Extended response Banker

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: First night at sea(1) Bilal was fifteen when his uncle finally agreed to take him out on the boat. They left Gwadar harbour as the sun was setting, the engine coughing and then settling into a steady growl, and Bilal stood at the bow feeling the spray on his face and trying to look as though he did this every day.(2) The sea was calm at first, a vast sheet of beaten copper that turned purple, then black, as the light drained away. The coast shrank behind them to a string of yellow beads. Bilal had never known darkness like it: the stars were not scattered but poured across the sky like spilled sugar, and the wake behind the boat glittered with tiny sparks of green light.(3) Around midnight they put out the nets. His uncle and the two crewmen worked without talking, their hands moving as if they belonged to one body, while Bilal fumbled with ropes that were wet, heavy and seemed determined to tangle. His palms burned. Nobody shouted at him, which somehow made it worse.(4) Then the wind changed. It came from nowhere, slapping the boat sideways, and the sea, so obedient an hour before, began to heave and snarl. Waves rose like dark hills and broke over the side, drenching him. The deck tilted beneath his feet and his stomach lurched with it. He clung to the mast, sick and terrified, certain the boat would roll over and swallow them all. Through the roar he heard his uncle laughing. "This is nothing!" he shouted. "This is the sea saying hello."(5) By dawn the wind had dropped, and the nets came up silver and thrashing with fish. Bilal hauled with the others until his arms shook. When the harbour appeared again, low and pale on the horizon, he realised he was no longer pretending.

1. (a) You are Bilal. A week after your first night at sea, you are interviewed by a local radio presenter for a programme about young people in the fishing industry. Begin your interview with the first question.Write the words of the interview. The interviewer asks only these three questions:• What did you expect your first night at sea to be like, and how did it begin?• What happened when the wind changed, and how did you feel?• How has that night changed the way you see your uncle, the crew and yourself?Base your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Service(1) On her first evening as a trainee in the kitchen of a large hotel in Dubai, Mariam was given a knife, a mountain of onions and a single instruction: "Don't get in anyone's way." By seven o'clock, she understood why.(2) When the first orders arrived, the kitchen exploded into life. Flames leapt from the pans with a roar, licking upwards towards the extractor fans. Chefs shouted orders across the steel counters in four languages, and the printer by the pass chattered out ticket after ticket like a machine gun that would never run out of bullets. Waiters swept in and out through the swinging doors, and every surface hissed, clattered or steamed. The heat was astonishing; within minutes Mariam's white jacket was soaked through.(3) The head chef, a tall Sri Lankan man named Ruwan, moved through the chaos without ever seeming to hurry. He tasted everything, said very little, and occasionally pushed a plate back towards a cook with one finger, which was worse than any shout.(4) At eight, a chef on the sauce station burned his hand and was sent to the first-aid room, and Ruwan pointed at Mariam. "You. Stir. Don't stop." She found herself in front of a huge pan of sauce that bubbled and spat like a small volcano, its surface glossy and dark as melted chocolate. Her arm ached after five minutes and burned after ten. Around her, the noise rose and fell like waves crashing on rocks, but she kept her eyes on the pan and her spoon moving in slow figures of eight, terrified that if she stopped for a second, the whole thing would catch and burn.(5) At eleven, the last ticket was cleared. Ruwan walked past, dipped a spoon into her pan, tasted it, and nodded once. Mariam had never been so tired, or so happy.

1. (a) You are Mariam. A year after your first night as a trainee, you have become a junior chef. A careers website interviews you about starting work in a hotel kitchen. Begin your interview with the first question.Write the words of the interview. The interviewer asks only these three questions:• What was your first evening in the kitchen like?• What happened when you were asked to take over the sauce, and why was it such an important moment?• What qualities do young people need to succeed in a professional kitchen?Base your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Breakdown on the Karakoram(1) The night bus from Rawalpindi to Gilgit was supposed to take fourteen hours. Eleven hours in, somewhere above the Indus gorge, the engine gave a loud bang, a long shudder and then nothing at all.(2) The driver coasted to a stop at a wider section of the road, close against the cliff. When the passengers climbed out to stretch their legs, the darkness was enormous. Far below, invisible, the river roared through the gorge. Above, the mountains rose like black walls into a sky crowded with stars, and the cold air smelled of rock and snow.(3) The driver and his assistant crawled beneath the bus with a torch. Ten minutes later the driver emerged, wiping his hands on a rag, and announced that a part had broken and that a mechanic would have to come from the next town, perhaps in four hours, perhaps in six.(4) Nobody complained very much. A family produced a flask of tea and passed it round. Two students lit a small fire from scraps of wood found beside the road, and people gathered round it, holding out their hands. An old man from Hunza told stories about the building of the highway, when he was a boy, and the workers who had died blasting it out of the mountain. A young couple from Karachi, on their first trip north, admitted that they were terrified of the drops and had kept their eyes closed for most of the evening.(5) The mechanic arrived at dawn, on a motorbike, with the part tied to the back. As the sun rose, lighting the snowy peaks one by one, the engine coughed into life, and the passengers cheered and climbed back on board, strangers no longer.

1. (a) You are one of the young couple from Karachi on the bus. A travel blogger interviews you about your first journey to the north. Begin your interview with the first question.Write the words of the interview. The interviewer asks only these three questions:• What was the journey like before the breakdown?• What happened while you waited for the mechanic?• How did the night change your feelings about the journey and the other passengers?Base your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: White-out(1) We were two hours from the base camp, and the glacier had been kind to us all morning: firm snow, clear sky, the peaks around us so sharp against the blue that they looked as if they had been cut out with scissors. Ayesha, our guide, kept glancing at the west, but she said nothing.(2) The cloud arrived quickly. First a thin veil slid over the ridge; then the sun became a pale coin, then a smudge, and then it was gone. Within minutes the world had been rubbed out. Snow and sky merged into one blank, milky wall, and I could not tell up from down. The only colours left were the red of Ayesha's jacket, three metres ahead, and the blue rope between us, which suddenly seemed as thin as a thread of cotton.(3) "Stop," she called. "Nobody moves." We gathered close, roped together, while she checked the compass and the map she had studied the night before. Somewhere to our left, I knew, the glacier was split by crevasses deep enough to swallow a house.(4) The wind rose and the snow came at us sideways, hissing like sand against our goggles. My fingers, even inside two pairs of gloves, felt like lumps of wood. Every sound was swallowed by the whiteness; when I shouted to the man behind me, my voice seemed to fall at my feet. I began to imagine shapes in the blankness, a tent, a rock, a figure waving, and each one dissolved as soon as I looked at it. Fear crept up my spine with cold little fingers.(5) Ayesha led us forward one careful step at a time, probing the snow with her pole. It took four hours to cover a distance we had walked in one that morning. When the tents of the camp finally appeared, like small orange lanterns in the mist, nobody cheered. We were too tired, and too grateful, to speak.

