Mongolia.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same writer visits another country. He puts an account of his experience of one of its
national customs on the same website. Write the opening of the account (between 120150
words). Base your answer closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

Throughout the evening people came to warn me about themselves. They

sat on the grass outside my tent, unburdening themselves with confessions. The
following day would be difficult, they said. Weddings were boisterous occasions.
People became unpredictable. They counselled me about particular individuals,
then admitted that they themselves could be as bad as the next fellow. I would be 5
wise to get away early before things got out of hand.
In the morning the groom and his supporters, a party of about seven or eight
relations, set off to fetch the bride from her ger,1 which lay some 15 miles away. An
old Russian truck, the equivalent of the wedding Rolls-Royce, had been specially
hired for the occasion. When they arrived, the groom would be obliged to search 10
for his bride, who by tradition must hide from him. It would not be too difficult. The
tradition is that she hides under a bed in the neighbouring ger.
While we waited for their return we were given breakfast in the newlyweds
ger. Over the past weeks it had been lovingly prepared by relations. It was like a
show ger from Ideal Gers. Decorations included a poster of the inspirational figure 15
of Batardene, the national wrestling champion, which had been hung in a prominent
position above the marital bed. Biscuits, slabs of white cheese and boiled sweets
had been arrayed on every surface in dizzy tiers like wedding cakes. On a low stool
stood a mountainous plate of sheep parts, with the favoured cut, the great fatty tail,
like a grey glacier on its summit. 20
Younger sisters hustled in and out making last-minute preparations. While we
were at breakfast the first lookouts were posted to watch for the return of the truck
bearing the wedding party from the brides camp.
By mid-afternoon we were still waiting. Apparently a wedding breakfast would
have been given to the groom and his accompanying party at the brides camp, and 25
complicated calculations were now performed concerning the number of miles to the
brides ger, divided by the speed of the truck combined with the probable duration of
the breakfast, and finally multiplied by the estimated consumption of arkhi, a clear
spirit distilled from milk.
At four oclock a spiral of dust finally appeared beyond a distant ridge. When the 30
truck drew up in front of the wedding ger, it was clear that the lavish hospitality of the
brides camp had been the cause of the delay. The back of the truck was crammed
with wedding guests in such a state of dishevelled merriment that we had some
difficulty persuading them to disembark. The brides mother, apparently convinced
that they were at the wrong ger, required four men to convey her to terra firma.2 35
The brides elder sister, shrugging off all assistance, fell headfirst from the tailgate,
bounced twice and came to rest, smiling, against a door post.
Once everyone was down from the truck, the bride and the groom stood
respectfully to one side while the wedding party crowded into the new ger. The groom
was tall and thin with a long, angular face. The bride, as round as he was linear, 40
came up to his waist. Throughout the happy day they behaved like disappointed
parties on a first date, never once meeting each others eyes.

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 3

For the bride this was part of Mongolian tradition. She was meant to display a
demure reluctance, deemed to be commensurate with feminine modesty. Her new
husband was part of a wider tradition: the nervous, slightly shell-shocked bridegroom 45
familiar in every culture. Their curious distance from the general jollity was made
worse by the fact that they remained the only sober members of the wedding party.
Inside the newlyweds ger, the two families took up positions on either side
of the tent like opposing armies. Numbering 50 or 60 people, they were crowded
together with the kind of intimacy usually reserved for the morning rush hour on the 50
Tokyo subway.
The unexpected presence of me, a foreigner, was seen as a sign of good
fortune for the success of the union and I had been squeezed into the lap of one of
the grooms brothers. At my back were the sharp knees of a long, disapproving line
of grannies and elderly aunts seated on cots. 55

1ger : dwelling (an elaborate tent)

2terra firma: solid ground

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 4

2 The following passage describes the writers thoughts and feelings about the enthusiasm for sheds
among male family members. (A shed is an outbuilding where tools are normally stored.)

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Louiss father sits in his shed writing his autobiography. In one section he explains why he
feels all men need their own space. Write the section (between 120150 words). Base your
answer closely on the material of the original extract. [10]

Under an old apple tree at the top of the garden, dappled in sunshine, is a
small green shed. It sits a few yards from the hedge that separates our tiny patch of
garden. Within the shed, presumably far from me, its occupant, Louis, our 13-year-
old, is doing whatever it is that the male of the species tends to do in a small shed.
Precisely what that is I cannot say, because with sheds, there is an unofficial omerta1 5
that forbids the owner divulging his activities therein to any female.
Louis may or may not be the youngest shed-dweller in Britain today, but he
is surely the proudest. Offered carte blanche2 (within financial, legal and moral
reason), the choice of any present to mark his shift into teenagerdom, this 8 6 ft
building was his first choice. 10
Surely, I suggested, he would prefer something electronic or mildly dangerous,
something with wheels? Something flashy and gaudy, possibly something with an
apple logo on its outer casing? But no. A shed, and only a shed, would do.
His father took a different view when I relayed the news and the beam of
paternal pride was clearly audible even at a distance of 130 miles. Thats my boy, 15
he said, speaking from his own shed.
Louiss shed, however, and his fathers could hardly be more different. Where
Louiss is like a Morris Minor car, being tiny and purely functional, his fathers is
a luxury Bentley convertible. Technically, its true, the entire roof doesnt come
off (although there is a skylight). Yet it is a powerful and well-equipped machine, 20
electrified and connected to the main water supply. It houses not only a flat-screen
television, DVD player, reclining leather armchair, capacious bookshelves and an
L-shaped execu-desk, but also a lavatory and what an estate agent might call a
bijou kitchenette.
It arrived 10 years ago, ready made. Ready made, but bespoke in that it 25
was finished according to precise instructions not until then or since then has
my husband applied himself so fully to the tiny details. It was lowered, spinning
on the end of a crane, into the bottom of our London garden. Our rear neighbour
complained to the council who told her there was nothing she could do. She sold up
and moved to Australia. 30
Louis, five at the time, was naturally intrigued by this new dwelling and asked
whether it meant that his father was going to live in it. I told him not to be daft,
although of course I knew that he had hit on the truth.
For those eight years, Louis has been my shed spy. Where my daily visits
with tea and toast are invariably intercepted at the door, Louis is permitted at least 35
some limited access. Each day (during term time when we are in London) when he
returns from school, he runs down to the shed and then reports back to me. Hes
pretending to be working, is the most common observance, and hes not in a good
mood because hes just had his aces cracked by an imbecile who called with a pair
of threes and hit his set on the flop. Louis does seem worryingly au fait3 with the 40
terminology of internet poker games.
Sometimes, however, he will report that his father is actually working at his
computer. More frequently, the news will be that he is shouting at a sportsman on
the TV, reading a biography of an American president or rearranging his collection of
1 coins into taller piles. 45

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 5

My husband and I had a long talk about all this once when I hadnt seen him for
three whole days. He paced the room when I asked him what it all meant and said:
What you must try to understand is that every man is an emotional inadequate and
we need weird, ritualistic order in our lives. We need space where we can insulate
ourselves from emotional contact with others, particularly our female superiors. This 50
is the true meaning of the shed.
So there we have it. Once, long ago, I naively assumed that a shed was a
storage space for tools. My husband happens to be the kind of man who would no
more allow a garden tool in his shed than a large lump of glowing plutonium. The
closest thing to a tool is the dinky little penknife he uses to scrape the filth from the 55
bowls of the tobacco pipes he puffs on, of which he seems to have almost as many
as pound coins.

1omerta: a rule or code that prevents

information being shared

2carte blanche: free choice

3au fait : familiar

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 6

3 The following passage describes some thoughts and feelings about the environment. In it the
writer sees the world through the eyes of an animal.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The writer publishes another article in which she speaks on behalf of another endangered species
in the natural world. Write the opening of the article (between 120150 words). Base your answer
closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

I am thinking about the end of the world not because I am religious, but
because I am a polar bear, and the world will end for me faster than it will for you,
and youll put some of me in zoos and special chill nature reserves, but what you will
really be excited about is oil and trade and who controls the North West Passage.
And I will be a monster because only monsters have no home. 5
When you take my world away from me Im going to come and live with you.
All your civilisation and all your science will be on the outside, along with all your
trade and aid. Inside, there will be me. Your inner polar bear the wild free place
white pristine sun dropped red behind my head head back jaw open swallowing
pounds and pounds of fresh killed life raw clean cold. The dive of me the weight of 10
me.
I will be everything you have lost. I will be everything you neglected. I will be
everything you forgot. I will be the wild place sold for money.
You see, when I lived far away, you knew I was there, and I kept something
for you, even though you had never seen a polar bear or an ice floe. Even though 15
you are not adapted to my conditions. I kept your wild, cold, raw. And the lion keeps
something for you, and the mangrove swamp and the coral and the spider and the
wren.
You think I am a stupid polar bear? Go up into space and look back at this
diamond cut planet, polar capped, white whirled. It is one planet, one place, and 20
there is nothing else like it anywhere in the solar system. When you see it whole,
you remember that its not polar bears over there, and snakes over here; its one
place, one strange special place. It comes as a whole or not at all.
You will live longer than us my kind, not just my polar bear kind but all of us
who need a home and you so envious that you want all the homes, leaving nothing 25
you cant sell or rent. Enclosure of the whole world
Climb on my back and Ill carry you to the top of the snow-silent mountains
and let you look out over the rim of the earth. Look, beyond us are the stars, and
if I reach with my paws I can use the stars as footholds. Higher now, through the
witnesses, which I think the stars are the roof of our life bright with silver eyes. 30
What do they see? This blue planet, and near her, the white moon that holds us in
her gravitational pull, so that we spin at the speed of life. Not too fast, not too slow,
the speed of life.
As I climb through the stars, stretching myself into a constellation, The Great
Polar Bear,1 I wonder how many millions of years it will be before a wiser species 35
than Homo sapiens2 inhabits the earth? And I wonder if I will ever come home?
When the earth re-evolves herself, after the plagues, the bombs, the wipe-outs,
the lights-out, will there be polar bears? And lions? And wrens?
When earth begins again I would like to slide down a chute of stars into an icy
untamed sea and swim through the cold to the ice-floe where there will be others 40
like me, not monsters, homed. A place to be.
But until then I would rather climb away, not wait for the last piece of ice to melt,
but climb into the airless cold of outer space where I too can be a witness to what
happens next.

UCLES 2012 8693/11/M/J/12

 7

Once upon a time there was a polar bear. He had nowhere to live so he came 45
to live in your head. You started to think polar bear thoughts about iciness and
wilderness. You went shopping and looked at fish. At night you dreamed your skin
was fur. When you got in the bath you dropped through nameless waters deeper
than regret. You left the cold tap running. You flooded the house. You dived into
winter with no clothes on. You sought loneliness. You wanted to see the sun rise 50
after a night that lasted as long as all the things you have done wrong. You wanted
to see the sun come up and no one to be near you. You wanted to look out over the
rim of the world. But you live in the city and the rest is gone.
And all the longings and all the loss cant bring back the dead. The most
beautiful place on earth was everywhere a raft in the wilderness of space, 55
precarious, unlikely, our polar bear home.

1The Great Polar Bear : a reference to The

Great Bear, a group of stars that can be
seen in the northern hemisphere

2Homo sapiens: the human race (Latin for

wise man)

UCLES 2012 8693/11/M/J/12

 2

Answer two questions.

1 In the following passage, from a travel website, the writer describes her thoughts and feelings as
she travels to a dance studio in the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina. She is about to experience
the countrys national dance, the tango.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same writer visits another country. She writes an account of her experience of one of its
national customs on the same website. Write the opening of the account (between 120150
words). Base your answer closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

My cab is stuck to the asphalt like its tyres are melting in the thirty five degree
heat. The Obelisco1 looms up ahead from its restless bed in the centre of Avenida
9 de Julio. Horns hit my ears. The aircon blast cant mask the stale drift of cigarette
from my taxistas2 clothes, as he shifts to stare back at me. Hes just found out Im
British, but speak enough Spanish to converse with him. My answers flow pat, the 5
minutes tick slow, and the meter racks up, but I can bear it this afternoon: my mind is
on the new four inch stiletto heels in my bag.
On the pavement opposite Suipacha 384 I look up. I always do. The suspended
sign that will glow red neon by night; the broken windows that cannot keep the
beckoning melodies from the street; the stone balcony on which I have stood, and 10
smoked, and caught my breath so many times. I delay. Buy mints. Drag out the
seconds until I will mount the stairs and allow the music to drown out the background
chatter of my life. Its my ritual: a calming; a buffer zone between the chaotic and
bliss.
The steps to the first floor are worn to shallow smiles. Who has climbed them 15
across the decades? Pugliese on the way to his piano keys; Pablo Veron en route to
stardom; Sally Potter3 blazing the trail, the likes of me in her wake; and the strangers
who now, this minute, wait to take me in their arms. A gust of hot wind blows the
balcony curtain towards me as I pass, a caress of wine red velvet on my hand. I
push my money across the smooth counter of wood and exchange kisses with the 20
hostess, Youre late, I thought you werent coming. How was your week? Are you
alone today? I am. She guides me to my table, although I know it as a home: the
layered cream and red coloured cloths scarred by cigarette burns and flung into
unruly folds by the draughts from the huge wall fans; the two crimson leather chairs
with their buttock-dented seats; the marble column around which I will have to peer 25
with determination, to catch the farthest male eyes.
I do not look up as I prepare. Instead, I keep my gaze on my Cinderella shoes
as they slide out of their silk bag. I focus only on my transformation, slip my naked
feet into silver metallic snake-skin, adjust tiny buckles and thin straps, flex my ankles
awake: unseen below the cloak of the table cloth. The waiter appears, all bow tie 30
and apron, and I order my agua con gas and a cortado4: coffee will heighten my
senses and the water will cool me. I place my fan on the table. My mints. Adjust the
clip in my hair. Finally Im ready. I raise my eyes.
On the smooth polished stone, pairs of bodies weave their unique and silent
songs. Each close embrace carries two hearts and two souls in its arms. Music 35
transports the soul. The soul directs the feet. The feet dance.
I see my regular dance partners: I already know where we will walk together
today. I linger over the men who Ive never touched: how will it be to lean into their
chests, their heartbeats, the voices of their dance? The clues undulate before
me and I search them out: a body shape, a height, a hand touching a back, the 40
smoothness of a step, an expression on a partners face, even the way he escorts
her from the floor when the tango ends with the shock of rock and roll. I hold each
UCLES 2012 8693/12/M/J/12
 3

man in my gaze, one after the other, and I smile because I find him quite easily
today: the stranger I will accept if the music insists that I take a risk, and his eyes
find mine. 45
The first notes of another tango surge into five oclock and I decide. My eyes
do not leave him as he sips his glass of champagne. He looks up, and straight at
me. I glance away. I put down my fan. I glance back. His stare is constant. Me. He
wants me too. He inclines his head. Slowly and deliberately, I nod my acceptance.
He stands and begins his walk towards me. I take off my glasses: I know that for the 50
next four tangos he is mine. I am about to discover the story of an unknown soul.

1Obelisco: a large monument

2taxistas: taxi drivers

3Pugliese Pablo Veron Sally Potter : famous

tango musician/dancers

4agua con gas and a cortado: sparkling water

and strong coffee

UCLES 2012 8693/12/M/J/12 [Turn over

 4

2 The following passage describes the writers relationship with his stepfather.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Mrs Grant, the housekeeper, writes a letter to a friend in which she describes the boys
relationship with his stepfather. Write the opening of the letter (between 120150 words).
Base your answer closely on the material of the original extract. [10]

My love of food began long ago. As far as I can remember, in fact. And it started
with an Aga1 and rice pudding. The Aga was a vast cream and black monster,
glowering on the stone floor of the farm kitchen. It had doors, drawers, dials and
apertures enough to fascinate the curiosity of a six-year-old boy with an undiluted
imagination. From the moment I saw it, I was beguiled and drawn into every part of 5
its system.
Agas are astounding creatures. Domesticated dinosaurs. They offer warmth
and solace, and you can learn everything you ever need to know about cooking on
their plates and in their furnaces. But strangely, for me, of all the roasts, stews and
tarts, the most remarkable dish cooked in that Aga was rice pudding. It was firm and 10
creamy, with a lemony zest and crisp blackened skin.
My first memory of rice pudding is etched with force. It symbolises an act of
compassion in the midst of despair. For the Aga also represented a dangerous
nemesis.2 When my mother and I moved to a farm to live with Graham, my
stepfather, I was five. In the first days of this strange new parent, I was confused and 15
detached. For security, I found the bewitching warmth of this huge cast-iron beast in
the kitchen. At any opportunity, I hid beside its hot water boiler.
I unscrewed one of the knobs from the controls of this contraption. Its spark
went out. It was no more than a childish misdeed. But not for Graham. He was
master of his home. Such disorder was intolerable. 20
At that age, a little boy will do anything to avoid trouble, so I lied. But to him my
fibs were a sign of creeping moral ambiguity. I was banished in disgrace to my room,
a terrible punishment for a lively and gregarious child.
The following day, in exile, as I lay shivering and hungry in my bedroom, a quiet
knock came and the door opened gingerly. A bowl of steaming rice pudding was set 25
down on the floor. Mrs Grant, the housekeeper, one of my first saviours.
Though this punishment, and others, happened many times subsequently, no
one else ever admitted to me that they knew about what was going on.
None of my stepfathers brutal strategies really worked. And despite my
suffering, instead of submitting, my will grew stronger. And he became more enraged 30
by me. War was declared, and even at that young age, I knew how to exact revenge.
He loved food. He was greedy, even. So was I. And we were a fair match. He
had lived on that farm for almost 30 years and had full-time gardeners to oversee
the kitchen garden, orchards and greenhouses. He had apricots and pears, white
muscatel grapes and figs under glass, nectarine houses and asparagus beds, 35
heated with lead wires in the ground. From redcurrants to his sacred Royal Sovereign
strawberries, the gardens were a cornucopia3 that became my plundering ground.
In the evenings, my stepfather would wander through the greenhouses or past
the apple trees, checking for the perfect ripeness of his latest progeny. He would
never touch the fruit, for as any gardener will know, they carry a bloom, a sort of 40
musty blush, that must be untouched for the perfect fruit. Soon he began to notice
an early predator had been at his prizes. Little finger marks on the bloom betrayed
a thief among the nettings and glass. Just before he was ready to pluck a succulent
nectarine from the tree, it vanished.
He loved chocolate, too, and hid boxes of expensive truffles and dark chocolate 45
bars around his private spaces in the house. I knew them all, and feasted on the
spoils.
UCLES 2012 8693/12/M/J/12
 5

This war of attrition carried on for years but in the end he knew he couldnt win.
Eventually an uneasy truce settled. We learned to get along.

