MOCK EXAM 2016.

ENGLISH IN THE MEDIA

Name: _________________________________ ID NUMBER: ________________________

GROUP: ________

PART 1. Grammar and Theory

Exercise 1. Read the following news article. Write a headline and a subheadline for it. Write
the verbs in parenthesis in the correct form and complete the rest of the gaps with the
correct preposition.

Headline_____________________________________________________________________

Subheadline__________________________________________________________________

By Sam Marsden

The Telegraph 04 Dec

A teenage soldier ______________ (arrest) on suspicion of terrorism offences ____________ a

nail bomb was allegedly ___________ (find) at his family home.

The serviceman, ______________ (name) locally as Ryan McGee, 19, ____________

(understand) to have been serving _____________ 5th Battalion The Rifles in Paderborn,
Germany.

His arrest came ____________ police evacuated residents and called ___________ Army bomb
disposal experts following the discovery ______________ a suspicious device _________ the
house last week.

Officers also allegedly _____________ (find) right-wing leaflets ____________ the search of the
semi-detached property in Mellor Street, Eccles, Greater Manchester, which is home
____________ Mr McGee’s brother and mother.

It is understood that the young soldier was first ___________ (hold) at his base in Germany
_____________ the Royal Military Police on suspicion of unlawfully possessing explosives,
firearms and ammunition, but was later released ______________ charge.

He then flew back _____________ Britain on Monday and was detained by officers
_____________ Greater Manchester Police under Section 57 of the Terrorism Act, which relates
_____________ the possession of articles connected ____________ the "commission,
preparation or instigation" of terrorism.
MOCK EXAM 2016. ENGLISH IN THE MEDIA

Name: _________________________________ ID NUMBER: ________________________

GROUP: ________

Exercise 2. Fill in the gaps with the correct function word.

Eurostar stake up for grabs in £10bn sell-off of

government assets

UK's 40% stake in cross-channel rail operator offered amid intensifying debate about private
versus public ownership

Rowena Mason, political correspondent

The Guardian, Wednesday 4 December

Britain's stake in the cross-channel rail operator Eurostar will be sold ___________ under a new
£10bn privatisation programme.

Danny Alexander, _____________ chief secretary to the Treasury, will announce ____________
Wednesday ______________ he has doubled the coalition's target for the disposal
____________ state assets to £20bn _____________ the next six years, ___________ weeks
after the government was criticised for undervaluing Royal Mail _____________ its controversial
flotation.

____________ disposal of ____________ UK's 40% stake in Eurostar could potentially net
____________ Treasury hundreds of millions of pounds.

____________ higher target for privatisations will lead ___________ speculation ____________
which other businesses in the government's estimated £600bn corporate ____________ property
portfolio will be sold in the coming years. Assets held by the state include the broadcaster Channel
4, and support services businesses such as Companies House, the Royal Mint, the Met Office
and Ordnance Survey, as well as the Post Office.

____________ the past, coalition ministers have maintained ____________ the Eurostar stake
would be retained. The company, _____________ is majority-owned _____________ the French
state rail firm, SNCF, more than doubled profits ________________ £52m last year.
MOCK EXAM 2016. ENGLISH IN THE MEDIA

Name: _________________________________ ID NUMBER: ________________________

GROUP: ________

Exercise 3. Read the following text. Identify the sentences in Reported Speech and change
them into Direct Speech. Also, identify the sentences in Direct Speech and change them
into Reported Speech. DO NOT USE the introductory verb ‘SAY’.

Cost cutting to blame for RBS’s Cyber Monday

card glitch, says union

Unite says job losses and offshoring led to customers being unable use debit cards or withdraw
cash on Monday
The Guardian, Tuesday 3 December

The boss of RBS has admitted the bank would have to put right decades of underinvestment in
its computer systems that have led to embarrassing IT failures barring customers from accessing
their accounts.

