Bazoul’s New Secondary school School year: 2020- 2021

Level: 1st year (Sci. stream) duration: 2 hours

The first-term Exam of English

PART ONE: Reading (15pts)
Read the text carefully and do the activities

Nowadays, people increasingly choose to turn to the Internet and especially to social media
for news and other types of content, while often not questioning the trustworthiness and reliability of
the information. In February and March 2020, we conducted an online survey to find out if our
teenagers could evaluate news sources and spot fake news. We used a nationally representative
sample of more than 1,000 teenagers aged between 13 and 16 years old.
Although 44% of the respondents said they could tell the difference between fake news
stories and real ones, more than 30% who said that they had shared a news story online during the
past six months admitted that they didn't get it exactly right. They said they later found out that a story
they shared was wrong or inaccurate.
Although most of the teenagers trusted their families more than any other news source, they
said that social media were their preferred news source. Thirty-nine percent said they preferred to get
their news from social media, versus 36% who chose family, teachers and/or friends and 24% who
selected traditional media. Teenagers said Facebook is their number one social media news source.
Adapted from: https://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/10/health/fake-news-kids-common-sense-media/index.html

A/ Comprehension and Interpreting(8pts)

1. The text is ……………………………………..
Choose the appropriate answer.
a. A web article b. a letter c. a questionnaire
2. Say whether the following statements are true or false.
a. The informants of the survey are a group of adults.
b. The majority of informants could differentiate between fake news stories and real ones.
c. Most of the informants believe in the news they hear from their families.
d. Most of them use Facebook as their primary source of information.
3. Answer the following questions according to the text.
1. Why was the survey conducted?
2. What is the most popular source of news among the informants?
3. Did the teenagers say they always shared real and truthful news stories?
4. Say who or what the words in bold refer to in the text.
They (§ 2) …………………….. their (§ 3) ………………………
5. Choose a title for the text.
a. Dangers of social media
b. Is 'fake news' fooling kids? New report says yes
c. The different sources of news stories
B/ Text exploration (7pts)
1. Find in the text words closest in meaning to the following.
Discover (§ 1) = ……………………. Informants §2 = …………………..
2. Fill in the table below.

verb noun
find
reliability

3. Complete sentence ‘b’ so that it means the same as sentence ‘a’.

A. a) A respondent said he could tell the difference between fake news stories and real ones.
b) A respondent said, “……………………………………………………………

B. a) “Do you trust the news on social media?” the reporter asked them.
b) the reporter asked them…………………………………………………………

C. a) “Could you answer this survey, please?” he asked the teenagers.

b) He asked the teenagers………………………………………………………………………
D. a) A teenager said, “I always check the source of the information I find.”
b) A teenager said ……………………………………………………………………………………….
4. classify the following words according the pronunciation of their final “ed”.
Conducted- asked- preferred- used

/d/ /Id/ /t/

PART TWO: Writing (5pts)

Topic one: Many people think that teenagers today hate going to school and find school
subjects boring. You decided to conduct a survey to find out if that was true.
-Report your findings using the information in the table below.

Number of informants: 70
Age: 15- 17

Question Results/ findings

-Do you go to school? Yes: 70 No: 00

-What level are you? 1st year (20) 2nd year (10) 3rd year (40)

- Do you like school? Yes: 65 No: 5

-What are your favourite English: 27 Science: 30 Mathematics:13

subjects?
Topic two: You noticed that one of your friends is wasting time on social media because they
do not really know how use them effectively and reasonably. Write to him/ her an informal
letter to advise him/ her on how to better use those media.