DIRECTORATE FOR QUALITY AND STANDARDS IN EDUCATION

Department of Curriculum Management

Educational Assessment Unit Track 3

Annual Examinations 2017

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
YEAR 9 ENGLISH TIME: 15 minutes
LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Teacher’s Paper

Instructions for the conduct of the Listening Comprehension Examination

The teacher should instruct the candidates to answer the questions on the paper provided. The
following procedure for reading the Listening Comprehension passage is to be explained to the
candidates immediately before proceeding with the examination.

You have been given a sheet containing the listening comprehension

questions. You will be given three minutes to read the questions based
on the passage. The passage will be read at normal reading speed.
You may take notes during the reading. After this reading there will
be a pause of another three minutes to allow you to answer some of
the questions. I shall read the passage a second time and you may
take further notes and answer the rest of the questions. After this
second reading you will be given a further three minutes for a final
revision of the answers.

a. 3 minutes – Students read questions.

b. 3 minutes – Teacher reads passage aloud for the first time while students take notes.

c. 3 minutes – Students answer questions.

d. 3 minutes – Teacher reads passage for the second time. Students may answer more
questions.

e. 3 minutes – Students revise final answers.

English – Listening Comprehension – Teacher’s paper – Year 9 – Track 3 – 2017 Page 1 of 2

DIRECTORATE FOR QUALITY AND STANDARDS IN EDUCATION
Department of Curriculum Management
Educational Assessment Unit Track 3

Annual Examinations 2017

__________________________________________________________________________________________________
YEAR 9 ENGLISH TIME: 15 minutes
LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Teacher’s Paper

Listen to a radio documentary called ‘The Bitter Taste of Cocoa’.

Global cocoa production runs into million of tonnes per year. The best cocoa beans are grown in South
America, but around 66 per cent of the world’s cocoa actually comes from two extremely poor African
countries: the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

Raw cocoa costs around 3,200 pounds per tonne to harvest and prepare for market, but it only sells for
2,200 pounds per tonne. An Ivorian farmer told the BBC that if the price is low, he loses money. On
average, he makes less than 2 dollars a day, so he cannot pay his farm hands more than a few cents at a
time. Adults will not work for that kind of money, so what do many farmers do? They use child
labourers instead.

According to some estimates, 12,000 of the 200,000 children working in cocoa farming on the Ivory
Coast alone are kept as slaves, while the others earn only a few dollars a month. One boy told us that he
has been working for ages and that he hasn’t seen his family in years. His friend Peter is only nine, but
already works very hard and his mother wouldn’t feed him unless he worked. Boys like him are sold
directly to the farmers by desperate parents. Children as young as eight are expected to climb trees to
cut down ripe cocoa pods using long, curved knives called machetes. They have to carry sacks of cocoa
beans which are much too heavy for a young child, and they have to work with dangerous chemicals
such as insecticides.

Cocoa farming has the highest injury rate of any form of child labour. There is no money for good
doctors or hospitals, so some children are hurt for life because of a broken leg or a dangerous infection
caused by insect bites or a machete cut. Also, they do not get an education because they often cannot
find time to attend school which means that many cannot read or write.

The world’s large chocolate makers now want their suppliers to guarantee that the cocoa they use in
their chocolate products was not produced by child slaves, but this is easier said than done. If asked
about very young people working their land, many farmers will simply present them as their own
children.

The United Nations and various organizations have long been trying to deal with the problem, but the
number of child labourers has actually gone up in the last years. As for the chocolate manufacturers,
most agree that more needs to be done. All those concerned need to come together to make sure cocoa
prices are fair and if this means more expensive chocolate in the future, we all know that the extra
money per chocolate bar will be for a good cause.

English – Listening Comprehension – Teacher’s paper – Year 9 – Track 3 – 2017 Page 2 of 2