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 Side 1 af 11 sider

Answer either A or B

A – non-fiction
The texts in section A focus on mixed martial arts.
Write a paper (700-1000 words) in which you answer the following questions.
Answer the questions separately.

1. Explain briefly what mixed martial arts is, and give an outline of some of the
views on the sport presented in the three texts.

2. How does Peter McCabe argue for his views in text 2? Give examples from the
text.

3. Taking your starting point in one of the texts, discuss whether mixed martial arts
should be legal or illegal.

Texts
1. Jenny Flinn, “The rise and rise of ultimate fighting (and why boxing is
now so passé)”, an article from The Conversation website, March 9, 2016. page 2

2. Peter McCabe, “How many more young people must die before mixed
martial arts is banned?”, an article from The Guardian website,
April 15, 2016. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 4

3. Cameron Mee, “In defence of mixed martial arts”, a blog article from
The Roar website, November 20, 2015. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6

B – fiction
Write an analytical essay (700-1000 words) in which you analyse and interpret
Anne Hayden’s short story “Same Same but Different”. Your essay must include
the following points:
-  a characterisation of the narrator
-  her relationship to her twin sister, Molly
-  the structure
-  the main theme

Text
Anne Hayden, “Same Same but Different”, 2016. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 8

Teksternes ortografi og tegnsætning følger forlæggene. Trykfejl er dog rettet.

Opsætningen følger ikke nødvendigvis forlæggene. Dog følges forlægget nøje, hvor
opsætningen på den ene eller anden måde indgår i opgaven.
 Side 2 af 11 sider
A – non-fiction
TEXT 1
Jenny Flinn is a lecturer in Events Management at Glasgow Caledonian University.
The article is from 2016.
Jenny Flinn
The rise and rise of ultimate fighting (and
why boxing is now so passé)
Ronda Rousey (right) and Bethe Correa battle it
out in 2015.
UFC1 fighters Conor McGregor and
Ronda Rousey are becoming household
names and Mixed Martial Arts, or MMA,
is rapidly making the move from minority
5 to mainstream sport. Although MMA
only emerged in the 1990s, its growth
has been, quite simply, phenomenal; it is
currently one of the fastest growing sports
in the world. According to a recent report,
10 MMA is second only to adventure racing
when it comes to growing participation,
recording a 19.5% increase since 2013.
1
Ultimate Fighting Championship: MMA
organisation
[…]
In spite of its phenomenal growth
many people remain unclear as to
15 what MMA actually involves. This is
perhaps unsurprising given the rapid
transformations that the sport has
undergone within a relatively short time
period.
20 Often referred to as “ultimate fighting”
or “cage fighting” (a term despised by
anyone involved in the sport), MMA
is essentially a combination of bare-
handed oriental martial arts and Western
25 combat sports involving combinations
of standing and striking techniques
along with grappling and fighting on the
ground. This can involve techniques of
muay thai, Brazilian jiu jitsu, kickboxing
30 and submission wrestling, with many
participants also drawing on a variety
of martial arts such as judo, savate or
sambo, often depending on their country
of origin. Everything martial arts goes,
35 with many fans drawn to its incredible
mix of athleticism and risk. […]
Initially, the UFC focused on pitting
fighters from different martial arts