1Aga: a large metal oven

2nemesis: source of retribution and vengeance

3cornucopia: a rich variety

UCLES 2012 8693/12/M/J/12 [Turn over

 6

3 The following passage is an account of the writers fascination with trees.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same writer produces another account in which he reflects on his relationship with
another aspect of the natural world. Write the opening of the section (between 120150
words). Base your answer closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

I come out solemnly with a pencil and an exercise book, and take my seat in all
gravity at the foot of a large fir-tree, and wait for thoughts to come, gnawing like a
squirrel on a nut. But the nuts hollow.
I think there are too many trees. They seem to crowd round and stare at me, and
I feel as if they nudged one another when Im not looking. I can feel them standing 5
there. And they wont let me get on. Just their cussedness1. I felt they encouraged
me like a harem of wonderful silent wives.
It is half rainy toothe wood so damp and still and so secret, in the remote
morning air. Morning, with rain in the sky, and the forest subtly brooding, and me
feeling no bigger than a bug between the roots of my fir. The trees seem so much 10
bigger than me, so much stronger in life, prowling silent around. I seem to feel them
moving and thinking and prowling, and they overwhelm me. Ah, well, the only thing
is to give way to them.
This is the edge of the Black Forest in Germany sometimes I can see the
Rhine river far off, like a bit of magnesium ribbon. But not today. Today only trees, 15
and leaves, and vegetable presences. Huge straight fir-trees, and big beech-trees
sending rivers of roots into the ground. And cuckoos, like noise falling in drops off
the leaves. And me, a fool, sitting by a grassy wood-road with a pencil and a book,
hoping to write.
Never mind. I listen again for noises, and I smell the damp moss. The looming 20
trees, so straight. And I listen for their silence. Big, tall-bodied trees, with a certain
magnificent cruelty about them. Or barbarity. I dont know why I should say cruelty.
Their magnificent, strong, round bodies! It almost seems I can hear the slow,
powerful sap drumming in their trunks. Great full-blooded trees, with strange tree-
blood in them, soundlessly drumming. 25
Trees that have no hands and faces, no eyes. Yet the powerful sap-scented
blood roaring up the great columns. A vast individual life, and an overshadowing will.
The will of a tree. Something that frightens you.
Suppose you want to look a tree in the face? You cant. It hasnt got a face. You
look at the strong body of a trunk: you look above you into the matted body-hair of 30
twigs and boughs: you see the soft green tips. But there are no eyes to look into, you
cant meet its gaze.
Its no good looking at a tree, to know it. The only thing is to sit among the roots
and nestle against its strong trunk, and not bother. Thats how I write, between the
toes of a tree, forgetting myself against the great ankle of the trunk. And then, as a 35
rule, as a squirrel is stroked into its wickedness by the faceless magic of a tree, so
am I usually stroked into forgetfulness, and into scribbling this book. My tree-book,
really.
This marvellous vast individual without a face, without lips or eyes or heart. This
towering creature that never had a face. Here am I between his toes like a bug, and 40
him noiselessly over-reaching me. And I feel his great blood-jet surging. And he has
no eyes. But he turns two ways. He thrusts himself tremendously down to the middle
earth, where dead men sink in darkness, in the damp, dense under-soil, and he
turns himself about in high air. Whereas we have eyes on one side of our head only,
and only grow upwards. 45
Plunging himself down into the black humus, with a roots gushing zest, where
we can only rot dead; and his tips in high air, where we can only look up to. So vast
UCLES 2012 8693/12/M/J/12
 7

and powerful and exultant in his two directions. And all the time, he has no face,
no thought: only a huge, savage, thoughtless soul. Where does he even keep his
soul?Where does anybody? 50
But now they are my only shelter and strength. I lose myself among the trees. I
am so glad to be with them in their silent, intent passion.

1cussedness: obstinacy

UCLES 2012 8693/12/M/J/12

 2

Answer two questions.

1 In the following passage, from a travel website, the writer describes her thoughts and feelings as
she travels to a dance studio in the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina. She is about to experience
the countrys national dance, the tango.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same writer visits another country. She writes an account of her experience of one of its
national customs on the same website. Write the opening of the account (between 120150
words). Base your answer closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

My cab is stuck to the asphalt like its tyres are melting in the thirty five degree
heat. The Obelisco1 looms up ahead from its restless bed in the centre of Avenida
9 de Julio. Horns hit my ears. The aircon blast cant mask the stale drift of cigarette
from my taxistas2 clothes, as he shifts to stare back at me. Hes just found out Im
British, but speak enough Spanish to converse with him. My answers flow pat, the 5
minutes tick slow, and the meter racks up, but I can bear it this afternoon: my mind is
on the new four inch stiletto heels in my bag.
On the pavement opposite Suipacha 384 I look up. I always do. The suspended
sign that will glow red neon by night; the broken windows that cannot keep the
beckoning melodies from the street; the stone balcony on which I have stood, and 10
smoked, and caught my breath so many times. I delay. Buy mints. Drag out the
seconds until I will mount the stairs and allow the music to drown out the background
chatter of my life. Its my ritual: a calming; a buffer zone between the chaotic and
bliss.
The steps to the first floor are worn to shallow smiles. Who has climbed them 15
across the decades? Pugliese on the way to his piano keys; Pablo Veron en route to
stardom; Sally Potter3 blazing the trail, the likes of me in her wake; and the strangers
who now, this minute, wait to take me in their arms. A gust of hot wind blows the
balcony curtain towards me as I pass, a caress of wine red velvet on my hand. I
push my money across the smooth counter of wood and exchange kisses with the 20
hostess, Youre late, I thought you werent coming. How was your week? Are you
alone today? I am. She guides me to my table, although I know it as a home: the
layered cream and red coloured cloths scarred by cigarette burns and flung into
unruly folds by the draughts from the huge wall fans; the two crimson leather chairs
with their buttock-dented seats; the marble column around which I will have to peer 25
with determination, to catch the farthest male eyes.
I do not look up as I prepare. Instead, I keep my gaze on my Cinderella shoes
as they slide out of their silk bag. I focus only on my transformation, slip my naked
feet into silver metallic snake-skin, adjust tiny buckles and thin straps, flex my ankles
awake: unseen below the cloak of the table cloth. The waiter appears, all bow tie 30
and apron, and I order my agua con gas and a cortado4: coffee will heighten my
senses and the water will cool me. I place my fan on the table. My mints. Adjust the
clip in my hair. Finally Im ready. I raise my eyes.
On the smooth polished stone, pairs of bodies weave their unique and silent
songs. Each close embrace carries two hearts and two souls in its arms. Music 35
transports the soul. The soul directs the feet. The feet dance.
I see my regular dance partners: I already know where we will walk together
today. I linger over the men who Ive never touched: how will it be to lean into their
chests, their heartbeats, the voices of their dance? The clues undulate before
me and I search them out: a body shape, a height, a hand touching a back, the 40
smoothness of a step, an expression on a partners face, even the way he escorts
her from the floor when the tango ends with the shock of rock and roll. I hold each
UCLES 2012 8693/13/M/J/12
 3

man in my gaze, one after the other, and I smile because I find him quite easily
today: the stranger I will accept if the music insists that I take a risk, and his eyes
find mine. 45
The first notes of another tango surge into five oclock and I decide. My eyes
do not leave him as he sips his glass of champagne. He looks up, and straight at
me. I glance away. I put down my fan. I glance back. His stare is constant. Me. He
wants me too. He inclines his head. Slowly and deliberately, I nod my acceptance.
He stands and begins his walk towards me. I take off my glasses: I know that for the 50
next four tangos he is mine. I am about to discover the story of an unknown soul.

1Obelisco: a large monument

2taxistas: taxi drivers

3Pugliese Pablo Veron Sally Potter : famous

tango musician/dancers

4agua con gas and a cortado: sparkling water

and strong coffee

UCLES 2012 8693/13/M/J/12 [Turn over

 4

2 The following passage describes the writers relationship with his stepfather.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Mrs Grant, the housekeeper, writes a letter to a friend in which she describes the boys
relationship with his stepfather. Write the opening of the letter (between 120150 words).
Base your answer closely on the material of the original extract. [10]

My love of food began long ago. As far as I can remember, in fact. And it started
with an Aga1 and rice pudding. The Aga was a vast cream and black monster,
glowering on the stone floor of the farm kitchen. It had doors, drawers, dials and
apertures enough to fascinate the curiosity of a six-year-old boy with an undiluted
imagination. From the moment I saw it, I was beguiled and drawn into every part of 5
its system.
Agas are astounding creatures. Domesticated dinosaurs. They offer warmth
and solace, and you can learn everything you ever need to know about cooking on
their plates and in their furnaces. But strangely, for me, of all the roasts, stews and
tarts, the most remarkable dish cooked in that Aga was rice pudding. It was firm and 10
creamy, with a lemony zest and crisp blackened skin.
My first memory of rice pudding is etched with force. It symbolises an act of
compassion in the midst of despair. For the Aga also represented a dangerous
nemesis.2 When my mother and I moved to a farm to live with Graham, my
stepfather, I was five. In the first days of this strange new parent, I was confused and 15
detached. For security, I found the bewitching warmth of this huge cast-iron beast in
the kitchen. At any opportunity, I hid beside its hot water boiler.
I unscrewed one of the knobs from the controls of this contraption. Its spark
went out. It was no more than a childish misdeed. But not for Graham. He was
master of his home. Such disorder was intolerable. 20
At that age, a little boy will do anything to avoid trouble, so I lied. But to him my
fibs were a sign of creeping moral ambiguity. I was banished in disgrace to my room,
a terrible punishment for a lively and gregarious child.
The following day, in exile, as I lay shivering and hungry in my bedroom, a quiet
knock came and the door opened gingerly. A bowl of steaming rice pudding was set 25
down on the floor. Mrs Grant, the housekeeper, one of my first saviours.
Though this punishment, and others, happened many times subsequently, no
one else ever admitted to me that they knew about what was going on.
None of my stepfathers brutal strategies really worked. And despite my
suffering, instead of submitting, my will grew stronger. And he became more enraged 30
by me. War was declared, and even at that young age, I knew how to exact revenge.
He loved food. He was greedy, even. So was I. And we were a fair match. He
had lived on that farm for almost 30 years and had full-time gardeners to oversee
the kitchen garden, orchards and greenhouses. He had apricots and pears, white
muscatel grapes and figs under glass, nectarine houses and asparagus beds, 35
heated with lead wires in the ground. From redcurrants to his sacred Royal Sovereign
strawberries, the gardens were a cornucopia3 that became my plundering ground.
In the evenings, my stepfather would wander through the greenhouses or past
the apple trees, checking for the perfect ripeness of his latest progeny. He would
never touch the fruit, for as any gardener will know, they carry a bloom, a sort of 40
musty blush, that must be untouched for the perfect fruit. Soon he began to notice
an early predator had been at his prizes. Little finger marks on the bloom betrayed
a thief among the nettings and glass. Just before he was ready to pluck a succulent
nectarine from the tree, it vanished.
He loved chocolate, too, and hid boxes of expensive truffles and dark chocolate 45
bars around his private spaces in the house. I knew them all, and feasted on the
spoils.
UCLES 2012 8693/13/M/J/12
 5

This war of attrition carried on for years but in the end he knew he couldnt win.
Eventually an uneasy truce settled. We learned to get along.

1Aga: a large metal oven

2nemesis: source of retribution and vengeance

3cornucopia: a rich variety

UCLES 2012 8693/13/M/J/12 [Turn over

 6

3 The following passage is an account of the writers fascination with trees.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same writer produces another account in which he reflects on his relationship with
another aspect of the natural world. Write the opening of the section (between 120150
words). Base your answer closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

I come out solemnly with a pencil and an exercise book, and take my seat in all
gravity at the foot of a large fir-tree, and wait for thoughts to come, gnawing like a
squirrel on a nut. But the nuts hollow.
I think there are too many trees. They seem to crowd round and stare at me, and
I feel as if they nudged one another when Im not looking. I can feel them standing 5
there. And they wont let me get on. Just their cussedness1. I felt they encouraged
me like a harem of wonderful silent wives.
It is half rainy toothe wood so damp and still and so secret, in the remote
morning air. Morning, with rain in the sky, and the forest subtly brooding, and me
feeling no bigger than a bug between the roots of my fir. The trees seem so much 10
bigger than me, so much stronger in life, prowling silent around. I seem to feel them
moving and thinking and prowling, and they overwhelm me. Ah, well, the only thing
is to give way to them.
This is the edge of the Black Forest in Germany sometimes I can see the
Rhine river far off, like a bit of magnesium ribbon. But not today. Today only trees, 15
and leaves, and vegetable presences. Huge straight fir-trees, and big beech-trees
sending rivers of roots into the ground. And cuckoos, like noise falling in drops off
the leaves. And me, a fool, sitting by a grassy wood-road with a pencil and a book,
hoping to write.
Never mind. I listen again for noises, and I smell the damp moss. The looming 20
trees, so straight. And I listen for their silence. Big, tall-bodied trees, with a certain
magnificent cruelty about them. Or barbarity. I dont know why I should say cruelty.
Their magnificent, strong, round bodies! It almost seems I can hear the slow,
powerful sap drumming in their trunks. Great full-blooded trees, with strange tree-
blood in them, soundlessly drumming. 25
Trees that have no hands and faces, no eyes. Yet the powerful sap-scented
blood roaring up the great columns. A vast individual life, and an overshadowing will.
The will of a tree. Something that frightens you.
Suppose you want to look a tree in the face? You cant. It hasnt got a face. You
look at the strong body of a trunk: you look above you into the matted body-hair of 30
twigs and boughs: you see the soft green tips. But there are no eyes to look into, you
cant meet its gaze.
Its no good looking at a tree, to know it. The only thing is to sit among the roots
and nestle against its strong trunk, and not bother. Thats how I write, between the
toes of a tree, forgetting myself against the great ankle of the trunk. And then, as a 35
rule, as a squirrel is stroked into its wickedness by the faceless magic of a tree, so
am I usually stroked into forgetfulness, and into scribbling this book. My tree-book,
really.
This marvellous vast individual without a face, without lips or eyes or heart. This
towering creature that never had a face. Here am I between his toes like a bug, and 40
him noiselessly over-reaching me. And I feel his great blood-jet surging. And he has
no eyes. But he turns two ways. He thrusts himself tremendously down to the middle
earth, where dead men sink in darkness, in the damp, dense under-soil, and he
turns himself about in high air. Whereas we have eyes on one side of our head only,
and only grow upwards. 45
Plunging himself down into the black humus, with a roots gushing zest, where
we can only rot dead; and his tips in high air, where we can only look up to. So vast
UCLES 2012 8693/13/M/J/12
 7

and powerful and exultant in his two directions. And all the time, he has no face,
no thought: only a huge, savage, thoughtless soul. Where does he even keep his
soul?Where does anybody? 50
But now they are my only shelter and strength. I lose myself among the trees. I
am so glad to be with them in their silent, intent passion.

1cussedness: obstinacy

UCLES 2012 8693/13/M/J/12

 2

Answer two questions.

1 The following passage is an account of the writers first experience of work, picking blueberries on
a farm during his school vacation.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same writer finds a different kind of job in his next vacation and writes an account of his
thoughts and feelings. Write the opening of this account (between 120150 words). Base your
answer closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

After the last pickers left for home, and the final flats1 were weighed and loaded
and secured on flat bed trucks, the drivers headed for a warehouse far away. The
farm owner and his hands would gather and stack all the flats, carts, and stray
baskets then load up everything and, after a last stop at the outhouse, unload all
the equipment at a storage shed and go home to await their pay then move on to 5
the next crop.

The quiet berry fields were left alone to begin their long summer, fall and winter
vacations until the following spring, when we would show up to harvest them. Some
of us were willing, while many more hadnt the first clue what real work entailed. It
was amazing that the crop owners allowed neighborhood youth in the fields for as 10
many years as they did.

I get up early that first morning, grab my lunch and catch the bus but I cant sleep,
because even this early in the day the beat-up school bus is packed with youth. I
dont know any of these kids and wonder where they all come from. After all, this is
the country farms and older houses sitting on over-sized lots of a couple acres. If 15
these guys are from the neighborhood I should have seen them at school. Makes me
a little uncomfortable to be traveling with unfamiliar people to an unfamiliar location.
The only things I recognize are the lunch Mom made last night, my Dads tin-covered
Aladdin thermos covered with scenes of generic men in various fly fishing poses,
and my reflection in the bus window. 20

But wait there is one other familiar sight our bus driver, Mr. Stang. Though hes
my junior high school teacher, the recognition brings no comfort. Of all my instructors
at school this year, he has to be the strangest. Aside from his dictatorial demeanor
and mercurial temper, he is also cross-eyed, and the effect his conflicted gaze has
on 7th and 8th graders especially when Stang is annoyed is unsettling, to say 25
the least.

Every so often he fills the rear view mirror with separate but menacing gazes, and
every so often he yells at some malcontent, but its the weekend and hes supposed
to be off duty. And for most of the trip he keeps a lid on it but in the back of my
mind lurks the potential for disaster should one of us do something to rub him the 30
wrong way.

So the bus rattles along, and this being a typical early June morning in Oregon,
drizzle lends a gray, depressing cast to the road ahead and behind, as well as the
houses, sky and scenery. Looks more like winter than early spring.

After a while Mr. Stang steers the long yellow bus off the highway onto a rough, 35
hilly dirt road for a good 200 yards. Then the bus comes to a much too abrupt halt,
considering were on farmland.
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 3

Stang yanks the polished door release handle and the narrow double doors fly open.

Everybody off! he shouts, and we all stumble down the aisle and out of the yellow
beast, wondering if this is the day well make the big bucks. At least thats what Im 40
hoping.

The first row is always the hardest. Having left the relative comfort of the bus, I
grab an empty flat, and decide to use a cart to hold it though that thing was more
trouble than it was worth, last time out and Ive been assigned a row. Now I have to
make that initial move that will immediately get those nice dry pants all muddy and 45
wet. I get down on my knees and assume the harvesting position. Once thats done,
I begin the uncomfortable work that is berry picking.

When I finally haul a flat of berries to the spot where the scales are, and am told
that either the baskets arent full enough, or that all my hard work has amounted to a
mere $1.50, I realize how far I am from home, and how long this day is going to be. 50

Walking down the narrow path flanked by berry plants, I search for a couple of
minutes before finding the place where I left off. Now comes the big decision: Should
I pick standing up or kneeling? Looking out across the uncountable rows I see
people employing one of several techniques, some (even at this early hour) having
abandoned any pretense of honest labor, opting for the seated position. 55

At first I look upon them with scorn. Slackers! Lazy bums! But returning to the task
at hand, basket in position, I bend over and start picking fruit.

1 flats : containers for fruit

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 4

2 The following passage comes from a short story set in World War Two. Miss Anstruthers home
has been destroyed by bombing.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) A local newspaper reporter interviews Miss Anstruther and publishes an article about what
has happened to her. Write the opening of the article (between 120150 words). Base your
answer closely on the material of the original extract. [10]

Miss Anstruther, whose life had been cut in two on the night of 10 May 1941, so
that she now felt herself a ghost, without attachments or habitation, neither of which
she any longer desired, sat alone in the bed-sitting-room she had taken, a small
room, littered with the grimy, broken and useless objects which she had salvaged
from the burnt-out ruin round the corner. It was one of the many burnt-out ruins of 5
that wild night when high explosives and incendiaries had rained on London and
the water had run short: it was now a gaunt and roofless tomb, a pile of ashes and
rubble and burnt, smashed beams. Where the floors of twelve flats had been, there
was empty space. Miss Anstruther had for the first few days climbed up to what had
been her flat, on what had been the third floor, swarming up pendent fragments of 10
beams and broken girders, searching and scrabbling among ashes and rubble, but
not finding what she sought, only here a pot, there a pan, sheltered from destruction
by an overhanging slant of ceiling. Her marmalade had been there, and a little sugar
and tea; the demolition men got the sugar and tea, but did not care for marmalade,
so Miss Anstruther got that. She did not know what else went into those bulging 15
dungaree pockets, and did not really care, for she knew it would not be the thing she
sought, for which even demolition men would have no use; the flames, which take
anything, useless or not, had taken these, taken them and destroyed them like a
ravaging mouse or an idiot child.

After a few days the police had stopped Miss Anstruther from climbing up to her flat 20
any more, since the building was scheduled as dangerous. She did not much mind;
she knew by then that what she looked for was gone for good. It was not among the
massed debris on the basement floor, where piles of burnt, soaked and blackened
fragments had fallen through four floors to lie in indistinguishable anonymity together.
The tenant of the basement flat spent her days there, sorting and burrowing among 25
the chaotic mass that had invaded her home from the dwellings of her co-tenants
above. There were masses of paper, charred and black and damp, which had been
books. Sometimes the basement tenant would call out to Miss Anstruther, Heres a
book. Thatll be yours, Miss Anstruther; for it was believed in Mortimer House that
most of the books contained in it were Miss Anstruthers, Miss Anstruther being 30
something of a bookworm. But none of the books were any use now, merely drifts of
burnt pages. Most of the pages were loose and scattered about the rubbish-heaps;
Miss Anstruther picked up one here and there and made out some words. Yes,
she would agree. Yes, that was one of mine. The basement tenant, digging bravely
away for her motoring trophies, said, Is it one you wrote? I dont think so, said 35
Miss Anstruther. I dont think I can have She did not really know what she might
not have written, in that burnt-out past when she had sat and written this and that
on the third floor, looking out on green gardens; but she did not think it could have
been this. Have you lost all your own? the basement tenant asked, thinking about
her motoring cups, and how she must get at them before the demolition men did, 40
for they were silver. Everything, Miss Anstruther answered. Everything. They dont
matter. I hope you had no precious manuscripts, said the kind tenant. Books you
were writing, and that. Yes, said Miss Anstruther, digging about among the rubble
heaps. Oh yes. Theyre gone. They dont matter

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 6

3 The following passage, taken from a travel website, describes the writers sense of adventure and
excitement during a visit to the Grand Canyon in Colorado, USA.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same writer experiences another adventure and writes an account of it on the same
website. Write the opening of the account (between 120150 words). Base your answer
closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

Scottys words are still echoing in my head: Whatever happens, dont go in the
hole.