1. (a) You are one of the climbers in the group led by Ayesha. Back home, you are interviewed for a mountaineering club magazine. Begin your interview with the first question.Write the words of the interview. The interviewer asks only these three questions:• How did the conditions change on the glacier, and what was it like inside the white-out?• What did Ayesha do that kept the group safe?• What advice would you give to other climbers after this experience?Base your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The wall of sand(1) We had left the fort in the Cholistan desert just after noon, three of us in an old jeep, heading for a village where my father had arranged to buy two camels. Our driver, Jumma, had made the journey a hundred times and drove with one hand on the wheel, humming.(2) The first sign was a change in the light. The sky, which had been a hard, dazzling blue, took on a yellowish tinge, like an old photograph. The wind dropped completely, and an eerie stillness settled over the dunes. Jumma stopped humming. On the horizon a dark smudge appeared, and it grew, rolling towards us like a great brown wave, swallowing the low hills one by one.(3) "Windows up," said Jumma. "Scarves on." He swung the jeep round so that its back faced the approaching storm and switched off the engine.(4) Then it hit us. The light went out as though someone had switched off the sun, and the jeep rocked on its springs. Sand screamed against the metal and the windows, millions of tiny needles hunting for a way in. It found one: a fine dust crept through every crack, settling on our clothes, our eyelashes, our tongues, gritty as ground glass between our teeth. The world outside was a roaring orange darkness. I pressed my scarf over my mouth and counted my breaths, and every time the wind gave a fresh howl, the jeep shuddered like a frightened animal.(5) After an hour, which felt like a day, the noise faded to a whisper. We opened the doors onto a landscape we did not recognise. The track had vanished, and new dunes lay smooth and innocent where none had been before. Jumma climbed onto the roof, studied the sun for a long time, and then started the engine as calmly as if nothing had happened.

1. (a) You are the narrator. A television documentary about life in the Cholistan desert interviews you about the sandstorm. Begin your interview with the first question.Write the words of the interview. The interviewer asks only these three questions:• What were you doing in the desert, and what warning signs did you notice before the storm?• What was it like to be inside the jeep during the storm?• What did you learn from Jumma about surviving in the desert?Base your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The last over(1) Six balls. Eleven runs to defend. The inter-school final had come down to this, and the captain, after a long moment of staring at the ground, tossed the ball to me.(2) I was not our best bowler. I was not even our second-best. But the others had finished their overs, and so I stood at the top of my run-up with the ball in my hand and the whole ground looking at me. The stands, which held perhaps five hundred people, sounded like five thousand. The batsman was their captain, a tall boy who had already hit four sixes, and he tapped his bat on the crease with a confidence that made my knees feel hollow.(3) The first ball was too short, and he pulled it for four. Seven needed from five. The second was a dot ball; he swung and missed, and our wicketkeeper whooped. The third he pushed for a single, and the fourth was driven for two.(4) Four runs needed from two balls. I walked back to my mark slowly, trying to breathe. My hands were damp, and I wiped the ball on my trousers until the red leather left a pink stain. I could hear my heart over the crowd. I ran in, the ground blurring beside me, and bowled the fastest ball of my life, full and straight. The batsman swung hard. There was a crack, and the ball flew high, high, towards the long boundary, and every face in the ground turned to follow it.(5) Our fielder, a quiet boy named Usman who had dropped two catches earlier, was standing beneath it. He did not drop this one. I do not remember bowling the final ball, only that we won by two runs and that the team carried Usman, not me, off the field on their shoulders. That seemed exactly right.

1. (a) You are the bowler who bowled the last over. Your school sports magazine interviews you after the final. Begin your interview with the first question.Write the words of the interview. The interviewer asks only these three questions:• How did you feel when the captain gave you the ball for the last over?• Take us through the over ball by ball.• Why do you think Usman, rather than you, was carried off the field?Base your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The audition(1) The corridor outside the audition room was painted a sickly shade of green, and the chairs along the wall were so hard that every candidate sat on the very edge of them. Zara had been waiting for forty minutes. Her violin case lay across her knees, and she kept opening and closing the clasp without noticing she was doing it.(2) Through the closed door came the sound of the boy before her, playing the same piece she would play. His notes were clean and confident, each one landing exactly where it should, like stones dropped into a still pool. Zara's stomach tightened into a fist. She had practised for six months, two hours every evening, until her neighbours knew the piece as well as she did. Now it seemed to be evaporating from her memory note by note.(3) The door opened. "Zara Hussain?" A woman with a clipboard smiled briefly and held the door. Inside, three judges sat behind a long table, a glass of water in front of each of them, their faces polite and unreadable.(4) She lifted the violin to her chin. Her hands were trembling so much that the bow skittered on the first note, a thin squeak like a door hinge, and she saw one judge write something down. For a terrible moment the room tilted. Then she remembered her teacher's advice: play to one person, not to the room. She thought of her grandmother, who had sold a gold bangle to buy this violin, and closed her eyes. The next note was warm and full. The melody rose, steadied, and began to sing, filling the bare room like light pouring through a window.(5) When she finished, there was a short silence. The judge in the middle took off his glasses. "Thank you," he said. "You may go." It was only in the corridor, as the next candidate stood up, that Zara noticed he had been smiling.