backgrounds against each other in order
40 to determine which martial art was
superior. MMA was not considered a
sport, merely a fighting contest that
offered a montage of different combat
sports, under new rules of engagement.
45 Despite initially drawing relatively
significant TV audiences (the first UFC
competition drew a pay-per-view audience
of 86,592) throughout the early 1990s,
Side 3 af 11 sider
the UFC struggled to survive because of
50 negative public perceptions of its brutality
and high levels of violence. Arizona
senator John McCain famously referred to
MMA as “human cockfighting” and was
successful in getting MMA banned in all
55 but three states in the US.
(2016)
 Side 4 af 11 sider
TEXT 2
Peter McCabe is the chief executive for Headway, the brain injury association. The
article is from 2016.
Peter McCabe
How many more young people must die
before mixed martial arts is banned?
João Carvalho died after an MMA fight this
week. Photograph: Nobrega Team/Facebook
Mixed martial arts (MMA) markets itself
as a brutal, money-making spectacle.
When the objective is to render opponents
senseless by kicking and punching
5 them in the head, it is no surprise when
someone is seriously hurt and sustains
fatal neurological damage.
Of course, first and foremost our
thoughts at Headway, the brain injury
10 association of which I am chief executive,
are with the family of João Carvalho, the
cage fighter who died of a brain injury
sustained during a fight in the Republic
of Ireland. Everyone understands how
15 agonising it is for a family to wait by the
hospital bedside of their loved one, hoping
and praying they will regain consciousness.
But sadly, Carvalho is not the first
fighter to lose his life as a direct result
20 of catastrophic brain injury caused by
deliberate blows to the head. And he
won’t be the last. The very nickname of
his opponent, Charlie “The Hospital”
Ward, highlights the calculated brutality
25 of this so-called sport.
The evidence – backed by the British
Medical Association (BMA) and
numerous other medical associations
across the world – is that the cumulative
30 effect of repeated blows to the head, as
suffered by all MMA fighters and boxers,
can cause permanent brain injury.
Too many individuals are forced
to struggle on a daily basis with the
35 devastating effects of brain injuries
sustained in unavoidable circumstances.
It is difficult for those families to
comprehend why someone would
willingly put themselves at risk of
40 lifetime disability or death. If participants
of MMA fully understood what it meant
to lose a loved one or struggle to walk or
feed yourself, perhaps they would think
twice before entering the ring.
45 A 28-year-old in the prime of his
life has died after someone deliberately
punched him in the head. If this had
occurred in the street, the public’s

reaction would be one of horror and
50 revulsion. The police would be called
and the fighters arrested. Instead, as a
society we continue to sit back and allow
audiences to pay money to watch this
violence in the name of entertainment. As
55 the popularity of MMA has soared, there
are people making vast sums of money
by encouraging young people to risk their
lives. How do they sleep at night?
Published reports suggest that MMA
60 fighters receive only a small fraction of
the income generated. The time has come
to turn a big spotlight on the finances of
MMA. It cannot be ethical that MMA
promoters sit comfortably on the sidelines
65 counting their money while participants
risk paying the ultimate price in the name
of entertainment.
If all proper protocols were followed
by the referee, we must ask how such
70 accepted rules can possibly be labelled
“safety regulations” if they allow a
participant to die as a direct result of a
brain injury sustained in the ring. Even
Side 5 af 11 sider
the Ultimate Fighting Challenge star
75 Conor McGregor, who witnessed the
fight, said before Carvalho’s death that
he “thought it could have been stopped a
little earlier and… these referees need to
be on the ball a little bit”.
80 So often we hear calls that these
bloodsport bouts should have been
stopped several rounds earlier – but it is
a bit late when a young man has lost his
life.
85 At a time when responsible sports
bodies1 are rightly taking action to
improve their concussion protocols2 to
ensure participants are properly cared
for when accidental collisions occur,
90 it seems perverse that MMA can be
allowed to continue to encourage trauma
to the brain. There is no conceivable way
in which MMA can even remotely be
considered safe. How many more young
95 men need to die before we take action?
(2016)
1
organisations
2
(here) strict rules
 Side 6 af 11 sider
TEXT 3
Cameron Mee is an Australian sports blogger. The blog article is from 2015.
Cameron Mee
In defence of mixed martial arts
I have seen numerous articles criticising
the sport of mixed martial arts, labelling
it as savage and brutal.
In response to this criticism I feel it
5 should be highlighted that MMA is not
everyone’s cup of tea. That’s fine, not
everyone has to like every single sport.
In fact you’ll be hard pressed to find any
sports fan that is a fan of every sport.
10 But it’s important to remember that “I
don’t like it” does not equate to “it’s not
okay”.
Just because you don’t enjoy
something doesn’t mean no one else is
15 able to. The world would be a very boring
place if only movies that every person in
the world liked were created and aired in
the cinemas.
Despite this, there are legitimate
20 concerns surrounding UFC and the wider
sport of MMA. Some of the arguments
used by commentators over the past week
have merit, some of them don’t. […]
Not everyone enjoys watching people
25 punch, kick and grapple and that is fine.
But if two consenting adults choose to
step into a ring in a highly regulated
environment, that is their choice.
Speaking of regulations, that is another
30 argument surrounding UFC. It is argued
that MMA fights are a ruleless free-for-
all. No-holds barred, anything goes. This
could not be further from the truth.
The rules are extensive and clearly
35 written. There are very specific rules
governing fighters’ clothing, hand wraps
and gloves. There are 31 specific holds
and shots that are banned. These include
head butting – an offence that has seen
40 rugby league players go unpunished – eye
gouging, hair pulling – an act completely
legal in American Football – and faking
injuries, a favourite hobby of soccer
players. […]
45 There have been numerous studies
evaluating the safety of the sport of
MMA, many of which compared
MMA to boxing. Researchers from
the University of Toronto have found
50 that more professional MMA fights end
in knockout or technical knockout than
boxing fights.
They also found that MMA fights that
end in a knockout or TKO1 tend to end
55 with a flurry of punches in the last 30
seconds. This is less common in boxing.
The University of Toronto researchers did
not, however, examine the relationship
between fight outcome and injury.
60 The counterargument to the above
research is that boxing involves repeated
bludgeoning to the head. That is the
entirety of the sport, punches delivered
1
technical knockout