It is too late. We are in the hole. A towering wall of water engulfs the kayak and
flips it around. Suddenly, we are pointing upstream and being sucked backwards. I
glance around to discover my brother is no longer behind me. He has been washed 5
out but has managed to grab the rope at the back. Somehow he hauls himself back
in and we paddle like madmen, crashing through a series of huge waves to make it
to calmer water.

Scotty is waiting there, smiling and shaking his head. I told you not to go in the
hole. 10

The rapid at mile marker 209 might only be a grade five on the Grand Canyons
white-water rating system of 1 to 10, but I feel as though we have just paddled
through Niagara Falls. I am not normally a high-five kinda guy but I cant stop myself
from shrieking and pumping my fists in an explosion of adrenalin and relief. It is
quite simply one of the most thrilling things I have ever done. 15

Rafting through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River has become one of those
life-changing, must-do-before-you-die travel experiences.

We pass an enjoyable afternoon horse riding and clay pigeon shooting before
sitting down to a hearty dinner and some good ol fashioned country music from an
amusing band of slow-talking, Stetson-sporting1 locals. 20

The next morning a helicopter threads its way between the canyons dramatic
burnt-orange walls to deliver us to the rafts where Scotty and the other guides
for the trip await our arrival. Guides can make or break this sort of trip and by all
accounts Scotty is famous in these parts. He has done more than 200 trips through
the canyon and with his long hair, beard and slightly maniacal pirate-style laugh, he 25
looks and sounds every inch the rafting legend.

We pack our gear into waterproof bags and set off down the river in one of six,
six-metre rafts. Only now, as we drift serenely downstream, do I finally comprehend
the scale and majesty of this natural phenomenon. To lie back and be surrounded by
two billion years of scenery is indeed breathtaking and humbling. 30

As the morning progresses, the temperature steadily climbs until it is well into the
30s. It is mid-June, and staying protected from the sun is of the highest concern. The
water, on the other hand, barely fluctuates from a bracing 10 degrees all year round
and the first time I get splashed I fail to stifle an embarrassingly high-pitched shriek.

We set up camp for the night on a wide sandy beach and, while the guides prepare 35
a feast of barbecue chicken and pecan pie, we all settle down in camping chairs,
crack open some wine and get better acquainted.
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 7

There are enough tents for everyone, but most of us choose to sleep on cushioned
mats underneath the stars. The guides go to bed at 9.30pm and after a lot of banter
and several cases of wine, we are not far behind. There is no need for a torch to find 40
your way around the moon bathes the beach in a ghostly half light and the sky is
crammed with a riot of stars.

There are sore heads when we are roused the following morning at 6 oclock. To
ease the pain there is hot coffee and a breakfast of eggs, bacon, pancakes and fresh
fruit, all miraculously prepared in a makeshift kitchen in the middle of the wilderness. 45

We tackle three large rapids today and Scotty talks us through each one first. He can
remember the nuances of every major rapid along the river, including the swirling
vortex hole in rapid 209 that we are explicitly told to avoid.

Between rapids we let the current carry us downstream while we marvel at the
majestic scenery and wildlife. Falcons, eagles and osprey soar high above us while 50
big horn sheep negotiate impossibly steep slopes.

For the first time we see boats from other operators: large, motorised ten-metre
monsters that can carry fifteen people. The passengers all sit perched high on
top and they look strangely detached and uninvolved as they power relentlessly
downstream. 55

We enjoy one final evening of feasting, storytelling and stargazing on the river before
we paddle towards Diamond Creek, where the rafts will be unloaded and we will be
shuttled back out to civilisation.

During those final few kilometres, the river narrows and we find ourselves hemmed
in by a natural amphitheatre of towering rock. While we drift silently downstream, 60
one of the guides stands up and sings a slow, haunting rendition of Amazing Grace,
her voice echoing off the canyon walls. It is a poignant end to a magical trip.

1 Stetson-sporting : wearing cowboy hats

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 2

Answer two questions.

1 The following passage is an account of the writers first experience of work.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same writer later finds a different kind of work and writes an account of his thoughts
and feelings. Write the opening of the account (between 120150 words). Base your answer
closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

My heart was full of excitement, when I received the call from the man called Edge.
It had been nearly two weeks since I first met him face to face shortly after school
had been let out for summer. He was a tiny man, short in stature but wide in girth.
He stood nearly five feet tall and had a waddle to his walk and spoke in grunts. The
cap on his head had writing on it, but it was so dirty, I could not make out what it 5
said. His thick German accent made it even more difficult to understand most of
what he said. I was hoping that he did not notice how nervous I was, standing there
in front of him in the greenhouse he built and owned. I am certain that my hands
were wet with sweat when I shook his and thanked him for his time after meeting
him and asking him for a job. My mother told me that you always should ask for the 10
job. The dirt in his own hands was so deep, none of it was left behind in my palm
after shaking his firm small hand

Are you ready to start? he asked. Well, sure, I hesitated. I did not expect him
to start me right away. My mother told me that folks usually have two interviews
before they make a decision to hire you. Follow me, he told me, as I greeted him 15
with my handshake at the small cash register counter of his store. Put this on, he
said, handing me an apron. He also told me that on most days I worked, that he
would expect that I would stay for four hours, which seemed like an awful long time
to me. He told me that I would earn $1.64 per hour; not as much as I anticipated,
but hell, it was my first job, I was sure I would get a raise as soon as he saw what 20
a great worker I was. Besides that, at fourteen years old, I did not even know that
there WAS a minimum wage, much less, whether or not I was being paid under the
table 1. Here you go, he stated, standing in front of a black pile of steaming manure
that was dumped into a pile next to a four foot by six foot box that was about three
feet deep. It had a screen made from what looked like chicken wire pulled over four 25
two by fours. Shovel the manure onto the screen, sift it into the box. Ill be in the
back by the perennials 2 if you need me. That was it. The excitement of my new
career screeching to a halt. The stench emanating from the warm pile made me
nauseous. I stood there for a few moments and watched Edge waddle away. I was
holding the shovel in my hand, my heart racing, now for a different reason. Part of 30
me wanted to put it down, walk through the greenhouse past the cash register and
out of the front door, jump on my bike and ride home. Another part knew that I had
to stay. What would my Mum and Dad say if I quit before I started? I had heard the
stories that both of them had told about the hardships they endured as children, and
sifting a little manure as a personal choice was nothing. 35

And so, I started. Lifting the shovels full of manure onto the home-made sift seemed
easy at first. I would lift about five scoops onto the sift, then shake it using all of the
force of my body weight to shake the sift back and forth to cause the manure to fall
through the tiny little squares of the chicken wire. Whatever was left, I would push
through with my hands. After about forty-five minutes, I stopped being grossed out, 40
and had sifted four complete loads into the box. Now, however, I noticed another
problem. Blisters. Both my hands now were blistered from lifting the shovels of
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manure onto the sieve. Tears welled in my eyes from the pain and frustration. Until
I noticed the blisters, I did not feel any pain, but somehow looking at them caused
me to feel the pulsating sting. I was supposed to work three more hours, and I did 45
not know how I was going to continue. Lifting the shovel even one more time would
cause the blisters to rip off my hands.

Then, I felt his hand on my shoulder. Du need to use deeze he said, handing me
a pair of leather gloves. He scared me. Where did he come from, I thought, and
why did I not hear him? You must always use gloves when you work. And then, he 50
waddled away into another part of the greenhouse.

1 under the table : in cash, avoiding tax

2 perennials : long lasting garden plants

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 4

2 The following passage comes from a short story set in World War Two. Miss Anstruthers home
has been destroyed by bombing.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Miss Anstruther later records her thoughts and feelings about that particular night in her diary.
Write the opening of the diary entry (between 120150 words). Base your answer closely on
the material of the original extract. [10]

Each night, as Miss Anstruther lay awake in her strange, littered, unhomely
room, she lived again the blazing night that had cut her life in two. It had begun
like other nights, with the wailing siren followed by the crashing guns, the rushing
hiss of incendiaries over London, and the whining, howling pitching of bombs out
of the sky onto the fire-lit city. A wild, blazing hell of a night. Miss Anstruther, whom 5
bombs made restless, had gone down once or twice to the street door to look at
the glowing furnace of London and exchange comments with the caretaker on the
ground floor and with the two basement tenants, then she had sat on the stairs,
listening to the demon noise. Crashes shook Mortimer House, which was tall and
slim and Edwardian,1 and swayed like a reed in the wind to near bombing. Miss 10
Anstruther understood that this was a good sign, a sign that Mortimer House, unlike
the characters ascribed to clients by fortune-tellers, would bend but not break. So
she was quite surprised and shocked when, after a series of three close-at-hand
screams and crashes, the fourth exploded, a giant earthquake, against Mortimer
House, and sent its whole front crashing down. Miss Anstruther, dazed and bruised 15
from the hurtle of bricks and plaster flung at her head, and choked with dust, hurried
down the stairs, which were still there. The wall on the street was a pile of smoking,
rumbling rubble, the Gothic respectability of Mortimer House one with Nineveh and
Tyre 2 and with the little public 3 across the street. The ground-floor flats, the hall
and the street outside, were scrambled and beaten into a common devastation of 20
smashed masonry and dust. The little caretaker was tugging at his large wife, who
was struck unconscious and jammed to the knees in bricks. The basement tenant,
who had rushed up with her stirrup pump, began to tug too, so did Miss Anstruther.
Policemen pushed in through the mess, rescue men and a warden followed, all was
in train for rescue, as Miss Anstruther had so often seen it in her ambulance-driving. 25
What about the flats above? they called. Anyone in them?
Only two of the flats above had been occupied, Miss Anstruthers at the back. Mrs
Cavendishs at the front. The rescuers rushed upstairs to investigate the fate of Mrs
Cavendish.
Why the devil, inquired the police, wasnt everyone downstairs? But the 30
caretakers wife, who had been downstairs, was unconscious and jammed, while
Miss Anstruther, who had been upstairs, was neither.
They hauled out the caretakers wife, and carried her to a waiting ambulance.
Everyone out of the building! shouted the police. Everyone out!
Miss Anstruther asked why. 35
The police said there were to be no bloody whys, everyone out, the bloody gas
pipes burst and theyre throwing down fire, the whole thing may go up in a bonfire
before you can turn round.
A bonfire! Miss Anstruther thought, if thats so I must go up and save some things.
She rushed up the stairs, while the rescue men were in Mrs Cavendishs flat. Inside 40
her own blasted and twisted door, her flat lay waiting for death. God, muttered Miss
Anstruther, what shall I save? She caught up a suitcase, and furiously piled books
into it, then, as the suitcase would not shut, she turned out the largest volume
and substituted a china cow, a tiny walnut shell with tiny Mexicans behind glass,
a box with a mechanical bird that jumped out and sang, and a fountain pen. No 45
use bothering with the big books or the pictures. Slinging the suitcase across her
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 5

back, she caught up her portable wireless set and her typewriter, loped downstairs,
placed her salvage on the piled wreckage at what had been the street door, and
started up the stairs again. As she reached the first floor, there was a burst and a
hissing, a huge pst-pst, and a rush of flame leaped over Mortimer House as the 50
burst gas caught and sprang to heaven, another fiery rose bursting into bloom to
join that pandemonic red garden of night. Two rescue men, carrying Mrs Cavendish
downstairs, met Miss Anstruther and pushed her back.

1 Edwardian : dating from the beginning of the twentieth century

2 Nineveh and Tyre : ruined cities of the past
3 public : public house

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 6

3 The following passage, taken from a blog on a travel website, describes the experience of a slow
voyage on the Murray River in Australia. The writer sees himself as the captain and his children
as the crew.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same writer decides to experience a different kind of journey and writes an account of it
on the same website. Write the opening of the account (between 120150 words). Base your
answer closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

What bright spark invented the fishfinder? Obviously not a person with children.

If they did have children, they would know that the size of the fish the finder finds
should be faithfully reproduced to scale on the small LED crystal screen. It would
certainly save a lot of arguments on the River Murray.

Small crewman: Stop the houseboat! 5

Theres a really big fish underneath us!

Nominal captain: We cant just STOP the houseboat. By the time we turn around
the fish will be long gone. Well find a spot where we can stop and fish.

Besides, I dont think the fish was THAT big. Its an electronic representation. Dont
take it so literally. 10

Small crewman (five minutes later): Stop the houseboat!!!

Theres heaps of fish under us only 1.5m below. THOUSANDS of them!

Nominal captain: Its probably a log.

Small crewman: NO! NO! Look at the screen! All the little images have little tails.

Nominal captain: We cant stop in the middle of the river. We have to find a safe 15
mooring. We can fish from there.

Small crewman (sulkily): There probably wont be any fish there

He was right.

Like endless rows of animated Space Invaders, clouds of large and small fish
images regularly crossed the small screen as our houseboat made its way upriver 20
from Blanchetown towards Morgan, in South Australia.

Carp and young boys have a symbiotic relationship. On a good day, the fish virtually
throw themselves on the hook, and the boys throw all their efforts into catching them.

Pelicans are also part of this food chain. With round, wise eyes, they patiently wait.
When the fish hauled up from the depths of the Murray is small, the boys must eat 25
their pride. But the pelicans get to eat the carp.

Casting longer distances became a challenge amongst the boys one which cost
the nine-year-old his fishing rod.

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 7

The shock of the impact of lead on head from a wildly swinging sinker not only
caused a large lump but ended with the rod in the river. 30

After that, it was hand-line fishing.

Cruising into the glittering path of a shaft of morning sunshine, with the smell of
bacon and eggs cooking on the barbecue, its easy to see why people choose to live
on the river. Life is visibly slower.

Squadrons of swallows skim low over the water ahead of the bow. An occasional 35
pelican, looking like an overloaded seaplane, cruises in for a precarious landing.

The riverine sunshine loosens the chilly grip of early morning as the houseboat
meanders upriver, past the mouth of Cumbunga Creek, Roonka Conservation Park
and Reedy Island, to moor for the night on a sandy bank at Glenforslan.

As sunset turns the clouds orange, then plum red, raucous flocks of white cockatoos 40
roosting in the river red gums quieten their chaos in the fading light. The trees are
like ghostly black cut-outs on the evening sky. Its a uniquely Australian experience.

Cruising upriver on a houseboat with a large kitchen/living area is something like

living in a glass-walled lounge room. The landscape slips by. Holidaymakers and river
folk sitting around a breakfast campfire wave from the bank. On the river, travellers 45
dont just pass through the scene. Like an animated Hans Heysen painting, they are
a living part of it.

The next morning, hidden kookaburras1 laugh at our fishing efforts as the houseboat
passes Donald Flat lagoon. Two kilometres upriver lies the ruins of the Woods Flat
post office, opened in 1901 and closed in 1971. 50

Past clifftop homes commanding magnificent views of the river, caravans and
huddles of simple holiday homes, and occasionally, sprawling riverside residences
contemporary mansions in all but name.

Mooring for a night opposite Donald Flat Lagoon, hordes of white cockatoos
screeched goodnight. And goodnight. And goodnight. Then, as if on cuesilence. 55

As the boys eat breakfast, a pair of hawk-like whistling kites ride the air above the
river red gums, carefully eyeing the water to catch their own.

On the broad expanse of Brenda Reach, 10km downriver from Morgan, the world
awakens with blushes of pink on the clouds as the glow of first light paints muted
orange brushstrokes on the sandstone cliffs. 60

Kookaburras trade jokes in the distance and magpies warble as the waters
mirror-surface is broken by the spreading ripples of surfacing fish.

Its another day on the Murray.

1 kookaburras: Australian birds with a laughing cry

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 2

Answer two questions.

1 The following passage is an account of the writers first experience of work.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same writer later finds another kind of work and writes an account of her thoughts and
feelings. Write the opening of the account (between 120150 words). Base your answer
closely on the style and language of the original extract. [10]

I had experienced a rather unceremonious exit from school.

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

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 3

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

sensual woman who indulged in whatever she wanted. 55

1 palazzo: a grand house in Italy

2 Sophia Loren: Italian film star

3 Vogue: a leading fashion magazine

4 Anita Ekberg: Scandinavian film star

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 4

2 The following passage comes from a short story set in World War Two. Miss Anstruthers home
has been destroyed by bombing.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) Later, Miss Anstruther records her thoughts and feelings about the loss of her home in a
letter to a friend. Write the opening of the letter (between 120150 words). Base your answer
closely on the material of the original extract. [10]

She cried, I must go up again. I must get something out. Theres time.
Not a bloody second, one of them shouted at her, and pushed her back.
She fought him. Let me go, oh let me go. I tell you Im going up once more.
On the landing above, a wall of flame leaped crackling to the ceiling.
Go up be damned. Want to go through that? 5
They pulled her down with them to the ground floor. She ran out into the street,
shouting for a ladder. Oh God, where are the fire engines? A hundred fires, the
water given out in some places, engines helpless. Everywhere buildings burning,
museums, churches, hospitals, great shops, houses, blocks of flats, north, south,
east, west and centre. Such a raid never was. Miss Anstruther heeded none of it; 10
with hell blazing and crashing round her, all she thought was, I must get my letters.
Oh dear God, my letters. She pushed again into the inferno, but again she was
dragged back. No one to go in there, said the police, for all human life was by now
extricated. No one to go in, and Miss Anstruthers flat left to be consumed in the
spreading storm of the fire, which was to leave no wrack behind. Everything was 15
doomed furniture, books, pictures, china, clothes, manuscripts, silver, everything:
all she thought of was the desk crammed with letters that should have been the
first thing she saved. What had she saved instead? Her wireless, her typewriter, a
suitcase full of books; looking round, she saw that all three had gone from where
she had put them down. Perhaps they were in the safe keeping of the police, more 20
likely in the wholly unsafe keeping of some rescue-squad man or private looter. Miss
Anstruther cared little. She sat down on the wreckage of the road, sick and shaking,
wholly bereft.
The bombers departed, their job well done. Dawn came, dim and ashy, in a pall
of smoke. The little burial garden was like a garden in a Vesuvian village1, grey in its 25
ash coat. The air choked with fine drifts of cinders. Mortimer House still burned, for
no one had put it out. A grimy warden with a note-book asked Miss Anstruther, have
you anywhere to go?
No, she said, I shall stay here.
Better go to a rest centre, said the warden, wearily doing his job, not caring where 30
anyone went, wondering what had happened in North Ealing, where he lived.
Miss Anstruther stayed, watching the red ruin smouldering low. Sometime, she
thought, it will be cool enough to go into.
There followed the haunted, desperate days of search which found nothing. Since
silver and furniture had been wholly consumed, what hope for letters? There was no 35
charred sliver of the old locked rosewood desk which had held them. The burning
words were burnt, the lines, running small and close and neat down the page, difficult
to decipher, with the os and as never closed at the top, had run into a flaming void
and would never be deciphered more. Miss Anstruther tried to recall them, as she
sat in the alien room; shutting her eyes, she tried to see again the phrases that, 40
once you had made them out, lit the page like stars. There had been many hundreds
of letters, spread over twenty-two years. Last year their writer had died; the letters
were all that Miss Anstruther had left of him; she had not yet re-read them; she had
been waiting till she could do so without the devastation of unendurable weeping.
They had lain there, a solace waiting for her when she could take it. Had she taken 45
it, she could have recalled them better now. As it was, her memory held disjointed
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phrases, could not piece them together. Light of my eyes. You are the sun and the
moon and the stars to me. When I think of you life becomes music, poetry, beauty,
and I am more than myself. It is what lovers have found in all the ages, and no one
has ever found before. The sun flickering through the trees on your hair. And so on. 50
As each phrase came back to her, it jabbed at her heart like a twisting bayonet.

