KULLEGG MARIA REGINA BOYS’ JUNIOR LYCEUM

HALF-YEARLY EXAMS SCHOLASTIC YEAR 2008/2009

ENGLISH TIME: 2 HRS FORM 1

NAME : ___________________________ INDEX NO : __________

FORM : ___________________ MARK: _______________

MARKS
Listening Compr. Oral Assessment Written Paper Total

Section A: Language (20 marks)

Exercise 1: Rewrite this paragraph using the correct punctuation marks. (5 marks)

Harry woke up at five o’clock the next morning and was too excited and nervous to go back
to sleep He got up and pulled on his jeans because he didn’t want to walk in the station with
wizard’s robes. he checked his hogwarts list yet again to make sure he had everything he
needed he saw that hedwig the owl was shut safely in her cage and then paced the room
waiting for the dursleys to get up. They reached King’s Cross at half past 10. Uncle Vernon
dumped Harry’s trunk on the trolley. well, there you are boy. Platform nine and platform
ten. Your platform should be somewhere in the middle, but they don’t seem to have built it
do they
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Exercise 2: Put the verbs in brackets in the correct tense. Use the present simple or the
present continuous tense. (5 marks)

Paul ___________ (leave) the hotel and ____________ (decide) to go for a walk in the
village to find some more people he can ask for more information about his grandfather. It
__________ (are) a beautiful day, the sun _____________ (shine) and people
______________ (arrive) for the Sunday market. Paul decides to visit the market and walk
around looking at the stalls. Suddenly, he ____________ (notice) a stall selling antique
jewellery. He ________ (stop) because he has seen a box which contains a lot of uncut

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precious stones. He _____________ (remember) a Konchi diamond and looks more closely
at the stall. A woman ___________ (sit) behind the table. She looks like a gypsy. She
_____________ (wear) very brightly-coloured clothes and lots of jewellery.

Exercise 3: Pick five adjectives and five nouns from the text below and write them in
their correct column. (5 marks)

Estelle looked as if she’d stepped out of a horror film. She might have been Dracula’s
daughter. She was dressed in a black blouse and skirt. When I say ‘dressed’ I am being very
generous, because the blouse was slipping off her shoulders, the skirt was all fringe and the
holes in her tights were enormous. Around her neck were yards of silver chains.

Nouns Adjectives

Exercise 4: Put in who, what, where, when, why, that, which, whose and how in the
spaces. One of them is to be used twice. (5 marks)

1. I was walking down the street _________I saw a man escaping through an open
window.
2. The boy __________ was walking on the pavement was hit by a car.
3. I talked to the girl _____________ car was destroyed in the accident.
4. I couldn’t understand _____________ shop she was referring to.
5. The place ___________ I was born has been turned into an industrial estate.
6. Jessica was still confused about ____________ her bag was stolen.
7. The car ___________ was parked in front of our house has caught fire.
8. Jenny couldn’t figure out _______________ Tina was telling her.
9. The mother tried to understand the reason ____________ Kate was crying.
10. Jane couldn’t remember ______________ she put her car keys.

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Section B: Reading Comprehension (20 marks)

What's black and white and adored all over—and can cost a zoo
more than three million dollars a year?

He's got chubby cheeks. He naps a lot. He eats with his hands. He lives with his
mother. The Tai Shan is a giant panda cub who was born at 3:41 a.m. on
Saturday, July 9, 2005, at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in
Washington, D.C. Tai Shan is the first offspring of Tian Tian and Mei Xiang,
male and female giant pandas shipped from China to Washington in December 2000. There
are only eight other pandas in the United States: two at Zoo Atlanta in Georgia, two at the
Memphis Zoo in Tennessee, and four at southern California's San Diego Zoo, where Bai Yun
has had three healthy cubs in the past seven years.

Hosting giant pandas costs each zoo an average of 2.6 million dollars a year, and that's if no
babies arrive. Add a cub, and the budget tops three million dollars. Add two cubs (nearly half
of panda pregnancies produce twins), and the budget approaches four million dollars. What
makes pandas so special? It could be sheer cuteness. The National Zoo's Internet panda
cameras, which follow the daily activities of Tai Shan and his mom, draw an average of two
million online visits a month. In the first three months that Tai Shan was on public display,
visits to the zoo jumped by as much as 50 percent over prior years. Adoring fans pack the
railing at the Giant Panda Habitat shoulder to shoulder. Fingers point, voices coo, faces
crease in blissful grins. So many cameras click at once that you'd think you were on the red
carpet on Oscar night.

Scarcity also boosts the bears' popularity. Giant pandas are excruciatingly rare. Even other
famously endangered mammals—tigers, gorillas, black rhinos, Asian elephants—outnumber
them, both in the wild and in captivity. China's most recent national giant panda survey
reported that 1,590 of the black-and-white bears survive in the rugged hills of Sichuan,
Shaanxi, and Gansu Provinces. In captivity, there were only 188 pandas worldwide at the end
of 2005: the 11 U.S. residents, a handful of others in Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Germany, and
Austria, and all the rest in zoos and research centers in their native China.

