Name: ……………………………………………………………….

( ) Class: ……………

CHIJ KATONG CONVENT

PRELIMINARY EXAMINATIONS 2020
Secondary Four Express / Five Normal (Academic)

LITERATURE IN ENGLISH 2065/01

2274/02
Paper 1 Prose and Unseen Texts
September 2020

1 hour 40 minutes
Additional Materials: Answer Paper

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST

Write your name, class and registration number on all the work you hand in.
Write in dark blue or black ink on both sides of the paper.
Do not use staples, paper clips, glue or correction fluid / tape.

Answer two questions: one question from Section A and one question from Section B.
You are reminded of the need for good English and clear presentation in your answers.

At the end of the examination, submit the following sections separately:

 Answer to Section A
 Answer to Section B
 This Question Paper

All questions in this paper carry equal marks.

This document consists of 9 printed pages.

[Turn over
 CHIJ Katong Convent Preliminary Examinations 2020 Literature in English Paper 1 2065/01 & 2274/02 Sec 4E & 5N

SECTION B

Answer either Question 3 or Question 4.

Remember to support your ideas with relevant details from the writing.

Either 3 Read this poem carefully, and then answer the questions that follow it.

Disgrace

But one day we woke to disgrace; our house

a coldness of rooms, each nursing
a thickening cyst of dust and gloom.
We had not been home in our hearts for months.

And how our words changed. Dead flies in a web. 5

How they stiffened and blackened. Cherished italics
suddenly sour on our tongues, obscenities
spraying themselves on the wall in my head.

Woke to your clothes like a corpse on the floor,

the small deaths of lightbulbs pining all day 10
in my ears, their echoes audible tears;
nothing we would not do to make it worse

and worse. Into the night with the wrong language,

waving and pointing, the shadows of hands
huge in the bedroom. Dreamed of a naked crawl 15
from a dead place over the other; both of us. Woke.

Woke to the absence of grace; the still-life

of a meal. untouched, wine-bottle, empty, ashtray,
full. In our sullen kitchen, the fridge
hardened its cool heart, selfish as art, hummed. 20

To a bowl of apples rotten to the core. Lame shoes

empty in the hall where our voices asked
for a message after the tone, the telephone
pressing its ear to distant, invisible lips.

And our garden bowing its head, vulnerable flowers 25

unseen in the dusk as we shouted in silhouette.
Woke to the screaming alarm, the banging door,
the house-plants trembling in their brittle soil. Total

disgrace. Up in the dark to stand at the window,

counting the years to arrive there, faithless, 30
unpenitent. Woke to the meaningless stars, you
and me both, lost. Inconsolable vowels from the next room.

(by Carol Ann Duffy)

2
CHIJ Katong Convent Preliminary Examinations 2020 Literature in English Paper 1 2065/01 & 2274/02 Sec 4E & 5N

(i) What is striking about the way the speaker describes the house in
lines 1 – 12?

(ii) How does the poet convey her feelings so powerfully to you in the
rest of the poem?

3 [Turn over
 CHIJ Katong Convent Preliminary Examinations 2020 Literature in English Paper 1 2065/01 & 2274/02 Sec 4E & 5N

Or 4 Read this poem carefully, and then answer the questions that follow it.

Remember to support your ideas with relevant details from the writing.

Boneman

I don’t know if it was before, because

or when he first developed symptoms that
she left him. In any case, his body started
to turn to bone. His neck and shoulders flared
Up, hot and red and swollen; then it spread 5
down his body, back to front, his own
flesh harbouring beneath the surface of a coarse,
rebellious, calcifying mass that slowly
became new bone following the same
process of skeleton formation in 10
an embryo. His bruises healed as bone,
his joints grew uselessly sealed. Surgeons said
more bone would grow if they were to operate.
He was seen by specialists and famed professors;
none could picture a solution, as 15
there was no cure; he had a strange disorder
caused by one gene broken. So he grew
more vertebrae, more blasé1 and more mature,
some say unfeeling also, like a stone;
but that was wrong; he felt, although he made 20
no bones about what life had dealt him. He
had none to remonstrate with; his DNA
had spoken, other people merely cut
him to the quick with words like knives. Years passed
that stretched out prone inside a nutshell, like 25
a richness of unknown longings and fears.
He could hardly move, his urgency
diminished, and his only consolation
came in needing none, accepting his fate,
not spreading blame for having to become 30
a Gregor2 with an exoskeletion3;
and in that same dwelling without desolation,
as his parents rallied round their son,
I do believe he found a perfect love.

(by Toh Hsien Min)

1
not impressed or worried about something as you have seen or
experienced it many times before

2
a character from Star Wars who is a puppet to the commander of
the Grand Army of the Republic.

3
a machine attached to somebody's body to enable them to
perform movements and actions more easily

4
CHIJ Katong Convent Preliminary Examinations 2020 Literature in English Paper 1 2065/01 & 2274/02 Sec 4E & 5N

(i) What makes lines 1-13 of the poem so dramatic.

(ii) How does the poet powerfully convey the boneman’s feelings
and sensations in the poem as a whole?