SECTION A: ENCH
Spend 65 minutes on this section.
Read Text A, and then answer the questions 1–9.
TEXT A
An extract from Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge
Gullstruck Island is inhabited by various tribes, including the Lost and the Lace.
***
It was a burnished, cloudless day with a tug-of-war wind, a fine day for flying. And so Raglan
Skein left his body neatly laid out on his bed, its breath as slow as sea swell, and took to the sky.
He took only his sight and hearing with him. There was no point in bringing those senses that
would make him feel the chill of the sapphire-bright upper air or the giddiness of his rapid rise.
Like all Lost, he had been born with his senses loosely tethered to his body, like a hook on a 5
fishing line. He could let them out, then reel them in and remember all the places his mind had
visited meanwhile. Most Lost could move their senses independently, like snails’ eyes on stalks.
Indeed, a gifted Lost might be feeling the grass under their knees, tasting the peach in your hand,
overhearing a conversation in the next village and smelling cooking in the next town, all while
watching barracudas dapple and brisk around a shipwreck ten miles out to sea. 10
Raglan Skein, however, was doing nothing so whimsical. He had to take his body on a difficult and
possibly perilous journey the next day, and he was spying out the land. It was a relief to see the
world plummet away from him so that everything became smaller. More manageable. Less
dangerous.
Scattered around the isolated island of Gullstruck dozens of other minds would be adrift. Lost 15
minds, occupied with the business of the island, keeping it functioning. Scrying for bandits in the
jungles, tracing missing children on the rises, spotting sharks in the deeps, reading important
trade notices and messages long distance. In fact, there might even be other Lost minds floating
near him now, indiscernible to him as he was to them.
He veered towards the mountain ridge that ran along the western coast, seeing the individual 20
peaks emerge from the fleece of clouds. One such peak stood a little proud of the rest, its
coloration paler. It was Sorrow, the white volcano, sweet, pure and treacherous as snow. Skein
gave her a wide berth and instead veered towards her husband, the King of Fans, the tallest
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middlemost mountain of the ridge, his cratered head forever lost in clouds. For now, the King was
docile and hazy with the heat, but he too was a volcano and of uncertain temper. The 25
shimmering air above his slopes was flecked with the circling forms of eagles large enough to
carry a child off in each claw. Villages on this coast expected to lose a couple of their number to
the eagles each year.
But these eagles would have no interest in the little towns that sprawled below. As far as the
great birds were concerned, the towns were just more animals, too vast and sluggish for them to 30
bother with, scaled with slate and furred with palm thatch. The muddy roads were the veins, and
bronze bells in white towers tolled out their slow, cold heartbeats.
For a moment Skein wished that he did not know that every town was really a thriving hive of
bitter, biting two-legged animals, full of schemes and resentment and hidden treachery. Yet again
the fear of betrayal gnawed at his mind. 35
We will talk to these people; the Lost Council had announced. We are too powerful for them to
ignore us. Everything can be settled peacefully. Skein did not believe it. Three days more, and he
would know if his shadowy suspicions had flesh to them.
There lay the road he would travel over the next few days. He scried it carefully. Even though he
had left for the coast quietly and with haste, there was always a chance that news of his arrival 40
had outstripped him, and that enemies lay in wait.
And it was no mean task, spying out ambushes and surprises on this coast of all coasts.
Everything about it reeked of trickery and concealment. There were reefs beneath the water of
the bay, betrayed only by the foam fringes on the far waves. The cliff-face itself was a labyrinth.
Over centuries the creamy limestone had been hollowed and winnowed until it was a maze of 45
tapering spires, peepholes and snub ridges like sleeping lions. So, it was all along the west coast
of the island, and it was this that had given the Coast of the Lace its name.
The tribe who lived here nowadays was also known as ‘the Lace’, and they too were full of ins
and outs and twists and turns and sleeping lions pretending to be rocks. You never knew where
you were with the Lace. 50
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Section A: Reading
Spend 30 minutes on this section.
Answer questions 1 – 9.
1 Look at lines 1–3.
(a) What figurative technique is used? Tick (✓) one box.
simile
oxymoron
hyperbole
onomatopoeia [1]
(b) The writer uses the phrase ‘tug-of-war’ in line 1. What effect does this create?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………...[1]
2 People from the Lost tribe are able to experience sensations from different locations all at the
same time. Give one quotation that tells the reader how they do that.
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……………………………………………...[1]
3 The writer uses ‘however’ (line 11) to introduce a contrast between the third and fourth
paragraph. Explain what this contrast is.
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4 Look at lines 15–19. People living on the island face dangers on and around the island. Give one
example.
