CARIBBEAN E XAM I NAT I O N S COUNCIL

CARIBBEAN SECONDARY EDUCATION CERTIFICATE®

EXAMINATION
‘‘*’’Barcode Area”*”
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11 JANUARY 2017 (p.m.)

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SUBJECT ENGLISH B – Paper 01

PROFICIENCY GENERAL

REGISTRATION NUMBER

SCHOOL/CENTRE NUMBER

NAME OF SCHOOL/CENTRE

CANDIDATE’S FULL NAME (FIRST, MIDDLE, LAST)

‘‘*’’Barcode Area”*”

DATE OF BIRTH D D M M Y Y Y Y
Current Bar Code

SIGNATURE __________________________________________________

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FORM TP 2017009 JANUARY 2017

CARIBBEAN E XAM I NAT I O N S COUNCIL

CARIBBEAN SECONDARY EDUCATION CERTIFICATE®

EXAMINATION

ENGLISH B

Paper 01 – General Proficiency

1 hour 45 minutes

READ THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY.

1. This paper consists of THREE questions. Each question is worth 20 marks.

2. Answer ALL questions.

3. Write your answers in the spaces provided in this answer booklet.

4. Do NOT write in the margins.

5. You are advised to take some time to read through the paper and plan your answers.

6. If you need to rewrite any answer and there is not enough space to do so on the
original page, you must use the extra lined page(s) provided at the back of this
booklet. Remember to draw a line through your original answer.

7. If you use the extra page(s) you MUST write the question number clearly in
the box provided at the top of the extra page(s) and, where relevant, include
the question part beside the answer.

DO NOT TURN THIS PAGE UNTIL YOU ARE TOLD TO DO SO.

Copyright © 2015 Caribbean Examinations Council

All rights reserved.
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SECTION A – DRAMA

1. Read the extract below carefully and answer ALL the questions that follow.

Matilda and Betty are busily putting the finishing touches to the house in preparation for Pat’s
arrival.

BETTY: Mamma, I think that’s them coming now!

(Both look excitedly at each other, waiting. A knock is heard at the door.)

5 BETTY: I’ll get it, Mamma. Pat!

PAT: Well my little baby sister, how you’ve grown! (She kisses her cheeks and sees
Mamma.) Mamma, how are you?

MATILDA: Pat, my child, you sure look good. I’m glad to see you come home.

PAT: It’s rather nice to be back home after three years, Mamma.

10 MATILDA: You like Jamaica, Pat?

PAT: I made the most of my time there until I could get my BA. (All smile proudly.) But
you know, now that I’m back home, as I gazed at the old homes and the same old
narrow streets everything suddenly seemed so small. Even this house, Mamma
… nothing has really changed. What I mean is that everything is so teeny-weeny.
15 Why, I feel suffocated already.

(She takes her purse from the table, opens it, takes a pack of cigarettes from it, lights one and
smokes. All around are stunned.

(Junior comes into the room.)

PAT: (Drily) Hi, big brother! You certainly have grown. Why, I have to look up to you
20 now.

JUNIOR: Well, yes … I guess so.

PAT: (Sarcastically) Only in some things though. (Junior is a little surprised.) By the
way, Junior, thanks for the twenty dollars you so faithfully sent me every month.
It certainly did come in handy for lipstick, cigarettes and the likes.

25 JUNIOR: (Astounded) Lipstick … cigarettes … and the likes! I hope “the likes” means your
room, rent and food.

PAT: Rent and food? That couldn’t begin to give me a comfortable room let alone
nourishment. No, Junior, my scholarship did all that. Didn’t Mamma tell you all
this?
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30 JUNIOR: (Very angrily) I’ve just finished seeing who you are, Pat. So that’s the way it goes!
Three long years I’m here working myself to death, scraping together every cent
I could get, doing without lunch in the day, can’t even afford to go to the movies
on Saturday, like other boys, just to make up the twenty dollars for you to buy
lipstick, cigarettes and the likes.

35 PAT: Now just a minute, Junior. Why are you so upset? I think you’re being very unfair.
You’re trying to compare me with yourself now. I’m a different kind of person.
Because you don’t care for the finer things of life, why shouldn’t I?

