Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
ENGLISH 0844/01
Paper 1 April 2017
1 hour
Candidates answer on the Question Paper.
No Additional Materials are required.
Write your Centre number, candidate number and name in the spaces at the top of this page.
Write in dark blue or black pen.
The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.
Suggestions for how long to spend on each section are given in the booklet.
The total number of marks for this paper is 50.
IB17 05_0844_01/7RP
© UCLES 2017 [Turn over
2
Section A: Reading
The English Channel is 34 kilometres across at the shortest point, from 1st paragraph
Dover in England to Cap Gris Nez in France. Every year, hundreds of
people attempt to swim across this part of the channel, but the success
rate is lower than 10%, and the swim has become known as ‘the Everest
of open-water swimming’.
‘There are a lot of factors that combine to make the swim hard but the 2nd
cold is the biggest hurdle,’ says Alison Streeter, who holds the world
record with a staggering 43 successful swims across the channel.
‘It’s not about the distance – lots of people can swim the equivalent in a 3rd
pool,’ she says, ‘It comes down to the cold. Athletic swimmers are often all
muscle and don’t have much fat on them. This means they get cold more
quickly, and once cold gets into your muscles it is very hard to continue.’
Besides hypothermia* and the risk of cramp*, there are also external 4th
horrors to contemplate such as jellyfish and raw sewage. Then, because
this is a shipping lane, there are 600 commercial ship movements and 80
to 100 ferry crossings between Dover and Calais every day to avoid.
The tides in this part of the Channel are particularly strong and change 5th
direction approximately every six hours. The wind and weather are a
problem too as the Dover Straits are dominated by local weather
conditions that can change very quickly and are hard to forecast
accurately.
The first person to swim unassisted across the Straits of Dover was 6th
Captain Matthew Webb on 25 August 1875. The current world record
holder for the fastest Channel swim is Christof Wandratsch, a German
athlete, who completed his swim in just over seven hours in 2005. The
youngest person to make the crossing, a boy called Thomas Gregory,
was just 11 years old.
Glossary
hypothermia: the condition of having an extremely low body temperature
cramp: contraction of muscles
1 Name the places at either side of the narrow part of the English Channel.
[1]
2 Why do fit athletes in particular have problems with the cold when they are
trying to swim across the English Channel?
[1]
3 Tick () two boxes to show what problems, according to the text,
swimmers may encounter when they attempt to swim across the Channel.
sea birds
shark attacks
4 Rewrite the fifth paragraph to include most of the main points, using no
more than 25 words.
[2]
5 Tick () the best description of the text Swimming the English Channel.
Text 1 Text 2
You should start training for your It’s a good idea to start training for
swim months in advance. You can your swim a few months ahead of it.
start this at your local pool. Most Your local pool is a great place to
Channel swimmers, however, start with but it’s probably best to get
acclimatise themselves to local used to the really cold water by
conditions on the beaches of taking a dip in the sea at Folkestone
Folkestone or Hythe in England. or Hythe in England.
The information in both texts is the same but the language used is different.
Text 1
Text 2
[1]
Read this text about jellyfish, and then answer the questions.
[1]
[1]
8 Tick () two boxes to show which statements about jellyfish are FALSE.
9 Using the text, explain why the body of a jellyfish collapses as soon as it is
removed from water.
[1]
(a) What is the purpose of the sub-headings in the text Facts about
jellyfish?
[1]
(b) In the text Swimming the English Channel, paragraphs are used.
Draw lines to link each paragraph with its main topic. The first two
have been done for you.
1st
Who are the world record holders?
paragraph
2nd
What is the English Channel swim?
paragraph
5th
Why is the cold such a problem?
paragraph
Section B: Writing
11 Swimming the English Channel and Facts about jellyfish are both articles
taken from information books.
Write your own article for an information book about a topic or an object that
you know something about. It could be:
an unusual animal
for example
a tortoise
a tiger
a dragonfly
a dog.
PLANNING
Spend about five minutes making notes in this box:
12 Join the underlined word in each of these sentences to match the correct
word class.
The current world record holder for the fastest Channel swim is
Christof Wandratsch, a German athlete, who completed his swim in
just over seven hours in 2005. [1]
[2]
The swimmers were crossing the centre of the Channel when they
suddenly saw a shoal of fish ahead.
[1]
(b) Complete the sentences by writing the passive forms of the verbs given
in brackets. The first one has been done for you.
70-year-old woman.
T h e s w i m m e r s a r m s a n d l e g s w e r e
a c h i n g s o m u c h t h a t h e d i d n t s e e t h e
j e l l y f i s h w i t h i t s t e n t a c l e s s p r e a d o u t . [1]
“D i d y o u g e t s t u n g b y t h a t j e l l y f i s h
a s k e d t h e m a n i n t h e b o a t.
“Y e s s a i d t h e s w i m m e r a n d i t r e a l l y
h u r t s” [2]
‘There are a lot of factors that combine to make the swim hard but the
Write other words or phrases that mean the same as the underlined words.
Your new words must keep the meaning and make sense in the sentence.
factors
hurdle [2]
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