to the chest, stomach and head. By
65 their very nature MMA fights involve
more than just punching. They involve
numerous different martial art holds and
submission manoeuvres.
It is largely for this reason that
70 numerous studies, including research
from the University of Alberta, found
that boxers are more likely to suffer
concussions or serious eye injuries
than MMA fighters. This is not to say
75 that MMA fights are safe, of course
there is some inherent degree of danger
involved in the sport. But with respect
to concussions, the sport is a safer
alternative to boxing, yet is treated as
80 boxing’s Neanderthal cousin by the wider
public. […]
Until you step inside an MMA cage
or a boxing ring you can never fully
understand what the athletes experience
85 when they go face to face. It’s not just
a battle against your opponent, it’s a
battle with yourself to push through the
fatigue and continue to fight when you’re
exhausted.
90 From an amateur perspective, there are
multiple other reasons that people take up
the sport. Firstly, it teaches combatants
vital self-defence skills that may or may
not come in handy some time throughout
95 one’s life.
Side 7 af 11 sider
I hope to never find myself in a fight
during my lifetime but the reality is that
fights happen and that’s why, along with
fight avoidance techniques, I was also
100 taught basic fighting methods while at
school. Many choose to take this a step
further and pay for classes in order to
develop their skills in the chance that they
are in a fight.
105 Additionally, there are numerous
physical, mental and intangible benefits
from MMA training.
Clearly it is an effective form of fitness
training and helps develop muscular
110 strength and endurance. Mentally, MMA
fights allow combatants to channel their
energy into a controlled, sanctioned
environment, thus providing them with
an opportunity to de-stress and release all
115 their pent-up anger and aggression. […]
MMA is a dangerous sport with
potentially harmful implications for
its combatants. However, that does not
make the combatants brutes. The sport
120 is not a free-for-all and it is not akin to
cockfighting.
Yes, it is not for everyone and that’s
fine but we shouldn’t rush to blindly
criticise at the first sight of blood. The
125 sport deserves criticism, but it has to be
nuanced in order to improve the sport.
(2015)
 Side 8 af 11 sider

B – fiction
Anne Hayden is a writer and deputy sub-editor for The Irish Sun. The short story is
from The Irish Times website 2016.