JUNIOR: So you’re different … and Junior, he’s just a small brain kid who don’t care for the
“finer things of life”, so he takes what money he would buy these things with and
40 gives it to his precious, “different” sister. So you had to have lipstick; you had to
have cigarettes; you had to have “the likes”. What about me? Does it matter to
you whether I have shoes, clothes or even lunch at lunchtime? Tell me that!

PAT: (Deliberately) I should be angry at you, Junior, but I’m not. In fact, I feel sorry
for you. Don’t you think that it’s time for you to face up to the realities of life?
45 Why should you spend money on fancy clothes when you don’t need more than a
few pairs of dungarees? You don’t meet the type of people I meet or go the kind
of places I go.
Adapted from S. Wallace,“The Chance”. In Back Home:
An Original Anthology, The Nassau Guardian (1844) Ltd, 2005, pp. 20–26.

(a) Describe what is happening in lines 1–10.

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(2 marks)

(b) What impression of Pat is created in lines 11–15? Support your answer with evidence
from lines 11–15.

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(3 marks)

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(c) Show how the stage directions in lines 1–17 are used to create mood in the extract.

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(3 marks)

(d) Describe the relationship between Pat and Junior. Support your answer with evidence
from the extract.

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(3 marks)

(e) Explain the dramatic effect of Pat’s lighting up a cigarette and smoking (lines 16–17).

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(2 marks)

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(f) What does Pat’s treatment of her family suggest about her attitude to education? Support
your answer with evidence from the extract.

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(3 marks)

(g) Explain TWO ways in which the writer builds tension in the extract.

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(4 marks)

Total 20 marks

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SECTION B – POETRY

2. Read the poem below carefully and answer ALL the questions that follow.

Mother in the Morning

Mother sips tea in her garden on mornings,

abandoning the kitchen that echoes with breakfast,
lunch kits, laces untied, and the dripping faucet.
She sits on a cracked footstool in silence
5 as the heat from the teacup rises,
whispers warm comforting secrets
only she can understand.

There are sharp things in the ground

and her hands are soft
10 But she never wears gloves.
She is not afraid of the damp, dark earth
with its shards of buried glass and crawling creatures.
She has planted hope,
seen it grow tall.

15 When my mother’s hands are in the dew-damp earth

and she is fragile in the morning light,
sharp things are buried in her,
and I realize how the fluorescent kitchen light dims her,
hides the secret flower she is growing
20 that only blooms when she does.

Danielle Boodoo-Fortune, “Mother in the Morning”.

In Coming up Hot, Peekash Press, 2015, p. 34.

(a) Describe what is happening in stanza 1.

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(2 marks)

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(b) (i) Who is the speaker in the poem?

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(1 mark)

(ii) State ONE observation the speaker makes about the mother’s relationship with
the garden. Support your answer with evidence from the poem.

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(2 marks)

(c) Identify the figurative device used in ONE of the following and comment on its effectiveness:

• “as the heat from the teacup rises, / whispers warm comforting secrets” (lines 5–6)

• “I realize how the fluorescent kitchen light dims her” (line 18)

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(3 marks)

(d) Comment on the poet’s use of garden imagery in stanza 2.

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(e) Explain the meaning of the following lines in the poem:

(i) “She has planted hope, / seen it grow tall” (lines 13–14)

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(2 marks)

(ii) “hides the secret flower she is growing / that only blooms when she does”
(lines 19–20)

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(2 marks)

(f) Identify ONE example of contrast in the poem and show how it highlights the speaker’s
attitude to the mother.

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(3 marks)

(g) Suggest another title for the poem. Justify your response with evidence from the poem.

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(3 marks)

Total 20 marks
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NOTHING HAS BEEN OMITTED.

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SECTION C – PROSE FICTION

3. Read the extract below carefully and answer ALL the questions that follow.

My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. “Of course you
can be prodigy1, too,” my mother told me when I was nine. “You can be best anything.”

I pictured this prodigy part of me as many different images. I was a dainty ballerina girl,
waiting to hear the right music that would send me floating on my tiptoes. I was Cinderella stepping
5 from her pumpkin carriage with sparkly cartoon music filling the air. In all of my imaginings, I
was filled with a sense that I would become perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I
would be beyond reproach.

