Comprehension For '0'Level Read the passage below and then answer all the questions which follow.

Parachute Jumping At first the training was merely physical training and the drill of jumping off a platform On a matress, with one's feet together. One of my daughters, now aged four, Who likes showing how to jump off the nursery table, reminds me constantly of the Glee with which we practised. But all this was very much like any other form of Physical training, and did not give one much idea of what the actual jumping would Be like As the time came nearer, I certainly began to wish heartily that 1 had not Got to do it. It was clean too, from the talk of the others that we were all thinking hard about it, and the instructor kept emphasising that, no matter how often you jumped, you always felt frightened. So I watched the face of the instructor when he was about to do a demonstration jump before us. Although he seemed as tough and matter-of-fact a sergeant as one could meet, I felt sure from his look as the warning bulb lit up that he too felt the strain. I knew I was going to be very frightened indeed, but believed that somehow we should all get through with it. That feeling increased in the plane itself. There were nine of us, and the first eight were to jump in pairs. This meant that only two left the plane each time it passed over the landing area and that, even if they were slow, they would still drop within the area. As I was in the fourth pair, I would have to watch most of the others go first but, although the waiting increased the length of strain, it also increased one's confidence. It is no criticism of the others to say that they were all obviously frightened too. I remember watching them as we all chewed away at the chewing-gum, which our sergeant with efficient but not overconcerned decency had produced as we entered. He explained that it was always best to take it before a jump and that, apart from helping one when feeling strained, it prevented one from getting thirsty. The plane circled over the landing-ground. The door through which we were to jump was open and we could hear the air rushing past outside. The plane circled again, the warning light went up by the doorway, the first man took hold of either side of it, with his feet together almost out of the plane, ready to wrench himself through. He had to wrench hard to get out before the airstream knocked him against the side of the door. Then the green light went on; the dispatcher gave him the order and he vanished through the door, followed a moment later by his companion. The dispatcher looked out behind the plane and turned at once with a grin and his thumbs up. We could hear little because of the noise of the engine and the slipstream, but we knew that the first two parachutes had opened, and that the pair were already drifting down, hundreds of yards away from us When my turn came I was thinking hard about how to junp out property and not asking myself whether to jump or not. Then the green light went up. the man in front of me shot out: I clutched the sides of the doorway, while the air outside the plane - and in fact the whole of space - seemed to be screeching past. One, two - the dispatcher was beside me counting with his arm like a boxing referee - then the order to jump and, looking fixedly ahead so as not to look down, I wrenched with both arms. 5. The next half-second - for it could have been no longer - is something which anyone who has experienced a first jump can ever forget, or indeed contemplate calmly I find for instance that I have been driving my pencil with several times its usual

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pressure on to the paper as I write about it) - nor, I fear, is anyone likely to be able to imagine it merely from a description. The parachutist jumps from a static atmosphere inside the plane into the slipstream flowing past outside of perhaps 250 to 300 kilometres an hour, and immediately it seems that a rushing mighty wind or raging torrent has struck one side of his body. I have never felt so helpless in the power of blind physical forces, completely beyond the control of my own will. To be rolled about and knocked over by waves might feel something like it, if you could imagine the sea about you moving at twice the pace of a racing motorist. 6. Then suddenly there was a hard tug at my shoulders, and the sensation of being a snowflake in a blizzard ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The parachute had opened I looked up and felt inside me a great surging gratitude. I seemed to be suspended snug and safe, as I had lain years before rocking gently in a garden hammock, and the contrast and the relief was so sudden and over-whelming tharl still wish they had never ended. Craning back, I could see the parachute swaying above me. My shoulder cords were twisted and I was spinning slowly round and round like someone with ropes twisted on a swing. Section:2 Reading for Meaning From Paragraph I Explicit meaning 5. Why did the men jump off a platform on to a mattress during their training? [I] 6. Why did the instructor stress that "you always felt frightened?"[2] 7. What two qualities of the instructor are mentioned here?[2] 8. Pick out one word, which shows that the instructor was frightened.[1] From Paragraph 2 Explicit meaning 9. Pick out a phrase from the paragraph, which is paradoxical. Implicit meaning 10. The sergeant had given them the chewing gum with "efficient but not over-concerned decency." Explain how he behaved with particular reference to the bold words: [2]

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[2] Explicit meaning 11. What were the two effects of chewing gum?[2] From Paragraph 3 Explicit meaning 12. Pick one word that suggests a lot of effort was required.[I]

From the whole of Passage Explicit meaning 19. Choose five of the following words. For each of them give one word or short phrase (of not more than seven words) which has the same meaning that the word has in the passage. 1. glee (paragraph I, line 4) 3. drifting (paragraph 3, line 35) 5. fixedly (paragraph 4, line 41) 7. static (paragraph 5, line 47) 8. surging (paragraph 6, line 56) ______________________________ ____________________________ __________________________ ____________________________ ___________________________ 2. obviously (paragraph 2, line 20) ______________________________ 4. clutched (paragraph 4, line 38) _____________________________ 6. contemplate (paragraph 5, line 44) __________________________