1. (a) You are Zara. A month after your audition, you have been offered a place at the music academy, and a reporter from your school newsletter interviews you. Begin your interview with the first question.Write the words of the interview. The interviewer asks only these three questions:• How did you prepare for the audition, and how did you feel while you were waiting?• What went wrong at the start of your performance, and how did you recover?• What part did your family, especially your grandmother, play in your success?Base your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Tracks in the snow(1) Rangers in the high valleys of the north spend whole winters searching for an animal that most of them have seen only a handful of times. Karim had been a ranger for nine years and had seen a snow leopard just twice, both times for less than a minute.(2) This morning, at dawn, he found tracks. They crossed the path below the ridge in a neat, deliberate line, each print as wide as his palm, pressed cleanly into the fresh snow like a seal stamped in wax. The tail had left a faint brushing mark beside them. They were so new that the edges were still sharp and powdery, untouched by the wind. Karim's heart began to thump.(3) He followed them slowly, keeping below the skyline, his breath clouding in front of him. The tracks led up across a slope of loose scree, past a cluster of juniper bushes, and towards a band of grey cliffs where the leopard might rest during the day.(4) At the foot of the cliffs he stopped and raised his binoculars. For a long time he saw only rock: grey, black, streaked with white, a jumble of shapes in which anything could hide. Then one of the shapes moved. A long, thick tail curled lazily, and the rock became a cat, smoky grey and dappled with dark rosettes, so perfectly matched to the stone that it seemed to have been carved from it. It lifted its head and looked straight at him across four hundred metres of air, its pale eyes calm and utterly unafraid. The valley went completely silent; even the wind seemed to stop and watch.(5) Then, in one fluid movement, the leopard rose, turned and poured itself over the ridge like smoke. Karim lowered his binoculars. His hands, he noticed, were shaking, and not because of the cold.

1. (a) You are Karim, the ranger. A wildlife magazine interviews you about the day you saw the snow leopard. Begin your interview with the first question.Write the words of the interview. The interviewer asks only these three questions:• Why is seeing a snow leopard so rare, and how did you know that one was close that morning?• Describe the moment when you finally saw the leopard.• Why do you think it matters that rangers keep watching for these animals?Base your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Below ground(1) Our school trip to the caves had been planned for months. Thirty of us, two teachers and a local guide, climbing down an iron staircase into a cavern so large that the guide's torch could not reach its roof.(2) The guide led us along a narrow path through chambers of strange stone shapes: columns like melted candles, curtains of rock that rang like bells when he tapped them, pools so still and clear that they looked like glass. The air was cool and damp and smelled of wet stone. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, slow and regular, like a clock.(3) It was my own fault. I stopped to take a photograph of a formation shaped like an elephant, and when I turned round, the group had gone. I could hear their voices, faint and echoing, but the echoes came from every direction at once.(4) I called out. Nobody answered. My phone torch showed only rock and three passages leading off into blackness. I chose the one that seemed brightest and walked forward, then realised it was getting narrower and turned back. Now I could not tell which passage I had come from. The darkness pressed against my small circle of light as if it wanted to swallow it. I remembered the guide's words at the entrance: if you are lost, stay where you are. So I sat down on a cold rock, switched my torch off to save the battery, and waited, counting the drips.(5) After twenty minutes that felt like a year, a beam of light swept around the corner, and the guide's voice said my name. He was not angry. He told me I had done the right thing by staying still, and that most people who got lost in the caves made it worse by trying to find their own way out.

1. (a) You are the student who got lost in the caves. You are interviewed for a school assembly about safety on trips. Begin your interview with the first question.Write the words of the interview. The interviewer asks only these three questions:• What were the caves like, and how did you become separated from the group?• What did you do when you realised you were lost, and why?• What should other students learn from your experience?Base your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The house on Mall Road(1) I had not been back to the house for twenty years. After my grandmother died, it was locked and left while my uncles argued about who should have it, and somehow the argument outlived two of them. When I finally pushed open the gate, it groaned on its hinges as if it resented being woken.(2) The garden that I remembered as a jungle of roses and guavas had surrendered completely. Weeds stood waist-high, brittle and grey in the winter sun, and a creeper had wrapped itself around the verandah pillars like a python squeezing its prey. The fountain where my cousins and I had sailed paper boats was cracked and dry, its basin filled with dead leaves the colour of old tea.(3) The key turned stiffly. Inside, the air was cool and stale and smelled of dust and something sweeter, perhaps the ghost of my grandmother's rosewater. Sheets covered the furniture, so that the drawing room looked like a gathering of patient, shrouded figures waiting for someone to speak.(4) I went upstairs to the room where I used to sleep during the summer holidays. The window still had the crack shaped like a lightning bolt, and the afternoon light came through it in a thin golden blade that cut across the floor. Dust motes drifted in it, slow and dreamy, like tiny swimmers. On the wall, faint pencil marks recorded my height at seven, eight and nine years old, each line labelled in my grandmother's careful, looping hand. I put my palm flat against them. The plaster was cold, and for a moment my throat closed so tightly that I could not breathe.(5) Outside, a car horn sounded, and the spell broke. I took a photograph of the pencil marks, locked the door again and walked back down the path through the whispering weeds, knowing that I would not come back.

1. (a) You are the narrator. Write an article for a heritage website about old family houses that stand empty while families argue over them.Write the article. In your article you should:• describe the state of the house and garden when you returned• explain what memories the house holds for you• give your views on what should happen to empty family homes like this oneBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Night watch(1) Mr Rehman had been a night guard at the city museum for twenty-two years. Every evening at seven, after the last visitors had gone and the cleaners had finished, he locked the great front doors and began his first round of the empty galleries.(2) He liked the museum best at night. Without the crowds, the rooms seemed larger and more solemn. His footsteps echoed on the marble floors, and the beam of his torch moved across ancient statues, faded carpets and glass cases of coins and jewellery, picking out a carved face here, a golden bracelet there. In the gallery of ancient pottery, the jars stood in their rows like a silent audience.(3) Some of the younger guards found the place unsettling. They said the eyes of the portraits followed them and that they heard footsteps when nobody was there. Mr Rehman only laughed. Old buildings, he told them, make noises as they cool down at night, like old men stretching their bones.(4) At half past two, on an ordinary Thursday, he heard a sound that was not the building cooling. It was a soft scrape, followed by a click, coming from the gallery of manuscripts. He switched off his torch and stood perfectly still, listening. His heart was beating fast, but his mind was clear. He radioed the control room in a whisper and moved silently along the wall, keeping to the shadows he knew so well.(5) In the manuscript gallery, a window at the top of the wall stood open, and a cat was sitting on the display case beneath it, washing its paws. Mr Rehman began to laugh so hard that he had to sit down. Nevertheless, he wrote a full report, and the next day the window catch was replaced.

