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Level 2 English, 2012

91100 Analyse significant aspects of unfamiliar written
text(s) through close reading, supported by evidence
9.30 am Tuesday 13 November 2012
Credits: Four

RESOURCE BOOKLET
Refer to this booklet to answer the questions for English 91100.
Check that this booklet has pages 25 in the correct order and that none of these pages is blank.
YOU MAY KEEP THIS BOOKLET AT THE END OF THE EXAMINATION.

New Zealand Qualifications Authority, 2012. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without the prior permission of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.

TEXT A: FICTION
This passage from a novel imagines the first meeting between the established New Zealand writer Frank
Sargeson and a young Janet Frame, who is just starting out as a writer.

A Writers Life
She stared at me as if she had no idea what I meant, no practical idea of the problems she was
going to face. And these things mattered so much!
I gestured outside, towards the pumpkin vines, the tomatoes, the lettuces and beans that
fluttered and throbbed beneath the beat of the water sprinkler.
Look out there, I said. It doesnt sow itself. It doesnt weed itself. It doesnt water itself. The
more time I spend on that and the cooking and the washing the less time I have to write
and read. Even going down to Coldicutts for bread wastes time. Writers are meant to write,
theyre meant to read. Everything else is just a waste

I stood.
A writer should just get up and write, I said. Or get up and read

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But thats what I want! I want to live like you!

The words just burst out of her, with such force that they seemed to come from somewhere
else, as if they could have no possible origin in the child-woman Id been talking to. Her
intensity rocked me a little: I scrambled to focus on my earlier theme. What was it I had been
on about?money, of all things, was that it?

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Youll have to confront money, I managed to say. Alas, but its true
Across from me she seemed to have settled back down again. She was sitting forward on her
seat, hands politely together and legs crossed at the ankles as if she was being photographed
or interviewed for a job.
I pressed on:
It all comes down to money in the end, I told her. Money buys time. Can you imagine what
its like in a full-time jobI had one once, I was a solicitor, can you believe that?not for
long, just long enough to know I was in the wrong trade. I came to realise how much of life is
waste, and that all that matters (I gestured at the pile of books by her chair) is that, producing
that. And finding ways of keeping that (I gestured at the window, at my grassy green world
outside) at bay

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But its magical, she said.

The world is?
She shook her head. This world
She pointed through the window.
Your worldthe one youve made here
Source: Patrick Evans, Gifted (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2010), pp 5758.

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TEXT B: POETRY
This poem deals with ideas about family relationships, and what happens when these relationships have
broken down.

Hat
Dad wouldnt be seen dead
without a hat.
Farm hat, summer hat, town hat
even when he had hair.
Hat on an angle, hat on horse,
hat in the truck with dogs.

We fished by stealth
stalked trout
with a spear and a light.
He wore his hat in the dark.

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A mile apart by metal road

my grandmother lived
on her half of the farm.
No chance meetings, not even
a skyline sighting.

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She lay in wait in town

watched
from the haberdashery
as he walked up the street.
She came out as if by accident.
Hand frail, and clasping
the front of her coat,
she gave a coy look
from the bags of her bloodhound eyes
the whole air stopped

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he raised his hat, went past.

Source: Marty Smith, Hat, Sport 37 (Winter 2009), http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Ba37Spo-t1-body1-d20.html
(accessed 26 April 2012).

TEXT C: NON-FICTION
This passage describes the writers experience of talking to a group of high school students, so that his
readers will think about how language empowers them to think, learn, communicate, and act.

A Lot Like Us
According to a magazine I picked up at the dentists, children say the darnedest things. So,
where do I start with this tosh? Well, why not start with some of the darnedest things that
children actually say? Such as, Yo bro, give me your lunch or Ill beat you up.
Or, Totally wicked and awesome.
Or, Seven years! Thats a bit stiff, your honour.

Or, Thanks for the lunch, bro, which was totally wicked and awesome. But Im still going to
beat you up.
Kids were my business for 20 years. They didnt provide much income. School teaching is
viewed as a profession more or less on a par with zoo keeping. Its the business you go into
because you took an unhealthy pleasure in school yourself, or because you feel a sense of
missionary zeal, or because you cant think of anything else to do.

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Teaching did cure me, however, of any sentimentality about children and of any fear of them.
The curious truth about children is that they are a lot like us.
But they do provide zest. Even their lethargy is zestful. That zest is infectious. It causes time
to pass swiftly. And even though I whooped with delight when I managed to quit teaching
in 1998, and even though a herd of wild horses on dietary supplements wouldnt drag me
back permanently to the classroom, I do miss the little darlings. If nothing else, they made me
laugh. Not by saying the darnedest things, nor yet by telling me jokes (oh, children tell jokes
so very badly), nor yet by being staggeringly ignorant, but simply by being fresh, erratic
bouncers through the early years of life.
So when, recently, I was asked to go and chat to some schoolchildren, I accepted. I didnt fall,
I hope, or at least not entirely, into the old trap of thinking I might have something useful to
tell them. I did have lots of useful things to tell them, of course, priceless things, the fruits of
50 years of breathing, but at the same time I knew exactly how much attention the solipsistic
darlings would pay to those fruits. Children dont want to be told useful stuff, any more than
you do, indeed, less.

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No, the main reason I accepted, was selfish. I wanted an infusion of the muddled zest of the
young. And I wanted to laugh.
The kids shambled into the library. Some were earnest imitators of adults. Others had made
unfortunate choices with their hair. Teachers were stationed around the perimeter of the
throng like snipers. And I was a guest speaker.
Oh, God, Ive seen guest speakers in school: poets (ow), dignitaries (ow plus), distinguished
former pupils (ow squared) and advocates of sexual health with their hearty frankness (ow to
the nth degree with bonus interest). But, in compensation, Ive also known the effect theyve
had on kids, which is zip.
I thought Id start strong. I hoped I might excite them a bit. You, I said, picking a girl near
the back. Whats the difference between you and a gibbon? She looked as if shed been shot,
which was gratifying. She said nothing.

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Come on, I said, whats the diff between you and a gibbon? DNA says that you are ninetynine-point-nine-something per cent identical to a gibbon, so where lies the difference? The
girl looked at me with the full-moon eyes of wonder and perhaps disdain. But at least she
wasnt yawning.

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No ideas? I said. So if you chanced to see a gibbon in the street you would mistake it for
a human being?
The girl continued to stare at me in silence. But others piped up. I listened to all of them
cheerfully, then shot them down. Until one boy said language and we were away. Or at
least I was. I plunged into a rant about language, its relationship to thought, its fundamental
importance to learning and therefore to civilisation, the need for fresh language and the perils
of tired language. I asserted that anyone with some control of language was in a position to
do better thinking and better things than his yo-bro coeval. We had a rare old time, or at least
I did, and during the hour that I was there I didnt actually notice any kid sleeping or leaving,
and several argued badly but with vigour, and I worked myself into a lather and I think it
was all right.

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Right, I said, as I wound things up. Anyone got any last questions?
The girl Id originally selected, and who had still not spoken, put up a hand. I was delighted.
Yes? I said.
Whats a gibbon? she said.

Glossed words
solipsistic
self-centred (literally, believing that the self is the only thing that can be known to exist)
gibbon
a type of tree-dwelling ape, with long arms and known for its distinctive hooting calls
coeval
a person of the same age
Source (adapted): Joe Bennett, Eyes right (and theys wrong): Joe Bennett sets the world straight. Again. (Auckland:
HarperCollins, 2007), pp 4749.

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