1 Vesuvian village: a village devastated by a volcano

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 6

3 The following newspaper article describes the experiences of journalists in a war-torn area.

(a) Comment on the style and language of the passage. [15]

(b) The same journalist arrives at another destination which is affected by matters beyond her
control. She writes an article about this new location. Write the opening of the article (between
120150 words). Base your answer closely on the style and language of the original extract.
[10]

The call sometimes comes in the middle of the night. Pack your bags, you are being
deported. Or: we would like to discuss an error in your story now. Or even: we
have news about your visa inquiry. One evening, a list of 25 names was posted in
the hotel lobby. The following journalists will be leaving tomorrow. No reason, no
discernible pattern. The next morning, all were reprieved. Bags were unpacked, 5
travel arrangements unpicked.

This is part of life as a foreign journalist under virtual house arrest at the five-star
hotel where maddening soft pop plays on an endless loop, portraits of the Brother
Leader hang in the lobby, and armed men stand guard on the gate to prevent
reporters slipping out. It is a world of rumour, paranoia, mistrust, manipulation, 10
frustration and interrupted sleep. North Korea with palm trees was how one of our
number described it.

But we are forbidden from leaving the hotel without a minder. The BBC and
al-Jazeera websites cannot be accessed, although their TV channels are available.
One minder favours long, intense conversations with journalists about the virtues 15
and magnanimity of the Guide, aka the Leader. Everywhere we go on government-
organised trips spontaneous demonstrations of ardent loyalists erupt.

How long have you been here, when are you leaving and whats happening are the
most common questions we ask one another. There is no routine or pattern to the
days. Ask a minder if an organised trip is likely to depart, and he will shrug and say: 20
Maybe. Hours can slip by waiting for something that never materialises.

The camaraderie among the foreign press corps is occasionally punctuated by small
explosions of frustration and competition. Ive been doing this job for twenty years,
a reporter yelled at a cameraman in a scrum the other night. It doesnt show, came
the instant putdown. 25

The mutual support between journalists came perilously close to collapse last week
when the government minders said they would take a small number on a trip to a
city in the west that has seen sustained fighting for several weeks. An unseemly
scramble to get a place on one of the two minibuses ensued. Reporters and TV
teams pleaded to be included; some tried to force their way past the minders on 30
the bus doors, others clambered through the vehicles windows. Yet, in a spirit of
solidarity, those left behind thrust flak jackets through the windows for colleagues
without body armour as the buses moved off.

The following day, another trip to the city was laid on. It was a ten-hour round journey
during which we saw precisely nothing apart from a few columns of black smoke in 35
the distance. The minders decided to take a long detour on the way back, citing
danger on the main highway. We got back to the hotel after midnight at which point
a press conference was announced.

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Late-night press briefings are a feature of life here. This week, one began at 1.30am.
A TV cameraman filmed the event in his hotel bathrobe. Another night, I had just 40
got into bed hoping for an early night when the familiar ding-dong of the public
address system disturbed the peace of my room. Good evening everyone, the
announcements usually begin. To all journalists: there will be a press conference in
ten minutes/half an hour/an hour/now. We are never told the subject or the speaker,
and they never start on time. 45

Government officials regularly berate us for our lack of professionalism, objectivity,

accuracy. To be lectured on journalistic ethics when we are not allowed to move
around freely or talk to unauthorised citizens is rich in irony

Rumours and speculation abound. One journalist refused to eat hot food during
his stay, believing it was spiked with sedatives. Others nurse suspicions about how 50
the minders manage to stay awake virtually round the clock. Is there a team in the
basement listening to our phone calls and monitoring our emails? Is it possible to
escape through the kitchen? Are the waiting and cleaning staff spies? Why do some
peoples computers suddenly lose internet connection when others remain online?
Who is that guy who keeps photographing us at press conferences? Why have 55
scores of hideous paintings been hung on the hotel walls in the past few days?

Mindful of the tightened budgets of their news organisations, many journalists try
to contain their soaring hotel bills by skipping meals. One who regularly dined on
cream crackers and peanut butter in his room found, upon checkout, that the hotel
had charged him for lunch and dinner every day, regardless. After fifteen minutes of 60
fruitless argument, he gave up and paid. At the hotel, its easy to lose the will to fight
back.

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Answer Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

1 The following text is taken from a newspaper article offering a guide for new visitors to the city of
Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to portray the city. [15]

(b) The same newspaper publishes another article which offers a similar guide for new visitors to
a popular tourist location in your country.

Write a section (between 120150 words) of this article. Base your answer closely on the
features of the writing in the original extract. [10]

RIO DE JANEIRO Brazil is not for beginners, the late, great Brazilian composer
Tom Jobim once quipped. Nowhere does the remark hold more true than for the
countrys pulsing, chaotic oceanfront metropolis, Rio de Janeiro.

This is a city of contrasts, where vastly different worlds rub shoulders, and the
unexpected lies lurking around every corner. 5

Hang a right during an aimless stroll through the chic beach-side neighborhoods
of Ipanema or Copacabana and you might just bump into a lush tropical forest.
Hang a left, and the luxury condominiums1 could give way to a warren of brick and
corrugated iron houses perched precariously on a rocky outcropping a favela, or
hillside slum. 10

Its this proximity between rich and poor, city and nature, that gives Rio its intensity.
But it also makes navigation a challenge for first-time visitors.

Luckily, Rio is dotted with landmarks that allow you to easily find your bearings.
Sugarloaf Hill, the awesome rocky outcropping that can be visited by aerial cable
car, presides over Guanabara Bay in the east. The monumental statue, Christ the 15
Redeemer, reaches toward the sea from his perch inside the dense Tijuca Forest
in the heart of the city. A five-mile stretch of white sand marks Rios southern edge,
home to the legendary Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon beaches.

Here, the beach is a way of life, and these iconic stretches of sand are the stage
upon which Rio natives play out their lives. Weekends draw huge crowds from 20
across the class spectrum to swim, surf, sun, jog, picnic, gossip, frolic, flirt, stretch
and strut.

During the Southern Hemisphere summer, January to March, the throngs are often
so thick that towel-size beach space can be hard to come by. But persevere.

Between the tall, tanned, young and lovely girls from Ipanema, their muscle-bound, 25
tattoo-covered male counterparts, the flocks of screaming children and steady
stream of vendors selling everything from sunscreen to frozen slush made from
Amazon berries, the action is not to be missed.

No trip to the beach is complete without a stroll down Avenida Visconde de Piraja,
Ipanemas main drag2, where the dress code consists of bikinis, sarongs and flip- 30
flops. Homegrown clothing lines abound, churning out pretty but pricey sundresses,
short-shorts, pantsuits for the daring and, naturally, bikinis. Top Brazilian beachwear
houses include Lenny, Salinas and Osklen.
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 3

If you havent gotten your fill of snacks on the beach, head to Bibi Sucos, which
serves up a dizzying array of freshly squeezed exotic juices jabuticaba,3 anyone? 35
and, with Brazils dizzily spiraling prices, is among Rios few remaining inexpensive
pleasures. A more sophisticated meal can be had at Market, also on Visconde de
Piraja, which serves up tasty, healthy alternatives to the comida por quilo self-
service buffets that offer up meat in all its imaginable incarnations, paid for by the
weight. 40

If youre a Brazilian at heart, with a well-developed carnivorous instinct, no trip to Rio

is complete without a visit to a rodizio, a fixed-price restaurant where an endless
variety of meats, from filet mignon to chicken hearts, are served off the spit by a
parade of waiters. Porcao, which has three Rio locations including one in Ipanema,
is a rodizio of epic proportions. 45

To work off the meat overdose, a hike doubtless will be in order, and Rio offers
several excellent options.

The worlds largest urban forest, Tijuca is home to a host of monkeys, parrots and
cute raccoon-like creatures called coatis (cuatis in Portuguese) as well as the Christ
statue, perched atop a verdant, 2,300-foot peak. You could take the bondinho, or 50
little streetcar, that winds its way to the top.

But if you really want to burn off those extra calories, a better option is a hike to
the top of the Tijuca Peak, which is a full 1,000 feet higher and offers unparalleled
panoramic views over the city. Get an early start, because the park closes at
sundown, and the hike can take up to six hours for a round trip. 55

For a stiff dose of Rio night life, hit Lapa. Bars serving up Brazilian cane alcohol,
cachaca, tiny clubs with live music and massive, multilevel mega-discos are all
concentrated in this historic neighborhood near the city center. Friday nights this
is where the action is, and the crowds are so thick you can barely walk let alone
dance. 60

1 condominiums : apartments
2 drag : street
3 jabuticaba : a purple grape used for producing fruit drinks

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2 The following text is taken from an autobiographical account written by a passenger who was on
board the ship Titanic when it hit an iceberg in 1912.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to portray the writers thoughts
and feelings. [15]

(b) Continue the account (between 120150 words). You do not have to bring the account to a
close. Base your answer closely on the style and features of the original extract. [10]

Suddenly a queer quivering ran under me, apparently the whole length of the ship.
Startled by the very strangeness of the shivering motion, I sprang to the floor. With
too perfect a trust in that mighty vessel I again lay down.

No confusion, no noise of any kind, one could believe no danger imminent.

Our stewardess came and said she could learn nothing. Looking out into the 5
companionway I saw heads appearing asking questions from half-closed doors.
All still, no excitement. I sat down again. My friend was by this time dressed; still
her daughter and I talked on, Margaret pretending to eat a sandwich. Her hand
shook so that the bread kept parting company from the chicken. Then I saw she
was frightened, and for the first time I was too, but why get dressed, as no one 10
had given the slightest hint of any possible danger? An officers cap passed the
door. I asked: Is there an accident or danger of any kind? None, so far as I know,
was his courteous answer, spoken quietly and most kindly. This same officer then
entered a cabin a little distance down the companionway and, by this time distrustful
of everything, I listened intently, and distinctly heard, We can keep the water out for 15
a while. Then, and not until then, did I realize the horror of an accident at sea. Now
it was too late to dress; slippers were quicker than shoes; the stewardess put on our
life-preservers, and we were just ready when Mr Roebling came to tell us he would
take us to our friends mother, who was waiting above.

No laughing throng, but on either side [of the staircases] stand quietly, bravely, the 20
stewards, all equipped with the white, ghostly life-preservers. Always the thing one
tries not to see even crossing a ferry. Now only pale faces, each form strapped
about with those white bars. So gruesome a scene. We passed on. The awful
good-byes. The quiet look of hope in the brave mens eyes as the wives were put
into the lifeboats. Nothing escaped one at this fearful moment. We left from the 25
sun deck, seventy-five feet above the water. Mr Case and Mr Roebling, brave men,
saw us to the lifeboat, made no effort to save themselves, but stepped back on
deck.

Our lifeboat, with thirty-six in it, began lowering to the sea. This was done amid the
greatest confusion. Rough seamen all giving different orders. No officer aboard. As 30
only one side of the ropes worked, the lifeboat at one time was in such a position
that it seemed we must capsize in mid-air. At last the ropes worked together, and we
drew nearer and nearer the black, oily water. The first touch of our lifeboat on that
black sea came to me as a last good-bye to life, and so we put off a tiny boat on a
great sea rowed away from what had been a safe home for five days. 35

The first wish on the part of all was to stay near the Titanic. We all felt so much
safer near the ship. Surely such a vessel could not sink. I thought the danger must
be exaggerated, and we could all be taken aboard again. But surely the outline of
that great, good ship was growing less. The bow of the boat was getting black. Light
after light was disappearing, and now those rough seamen put to their oars and we 40
were told to hunt under seats, any place, anywhere, for a lantern, a light of any kind.
Every place was empty. There was no water no stimulant of any kind. Not a biscuit
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 5

nothing to keep us alive had we drifted long. The life-preservers helped to keep us
warm, but the night was bitter cold, and it grew colder and colder, and just before
dawn, the coldest, darkest hour of all, no help seemed possible 45

The stars slowly disappeared, and in their place came the faint pink glow of another
day. Then I heard, A light, a ship. I could not, would not, look while there was a bit of
doubt, but kept my eyes away. All night long I had heard, A light! Each time it proved
to be one of our other lifeboats, someone lighting a piece of paper, anything they
could find to burn, and now I could not believe. Someone found a newspaper; it was 50
lighted and held up. Then I looked and saw a ship. A ship bright with lights; strong
and steady she waited, and we were to be saved. A straw hat was offered: it would
burn longer. That same ship that had come to save us might run us down. But no;
she is still. The two, the ship and the dawn, came together, a living painting.

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3 The following text is a review of a rather unusual restaurant and its owner.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to present the owner and her
surroundings. [15]

(b) The television company decides to advertise the new television series presented by Rachel
Khoo. Basing your answer closely on the material of the original extract, write the text for the
advertisement (between 120150 words). [10]

The surprise is not that Rachel Khoo cooks well, which she does. The surprise is
that she does it at all. You see, Khoo operates several flights up within a rather
shabby-chic block, in a flat that is weeny.1 In total, it is 22 square metres in size.
Thats about as big as a double bedroom.

Entering it feels like arriving in a treehouse. Theres a tiny little hall, a titchy bathroom 5
and a diminutive living room, where she sleeps. And theres a little kitchen. Rachels
little kitchen. This is her definition, indeed, its the title of her book and accompanying
TV show, which is in the process of being filmed when I visit.

Hello! she cries. Only I cant see her. The figure of the director and the cameraman
are enough to entirely obscure Rachel in her bedroom cupboard, sorry kitchen. In 10
all, there are five of us in the flat, and it is chocka.2 All I can see is a vintage-looking
colander hanging on the wall. And a pair of feet in socks.

These belong to Rachel, who is standing in her kitchen rolling out dough and
explaining that when you do this, its best to sandwich it within baking paper, so it
doesnt stick. Its also good because it means you dont have to cover your worktop 15
with flour, which then gets everything all messy. You have to be neat when you work
in a kitchen the size of a doormat.

You have to think twice about what you buy, too, she tells me later, over hot
chocolate at Cherie, her favourite caf down the road in the newly fashionable 13th
district, near the station. You have to really think about what you need. 20

Shes not complaining. Khoo, 31, is quite petite herself. Equally fortunately, she
appears to have brutal drive. This is essential. Right now, the world of the television
chef is, frankly, as full as a bowl of classic Italian minestrone soup. Except with giant
egos instead of macaroni bobbing about in it.

To make it big in the world of the televised smile hovering over the expertly kneaded 25
short-crust pastry, to become famous on Planet TV Chef, you have not only to have
talent, but you also need nuclear-powered self-belief, and you must have a gimmick.
This is crucial, as it will set you apart from all those other TV chefs who have their
gimmicks, too easy, sexy, fishy, French, foul-mouthed, and, er, very foul-mouthed.

We know them so well, they exist simply under these totems.3 Rachel will have to 30
have her own niche, in order to compete. A microscopic kitchen, which is, of course,
a niche in its own right, will do perfectly.

Khoo, who trained as a cordon bleu chef when she got fed up working as a food
stylist, has all of the above. She has talent. The gimmick is the tiny kitchen. And she
has self-belief. Gallons of it. If you measured it, it would probably be larger than her 35
flat, actually.

Then she found a cookshop with a caf attached. She talked her way in as the
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resident pastry chef, launching sessions like Pimp My Cupcake for elegant ladies
who were curious to know more. She then got 30 minutes of pitch-time at Penguin
Books. She marched into the commissioning editors office and sold My Little 40
Kitchen.

Does she have a life outside patisserie? It doesnt look like there is room for much
else. She will probably be a giant success, and be known on first name terms before
the year is out; she looks like Juliette Lewis, for a start, she is winningly down to
earth (If your quiche Lorraine 4 has anything other than bacon, eggs and cream in 45
it, it is not a quiche Lorraine, I hear her telling the camera), and she is the real deal.
She cooks in a tiny flat, rather well.

Oh, you dont need a giant kitchen, she breezes. Her first kitchen didnt even have
an oven. Or a fridge. Whats the bare minimum, then? A hob. Running water. Some
pots, and chefs knives. And a windowsill. What, for growing herbs? No, for the 50
fridge.

Wouldnt she love to have a giant kitchen with an island, a big oven and a
breadmaker? No. I like small. Its why I like living here it still feels quite small. She
goes to the local market twice a week and simply cooks whats in season; she has
a butcher and a baker and is a self-confessed croissant snob. She doesnt buy what 55
she doesnt need and she lives frugally, largely because her life has to be utterly
minimalist, like her quiches. After all, it can be summarised by the contents of a
single cupboard, a rather rickety shelving unit, and a tiny kitchen. Shes arrived at
the right time, I think.

1 weeny : tiny
2 chocka : full to bursting
3 totems : symbolic labels
4 quiche Lorraine : French savoury dish

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Answer Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

1 The following text is taken from a website advertising a holiday location.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to promote the island and its
benefits. [15]

(b) The designers of the same website are invited to write a similar promotion for another holiday
destination and its benefits to potential visitors.

Write a section (between 120150 words) of this promotion. Base your answer closely on the
style and features of the writing in the original extract. [10]

In the azure waters of the Indian Ocean there is an island like no other on earth. An
island where nature thrives and man is just a silent observer, curator of one of the
most pristine islands on earth. Cousine Island is one of the 115 islands that make
up the Seychelles: the perfect destination for travellers seeking an escape from the
crowds, but where luxury and service are never compromised. Cousine Island can 5
only be reached by helicopter and it is this seclusion that makes it such an attractive
haven for people wanting absolute privacy.

Cousine Island offers you the opportunity to not only visit a private island but to
experience a sense of ownership. The Island offers privacy found in very few places
on earth! 10

From arrival to departure and beyond, you are a part of the Cousine Family we
offer warm hospitality which is unobtrusive and encourages a true home away from
home feeling.

Birds and tortoises welcome you, the song of the Magpie Robin enchants you and
the ever curious skinks1 sit quietly awaiting a crumb to fall from your table 15

Private, unique and intimate weddings are offered on Cousine Island! Where would
you find the most romantic beach wedding location to tie the knot? For the ultimate
beach wedding, you wont have to look further than Cousine Island. You cannot afford
not to investigate Seychelles beach weddings; the exquisite setting is the perfect
ingredient for a happy day, and with our temperate climate, choosing Cousine Island 20
for this milestone will be one of the wisest choices you make.

Most newlyweds long for some seclusion, but they also want comfort and luxury and
this is what Cousine Island is all about. For Seychelles beach weddings, the best
time to come and tie the knot is from October to February, because you have the
promise of lazy, hazy days; calm, serene seas and gentle breezes. 25

Save yourself a great deal of stress. Let us plan everything for you from your
dress, to the flowers, to the music and wedding feast. There are all sorts of different
ways you can celebrate your beach wedding, anything from barefoot and tropical to
something more formal.

The pressure is on for you to create an experience that is truly unforgettable, and 30
it can be hard to know where to begin, but with Seychelles beach weddings we
arrange everything and plan a day that you will never forget, and you will be totally
relaxed and rejuvenated from having us arrange every tiny detail.

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Come to the islands of love Seychelles beach weddings and honeymoons are
the perfect way to start your journey together and to return again to celebrate all the 35
important stages of your marriage.

The powder-white beach overlooking the turquoise blue water with palm trees
swaying gently in the mid-afternoon breeze offers the perfect setting to celebrate
your perfect wedding. Whether it is a grand affair with pastor and choir or barefoot
on the beach, your wedding is sure to be remembered forever! 40

A perfect day rounded off by a romantic beach barbecue with a bonfire and a starlit
sky or a feast in the pavilion with family and friends.

Your honeymoon a time to relax after the wedding. Kick off your shoes, settle
under a palm tree and read your favourite book or let our spa therapist work away at
the stress and tension left over from your wedding. Relax and unwind in our rustic 45
spa which is located at the old Beach House. Our spa features the exclusive Ligne
St Barth product range which is a very luxurious and all-natural skincare range.

You will be taken on a sensory journey that will leave you tingling with delight from
head to toe. Enjoy our home-made ginger and peppermint tea on the verandah
overlooking the ocean. We make sure that your time spent here with us will be 50
enjoyed to the full.

Come and experience true paradise without having to deal with crowds of people!