And then I saw what seemed to be the prodigy side of me. I looked at my reflection. The
girl staring back at me was angry, powerful. This girl and I were the same. I had new thoughts,
10 wilful thoughts, or rather thoughts filled with lots of won’t. I won’t let her change me, I promised
myself, I won’t be what I’m not.

One day my mother was watching The Ed Sullivan Show. She seemed entranced by the
music. It was being pounded out by a little Chinese girl, about nine years old. Three days after my
mother told me what my schedule would be for piano lessons and piano practice. She had talked to
15 Mr Chong, a retired piano teacher and my mother had traded house cleaning services for weekly
lessons and a piano for me to practise on every day. I soon found out why Old Chong had retired
from teaching piano. He was deaf. I learnt that I could be lazy and get away with mistakes, lots
of mistakes. If I hit the wrong notes, I never corrected myself. I just kept playing in rhythm. I did
pick up the basics pretty quickly. But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different
20 that I learned to play only the most earsplitting preludes, the most discordant hymns.

A few weeks later, Old Chong and my mother conspired to have me play in a talent show.
My parents invited all the couples from the Joy Luck Club to witness my debut. When my turn
came, I was very confident. It was as if I knew, without a doubt, that the prodigy side of me really
did exist. I had no fear whatsoever, no nervousness. As I sat down I envisioned Ed Sullivan
25 rushing up to introduce me to everyone on TV.

And I started to play. It was so beautiful. I was so caught up in how lovely I looked that
at first I didn’t worry how I would sound. So it was a surprise to me when I hit the first wrong
note and realized something didn’t sound quite right. And then I hit another and another followed
that. Yet I couldn’t stop playing, as though my hands were bewitched. I kept thinking my fingers
30 would adjust themselves back, like a train switching to the right track. I played this strange jumble
through two repeats, the sour notes staying with me all the way to the end. Then I saw my mother’s
face, her stricken face.

Adapted from Amy Tan, “Two Kinds”. In The Woman That I Am.
St. Martin’s Press, 1994, pp. 276–281.

1
genius

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(a) (i) Who is the narrator?

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(1 mark)

(ii) What narrative point of view is used in the extract?

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(1 mark)

(b) State TWO qualities of the daughter. Support EACH response with evidence from the
extract.

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(4 marks)

(c) Describe the relationship between the narrator and her mother. Support your response
with evidence from the extract.

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(3 marks)

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(d) Identify the figurative device used in ONE of the following and comment on its effectiveness:

• “I kept thinking my fingers would adjust themselves back, like a train switching to the
right track.” (lines 29–30)

• “the sour notes staying with me all the way to the end.” (line 31)

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(3 marks)

(e) Comment on ONE example of irony in the extract.

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(3 marks)

(f) Identify ONE theme in the extract. Support your answer with evidence from the extract.

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(2 marks)

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(g) What lesson might the narrator learn from her experience at the talent show? Support
your answer with evidence from the extract.

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(3 marks)

Total 20 marks

END OF TEST

IF YOU FINISH BEFORE TIME IS CALLED, CHECK YOUR WORK ON THIS TEST.

The Council has made every effort to trace copyright holders. However, if any have been inadvertently
overlooked, or any material has been incorrectly acknowledged, CXC will be pleased to correct this at
the earliest opportunity.

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EXTRA SPACE

If you use this extra page, you MUST write the question number clearly in the box provided.

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 CANDIDATE’S RECEIPT

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATE:

1. Fill in all the information requested clearly in capital letters.

0 1 2 1 9 0 1 0
TEST CODE:

SUBJECT: ENGLISH B – Paper 01

PROFICIENCY: GENERAL

REGISTRATION NUMBER:

FULL NAME: ________________________________________________________________

(BLOCK LETTERS)

Signature: ____________________________________________________________________

Date: ________________________________________________________________________

2. Ensure that this slip is detached by the Supervisor or Invigilator and given to you when you
hand in this booklet.

3. Keep it in a safe place until you have received your results.

INSTRUCTION TO SUPERVISOR/INVIGILATOR:

Sign the declaration below, detach this slip and hand it to the candidate as his/her receipt for this booklet
collected by you.

I hereby acknowledge receipt of the candidate’s booklet for the examination stated above.

Signature: _____________________________
Supervisor/Invigilator

Date: _________________________________