Language exam Q3a Practice

Again answers will be posted in a weeks time.

 There was a sound of undergrowth being disturbed--a click of breaking branches, a weighty pushing through low foliage--and then a kind of large, vaguely irritable snuffling noise.
Bear!

I sat bolt upright. Instantly every neuron in my brain was awake and dashing around frantically, like ants when you disturb their nest. I reached instinctively for my knife, then realized I had left it in my pack, just outside the tent. Nocturnal defense had ceased to be a concern after many successive nights of tranquil woodland repose. There was another noise, quite near.

"Stephen, you awake?" I whispered.

"Yup," he replied in a weary but normal voice.

"What was that?"

"How the hell should I know."

"It sounded big."

"Everything sounds big in the woods."

This was true. Once a skunk had come plodding through our camp and it had sounded like a stegosaurus. There was another heavy rustle and then the sound of lapping at the spring. It was having a drink, whatever it was.

I shuffled on my knees to the foot of the tent, cautiously unzipped the mesh and peered out, but it was pitch black. As quietly as I could, I brought in my backpack and with the light of a small flashlight searched through it for my knife. When I found it and opened the blade I was appalled at how wimpy it looked. It was a perfectly respectable appliance for, say, buttering pancakes, but patently inadequate for defending oneself against 400 pounds of ravenous fur.

Carefully, very carefully, I climbed from the tent and put on the flashlight, which cast a distressingly feeble beam. Something about fifteen or twenty feet away looked up at me. I couldn't see anything at all of its shape or size--only two shining eyes. It went silent, whatever it was, and stared back at me.

"Stephen," I whispered at his tent, "did you pack a knife?"

"No."

"Have you get anything sharp at all?"

He thought for a moment. "Nail clippers."

I made a despairing face. "Anything a little more vicious than that? Because, you see, there is definitely something out here."

"It's probably just a skunk."

"Then it's one big skunk. Its eyes are three feet off the ground."

"A deer then."

I nervously threw a stick at the animal, and it didn't move, whatever it was. A deer would have bolted. This thing just blinked once and kept staring.

I reported this to Katz.

"Probably a buck. They're not so timid. Try shouting at it."

I cautiously shouted at it: "Hey! You there! Scat!" The creature blinked again, singularly unmoved. "You shout," I said.

"Oh, you brute, go away, do!" Katz shouted in merciless imitation. "Please withdraw at once, you horrid creature."
Q3a) What makes the author anxious and how do he and his friend respond to the situation?
Write your answer using short notes, aiming to find 15 points.

Q3b) Now use your notes to write a summary of what makes the author anxious and how he and his friend respond to the situation.
Your summary should be in continuous writing and use your own words as far as possible. It should include all 15 points from a and should be between 200-250 words in length.

Language exam practice
Q3a Answers will be posted next week. 1 week to attempt this. Keep your answer safe so you can then self-assess.

The fleet entered the Magellan Strait with the southern winter already begun. A sailor's frostbitten nose fell off when he blew it. Beyond Cape Froward, they ran into north-westerly gales and sheltered in a tight cove with the wind howling over their mastheads.
In a storm off Cape Pilar, the Desire lost the Pinnance, which went down with all hands. Davis was alone at the helm, praying for a speedy end, when the sun broke through the clouds. He took bearings, fixed his position, and so regained the calmer water of the Strait.
He sailed back to Port Desire, the crew scurvied and mutinous and the lice lying in their flesh. He repaired the ship as best he could. The men lived off eggs, gulls, baby seals, scurvy grass and the fish called pejerry. On this diet they were restored to health.
Ten miles down the coast, there was an island, the original Penguin Island, where the sailors clubbed twenty thousand birds to death. They had no natural enemies and were unafraid of their murderers. John Davis ordered the penguins dried and salted and stowed fourteen thousand in the hold.
On November 11th a war-party of Tehuelche Indians attacked. Nine men died in the skirmish, among them the chief mutineers, Parker and Smith.
The Desire sailed at nightfall on December 22nd and set course for Brazil, where the Captain hoped to provision with cassava flour. On January30th he made land at the Isle of Plasencia, off Rio de Janeiro. The men foraged for fruit and vegetables in gardens belonging to the Indians.
Six days later, the coopers went with a landing party to gather hoops for barrels. The day was hot and the men were bathing, unguarded, when a mob of Indians and Portuguese attacked. The Captain sent a boat crew ashore and they found the thirteen men, faces upturned to heaven, laid in a rank with a cross set by them.
John Davis saw pinnaces sailing out of Rio harbour. He made for open sea. He had no other choice. HE had eights casks of water and they were fouled.
As they came up to the Equator, the penguins took their revenge. In them bred a "loathsome worme" about an inch long. The worms ate everything, iron only excepted - clothing, bedding, boots, hats, leather lashings, and live human flesh. The worms gnawed through the ship's side and threatened to sink her.

3a) What difficulties were met by Davis and his crew and how did they try to cope with them? Write your answer using short notes (bullet points) aiming to find 10 points.