1 skink : type of lizard

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 4

2 The following text is taken from an account of the moments when the ship Titanic hit an iceberg in
1912.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to create the atmosphere of the
scene. [15]

(b) Continue the account (between 120150 words). You do not have to bring the account to a
close. Base your answer closely on the style and features of the original extract. [10]

High in the crows-nest of the new White Star liner, Titanic lookout Frederick Fleet
peered into a dazzling night. It was calm, clear and bitterly cold. There was no moon,
but the cloudless sky blazed with stars. The Atlantic was like polished plate glass.
People later said they had never seen it so smooth.

So far so good. On duty at ten oclock a few words about the ice problem with 5
lookout Reginald Lee who shared the same watch a few more words about the
cold but mostly just silence as the two men stared into the darkness.

Now the watch was almost over, and still there was nothing unusual. Just the night,
the stars, the biting cold, the wind that rushed through the rigging as the Titanic
raced across the calm, black sea at 22.5 knots. It was almost 11.40pm on Sunday, 10
14th April 1912.

Suddenly Fleet saw something directly ahead even darker than the darkness. At first
it was small (about the size, he thought, of two tables put together) but every second
it grew larger and closer. Quickly, Fleet banged the crows-nest bell three times, the
warning of danger ahead. At the same time he lifted the phone and rang the bridge.1 15

What did you see? asked a calm voice at the other end.

Iceberg right ahead, replied Fleet.

Thank you, acknowledged the voice with curiously detached courtesy. Nothing
more said.

For the next thirty-seven seconds Fleet and Lee stood quietly side by side watching 20
the ice draw nearer. Now they were almost on top of it, and still the ship didnt turn.
The berg towered wet and glistening far above the forecastle deck, and both men
braced themselves for a crash. Then miraculously, the bow began to swing to port.
At the last second the stern shot into the clear and the ice glided swiftly by along the
starboard side. It looked to Fleet like a close shave. 25

At this moment Quartermaster George Rowe was standing watch on the after
bridge. For him too, it had been an uneventful night just the sea, the stars, the
biting cold. As he paced the deck, he noticed what he and his mates called whiskers
round the light tiny splinters of ice in the air, fine as dust, that gave off myriads of
bright colours whenever caught in the glow of the deck lights. 30

Then suddenly he felt a curious motion break the steady rhythm of the engines. It
was a little like coming alongside a dock wall rather heavily. He glanced forward
and stared again. A windjammer,2 sails set, seemed to be passing the starboard
side. Then he realized it was an iceberg, towering perhaps a hundred feet above the
water. The next instant it was gone, drifting astern into the dark. 35

On this quiet, cold Sunday night a snug bunk seemed about the best place to be.
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But a few shipboard diehards were still up. As usual most were in the first-class
smoking-room on A deck. Somebody produced a deck of cards, and as they sat
playing and laughing, suddenly came that grinding jar. Not much of a shock but
enough to give a man a start. In an instant through the aft3 door past the Palm 40
Court and out on to the deck. They were just in time to see the iceberg scraping
along the starboard side, a little higher than the boat deck. As it slid by, they watched
chunks of ice breaking off and tumbling into the water. In another moment it faded
into the darkness astern.

The creaking woodwork, the distant rhythm of the engines, the steady rattle of the 45
glass dome over the A deck foyer all the familiar shipboard sounds vanished as
the Titanic came to a stop. Far more than any jolt, silence stirred the passengers.

On deck there was little fun to be seen; nor was there any sign of danger. For the
most part the explorers wandered aimlessly about or stood by the rail, staring into
the empty night for some clue to the trouble. The Titanic lay dead in the water, three 50
of her four huge funnels blowing off steam with a roar that shattered the quiet, starlit
night. Otherwise everything was normal. Towards the stern of the boat an elderly
couple strolled arm in arm, oblivious of the roaring steam and the little knots of
passengers roving about.

It was so bitterly cold and there was so little to be seen, that most of the people 55
came inside again. Mingling together, they made a curious picture. Their dress was
an odd mixture of bathrobes, evening clothes, fur coats, turtle-neck sweaters. The
setting was equally incongruous the huge glass dome overhead the dignified
oak panelling the magnificent balustrades with their wrought-iron scrollwork
and looking down on them all, an incredible wall clock adorned with two bronze 60
nymphs, somehow symbolizing Honour and Glory crowning Time.

1 bridge: a ships control centre

2 windjammer : large, old-fashioned sailing ship
3 aft : rear

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3 The following text is taken from an autobiographical account of growing up.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to convey the writers thoughts
and feelings. [15]

(b) Later, the friend records her thoughts and feelings about the writer and the journey in her
diary. Write a section of the diary entry (between 120150 words). Base your answer closely
on the material of the original extract. [10]

Since Im still in my senior year of high school none of my memories are too
far in the past To say the least Ive a bad case of senioritis1 but am fighting
well. Anyhow, this seemed to be a pretty profound morning for me about a week
ago

The morning commute is, unfortunately, the same as its always been. The same 5
grueling forty-five minutes of persistent chatter and the consuming static of a radio
thats permanently stuck on too loud. My only salvation is a single friend, the only
soul on this forsaken mass-transit with a shred of dignity and intelligence and I
shouldnt just say a shred, shes practically brimming with it.

As I fold myself into the cracked faux leather seat, my knees press into the bench 10
in front of me and I note, not for the first time, that Im much too tall for this. In
an ineffective effort to escape the monsters around us, we both slide into the
confines of the seat and bunker down for the daily ritual. It begins as per usual, we
simultaneously contribute to an awkward silence then share common trivialities, like
were meeting for the first time, or passing shopping-carts in the grocery store. 15

After surveying the oblivious newcomers, I groan and break the silence, They make
me feel so old, you know? I say, nodding my chin toward the junior high students
clustered in the front six seats. She laughs in agreement and compliments my
ponytail, comments on my barrette2. She has a tendency to do that on days like this;
its like she can sense when Im feeling down on myself. It typically makes me feel a 20
bit better. I try and do the same for her, but Im a terrible judge of facial expression.

Some idiot in the back just decided to go and open a window, even though the dead
admit its cold outside. Some kids yell that it is only 2 and to shut the window, but
I just pull my khaki wool jacket tighter across my chest and kick off my gray flats so
I can tuck my feet beneath me and keep my toes warm. My confidant does the same 25
and zips up her black windbreaker, theres a moment of rustling that follows from her
arms swishing across her torso while she rearranges her numerous bags. I shiver
and we exchange a meaningful look that says simply why? because we both know
the window will end up open all week.

I look again at her and her mountain of clutter and think, shell be a crazy bag lady 30
someday The thought makes me smile since Im sure she knows it too and I idly
play with the impossible lock ties of my own vintage blue messenger bag. Its at this
time that I really notice how ravenous I am. I pull a small container of leftovers out
of my bag to munch at as we converse and bump along. Do you remember feeling
six? she asks while drawing on the frost-covered plexi-glass. For a moment I have 35
to stop chewing and seriously think. Images, hard to conjure, dimly flash; the salty
taste of play-dough, the smell of summer and other various events that I would not
care to dwell on. No. I finally answer, I remember some things from being six, but
the feeling escapes me entirely. And it truly did, I just felt well cold, a little old
and just plain hungry. No matter how hard I tried I couldnt bring back that feeling of 40
uninhibited innocence that currently belongs to my little sister.
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While we talked, complained and generally gossiped, the thought lingered in the
back of my mind: just why was it so terrifically difficult to return to a long forgotten
mindset? It frustrated me terribly that I could remember everything that happened,
but it was like watching somebody else. In some weird way I felt as though I was 45
intruding on someone elses experiences, trying to unravel some alter mes emotions
and motivations. The vehicle stops and Im returned, full force, to the present. The
school gossip is climbing the stairs and I lean over and whisper, Its too early for
this. Shamefully we both plug our ears with headphones and miserably feign sleep.

Its all for nothing though since, Mouth, as well call her, plops into the seat next to 50
us and pulls the headphones out to talk. For the next fifteen minutes my savior and I
exchange casual help me glances as we get a months worth of gossip at 30MPH,
and once again Mouths life story that either of us could repeat word for word.

1 senioritis : decreased motivation toward studies displayed by students who are

nearing the end of their school life
2 barrette : a clasp or pin for holding hair in place

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Answer Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

1 The following text is taken from an online advertisement for a luxury apartment called Pembroke in
Cape Town, South Africa.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to promote the accommodation
and its location. [15]

(b) The same company posts a similar online advertisement for a different luxury apartment they
run in your own part of the world.

Write a section (between 120150 words) of this advertisement. Base your answer closely on
the style and features of the original extract. [10]

Set on the waters edge in the heart of Cape Towns acclaimed waterfront, Pembroke
is the quintessence of luxury serviced accommodation for either business or holiday,
rubbing shoulders with two of the worlds leading hotels, The One and Only, and
Cape Grace.

Within walking distance of a myriad of bistros, gourmet restaurants, popular and 5

designer shopping, and an internationally renowned aquarium, Pembroke is an
oasis to which you can retreat after sampling the citys busy delights.

Perched above the marina, relax and enjoy a languid drink at sunset, looking out
over the water, or contemplate the majesty of Table Mountain after an invigorating
day out and about. 10

When only the very best will do for your Cape Town trip, why look any further?

Retail food outlets and fine dining establishments are within walking distance.
For a special occasion, enlist a private chef for that indulgent gourmet meal. We
can arrange tours of the Winelands, as well as trips to experience the exceptional
regional flora and fauna (e.g. botanical gardens or whale-spotting). The Cape is also 15
a hotspot for golf with many nearby courses. We will gladly organise airport transfers
as well as assist with vehicle hire during your stay.

This luxury serviced apartments bedroom suite, which comes with a plush extra
length king bed and luxury linen, commands superb views across the marina to
Cape Towns waterfront and the ocean beyond. There is an open-plan dressing room 20
and en suite bathroom with separate wet room and power shower, a regal double
bath enjoying views over the harbour, twin basins and bidet.

The bed is an extra length king-size, dressed with the finest linens with which to
enjoy your marina bedroom choice of TV, film or music from the flat-screen TV and
the surround-sound speakers link to the apartments integrated audiovisual system, 25
enhanced by mood lighting to orchestrate the ambience of the moment and all by
remote control.

The suite enjoys vistas of Table Mountain and the cableway, Signal Hill and the Noon
Day Gun (youll hear its crack at twelve precisely), with The One and Only Hotel and
its private villas huddled around the canal below. There are magnificent views of the 30
green belt of Signal Hill from even the shower and bath. The terrace, too, invites you
to step out and contemplate this panorama. On a balmy summers evening, the play
of light is remarkable.
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Extra sleeping accommodation is available in the TV lounge with a pair of specially

commissioned daybeds imported from Switzerland. By day, these form very smart 35
and comfortable seating or lounging spaces, while, at night, they can convert into
fully functional beds on sprung bases to make a pair of twins or a king bed. This
area is serviced by another bathroom with its own wet room and power shower.

The fully-equipped kitchen is ergonomic perfection. Built-in appliances, coupled with

finger-touch drawers and cupboards, make it heaven for gastronomes. Stylish cobalt 40
blue stone surfaces, punctuated with silver glints, add a dramatic signature to the
kitchens muted off-white and teal1 colour scheme. Aspiring chefs can communicate
directly with their guests in the lounge and dining area, with a serving counter
providing direct and practical access from the kitchen.

The glass dining table is another spectacular creation and provides generous 45
seating for at least 8 people. The extremely comfortable dining chairs were specially
made in a grey-blue leather to match the sofa in the lounge and to marry in with
tall units in the kitchen. The lighting of the dining area was created for atmosphere
to allow focused lighting on the table while reducing the light level throughout the
rest of the open-plan space. All of this can be adjusted at the touch of a button on 50
the remote control. We love to dine here having put together a lovely meal with
a good bottle of wine from our cellar collection also available to our guests. A
few tea-lights in white porcelain holders add further to the atmosphere as does the
wonderful sound of the music from the speakers. Looking towards the balcony from
the table and through the sheer red chilli metallic drapes, the lights of the marina 55
shine like stars. It really is so magical.

1teal: blue-green colour

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2 The following text is taken from a magazine feature which describes the underwater exploration of
the ship Titanic, which sank in 1912.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to convey the atmosphere of the
scene. [15]

(b) The writer publishes a magazine feature in which he describes his exploration of another
unusual location (real or imaginary). In it he creates a strong sense of atmosphere.

Write a section (between 120150 words) of this article. Base your answer closely on the
features of the writing in the original extract. [10]

It had been five hours since my intrepid robot Gilligan left its garage on the front of
the submersible Mir 1 and disappeared inside the cavernous shipwreck.

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

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Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

It was an eerie feeling but also strangely comforting, as if I

were somehow home.

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 6

3 The following text is taken from an autobiographical account. The writer recalls his early life in
Havana, Cuba, and the time when the leader of the country, Batista, was overthrown by his
opponents. At this stage, the writer feels that he is an outsider both in terms of his family and the
outside world.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to represent the writers thoughts
and feelings. [15]

(b) Later, the writers mother records the experience of this day in her diary. Write a section of
the diary entry (between 120150 words). Base your answer closely on the material of the
original extract. [10]

The world changed while I slept, and much to my surprise, no one had consulted
me. Thats how it would always be from that day forward. Of course, thats the way it
had been all along. I just didnt know it until that morning.

I was barely eight years old, and I had spent hours dreaming of childish things, as
children do. My father, who vividly remembered his prior incarnation as King Louis 5
XVI1 of France, probably dreamt of costume balls, mobs, and guillotines2. My mother,
who had no memory of having been Marie Antoinette3, couldnt have shared in his
dreams. Maybe she dreamt of hibiscus blossoms and fine silk. Maybe she dreamt of
angels, as she always encouraged me to do. Suea con los angelitos, she would
say: Dream of little angels. The fact that they were little meant they were too cute to 10
be fallen angels.

The tropical sun knifed through the gaps in the wooden shutters, as always,
extending in narrow shafts of light above my bed, revealing entire galaxies of swirling
dust specks. I stared at the dust, as always, rapt4. I dont remember getting out of
bed. But I do remember walking into my parents bedroom. Their shutters were open 15
and the room was flooded with light. As always, my father was putting on his trousers
over his shoes. He always put on his socks and shoes first, and then his trousers.
For years I tried to duplicate that nearly magical feat, with little success. The cuffs of
my pants would always get stuck on my shoes and no amount of tugging could free
them. More than once I risked an eternity in hell and spat out swear words. 20

As he slid his baggy trousers over his brown shoes, effortlessly, Louis XVI broke the
news to me: Batista is gone. He flew out of Havana early this morning. It looks like
the rebels have won.

You lie, I said.

No, I swear, its true, he replied. 25

Marie Antoinette, my mother, assured me it was true as she applied lipstick, seated
at her vanity table. It was a beautiful piece of mahogany furniture with three mirrors:
one flat against the wall and two on either side of that, hinged so that their angles
could be changed at will. I used to turn the side mirrors so they would face each
other and create infinite regressions of one another. Sometimes I would peer in and 30
plunge into infinity.

The night before, we had all gone to a wedding at a church in the heart of old
Havana. On the way home, we had the streets to ourselves. Not another moving car
in sight. Not a soul on the Malecn, the broad avenue along the waterfront. Louis
XVI and Marie Antoinette kept talking about the eerie emptiness of the city. Havana 35
was much too quiet for a New Years Eve.
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 7

I cant remember what my older brother, Tony, was doing that morning or for the rest
of the day. Maybe he was wrapping lizards in thin copper wire and hooking them up
to our train transformer. He liked to electrocute them. He liked it a lot.

My older brother and my adopted brother had both been Bourbon princes in a former 40
life. My adopted brother had been the Dauphin, the heir to the French throne. My
father had recognized him on the street one day, selling lottery tickets, and brought
him to our house immediately. I was the outsider.

The lizards remained oblivious to the news that day, as always. Contrary to what my
brother Tony liked to say as he administered shock treatments to them, the lizards 45
were not deluded in the least. They knew exactly what they were and always would
be. Nothing had changed for them. Nothing would ever change. The world already
belonged to them whole, free of vice and virtue. They scurried up and down the walls
of the patio, and along its brightly colored floor tiles. They lounged on tree branches,
sunned themselves on rocks. They clung to the ceilings inside our house, waiting for 50
bugs to eat. They never fell in love, or sinned, or suffered broken hearts. They knew
nothing of betrayal or humiliation. They needed no revolutions. They feared neither
death nor torture at the hands of children. They worried not about curses, or proof of
Gods existence, or nakedness. Their limbs looked an awful lot like our own, in the
same way that eggplants resembled breasts. Lizards were ugly, to be sure or so I 55
thought back then. They made me question the goodness of creation.

I could never kiss a lizard, I thought. Never.

Perhaps I envied them. Their place on earth was more secure than ours. We would
lose our place, lose our world. They are still basking in the sun. Same way. Day in,
day out. 60

1Louis XVI: the deposed King of France at the time of the French Revolution in
1789, later executed by guillotine by his opponents
2guillotine: device which drops a heavy blade, used to execute people
3Marie Antoinette: wife of King Louis XVI, also executed
4rapt: enchanted

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Answer Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

1 The following extract is taken from a speech given by Martin Luther King, a leading civil rights
campaigner, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize, in Oslo, 1964.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to persuade the audience. [15]

(b) Continue the speech (between 120150 words). You do not have to bring it to a conclusion.
Base your answer closely on the style and features of the original extract. [10]

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive is a profound

recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question
of our time the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without
resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical
concepts. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way 5
to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy1 into
a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all
human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The
foundation of such a method is love.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith and an audacious faith in the future of 10
mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.
I refuse to accept the idea that the isness of mans present nature makes him
morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal oughtness that forever confronts
him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river
of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to 15
accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism
and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become
a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a
militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed 20
truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right,
temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid
todays mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.
I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our
nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children 25
of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals
a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and
freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men
other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the
altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent 30
redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. And the lion and the lamb shall
lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none
shall be afraid. I still believe that We Shall Overcome!2

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our
tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. 35
When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become
darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative
turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity.
I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood. I say I 40
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 3

come as a trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much
more than an honour to me personally.

Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a
successful journey possible the known pilots and the unknown ground crew.

So you honour the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as 45
the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honour the ground crew without whose
labour and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of
these people will never make the headline and their names will not appear in Whos
Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused
on this marvellous age in which we live men and women will know and children 50
will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization
because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness sake.

1 elegy : lament
2 We Shall Overcome! : famous protest song of the Civil Rights Movement

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2 The following text is taken from the writers autobiography. It describes her memories of growing
up in Egypt.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to create a sense of mood and
place. [15]

(b) Later in her autobiography the writer describes another place which brings back strong
memories of a particular time in her life.

Write a section (between 120150 words) of this description. Base your answer closely on the
style and features of the writing in the original extract. [10]

It was as if there were to life itself a quality of music in that time, the era of my
childhood, and in that place, the remote edge of Cairo. There the city petered out
into a scattering of villas leading into tranquil country fields. On the other side of our
house was the profound, unsurpassable quiet of the desert.

There was, to begin with, always the sound sometimes no more than a mere 5
breath of the wind in the trees, each variety of tree having its own music, its own
way of conversing. I knew them all like friends (when we left in the summers for
Alexandria I would, the last day, make the round of the garden saying goodbye to
the trees), although none more intimately than the two trees on either side of the
corner bedroom I shared with Nanny. On one side was the silky, barely perceptible 10
breath of the mimosa, which, when the wind grew strong, would scratch lightly with
its thorns at the shutters of the window facing the front of the house, looking out
onto the garden. On the other side was the dry, faintly rattling shuffle of the long-
leaved eucalyptus that stood by the window facing the street. On hot nights the
street lamp cast the shadows of the slender twirling eucalyptus leaves onto my 15
bedroom wall, my own secret cinema. I would fall asleep watching those dancing
shadows imagining to myself that I saw a house in them and people going about
their lives. They would appear at the door or windows of their shadow house and
talk and come out and do things on the balcony. I would go to bed looking forward to
finding out what had happened next in their lives. 20

I loved the patterns of light cast by leaves on the earth and I loved being in them,
under them. The intricate, gently shifting patterns that the flame tree cast where the
path widened toward the garden gate, fading and growing strong again as a cloud
passed, could hold me still, totally lost, for long moments.

