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BBA PRACTICE EXAMINATION

2010
ENGLISH
Level One
RESOURCE BOOKLET
90057
Read and show understanding of unfamiliar texts.
Credits: Three
Refer to this booklet to answer all questions in the
90057 Question and Answer Booklet.
Check that this booklet has pages 2-4 in the correct order and that none
of these pages is blank.
YOU MUST HAND THIS BOOKLET TO THE SUPERVISOR
AT THE END OF THE ASSESSMENT.

BBA Educational Resources 2010

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Text A: The Doughnut Thief (written language - prose, from a Year 11 student)
Read Text A then answer questions One and Two in the 90057 Question and Answer Booklet.
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My stomach growls. Loudly. Its utterly empty, and hunger threatens to overcome me.
I ignore it and continue walking purposefully down the street. Places to go, people to
see. No time for breakfast. But I pass a bakery and a cold gust of wind blows its sweet
yeasty warmth towards my nose. The smell is tantalising. My feet turn uncontrollably
to the beckoning door, and I enter.
Inside, the shop is cosy and lled with the mouth-watering aromas of baking. It seems
to glow with warmth, a haven of comfort from the harsh outdoors with its grey sky and
biting wind. The windows have fogged up, and children have been writing their names
in the glass. Rows on rows of baked goods ll the store, counters heaving with cakes,
mufns, loaves of bread and soft white buns. A girl stands behind them, a crisp white
apron tied around her waist. She smiles at me as I survey the food. There is our on her
cheeks. I smile back and then I notice the doughnuts.
There are so many round ones; plain ones; long cream-lled ones with pink icing;
and raspberry-jam, chocolate covered ones; and ones topped with lurid multicoloured
sprinkles. I eye up a particularly fat but relatively plain example, coated merely with
a layer of bright orange icing. Ninety-ve cents, the price reads. Very reasonable.
But theres no money in my pockets. I turn them inside out in desperation. Darn! The
warmth of the bakery suddenly seems uncomfortable rather than comforting. Sweat
trickles down my forehead. The doughnut calls to me, a beacon, the golden light at the
end of my tunnel of hunger. Im not leaving without it.
The girl behind the counter is watching me curiously.
Can I help you sir? she asks, a quizzical expression on her face.
Im still deciding, I say quickly.
Another customer enters. A woman. She orders ve loaves of bread, and while the girls
attention is diverted, I grab the doughnut and shove it into the pocket of my sweatshirt.
Its still hot. I can feel the heat through the material, warming my skin.
The girl looks back at me. I stammer out an excuse for not buying anything and turn
to leave. As I do, my eye is caught by a sign, which declares, rather ominously, that
shoplifters will be prosecuted. My empty stomach does ips. I feel a hand on my
shoulder. The girl is no longer behind her counter. She speaks in a cold authoritative
tone, far more chilling than I ever thought a girl with our on her cheeks could be.
Can I see what is in your pockets please?
Oh no, I think. My stomach growls loudly in agreement.
READING WRITTEN LANGUAGE
The Doughnut Thief
Jessie Annett-Wood, Wellington East Girls College, Year 11, in Through a Gap in the Fence,
Journal of Secondary Students Writing, 2008, Learning Media Limited, Wellington.
TEXT A
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Four Bananas
Scrape margarine across eight slices
of white bread, raspberry jam and Nutella
and Marmite and jam again. Eight sandwiches
two each. Cut and wrap. Its not enough.
Add four bananas that will come home bruised
and blackened mid-afternoon. Seal in four
plastic lunch-boxes. Its not enough. A thump
of backpacks and a wrenching of zips,
this daughter smiling and this daughter
sullen, and these two in a stumbling panic
Dont slam the door, dont leave me here
beside myself these two, my hatchlings,
my little ones, are gone, fallen through
that bright rectangle to where the world
waits with its claws and teeth, its every kind
of sharp and sudden thing
I would halt trafc to let you pass,
I would snarl and swipe at the dogs
that bound from driveways, I would
smooth and make safe and contain but all
I am is here, I am always here I wipe away
the slopped cereal, inhale the sour smell
of your rooms as I make your beds,
the sheets in which the grains of your hot,
dry bodies threshed all night already cooling.
- Tim Upperton
Text B: Four Bananas (written language-poetry, from a New Zealand poet)
Read Text B then answer questions Three and Four in the 90057 Question and Answer Booklet.
TEXT B
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READING WRITTEN LANGUAGE
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Tim Upperton, Turbine 2008, A Journal of New Zealand Writing.
http://www.nzetc.org/iiml/turbine/Turbi08/poetry/
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READING VISUAL LANGUAGE
Text C: Sporting Behaviour (visual language-poster)
Read Text C below, then answer questions Five and Six in the 90057 Question and Answer Booklet.
TEXT C