As one City analyst suggested the problems would cost the state-owned bank as much as £1bn
to put right, the chief executive, Ross McEwan, apologised for the "unacceptable" technical faults.

Despite assurances from the bank that the latest problems had been resolved, customers were
still reporting problems on Tuesday following Monday's glitch, which saw millions unable to pay
by card or withdraw cash on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The bank said that
more than 1,000 branches would open earlyWednesday morning to help customers affected by
the faults.

McEwan said: "Monday night's systems failure was unacceptable. It was a busy shopping day
and far too many of our customers were let down. For decades, RBS failed to invest properly in
its systems. We need to put our customers’ needs at the centre of all we do. It will take time, but
we are investing heavily in building IT systems our customers can rely on. We know we have to
do better."

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MOCK EXAM 2016. ENGLISH IN THE MEDIA

Name: _________________________________ ID NUMBER: ________________________

GROUP: ________

PART 2. Reading & Writing

Children’s fiction is not great literature

Kent University was right – the best children's books are better written, but only adult literature
confronts the range of human experience

Jonathan Myerson
The Guardian, Wednesday 4 December

'Roth does say something rather more challenging than Rowling - what's so wrong with that?'
Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

Come on, University of Kent, why the grovelling retreat? Your creative writing website got it right
first time. You know perfectly well that when you made a distinction between "great literature" and
"mass-market thrillers or children's fiction", you were standing up for something. That Keats is
different from Dylan, or, in this instance, that Philip Roth does say something rather more
challenging than JK Rowling, that Jonathan Franzen does create storylines more ambiguous and
questioning than Stephanie Meyer's. What's so wrong with that? I'll go forward carrying the banner
even if you won't.

Like Kent, we at City University take on creative writing MA students specifically to write literary
novels – so we are quite ready to define what's required to write for adults as opposed to children.
It isn't about the quality of the prose: the best children's books are better structured and written
than many adult works. Nor is it about imaginary worlds – among the Lit Gang, for instance, Kazuo
Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy and Michael Chabon have all created plenty of those. It's simpler than
that: a novel written for children omits certain adult-world elements which you would expect to
find in a novel aimed squarely at grown-up readers.

When I was a "young adult", YA fiction didn't exist and I filled my hours with Robert Louis
Stevenson or Isaac Asimov. These novels held and excited us because they created scenarios
where good and evil were clearly defined and rarely muddied.

I am so glad that first-rate children's literature was there for my own children. I would not have
wanted them – at 11, 12 or 13 – to confront the complexity and banality of evil. It's quite right that
they wanted to read about worlds where evil was uniformly evil and good people were constantly
good. In contrast, adulthood means learning that SS officers or drone pilots do go home and kiss
their wives, without a thought of belonging to the "dark side". Equally, while you come to know
how to interpret Portnoy's self-loathing or Humbert Humbert's witty detachment, children wouldn't
enjoy these characters or their dilemmas. The best young adult novels do bridge that sticky chasm
between the undoubting days of childhood and the hedged decades of adulthood.
MOCK EXAM 2016. ENGLISH IN THE MEDIA

Name: _________________________________ ID NUMBER: ________________________

GROUP: ________

But there's no avoiding the real question. Are adult novels larger than children's novels largely
because they seek to confront all these issues? Of course they are. Great adult literature aims to
confront the full range of genuine human experience, a world where individuals do not wear the
same black or white hat every day. Life is messy, life is surprising and, most of all, life is full of
compromises. One of the great themes of literature – which therefore often makes for great
literature – springs from the protagonist who rejects compromise and usually pays the price
(Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Pinkie Brown, Rabbit Angstrom). Would we really want our
children to cope with the unwinnable dilemmas of JM Coetzee's Disgrace?

But does that make children's literature any easier to write? I imagine quite the reverse. It's harder
– children are not so easily fooled. Not only that, but many great writers – even those who go on
to write the dark stuff of adult fiction – are informed and inspired by their childhood reading. These
books stay with you because they are important at that age.

