DECEMBER 1978
DEPARTMENT OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS (INDIAN AFFAIRS)
SENIOR CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION DECEMBER 1978
Read the following passages carefully and then answer the questions set on them, using your own words as far as possible.
In trying to recapture the presence of my Mother I am pulling at broken strings. The years run back through the pattern of her confusions. Her flowers and songs, her unshaken fidelities, her attempts at order, her relapses into squalor, her near madness, her crying for light, her almost daily weeping for her dead child-daughter, her frisks and gaieties, her fits of screams, her love of man, her hysterical rages, her justice towards each of us children - all these rode my Mother and sat on her shoulders like a roosting of ravens and doves. Equally I remember her occasional blooming, when she became secretly beautiful and alone. And those summer nights - we boys in bed when the green of the yew trees filled the quiet kitchen, and she would change into her silk, put on her bits of jewellery, and sit down to play the piano.
She did not play well; her rough fingers stumbled, they trembled to find the notes - yet she carried the music with little rushes of grace, half-faltering surges of feeling, that went rippling out through the kitchen windows like signals from a shuttered cage. Solitary, eyes closed, in her silks and secrets, tearing arpeggios from the yellow keys, yielding, through dusty but golden chords, to the peak of that private moment, it was clearly then, in the twilit tenderness she created, that the man should have returned to her.
I would lie awake in my still-light bedroom and hear the chime of the piano below: a ragged chord, a poignant pause, then a twinkling wagtail run. Brash yet melancholy, coarse yet wistful, it would rise in a jangling burst, then break and shiver as soft as water and lap round my listening head. She would play some waltzes, and of course "Killarney"; and sometimes I would hear her singing - a cool lone voice, uncertainly rising, addressed to her own reflection. They were sounds of peace, half-edged with sleep, yet disturbing, almost shamefully moving. I wanted to run to her then, and embrace her as she played. But somehow I never did.
Adapted from Cider with Rosie: Laurie Lee
QUESTION 1
A
a) | I am pulling at broken strings (line 1) | (4) |
b) | Through the pattern of her confusions (line 2). i) Explain clearly the specific meanings of the words patterns and confusions. ii) Suggest why the writer uses this description. | (4) |
c) | All these rode my Mother and sat on her shoulders like a roosting of ravens and doves (lines 5 and 6). Show how this statement is an effective summing up of the lines that precede it. | (4) |
d) | Occasional blooming (lines 6 and 7). Justify the writer's choice of each of these words in the context. | (3) |
e) | Like signals from a shuttered cage (line 12). How is your understanding of her feelings intensified by this description? Explain. | (3) |
f) | How does the description of her piano-playing in the third paragraph sustain the description of the writer's mother given in the first paragraph? | (3) |
g) | Around my listening head (line 19). It is usual to say Around my listening ears. Why does the writer use the word head instead? | (3) |
h) | I wanted to run ... I never did (lines 23 and 24) Suggest i) what feelings the writer had at such times; ii) why he never did. | (4) |
B
A dispiriting form of gastronomic apartheid is spreading across Europe. It is called the tourist menu. The principle is simply to provide a fixed-price meal of limited choice, but including bread, wine and service charge. You know in advance exactly what you’ll get and how much you will pay. Its aim is to prevent exploitation of tourists and to help keep prices stable. The only trouble is it does not work.
To begin with, you have to be pretty smart about actually getting the tourist menu. In France it is usually produced only on demand – and then with withering contempt by a waiter who suddenly can’t speak a word of English. The Spanish system consists of foods listed in groups and you choose one item from each group. But unless you state, loudly and clearly, that you are selecting turistico you will nearly always be charged for each item separately, with bread and wine extra.
Personally, I don’t want to eat two three-course meals a day. And I suspect that a great many people who feel the same are mesmerized into the habit through imaginary thrift.
a) | Why does the writer describe the use of tourist menus as gastronomic apartheid (line 1)? | (2) |
b) | i)What evidence is there in the passage to show that restaurant-owners in Europe do not really support the idea of the tourist menu? ii) Suggest a reason for waiters reacting as they do. | (2) (2) |
c) | Imaginary thrift (line 12) Explain why, by constantly ordering tourist menus, one's thrift may be imaginary. | (3) |
d) | The tone of the passage may best be described by ONE of the following words. Select the word which you consider most appropriate and give a reason for your choice. i) cynical ii) satirical iii) humorous | (3) |
TOTAL MARKS | 40 |
QUESTION 2
Give the substance of the following passage in NOT MORE THAN 70 WORDS. Write your answer in the first person plural (we) and indicate the number of words used.
As we grew older it was not the picnic that appealed to us so much, but the dance that followed at night. How fine and grown up we were the first time we were permitted to dance. And actually to go home and dress for the dance. It had a marvelous sound. What matter that the milking and the feeding of the pigs and fowls had to be done first! We persuaded ourselves that we really went home to dress. True, our dresses were for some years only our ordinary 'Sunday dresses' freshly starched and ironed, but there was always a new bit of ribbon for our hair or a new lace collar or some little ornament to transform it from a day-frock into a glamorous evening gown.