Almost everything then seemed to have its own beat, its own lilt: sounds that 25
distilled the sweetness of being, others that made audible its terrors, and sounds for
everything between. The cascading cry of the karawan, a bird I heard but never saw,
came only in the dusk. Its long melancholy call descending down the scale was like
the pure expression of lament at the fall of things, all endings that the end of light
presaged1. 30

Then there was the music of the street beyond the garden hedge in the day, not
noisy but alive, between long intervals of silence, with the sounds of living. People
walking, greeting one another, the clip-clop of a donkey, sometimes of a horse. Street
vendors calls tama-a-tim for tomatoes, robbabe-e-eccia-a for old clothes and
furniture. And the sound, occasionally, of cars, though rarely enough for us to be 35
able to detect the horn and the engine even of our own car. Our dog, Frankie, could
detect it long before we could, when the car was still almost two miles away.

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 5

Then there was the sound sometimes, in the earliest morning, of the reed piper
walking past our house. His pipe sounded private, like someone singing to himself.
A simple, lovely sound, almost like speech, like a human voice. He would say good 40
morning with his pipe and one knew it to be good morning. When he passed, it
would feel as if something of infinite sweetness had momentarily graced ones life
and then faded irretrievably away.

Years later Id discover that in Sufi poetry this music of the reed is the quintessential
music of loss and Id feel, learning this, that Id always known it to be so. In the 45
poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, the classic master-poet of Sufism, the song of the reed
is the metaphor for our human condition, haunted as we so often are by a vague
sense of longing and of nostalgia, but nostalgia for we know not quite what. Cut from
its bed and fashioned into a pipe, the reed forever laments the living earth that it
once knew, crying out, whenever life is breathed into it, its ache and its yearning and 50
loss. We too live our lives haunted by loss we too, says Rumi, remember a condition
of completeness that we once knew but have forgotten that we ever knew. The song
of the reed and the music that haunts our lives is the music of loss, of loss and of
remembrance.

Thats how it was in the beginning, how it was to come to consciousness in this 55
place and this time and in a world alive, as it seemed, with the music of being.

1 presaged : anticipated

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 6

3 The following newspaper article describes the writers experience of an outdoor activity she has
not tried before. Training involves meeting her new instructor, Robert.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to convey the writers thoughts
and feelings. [15]

(b) Later, Robert records his own thoughts and feelings about the writer and the days training in
his diary.

Write a section of the diary entry (between 120150 words). Base your answer closely on the
material of the original extract. [10]

Whats your name? I ask, staring up at a blue-eyed Adonis1 who is in every sense
about to be my saviour.

OK. I think. Im a 44-year-old woman and a very fit man in his 20s might be flirting
with me. Play it cool. Play it cool.

Im about to try river bobbing for the first time. I have looked it up online and it seems 5
to involve sitting on a rubber ring and bouncing down rapids. Looks fun. Except Ive
booked the wrong course. Im not river bobbing at all. Im river swimming.

This is an entirely different prospect. I have to dive into fast-flowing water, tackle
rapids with nothing more than two wetsuits, a buoyancy jacket, a helmet and the
limbs my mother gave me. I cant do front crawl and, if Im being honest, I can only 10
swim with a snorkel.

So I want you to shallow dive upstream and then front crawl as hard as you can
across the current and meet me at that rock, says Rob, pointing towards dark water
thats as fast as a whip.

I stare back at him. Is now a good time to tell him Im not very good at swimming? 15
No, I cant. If I tell him, he might not let me do it and Im supposed to be having a go.
Giving up is not an option.

I havent really dived before, I mumble, chewing my bottom lip.

Rob blinks. What? Ever?

I shake my head. He frowns. Well, just watch me and copy. But dont deep dive. 20
Keep it shallow. Youll be fine.

He then dives in with the grace of a swan and front crawls effortlessly across the
raging current.

At this point, I wonder what on earth I am doing. My mother threatened to phone my

editor a week ago and say I wasnt allowed to do this. I wish she had. Still, in for a 25
penny, in for a pound. Lifes for living. And with that in mind, I belly flop, arms spread-
eagled, into the river.

It is so cold I think I might die, here and now. I gasp. My heart is pounding in my
chest but somewhere, over the shock, I can hear Rob shouting, Swim! Swim!

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 7

I have to front crawl my way out of this immediately, I think, and so start making 30
awkward windmill shapes with my arms until I can feel rocks scraping at my knees. I
open my eyes. Rob is staring down at me. And thats the first bit over.

We clamber up the river bank. Right, says Rob, this time I want you to jump in on
your back, feet pointing downriver. The current is faster. He then leaps in, and off
the water takes him. Make sure you jump out far enough! he yells. 35

I give it a go. But I dont jump out far enough and instead I land on a rock. I howl in
pain, but as I spin down the river wondering if my buttock has been shattered, I can
see Rob ahead. Hes gesturing to me to steer myself towards him. Hes perched on
a rock. Ahead of him are some white-water rapids. I dont want to go down those, I
think. So I try to stop. Except, I cant. 40

Its at this point that Rob, as if hes in a film, reaches for me, manages to get the end
of his fingertips around my outstretched hand and yanks me to safety. Hes saved
my life, I think. Technically, I now have to marry him.

Right, says Rob, leading me further up the bank. These are calmer rapids. Its
very, very important that you get your breathing right. Get it wrong and youre going 45
to be in trouble. Feet up. Follow my line.

And in he leaps. I look at these calmer rapids. They dont look very calm to me. They
look positively livid. I cant bring myself to leap in a third time, so I sort of flop in like
a drunken seal. The water takes me immediately.

I flip on to my back. Im about to hit the first patch of white water, so I take a deep 50
breath and shut my mouth. Which is all very well, but a huge surge of water crashes
over my head shooting straight up my nose. I start to choke and I cant breathe, but I
cant do anything about it because a second wave of water is crashing over me and
shoots up my nose again. Oh dear, I think as I tumble into a rock, I might be about
to drown. And it is at this point, as I am choking and spluttering that Rob grabs me, 55
pulls me on to a rock and saves my life. Again.

1 Adonis : in Greek mythology, an extremely handsome young man

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 2

Answer Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

1 The following extract is taken from a speech to the Organisation of African Unity given by Kwame
Nkrumah, President of Ghana, in 1963.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to persuade the audience. [15]

(b) Continue the speech (between 120150 words). You do not have to bring it to a close. Base
your answer closely on the style and features of the original extract. [10]

Our objective is African union now. There is no time to waste. We must unite now or
perish.

African unity is, above all, a political kingdom which can only be gained by political
means. Our people supported us in our fight for independence because they
believed that African governments could cure the ills of the past in a way which 5
could never be accomplished under colonial rule.

If, therefore, now that we are independent we allow the same conditions to exist
that existed in colonial days, all the resentment which overthrew colonialism will be
mobilised against us. The resources are there. It is for us to marshal them in the
active service of our people. Unless we do this by our concerted efforts, within the 10
framework of our combined planning, we shall not progress at the tempo demanded
by todays events and the mood of our people. The symptoms of our troubles will
grow, and the troubles themselves become chronic. It will then be too late for pan-
African unity to secure for us stability and tranquillity in our labours for a continent of
social justice and material wellbeing. 15

What need is there for us to remain hewers of wood and drawers of water for the
industrialised areas of the world? It is said, of course, that we have no capital, no
industrial skill, no communications, and no internal markets, and that we cannot
even agree among ourselves how best to utilise our resources for our own social
needs. Yet all stock exchanges in the world are preoccupied with Africas gold, 20
diamonds, uranium, platinum, copper and iron ore.

Our capital flows out in streams to irrigate the whole system of Western economy.
Africa provides more than 60% of the worlds gold. A great deal of the uranium for
nuclear power, of copper for electronics, of titanium for supersonic projectiles, of
iron and steel for heavy industries, of other minerals and raw materials for lighter 25
industries the basic economic might of the foreign powers comes from our
continent.

Are you afraid to tackle the bull by the horn? For centuries, Africa has been the
milch cow1 of the Western world. Was it not our continent that helped the Western
world to build up its accumulated wealth? 30

We have the resources. It was colonialism in the first place that prevented us from
accumulating the effective capital; but we ourselves have failed to make full use of
our power in independence to mobilise our resources for the most effective take-off
into thorough-going economic and social development.

We have been too busy nursing our separate states to understand fully the basic 35
need of our union, rooted in common purpose, common planning and common
endeavour. A union that ignores these fundamental necessities will be but a sham.
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It is only by uniting our productive capacity and the resultant production that we
can amass capital. And once we start, the momentum will increase. With capital
controlled by our own banks, harnessed to our own true industrial and agricultural 40
development, we shall make our advance.

We shall accumulate machinery and establish steel works, iron foundries and
factories; we shall link the various states of our continent with communications by
land, sea, and air. We shall cable from one place to another, phone from one place
to the other and astound the world with our hydro-electric power; we shall drain 45
marshes and swamps, clear infested areas, feed the undernourished, and rid our
people of parasites and disease.

1 milch cow : milking cow

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 4

2 The following text is taken from a travel book. It describes the writers experience of staying in
Tahiti, an island in French Polynesia, an area of the southern Pacific Ocean.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to create a sense of mood and
place. [15]

(b) Later in her book, the writer describes a different type of location which has also affected her
thoughts and feelings.

Write a section (between 120150 words) of this description. Base your answer closely on the
style and features of the writing in the original extract. [10]

My trip began in paradise. In Tahiti. It was one week before the French nuclear tests
on the Mururoa atoll1, one week before protestors riots and looting ripped apart the
Tahitian capital, Papeete. I saw none of that coming. I had never been to a more
peaceful place.

I was staying in a youth hostel, and it wasnt long before a grubby group of us 5
invaded the Hyatt Regency Hotel, occupying the terrace restaurant and securing
seats overlooking the sea. We wanted to improve on our view. We wanted beer, nuts
and cocktails at eight dollars a shot, and the feeling of life being as close to perfect
as it could ever be.

It came close that night. A magnificent South Pacific sunset graced our efforts. 10
Gilded waves, a blazing sky containing every shade of red imaginable. We gaped
at the west, our eyes never leaving it as we talked lazily about many things. Why
Americans never travel anywhere. Why Germans always do. Didnt Marlon Brando2
have an island somewhere around there? Didnt his daughter kill herself? We all
looked over at the dreadlocked Brit who asked this last question and admonished 15
him with our gazes: inappropriate subject. We would not tolerate such questions.
Not now. Not in front of such perfection.

Every day in Tahiti ended with sentimental perfection, as if it were always the last day
before the end of the world. Beauty was ostentatious there. The air reeked of tiare3
and orange blossoms like a land wearing too much perfume; walking the streets 20
meant treading on flowers shed like autumnal leaves. I wondered absently when Id
be dropped to earth again, a mortal. Too soon, surely. And I wasnt yet prepared for
the sobering jolt.

The quietest of the group, I was surprised when the others joined me in silence.
To the west, the night was taking over, creating an edge to the colors and slowly 25
blowing out the scene. Mauve. Dark maroon. Slowly, slowly. The sky and sea joining.
A slice of moon asserting itself. The sounds of insects. A cooler ocean breeze.

And night.

Something akin to disappointment overtook us. The beers and cocktails became
much too expensive for us. The Hyatt Regency Hotel too stuffy. We counted out our 30
loose change, piled it on the table, and left to the relief of the hotel staff.

Heading to the youth hostel with everyone in the back of an old truck, I felt like one
of Tahitis tupapaughostswhich people believed wandered endlessly and could
only be persuaded to rest by lighting a kerosene lamp in the night. I was already
feeling anxious to leave Tahiti. Inexplicably, I always needed to be somewhere else. 35
Id left behind so much this time. Graduate school, my teaching job, my chance at
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 5

having some savings. A boyfriend who loved me and whom I might have allowed
myself to love back.

The stars above, for all of the trucks speed, didnt seem to move. The wind lashed
our hair back, sent our clothes beating upon us. Tahiti and its people appeared in 40
glimpses of light: an old man walking beneath a street lamp, a pale ocean, a mother
on her front steps calling to a child.

I looked at the young people around me. Most of them had been in Tahiti for months,
glorying like Fletcher Christians mutineers4 in how successfully they had evaded
the rest of the world and its responsibilities. They lived, as I did, out of a backpack. 45
They spent their nights getting Polynesian tattoos and drinking beer around bonfires
on the sand, a society of merry vagabonds. I was always tentative about joining
them, sitting on the fringe of the circle of light. I liked to watch them, wondering what
happened when paradise officially became ones home. Did the escapes stop then?
Did one live a charmed life? For their lives, these happy peoples, indeed seemed 50
charmed.

Id found that the most paradisiacal places in the world only distracted me for a few
blessed days. It was like having an out-of-body experience: I stepped away from
myself and my past, and resided in turquoise waters and white sands, pretending
I wouldnt ever have to return to anything. Rest and relaxation, people called it. I 55
called it hope.

1 atoll : coral island

2 Marlon Brando : a Hollywood film star
3 tiare : a type of gardenia plant
4 Fletcher Christians mutineers : sailors, led by Fletcher Christian, who rebelled

against their commanding officer on an expedition to Tahiti in the eighteenth century

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 6

3 The following text describes how the writer, an English tutor, tries to help one of her students
to take life less seriously. They are sitting in a Japanese sushi restaurant where food travels by
conveyor belt.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to present the characters and
the setting. [15]

(b) Later, Yumiko records her thoughts and feelings about the evening in her diary.

Write a section (between 120150 words) of the diary entry. Base your answer closely on the
material of the original extract. [10]

That night at the cheap sushi place, Yumiko was complaining about her boyfriend.
Yumiko didnt really love him. He was boring. A purple running shoe rounded the
bend behind a tub of wasabi1. I blinked and it was still there, unhurriedly cruising the
conveyor belt.

but love is not everything and I am getting old. She bit her glossy lower lip. You 5
understand, Natalie?

Maguro2, shrimp, melon slice, wasabi, shoe.

Yumiko saw it too. The running shoe crept by, its frayed laces dangling over the edge
of the counter.

Laughing, I turned to look at the other diners. The room was wide and white, with four 10
rows of blood-orange seats lining the snakelike progression of the sushi track. The
ceiling spewed out fluorescent light over the constant noisechildren squealing,
waiters singing welcome, men barking orders into tableside speakers. I wonder
what kind of person wears a purple shoe, Yumiko said without smiling. She paused
to brush her long braid over her shoulder. 15

I was still laughing. This is truly awesome.

Its not funny.

Dont worry, I said.

Yes, youre right, she said, and relief spilled over her face. She scooped a heap of
ginger out of a plastic bin on the table. I peeked across the restaurant. A few people 20
were smiling and pointing.

She looked across the restaurant. My father thinks Satoshi will be a good husband.

I shoved a thick slab of salmon and rice into my mouth. The fish was a little oily,
and everything melted on my tongue. I reached for another piece while I was still
chewing, then realized Yumiko was waiting for me to say something. I swallowed. 25

I saw the high heel only as it reached Yumikos right shoulder. It was black and it
reflected stripes of light.

She gasped. We should leave, maybe.

I laughed, listening as the key of the restaurant changed from flat to sharp, with
high-pitched tones of wonder winding through the place. No way were leaving now! 30
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 7

Look!

Across the aisle, a woman was wiping the face of a tiny baby in a booster seat. The
little girl behind her had slipped off her shoe and was reaching up toward the moving
belt. Her smile, stretched to its limits, burst into a shriek of laughter as she carefully 35
set the shoe down. She stood up on the bright plastic seat and leaned over the
plates of sushi to watch it disappear.

I cannot believe that girl! Yumiko said. Just watch what her mother will say.

The mother finally did turn back to the girl, who was still leaning against the counter.
She looked at her daughter standing in the seat, and took one look at her bare foot 40
before she threw her head back, giggling. She spun back to the baby in the booster
seat, who was now kicking his feet, riding an imaginary bicycle. Off came a green
knitted bootie. From mothers hand to daughters, and onto the belt between two
pieces of eel.

I grinned at Yumiko, who was still chewing absently, and bent down.
45
No! Stop! Dont do it please. Her voice was desperate.

Whats wrong? This is funny. Come on, everyones laughing. I patted a passing
green tennis shoe.

I think Im going to call Satoshi. She reached for her phone. Her hand trembled. I
reached across the table and touched her arm.
50
Yumiko, come on. No ones getting hurt.

All around us, groups were shouting, laughing, taking plates off the conveyor belt in
order to make more room for the shoes that were beginning to crowd it. Waitresses
continued buzzing, whisking beers and soup bowls with the efficiency of worker
bees.
55
As the noise level of the restaurant billowed up towards hysterical, Yumiko smiled.
Her phone rang. She looked at me; we both looked at the phone. The room broke
into applause and instead of answering the call she swung her legs around to stand
up on her seat along with me and some other customers. We whistled and whooped.

Her phone was still ringing.

1 wasabi : spicy vegetable sauce

2 maguro: tuna sushi dish

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Answer Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

1 The following extract is taken from a speech given by Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of
India, in 1947. In it, he celebrates the beginning of Indias new independence.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to persuade the audience. [15]

(b) Continue the speech (between 120150 words). You do not have to bring it to a close. Base
your answer closely on the style and features of the original extract. [10]

Long years ago we made a tryst1 with destiny, and now the time comes when we
shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life
and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step
out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long 5
suppressed, finds utterance.

It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service
of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries
are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through 10
good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals
which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers
herself again.

The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the

greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise 15
enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this assembly,
a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of
freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the
memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the 20
past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil
the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of
India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty
and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. 25

The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear
from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering,
so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams.
Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and 30
peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can
live apart.

Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and

so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated
fragments. 35
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 3

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join

us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and
destructive criticism, no time for ill will or blaming others. We have to build the noble
mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.

The appointed day has come the day appointed by destiny and India stands forth 40
again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past
clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem
the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning point is past, and history begins
anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, 45
the star of freedom in the east, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished
materialises. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!

We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our
people are sorrow-stricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings
responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and 50
disciplined people.

1 tryst : date.

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 4

2 The following text is taken from the journalists website. It describes his thoughts and feelings
about a particular place in Ghana, Africa.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to create a sense of mood and
place. [15]

(b) The tour guide, Prosper, is not as enthusiastic about the setting as the writer is. Later, he
sends a letter to his daughter. In it, he describes his thoughts and feelings about the visit to
the waterfall and the journalists writing in response to it.

Write a section (between 120150 words) of the letter. Base your answer closely on material
of the original extract. [10]

There is something at Wli Waterfall that connects with the soul. Something surreal
and yet so real. Something soothing that snaps a bouquet of emotions. It makes you
thirst to see the water again. It makes you hunger for natures food for thought. This
craving led me to the Waterfall, again. This time I was alert to unravel the mystery
of Wli. I went with a critical observational stance. That oh, its just another waterfall 5
attitude. But at the end I bowed, as I was bowled over by the spectacle.

The magic lies in witnessing tons and tons of water thunder down in an awesome,
perpetual splash. This splash engulfs a large circumference creating a calming,
cold-room of an atmosphere. By being there one is odorised with a refreshing spray
of white water. This, added to the music of the water-rush in a lush forest, creates a 10
Garden-of-Eden effect.

The water cascaded between what appears to be two huge blocks of hills standing
shoulder to shoulder. When the wind blew, it blew a gust of refreshing dew across
my face seeping into my skin. I was wet, yet I wanted more. My T-shirt hugged my
body. There was no complaining. Without tasting it, I could sense the cool sweetness 15
of the water.

Still rooted to the ground, I looked up. I could only wonder. What does this sight look
like when it is midnight and the sun has gone to bed? What would the effect be when
the moon strikes the water with her light? Would a rainbow appear? Through the
course of time, how many souls have beheld this display? How many more would? 20

Only one other person was close by, Prosper my tour guide. This man has seen this
scene a thousand times. But what does it mean to him? Beyond the daily drudgery
and his desire to pay his only daughters school fees, has Prosper ever stood to
search his soul in this temple of nature? Standing at a respectable distance he
was only accompanying another tourist. If this was a shrine Prosper is the one who 25
would hold the sacrifice. On our way here it was all talk. But now I have no question
for him. I wondered if he understood my silence.

