The Endless Steppe: Esther: Passage One

4EBO/O1
Edexcel IGCSE
English Language B
Sample Assessment Material
NAYAN SIR (ENG.LANGUAGE)
PASSAGE ONE
THE ENDLESS STEPPE: ESTHER
A young girl named Esther goes to a new school in Russia when her family are exiled from Poland in 1941.
The morning I was to go to school for the first time, I woke up in a
blackness as mysterious as the heart of a dark forest, the sounds nearby its
strange beat. But the howl of a wolf way out in the country gave me my
bearings.
I took up my little notebook, and a small stub of pencil, my only academic
possessions. How long would they last? How small could I write?
I quickly got dressed, as warmly as 1 could, although deep winter had not
yet arrived. I pulled a sweater over my thin little blouse, and struggled into
my black leather shoes, which were not only pinching but which were
beginning to crack from the wet and the mud, and endless drying in front
of our little stove. On went my one and only coat, I was ready to go.
Mother had to be at the bakery early that day and so, clutching my
notebook and pencil, I went to school alone. It never occurred to me that
for a child to walk alone down a deserted Siberian road, so obviously a
stranger, required some courage. I was too busy trying to rehearse the
Russian alphabet I would need to know in my new school.
In room number five, a few children in caps and coats were seated at their
desks watching the teacher write on the blackboard. She turned when I
came in and looked at me so severely my heart sank.
'You must be Esther Rudomin. From Poland. Your Russian will be poor.'
It was as if she was reading from a dossier that would determine some sort
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Edexcel IGCSE in English Language (Specification B) Sample Assessment Materials
NAYAN SIR (ENG.LANGUAGE) 01720-362975
4EBO/O1
Edexcel IGCSE
English Language B
of punishment. 'It will be my task to see that you improve it. My name is
Raisa Nikitovna. Go to the last desk of the third row and sit down.'
Without another word, she picked up a book, and called out a page
number. Everyone had a book but me. The feeling must have been
something like being the only soldier without a gun. I leaned towards the
girl next to me and asked if I might share her book. She grudgingly
agreed. She was a very pretty girl with short blonde hair, and eyes the
special blue of northern countries. I asked her name, but she told me to be
quiet; there was absolutely no talking allowed in class.
My first lesson in school in Siberia was memorable for being a chilly

