NCU As aay Reading Vampires Key Stage 3 English Test Reading Paper Vampires Set A Instructions Before you start to write, you have 15 minutes to read the Reading Booklet, From that point you will have 1 hour to write your answers. Try to answer all of the questions. There are 14 questions, worth 32 marks. Check through all of your work carefully before the end of the test. If you're not sure what to do, ask your teacher. First Name Last Name School ‘SCORE: FIRSTGO. --—» SECONDGO.— THIRD GO Exam Set ER3P33, ETTP32 or EMAP4 ‘© CGP 2007Questions 1-5 are about Yikes! Vampire Bats Can Run, Too (pages 3-4 in the Reading Booklet) 1. From the first paragraph of the article, write down three things a vampire bat can do. (tmarky | Lo 2. How does the title of the article grab the reader's attention? Explain one way. (1 mark) ‘mark 3. Look at paragraphs 5 and 6. Explain one way in which the writer links these paragraphs together smoothly. Support your answer with a quotation. (2marks) | oy 4, a) From the first three paragraphs, write down a phrase which tells the reader that vampire bats can be quite fast. (imark) | al b) Write down a word from the section “On to the treadmill” which suggests that cattle move slowly. (1 mark) Tmark KSaiEniLevels 471A Reading cep 2007In the whole article, how does the writer try to make the information entertaining and easy to understand for the reader? You should comment on: + the way the article is organised; + the writer's use of informal language; + the comparisons the writer uses. Sark (5 marks) KSSIEniLevels 4-71A Reading © cGP 2007Questions 10-13 are about the extract from Dracula by Bram Stoker (pages 7-8 in the Reading Booklet) 10. Give one detail in paragraph 1 that tells us that itis night-time. (1 mark) Tak 14. In the first 10 lines of paragraph 4, the narrator tells the reader how he feels about being in Count Dracula's castle. Pick out two phrases or sentences and explain what each one suggests about the narrator's feelings. Write your answers in the table below. Words from the text What they suggest (2 marks) marks KS3/EniLevels 4-71A Reading © CGP 200712, The narrator's feelings change between the middle of paragraph 1 and the middle of paragraph 2. a) Describe the narrator's feelings in the middle of paragraph 1 Support your answer with a quotation. b) Describe the narrator's feelings by the middle of paragraph 2. ‘Support your answer with a quotation. (4 marks) marks 13. In the last paragraph, the narrator repeats certain words. Pick out one example of repetition. Explain what it suggests to the reader about the narrator's state of mind. Example What it suggests about the narrator's state of mind (1mark) | © cap 2007 KSEnILevels 4-7/A ReadingQuestion 14 is about Yikes! Vampire Bats Can Run, Too and Dracula 14. Yikes! Vampire Bats Can Run Too and Dracula each have a different tone and atmosphere. Complete the table below by explaining how each phrase makes the reader feel about the creature it is describing. Words from text Effect on the reader “Hopping is good, when you're a bat slurping cow blood, because cows are heavy and can kick or roll Yikes! over and squash a bat” Vampire Bats Can Run, Too “the clever little mammals dutifully kept pace” “down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings.” Dracula “what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man?” (4 marks) Sans KSHEnILevels 4-7/A Reading Eirau CGP 2007SetA | a Lee y ~ ret, ie Nr VampiresContents Yikes! Vampire Bats Can Run, Too........ Writing Horror — Forbidden Treats. page 5 Extract from Dracula..... sepage 7 The idea of bloodsucking vampires has frightened and fascinated people for centuries. There are many superstitions and legends about them. Writers describe imaginary vampires in fiction. Scientists are still discovering more about the powers of the only real vampires — vampire bats — which have some very surprising abilities. KS3/EnILevels 4-714 Reading 2 @cGP 2007Common vampire bats live in Mexico and most countries in Central and South America. They roost in dark caves and tree hollows and feed on the blood of birds and mammals such as cows and horses. This article by Robert Ray Britt for the LiveScience website reports on a new discovery about how they can move around. Yikes! Vampire Bats Can Run, Too As if nature really needed to endow vampire bats with anything more unusual than the ability to fly and a propensity to drink blood, the creatures have been found to sprint along the ground, too. All the better to sneak up on a viotim, scientists say. 2 ‘Anew study found fleet-footed vampire bats can break into a loping run on all fours, at least when coaxed on a treadmill. Bad news for cows Bats are the only mammals that fly. Scientists think they generally stopped running long ago, as evolution gave flight capabilities