CAMBRIDGE LOWER SECONDARY ENGLISH 7: END OF UNIT 6 TEST

Name Date

End of unit 6 test

Section A: Reading
Read the extract, published by the BBC following a radio broadcast called ‘From Our Own
Correspondent’, then answer questions 1–7.

Letter to Daniel
Daniel Patrick Keane was born on 4 February, 1996.
My dear son, it is six o’clock in the morning on the island of Hong Kong. You are asleep
cradled in my left arm and I am learning the art of one-handed typing. Your mother,
more tired yet more happy than I’ve ever known her, is sound asleep in the room next
5 door and there is a soft quiet in our apartment.
Since you’ve arrived, days have melted into night and back again and we are
learning a new grammar, a long sentence whose punctuation marks are feeding and
winding and nappy changing and these occasional moments of quiet.
We had wanted you and waited for you, imagined you and dreamed about you and
10 now that you are here no dream can do justice to you. Outside the window, below
us on the harbour, the ferries are ploughing back and forth to Kowloon. Millions are
already up and moving about and the sun is slanting through the tower blocks.
I can see the trail of a jet over Lamma Island and, somewhere out there, the last
stars flickering towards the other side of the world.

1 What does the word ‘cradled’ (line 2) suggest about the way the writer is holding his
baby son?

[1]

2 Explain, using your own words, why Daniel’s mother is ‘tired’ yet ‘happy’ (line 3).

She is tired because

She is happy because [2]

Cambridge Lower Secondary English 7 – Creamer, Williams, Rees-Bidder & Elsdon © Cambridge University Press 2021 1
 CAMBRIDGE LOWER SECONDARY ENGLISH 7: END OF UNIT 6 TEST

3 Explain, using your own words, what days have melted into night’ (line 5) tells you about
the writer’s life with a new baby.

[1]

4 Look at lines 5–7. ‘we are learning a new grammar, a long sentence whose punctuation
marks are feeding and winding and nappy changing and these occasional moments of
quiet.’ What is this sentence an example of?
Tick () one box.

personification metaphor

alliteration rhyme [1]

5 Look at lines 8–9. ‘We had wanted you and waited for you, imagined you and dreamed
about you and now that you are here no dream can do justice to you.’
Give one structural feature used by the writer in this sentence and explain its effect.
Structural feature:

Effect:

[2]

6 Explain, using your own words, what the word ‘ploughing’ (line 10) suggests
about the ferries.

[1]

7 ‘Millions are already up and moving about and the sun is slanting through the tower
blocks. I can see the trail of a jet over Lamma Island and, somewhere out there, the last
stars flickering towards the other side of the world.’
Give two impressions of life in Hong Kong created in these lines.

Cambridge Lower Secondary English 7 – Creamer, Williams, Rees-Bidder & Elsdon © Cambridge University Press 2021 2
 CAMBRIDGE LOWER SECONDARY ENGLISH 7: END OF UNIT 6 TEST

Section B: Writing
1 Imagine that you are Daniel at the age of 12 and you have just read this letter from your
father. Write a letter replying to him.
You could include:
• memories of living in Hong Kong as a small child
• the things that you appreciate about your father and mother. [10]

Space for your plan:

Cambridge Lower Secondary English 7 – Creamer, Williams, Rees-Bidder & Elsdon © Cambridge University Press 2021 3
 CAMBRIDGE LOWER SECONDARY ENGLISH 7: END OF UNIT 6 TEST

Write your letter:

Cambridge Lower Secondary English 7 – Creamer, Williams, Rees-Bidder & Elsdon © Cambridge University Press 2021 4