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ENTRANCE AND SCHOLARSHIP

EXAMINATION 2012

ENGLISH

Allowed time - 1 Hour

Candidate’s Name:

Date of Birth:

Instructions

1. Write your name and date of birth in the space provided above.

2. Write all your answers for Sections A and B into this booklet.

3. Section A is worth 50 marks and Section B is worth 30 marks – so leave

about half an hour for Section B – don’t run out of time!

4. Read both sections of the paper through a couple of times before starting to

answer the questions.

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Section A [Total for Section A: 50 marks]

Question 1 (10 marks)

The extract below is taken from Tins by Alex

Shearer

Sometimes words are spelt wrongly. Sometimes

the wrong words have been used. Sometimes the

grammar is wrong.

The passage below is taken from the beginning of

the first chapter. This is an example – it has been

done for you to show you what to do.

Chapter 1

Take a Gamble

have been model

It could of bean stamps. It could have been stickers, or postcards or modle

free cereal pictures

aeroplanes, or the frea gifts in serial packets. It could have been pitchers of

autographs people

footballers. It could have been autografs of famous poeple. But it wasn’t.

It was tins.

seemed was clever

And the only explanation for them seamed to be that Fergal Bamfield woz cleaver.

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Now carry on correcting the mistakes yourself. The mistakes have been

underlined.

Fergal Bamfield found is reputation four cleverness as irritating as it were

undeserved. It wayed heavily upon him, lik a bag ful off bricks. It wasn’t that he was

stupid; far from it. He was capable and got good – often above average – marks in

his exams. It was his exentric appearance what marked him out. His unruly hair

stuck out at all angels and could never be tamed, not even with a pot of gel.

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Question 2 (8 marks)

Now, as the story continues, find seven errors of your own that have not been

underlined. Underline them and correct them.

Then their where his glasses witch not only enlarged his eyes, but sumhow had the

affect of making his very hed (and by implication his brain) seem bigger than they

really were. The overall effect was that of the ‛mad proffesser’s apprentice.’

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Question 3 (4 marks) The chapter goes on and there are four punctuation mistakes. Some

punctuation might be missing or it might be wrong. The mistakes have been

underlined for you. Correct the mistakes.

So Fergal came to acquire a reputation for extreme cleverness which he

hated he hated it because he knew he didnt deserve it and he hated it because

he felt pressured to live up to it, and to do and say clever things’.

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Question 4 (3 marks)

Now find three punctuation mistakes yourself, where the punctuation is missing but has not been underlined. Underline the mistakes and correct them.

As a result, he sought refuge in greater eccentricities, and that was the

beginning that was what started him off on the tins.

Fergal felt he needed somewhere to hide a wall to retreat behind – some

shelter. He didn’t want a hobby to bring him into contact with other people he

wanted one to shield him from them. That was when he became interested in tins.

This part of the chapter finishes like this (this is just for you to read):

Not rare tins, though, nor ancient tins from expeditions to the North or South

Pole; not foreign tins from exotic places, or tins in unusual colours. Just simple,

ordinary, everyday tins.

Without labels.

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Question 5 (14 marks)

This extract below is from another

novel called The Graveyard Book by

Neil Gaiman.

It comes from near the beginning of

Chapter 1, which is called “How

Nobody Came to the Graveyard”.

5

10

15

The fog was thinner as you approached the top of the hill. The half moon

shone, not as bright as day, not by any means, but enough to see the

graveyard, enough for that.

Look.

You could see the abandoned funeral chapel, iron doors padlocked,

ivy on the sides of the spire, a small tree growing out of the guttering at

roof level.

You could see stones and tombs and vaults and memorial plaques.

You could see the occasional dash or scuttle of a rabbit or a vole or a

weasel as it slipped out of the undergrowth and across the path.

You would have seen these things, in the moonlight, if you had been

there that night.

