CE Английский

Пример теста по Common Entrance Английский

YEAR 9 (13+) ENTRANCE EXAMINATION

April 2016
for entry in September 2017

ENGLISH

Your Name: ____________________________________________________________

Your School: ____________________________________________________________

Time allowed: 1 hour
Equipment needed: Pen and lined paper.
Information for candidates:

1. Dictionaries are NOT allowed.
2. Write your name and school on this page.
3. Write your answers on the separate paper provided. Please put your name on all the sheets of paper you use.
4. There are 2 sections in this paper Section A and B. You should attempt both of them.
5. The paper will be marked out of 30. The marks for each question are indicated in square brackets [ ].

SECTION A

Read the following extract and answer all the questions that follow:

The gates had shut to with a crash behind us, the dusty high-road was out of sight and I became aware that this was not the drive I had imagined. This was not a broad and spacious thing of gravel, flanked with neat turf at either side.

This drive twisted and turned as a serpent, scarce wider in places than a path and about our heads was a great colonnade of trees, whose branches nodded and intermingled with one another, making an archway for us, like the roof of a church. It was very silent, very still. Even the midday sun would not penetrate the interlacing of those green leaves, they were too thickly entwined one with another, and only little flickering patches of warm light would come in intermittent waves to dapple the drive with gold. On we went, over a little bridge that spanned a narrow stream, and still this drive that was not drive twisted and turned like an enchanted ribbon through the dark and silent woods, penetrating even deeper to the very heart of the forest itself, and still there was no clearing, no space to hold a house.

The length of it began to nag at my nerves; it must be this turn, or round that further bend; but as I leant forward in my seat I was for ever disappointed, there was no house, no field, no broad and friendly garden, nothing but silence. The lodge gates were a memory, and the road something belonging to another time, another world.

Suddenly I saw a clearing in the dark drive ahead, and a patch of sky, and in a moment the dark trees had thinned, the nameless shrubs had disappeared, and on either side of us was a wall of the colour, blood-red, reaching far above our heads. We were amongst the rhododendrons1. There was something bewildering, even shocking, about the suddenness of their discovery. The woods had not prepared me for them. They startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic. These were monsters, rearing to the sky, massed like a battalion, too beautiful I thought, too powerful; they were not plants at all.

Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier

Questions Section A

1. In what ways is the drive not as the narrator had expected? [2 marks]
2. What do you think is meant by “this drive twisted and turned as a serpent”? (line 4) [3 marks]
3. What kind of atmosphere is created through the way in which this passage is written? You should include quotations to support your ideas.

[10 marks]

SECTION B

1. Continue the story in whatever way you would like. You do not have to write a long piece but should think about using good vocabulary and writing accurately.

[15 marks]

Total: [30 marks]

Glossary

1 Rhododendron – large woodland plant