to their forelimbs. Most species of 4 bats, if asked to run, can do little more than flop around like fish out of water. Vampire bats must have regained the ability to run, says Cornell University researcher Daniel Riskin, who led the new experiments. The skill might have been useful for chasing down small, swift animals that wouldn't sit still for a feeding event, Riskin told LiveScience. Thing is, the common vampire bat rarely chases small animals any more. Instead, it feeds mostly on dozing cattle that have been introduced into the bats’ range — mostly from northern Mexico down to Argentina and Chile — over the past few 6 hundred years, Riskin said. In labs, a vampire bat will feed on anything — even a snake — but in the wild they prefer cows, whose blood they drink mostly at night while the livestock sleep. “Cows just seem to be the easiest,” he said. 7 The ability to run is not so critical when gorging on a sleeping cow, and therefore it has gone unnoticed by scientists, Riskin figures. Hopping is good, when you're a bat slurping cow blood, because cows are heavy and can kick or roll over and squash a bat, Riskin explained in a telephone interview. On to the treadmill Scientists knew previously that the legs of vampires were stronger than those of other bats, enabling them to crawl and hop. In the March 17 issue of the journal Nature, Riskin and his colleagues write: “The common vampire bat (Desmodus 10 rotundus) walks forwards, sideways and backwards, and initiates flight with a single vertical jump from standing.” Researchers still don't know exactly why they can walk KS31EnlLevels 4-7/A Reading 3 @cGP 2007‘And nobody had ever documented bats doing the 4-yard dash. To study this movement, captive bats were put on a treadmill — safely inside a Plexiglas cage — and photographed. At slow treadmill speeds, the bats walked in a manner similar to mice. When the treadmill was cranked up, the clever little mammals dutifully kept pace, using mostly their powerful forelimbs to reach speeds exceeding 2.7 miles per hour (1.2 metres per second). “Bats with a little more room to manoeuvre can probably move twice that fast,” Riskin said. For the record, a reasonably fit human can run much more quickly. The swift gait of the vampire bat is unlike that of any other animal, the study found. The scientists call it running “because it includes a notable aerial phase.” You might want to jog across the room with a nice spring in your step to understand what that means. Vampire bats, it seems, are over-evolved, now that their prey are just lumbering cattle. “I's as if they were designed to chase race cars,” Riskin said, “and they find themselves running after school buses.” Blood Suckers? A vampire bat's wingspan is typically 8 inches, though its body is about the size of an adult human thumb. It feeds on the blood of horses, pigs and even birds. The common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus, prefers cows, however, The vampire hunts at night, when other animals are sleeping. It doesn't suck blood. It uses heat sensors to find a victim's veins. Sharp teeth cut the animal — about like a shaving nick — and the bat simply laps up what oozes out. A chemical in the bat's saliva keeps the blood from clotting, so it keeps flowing (a blood-thinning drug developed from vampire bat saliva helps prevent strokes and heart attacks). Another chemical numbs the victim's skin so it won't wake up. “They sit there licking the wound for up to @ half hour," says Daniel Riskin of Cornell University. A bat will drink about a tablespoon of blood in a sitting. Vampires have attacked humans, but such reports are rare. Article written by Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience.com © 2005 Imaginova Consumer Media Leal a A vampire bat sprinting, 1 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 2a 22 KS3IEniLevels 4-714 Reading 4 @.CGP 2007Darren Shan is an author who writes for teenagers. His series of vampire stories — which feature a teenage hero whose name is Darren Shan — began with the novel “Cirque Du Freak’. In this article for a children's book website, Kidsreads, he explains some of the ideas behind the story. Writing Horror — Forbidden Treats by Darren Shan | remember somehow catching the hammy* Vincent Price film, “Theater Of Blood,” when | was 6 years old. It's the one where he plays a lambasted** Shakespearean actor who sets out to silence his critics with artistic murderous licence. In one scene he feeds a critic 1 the mashed-up remains of his beloved poodles, on which the poor man duly chokes. | was blown away! This was story-telling as I'd never experienced it, and even at that tender age, while other kids were glued to nice, safe, anodyne*** stuff, | knew | wanted more!!! That thirst for “more” has never left me. As a child