The English School Entrance Examination 2023

Near-Native English
Time allowed: 1 hour 15 minutes
General Instructions:
1. Answer one question in Section A, and all questions in Sections B
and C
2. Read the instructions carefully before answering
3. Do not spend too much time on questions you find difficult as you
must finish the paper
4. Write neatly and in black ink
5. Check your work carefully at the end
6. No questions concerning the content of the paper are allowed
7. Do Not write your name on any part of the paper.

Time Guidance:
Section A: Composition (35 marks), 30 minutes
Section B: Comprehension and Usage (50 marks), 30 minutes
Section C: Directed Writing (15 marks), 15 minutes

Total marks: 100

The paper consists of 16 pages
Good Luck!

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Section A: Composition
(35 marks)
Choose ONE of the following questions and write about 220-250 words.
Remember the importance of:
• Planning your response
• Vocabulary, expression and written accuracy
• Structure and punctuation

EITHER:
1. Narrative

Write a story about the discovery of something unexpected. Begin with the line:

‘I was strolling along the beach and stumbled upon something dangerous.’
Make sure you include the following within your story:
• your reaction to the discovery;
• what actions you took;
• how this ended.

OR
2. Discursive

Develop your views on the following topic.

"The use of electronic devices can have a positive impact on a teenager".

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 Make sure you refer to the following:

• the use of video games in everyday life;

• the use of a mobile phones at home and at school;
• your personal view about this issue.

OR
3. Descriptive
Imagine you woke up one morning to discover the world had turned to ice.
Describe:
• What you saw and heard;
• What you felt;
• What impressed you the most.

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Question: …………

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5
Turn to the next page

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 Section B: Comprehension (50 marks)

Read the following extract carefully and answer ALL the questions that follow.

The following extract is from the novel ‘October, October’, where the
narrator describes her life with her father in the woods.

We live in the woods and we are wild.

Tonight we howl at the star-dusted sky. We throw our voices and shape them and mix
them and mould them like clay. We can stretch our sounds so that they reach the very
tops of our tallest trees and down to the secret-filled earth and so that they tangle in the
5 brambles and skim across the pond because this world is ours and we are alone.
Just us.
A pocket of people in a pocket of a world that’s small as a marble. We are tiny and we
are everything and we are wild.
We live in the woods.
10 We live in the woods and we are wild.
Our house sits in the woods and it’s made from the trees that frame it. They’ve been
chopped and planed and smoothed into a house, and so it’s not the same as looking at
the twisted reaches of the branches but I like to be inside the woods. It feels like a
secret because we are hidden away and forgotten about in the best way, even though
15 people know we’re here. We have to go into the village every year or so and buy the
food we can’t grow or the clothes we can’t make, which is nearly all clothes except for
socks and even those aren’t very good when I try. Dad can turn a ball of wool into a foot
shape with a click-clack of needles and half an eye on the stove but I can’t manage
more than a tangle. We get all the things we need for another year and slip back into
20 the woods while the village forgets us again.
The house was built by Dad before I was born. I wasn’t born here though, because at
the last minute the woman who is my mother said no way and she was whisked off to
the hospital and she was pushed down corridors that were white and bright and treeless
and blank and like nothing she remembered. But then she did remember. She
25 remembered all the things like microwaves and internet and heating that happens at the
push of a button and not from the roar of a stove that makes your clothes smell smoky
and sweet. She remembered, and when she had her baby wrapped in a white blanket
that matched the walls and the sheets and the pillows she said to Dad that she couldn’t
go back.

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30 She did, for a bit. But she was floating off into the world that fringes ours, and when I
was four she was gone. In my head I think I remember the day she left but the memory
is like trying to hold water in my cupped hands and it trickles away before my eyes.
There are wisps of a woman holding on to my hand and I feel my whole body being
pulled along by the tide of another person running and my legs can’t keep up. There’s
35 crying and I know that I let out a shriek so loud it pierced the sky and the birds
scattered.
I wouldn’t let her leave with me. I wouldn’t leave the woods.

