PODAR INTERNATIONALSCHOOL (IB & Cambridge International)

Affiliated to International Baccalaureate and Cambridge Assessment

International EducationAffiliation No. IB - 002228 & Cambridge
International - IN420

ACADEMIC YEAR: 2023-24

FIRST TERM EXAMINATION
Grade: 8 Paper :1
Subject: First Language English (0500) Marks: 80
Duration: 2 hrs. 15 min Date: 26th September 2023

Candidate Name
Grade /Div Roll No

INSERT

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST

This insert contains the reading passages for use with all the questions
on the question paper.
You may annotate this inert and use the blank space for planning.
Do not write your answers on the insert. The insert is not assessed by
the Examiner.

Page 1 of 6
Read Text A The Elephant and the Blind Men in the insert and then answer Questions 1(a)–(e)
on this question paper.

Text A

The Elephant and the Blind Men

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived six blind men. They were friends, but each of
them thought himself very wise, much wiser than the others.

One day these six wise blind men went for a walk in a zoo. They could not see the animals but
they wanted to listen to them, and they were especially interested in the elephant, of which they
had heard much. 5

That day the zoo-keeper had forgotten to lock the gate of the elephant's cage which was in a
secluded enclosure. There was nobody around. Elephants are naturally very curious animals, so
it immediately pushed the gate to the cage to see if it might open. To its great delight, it swung
wide and the elephant was able to stroll through. Just at that moment the six blind men were
passing the elephant's cage. One of them heard a twig snap and went over to see what it was 10
that was walking nearby.

'Greetings!' said the first blind man to the elephant. 'Could you please tell us the way to the
0
elephant enclosure?' The elephant made no noise, but it shifted its weight from left to right, and
rocked backwards and forwards. The first blind man walked over to see if this big silent person
needed any help. With a bump, he walked right into the side of the elephant. He put out his arms 15
to either side, but all he could feel was the unyielding body of the elephant stretching away in
both directions. The first blind man said to the others, 'I think I must have walked into a wall.
That's the only explanation.' 0
The second blind man joined the first. He took up a position to the front of the elephant and
grabbed hold of the animal's trunk. He quickly let go of it and shouted, 'Don't be ridiculous. This 20
isn't a wall. This is a snake! We should keep away in case it's poisonous.'

The third man didn't believe either of the other two and decided to find out for himself what it was. 0
He walked to the rear of the elephant and touched its tail. He laughed and said, 'This is neither
a wall nor a snake. You are both wrong once again. It is quite clear that this is a rope.'

The fourth man knew how opinionated and stubborn his friends could be, always claiming that 25
they were right and the others wrong. He took it upon himself to give his verdict and settle the
matter. He crouched down and felt around the bottom of one of the elephant's legs. 'My dear
friends,' explained the fourth man, 'this is neither a wall nor a snake. It is no rope either. What we 0
have here, gentlemen, is a tree trunk. That's all there is to say. Let's move on.'

The fifth man had become impatient by now and he realized that it was up to him to pronounce 30
definitively upon the matter. He walked up to the front side of the elephant and felt one of the
animal's long tusks. 'What I am holding is long and curved and sharp at the end. It must be a
spear. It is not safe to stay here.' 0

The sixth blind man was by now very puzzled that so many and such different answers could

Page 2 of 6
have been given by his five friends. He walked up to the front side of the elephant and grabbed 35
something huge which flapped. He dismissed the other explanations and stated categorically
that what they had found was a fan.
0
The six erstwhile friends began arguing with each other, each maintaining that they alone were
right and justifying their opinion. They became very aggressive about it, and started insulting
each other. 40

The zoo-keeper heard the noise the men were making, ran to where they were, and took hold of
the escaped elephant, speaking gently to it. The sixth blind man called out, 'Could you please 0
help us? My friends and I do not seem able to figure out what this nearby object is. One of us
thinks it's a wall; one thinks it's a snake; one thinks it's a rope; one thinks it's four tree trunks; one
thinks it's a sharp weapon. We are in danger of seriously falling out about this matter. Which of 45
us is right, and how can one thing seem so different to six people?'

'Well,' said the zoo-keeper, 'you are all right. And you are all wrong. This is an elephant, but 0
because you each encountered only a part of it, none of you were able to recognize what it really
is.'

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Page 3 of 6
Read Text B The First Agricultural Revolution carefully and solve question number 1 (f) on
the question paper.
Text B
The First Agricultural Revolution
Before the rise of cultivation and its related activity, the breeding of domestic animals, man was
a rare and inconspicuous inhabitant of the earth. Like other animals, he lived on what he could
find, adapting to the natural environment around him and changing it in minor and temporary
ways in his efforts to increase his supplies of food. Farming transformed Man into an entirely
different kind of organism: a being with many other organisms subjected to his will, such as plants 5
and animals.