I remained upright. My chin was up in the air and my head dropped in the opposite
direction. I watched and I watched. The water kept falling and falling. And with a
forceful rapidity too. It was a never-ending rhythm; a great mass of water thundering 30
down, followed by a great mass of water thundering down, followed by a great mass
of water thundering down

I thought I would be enraptured up to meet the plunging grandeur in one blissful

embrace. I had a strange feeling that something was about to appear. A face above
the source of the water, a mystical face looming large and high. The earthly truth is 35
that what is above is another waterfall, too high for my mortal eyes to behold.
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 5

Still standing in the shadows of the mighty fall I beheld another spectacle. Far above,
and glued to the hills, a battalion of bats had taken position. Hundreds of them, all
motionless. No flapping, no flying, no floating. They clung to the cliffs as if captured
in a time capsule. I believed they were throating out some sounds. But oh, no. No 40
sound could rise above the gushing of the great cascade.

I dropped my gaze only for my eyes to find another feast at the foot of the mountain,
an inviting pool. This has been created as the water hits the ground. Because the
falls vertical journey is over a great height the water actually breaks up into a white
spray before collecting once more in the swimming pool below. As it does that, 45
strong winds created by the uproar within the gorge spray the water on the visitor
(the same way a priest dispenses holy water to a congregation).

One such spray touched me and I thought of simulating the sign of the cross. I didnt
but I still felt healed, de-toxified. Suddenly, my knot of stress fell off and rolled away.
The (city accumulated) affliction brought about by polluted air, car fumes, open 50
gutters, plastic waste, rubbish heaps, irritating noise and hustling human parasites
was no more. I felt empty and stress-less.

What this therapy does is exercise the limbs and strengthen the heart. The visitor
inhales fresh, oxygen-rich air. As you walk over fallen leaves, you hear the roar of
the waterfall. Additionally, the cries of forest animals serenade you. If you are lucky a 55
butterfly or two will touch your body with a kiss.

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 6

3 The following newspaper article describes a relationship where both partners for different
reasons have received negative publicity in the media.

(a) Comment on the ways in which language and style are used to present the couple. [15]

(b) Later, the writer publishes a newspaper article about another couple who have also received
negative publicity in the media.

Write a section (between 120150 words) of this article. Base your answer closely on the
style and features of the writing in the original extract. The couple may be real or imaginary.
[10]

The Frenchman, seated on a patterned sofa in a London hotel suite, is a study in

still intensity.

Pascal Rubenat is wearing khaki combat trousers, a cream shirt and boots that look
like they have tramped through muddy fields.

He has a lot on his mind right now. 5

His wife, Samantha Brick, has been ridiculed, pilloried and insulted by thousands of
people around the world.

She has been accused of being deluded. It has even been said she is in urgent
need of psychiatric help.

The storm at the centre of which Pascal finds himself erupted on Tuesday, after his 10
wife decided to write about the burden she feels she has carried all her life the
burden of being beautiful.

Ever since her late teens, she opined, she has had to fend off advances from amorous
strangers who would accost her in the street bearing flowers and champagne and
proffering bundles of cash to pay her taxi fare. 15

Not only that, she has had to contend with streams of jealous women who hated her
just because of her head-turning looks.

Within hours of her article being published Samantha became the most talked about
woman on Earth.

So what does the brooding, mustachioed Pascal make of it all? 20

Well, first, he would like to make one thing clear. He agrees with Samantha.
Wholeheartedly. Not only is she beautiful, he announces, to him she is the most
beautiful woman in the world.

Gazing into the statuesque blondes eyes, he puts his arms around her playfully.

Samantha is beautiful in every sense of the word, he gushes. 25

Samantha giggles indulgently and affectionately squeezes his knee. Pascal can
barely take his eyes off her.

Beautiful or not, this is one man over whom Samantha Brick has absolute control. Im
supposed to be conducting an interview here. Instead I feel something of a spare part.
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 7

Pascal is clearly protective of his lovely wife, so I ask if the unprecedented onslaught 30
of abuse she has received in recent days has made him angry.

The Gallic carpenter strokes his chin deep in thought and takes a sip from a glass
of beer.

I cant be angry otherwise I cant help Sam, he begins, in his native French. I am
OK, because Sam is well. 35

But then Pascal, who himself became the subject of much internet ridicule after the
picture of him posing alongside his wife with a rifle was published on the internet,
issues a chilling, but tongue-in-cheek, warning.

If I have to intervene violently, I will intervene. I am here to protect my wife. It is my

role as a husband to comfort, console and support her. 40

He runs his fingers over his moustache. Here is a man who clearly means business.

So, in case any readers are unaware of what has become one of the Twitter
eras biggest media storms, what did Samantha say in her article to provoke such
venom?

Explaining the effect she has on men (swooning) and women (sniping), she 45
wrote shed had champagne, flowers and a train ticket bought for her by strangers,
adding: Even bartenders frequently shoo my credit card away when I try to settle
my bill.

Within hours, Samantha was being referred to online and on radio and TV stations
worldwide as Im so beautiful Samantha. 50

And she rapidly became an internet sensation, trending globally on Twitter.

The remarks were many and varied but there was a recurring theme.

I meet the pair at a hotel. To begin with I simply cannot take my eyes off Samantha.
An assessment of her looks is necessary.

She is very tall, 5ft 11in to be exact (the same height as Pascal, who doesnt like her 55
to wear heels in his presence). She is very blonde, with hazel-green eyes.

She is very striking and very pretty far more attractive than the picture that
accompanied the original article suggests.

But the stories of all these men falling at her feet suggest Samantha must possess
more than this; something rare, something elusive. She must be some sort of 60
enchantress, surely?

I look around me in search of swooning males. The waiter who brings us lunch
seems perfectly in command of himself.

Later, we take a walk out on the street. Samantha attracts the odd admiring glance
(as, I might add, do I) but, on this occasion, no flowers or champagne come her way. 65

But then she has her husband, the well-built Frenchman at her side, keeping an
ever-watchful eye. It would take a brave man to put himself in the path of powerful
Pascal.
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 2

Answer Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

1 The following text is the opening from an investigative article about Liberia, a country recently
devastated by civil war. The writer was sent to the country for a week by the international aid
charity Oxfam in order to see its help in action.

(a) Comment on the ways in which the language and style present the writers initial impressions
of the country and the aid efforts. [15]

(b) Another writer has been asked to write the script of a television appeal for charity donations
(120150 words).

Basing your answer closely on the material of the original extract, write the text for the charity
appeal. [10]

MONDAY
There is no real road network in Liberia. During the late-summer rainy season much
of the country is inaccessible. Tonight the torrential rain is unseasonable (it is March),
but the road is the best in the country, properly surfaced: one long, straight line from
the airport to the Mamba Point Hotel in Monrovia. Lysbeth Holdaway, Oxfams press 5
officer, sits in the back of an all-weather 44 outlining Liberias present situation.
Even by the standards with which she is familiar, Liberia is exceptional. Three-
quarters of the population live below the poverty line thats one US dollar a day
half are on less than fifty cents a day. What infrastructure there was has been
destroyed roads, ports, municipal electricity, water, sanitation, schools, hospitals 10
all desperately lacking or non-existent; eighty-six per cent unemployment, no
street lights Through the car window dead street lamps can be seen, stripped
of their components during the war. Lightning continues to reveal the scene: small
huts made of mud bricks; sheets of corrugated iron and refuse; more bored young
men, sitting in groups, dully watching the cars go by. The cars are of two types: 15
huge Toyota Land Cruiser pick-ups like this one, usually with UN stamped on their
bonnets, or taxis, dilapidated yellow Nissans, the back windows of which reveal six
people squeezed into the backseats, four in the front. Our driver, John Flomo, is
asked whether the essentials a water and sanitation system, electricity, schools
existed prior to the war. Some, yes. In towns. Less in the country. Even the electricity 20
that lights the airport is not municipal. It comes from a hydro plant belonging to
Firestone, the American rubber company famous for its tyres. Firestone purchased
one million acres of this country in 1926, a ninety-nine-year lease at the bargain
rate of six cents an acre. It uses its hydro plant to power its operation. The airport
electricity is a gift to the nation, although Firestones business could not function 25
without an airport. All this is Firestone, says Flomo, pointing at the darkness.

TUESDAY
The Mamba Point Hotel is an unusual Liberian building. It is air-conditioned, with
toilets and clean drinking water. In the car park a dozen UN trucks are parked. In the
breakfast room the guests are uniform: button-down collars, light khakis, MacBook 30
computers. Heres the crazy thing, one man tells another over croissants. Malaria
isnt even a hard problem to solve. At a corner table, an older woman reels off blunt
statistics to a newcomer, who notes them down: Population, three point five million.
Over a hundred thousand with HIV; male life expectancy, thirty-eight; female, forty-
two. Sixty-five Liberian dollars to one US. Officially literacy is fifty-seven per cent, but 35
that figure is really prewar theres this whole missing generation In the corner
bar, a dozen male Liberian waiters rest against the counter, devotedly following
Baywatch1.
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 3

All trips by foreigners, however brief, are done in the NGO2 Land Cruisers. The two-
minute journey to Oxfam headquarters passes an open rubbish dump. The NGO 40
buildings are lined up on UN Drive. Each has a thick boundary wall, stamped with
its own logo, patrolled by Liberian security. The American embassy goes further,
annexing an entire street. These offices resemble an English sixth-form college, a
white concrete block with swinging doors and stone stairwells. On each door there is
a sticker: NO FIREARMS. 45

1 Baywatch : glamorous American television soap-opera

2 NGO : Non-governmental organisation

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 4

2 The following extract is part of a speech given by the black American civil-rights activist Malcolm X
in 1963.

(a) Comment on the language and style of the extract. [15]

(b) Write the opening of a speech (between 120150 words) that deals with another major issue.
Base your answer closely on the language and style of the original. [10]

Im not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, Im not a student of much of
anything. Im not a Democrat. Im not a Republican, and I dont even consider myself
an American. If you and I were Americans, thered be no problem. Those Honkies1
that just got off the boat, theyre already Americans; immigrant Poles are already
Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out 5
of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I
have been over here, we arent Americans yet.

Well, I am one who doesnt believe in deluding myself. Im not going to sit at your
table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting
at the table doesnt make you a diner, unless you eat some of whats on that plate. 10
Being here in America doesnt make you an American. Being born here in America
doesnt make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldnt
need any legislation; you wouldnt need any amendments to the Constitution; you
wouldnt be faced with civil-rights filibustering2 in Washington, D.C., right now. They
dont have to pass civil-rights legislation to make an Italian an American. 15

No, Im not an American. Im one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of
Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy,
nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, Im not standing here speaking to you as an
American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver no, not I. Im speaking as
a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I 20
dont see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.

These 22 million victims are waking up. Their eyes are coming open. Theyre
beginning to see what they used to only look at. Theyre becoming politically mature.
They are realizing that there are new political trends from coast to coast. As they
see these new political trends, its possible for them to see that every time theres an 25
election the races are so close that they have to have a recount. They had to recount
in Massachusetts to see who was going to be governor, it was so close. It was the
same way in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, and in many other parts of the country.
And the same with Kennedy and Nixon when they ran for president. It was so close
they had to count all over again. Well, what does this mean? It means that when 30
white people are evenly divided, and black people have a bloc of votes of their own,
it is left up to them to determine whos going to sit in the White House and whos
going to be in the dog house.

It was the black mans vote that put the present administration in Washington,
D.C. Your vote, your dumb vote, your ignorant vote, your wasted vote put in an 35
administration in Washington, D.C., that has seen fit to pass every kind of legislation
imaginable, saving you until last, then filibustering on top of that. And your and my
leaders have the audacity to run around clapping their hands and talk about how
much progress were making.

1 Honkies : slang for white people

2 filibustering : preventing reform legislation by endlessly delaying it

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3 The passage below is an autobiographical memoir of an American sailors experience of Pearl

Harbor, the attack on American territory in Hawaii by the Japanese in 1941.

(a) Comment on the language and style of the extract. [15]

(b) Continue the memoir for a further 120150 words. You should base your answer closely on
the language and style of the original extract. You do not need to bring it to a conclusion. [10]

George Phraners Brush with Death Aboard the

USS Arizona
USS Arizona (BB-39)

George D. Phraner
Aviation Machinists Mate 1/c 5
USS Arizona (BB-39)
Battle Station: Forward 5 inch Gun.

As usual, there was a warm breeze that Sunday morning. We had just finished
breakfast and drifted out of the compartment to get a little air. This was our normal
routine on weekends as we had no work station to report to. It was fortunate for us 10
that we were able to sleep in until 6:30 as many of us had been out the night before.
Just as we left the mess area we heard this noise. We went outside to take a look
because its usually very quiet. When we arrived we could hear and see there were
airplanes. I looked across the bow of the ship and could see large plumes of smoke
coming up from Ford Island. At first, we didnt realize it was a bombing. It didnt 15
mean anything to us until a large group of planes came near the ship and we could
see for the first time the rising sun emblem on the plane wings. The bombing was
becoming heavier all around us and we knew this was REALLY IT!

At first there was a rush of fear, the blood started to flow real fast. It was then that
general quarters1 sounded over the speaker and everything became automatic. My 20
battle station was on a forward 5 inch gun and it was standard practice to keep
only a limited amount of ammunition at the guns. There was only one ready gun
crew on each side and mine wasnt one of them. There we were, the Japanese
dropping bombs over us and we had no ammo. All the training and practicing for
a year and when the real thing came we had no ammunition where we needed it. 25
As unfortunate as this was, that simple fact was to save my life. Somehow the gun
captain pointed at me and said, you go aft and start bringing up the ammunition out
of the magazines. The aft magazines were five decks below.

A few moments later I found myself deep below the water line in a part of the ship I
normally would never be in. I remember getting these cases of ammo powder and 30
shells weighing about 90 pounds each. I had begun lifting shells into the hoist when
a deafening roar filled the room and the entire ship shuddered. It was the forward
magazine. One and half million pounds of gun powder exploding in a massive fireball
disintegrating the whole forward part of the ship. Only moments before I stood with
my gun crew just a few feet from the center of the explosion. Admiral Kidd, Captain 35
Van Velkenburg, my whole gun crew was killed. Everyone on top.

Seconds after the explosion the lights went out and it was pitch black. Almost
immediately a thick acrid smoke filled the magazine locker and the metal walls
began to get hot. In the dark and not being able to breathe, we made our way to the
door hatch, only to find it shut and locked. Somehow we were able to open the hatch 40
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and start to make our way up the ladder. A quick glance around revealed nothing in
the darkness, but the moaning and sounds of falling bodies told me that some of my
shipmates had succumbed to defeat and had died in their attempt to survive.

Getting through that choking kind of smoke was a real ordeal, the kind of smoke
that really hurt your lungs. After awhile I began to get weak and lightheaded. I could 45
feel myself losing the battle to save my own life. I hung to the ladder, feeling good. I
felt that it was all right for me to let go. At that moment I looked up and could see a
small point of light through the smoke. It gave me the strength to go on. After what
seemed to me like an eternity, I reached the deck gasping and choking. I laid down
for a few moments. The warm Hawaiian air filled my lungs and cleared my head. I 50
glanced over to the forward end of the ship to see nothing but a giant wall of flame
and smoke.

1 general quarters : the call for the crew to go to battle stations

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Answer Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

1 The article below is a newspaper opinion column that discusses contact with work during holiday
periods.

(a) Comment on the language and style of the extract. [15]

(b) The same writer publishes a second article complaining about another problem in modern
life.

Write the opening of this article (between 120150 words). Base your article closely on the
style and language of the original extract. [10]

Out of office, out of mind free yourself from inbox

tyranny on holiday
We should all follow car maker Daimlers lead and release
ourselves from the evils of the out-of-office reply while away
Preparing to go on holiday has always required a checklist passport, swimming 5
costume, that first volume of Karl Ove Knausgrd youve been meaning to read
because everyone says its amazing (spoiler: it is). But in the modern era there is
another decision that could make or break your holiday: how will you set your email
out-of-office reply?

Will you simply say, for example, that you are on holiday or will you announce 10
grandly that you are on annual leave? More importantly, will you stick to what your
out-of-office says? Do you plan to check your email while away or blithely ignore it
all? Best, surely, just to commit it to the digital inferno.

The German car maker Daimler is offering its employees a blissful solution. With
the companys mail on holiday inbox feature, correspondents will be told to contact 15
someone else because all email sent to this person while they are on holiday will
just be deleted. Thats right: destroyed. Gone. Imagine the calm of getting home. No
horrifically bulging inbox. Nothing to catch up on.

A sneaky brutality is concealed within this notion of having to catch up on stuff after
your holiday, as though office life were an engrossing television drama filled with 20
excitement and dragons. If you are obliged to catch up on what youve missed while
on holiday, that implies you shouldnt really have been on holiday. It is a reminder
that time off is a gift in return for your servitude during the rest of the year.

The fear that catching up on a fortnights email will be epically disgusting labour
convinces people to check their email while away. Some say they need to keep in 25
touch with the office, as if it were a friend. (Such fake friendship usually operates in
only one direction, like loyalty to a supermarket.)

Unfortunately, science seems to confirm what we already knew: that worrying about
the office will ruin your holiday. The neuroscientist David Levitin recently declared the
importance, in addition to naps and daydreaming, of taking true vacations without 30
work for optimum mental functioning.

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 3

Our European cousins are at the forefront of more humane approaches to work
communication. Earlier this year some French workers benefited from a new
agreement obliging them to disconnect from work communication after office hours.
But for something like Daimlers brutal total-email-zapping holiday system to gain 35
widespread acceptance is a problem a little like that of world communism: it has to
happen all at once and everywhere. While there are still people who assiduously
work on their supposed holiday, theyll be making the refuseniks1 look bad, even if
theyre not plotting to steal their jobs.

For everyones psychic comfort, it is crucial we avoid sending out mixed messages. 40
I recently received an out-of-office reply from someone who said they were on
holiday and not reading emails, but that if I were to email them and add the word
Urgent in the subject line they would in fact read it and do something. Naturally, I
instantly re-sent the same email, with Urgent bolted on, thus doubling the volume
of email this poor person had received from me while on a supposedly relaxing trip. 45
Of course, I felt sorry for the recipient. At the same time, the out-of-office message
had literally asked for it.

What is needed is a go-slow solidarity movement. Let us all set our out-of-office
wording to manage expectations violently downwards. A little poetic licence should
be acceptable too. For instance: Im on holiday, on the moon. As you may be aware, 50
there is no Wi-Fi or phone signal on the moon. See you when I get back!

Workers of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your two-week backlog of
reply-all email chains.

Notes:

1 refusenik : someone who refuses to do a task.

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2 The following text is from Langston Hughess autobiography The Big Sea (1940). In this extract he
recalls journeying back to the United States from Africa with a pet monkey.

(a) Comment on the language and style of the passage. [15]

(b) Later, Langston Hughes recalls arriving at the docks in America, where the monkey escapes
once again.

Write the opening of this new account (between 120150 words). Base your answer closely
on the style and language of the original. [10]

It made him furious to have to get back in his cage, when it was time for me to go
to work.

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

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 5

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

But finally he leaped chattering into my arms and

devoured a prune.

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3 The following passage is by the travel writer Eric Newby. In it he recalls a childhood trip to the
exclusive department store Harrods, in London.

(a) Comment on the language and style of the extract. [15]

(b) Imagine that the same writer visits a place that you know well and records his impressions.

Write the opening (between 120150 words) of this new piece. Base your answer closely on
the style and language of the original passage. [10]

Hold my hand tight, or youll get lost, my mother used to say, as she moved
through the store, browsing here and there like some elegant ruminant1, a gazelle
perhaps, or else walking more purposefully if she was on her way to some specific
destination, as she often was. My mother was not the sort of person who only
entered Harrods in order to shelter from the rain. Once she was in it, she was there 5
as a potential buyer.