You might not have seen a pale, plump woman, who walked the path

near the front gates, and if you had seen her, with a second, more careful

glance you would have realised that she was only moonlight, mist and

shadow. The plump, pale woman was there, though. She walked the path

that led through a clutch of half-fallen tombstones towards the front gates.

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20

25

30

35

40

The gates were locked. They were always locked at four in the

afternoon in the winter, at eight at night in summer. A spike-topped iron

railing ran around part of the cemetery, a high brick wall around the rest of

it. The bars of the gates were closely spaced: they would have stopped a

grown man from getting through, even stopped a ten-year old child ...

‘Owens!’ called the pale woman, in a voice that might have been the

rustle of the wind through the long grass. ‘Owens! Come and look at this!’

She crouched down and peered at something on the ground, as a

patch of shadow moved into the moonlight, revealing itself to be a grizzled

man in his mid-forties. He looked down at his wife, and then looked at what

she was looking at, and he scratched his head.

‘Mistress Owens?’ he said, for he came from a more formal age than

our own. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

And at that moment the thing he was inspecting seemed to catch

sight of Mrs Owens, for it opened its mouth, letting the rubber dummy it

was sucking fall to the ground, and it reached out a small, chubby fist, as if

it were trying for all the world to hold on to Mrs Owens’ pale finger.

‘Strike me silly,’ said Mr Owens, ‘if that isn’t a baby.’

‘Of course it’s a baby,’ said his wife. ‘And the question is, what is to

be done with it?’

‘I dare say that is a question, Mistress Owens,’ said her husband.

‘And yet, it is not our question. For this here baby is unquestionably alive,

and as such is nothing to do with us, and is no part of our world.’

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Now, below the extract has been rewritten, using many different words. Where

words or phrases are missing, lines have been drawn. Please fill in the gaps

with one or more words as needed.

Walking up to the top of the hill, the fog becomes . In the sky the

light from was not as bright as the sun light, but certainly

enough to see the .

Anyone walking would see the abandoned funeral chapel, its doors

with growing up the spire and a small tree growing

out of the roof.

Anyone watching could see the stones, vaults and memorial plaques. They could

see the odd rabbit, vole or as it rushed by out of hiding for a

moment.

Those are all the things that they would have seen in the

if they had been there that night.

But anyone watching that night might not have seen a

, or after a closer look they would have discovered that she was no more

than . She was there though, walking towards

.

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The gates were always locked at four in the

winter and at eight in the summer. No one

could squeeze through the railings or the bars

of the gate, not even a

.

The pale woman called out, ‛ !’ in a voice that might have been

wind whispering through the . ‛Come and see!’

‛I can’t believe it!’ said Mr Owens. ‛Isn’t that a ?’

Question 6 (1 mark)

What are Mr and Mrs Owens?

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Question 7 (2 marks)

There is a metaphor in paragraph 6 and another one in paragraph 9. Can you

find one of them? Write it out and explain what it means.

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Question 8 (5 marks)

Explain in your own words what the following words or phrases mean from

The Graveyard Book

“Spire” (line 6)

“Dash” (line 9)

“Glance” (line 15)

“Cemetery” (line 20)

“a more formal age than our own” (lines 29 & 30)

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Question 9 (3 marks)

Look at the last paragraph of the extract from The Graveyard Book, that begins

with “ ‛I dare say that is a question, ....’ ”

Find one noun, one verb and one adverb.

Noun

Verb

Adverb

End of Section A

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Section B Writing [30 marks]

20 marks for Content, Expression and use of Vocabulary.

10 marks for structure, organisation of ideas, Grammar and Punctuation.

Choose one only of the following subjects.

Either

Question 10 Write the story of what you imagine happens next in Tins.

Or

Question 11 Write the story of what you imagine happens next in The Graveyard

Book.

Or

Question 12 Write a description of someone who is rather strange or unusual (a

friend or a relative for instance). This could be a real person or an

imaginary one.

Or

Question 13 Write a story or a description of a walk in a graveyard.

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This page is for you to plan your writing on. It will not be marked.

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Writing question answer sheets. Question number:

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