His first hesitant steps in this direction produced amazing results. No longer did he merely adapt 0
to the natural environment; now he began to alter it, and in major ways. Farming gave him the
power to change the balance of nature so that it would provide more of what he needed. For
example, by encouraging the growth of a relatively few food plants, like wheat and barley, the 10
farmer at the same time discouraged many inedible wild plants that unless weeded out of the
fields, would absorb much of the moisture and many nutrients in the soil and might even choke
out the food crops entirely. In much the same manner, he altered the balance of animal life in 0
many areas. He domesticated certain food-producing animals (and thus directed their evolution)
and discouraged the activities of other creatures that harmed his crops or killed his herds. 15

When the farmer had created an environment suited to his needs, he extended it to land where
it could not naturally exist. In forest country, for instance, he cut down trees to open up space for 0
the light-loving plants they cultivated; in arid regions he devised ways to bring the life-giving
waters of rivers to acres that otherwise would yield nothing but scrubby brush. Eventually he
even extended his man-made environment to steep mountain sides and, by carving then into 20
terraces that would hold patches of soil, transformed them into productive farmland.

The result was the production of more food within a given area. And once Man had a much larger 0
food supply ready at hand, the groundwork was laid for civilization. The pace of life speeded up,
as if an oxcart were hitched to a jet engine. Farming greatly accelerated developments that had
already started to appear among certain hunter-gatherers living in favoured places: it encouraged 25
permanent settlements, inspired the invention of new tools and techniques, and led them to
develop a wide range of artistic expression and increasingly sophisticated crafts. It triggered an
explosive increase in population, encouraging not only larger families, but large and complex 0
societies, which meant encouraging the growth of government, trade and communication among
great number of people. 30

After this first agricultural revolution, Man was no longer an inconspicuous rarity. Armed with his
new skills and power, he became not simply the dominant animal on earth but the planet’s 0
dominant form of life.

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Page 4 of 6
Read Text C ‘The Mountain Lake’ carefully and then answer questions 2(a), (b) and (c) along
with Question 3 on the Question Paper.
Text C

‘The Mountain Lake’

In this passage, the writer describes a remote mountain lake in Ireland and tells what happened
on a family trip to fish for brown trout.

There is a lake, halfway up a mountain, where my family and I spend a day or two fishing each
year. The climb, over waterlogged ground, drains the energy from our legs and makes us pause
every now and then to catch our breath. During these short breaks we turn our backs on the
mountain, and face, instead, the open country beneath us. There is plenty to see. The flat green
country is divided by the River Shannon. There are lakes everywhere. Some of the larger ones 5
we can name, but the small ones are too many to count; each one a jewel nestled into a fold in
the velvet landscape. All around us the air carries the sound of the tiny streams which gather the
water from the mountain and begin to steer it, well beyond our vision, towards the ocean. 0
The mountain lake is not easy to find. It seems unusual to locate a lake by climbing upward and,
in many ways, we were lucky to find it at all on our first trip. It is very small and seemingly invisible 10
until you arrive at a ridge and discover it, quite suddenly, at your feet. Sometimes it is not there
at all. The dark clouds that graze the mountaintops here may decide to throw a protective fog
around it, and steal it back. On such days we are forced to turn away and leave the local fish, 0
the brown trout, to cruise the dark waters undisturbed.

This isolated lake is fed only by a stream which gathers rainfall from the mountain ridge above. 15
How did the trout get here? They are not big fish: the heaviest we have caught is probably just
under half a kilo. With their black backs, copper sides and two rows of red spots, they are all very
similar in appearance. It seems to me that their strict conformity to a shared dress code might 0
say something about their history. Scientists suggest that fewer physical differences are to be
expected in a small population long isolated from others. In my imagination, they are the 20
descendants of ancestors which colonised these waters in prehistoric times; ancestors which
swam through channels long since vanished in a landscape of ice and glaciers and a wilderness
unseen by human eyes. 0
I had taken my son, Leo, on a short fishing trip and had decided to go to the mountain lake as its
eager fish might offer him the greatest hope of an early catch. Here the brown trout always rise 25
freely, as though to reward us for the effort we have made to reach them. Would these bold trout
oblige us by rising to the water’s surface as we had hoped? I need not have worried. Sure
enough, within ten minutes or so of our arrival, a swirl distorted the mirror of the mountain lake’s
0
surface. A few moments later, we were admiring the varnished scales of Leo’s first trout before
he gently lowered it into the lake once more and let the black water reclaim it. 30

To celebrate Leo’s first trout, I painted a watercolour picture of it. It is framed now and hangs on
his bedroom wall. It is not a good picture perfect painting. While its proportions are approximately 0
correct and its colours resemble the original, I could no more capture its beauty using paints than
I now can, using words. If you wish to see for yourself how beautiful these trout really are, you
must go there – and hope that, for a few hours at least, the clouds will surrender the mountain 35
lake to you… so that you can witness a trout that looks like a rainbow.

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