1. (a) You are a reporter for the city newspaper. Write an article about Mr Rehman and the night of the 'break-in' at the museum.Write the article. In your article you should:• describe Mr Rehman's job and why he enjoys the museum at night• explain what happened on the Thursday night• comment on what the story shows about Mr Rehman and the work of night guardsBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The water came at four(1) It had been raining since lunchtime, but nobody in our street worried. Rain in July is normal, and the drains usually managed. I was walking home from tuition with my bag over my head when I noticed that the gutters were no longer gutters but small brown rivers.(2) By the time I reached the main road, the water was over my ankles and rising. Cars ploughed through it like reluctant buffaloes, pushing waves onto the pavement, and a rickshaw had stalled in the middle of the junction, its driver standing on the seat and shouting at nobody. Plastic bags, sandals and a child's ball spun past me. The sky had turned the colour of a bruise, and the rain no longer fell in drops but in heavy grey ropes that stung my face.(3) I tried to remember the safest way home. The lane behind the bakery was lower, so I kept to the main road, holding on to railings and shop shutters, testing each step before trusting it. Somewhere an uncovered manhole was waiting; everyone knew the stories.(4) At the corner of our street the water reached my knees, warm and thick and stinking of diesel. Our neighbour, old Mrs Zaidi, stood in her doorway clutching a birdcage to her chest, her face as white as flour. Her front room had become a pond; a cushion floated across it as slowly as a lazy duck. I waded over and took her arm. Her fingers gripped mine like the claws of a frightened bird, and together we edged along the wall towards our house, which stood two steps higher.(5) That night, eleven of us slept on our first floor, with Mrs Zaidi's canary singing in the corner as though nothing had happened. In the morning the water had gone, leaving behind a crust of mud and a smell that lasted for weeks.

1. (a) You are the narrator. A week after the flood, you write an article for your local newspaper titled 'When our street became a river'.Write the article. In your article you should:• describe how quickly the flood developed and the dangers you faced on the way home• explain what happened to Mrs Zaidi and how neighbours helped one another• suggest what the local authorities and residents should do before next year's monsoonBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The night the ground moved(1) My cousin Hina's wedding was held in a marquee in the garden of her parents' house in Quetta. By ten at night, four hundred guests were seated at round tables beneath strings of fairy lights, and the air was warm with the smell of roasting meat and the sound of a band that played slightly too loud.(2) The marquee was a palace of colour. Its walls were draped in silk of deep red and gold, and chandeliers of fake crystal hung from the roof, scattering little rainbows across the faces below. Hina sat on a raised stage, glittering like a jewel box in her heavy embroidered dress, so still and serious that she might have been a painting. Children chased each other between the tables, and the aunties' laughter rose in bursts like flocks of startled pigeons.(3) I was carrying a plate of sweets to my grandmother when the first tremor came. It was not dramatic: a low rumble, almost below hearing, and a faint shiver in the floor, as if a heavy lorry were passing in the street.(4) Then the chandeliers began to sway. Slowly at first, then wildly, like pendulums gone mad, and the fairy lights flickered and danced. Glasses chattered against one another on the tables. A great groan seemed to rise out of the earth itself, deep and animal, and the ground beneath my feet rolled like the deck of a ship. For a second nobody moved. Then four hundred chairs scraped back at once, and the music stopped in the middle of a note. My grandmother caught hold of my wrist with a grip like iron and steered me calmly towards the open side of the marquee.(5) It lasted less than a minute. Out on the lawn, under the cold stars, we counted heads and found everyone safe. After an hour, when no more tremors came, the band picked up their instruments again, and Hina, still in her glittering dress, laughed for the first time all evening.

1. (a) You are the narrator. Write an article for your school magazine about the wedding and the earthquake.Write the article. In your article you should:• describe the wedding celebration before the tremor• explain what happened during the earthquake and how people reacted• reflect on what the evening taught you about people in a crisisBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Before the city wakes(1) Every morning at half past four, my father unlocks the shutter of his tea stall at the corner of the bus station. I have helped him on Saturdays since I was ten, and I know his routine better than my own.(2) First the stove is lit, and the blue flame roars into life under the big blackened kettle. Then the milk is poured into a dented aluminium pan, the tea leaves measured with a spoon he has used for thirty years, the cardamom crushed under the flat of a knife. He never measures the sugar; he says his hand knows.(3) By five the first customers arrive: bus drivers yawning and stretching, sweepers in orange jackets, a policeman at the end of his night shift. My father knows most of them by name and how they like their tea. He pours it from a height into small glasses, the stream arching through the air like a ribbon of brown silk, and the foam rises frothy and pale on top.(4) As the sky lightens, the bus station begins to fill. Engines grumble, conductors shout destinations, and the smell of diesel mixes with the sweet steam of the tea. Students on their way to early classes buy parathas from the stall next door and eat them standing up. My father does not stop moving for three hours, pouring, washing glasses, taking coins, joking, and somehow remembering who has not yet paid.(5) At eight, the rush fades. He sits down on his upturned crate for the first time and pours a glass for himself and one for me. We drink in silence, watching the city wake up properly around us. It is my favourite moment of the week.

1. (a) You are the narrator. Write an article for a magazine series called 'Working lives', about your father's tea stall.Write the article. In your article you should:• describe how your father prepares the stall each morning• explain who his customers are and how he treats them• explain why Saturday mornings at the stall matter so much to youBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Frost in the orchard(1) Every April, Bibi Gul's apricot trees burst into flower all at once, and for a week the terraced orchard above the village looked as though a cloud had come down to rest on the hillside. She was seventy-eight and had planted half the trees herself, carrying the saplings up from the river in a basket on her back.(2) That year the blossom was the best anyone could remember. The branches were heavy with it, pale pink and white, and when the wind blew, petals drifted down onto the stone walls like warm snow. Bees hummed in the trees from dawn until dusk, a low contented sound like a kettle about to boil, and the whole slope smelled faintly of honey and almonds.(3) Then the radio warned of a frost. Bibi Gul listened in silence, her hands folded in her lap, and then she sent her grandsons to collect every old tyre, dry branch and sack of sawdust they could find.(4) By nightfall the sky was hard and clear, and the cold came down from the glacier like a thief. Stars glittered above the peaks, sharp as broken glass. The family lit small smoky fires between the rows of trees and kept them burning hour after hour, feeding them, coughing in the bitter smoke. Bibi Gul moved from fire to fire wrapped in her shawl, a small bent shape in the orange glow, touching the trunks of the trees as if she were comforting children. Her breath hung in front of her face like a ghost. Nobody slept.(5) At sunrise the grass was white and stiff, crunching underfoot. Some of the lower trees had lost their flowers, the petals brown and curled. But on the higher terraces, where the smoke had lain thickest, the blossom had survived. Bibi Gul stood among the branches for a long time, saying nothing at all.

