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BBA PRACTICE EXAMINATION

2013
ENGLISH
Level One
RESOURCE BOOKLET
90851 (1.3)
Show understanding of signicant aspects of unfamiliar written text(s)
through close reading, using supporting evidence.
Credits: Four
Refer to this booklet to answer all questions in the
90851 Question and Answer Booklet.
Check that this booklet has pages 2-4 in the correct order and that none
of these pages is blank.
YOU MUST HAND THIS BOOKLET TO THE SUPERVISOR
AT THE END OF THE ASSESSMENT.

BBA Educational Resources 2013

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You are advised to spend 60 minutes answering the questions in this booklet.
Text A: FICTION
This passage from a New Zealand short story involves 3 young children lost on a long tramp.
Read Text A, then answer Question One.
Charlotte Grimshaw, Pararaha in Singularity, Random House NZ, 2009
TEXT A
Emily started to hate the river. It laughed at them, dashing along over its rocks, it menaced
and mocked. She slipped and grazed her foot, and the river babbled and sighed and
chuckled to itself. The sky was still bright but the colours were still changing, the sunlight
growing yellower. Emily thought with fear of the gorge at night.
Larry frowned at his map. Sam bleakly ate the last sandwich and Emily stared down
at the shallows, where the water rippled and the weed waved, and the eels curled and
slipped between the rocks. She saw a freshwater craysh poke its claws out from under
a rock as if to check the underwater weather. It shot back under the rock again, quick as
a ash. The feathery river weed was combed and parted by the current, and tiny bubbles
of air were caught and whisked away.
Then, nally, the land began to atten out and they were no longer walled in on both sides
of the river by steep hills. And now, the sea was really roaring, and when they crossed a
wooden bridge over a marsh and followed a narrow path under a row of cabbage trees,
they came to the foot of a vast black sand dune. Emily looked up the glittering iron slope
to the intense blue sky. She had never seen such a dune, its spine curving like the back
of a giant lizard, its rippling ank so black that it had a sheen of blue.
They began to climb, their feet sinking into the hot sand. Sam started to cry as the sand
got into his sandals, burning his feet. They reached the top and there before them was
the huge curve of the coast, stretching all the way to Whatipu, a desert of black sand
and dunes and scrub rippling with heat waves, and, far across it, fringed with surf, the
wild sea. Emily turned and turned: it seemed to her that the whole landscape was full
of bright, violent motion. The uffy toetoe waved in the wind like spears borne by a
marching army, the surf ceaselessly tumbled and roared, the light played on the sand,
casting a powerful shimmering glare. Where the black desert sand met the land there
were enormous grey cliffs that sent the sound booming off them.
They walked along the backbone of the great dune, and across a boiling expanse of
beach. Then they came down into a trench of scrub under the cliffs where the cabbage
trees grew and pohutukawas hung off the cliffs. Here they were screened from the roar
of the sea by the dunes, and there was a path of hard, matted grass that was easy to
walk on.
But Sam sat down on the grass. He couldnt go on.
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LOST
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Text B: POETRY
This poem is about a pet dog taken to the zoo.
Read Text B, then answer Question Two.
Anna Jackson, Landfall Magazine, number 213, pp 97-98 Otago University Press, 2007
TEXT B
Are you still there?
Unlike everyone else, always busy,
Earning money, talking on cell phones,
You have time to hold on to a leash
And even take me to the zoo!
(Are you still there?)
A trip to the zoo! Look at all the animals!
It does seem a bit sad, all of them in cages.
It does make you wonder,
about people.
But how nice to be here!
With you on the other end of my leash!
Pity the old bear looks so sad
and the camel seems to be going bald.
That tiger is off-putting,
A cat that size.
But I cant help liking the lion.
(Are you still there?)
I remember you once reading about lions
and dogs once, remember?
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MICKY THE FOX TERRIER AT THE ZOO
You said lions love having a little dog
in their cages, remember?
They may tear fve to pieces, you read,
but theyll make friends with a sixth.
Id rather be a seventh though,
and free,
With you on the end of my leash.
(Are you still there?)
It is so interesting seeing all the animals in cages
I will probably dream about them later,
my heart is all revved up like a motorcycle
sto, ste, sto, ste, drumming away
with excitement, I suppose, because
it really is exciting, being taken to the zoo.
And the whole time I can look forward, too,
to the ride back home in the car
with my nose on the end of my leash
and my eyes on you.
by Anna Jackson
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Text C: NON-FICTION
This newspaper editorial examines the good and bad points about the New Zealand Driving
Licence Tests, which changed format in February 2013.
Read Text C, then answer Question Three.
Source: Editorial New Zealand Herald on Sunday, September 30, 2012.
TEXT C
There will never be much sympathy for teen drivers. Running up too many speeding tickets,
incurring too many careless driving convictions, it is easy to see them as a danger on the roads.
Seven hundred Kiwi teens died in road crashes in the past 10 years - the highest rate among
developed nations.
Successive governments have won votes by cracking down on young drivers. Minister of Justice
Judith Crusher Collins revelled in the nickname given her for legislating to conscate and destroy
the souped-up cars of boy racers whose antics struck the fear of God into their law-abiding
elders. And parents dread the day when their sweetfaced children get a driving licence and behind
the wheel of their rst car.
The Automobile Association seems to agree. AAs motoring affairs manager Mike Noon said it was
better to have people not driving than driving badly. We are not doing kids any favours by putting
them out on the road before they are ready.
But fairs fair.
If teenagers learn the Road Code, do the hard yards with a driving instructor or parent and learn
to drive, shouldnt they have a fair chance at passing their test and being granted the privilege of
taking their place among New Zealands licensed drivers?
Not according to New Zealand Driver Licensing, the company that runs the tests.
A memo leaked to the Herald on Sunday reveals testers have been told to pass around 40 per
cent of candidates, or face the consequences. The arithmetic isnt hard: that means failing 60 per
cent.
Now, there are clear, legal guidelines around what qualies as a pass or a fail. Do the indicators
and brake lights work? Can the candidate turn right at a T-junction, giving way to one lane of
oncoming trafc? Do they maintain a safe following distance? There are dozens of boxes they
must tick.
Nowhere in the legislation does it say pass rates should be scaled up or down to ensure most
candidates fail.
Even parents are getting frustrated. One Hamilton father told this paper how he watched his two
sons fail three times each, despite a driving instructor assuring them they were ready.
Is it a coincidence that each time New Zealand Driver Licensing fails a young driver, the company
can charge them $88 to resit the test - and that the 7397 resits forced on candidates since tough
new standards were introduced in February 2013 have gained the company more than $650,000?
*Arbitrary scaling was phased out of high school examinations 25 years ago, because the
community realised it was unfair to treat children as rats in a statistical laboratory. We shouldnt let
some greedy testing contractor bring it back, just because were scared to let our kids grow up.
TESTS MUST BE DRIVEN BY FAIRNESS, NOT FEAR
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Glossed words
*Arbitrary scaling: the % of passes is decided by someones choice, not by reason or logic.