Why are pandas so expensive? At U.S. zoos these high-profile animals get the best of
everything: state-of-the-art habitats with 24-hour video monitoring, the services of devoted
keepers and veterinarians, and abundant supplies of fresh bamboo to eat, supplemented with
carrots, yams, and vitamin-and-mineral-packed biscuits cooked up especially for leaf-eaters.
Keepers even add chunks of fruit to juice and water, and then freeze the mix into big
"fruitsicles" as treats for their charges. Keepers give pandas a constantly changing assortment
of plastic tubs, balls, and other toys to crush, wrestle, toss, and roll. This type of care runs
hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

So cuddly, funny, adorable Tai Shan turns out to be more than just the fulfillment of the
National Zoo's decades-long dream of raising a healthy giant panda cub, more than a crowd-
pleasing, four-legged rock star in a black-and-white bear suit. He stands for the possibility of
genuine international cooperation on behalf of endangered animals, and like every one of the
cubs that swelled the giant panda ranks last year, he moves his species one step closer to a
self-sustaining captive population, and one step back from the brink of extinction.

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Choose the correct answer and write it down in the space provided.
1. The text is about a ____________________.
a. Zebra b. giant panda c. leopard d. seal (1 mark)

2. Tai Shan was born in ___________________.

a. America b. China c. California d. Atlanta (1 mark)

Answer the following questions. Full answers are required.

3. Were Tai Shan’s mother and father born in Washington? Quote a sentence from the
text to prove your answer? (2 marks)
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4. How did the Internet Panda camera affect the zoo’s popularity? Choose two positive
effects mentioned in the text. (2 marks)
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5. Why does the author compare an outing to the Giant Panda Habitat to the red carpet
on an Oscar night? (2 marks)
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6. Where do the giant pandas survive most? (2 marks)
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7. Mention four ways how pandas are taken care of in zoos. (4 marks)
a. __________________________________________________________________
b. __________________________________________________________________
c. __________________________________________________________________
d. __________________________________________________________________
8. Why are pandas given a constant changing assortment of toys? (2 marks)
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9. From the last paragraph, give two reasons why Tai Shan’s presence is essential in the
Washington zoo? (2 marks)
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10. Give the meaning of the following words as used in the text. (2 marks)
a. Offspring (Par.1)
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b. Blissful (Par. 2)
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c. Scarcity (Par. 3)
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 d. Leaf-eaters (Par.4)
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Section C: Poetry (10 marks)

Answer BOTH questions.

1. Read the extract from the poem ‘The River’ by Valerie Bloom and answer the
questions. (5 marks)

The River’s a baby,

He gurgles and hums,
And sounds like he’s happily
Sucking his thumb.

The River’s a singer,

As he dances along,
The countryside echoes
The notes of his song.

The River’s a monster

Hungry and vexed,
He’s gobbled up trees
And he’ll swallow you next.

a. Write down the title of the poem and the poet’s name. (1 mark)
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b. In the first stanza the river is being described as a __________________ (1/2 mark)
i. Boy ii. Girl iii. Baby iv. Mother
c. The river is compared to a human being. This is called _______________ (1/2 mark)
i. Personification ii. Metaphor iii. Simile iv. Alliteration
d. Quote another example of personification from the poem. (1/2 mark)
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e. ‘Gurgles’ is an example of __________________________ (1/2 mark)

i. Simile ii. Onomatopoeia iii. Metaphor iv. Rhyme
f. To what is the river compared in the last stanza? How is it described? (1 mark)
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g. ‘The river’s a monster’ is an example of a ____________________ (1/2 mark)

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 i. Metaphor ii. Simile iii. Persona iv. Personification
h. Find one pair of rhyming words from the poem. (1/2 mark)
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2. Read the poem and answer the questions (5 marks)

The wind was on the withered heath,

but in the forest stirred no leaf:
there shadows lay by night and day,
and dark things silent crept beneath.
The wind came down from mountains cold,
and like a tide it roared and rolled;
the branches groaned, the forest moaned,
and leaves were laid upon the mould.
The wind went on from West to East;
all movement in the forest ceased,
but shrill and harsh across the marsh
its whistling voices were released.
The grasses hissed, their tassles bent,
the reeds were rattling -- on it went
o'er shaken pool under the heavens cool
where racing clouds were torn and rent.
It passed the lonely Mountain bare
and swept above the dragon's lair:
there black and dark lay boulders stark
and flying smoke was in the air.
It left the world and took its flight
over the wide seas of the night,
The moon set sail upon the gale,
and stars were fanned to leaping light.

1. What is the name of the poem? (1/2 mark)

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2. Who wrote this poem? (1/2 mark)
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3. Write down the places visited by the wind. (1 mark)
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4. From the text, find ONE example of the following: (21/2 marks)
a. Personification:____________________________________________________
b. Metaphor:________________________________________________________
c. Simile:____________________________________________________________

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 d. Alliteration:_______________________________________________________
e. Onomatopoeia:____________________________________________________
5. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem? (1/2 mark)
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Section D: Prose (10 marks)

The following questions are on the book which you have read in class. Answer all
questions.

1. Name of novel: ________________________________ (1/2 mark)

2. Name of author: _______________________________ (1/2 mark)
3. Pick four characters from the novel and write one sentence on each. (4 marks)
a. _____________________________________________________________________
b. _____________________________________________________________________
c. _____________________________________________________________________
d. _____________________________________________________________________
4. Who is your favourite character in the novel? Describe why? (2 marks)
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5. In about 50 words, describe the part of the story you liked best. (3 marks)
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Section E: Composition (20 marks)

In about 150-200 words, write about ONE of the following.

1. What I like and dislike about my village.

2. You are staying in England with your aunt and uncle on a holiday. Write a letter to
your parents telling them how you are spending your time there.
3. It was a cold wintry day. It was raining heavily and I could hear thunder in the
distance. I was reluctantly getting out of bed to go to school when suddenly …

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 4. Look at the picture and write a story about it. Give a title to your story.

Question Number
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