1. (a) You are a journalist who spent the night of the frost in Bibi Gul's orchard. Write an article for a national magazine about farming in the mountains.Write the article. In your article you should:• describe the orchard in blossom and what it means to Bibi Gul• explain how the family tried to save the trees and what happened• consider what this night shows about the challenges and rewards of farming in the mountainsBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The swarm(1) My grandfather had kept bees for fifty years, and he spoke about them the way other people speak about their grandchildren. So when he phoned on a Saturday morning and said, very calmly, "The bees have left. Bring a cardboard box," I knew it was serious.(2) I found him standing in his front garden, staring up at the neighbour's walnut tree. Hanging from one of its lower branches was a dark, quivering mass about the size of a football, dripping like a bunch of dark grapes. It was made entirely of bees, thousands of them, clinging to one another and to their queen somewhere deep inside. The air around it vibrated with a deep, steady hum.(3) "They're looking for a new home," he said. "Scouts have gone out to find one. If we're quick, we can offer them one first."(4) He put on his veil but not his gloves; he said he could feel what he was doing better without them. I held the box beneath the branch while he climbed a stepladder. Then, with one sharp shake, he knocked the branch, and the whole mass dropped into the box with a soft thud, like a wet sack falling. A cloud of bees rose into the air around us, roaring. I froze. Bees crawled over my hands and arms, light and ticklish, but none stung me. "Don't flap," said my grandfather. "They're not angry. They're homeless."(5) We put the box upside down on a sheet with one corner propped up. That evening, as the light faded, the last stragglers marched inside in a long, orderly column. The next morning my grandfather tipped them into an empty hive, and within an hour they were flying in and out as if they had always lived there.

1. (a) You are the narrator. Write an article for a nature magazine titled 'The day my grandfather caught a swarm'.Write the article. In your article you should:• describe the swarm and explain why bees swarm, as your grandfather explained it• explain step by step how you and your grandfather collected the swarm• explain what the experience taught you about bees and about your grandfatherBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The kite on the roof(1) My grandfather's house in the old city had a flat roof, and every spring, on the morning of the kite festival, the whole family climbed the narrow stairs before breakfast. I was nine that year and had been promised, at last, that I could fly a kite of my own.(2) From the roof the city looked like a crowded chessboard of other roofs, each one alive with people. Music thudded from loudspeakers somewhere to the east. Above us the sky was already freckled with kites: paper diamonds in lime green and hot pink, swooping and stalling like nervous birds, their strings glinting in the low sun. The air smelled of fried pakoras, diesel and the dusty sweetness of marigolds strung along the parapet.(3) Grandfather handed me the reel as if it were something precious. "Let the wind do the work," he said. "You only listen." I ran three steps, the kite lifted, dipped, and then — miraculously — climbed, tugging at my fingers like a small animal desperate to escape.(4) For a few minutes I was a king. My kite, purple with a white tail, rode higher and higher until it was a tiny flickering stamp against the blue. Then another kite slid towards it, sly as a crocodile in a river, and the two strings crossed. My line went taut, hummed, and suddenly fell limp in my hands. I watched my kite drift away over the rooftops, turning slowly, already somebody else's prize, while shouts of triumph rose from a roof three streets away. Something hot and heavy climbed into my throat.(5) I expected to be laughed at. Instead, Grandfather sat down beside me on an upturned bucket and began to tell me about the first kite he had lost, sixty years earlier, on the same roof. By the time he finished, my tears had dried, and he had quietly tied a new kite to my reel.

1. (a) You are the narrator, now grown up. Write a letter to your grandfather, many years after the kite festival, thanking him for that day.Write the letter. In your letter you should:• describe your memories of the rooftop and the excitement of flying your kite• explain how you felt when your kite was cut and how he comforted you• explain what you learned from him that day and how it has stayed with youBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Lessons on the Shahrah-e-Faisal(1) My aunt Nargis decided to learn to drive at fifty-two, after my uncle announced that she would never manage it. She asked me to come along to her first lesson for moral support. I think she meant as a witness.(2) The instructor, a patient man named Mr Aslam, began in an empty car park. My aunt gripped the steering wheel at precisely ten and two o'clock and stared straight ahead as if the car might bite her. When she pressed the accelerator, the car leapt forward like a startled horse, and she stamped on the brake so hard that we all lurched against our seatbelts. "Gently," said Mr Aslam. "The car is not your enemy."(3) After two weeks she had mastered the car park. Then Mr Aslam took her onto a main road. Traffic in Karachi does not so much flow as boil: buses decorated like wedding cakes, rickshaws that dart into impossible gaps, motorbikes carrying whole families, donkey carts, and everyone sounding their horns at once.(4) My aunt drove at exactly forty kilometres an hour in the left lane, perspiring heavily. A bus overtook us with centimetres to spare, its conductor hanging from the door and shouting cheerfully. A rickshaw cut in front of us. My aunt muttered something I will not repeat, checked her mirror, indicated, and carried on. I realised, with surprise, that she was not frightened any more; she was furious, and it was making her concentrate.(5) Three months later she passed her test at the first attempt. The first journey she made alone was to my uncle's office, to collect him, and she drove him home without saying a single word, smiling all the way.

1. (a) You are Aunt Nargis. On the day you pass your driving test, write a letter to your niece or nephew who came to your first lesson.Write the letter. In your letter you should:• remind them how your first lesson went• describe what it was like driving in Karachi traffic for the first time• explain why passing your test means so much to youBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Shinjuku at eight(1) My cousin had warned me that the station would be busy, but no warning could have prepared me. I had been in Tokyo for exactly one day, my Japanese consisted of four polite phrases, and I had to change trains at eight o'clock on a Monday morning.(2) The moment the doors opened, the crowd carried me out like a leaf on a fast river. Thousands of people in dark suits moved in every direction at once, yet nobody collided; they flowed around one another with the silent precision of a shoal of fish. Announcements chimed overhead in a bright, cheerful voice I could not understand, and signs in three alphabets flashed and scrolled until my eyes ached.(3) I stopped to look at my phone and was immediately an obstacle. A man swerved, murmured something apologetic, and was gone. I stepped against a pillar and tried to find the platform number my cousin had written on a scrap of paper.(4) The map on the wall was a tangle of coloured lines, like a plate of noodles dropped on the floor. I traced one with my finger, lost it, and traced it again. My heart was hammering, and my shirt stuck to my back. All around me the river of people kept rushing past, indifferent and endless, and I felt suddenly very small, a single grain of rice in an enormous bowl. I thought about my mother telling me I was not ready to travel alone, and about how much I had wanted to prove her wrong.(5) Then an elderly woman with a shopping trolley stopped beside me. She looked at my piece of paper, nodded, and without a word set off, glancing back to make sure I was following. She led me up two escalators and along a corridor to the right platform, bowed, and disappeared into the crowd before I could even thank her properly.

