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UK GCSE MAY 2009 : Foundation Tier, English Paper 1

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General Certificate of Secondary Education 2009 Paper 1 Foundation Tier G2901 English [G2901] TUESDAY 2 JUNE, MORNING TIME 2 hours. INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES Write your Centre Number and Candidate Number on the Answer Booklet provided. Answer all four questions. Answer the three questions in Section A and the one question in Section B. Spend one hour on Section A and one hour on Section B. INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES The total mark for this paper is 60. Figures in brackets printed down the right-hand side of pages indicate the marks awarded to each question. 4343 Section A This section tests reading skills. Spend about 15 minutes reading the passage carefully. Answer all three questions. It is a beautiful evening in late summer. Two friends, Joe and Louis, who are holidaying on Achill Island on the West Coast of Ireland, are setting out to climb a nearby mountain. There are always sheep wandering around on this mountain, Joe! I bet one of them has been up to the top, said Louis. So what? So then it has been climbed before. We won t be the first, like you said at dinner. At dinner I had said that maybe in their rush to be the first up the really big mountains, like Everest or K2, climbers had forgotten to climb the really small ones. And this was one of the really, really small ones. Also climb was probably too dramatic a word for what we were about to do to it. We were actually just going to walk up to the top of the hill behind my granny s cottage on Achill Island. Hang on a second, I protested. Sheep don t count. Why not? asked Louis. Because if sheep count as being the first, then all animals count. So? So if all animals count, that includes tiny microscopic ones. And tiny microscopic animals live everywhere, even at the top of mountains. So then humans are never the first to the top, because tiny microscopic animals have always been there before them. I spoke fast. I always spoke fast when I was making it up. Nothing lives at the top of Mount Everest, said Louis. It s too cold. Not for some tiny microscopic animals. They love the cold. Louis marched on ahead, then stopped and spun around to look at me. Which tiny microscopic animals? I tried to think quickly of a word that sounded like the name of a tiny microscopic animal. Eh... Alveoli, I said after a while. Stop it with your alveoli. They re something to do with lungs. Louis could always tell when I was talking rubbish. No, it s a scientific term too... Still I tried to keep it going. Alveoli are a taytoscopic microbe. They look like little lobsters under the microsco... I couldn t go on anymore. Louis had started to make the low farting sound with his mouth in his elbow that he made whenever our arguments went this way. It always cracked me up laughing. It was a warm, still, late summer s evening; the sunsets on such evenings on Achill Island are always spectacular. The sea in Blacksod Bay behind us was flat calm as we climbed over the fence and up onto the mountain. It was eight o clock and the sun was sinking into the horizon. Looking back down the mountain all the cottages, including Granny s, were getting smaller and smaller. They seemed to glow bright white in the evening light. The mountain turned out to be unexpectedly high. Each time we thought we saw the top we would run towards it, but then see another top a bit further on. But that only added to the excitement. As we got close to the top, the Atlantic Ocean and the other side of Achill came into view in front. You could see the whole outline of the island. Over on the left was the mainland; on the right was Clew Bay with all of its tiny islands. To our 4343 2 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 [Turn over boyish imaginations, Achill was shaped like an enormous gun, pointing towards America. The setting sun had lit up the sky with shades of yellow, orange and red like Heaven was on fire. Louis and I lived in Dublin, about a hundred metres from each other on the same road. We had been staying on Achill with my mum since the start of July. Now it was the end of August and almost time to go back to school again. School. I had never liked it very much, but the year just passed, my second year of secondary school, had been really awful and all because of the lads. They were the group in my class who did all the things you weren t supposed to, like smoking behind the gym, or bunking off to the shopping centre at lunch. They thought they were too cool for the rest of us. It showed in everything they did in how they would all shake their heads and snigger if they overheard you saying something that they thought was stupid to one of your friends. The lads thought everything was stupid. Everything that didn t involve them getting drunk or going to mad parties or doing whatever else they said they did. The worst part of it was that in a way I believed them. I had started to think that a lot of the things I said and did were just stupid. I tried to change and act more like them to do what I thought the lads would have done in whatever situation I was in. But that made me feel even worse. I wasn t being me anymore. By the end of the year I was miserable. Achill had been such a break from that world. There were a million things to do there, things you couldn t do in the city. Louis and I had built a raft on the secret beach below the house and we could go off sailing on that or we could play golf on the little golf course covered in sheep or try to surf on Keel Strand or fish down on the rocks or hang out with the local kids or meet new people at the campsite. Or even play daft tricks on each other. One night Louis had said goodnight at about eleven. We both slept in the back bedroom. Ten minutes later I followed him in. The light was off and I could hear him snoring gently. I had to feel my way over to my bed. It was windy outside and I was looking forward to bundling up under the covers. I sat