3b) Now use your notes to write a summary of the difficulties met by Davis and his crew, and how they tried to cope with them.
Your summary should be in continuous writing and use your own words as far as possible. It shold include all 10 points from 3a. 100-150 words.

Intervention/ Drop in

Miss Lynch will be in class Wednesday and Thursday this coming week from 9am until 12 for students to:

- ask specific questions
- attempt a new language paper or literature paper in timed conditions that will then be marked as soon as you are finished
- get targeted, specific help on any aspect of the literature of language exams

Conflict Poems – some important points (Unit 2 Literature)

Task - re-write the notes below to help further your understanding of some of the poems in the anthology.

Extension - try to find quotes to justify each point

Flag

  Ideas of patriotism

Extract from Out of the Blue

  Use of persona to explore universal ideas in ‘extract from Out of the Blue’

Mametz Wood

  Ideas about waste and pointlessness

nature of the victims

deaths of the soldiers

ideas about the burial of the soldiers

The use of imagery

The use of language

The way that verse structure is used

The use and effects of enjambment

The Yellow Palm

  The contrast between violence and peace

  The sense of threat and danger contrasted with images of fragility and peace

  Incorporation of the senses

  The use and effects of colour

  The use and effects of nature imagery

  Effects of structural devices such as pauses, repetition and punctuated caesurae

  Effects of rhythm and meter

The effect of conflict and war on feelings about homes

 

 

The Right Word

  How conflict affects attitudes

At the Border, 1979

  Use of first person to create immediacy

  Feelings about home

  Ideas about the effects of conflict on civilians

  Ideas about the effects war on the land and the impermanence of conflict

in comparison to the more permanent reality of the land itself

  The contrasting reactions and points of view of the children and the adults

  Ideas about the nature of „home‟

  The use and presentation of different perspectives and points of view,

including the use of direct speech

  The use and effects of imagery, in particular the extended metaphor of the

chain

  The use of structural features including caesura, enjambment

 

Belfast Confetti

  Use of first person to create immediacy

  The use of metaphor

The effect of conflict and war on feelings about homes

the sense of danger in ‘Belfast Confetti’

the feelings of the speaker in ‘Belfast Confetti’

the sense of confusion in ‘Belfast Confetti’

the negative effects of conflict on people in ‘Belfast Confetti’

the use and effects of imagery in ‘Belfast Confetti’, for example the title itself

the use and effects of punctuation in ‘Belfast Confetti’

the use and effects of particular language choices in ‘Belfast Confetti’

the use and effects of structural features such as enjambment in ‘Belfast Confetti’

Poppies

  Ideas about effects of conflict on civilians in

  The contrast between power and powerlessness

Feelings of nurture and protection

Feelings of fear, loss and bereavement

Ideas about fragility and vulnerability

Use and effects of war / pain imagery

Use and effects of textile imagery

Juxtaposition of contrasting images

Creation of tone through tense, enjambment and language

Futility

  Ideas about waste and pointlessness

  The contrast between power and powerlessness

Ideas about the waste of life

Ideas about the life-giving power of the sun

Attitudes towards the futility of growth and life in the face of humanity’s powers of

destruction

Feelings of grief and loss

Use of form and structure

Use of questions in

Imagery of growth and life

Subtle tone and sense of irony

The Charge of the Light Brigade

  Ideas of patriotism

The poet’s attitude towards the soldiers

The description of the battle and the situation in which the soldiers are placed

The relationship between the soldiers and those in authority over them

Ideas about duty, heroism and honour

AO2

The use and effects of rhyme and rhythm including dactylic metre

The use and effects of particular techniques such as repetition, prepositions,

metaphor, rhetorical devices

Examples of particular language choices and effects

Use of direct speech

Bayonet Charge

  Ideas of patriotism

AO1

the fear of the soldier in ‘Bayonet Charge’

the patriotic attitudes and ideas in ‘Bayonet Charge’

the contrast between ideology and reality in ‘Bayonet Charge’

the soldier’s experience in ‘Bayonet Charge’

AO2

the presentation of time and movement in ‘Bayonet Charge’

the use of structure / form, including enjambment and punctuation, in ‘Bayonet

Charge’ and symbolism

the use of imagery in ‘Bayonet Charge’

the use of sound patterns in ‘Bayonet Charge’

The Falling Leaves

Come On, Come Back

Next to of course god America i

Ideas about symbolism

  Ideas about and attitudes towards patriotism and war

  Ideas about rhetoric and the power (or not) of political words

  The contrast between the noise of war and the silence of the „dead‟

  Ambiguity and irony

A02

  Use and effects of techniques such as alliteration and oxymoron

  Structural features such as use of sonnet form and punctuation for

particular effect

  Use and effects of imagery

  Use of speech conceit as means of conveying irony

 

Hawk Roosting

  Ideas about the hawk as representation of the power of nature

  Ideas about the hawk as metaphor for humanity’s destructive force

  The relationship between the hawk and nature

  Hawk as life-force, unburdened by conscience / rationality

A02

  Use and effects of first person to create connection / empathy / closer perspective

  Use and effects of line endings to create impact and emphasis

  Use of personal pronouns