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5 Look at lines 20–28.
(a) Most of the paragraph is made up of complex and compound-complex sentences. Why?
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……………………………………………...[1]
(b) The writer uses commas in this paragraph in two different ways. Tick (✓) two boxes.
before direct speech
between subordinate clauses
before and after extra information
between items on a list
after a time adverbial
[2]
6 Look at lines 36–38. The eagles see the towns as living creatures. Give a quotation that tells the
reader this.
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7 Look at lines 36–41.
(a) Raglan Skein sets off on a journey the next day. What is the purpose of this journey?
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(b) Give a phrase that means ‘were hiding, ready to attack’.
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8 (a) Look at lines 42-47. Give one phrase that means ‘a difficult job’.
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(b) What are the main dangers for a person arriving on the Lace coast by boat? Give two ideas
and support each idea with evidence from the text.
[4]
9 Look at lines 48–50.
(a) Here refers back to the previous paragraph. Give one more adverb that does this.
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(b) What do you think the Lace people are like? Give two ideas and support each idea with evidence
from the text.
First idea:
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Evidence 1:
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Second idea:
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Evidence2:
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[4]
TEXT B
An extract from Adventures of a young naturalist by David Attenborough, set in the 1950s
These days zoos don’t send out animal collectors on quests to ‘bring ’em back alive’. And quite right
too. The natural world is under more than enough pressure as it is, without being robbed of
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its most beautiful, charismatic and rarest inhabitants. Now most of a zoo’s crowd-attracting
species – lions, tigers and rhinos – have been born in zoos and kept track of in registers, so individual
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animals can be exchanged internationally without incurring problems of in-breeding . Zoos can then
play a valuable part in familiarising visitors with the splendours of the natural world and in explaining
the importance and complexities of conservation.
But it was not always so. London Zoo was founded in 1828 by scientists who were concerned
with compiling a catalogue of all the species of animals alive. Some were sent to it from distant parts
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of the world as dead specimens. Others arrived alive and were put on display in the zoo’s gardens.
But both kinds ended up as well-studied anatomical specimens and were carefully preserved.
Needless to say, special attention was paid to finding species that no other zoo had
ever possessed, and that ambition still lingered on even in the 1950s when I visited one of the
zoo’s curators, Jack Lester, with an idea for a new kind of television programme.
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My plan was simple – a joint animal-collecting expedition on which we should both go. I would direct
film sequences showing Jack searching for and finally capturing a creature of particular interest. We
agreed on a jungle location without any difficulty.
Jack had been to Sierra Leone. He knew the country and he knew the fauna. I was convinced,
however, that if the television programmes were to be a success, the expedition should have one
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particular objective – a rare creature that had never been seen in any zoo anywhere else in the world;
an animal so romantic, rare and exciting that the quest for it would keep viewers watching
programme after programme. We could call the series Quest for… but what?
It was a difficult bill to fill. The only animal Jack could think of in Sierra Leone that might
remotely qualify was a bird called Picathartes gymnocephalus. It seemed to me that raising the public
25
into a frenzy of excited anticipation to see a creature with such a name might be difficult. Had it not
got another, more romantic one? ‘Yes, indeed,’ Jack said helpfully, ‘its English name is bare-headed
rock fowl’. I decided to call the series Zoo Quest.
Based on your reading of Text B answer questions 10–16.
10 Look at the first paragraph (lines 3–9).
(a) Why are inverted commas ( ‘ ’ ) used? Tick ( ) one box
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to show a quotation
to give an explanation
to emphasise information
to introduce a different opinion
[1]
(b) Find the word ‘splendours’ at line 6 and give one possible meaning of it based on the context.
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11 Look at the second paragraph (lines 10–16). Give one word or phrase that means ‘continued’.
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12 Look at the third and fourth paragraphs (lines 17–24).
a. What is the writer’s main role when making the television programmes?
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…………………………………………[1]
b. Why was it easy for the curator and writer to choose the destination for their TV programme?
Tick ( ) one box.
They were looking for a particular species.
The area was familiar to one of them.
They were told to go there by the zoo.
The area had many exotic species.
[1]
13 Why are a dash ( – ) and a semi-colon ( ; ) used in the same sentence? Tick ( ) two boxes.
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to introduce an opposite idea
to build up further detail
to connect two clauses on the same topic
to add a list of examples
to introduce an element of humour
[1]
14 Look at the fifth paragraph (lines 25–29). What does it in It was a difficult bill to fill refer to?
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……………………………………..……….[1]
15 Explain why the writer finally settled on the name Zoo Quest for his new T.V. programme.
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[2]
[TOTAL FOR SECTION A: 30]
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