down on the bed and felt around for my duvet, but there was no sign of it. I checked the floor it wasn t there; on the chair not there either. Louis had stopped snoring and it sounded a bit like he was choking, so I switched the light on. In fact he was laughing, and pointing at the window. Through the gap in the curtains I could see my duvet hanging outside, blowing in the wind. Louis thought it was the funniest thing ever. I promised to get my revenge. Oh yeah, said Louis, I suppose I should say well done on last night with the wheel. Thank you very much. The wheel had been the latest instalment in our late night bed-war which Louis had begun by putting my duvet out the window. A few nights after that, I had put a frozen fish in his bed. He responded by putting ice-cubes in my pillow. I got him back by taping his duvet to his bed another night as he slept. He got me back by taping my hair to my pillow as I slept. And so it had gone on and on. The night before, I had set a beautiful trap to frighten him using an old bike wheel. I had tied a piece of fishing line to the wheel and hidden it behind the curtain in front of the window beside his bed. Just as he was dozing off I suddenly yanked on the fishing line, the curtains parted and the big old bike wheel landed plonk on the end of his bed. He screamed. I thought it was the funniest thing ever. He promised to get his revenge. 4343 3 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 [Turn over Suddenly, Louis let out a shout. Look, Joe, here it is! He was pointing at a mound of stones about three feet high just up ahead. I ve seen these on mountains with my dad. Each person who gets to the top adds another stone to the pile. 90 So we re not the first, then? I said No way, said Louis. A few sheep, some alveoli and a lot of people have already been up here. I looked around and found a rugby ball-shaped stone. Louis had picked up a big flat pebble. We carefully placed them at the top of the mound. 95 Louis glanced at his watch. It s going to get dark soon and I want to run back down. You go ahead; I ll see you at the cottage. I preferred to take my time. See you in a while then, he said, jogging off. I sat down on the mound, thinking about school. There was something different about going back this year. I wasn t dreading it at all; I was quite looking forward to it. 100 My mind turned to the lads. They would think my summer had been stupid. What had I been doing? Building rafts and doing mean things to somebody else s duvet. And what had they been doing? Probably going to their parties, and getting drunk. And they would probably be going on and on to each other about it for months. But then it struck me what was different about going back this year. I didn t care what they thought anymore about 105 my summer, about me, or about anything else. I knew I d just had the most fantastic summer of my life. The lads could say it was stupid; they could say and do and think whatever they wanted. But so could I. I felt like the happiest person alive as I set off back down the mountain towards Granny s cottage. 110 It was almost dark as I came round the corner towards the front door. Suddenly a bright light caught my eye: a lamp sitting in the middle of the grass. It lit up the whole front of the cottage, and something else beside it ... something big and bright and yellow... I recognised it immediately. It was my duvet cover spread out on my bed actually sitting there in the garden! The lamp was the bedside lamp from our room. Louis had even gone 115 to the trouble of plugging it in with the extension cable from the mower. I heard him sniggering behind the bush by the kitchen window. Quiet over there, I m trying to get some rest, I said, getting into the bed and pretending to go to sleep. Adapted from Climbing Mountains by David O Doherty 4343 4 [Turn over 1 Spend about 10 minutes on this question. Use evidence from lines 30 66 to support your answer. How has the writer created the sense of Achill Island as a pleasant and fun place for the boys to spend their summer holidays? [8] 2 Spend about 15 minutes on this question. Use evidence from the whole passage to support your answer. What do you learn about the boys and their relationship? 3 [10] Spend about 20 minutes on this question. Use evidence from the whole passage to support your answer. How has the writer created an interesting story for the reader? Write about: how the writer has told the story through Joe s thoughts and feelings what the boys say to each other the use of any particular words and phrases. [12] TURN OVER FOR SECTION B 4343 5 [Turn over Section B This section tests writing skills: to analyse, review and comment. Write in a way that suits this type of task. The answer should be developed fully. You will be expected to write at least two sides in the answer booklet. Leave enough time to re-read your work so that you can make any changes you feel are necessary. 4 Consider the following statement and the issues it raises: Today, it s not the taking part in sport that s important, it s the winning! The opinions below raise a series of points about the purpose of sport today. The examiner wants you to review the points that you consider to be important, along with ideas of your own. Analyse these in an extended piece of writing. At school level there is too much emphasis on winning the big competitions. We take part in sport because it s good for our health, not for silly medals. Professional sportsmen and women these days will go to any lengths to win. People enjoy taking part in all sorts of non-competitive sport just for the fun of it look at the numbers taking part in marathons and fun runs. Remember to include your own ideas, comments and conclusions. [30] THIS IS THE END OF THE QUESTION PAPER 4343 6 [Turn over Permission to reproduce all copyright material has been applied for. In some cases, efforts to contact copyright holders may have been unsuccessful and CCEA will be happy to rectify any omissions of acknowledgement in future if notified. S 11/07 938-004-1 [Turn over

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