1. (a) You are the narrator. Write a letter to your mother back home describing your first days in Tokyo.Write the letter. In your letter you should:• describe the station and the crowds• explain how you felt when you could not find your platform• describe the old woman's help and what it taught you about travelling aloneBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Lights out(1) The power went off at ten past nine, three days before my chemistry exam. One moment I was copying equations into my notebook beneath a bright desk lamp; the next, the whole apartment block plunged into darkness, and a groan rose from every floor at once, as if the building itself were complaining.(2) Then came the silence. The ceiling fan slowed, wobbled and stopped. The fridge shuddered and fell quiet. Without the hum of machines, I could hear things I never normally noticed: a baby crying two floors up, a motorbike far away, the tick of the clock in the hallway. The heat crept in almost immediately, thick and damp, wrapping itself around me like a wet blanket. Through the window, the city had become a sea of black, with only a few scattered generators glowing like islands.(3) My mother found candles in the kitchen drawer and lit two, setting them on saucers. My little brother was delighted and began making shadow animals on the wall. My father opened every window and announced that we would all sleep on the roof.(4) I tried to keep studying by candlelight. The flame bent and shivered each time someone walked past, and the words on the page swam in and out of the trembling yellow light like fish rising to the surface of a pond. Sweat dripped from my chin onto the paper and spread into small grey blots. Every few minutes a moth blundered into the flame and spun away, scorched and confused, and I felt exactly the same way. Organic chemistry had never seemed so cruel.(5) Eventually I gave up and climbed to the roof. The neighbours were already there with mats and water bottles. Someone had a radio. Above us, freed from the glare of the city, the stars were out, more of them than I had ever seen, and for once I did not think about the exam at all.

1. (a) You are the narrator. After your chemistry exam, write a letter to the managing committee of your apartment block about the power cut.Write the letter. In your letter you should:• describe what happened in the block when the power failed• explain how the power cut affected you and your family• suggest how the block could be better prepared for future power cutsBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: First snow(1) We moved from Lahore to Toronto in August, when the city was hot and green and did not seem so very different from home. My father had a new job; my mother was anxious; my little sister and I had been promised snow.(2) By November, the trees had shed their leaves in a blaze of red and orange, and the sky had turned a heavy, sullen grey. The cold was unlike anything we had known. It did not simply make you shiver; it stung the skin on your face and made your ears ache, and in the mornings the windows of our apartment were fringed with delicate patterns of frost like white ferns.(3) Every day my sister asked whether it would snow, and every day my mother checked the forecast and said, "Maybe tomorrow." We had bought thick coats, boots and gloves from a second-hand shop, and they waited by the door like soldiers ready for a battle that would not begin.(4) It came on a Tuesday night. I woke for no reason and noticed that the light in the room was strange, soft and pale, though it was two in the morning. I went to the window. Huge, slow flakes were drifting down past the streetlamp, tumbling and turning, and the street below had vanished beneath a smooth white blanket. Everything was utterly silent. The parked cars had become rounded white shapes, and the bare trees wore thin white lines along every branch.(5) I woke my sister, and we stood at the window in our pyjamas for a long time without speaking. In the morning, she ran outside before breakfast, lay down on her back in the snow and laughed until she could not breathe.

1. (a) You are the narrator. Write a letter to a friend in Lahore describing your first months in Toronto and the first snowfall.Write the letter. In your letter you should:• describe how Toronto changed from August to November• describe the night of the first snow• explain how you and your family are settling into your new lifeBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Halfway across the lake(1) The lake swim was two kilometres, from the boathouse to the jetty on the far shore. Sana had trained for it in the school pool all winter, length after length beneath the buzzing lights, but she had never swum in open water further than she could stand.(2) At the start, the water was a shock: cold enough to snatch the breath from her lungs, and dark, so that her own hands vanished a few centimetres below the surface. Around her, two hundred swimmers churned forward in a frenzy of arms and white foam, like a pot coming to the boil. Someone's heel struck her shoulder; someone else swam straight over her legs. She swallowed a mouthful of the lake, which tasted of mud and weeds, and came up coughing.(3) Gradually the crowd thinned out. She found a rhythm — breathe, stroke, stroke, breathe — and began to sight on the yellow buoys that marked the course, lifting her eyes every few strokes the way her coach had shown her.(4) Halfway across, her left calf seized. The pain was sudden and savage, as though a fist had clenched around the muscle and was twisting it. Her leg became a useless weight dragging her down. Panic rose in her like floodwater, and for a second she thrashed, gulping air and water together. The far shore looked impossibly distant, a thin green line wobbling on the horizon. Then she rolled onto her back, as she had been taught, and floated, staring up at a sky so wide and calm that it seemed to be holding her up. A kayak glided alongside, and a steward asked if she wanted to be pulled out.(5) She shook her head. When the cramp eased, she turned over and swam on, slowly, favouring the leg. She finished in the last twenty, shivering and grinning, and her father, waiting on the jetty, wrapped her in a towel without saying a word.

1. (a) You are Sana. Write a letter to your swimming coach after the lake race.Write the letter. In your letter you should:• describe what the start of the race was like compared with training in the pool• explain what happened when you got cramp and how you dealt with it• explain how the coach's training helped you and what you want to work on nextBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Ward Seven(1) Grandmother had been in hospital for eleven days when my mother finally agreed that I could visit. I was fourteen, and I had not been inside a hospital since I was born.(2) Ward Seven was on the third floor, at the end of a long corridor that smelled of disinfectant and boiled vegetables. Trolleys rattled past pushed by nurses who moved quickly, rubber shoes squeaking on the polished floor. Machines beeped behind curtains. Everything was white or pale green, and the fluorescent lights made every face look tired and slightly unwell.(3) She was in the bed by the window. I almost did not recognise her. At home she had always seemed large and loud, filling the kitchen with orders and laughter, but here, propped against the pillows in a faded gown, she looked small and fragile, as though someone had let some of the air out of her. A thin tube ran from the back of her hand to a bag of clear liquid.(4) Then she saw me, and her face changed completely. "Finally!" she said. "Have you been eating properly? Your mother never feeds you enough." She demanded to know my exam marks and criticised my haircut, and I felt the tight knot in my stomach begin to loosen. She was still herself, only quieter.(5) We stayed for an hour. Before we left, she pressed a folded note into my hand, as she had done every Eid since I was small, and told me not to tell my mother. In the lift on the way down, I unfolded it and found that she had written, in shaky letters along the edge, "Be brave." I still keep it in my wallet.