and teenager | ‘sought out all the horror that | could, be it in movies, books or comics. | craved creepiness. If nightmares were the result — all the better! Over the years, | moved on and found other loves (horror is fun, but it can be limiting), though nothing ever had the same effect on me as those old Hammer movies, or Stephen King's early novels, or the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. When I came to write Cirque Du Freak, | had only one mandate**** in mind: | was going to write the sort of book that I'd have loved to read as an 11/12 year old. It didn't matter that, as a twentysomething, I wasn't as stoked-up by horror as I'd once been. | wasn't writing for 3 twenty year olds: I was writing for kids, and for the kid I'd once been — and I was determined to treat them to the sort of gruesome helter-skelter ride | believed they deserved. * hammy = dramatically over-acted ** lambasted = strongly criticised ‘anodyne = dull ‘mandate = rule KS3IEniLovels 4.714 Reading 5 © cGP 2007Cirque Du Freak isn't a reckless, irresponsible book. Although it's about vampires and circus freaks, | wasn't interested in sickening readers or pushing back the boundaries of what is acceptable. It explores such themes as friendship, the importance of family, and the need to make personal sacrifices for the good of others. But, like “Theater Of Blood,” it certainly isn't for the squeamish! While there are no poodles in the book, there are vampires and poisonous tarantulas; a a savage Wolf Man and a Snake Boy; one character winds up in a coma, whilst another gets buried alive. It's a book designed to play on a reader's emotions, There are out-and-out scary scenes ("boo! moments” as | like to call them), but also darker, less bombastic” scenes, which will linger in your mind for days (and nights!) to come. That, for me, is the secret of good horror: the ‘subtle menace between the sudden bursts of action and violence. Cirque Du Freak is designed” not just to thrill you, but to set your nerves on edge. It's sometimes shocking, but also thought-provoking. Because that's where | believe the greatest horrors lie: not in having something leap at you out of the darkness, but in staring into the shadows of the night and brooding about what lurks within...waiting...staring back... © Darren Shan. 9 November 2005 * bombastic = extremely dramatic to impress KS9/EniLevels 4-7/A Reading 6 © CGP 2007Jonathan Harker has travelled to Transylvania to have a business meeting with Count Dracula. While staying in the Count's castle in the Carpathian mountains, he realises that he is a prisoner. Here he records a strange event in his journal. This is an extract from the 19th-century novel, Dracula, by Bram Stoker. Dracula When he left me | went to my room. After a little while, not hearing any sound, | came out and went up the stone stair to where | could look out towards the South. There was some sense of freedom in the vast expanse, inaccessible though it was to me, as compared with the narrow darkness of the courtyard. Looking out on this, | felt that | was indeed in prison, and | seemed to want a breath of fresh air, though it were of the night. | am beginning to feel this nocturnal existence tell on me. It is destroying my nerve. | start at my own shadow, and am full of all sorts of horrible imaginings. God knows that there is ground for my terrible fear in this accursed place! | looked out over the beautiful expanse, bathed in soft yellow 1 moonlight til it was almost as light as day. In the soft light the distant hills became melted, and the shadows in the valleys and gorges of velvety blackness, The mere beauty seemed to cheer me. There was peace and comfort in every breath | drew. As | leaned from the window my eye was caught by something moving a storey below me, and somewhat to my left, where | imagined, from the order of the rooms, that the windows of the Counts own room would look out. The window at which | stood was tall and deep, stone-mullioned*, and though weatherworn, was still complete. But it was evidently many a day since the case had been there. | drew back behind the stonework, and looked carefully out. * stone-mullioned = with a stone frame KS3/EnlLevels 4-7/A Reading z @cGP 2007What | saw was the Count's head coming out from the window. | did not see the face, but | knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. In any case | could not mistake the hands which | had had some many opportunities of studying. | was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when | saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss*, 2 face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first | could not believe my eyes. | thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but | kept looking, and it could be no