This world, which I was forced to regard from what was practically floor level,
was made up of the equivalents of jungles, savannas2, mountains, arctic wastes
and even deserts. All that was lacking were seas and lakes and rivers, although at
one time I distinctly remember there being some kind of fountain. The jungles were 10
the lavish displays of silk and chiffon printed with exotic fruits and lush vegetation in
which I was swallowed up as soon as I entered Piece Goods, on the ground floor,
which made the real Flower Department seem slightly meagre by contrast. The
biggest mountains were in the Food Halls, also on the ground floor, where towering
ranges and isolated stacks of the stuff rose high above me, composed of farmhouse 15
Cheddars, Stiltons, foie gras 3 in earthenware pots, tins of biscuits, something like
thirty varieties of tea and at Christmas boxes of crackers with wonderful fillings
(musical instruments that really worked, for instance), ten-pound puddings made
with ale and rum and done up in white cloths. Some of these apparently stable
massifs 4 were more stable than others and I once saw and heard with indescribable 20
delight a whole display of tins of Scotch shortbread avalanche to the ground, making
a most satisfactory noise.

In the great vaulted hall, decorated with medieval hunting scenes, and with metal
racks for hanging the trophies of it, where Harrodss Fishmongers and Purveyors of
Game and the assembled Butchers confronted one another across the central aisle. 25
There were mountainous displays of crabs, scallops, Aberdeen smokes, turbot and
halibut, Surrey fowls and game in season on one side; and on the other, regimental
lines of Angus Beef, South Down Lamb and Mutton.

The savannas were on the second floor, in Model Gowns, Model Coats and
Model Costumes, endless expanses of carpet with here and there a solitary creation 30
on a stand rising above it, like lone trees in a wilderness.

To me unutterably tedious were the unending, snowy-white wastes of the

Linen Hall, coloured bed linen, coloured blankets, even coloured bath towels, except
for the ends (headings) which were sometimes decorated with blue or red stripes,
being if not unknown unthinkable at that time (coloured blankets, usually red, 35
were for ambulances and hospitals). In it articles were on sale that not even my
mother was tempted to buy: tablecloths eight yards long to fit tables that could seat
two dozen guests, sheets and blankets ten feet wide, specially made to fit the big,
old four-poster beds still apparently being slept in by some customers.

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Higher still, on the third floor, were what I regarded as the deserts of the 40
Furniture Departments. It took something like ten minutes to get around these vast,
and to me as uninteresting as the Linen Hall, expanses, in which the distances
between the individual pieces were measured in yards rather than feet.

Notes:

1 ruminant : a grazing animal.

2 savannas: grassy plains with few trees.
3 foie gras: an expensive meat delicacy.
4 massifs: mountain ranges.

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 2

Answer Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

1 The following text is the opening of an investigative report by the Chicago Tribune newspaper on
the regulation of sales of dangerous childrens toys.

(a) Comment on the language and style of the extract. [15]

(b) Write the opening (between 120 and 150 words) of a similar report on an issue that you feel
needs investigation. Base your answer closely on the style and language of the original. [10]

Not until a boy died

By: Patricia Callahan
Tribune staff reporter
May 6, 2007, Part 1

Part 1 of 2: A captive of industry, the Consumer Product Safety Commission lacks 5

the authority and manpower to get dangerous child products off store shelves.

Sharon Grigsby pleaded with the operator at the federal safety hot line. A popular
new toy, Magnetix, nearly killed one of her preschoolers.

Please do something, Grigsby remembers urging. When the plastic building sets
broke, she told the operator, they shed powerful magnets inside her northern Indiana 10
preschool. Grigsby didnt see the loose magnets, not much bigger than baby aspirin.

But one of her 5-year-old students did. He found some and swallowed them. The
extraordinarily strong magnets connected in the boys digestive tract, squeezed the
folds of his intestines and tore holes through his bowels. Only emergency surgery
saved his life. 15

If this product isnt recalled, Grigsby remembers warning, children will die.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission responded with a form letter.

Because of limited resources and the volume of incidents reported to us, only a few
complaints may be selected for follow-up investigation at this time, stated the letter,
which arrived a week after Grigsbys May 2005 call to the hot line. 20

If Grigsbys complaint were important enough, the agency informed her, an

investigator would call within 30 days.

Thirty days went by, then another 30. No recall, no word from government
investigators. The magnets that doctors removed from the preschoolers intestines
corroded globs in a hospital specimen jar sat in a drawer in Grigsbys office 25
waiting for an investigator to examine them.

I felt like I was pushed aside, Grigsby said. I thought I was helping the next family.

Precisely what she feared would happen did, six months later and more than 2,000
miles away.

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 3

Kenny Sweet Jr., a suburban Seattle toddler with wispy blond hair, died from 30
Magnetix injuries on Thanksgiving Day 2005. Kennys parents thought he had a
stomach bug. By the time they realized something was seriously wrong, it was too
late. His heart stopped within minutes of his arrival at the emergency room.

But this is not a story about just one defective product and one familys grief. A
Tribune investigation found that Kenny Sweets death is emblematic of how a 35
weakened federal agency, in its myopic1 and docile approach to regulation, fails to
protect children. The result: injury and death.

For instance, the safety agency waited years to respond to consumer and attorney
complaints that soapmaking kits were landing children in hospital burn units. In the
meantime, more kids suffered disfiguring injuries. 40

The safety commission also recalled several types of playpens after they collapsed
and suffocated babies. But the agency did not act on reports that yet another style of
playpen posed the same hazard. It recalled those only after another baby suffocated.

As the agency slowly moved to address dangers of Magnetix toys, injuries mounted.
To date, at least 27 children have suffered serious intestinal injuries after swallowing 45
loose Magnetix magnets.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, or CPSC, declined to explain why it

didnt act sooner on warnings about any of these unsafe childrens products. In
refusing to answer questions about Magnetix, the agency cited a provision of federal
law that protects manufacturers reputations. 50

That law gives manufacturers great sway in how government officials regulate
childrens products. Combined with skimpy budgets and reduced staffing, the
provision undermines the agencys power.

The Reagan administration gutted the CPSC in the early 1980s, less than a decade
after its inception. Bipartisan neglect2 since then has left the agency with fewer than 55
half the number of employees it had in 1980 deeper cuts than in any other federal
health and safety regulator.

Yet the number of products the CPSC oversees, everything from chain saws to baby
cribs, has exploded. As consumers clamor for the latest high-tech toys and nursery
gear at ever-cheaper prices, companies are offering more complex products that 60
introduce new hazards.

Childhood play always has come with risks. Parents expect skinned knees, even
the occasional broken bone, from a fall off a bike or jungle gym. They dont expect
pieces from a broken toy to rip holes through a childs gut like a gunshot, which is
what happened with Magnetix. 65

Notes:
1 myopic: short-sighted.
2 bipartisan neglect: neglect by both main American political parties.

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2 The following text describes part of American writer Paul Therouxs train journey across the Khyber
Pass, from Afghanistan to Pakistan, in the 1970s.

(a) Comment on the ways in which the language and style present the writers experiences. [15]

(b) Continue the account (between 120 and 150 words), basing your answer closely on the style
and language of the original. You do not have to bring the account to a close. [10]

I found a seat in the last car and watched a tribesman, who was almost certainly
insane, quarrelling on the platform with some beggars.

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

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 5

Content removed due to copyright restrictions.

Well, I have a problem, and I am an old man, so I need some advice.

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3 The following passage is a review of a hotel in Buenos Aires from the online website TripAdvisor.
The review was written by guests, not by professional reviewers.

(a) Comment on the language and style of the passage. [15]

(b) Imagine that you stay in a hotel where things go less well.

Write a review of this stay (between 120 and 150 words). Base your answer closely on the
style and language of the original piece. [10]

Excellent small hotel, fine and helpful staff, clean and pleasant
Star rating: *****

Reviewed 1 week ago

This is an excellent small hotel, with a fine staff, one that is helpful in all ways and
very friendly. It has a rather good location in the Palermo district within a few blocks 5
walking distance to a number of good restaurants, shops, etc. If you want the city
center, this is not it, but if you want some peace and quiet, while at the same time
you want good service, this is a place to consider.

It has rooms in three categories, Terraza, Patio or Vitraux. We had a patio room on
the entrance floor and found the room to be clean, the en suite bathroom to be of 10
good size, the king bed to be very comfortable and the little patio nice for fresh air.
WiFi is included so you can stay connected if you wish. Also included (at least at
our room rate) is a rather nice breakfast. The breakfast includes a choice from many
items and you can have whatever you want in whatever quantity. So, there are three
choices of cereal, there is yogurt, there are egg choices, rolls, bread, juice, fruit, 15
etc. All very attractive to look at and good to eat. The coffee is excellent (at least we
thought so) and comes with steamed milk if you like it that way you add the milk
from a little pitcher.

The little front desk is staffed 24 hours a day. Access to the hotel is only available
by ringing the doorbell you cant just walk in. This enhances security and the bell 20
is responded to typically within a minute. Just a bit of advice there is no huge
sign to identify the hotel. Work by the street address 1746 Julian Alvarez and when
you arrive you will find a small sign on the wall of the building just to the left of
the door. That is your indication that you are at the right place. Our driver was a
bit concerned that we were in the wrong place, but the door opened and we were 25
warmly welcomed.

In fact, we arrived before normal check-in time after a long overnight flight and our
room was ready. There are several staff members who rotate in their times of duty,
but we found them all to be extremely helpful. We had communication with Alex
by e-mail and he was also there to provide breakfast on several of the days we 30
were there. He and the other staff speak English quite well and there was never
any difficulty with communication. We also found the staff to be very helpful with
recommendations for things. So, for example, we asked if there were reasonable
(in terms of quality) restaurants nearby and we were asked what kind of food we
might like and there then followed several suggestions. We tried a couple of them 35
and found the descriptions to be accurate and the quality and prices to be as we
were told in advance. The staff will make reservations for you, ask if credit cards are
accepted, etc. The staff will also make reservations for a return ride to the airport
for you (and confer with the driver in advance so that there is no surprise about the
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 7

cost). For such a trip the staff will also confirm whether or not the fare can be in US 40
dollars or Pesos. When the official exchange rate was 8.1 Pesos to the dollar, our
ride for 300 pesos was paid with 30 US dollars, a 101 rate.

Anyway, this is a fine place. If we are in Buenos Aires again and need a place in
that general area of the city, I certainly would not search further, but would return to
Magnolia for sure. We really liked it there. 45

Room Tip: Entrance floor (patio) rooms may be the quietest.

Stayed August 2014, travelled as a couple.

This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of

TripAdvisor LLC

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 2

Answer two questions

1 The passage below is taken from John F. Kennedys first speech as President of the United States
in 1960.

(a) Comment on the speakers style and use of language. [15]

(b) Write a newspaper report (around 120 words) about this speech under the headline A New
Beginning. [10]

So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of
weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of
fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belabouring those
problems which divide us. 5
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for
the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other
nations under the absolute control of all nations.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors.
Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the 10
ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce.
Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah
to undo the heavy burdens [and] let the oppressed go free.
And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let
both sides join in creating a new endeavour, not a new balance of power, but a 15
new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace
preserved.
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished
in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even
perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. 20
In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success
or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of
Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The
graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.
Now the trumpet summons us again not as a call to bear arms, though 25
arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear
the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, rejoicing in hope,
patient in tribulation, a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny,
poverty, disease and war itself.
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and 30
South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you
join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the
role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this
responsibility; I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places 35
with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion
which we bring to this endeavour will light our country and all who serve it, and
the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

8693/1/O/N/02
 3

2 The passage below appeared in a newspaper article by D. H. Lawrence, first published in August
1914. In it, at the beginning of the First World War, he describes a visit to an army training camp
and considers the nature of mechanical warfare.

(a) Comment on the writers style and use of language. [15]

(b) In the style of the original extract, write the opening to a magazine feature (around 120 words)
called The Machines Have Taken Over. [10]

What work was there to do? only mechanically to adjust the guns and fire the
shot. What was there to feel? only the unnatural suspense and suppression of
serving a machine which, for aught we knew, was killing our fellow-men, whilst we
stood there, blind, without knowledge or participation, subordinate to the cold
machine. This was the glamour and the glory of the war: blue sky overhead and 5
living green country all around, but we, amid it all, a part in some iron insensate will,
our flesh and blood, our soul and intelligence shed away, and all that remained of us
a cold, metallic adherence to an iron machine. There was neither ferocity nor joy nor
exultation nor exhilaration nor even quick fear: only a mechanical, expressionless
movement. 10
And this is how the gunner would let em have it. He would mechanically move
a certain apparatus when he heard a certain shout. Of the result he would see and
know nothing. He had nothing to do with it.
Then I remember going at night down a road, whilst the sound of guns thudded
continuously. And suddenly I started, seeing the bank of the road stir. It was a mass 15
of scarcely visible forms, lying waiting for a rush. They were lying under fire, silent,
scarcely stirring, a mass. If one of the shells that were supposed to be coming had
dropped among them it would have burst a hole in the mass. Who would have been
torn, killed, no one would have known. There would just have been a hole in the
living shadowy mass; that was all. Who it was did not matter. There were no 20
individuals, and every individual soldier knew it. He was a fragment of a mass, and
as a fragment of a mass he must live and die or be torn. He had no rights, no self,
no being. There was only the mass lying there, solid and obscure along the bank of
the road in the night.
The night came on. Suddenly, on the other side, high up in the darkness, burst 25
a beautiful greenish globe of light, and then came into being a magic circle of
countryside set in darkness, a greenish jewel of landscape, splendid bulk of trees, a
green meadow, vivid. The ball fell and it was dark, and in ones eye remained
treasured the little vision that had appeared far off in the darkness. Then again a
light ball burst and sloped down. There was the white farm house with the wooden, 30
slanting roof, the green apple trees, the orchard paling, a jewel, a landscape set
deep in the darkness. It was beautiful beyond belief. Then it was dark. Then the
searchlights suddenly sprang upon the countryside, revealing the magic, fingering
everything with magic, pushing the darkness aside, showing the lovely hillsides, the
sable bulks of trees, the pallor of corn. A searchlight was creeping at us. It slid up 35
our hill. It was upon us; we turned our backs to it, it was unendurable. Then it was
gone.
Then out of a little wood at the foot of the hill came the intolerable crackling and
bursting of rifles. The men in the trenches returned fire. Nothing could be seen. I
thought of the bullets that would find their marks. But whose bullets? And what 40
mark. Why must I fire off my gun in the darkness towards a noise? Why must a
bullet come out of the darkness, breaking a hole in me? But better a bullet than the
laceration of a shell, if it came to dying. But what is it all about? I cannot understand;
I am not to understand. My God, why am I a man at all, when this is all, this
machinery piercing and tearing? 45

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 4

3 The passage below describes how Merv Hector, an Australian bus driver, seems to live in a dream
world until his contentment is shattered by an accident.

(a) Comment on the writers style and use of language. [15]

(b) This passage is written as if it is Merv, the bus driver, thinking. Imagine that Ron, the
conductor, is telling his version of events in the same way. Write the opening (around 120
words) of Rons account. [10]

Breaking into light, this long silver bus. It comes rumbling from its concrete
pen. Grunting away. It reaches North Terrace by stopping and yawning; its full
length swings.
Yawns left, climbs past Rosella, hesitates at MaidnMagpie, take the left,
roads are empty, petrol stations are empty, car yards are empty, shops are empty, 5
hold her steady, chassis doesnt pitch then, there are couples behind curtains,
theres a dog, watch him, man on a bike, shiftworker in a coat probably. Now the
roads stirring, milkman turns a corner, leaves the road open, driver taps the
steering wheel rim, enormous view of life in the morning, foot taps contented by it.
The bus had PARADISE printed on the front, sides and back. It was a long run 10
to the suburb. At the outer reaches it specialised in young married women with
prams; and Merv Hector had to smile. From his position in the driving seat he
could see the new generation hairdos, skirts, worried eyebrows. Gentle, slow-
eyed Hector waited for them, was happy to be of service. When one of them
waved between stops he could stop the great silver machine every time. His 15
conductors were quick to see they were riding with a soft heart. Straightforward
characters, they were quick to assert themselves. Be an angel, Merv. Stop at the
shops there for some smokes. They also went to him when sick of things.
This time his conductor was Ron. His voice, tightly pitched. Getting up at this
hour really makes me wonder. Were not carrying a soul. Look, it really makes me 20
sick.
Merv shook his head. Through the pure windscreen the road was alive
ahead of him. Below his feet the bus was really travelling. It made you feel alive.
Theres the people we get on the way back, Merv said.
He made a long sentence of it, as he did when contented, and heard Rons 25
breath come out dissatisfied.
Theres too bloody many then. We should have two here serving then. All
the school kids; they never have to pay properly. What time is it?
They were entering Paradise. As usual Hector waited to be thrilled by it, he
stared and was ready, but a disappointment spread like the morning shadows. 30
Streets were golden but it seemed more like a finishing sunset than the beginning
of the day. When he stopped the bus it seemed to be further away Paradise did.
New tiles pointing in the sky spoilt the purity. But Paradise could be close by. It felt
close by. The air light, bright; he was at the edge of something. Hectors stubborn
fifty-four year old eyesight produced these messages for this heart but he was 35
required to turn the bus, and he turned the bus around.
Hell, were going to really get hot and crowded.
It was Ron running his finger around his collar.
Shell be right, said Hector.
Hang on a sec. Let us out at the shop. You want some chewy? 40
Stopped. Merv Hector was milk cheese from Norwood. At the M.T.T.1 he was
considered slow and forgetful. But he was dependable enough, and voiced no
objections to the long early morning runs. His moon wife was stupefied by his
sincerity. He was older. Their garden grew weeds. His watch was inaccurate, and
he stumbled near the garden. Dear? he sometimes said to Enid and faded out. 45

8693/1/O/N/02
 5

The distance to Paradise, with the great screen framing all kinds of life, gave him
this gentle advice: move, slow down, stop, let them get on, move, see, Paradise.
The world was beautiful. It was plainly visible.
Now Ron said something again.
Look at all the bloody kids. Just what I need. All right! Move down the back! 50
The bus grew squatter and fatter with the weight of everybody. Ron battled
through, and the air was hot and human. They were now channelled by houses
near the city, yet it was confusing.
A green bread van turned while Merv wondered. The shape was smacked by
the metal at Mervs feet and the whole green turned over and over like a dying 55
insect, a round pole came zooming forward. Hectors world entered it and
splintered. Glass splattered. A crying uniform over Hectors shoulder cracked the
windscreen.
There was the crash, Hector remembered. And the memory of Paradise
persisted. If there was a beautiful place he could watch for like that. 60
He was wrinkling and gave a twitch.

1 The local bus depot

8693/1/O/N/02
 2

Answer two questions

1 The passage below describes the writers thoughts and feelings as he recalls his attempts to help
an injured woman after a bomb attack.

(a) You yourself are a survivor of a similar disastrous road accident. In the style of the original
passage write the opening of your account (between 120150 words). [10]

(b) Compare the style and language of your piece with those of the original extract. [15]

We dug, or rather we pushed, pulled, heaved, and strained, I somewhat

ineffectually because of my hands; I dont know for how long, but I suppose for a
short enough while. And yet it seemed endless. From time to time I was aware of
figures round me: an ARP warden, his face expressionless under a steel helmet;
once a soldier swearing savagely in a quiet monotone; and the taxi-driver, his face 5
pouring sweat.
And so we came to the woman. It was her feet that we saw first, and whereas
before we had worked doggedly, now we worked with a sort of frenzy, like
prospectors at the first glint of gold. She was not quite buried, and through the gap
between two beams we could see that she was still alive. We got the child out first. 10
It was passed back carefully and with an odd sort of reverence by the warden, but it
was dead. She must have been holding it to her in the bed when the bomb came.
Finally we made a gap wide enough for the bed to be drawn out. The woman
who lay there looked middle-aged. She lay on her back and her eyes were closed.
Her face, through the dirt and streaked blood, was the face of a thousand working 15
women; her body under the cotton nightdress was heavy. The nightdress was
drawn up to her knees and one leg was twisted under her. There was no dignity
about that figure.
Around me I heard voices. Wheres the ambulance? For Christs sake dont
move her! Let her have some air! 20
I was at the head of the bed, and looking down into that tired, blood-streaked,
work-worn face