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BBA PRACTICE EXAMINATION

2014
ENGLISH
Scholarship
QUESTION BOOKLET
93001
Time allowed: Three hours
This examination paper has THREE sections:
Section A Close Reading of unfamiliar texts
Section B Response to literature and language
Section C Exploring issues in literature and language
Write THREE essays in total, ONE for EACH question, in the separate Answer
Booklet. If you need more rell paper, ask the Supervisor. Name any extra sheets
you use, and hand all of these in with your Answer Booklet at the end of the
examination.
Each essay is worth eight marks.
Check that this Question Booklet has pages 2-6 in the correct order.
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STUDENTS NAME

BBA Educational Resources 2014

Outcome Description
The student will respond critically to demanding texts and questions by means of extended
and informed argument
Scholarship Criteria
The student will:
demonstrate extensive knowledge of texts and methods used in crafting them
respond critically with mature ideas and independent refection
sustain coherent, substantiated and engaging argument
Scholarship with Outstanding Performance Criteria
In addition to meeting the criteria for Scholarship, the student will:
demonstrate an exceptional level of sustained critical response showing consistent
ability to synthesize knowledge, understanding and argument
HAND THIS BOOKLET TO THE SUPERVISOR AT THE END OF THE ASSESSMENT.
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You have three hours to answer THREE questions from this booklet.
Write a response, in the form of an essay of at least 800 words, to EACH of the following:
SECTION A
ONE topic from SECTION B (topics 1-14)
ONE topic from SECTION C (topics 15-24)
You must write a total of THREE essays.
Each essay should:
demonstrate an extensive knowledge of the texts and the methods used in crafting
them
respond critically with mature ideas and independent refection
sustain coherent, substantiated and engaging argument
show accurate use and control of the conventions of academic writing
USE THIS SPACE FOR PLANNING.
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SECTION A: CLOSE READING OF UNFAMILIAR TEXTS
Write an essay comparing and contrasting the ways the writers explore inner worlds in Texts A and B.
The essay must focus on the way(s) each writer has crafted the text by using techniques to reinforce the content. Techniques
include phrasing, vocabulary, point of view, positioning of the reader, gurative language, and structure.
Late last year, a designer and a geographer who met at M.I.T.
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revealed that theyd spent
much of 2013 mapping every single swimming pool in Los Angeles 43,123 of them, to
be exact. Their satellite photos documented all the little aquamarine ovals and rectangles in a
huge 74-book project called The Big Atlas of L.A. Pools. Though the cultural conversation
mostly revolved around how unsettlingly easy it was for them to locate and discover personal
details relating to each pools owner address, property value, even sex-offender status I
found myself fantasizing instead about disappearing, and using those pools to do it.
What would it be like to follow their hypothetical pool-hopping itinerary and swim freely,
from one backyard to another? Submerge yourself, and suddenly youre under the worlds
radar. Each pool, I saw, was in fact a potential portal: a way to shed the noise, to swim to
stillness.
This isnt as bad as it sounds. The medium makes it necessary to unplug; the blunting of
the senses by water encourages internal retreat. Though we dont all reach nirvana when we
swim, swimming may well be that last refuge from connectivity and, for some, the only
way to nd the solitary self.
Most days, I get into the neighborhood pool by 8:30 a.m. Even when theres frost on the
ground, the water is warm. Theres nothing to look at, once the goggles fog over. Sound?
The sloshing of water pretty much cancels out everything else. We enter the meditative
state induced by counting laps, and observe the subtle play of light as the sun moves across
the lanes. We sing songs, or make to-do lists, or fantasize about what were going to eat for
breakfast. Submersion creates the space to be free, to stretch, without having to contend with
constant external chatter. It creates internal quiet, too. Water, then, is a bubble in which all
social pressure is easily eluded.
We are left alone with our thoughts, wherever they may take us. A lot of creative thinking
happens when were not actively aware of it. The enforced solitude is at odds with where
we are as a culture. Our gyms are full of televisions tuned to Sports Center and cable news.
Were tethered to our devices, even at bedtime. With that pervasive lack of self-control, who
has the willpower to turn off technology for any meaningful period of time? I submit: Sliding
into the water is the easiest way to detach from your phone.
This is not to say that swimmers are natural Zen masters. I asked Dara Torres, who has
logged countless training hours for her ve Olympics, what she thinks about when shes
swimming. Im always doing ve things at once, she told me by phone (at the time, she was
driving a car). So when I get in the water, I think about all the things that I have to do. But