delusion, | saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as alizard moves along a wall What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance** of man? | feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering 3 me. | am in fear, in awful fear, and there is no escape for me. | am encompassed*** about with terrors that | dare not think of. * abyss = deep drop *semblance = likeness *“encompassed = surrounded KS2/EniLevels 471A Reading 8 ©ceP 2007 EHP3U ExAHE Using the right words 1 Amazing adjectives Look at these adjectives. They can all be used to describe your tests, Sort them into the correct column in the table. stimulating boring tedious essential exciting challenging interesting mundane ordinary dull normal _ wearisome Vital crucial _ monotonous necessary commonplace — usual Poe te. negative neutral Positive Aull 2 Vary your verbs How many other words can you think of to replace these verbs? ago b said € sleep day e walk 3 Use Standard English How would you change these if you were giving a formal presentation? a This product is really cool, PEE EEEE epee eee CEOPH HEIEePPE Ill catch you later. Ferree creer eee eee | dunno what to suggest. eS ecrcpE eS epeeoeeeeCeereeeereeeee d Hiya! eee eeeere eee eee eee ¢ We don’t want to be ripped off =4 Add some pictures Can you think of any similes you can use to describe the following? a a really fierce deputy head teacher. b a jolly and cheerful footballer € a huge grey factory d a small boat out at sea siaichild skling'downiajmountain, 5 Tug at the heart-strings “an you change these phrases to make them more emotive? a Young man hits old woman. b The Guildford Flames beat their opposition. © When the sun is shining | enjoy a cold drink. d We have to stay inside the house because there is too much snow around. € The old cat tried to catch a bird and failed. 6 Know when to avoid bias Can you change these emotive phrases into neutral ones? a The bear ripped him to shreds. b The woodland was ravished by a terrifying blaze. ¢ He shovelled the greasy burger into his mouth as if he was starved. d She shrieked as the thug yanked the handbag from her arm. © The crumbling school buildings are a death-trapParagraphs and structure 1 Read this extract and mark where the paragraphs should go. You might want to change the order. Se When you first see my house you might think Hs adit Aull and dingy because there ave plants growing up the front wall and the path is a bit overgrown, | like te think this adds character and makes it more exciting wher you come and visit we. If | trust you, ana the others Say it’s Ok, light take you to the end of the garden to see our Aen, It’s taken us yeaws to create it ama it’s simply the best place to be ih the summer, Once you ave in you'll probably be Arawn into the kitchen as there's generally something good cooking and that’s where we tend to be. Is funny really, as is the smallest voom in the house but it’s where we spend our Hine together. (Well, not the smallest, but you woulAn’t all sit vound the bathroom to talk about the day, would you!) Stepping Hough the front Aoor Por the fivst time is normally a bit of a shock because we've painted the inside really bright colours. The woodwork (that’s the Acovs and skivting beards) is pink and the walls ave purple. My gran hates it, but we sat Aown and made a Family Aecision so its Fine by us. oF"2 You also need to start new paragraphs when there’s a new speaker, Mark the paragraph breaks in this extract with a forward slash (/). “Look, I'm really sorry,” said Barry with frustration, “but this is just not going to work and that’s an end to it.” He threw down the play script and stood up to go. Laura looked up at him. “I'm really sorry as well,” she said with sarcasm, “I’m really sorry that we've wasted so much time rehearsing with you in the lead role when we could have had Lance. He would at least have listened to our ideas.” “That's just typical, * replied Barry, “and that's why I'm leaving. You've never wanted me in this stupid play. Well, if you think Lance will have anything to do with you when he hears how you've treated me you've got another think coming!” The rest of the cast sat watching with amazement as he coolly collected his jacket and walked out of the rehearsal room, Laura sat stunned “Did that really just happen?” she asked, “Did we finally get rid of that idiot?” “Yes!” shouted Sian with joy, “Well done, you finally did itt” 3 Choose the appropriate connectives from the list and add them to the recipe below. Next Finally Then Secondly Firstly pre-heat the oven to 180°, take your vegetables and chop them into 1 cm size cubes. lightly oil the baking tray and arrange the vegetables on it so they are evenly spaced. put the tray in the oven and set the timer to 40 minutes. remove the vegetables from the oven and enjoy!