CSEC ENGLISH
Hello there! If all goes to plan, you will be writing your English A and English B exams this coming week. We all—parents, teachers, Examiners—all of us know that you have had a very difficult few months, and we want you to know that our very best wishes go with you as you write your exams. Go in there and shine!! You can do it!
And for those of you who will be writing exams next year, stay with us. From next week we will be methodically going through your English B texts with you, and helping you to become better writers by way of our English A exercises.
Read on now, and enjoy today’s CSEC English page!
ENGLISH B—PAPER 1
Read this poem two or three times before you attempt to answer the questions that follow it. Check Page 6B for the answers.
A song in the front yard
I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley, To where the charity children play. I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine. My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face.
Gwendolyn Brooks 5. Which of the following is the mother’s opinion?
(A) George went to jail last winter for selling a gate.
(B) George is certain to end up in jail eventually.
(C) The authorities are not getting George to jail in a timely manner. (D) The authorities should have put George in jail sooner.
6. The speaker’s words, ‘Honest, I do’ are significant because
(A) she thinks her mother might not believe her.
(B) she thinks it’s fine that George will be taken to jail.
(C) she thinks it’s fine that George sold their back gate.
(D) it focuses our attention on the standards of behaviour required by her
mother despite the environment.
7. The speaker says she’d ‘like to be a bad woman’ because
(A) she wants to wear fashionable clothes and make-up when she gets older.
(B) she thinks that being a bad woman means dressing in ‘brave stockings.’
(C) she thinks she would look good in make-up.
(D) she does not understand that her mother suspects Johnnie Mae will end up as
a prostitute.
8. The mother ‘sneers’ because
(A) she does not believe the kids in the alley actually have ‘wonderful fun.’ (B) she is a very haughty woman.
(C) she is mocking her daughter.
(D) she does not want her daughter to admire the children in the alley.
9. The rose in stanza 1 suggests
(A) the girl’s beauty.
(B) that the girl is the product of a cultured, respectable upbringing. (C) beauty that gets sick and dies.
(D) someone pretty but prickly.
10. The rose in the front yard and the ‘untended and hungry weed’ in the back yard are _____________ respectively for children who are carefully raised and children whose training is neglected.
(A) personifications (B) comparisons
11. The mother in the poem is
(A) anxious to keep her daughter away from the bad influences in the neighbourhood.
(B) unfriendly and judgmental towards women who wear make-up and black
stockings.
(C) eager for George to be punished for his criminal behaviour.
(D) suspicious that her daughter is misbehaving.
12. Which of these statements is accurate? (A) The poem has a regular rhyme scheme. (B) The poem is an example of free verse. (C) The poem uses rhyme strategically.
(D) The poem has regular stanzas.
13. The poem is written from the point of view of
(A) a charity child who envies the advantages her rich neighbour enjoys. (B) an educated mother in a poor neighbourhood.
(C) a protected child who naively envies the freedom that other kids enjoy. (D) a social worker who is interested in methods of child-raising.
PAIRING ANTONYMS
(C) similes (D) metaphors
In List B, you will find an antonym (word with an opposite meaning) for each of the words in List A. See if you can pair them off correctly.
List A: Temporary, manual, hopeful, biased, celebrated, confident, rural, cultured, initial, positive, forthright, meticulous.
List B: Urban, skeptical, unprejudiced, notorious, permanent, sloppy, unsure, barbaric, automatic, reticent, pessimistic, final.
CAUGHT IN THE SLIPS
People sometimes get ‘caught in the slips’ when they mix up these two words: trashed and thrashed.
Turn to 6B