Ministerul Educaţiei, Cercetării şi Inovării

Centrul Naţional pentru Curriculum şi Evaluare în Învăţământul Preuniversitar

Examenul de bacalaureat 2009

Proba E/F
Proba scrisă la Limba engleză
L1 - Bilingv

• Toate subiectele sunt obligatorii. Se acordă 10 puncte din oficiu.

• Timpul efectiv de lucru este de 3 ore.

SUBIECTUL I (30 de puncte) Varianta 015

Read the text below and complete the following tasks.

On a frigid afternoon in May, I slipped through a crack in the sea ice and dropped into the
Arctic Ocean. The icy water hit my face and neoprene-clad head so hard I thought I would vomit.
(1) … The water was 29 degrees (-2ºC), about as cold as seawater gets before it freezes.
My teeth clenched the regulator as I tried to fight back nausea. Soon my breaths slowed, my head
numbed to the shock, and I swam down into the blackness. At one point I looked back up at the
ice, expecting it to appear as it most often does this early in the season - blue, featureless, lifeless.
(2) …. The ice was stained green and brown. It moved. I blinked and checked my depth. I
tried to make sure I wasn't suffering vertigo, which can be deadly to a diver working alone under
the three-foot-thick (one meter) roof of ice. (3) … it wasn't ice at all - I was watching a massive
cloud of amphipods, tiny shrimplike crustaceans, as they fed on phytoplanktons that grow on the
underside of the ice in spring when the sun returns to the Arctic. I was seeing the foundation of the
ecosystem, the combination of ice and minute life-forms upon which all the bigger animals - polar
bears, whales, birds, and seals-depend.
I've lived in the Canadian Arctic all my life and have spent most of my career photographing
the edge where ice meets open sea. When I began working, sea ice seemed invulnerable: even in
the warmest months much ice remained. (4) …. It is part of the biology of every creature that lives
in this frozen vastness. Year-round, but especially in spring, polar bears roam and hunt on the ice.
Seals rest and give birth on the ice. Massive bowhead whales arrive like squadrons of submarines
to feed on amphipods and copepods. Beluga whales and narwhals join them and chase arctic cod,
which hide as larvae in finger-thin channels of ice. An Arctic without ice is unimaginable.
(Paul Nicklen, Life at the Edge, National Geographic, June 2007)

1. Four sentences have been removed from the text. Select the appropriate sentence for
each gap in the text. There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
4 points

A. Ice is not just a landscape.

B. I was diving just south of Lancaster Sound, off the northern tip of Baffin Island in the Canadian
Arctic.
C. Then it hit me:
D. The rays of light were dancing in the water.
E. But something wasn't right.

2. Give the antonyms of the following words. 6 points

1. to freeze
2. to slow
3. tiny

3. Sum up the text in about 50 words. 10 points

 Ministerul Educaţiei, Cercetării şi Inovării
Centrul Naţional pentru Curriculum şi Evaluare în Învăţământul Preuniversitar

4. For the following questions, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which fits according to the
text. 6 points

1. Why was the diver feeling sick?

A. Because he was not used to diving.
B. Because he had a fever.
C. Because of the sudden change of the environmental conditions.
D. It is only natural to feel sick when diving.

2. Why did the ice seem as if it was stained green and brown?
A. Because there was a cloud of plankton between the diver and the surface.
B. Because the ice had been painted.
C. Because that was its real color.
D. Because the water was dirty.

3. Why did he think that ice was invulnerable?

A. Because not even in the warmest months did it fully melt.
B. Because it is hard to break.
C. Because he had a hard time finding an entry point.
D. Because it had a protective layer.

5. Comment on the following in about 100 words: An Arctic without ice is unimaginable.
4 points