1. (a) You are the narrator. Some years later, write a letter to your grandmother's nurse on Ward Seven, thanking the hospital staff and telling them about your visit.Write the letter. In your letter you should:• describe your first impressions of the hospital and the ward• explain how your grandmother seemed and how the visit changed your feelings• explain what her note meant to you and why you want to thank the staffBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Fog at the junction(1) The train from Lahore was due at the small junction at nine in the evening. At eleven, the stationmaster wrote "Late" on the blackboard in chalk and went back into his office. By midnight, nobody even looked at the board any more.(2) The fog had come down at dusk, thick and silent, swallowing first the fields, then the signal post, then the far end of the platform. The single lamp above the ticket window wore a fuzzy halo of light, and beyond it the world simply stopped, as if someone had hung a dirty grey curtain across the tracks. Every so often a figure would loom out of the whiteness, a porter with a trolley or a man wrapped in a blanket, and dissolve again a few steps later like a ghost walking through a wall.(3) About twenty passengers waited on the benches. A family shared roti from a cloth bundle; a student slept with his head on his rucksack; two old men played cards by the light of a mobile phone. The tea seller, who should have gone home hours before, kept his little stove alight and refilled cups without being asked.(4) The cold was the worst of it. It seeped up from the concrete through the soles of my shoes and crept inside my sleeves and collar, patient and determined. My fingers ached around the hot glass of tea. Somewhere out in the fog a dog barked, once, and the sound seemed to come from everywhere at once. When a train whistle finally sounded, faint and far away, the whole platform held its breath; heads lifted like birds hearing a hawk.(5) It was a goods train, rattling slowly through without stopping. Nobody complained. The tea seller simply put more water on to boil, and one of the card players began, very softly, to sing.

1. (a) You are the tea seller at the junction. A local radio station asks you to give a short talk about the night the train was delayed by fog.Write the words of your talk. In your talk you should:• describe the fog and the cold on the platform• describe the passengers and how they passed the time• explain why you stayed open so late and what the night meant to youBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The dog in the rain(1) Faisal saw the dog on his way home from school, huddled under a parked car on the corner of his street. It was small and brown, with one ear that stood up and one that flopped, and it was shivering so violently that its whole body seemed to vibrate. Rain hammered on the car roof above it.(2) He crouched down. The dog stared at him with wide, wary eyes and drew back further into the shadows, pressing its belly against the wet road. Faisal held out the last piece of his lunchtime sandwich. For a long time nothing happened. Then, inch by inch, the dog crept forward, sniffed the bread and snatched it from his fingers before retreating again, as though it expected to be punished.(3) It followed him home at a distance, stopping whenever he looked round, darting behind lampposts and bins. At his gate it hesitated, one paw raised, trembling. Faisal's mother came out with an umbrella, took one look and sighed. "Only until it stops raining," she said, which Faisal knew from experience meant something quite different.(4) They dried it with an old towel in the kitchen. Underneath the mud it was the colour of toffee, with a white patch on its chest, and it was much thinner than it had looked. It ate a bowl of rice and chicken so fast that it almost choked, then curled up beside the warm stove and fell asleep instantly, its paws twitching as it dreamed.(5) The next day, Faisal put up notices on lampposts. Nobody called. By the end of the week the dog had a name, Biscuit, a collar and a firm opinion about which chair belonged to him.

1. (a) You are Faisal. At a school assembly about caring for animals, you give a talk about how Biscuit came to live with your family.Write the words of your talk. In your talk you should:• describe how you found the dog and what state it was in• explain how you gained its trust and what happened when you took it home• encourage other students to help animals in need, and explain how to do so sensiblyBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The dry river(1) For as long as Imran could remember, the river below his village had been the centre of every summer. Boys swam there, women washed clothes on the flat stones, and in the afternoons he drove the family's three buffaloes down to wallow in the shallows until only their noses and curved horns showed above the water.(2) That June, the river did not come. Week after week the heat pressed down on the plain like a heavy hand. The sky was white rather than blue, and the sun hung in it like a hot coin. Where the water should have been, there was only a wide bed of cracked mud, split into a crazy pattern of plates that curled at the edges like old paper. The reeds along the bank had turned brittle and brown, and they rattled in the hot wind like dry bones.(3) The buffaloes suffered most. They stood in the shade of the neem tree with their heads low, panting, and refused to eat. Imran's father poured buckets of water from the well over their backs each morning, but the well too was getting lower, and the water came up cloudy.(4) One afternoon Imran walked the buffaloes three kilometres downstream, where an old man had told him a pool still remained beneath the railway bridge. The track was white with dust that rose in choking clouds around the animals' hooves. Sweat stung his eyes. When at last he saw the pool, it was a shrunken brown puddle, its edges trampled into thick mud by goats and cattle from five villages. The buffaloes lumbered into it with groans of pleasure, and Imran sat on the bank, watching the water shrink a little more with every hour.(5) That evening the radio reported that the rains were expected in ten days. His father switched it off without comment and went out to check the well again.