one. It was not only the Russian author's meaning that evaded me, lost as
it was in a sea of strange letters formed in the Russian alphabet, but so
did the book itself - literally. My classmate somehow managed to keep
slipping it out of my field of vision, which forced me to strain, squirm,
and nudge her to bring the book closer. Naturally, I had barely read the
first paragraph when Raisa Nikitovna began to quiz the class. To my
honor, one question was directed at me. As I began to answer in my
halting Russian, all the children turned to stare at me.
When the lesson was finished, Raisa Nikitovna introduced me to the class:
'This is Esther Rudomin, who comes from Poland. As you can tell, she
does not know Russian well and she will have to work hard to catch up.
She will share her books with Svetlana. Stand up, Svetlana. ‘Svetlana
turned out to be the pretty little girl sitting next to me; the prospect of
sharing with her was not heartening. The more attention I got in class, the
more she sulked. I sensed that Svetlana wanted to be the queen bee and
that I had become her natural enemy. This was confirmed when I asked if
I might come to her house and study with her. The answer was a sharp
'No!' I would be allowed to go there to fetch books when she had quite
finished with them, but otherwise I could jolly well trot home and study
alone.
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4EBO/O1
Edexcel IGCSE
English Language B
At the end of my first day at school, I went home and collapsed on the
sofa. Out of the confusion of the day, three giants emerged to be slain:
Svetlana, Raisa Nikitovna, and the Russian alphabet.
From The Endless Steppe, by Esther Hautzig, Puffin, 1993
The Endless Steppe is about Esther Hautzig's childhood. When Esther is 10 years old
she and her family are taken from their home in Vilna, Poland by the Russians. She and
her family are sent on a long train ride to Siberia, separated from one another, and are
forced to work in horrible conditions in a gypsum mine.
Esther Rudomin was born in Wilno, Poland (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania). Her childhood
was interrupted by the beginning of WWII and the conquest in 1941 of eastern Poland by
Soviet troops.
Her family was uprooted and deported to Rubtsovsk, Siberia, where Esther spent the next
five years in harsh exile. Her award winning novel The Endless Steppe is an
autobiographical account of those years in Sib ...more
PASSAGE: TWO
FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL: THE WORST
All this was during a time which seemed carefree and radiant when I
looked back afterwards in such longing, from the middle of my misery. I
was still at my first school when I had the bicycle. Then I sat for a
scholarship to go to a secondary school. We were given clean squares of
pink blotting-paper and pens of unpainted wood with bright nibs which
had never dipped in the inlet I sat with a big space around me, tense with
fear and importance, trying to breathe properly.
My father had to fill in a long questionnaire asking if he would be
prepared to pay for my uniform and books, and I think it was more than he
could manage. Everything for that place had extra shillings on it. There
were anxious discussions which I was not supposed to hear.
In the summer holidays my mother took me to buy a-new cap and tie, and
the badge of Memorial Road School for my jacket. The colors were purple
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4EBO/O1
Edexcel IGCSE
English Language B
and grey, and the badge was just a large ‘M’ in a purple frame. After that
we went to the bus station and set out to find the school itself.
I remember us getting off the bus and twisting through several streets in a
quiet district where everything was strange, going over some black dirt
near a small park where there was a sand-pit for playing in, climbing
slowly most of the time.
Suddenly at the top of the road all I could see was a line of railings made
from metal tubes, like scaffolding. There was only sky behind it, and I
cried out: it’s like the seaside!’ I knew it was impossible for a promenade
and the sea to be up there, but I started pulling my mother along, making
her walk faster, till we reached the top.
It was a large piece of flat common, dropping gently, with no buildings
until a low factory began, behind a line of poplars that seemed a long way
off. To the right and left there were houses and streets, but I looked
straight out, as I would have done at the edge of the sea. ‘That’s where
Uncle Jim works,’ my mother said. She pointed at the unreal factory,
glinting innocently behind the far-off trees.
We had come a little out of our way. An old man directed us back
downhill to our right, and soon we stood in front of a grim, high building
that reminded me of the city hospital. It was so large, so forbidding, that I
could not imagine myself going there. Because it conveyed nothing I was
quite brave, standing beside my mother staring across the queer blankness
of the tarmac playground at the dead school with its rows of blind
windows. There were three more weeks of holiday before I had to face the
first day. My mother murmured: you will be all right,’ and the words, or
perhaps the anxiety that had crept into her voice, gave me a twinge of
uneasiness. I was not really worried until then. I tried to pretend she had
spoken without thinking, for something to say, and was not comforting
me.
We found our bus stop and went home. It was Friday, which meant fish-
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4EBO/O1
Edexcel IGCSE
English Language B
cakes and home-made chips for tea, with moist new bread. I always
looked forward to Friday.
When the first Monday was still a week away a little fear came into me.
Instead of dying it grew stronger, until by the Sunday it was a dread. The
next day I would have to go, there was no escape, no way out, and in my
despair I felt I should never trust my parents again. They had betrayed me,
trapped me in some terrible sly way. I did not stop to think that I would
have had to leave my old school in any case, because I was too old to stay
there. I only knew I was being wrenched out of a place where I was rooted
and happy, though I had never realized it before.
Somehow I managed to get up next day, eat some breakfast and then put
on the blazer and cap with their hateful badges. But as my mother held
open the back gate and I wheeled my bicycle through dumbly. I saw by
her face that she understood.
‘Never mind, you'll soon be home.' she said hopelessly. The first day's
always the worst.
SECTION: A
Refer to passage one
1) What were Esther’s greatest worries about going to school? Mark:1
2) What were the problems Esther encountered when she tried to read the book? Mark:1
3.Text-Analysis. Explain how the writer represents Esther’s difficulties throughout
the passage. You should support your answer with close reference to the passage,
including brief quotations. Marks:10
Refer to passage two
4.What were the boy’s feelings at the thought of leaving his junior school? Mark:1
5.How does the writer suggest that the boy disliked the appearance of his new school?
Marks:2
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4EBO/O1
Edexcel IGCSE
English Language B
6.Text-Analysis. Explain how the author represent the writer’s feeling, first day at
school throughout the text. You should hold up your answer with close reference to
the passage, including brief quotations. Marks:10
Refer to both passages

7.Compare how the writers of Text One and Text Two convey their ideas and
experiences. Support your answer with examples from both texts. Marks:15
SECTION: B
8.Imagine you are Esther. Write your diary entry describing your first day at
school and describe your feelings about the events, which happened. Use your
own words as far as possible. You will lose marks for direct copying. Do not use
more than 300 words. Marks:30
SECTION: C
9.Choose one of the following titles on which to write in an interesting way. You
are advised to write between 350 -400 words.
a. Describe what you consider to be the three most interesting aspects about your
school.
b. Last hope. Tell a story, true or imaginary.
c. “Too much money is as bad as too little”, what are your views on this
statement? Marks:30
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My first lesson in school in Siberia was memorable for being a chilly

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