Anne Hayden

Same Same but Different

This is I’m sitting in a cafe in Melbourne when that song comes on, “When Will I Be Might be connected to the title
the nowFamous?”. There I am sipping a flat white, they love their flat whites over here, and
listening to this Aussie1 lad bang on about how he’s really into minimal techno. I’m
nodding away to the sounds of Bros2 and smiling to myself, he probably thinks I’m
5 being ironic or something. Molly would have been so much better at this online dating
Rather sudden don't
thing. She wouldn’t zone out in the middle of a conversation and start daydreaming you think?
about some boyband from the 1980s.
We used to sing it together at a karaoke bar called Same Same But Different during
our J13 summer in New York, her on lead vocals, me on backing. We’d mock fight over
10 which of us could have Luke Goss, the one we had decided was the better looking of the Direct denial, and

identical twins in Bros. But I knew if the unlikely situation did arise, Molly would get subjigationn
Luke and I’d have to settle for his slightly less handsome brother Matt. She loved that
song, she was the one who wanted to be famous. In the end, she had her picture splashed
across the newspapers for the worst possible reason. “Tragic twin” they called her.
This is once 15 The guy, his name is Luke funnily enough, is going on and on about how you can
again in the nownever replicate the sound of vinyl on a computer. I want to point out that minimal
techno, as far as I’m aware, is made on a computer but I resist the temptation.
Instead I say “I was in New York a few years ago and I bought this Talking Heads4
record in a second-hand shop, but then I brought it to the cinema and my friend sat on it
20 and broke it. I haven’t bought a record since.”

“It’s a dangerous game alright, the old vinyl,” Luke jokes.

It wasn’t my friend, actually, it was Molly who was the culprit, but I don’t mention that
because then he’d say something like “oh, you have a twin sister” and I’d have to either This is comlicated
lie or explain things. Moll was driving me mad that day, it wasn’t just the record, she had
25 talked all the way through the film too, I can’t even remember about what. I gave her the

silent treatment on the way home on the subway. It all seems so silly now. We fought a
lot that summer, I was tired of her finishing my sentences and speaking for both of us, a
throwback to when I had a stammer as a child. Old habits die hard, I suppose.
1
Australian
2
a British band
3
one-year visa
4
Talking Heads: American rock band
 Side 9 af 11 sider

Luke is looking at me curiously, he might have just asked me a question, something

30 about New York, I’m not sure. I shouldn’t have brought it up.
“Are you ok?” he asks over the sounds of coffee being ground and milk being
steamed.
“I’m sorry, it’s just… I’ve got this toothache, it’s killing me. I think I’ll have to go Beautiful
home.”
35 “Oh… ok, well another time maybe.”
“Yeah, I’m really sorry to rush off, thanks for the coffee.”
A toothache? Where did that come out of? I walk down Brunswick Street, wondering
what to do with myself for the rest of the afternoon now that I’ve put the kibosh on1
TIMESKIP
the date. I moved to Australia a few months ago because I was tired of everyone’s pity
40 and morbid curiosity at home. I wanted a fresh start, to be my own person, and that’s
impossible in a city like Dublin which is really just a big town. Everyone you meet
knows someone you know, and sooner or later everyone knows your story.
But all this bloody sunshine makes it much more difficult to be alone. I constantly
feel like I should be sitting with a group of friends in a beer garden or taking romantic
45 seaside strolls. I should have thought about this before moving to Australia on my own.
Maybe I should have gone to Seattle, I hear it rains a lot there.
The recession was my official excuse for leaving but mostly I was trying to get away
from my parents. I couldn’t stand their sadness anymore, their voices had changed,
become flatter. I once caught Dad listening to an old voicemail from Molly; I knew what
50 he was up to because I’d done the same thing. Birthdays are the worst. While she will
remain forever 21, and perfect, I continue to age, with the croakiness and crankiness
that that brings. We all wonder what she would be like if she were here. Would she have
made it as an actress? Got married? Had kids? We picture a parallel universe, one with
her in it.
55 When we met people in New York that summer, Molly and I used to tell them we
had twins’ telepathy, felt each other’s pain, that sort of thing. The Americans really buy
into all that stuff. We’d tell stories of how Molly knew when I’d broken my leg, or how
we were able to transmit messages during exams, but it was all nonsense. We never
experienced that sort of psychic connection. I don’t know if such a thing really exists.
60 That said, on the night she died, 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, I sat bolt upright in
my bed at 4am, as if waking from one of those nightmares that has a silent scream at
the end. I didn’t remember any bad dream but I did have a feeling of dread. It was 11pm
in New York, which I later learned was the time the taxi slammed into Molly as she
walked home from a night out in Brooklyn.
65 I had cut my summer short by returning to Dublin to repeat my oral Irish exam. That
fact has haunted me for years. If I hadn’t failed the exam, I’d still have been in New
York, and maybe I’d have been able to stop her from stumbling onto the street that night.
To make matters worse, I’d been enjoying our separation. Even though I was at home