Our mothers sat sedately round the room on stiff, hard forms, admiring their daughters, and keeping an eye on their behaviour! 'Don't you dare go outside between dances, Trixie!' 'Maggie! don't let the boys swing you off y our feet like that ...' And we would say, plaintively, 'But it's so hot, Mother. Can't we go out and get just a teeny breath of fresh air?'
Those old dances! Do people really enjoy the modern dancing - the shuffling gyrations, the convulsive stepping, and worst of all, the standing practically in one spot, shoulders and rumps heaving, feet lifting occasionally like a horse stamping away flies! In the old dances there was grace and dignity, splendid steps and intricate patterns of movement, and withal plenty of fun and merriment.
TOTAL MARKS: 12
QUESTION 3
Examine the following conversation between A and B.
A: | Look at all these so-called works of art. An ape with a paintbrush could have done just as well! |
B: | Just because you don't understand the paintings doesn't mean they're not worth anything. This is modern art... |
Imagine that A replies with one of the statements given below:
a) There you go again, suggesting I'm not intelligent!
b) I refuse to accept that six triangles, each painted a different colour, can be of a work of art...
c) There's nothing in the painting to understand; you've been deceived like most of the others who have paid to see them...
d) Don't impose your views on me! I have a democratic right to like or dislike whatever I choose!
Comment on each of A's possible answers, (a) to (d), showing why each is unacceptable in a reasonable discussion.
TOTAL MARKS: 8
QUESTION 4
Below are given seven sentences, some of which are relevant to the given topic sentence. Select those that are relevant and use them, together with the topic sentence, to construct a flowing paragraph.
Topic Sentence: The behaviour of a mature person is, ideally, rational and moral.
a) | Any individual who does not conform to the laws of society should be ostracised and condemned publicly. |
b) | If he accepts the standards and attitudes of his social group he accepts them because he believes them to be right. |
c) | Institutions are set up to control the actions fo the individual and to protect the rights of the social group. |
d) | He has learnt to refer his conduct to values beyond mere social pressures. |
e) | If he cannot actually fulfill the ideal, the mature person must at least understand the meanings of rational and moral. |
f) | Few of us attain the ideal with any constancy; but at least we recognise it as the ideal towards which it is in our nature to strive. |
g) | The mature person does not accept standards and attitudes merely because they are typical of this social group. |
TOTAL MARKS: 6 |
QUESTION 5
Write down the letters (a) to (j), and next to each, your choice of the possible answers listed for each gap in the passage.
POSSIBLE ANSWERS
a) | have informed; had informed |
b) | you; your |
c) | multi; mufti |
d) | our; one's |
e) | would wish; had wished; wish |
f) | quicker; more quickly; most quickly |
g) | realise; remember |
h) | opportunities; advantages |
i) | ambidextrous; amphibious |
j) | make headway; make ends meet. |
I ...(a)... your mother that I do not approved of ...(b)... appearing in public dressed in ...(c)... . It is necessary always to wear school uniform on such occasions.
Schooldays are surely the best days of ...(d)... lives. Though sometimes pupils ...(e... that the days would pass ...(f)..., they usually ...(g)... afterwards that only in school does one have so many ...(h)... to follow one's interests.
My own memories of high school include learning about frogs, those ...(i)... creatures which are equally happy on land or in water, and finding out how difficult it was to ...(j)... with all my work.
TOTAL MARKS: 10
QUESTION 6
a) | Punctuate each of the following sentences in such a way that each sentence clearly reflects two meanings, although the word order remains the same. i) the teacher said the boy was a hero ii) what do you know about him | (4) |
b) | A malapropism is the use of a wrong word similar in sound to the correct one. In the following sentences the words in bold print are examples of malapropism. Rewrite the sentences correctly. i) Sure, if I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue and a nice derangement of epitaphs. ii) Those countries may be described as contagious as they share a common boundary. | (5) |
TOTAL MARKS: | 9 |
QUESTION 7
Read the following advertisement carefully, and then answer the questions which follow.
IF YOU LIKE THE GOOD THINGS IN LIFE
Then SUNKIST is the breakfast food for you.
Full of pure natural goodness.
Goodness in the wholewheat and oat flakes.
Goodness in the rich brown sugar, the toasted hazelnuts and the soft sun-kissed fruit.
Goodness from a marvellous old Highlands recipe that
puts natural things together just the way they should be.
There's so much natural goodness in every spoonful of SUNKIST that just three spoonsful are all you need for a really nourishing breakfast.
When you want to make sure you're going to have a beautiful day, make sure your breakfast is SUNKIST.
It's one of the good things in life.
SUNKIST - MORE NATURAL GOODNESS EVERY MORNING.
a) | Select three adjectives from the passage that are vague in meaning. discuss the weakness of each. | (3) |
b) | Goodness from a marvellous old ... the way they should be (lines 7-8). Assess this statement critically, showing how the advertiser seeks to deceive the reader. | (3) |
c) | Does the writer fulfil the promise of the first line of the advertisement? Explain. | (2) |
d) | i) Comment on the way in which the advertisement is set out. ii) Account for the positioning of the brand-name of the product. | (3) |
e) | Suggest the type of person to whom this advertisement is directed. Give a reason for your answer. | (2) |
F) | In one sentence, write out the factual content of the advertisement. | (2) |
TOTAL MARKS: GRAND TOTAL: | 15 100 |