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Answer all the questions that follow:

1.
a) What word does October use to describe the way she and her father live?
______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)
b) What does she mean by this? Using your own words explain the way they live.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
(3 marks)
2. Re-read lines 2-6.
a) Identify four verbs from the passage that describe what October and her father do
with their voices.
i. ________________________
ii. _______________________
iii. _______________________
iv. _______________________
(4 marks)
b) What do these verbs show us about what their lives are like?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)
3. Re-read lines 11-20.
a) How do October and her father respect the environment through the way they live?
i. ____________________________________________________________________
ii. ___________________________________________________________________
iii. ___________________________________________________________________
(3 marks)

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b) How often do they visit the village and why? Explain, using your own words.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
(2 marks)
4. Re-read lines 21-29.
Using your own words, explain why October’s mother left the woods.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
(2 marks)
5. Re-read lines 30-37.
What memory does October have of her mother leaving? Summarise what happened
as October remembers it.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
(2 marks)

6. In your own words, explain what the writer means by each of the words underlined.
They have also been underlined in the passage for your easy reference:
i) ‘mould them like clay’
______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)
ii) ‘tangle in the brambles’
______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)
iii) ‘made from the trees that frame it’
______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)

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iv) ‘as she was whisked off’
______________________________________________________________________
(1 marks)
v) ‘wrapped in’
______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)
vi) ‘into the world that fringes ours’
______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)

9. Underline the sentences below which give accurate information:

October wished she had left with her mother.

October’s mother wanted to take October with her when she left.
Their house was made of bricks.
October’s father is very good at making all types of clothes.
People in the village do not know of October and her father or where they live.
(5 marks)

10. Write appropriate questions for the following statements.

e.g. Just us.
Who lived there?

a) She did remember.

______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)
b) The house was built by Dad before I was born
______________________________________________________________________

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 (1 mark)
c) She did, for a bit.
______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)
d) We live in the woods.
______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)
e) Our house sits in the woods and it’s made from the trees that frame it.
______________________________________________________________________
(1 mark)

11. Complete the sentences below, putting the words in brackets in the correct form.
e.g. Last night we __________ (howl) at the star-dusted sky.
Last night we howled at the star-dusted sky.

a) October hopes to continue _________________ (live) in the woods for the rest of her
life.
(1 mark)
b) October has always ______________ (make) her own clothes.
(1 mark)
c) Their lives are very ______________ (secret) as they are hidden away from
civilization.
(1 mark)
d) She _____________ (remember) being wrapped in a white blanket when she was a
baby.
(1 mark)
e) There is a woman ____________ (hold) on to my hand.
(1 mark)

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12. Imagine you are a villager talking to October about where her and her father live.
Based on the information from the extract, ask October 6 questions.

i. ____________________________________________________________________

ii. ____________________________________________________________________

iii. ___________________________________________________________________

iv. ___________________________________________________________________

v. ____________________________________________________________________

vi. ___________________________________________________________________
(6 marks)

13. Read the short paragraph below which has been adapted from the text. Rewrite it
by making the necessary changes in order to use the following linking words: because,
and, as, additionally.
Also use appropriate punctuation marks e.g. commas, full stops etc.
Tonight we howl at the star-dusted sky. We can change our sounds. We want them to
reach the very tops of our tallest trees. We want them to travel down to the secret-filled
earth. This world is ours. We love it.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
(5 marks)
Turn to the next page

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Section C: Directed Writing (15 marks)
Imagine you are October’s mother after you have left the woods.
Write a letter to October’s father explaining why you have left.

In your letter, make sure you describe:

• what your experience in the woods has been like;
• why you left and how you feel about leaving October behind.
There are 10 marks for the development of ideas from the text and 5 marks available for
your accuracy and style of writing. Write around 120 words.

Dearest,
I am so sorry I have had to do this to you and October but I feel I had no choice.

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Yours.
April

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Additional sheet (notes)

This is the End of the Examination

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