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BBA PRACTICE EXAMINATION

2014
ENGLISH
Level Three
RESOURCE BOOKLET
91474 (3.3)
Respond critically to signicant aspects of unfamiliar written texts
through close reading, supported by evidence.
Credits: Four
Suggested time: 60 minutes
Refer to this booklet to answer the questions for English 91474 (3.3)
Check that this booklet has pages 2-3 and that none of these pages is blank.
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STUDENTS NAME
BBA Educational Resources 2014
HAND THIS BOOKLET TO THE SUPERVISOR AT THE END OF THE ASSESSMENT.
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Text A: PROSE
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When most people think about happiness they ask themselves Am I happy? rather than thinking about
what happiness amounts to. Like the other animals, most of us dont think about it at all until we are
noticeably unhappy, by which I mean, so miserable that we cant avoid either the misery or ourselves any
longer and have to nd a solution.
By then the better description for that state of affairs is to say that one is unhappy and looking for a way out
of that, rather than suggesting the problem is an absence of happiness or a way into a happy state of being.
In most cases the cart is well and truly before the horse.
Through the years numerous famous people, and undoubtedly many more non-famous people, have had
something to say about happiness. Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) and George Orwell (1984) made
inroads with various denitions that spoke more of happiness in relative terms, rather than as an absolute.
Like success, the notion of happiness also gets tangled up with money and what others are doing, including
whether they are, or appear, happier than us.
There is a simple way around all of that. Imagine for a moment that there is no such thing as happiness (this
works for success also). Think really hard about that and do it often. If it helps, imagine that there is no such
word and never has been.
The exercise may at rst blush appear silly, or bleak and nihilistic, but if you persist the opposite result is
achieved. Instead of thinking the abolition of happiness means that there can be no more happiness (as if
you had it anyway) the total absence of any meaning or notion of happiness brings with it a sense of peace.
Rather than toiling under the overt or implied idea that one ought to, or even can, be happy, or that others
are happier than we might be, there is instead an understanding that things simply are as they are. No-one is
happy, or happier; emotions, sensations and the like are simply reactions to things or events.
The entire world and human endeavour are cause and effect with everything having its place and time.
Whether someone is sad, unhappy, pleased, elated, angry or whatever depends only on whether something
has caused that temporary state. That is quite reassuring and disposes of a lot of self analysis that really
does not serve a purpose, except perhaps to make sure we cannot be happy because we insist on
measuring up to impossible comparative standards, including worrying about what we think others think
about us.
Moreover, happiness, as most of us imagine it, is a human invention and as a concept, is quite at odds with
our state of being. We are animals needing food and shelter. There is nothing happy about the essential
human condition, including as it does a nite one-way stroll up the valley of the shadow of death; however,
that does not mean life must be unhappy, miserable or pointless.
In the end, you are as happy as you want to be and the analogy of the guy with the imaginary girlfriend is
apt: when asked what she was like, he answered rather glumly Shes ok - I guess. Actually, we dont get on.
I think we are going to break up.
Like the showy cars, boats and houses that are part-owned by banks and nance companies, people who
claim or demonstrate overt happiness are usually paying for it somewhere else. When asked if they are
happy people will almost always say or suggest they are because there is an element of shame, or failure in
not being so: pride accounts for a lot.
Happiness
TEXT A
Refer to Text A to answer Questions One and Three.
You are advised to spend 60 minutes answering the questions in this booklet.
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Driving at last through a tollgate,
past the white dome of a convention centre,
they made their way into a hot and tired town
tied about with motorways and slumped
at the bottom of a valley.
There they stopped the car.
On foot, they entered a cobbled square
where everything was blank and shuttered
for this was a Saturday afternoon
in a country which still observed siesta hours.
Walking at last through the open doorway
of a dark and dusty shop that stocked lemonade
brought into that valley some years earlier
they paid their money, drank, lit cigarettes,
and turned expecting to see only
the dishevelled, exhausted,
the frayed and impossible sky:
and they noticed instead a wedding party
riding out of the church door opposite
on the long tongue of a red carpet.
The bright bride sailed down the steps
towards the next day, and all the days
to follow were carried behind
by the solemn, irrepressible groom!
Seeing at last that their own immediate
past would fade the roadside shop, the smeared
and empty sandwich cabinets, the shop-girl
walking on curled disconsolate toenails
towards the cash register
believing this they, too, emerged
into the heat and felt its breath
as an afrmation on their faces:
that is, it no longer smelt of despair,
and they heard song in the hot trees.
- Sarah Quigley
*Santa Maria de Feira is a city in Portugal
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Santa Maria de Feira*
Text B: POETRY
Refer to Text B to answer Questions Two and Three.
TEXT B
Acknowledgements:
Text A: Tim Jackson, The Timaru Herald Newspaper, Fairfax NZ, 25th February, 2014. /timaru-herald/opinion/
comment/9759717/Happiness-is-easily-attainable-for-most (accessed 3/3/2014).
Text B: Sarah Quigley, Loveinabookstoreoryourmoneyback, Auckland University Press, 2003.
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BBA Educational Resources 2014