1
put the kibosh on: put an end to
 Side 10 af 11 sider

while she was living it up in the Big Apple, the independence was freeing. It was also
70 the first time in my life that I’d had my parents’ undivided attention. I know by now that
it’s not my fault but I still feel guilty sometimes, simply for the fact that I am alive and
she is not.
And then there was Stephen, Molly’s college boyfriend. They were still going out
when she died so I’m not sure if you’d call him ex-boyfriend or what? There doesn’t
75 seem to be a name for it. In the months after, he turned up at my door late one night
looking for a Molly-shaped shoulder to cry on. I opened a bottle of wine and we sat up
talking for hours. Sometime after we’d moved on to the whiskey, Steve leaned over and
kissed me, kind of clumsily, and I protested but then kissed him back. I knew it was
wrong but at that stage I’d have done anything to feel something different. We kept most
80 of our clothes on even when he was inside me, and we were ever so quiet although there
was no-one to hear us, as if being quiet somehow made it less of a crime. But when I
let out a moan, he stopped, went soft, and I still don’t know if it was because my moan
wasn’t Molly’s or because it was. As he sobbed into the crook of my neck, I wondered if
my skin tasted like hers. I saw him a few times after, but we never found a way to talk
85 about what happened.
After that, I tried changing my look, thinking it might be easier for everyone if
I looked less like Molly. I cut my hair short and bleached it blonde, invested in a
new wardrobe, ditching the jeans and hoodies we used to wear. But it’s not just our
appearances that were similar, we had the same voice, the same laugh. Sometimes I’ll
90 say something, and I’ll see a shadow flicker across my mother’s face and I’ll know she’s
heard a ghost.
Now here I am in Melbourne, with my new hair and my new clothes. This part of
Brunswick Street reminds me of Brooklyn, with its vintage shops and cafes selling 600
types of bitter-tasting coffee. But I barely have time to experience the pang Brooklyn
95 brings before I hear a voice that unmistakably belongs to Deirdre McCarthy from
school. I stall for a second then keep walking but she’s spotted me, there’s no escape. “I
don’t believe it,” she says, running across the tramlines to give me a hug, a small ball of
bluster. “I heard a rumour you’d moved over. It’s been years since I’ve seen you, it must
have been…” she trails off as she remembers the funeral was the last time. “I’m sorry…
100 it must still be so hard for you. How are you doing?”
I don’t know what to say really, after all this time I still don’t know what to say
when people say things like that. All I can think about is how I wish I could tell Moll
that Deirdre McCarthy has an Australian accent six months after getting off the plane.
She’d get such a laugh out of it. I mutter something about my teaching job and about the
105 weather, and tell her I’m running late. We exchange phone numbers and promise to meet
up but we won’t. I came here to break free of the past, not to meet it for a pint in an Irish
pub in St Kilda1.
It’s not as simple as it sounds, though, escaping the past, even when you put yourself