sometimes I go into a state I dont really think about anything. The important thing, she
says, is that the time is yours. You can use it for anything. It depends where your head is at
its a reection of where you are.
The reection of where you are: in essence, a status update to you, and only you. The
experience is egalitarian. You dont have to be a great swimmer to appreciate the benets of
sensory solitude and the equilibrium the water can bring.
So, quickly now: everybody in the pool. It wont be long before Google Goggles.
Source (adapted): The Self-Refecting Pool, Bonnie Tsui, Opinion, The New York Times, 14/2/2014.
www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/opinion/.../the-self-refecting-pool.html . Accessed 28/2/2014
Glossed abbreviation:
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MIT = Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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TEXT A
The Self-Reecting Pool
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TEXT B
The trouble with poetry
In the poem which is like a house the poet is looking
out a window. This is to say, he is looking into his own
furnished, sensitive mind. Sometimes he doesnt see anything
out the window at all, its so reective, and thats one kind of poem.
Sometimes he sees something you wouldnt notice but
because hes sensitive he gets worked up about it. Not too much.
A thrush on the lawn, for example, yes, a lyric thrush pecking
at the soil, its bright, hard eye, a light rain falling,
and it reminds the poet somehow of his friends last days
at the hospital, and what he said to his friend, or didnt say,
and meanwhile his hands are doing nothing in particular
and so hes now peeling fruit, maybe a pear, the esh gleaming
wetly under the knife. So theres the pear, the speckled rind
spooling naturally into a self-deprecating, slightly goofy anecdote
to offset the gloominess about his friend. Hes sensitive, not morbid.
His glass of chilled sauvignon blanc there it is, in his hand
catches the yellowy light. And hes a poet, not a novelist,
so after a page hes winding it all up, the friend, the pear,
his wine the colour almost of grass, the rain, and evening coming on,
nishing, of course, with the thrush on the lawn, its head cocked,
bent to the ground, acutely listening to the unseen thing tunnelling there.
-Tim Upperton
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Source: Tim Upperton Best NZ Poems 2011: International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University.
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/iiml/bestnzpoems/BNZP11/t1-g1-t15-body-d1. html. Accessed 15/2/2014
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SECTION B: RESPONSE TO LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE
Write a coherent and engaging essay in response to ONE of the statements numbered 114. Use the
statement as the focus for an in-depth discussion of one or more long texts OR a range of short texts.
Your essay should refect independent thinking and show extensive knowledge of appropriate text(s), their
purposes, and the methods used in crafting them.
Note: No content or quotations used in your answer to this section should be repeated in Section C.
STATEMENTS (Choose ONE)
1. Poetry blends a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order.
2. The spine of poetry is its form.
3. Non-ction writers should not only disclose the truth but also offer useful commentary on it.
4. Films market ideas to passive audiences.
5. Films laud anti-heroes.
6. Drama (non-Shakespearean) shows us that condence triumphs over competence.
7. In Shakespearean drama, through disguises and masks, characters enjoy unlimited self-
expression.
8. Shakespeare shows us that leadership is initiated by strength and sustained by cunning.
9. Scenes in novels are best constructed by quirky narrators.
10. The purpose of novels is moral scrutiny.
11. Short stories offer writers the ideal form to explore isolation and fragmentation.
12. Media texts constantly balance the need for provocation and analysis.
13. New media offer concise opportunities for wordplay.
14. Analysis of political language is the best protection of our democracy.
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SECTION C: EXPLORING ISSUES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE
Write a coherent and engaging essay in response to ONE of the statements numbered 15 24.
Your essay should refect independent thinking about an issue and show extensive knowledge of a
range of appropriate texts, their purposes, and the methods used in crafting them.
Note: No content or quotations used in your answer to Section B should be repeated in this section.
STATEMENTS (Choose ONE)
15. Pomp, inanity and treachery are the writers targets.
16. Words are planted in dictionaries but fower in the hands of writers.
17. The interaction of eye and text is creative.
18. Literature persuades us that life is a tale told by an idiot.
19. Engagement with ideas but resistance to them is the contemporary state of readership.
20. Successful plots take us on a journey of fear and surprise but always return us safely.
21. Writers imply, readers infer.
22. Literature is most valuable when it acknowledges the efcacy of science.
23. Writers sleight of hand must not be seen.
24. Literature is the antidote to sentimentality.

BBA Educational Resources 2014