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 016

Read the text below and complete the following tasks.

What's black and white and adored all over - and can cost a zoo more than three million
dollars a year? He's got chubby cheeks. He naps a lot. (1) ….He lives with his mother. Not exactly
the kind of character you'd expect to find at the center of high finance, international diplomacy, fan
frenzy, government scrutiny, and scientific fascination. But Tai Shan is a giant panda cub, and that
makes him, well, not your average bear.
Hosting giant pandas costs each zoo an average of 2.6 million dollars a year, and that's if
no babies arrive. Add a cub, and the budget tops three million dollars. Add two cubs (nearly half of
panda pregnancies produce twins), and the tab approaches four million dollars. "Nobody," says
David Wildt, head of the National Zoo's reproductive sciences program, "would ever commit this
kind of money to any other species."
(2) … . Could be sheer cuteness. Giant pandas possess the charisma that politicians and
movie stars dream of - and people crave a glimpse. The National Zoo's Internet panda cams,
which follow the daily activities of Tai Shan and his mom, draw an average of two million online
visits a month. In the first three months that Tai Shan was on public display, visits to the zoo
jumped by as much as 50 percent over prior years. Adoring fans pack the railing at the Giant
Panda Habitat shoulder to shoulder. (3) …
Scarcity also boosts the bears' cachet. Giant pandas are excruciatingly rare. Even other
famously endangered mammals - tigers, gorillas, black rhinos, Asian elephants - outnumber them,
both in the wild and in captivity. (4) ... Such a precise figure is questionable, especially for a hard-
to-spot species that occupies isolated and often virtually impassable mountain forests. In captivity,
there were only 188 pandas worldwide at the end of 2005: the 11 U.S. residents, a handful of
others in Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Germany, and Austria, and all the rest in zoos and research
centers in their native China.
(Lynne Warren, PANDA, Inc., National Geographic, July 2006)

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. Fingers point, voices coo, faces crease in blissful grins.

B. China's most recent national giant panda survey reported that 1,590 of the black-and-white
bears survive in the rugged hills of Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu Provinces.
C. He eats with his hands.
D. The number of giant pandas has dropped drastically.
E. What makes pandas so special?

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

1. adored
2. scarcity
3. captivity

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. What is one of the reasons that pandas are so popular with people?
A. They eat a lot.
B. They are cute.
C. They are expensive.
D. They are rare.

2. What makes pandas special, financially speaking?

A. Pandas cost a lot of money.
B. They are expensive to keep.
C. They are profitable.
D. Funds are allocated to their care that no other species would obtain.

3. Why is the result of China's most recent national giant panda survey questionable?
A. It was not conducted properly.
B. Because pandas live in remote areas and are hard to spot.
C. Because pandas migrate from area to area.
D. Because the observation period was too short.

5. Comment on the following in about 100 words: Giant pandas possess the charisma that
politicians and movie stars dream of - and people crave a glimpse. 4 points