1
St Kilda: a suburb of Melbourne
 Side 11 af 11 sider

on the other side of the world. In fact, I seem to think about Molly more than ever these
110 days. It’s probably because I haven’t made any real friends here. The girls at the school
I work in are nice to me but they haven’t fully invited me into the fold. Early on, one of
them was bitching about her sister taking her favourite leather jacket without asking,
and she asked me if I had any siblings and I said I was an only child. I thought she might
have felt bad if I told her the truth, but it’s hard to undo a lie once you start. Now I watch
115 my words around them and I’m sure they can sense my cautiousness, in the same way
that I can tell when my friends at home are minding what they say around me.
The online dating isn’t quite working out either. The problem is it’s hard to reveal
much of myself to anyone without explaining about the missing half. But I’m starting to
accept that, whether I like it or not, my identity will never be entirely my own.
120 I have my head in the clouds thinking about all this as I’m walking around but soon
I find myself stopped outside a hair salon I’d seen a few days ago. I suppose I’ve been
making my way here all along. I enter and ask if they can fit me in. Cut and colour? No,
I tell the woman, no cut, I’m going to grow it out. Just a colour, but not the blonde I have
now, it never suited me anyway. I want to go back to being a brunette, I say.
125 While I’m staring intently at a magazine to avoid the hairdresser’s small talk, a
text comes through from Luke. He hopes my tooth is alright, wants to see me again.
“Promise I’ll try not to go on like a broken record ;)” he writes.
I’m dying to ring Mam and tell her about the hair, she hated the blonde, but it’s three
in the morning in Ireland and the last thing she wants is the phone ringing in the middle
130 of the night. She never wants to hear the phone ring in the middle of the night again. She
prefers Skype anyway, says she likes to be able to see me when she’s talking to me. I
sometimes think it’s because my voice alone is not enough to separate me from Molly. I
text Luke back instead, warn him I’m no longer a blonde. “Same same but different,” he
replies.
135 We meet a few days later near Flinders Street Station in the city centre and walk to a
bar in one of the graffiti-lined laneways. Hip-hop music is spilling out from a window,
and between that and the street art I could be back in New York again, but that’s ok. We
stay for another drink, and another. Luke asks if I’m going to stay in Australia.
“Not for too long,” I say, “I think I’ll be ready to go home soon.”
140 “Can’t keep running away?”
“Something like that.”
“My brother’s living in Dublin, I keep promising to visit him. Maybe I’ll move over
there for a while, he seems to like it. What about you, have you got brothers or sisters?”
“Well, I had a twin sister,” I tell him. “But she passed away.”

(2016)
Anvendt materiale (til brug for Copydan):

“Escape the city, not the comforts”. The Gray Eagle Lodge website, viewed June 2016.
(www.grayeaglelodge.com)
Jenny Flinn. “The rise and rise of ultimate fighting (and why boxing is now so passé)”. The
Conversation website, March 9, 2016, viewed September 2016. (theconversation.com)
Peter McCabe. “How many more young people must die before mixed martial arts is banned?”. The
Guardian website, April 15, 2016, viewed June 2016. (www.theguardian.com)
Cameron Mee. “In defence of mixed martial arts”. The Roar website, November 20, 2015, viewed July
2015. (www.theroar.com)
Anne Hayden. “Same Same but Different”. The Irish Times website, April 2, 2016, viewed June 2016.
(irishtimes.com)
Image credit: UFC 190 by Shutterstock. Jenny Flinn. “The rise and rise of ultimate fighting (and
why boxing is now so passé)”. The Conversation website, March 9, 2016, viewed September 2016.
(theconversation.com)
João Carvalho died after an MMA fight this week. Photograph: Nobrega Team/Facebook. Peter
McCabe. “How many more young people must die before mixed martial arts is banned?”. The Guardian
website, April 15, 2016, viewed June 2016. (www.theguardian.com)
AGYM 171-21B