Whether a work of fiction is literary is not defined by the poshness of its vocabulary or the obscurity
of its references – it is simply a novel which leaves something out. In doing so, that novel makes
demands of us – to doubt, to admit bafflement, and to wonder if we could have done any better
in this real world – and far too few children's novels attempt that.

Answer the following questions

1. What type of word formation can you identify in the word ‘questioning’ (line 6)? Elaborate.

2. What type of word formation can you identify in the word ‘witty’ (line 26)? Elaborate.

3. What category of word do you think ‘springs’ is (line 34)? Explain.

4. What category of word do you think ‘Children’s’ is in the headline? Explain.

5. What is the function of the subheadline? Does it fulfil such a function? Do you think both the
headline and subheadline are appropriate for the text? Why? Why not? If not, which one(s) would
you suggest?
MOCK EXAM 2016. ENGLISH IN THE MEDIA

Name: _________________________________ ID NUMBER: ________________________

GROUP: ________

What is the meaning of the following expressions in the text?

a) "mass-market thrillers or children's fiction" (line 3)

b) ‘standing up for something’ (line 4)

c) ‘muddied’ (line 19)

d) ‘a world where individuals do not wear the same black or white hat every day’
(lines 31-32)

e) ‘it is simply a novel which leaves something out’ (line 44)

What do the following words refer to?

a) ‘that’ (line 7)

b) ‘those’ (line 14)

c) ‘you’ (line 15)

d) ‘them’ (line 21)

e) ‘it’ (line 44)

MOCK EXAM 2016. ENGLISH IN THE MEDIA

Name: _________________________________ ID NUMBER: ________________________

GROUP: ________

Underline the subject of the main verb in the following sentences extracted from the text.

a) ‘It's simpler than that: a novel written for children omits certain adult-world elements which you
would expect to find in a novel aimed squarely at grown-up readers.’ (paragraph 2)

b) ‘These novels held and excited us because they created scenarios where good and evil were
clearly defined and rarely muddied.’ (paragraph 3)

c) ‘These books stay with you because they are important at that age.’ (paragraph 6)

Identify the HEAD (H), PRE-MODIFIERS (PreM) and POST-MODIFIERS (PostM) in the
following noun phrases.

a) ‘Your creative writing website’ (paragraph 1)

b) ‘the best children's books’ (paragraph 2)

c) a world where individuals do not wear the same black or white hat every day. (paragraph 5)

Answer the following questions.

a) Who is the intended audience of this text? why?

b) Is the writer expressing his opinion? How do you know?

MOCK EXAM 2016. ENGLISH IN THE MEDIA

Name: _________________________________ ID NUMBER: ________________________

GROUP: ________

c) What is the function of this article?

d) Is the tone of the article formal or informal? How do you know?

Analyze the following advert and answer the questions below (your answers must be
based on the theory explained in class)

1. What can you say about the grammar/lexis of the written text?

2. What can you say about the visual text?

3. What can you say about the whole layout and the typographic elements of the advert?
MOCK EXAM 2016. ENGLISH IN THE MEDIA

Name: _________________________________ ID NUMBER: ________________________

GROUP: ________

4. Is the slogan catchy? Why?

PART 3. Listening & writing

Answer the following listening comprehension questions (40 points)

Where is the trunk now?

Where was the trunk discovered? Why was it hidden?

What is inside the trunk?

What period does the trunk belong to? Who would have used it?

What happened to priests if they were found in possession of a trunk like this? Why?

Answer the following questions after listening and responding to the comprehension
question (explain your reasons based on the ideas discussed in class). (60 points)

Which type of text have you listened to?

Is this likely to have appeared on the radio or on TV? Why?

Is this likely to have been broadcast in local or national radio station or TV channel? Why?

How do the different people that speak contribute to the credibility of the story?