1. (a) You are Imran. You have been asked to speak at a village meeting about the effects of the drought.Write the words of your speech. In your speech you should:• describe how the river and the land have changed this summer• explain how the drought has affected your family's buffaloes and your daily life• suggest what the village could do together while waiting for the rainsBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The wolf(1) Every summer, Gulnaz and her father took the family's sheep up to the high pastures above the village, where the grass grew thick and sweet after the snow had melted. They lived for three months in a stone hut with a roof of turf, and at night the flock was penned in a circular wall of piled rocks.(2) On the fifteenth night, Gulnaz woke suddenly in the dark. At first she did not know why. Then she realised that the sheep, normally silent at night, were restless, their bells clanking and their hooves shuffling against the stones. The dogs were growling, a low, continuous rumble that she felt in her chest more than heard.(3) Her father was already at the door with a torch and a heavy stick. "Stay inside," he said. Gulnaz waited for him to go out, then followed.(4) The moon was almost full, and the pasture was silver and black. At the edge of the pen, on a boulder, stood a shape she had heard about all her life but never seen: lean, grey and motionless, its eyes glinting green when the torchlight swept across it. The wolf did not look frightened. It looked at the sheep the way a shopper looks at a market stall. The dogs barked furiously but held back, their hackles raised. Her father shouted, swung the torch and banged his stick against the rocks. For a long moment the wolf stayed perfectly still. Then it turned, unhurried, and vanished into the darkness.(5) Neither of them slept again that night. They sat by the pen until dawn, wrapped in blankets, while the sheep slowly settled. When the sun rose over the ridge, her father counted the flock twice. Every animal was there.

1. (a) You are Gulnaz. Years later, you give a talk to students at a school in the city about life in the high pastures.Write the words of your talk. In your talk you should:• describe your summers in the high pastures with your father and the sheep• describe the night the wolf came• explain what that night taught you about courage and about wild animalsBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: Opening night(1) The school play that year was a version of an old folk tale, and I had been cast as the king. This meant I had the most lines, the heaviest costume and a cardboard crown that kept slipping over one eye.(2) For six weeks we rehearsed every afternoon in the hall, and every afternoon something went wrong. The curtain stuck halfway. The thunder sound effect played during the love scene. Our director, Miss Farida, had developed a way of closing her eyes and breathing slowly that we all recognised as dangerous.(3) On opening night, the hall was packed with parents, grandparents and small brothers and sisters. Behind the curtain, we could hear them rustling programmes and talking. My mouth was dry, and I had forgotten my first line completely.(4) The first act went perfectly. Then, in the second act, during my great speech about justice, the painted palace wall behind me began very slowly to lean forward. I saw the audience's faces change. I heard a small child say, quite clearly, "It's falling." There was nothing in the script about this, so I simply stepped to one side, continued my speech, and gestured grandly as the wall crashed to the floor in a cloud of dust, as though I had ordered it. After a moment of stunned silence, the whole hall burst into laughter and applause.(5) Afterwards, Miss Farida found me backstage. I expected trouble. Instead she shook my hand and said it was the best improvisation she had seen in twenty years of teaching. The wall was nailed down firmly for the second night, and, to my secret disappointment, it never fell again.

1. (a) You are Miss Farida, the director of the play. At the end-of-year prize-giving, you give a speech about this year's school play.Write the words of your speech. In your speech you should:• describe the rehearsals and the problems you faced• describe what happened on opening night when the scenery fell• explain what the cast, and especially the 'king', showed about teamwork and performingBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The crossing(1) The ferry to the island was supposed to take forty minutes. It was an old boat, its blue paint blistered by years of salt, and on that grey October afternoon it carried about thirty passengers, a few crates of vegetables and a goat tied to the rail.(2) For the first quarter of an hour the sea was merely restless. Long, oily swells lifted the ferry and set it down again, lazily, like a giant breathing in its sleep. Gulls hung motionless above the stern, and the island ahead was a low smudge of green beneath a sky the colour of wet cement. Most passengers sat inside, dozing or scrolling on their phones; only a few of us stayed on deck, where the wind tasted of salt and diesel.(3) Then the captain changed course, and the engine note deepened. A crewman came round closing the windows and handing out life jackets without explanation. Nobody asked questions, but everybody stopped talking.(4) The storm arrived in a single stroke. Rain lashed across the deck in stinging sheets, and the sea rose up in dark, marbled walls that slammed against the hull with the force of a battering ram. The ferry staggered, climbed each wave as if it were a mountain, hung for a terrible moment at the top and then plunged into the trough with a crash that rattled every bolt. Spray burst over the bow like broken glass. Inside the cabin a child was screaming, crates slid across the floor, and the goat bleated piteously in the rain. I clung to a pillar, my knuckles white, my stomach somewhere in my throat.(5) It lasted twenty minutes. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over; the clouds tore open, and a shaft of sunlight fell across the harbour as we limped in. On the quay, the goat's owner untied it, patted its soaked head and walked away as though nothing at all had happened.

1. (a) You are a passenger on the ferry. At a meeting of island residents, you give a speech about the crossing and ferry safety.Write the words of your speech. In your speech you should:• describe the crossing before and during the storm• explain how the crew and passengers behaved• argue for changes that would make future crossings saferBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]

Read the text carefully, then answer the question. Paragraph numbers are shown in brackets.Text: The kitten in the drain(1) The crying began on Monday morning, a thin, high mewing that seemed to come from beneath the road outside our school gate. By lunchtime, half the school had gathered around the iron grating of the storm drain, peering down into the darkness.(2) Far below, on a ledge just above a trickle of black water, crouched a kitten, no bigger than a man's hand. Its fur was matted and grey with mud, and each time it cried, its whole tiny body shook. The grating was bolted down, and the drain was too narrow for an adult to climb into.(3) Our caretaker tried lowering a basket on a rope, with a piece of fish inside. The kitten stared at it and backed further along the ledge. A teacher phoned the fire service, who said they would come when they could, which might not be until the evening. Clouds were gathering over the hills, and everyone knew what would happen to the drain if it rained.(4) It was Ayesha, the smallest girl in our class, who offered to go down. The caretaker unbolted the grating with a huge spanner, and they tied a rope around her waist. She slid into the hole feet first, scraping her elbows on the concrete, and disappeared. For several minutes nobody breathed. We could hear her voice echoing up from the darkness, soft and patient, talking to the kitten as if it were a baby. Then the rope jerked twice, the signal, and the caretaker hauled.(5) Ayesha emerged filthy, grazed and beaming, with the kitten zipped inside her jacket, only its furious little face showing. The first drops of rain began to fall as the caretaker bolted the grating back into place.

1. (a) You are the head teacher. At the next morning's assembly, you give a speech about the rescue of the kitten.Write the words of your speech. In your speech you should:• describe the situation the kitten was in and why it was urgent• praise Ayesha and others for what they did, describing the rescue• explain what the school community should learn from the event, including about safetyBase your answer on what you have read in the text, but be careful to use your own words. Address each of the three bullet points. Write about 250 to 350 words. Up to 15 marks are available for the content of your answer and up to 10 marks for the quality of your writing. [25]