Reading Quiz

Read the extracts below then answer the questions.

Extract A: from Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

They were off; the College already out of sight except for the tower through the trees as they bowled along the level Melbourne-Bendigo road, vibrating with particles of fine red dust. ‘Get up Sailor, you lazy brute … Prince, Belmonte, get back in your collars …’ For the first mile or two, the scenery was familiar through the girls’ daily perambulation in crocodile formation. The passengers knew only too well, without bothering to look out, how the scraggy stringy bark forest lined the road on either side, now and then opening out onto a lighter patch of cleared land. The Comptons’ whitewashed cottage whose sprawling quince trees supplied the College with jellies and jams, the clump of wayside willows at which the governess in charge would invariably call a halt and head for home. It was the same in Longman’s Highroads of History, where the class were forever turning back for recapitulation at the death of King George the Fourth before starting off again with Edward the Third next term … Now the willows in rich summer green were gaily passed and a sense of adventure ahead took over as heads began to peer through the buttoned tarpaulin flaps of the horse-drawn coach.

At Mrs Appleyard’s college SILENCE WAS GOLDEN, written up in the corridors and often imposed. There was a delicious freedom about the swift steady motion of the coach and even in the warm dusty air blowing up in their faces that set the passengers chirping and chattering like budgerigars.

The road to Hanging Rock turns sharply away to the right a little way out of the township of Woodend. Here Mr Hussey pulled up outside the leading hotel to rest and water his horses before starting on the last lap of the drive. Already the heat inside the vehicle was oppressive and there was a wholesale peeling off of the obligatory gloves. ‘Can’t we take our hats off too, Mam’selle?’ asked Irma whose ink-black curls were flowing out in a warm tide under the brim of her stiff school sailor. Mademoiselle smiled and looked across at Miss McCraw, sitting opposite, awake and vertical, but with two closed eyes, two puce kid hands locked together on her lap. ‘Certainly not. Because we are on an excursion, there is no necessity to look like a wagon load of street urchins.’

The rhythmic beat of the horses’ hooves combined with the close air of the coach was making them all sleepy. As it was still only eleven o’clock, with plenty of time in which to reach the picnic grounds for lunch, the governesses conferred and Mr Hussey was requested to let down the steps of the coach at a suitable spot off the road. In the shade of an old white gum the zinc-lined wicker basket that kept the milk and lemonade deliciously cool was taken out and unpacked, hats were removed without further comment and biscuits handed round.

Extract B: from The Family Law by Benjamin Law

My family isn’t the outdoors type. Despite being raised on the coast, Mum detested visits to the beach (all the sand it brought into the house), while Dad disapproved of wearing thongs (‘It splits the toes’). We never camped. All those things involved in camping – pitching a tent; cooking on open fires; the insects; sleeping on rocks – they never appealed to us.

We preferred theme parks. For parents raising five children, theme parks made so much sense. They were clean and safe. There were clearly designated activities, and auditory and visual stimuli that transcended racial, language and age barriers. Also, you could buy heaps of useless souvenirs.

It was a family tradition that once a year, our family of seven (eight, including my grandmother) would cram ourselves into a 1990 grey five-seat automatic Honda.

Faces smashed against glass; no leg room; the two smallest children illegally wedged between various legs – we travelled like this for a good three hours before we reached the Gold Coast. We’d nod off at such extreme angles that our spines contorted. When we woke up, our shirts would be covered in drool we weren’t even sure was ours. By the time we got to the theme park, our limbs were numb, our nerve endings destroyed.

On the day of the trip, we’d wake before sunrise in order to get there by opening time. Despite the three hours of pain we’d endured, we’d feel an overwhelming sense of wonder as the Thunderbolt, Dreamworld’s rollercoaster, painted with flames, emerged from the trees that bordered the Pacific Highway. It would appear so suddenly, like a strange apparition or a mirage. We would crane our necks back, trying to take in the sheer majesty of it.

For questions 1 – 8, choose the options which you think best answers the question.

Both extracts mention that during the trip, the passengers

Which group(s) of travellers passed the time by talking?

In which extract(s) do the people dislike spending time in natural surroundings?

In Extract A, why is ‘the clump of wayside willows’ significant for the students?

In Extract A, who appears to be in charge on the excursion?

In Extract A, what does the writer suggest by ‘hats were removed without further comment’?

How does the writer in Extract B feel when the rollercoaster comes into view?

From the first two paragraphs of Extract B we get the impression that

Read the poem below by Marianne Moore then answer the questions.

The Fish

wade
through black jade.
       Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
       adjusting the ash-heaps;
              opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
       The barnacles which encrust the side
       of the wave, cannot hide
              there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
       glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
       into the crevices—
              in and out, illuminating

the
turquoise sea
       of bodies. The water drives a wedge
       of iron through the iron edge
              of the cliff; whereupon the stars,

pink
rice-grains, ink-
       bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green
       lilies, and submarine
              toadstools, slide each on the other.

All
external
       marks of abuse are present on this
       defiant edifice—
              all the physical features of

ac-
cident—lack
       of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
       hatchet strokes, these things stand
              out on it; the chasm-side is

dead.
Repeated
       evidence has proved that it can live
       on what can not revive
              its youth. The sea grows old in it.

For questions 9 – 14, choose the options which you think best answers the question.

The title of this poem

What is compared to ‘an injured fan’?

What lights up the water?

In the way the writer uses the following words, which is the odd one out?

The cliff has ‘marks of abuse’ caused by

What does the form of the poem as a whole reflect?

Read the text below then answer the questions.

Six sentences have been removed from the text. Choose from the sentences (A – G) the one which fits each gap (15 – 20). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use. Please copy the whole choice sentence into the blank field.

A. Fish farmers have turned to the rearing of octopuses to try to replace these dwindling catches

B. But might this actually be the best way to protect the species over the long term?

C. Farming them intensively would probably cause large numbers of deaths from stress

D. There have also been advances in controlling the environments in which octopuses are raised

E. In one such experiment, scientists observed octopuses building shelters from pieces of coconut shell

F. But the case for octopus farming is weak, according to Jacquet and her co-authors

G. These efforts have foundered, however, because octopus larvae eat only live food

Read the four extracts below on the theme of dreams.

Extract A

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkempt, not the drive that we had known. At first I was puzzled, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realized what had happened. Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers.

Extract B

Why do we feel the urge to talk about our dreams? We like to talk about dreams to help us prepare for how to act in dangerous situations in the future. Most of your dreams are going to seem pretty boring to most people. But if you’re going to talk about some of your dreams, pick the ones in which you deal with a problem in some new way. This would make them more interesting than your happy dreams, and if you feel that you learned something about how to deal with a threat, maybe your audience will, too.

We tend to think of dreams as being really weird, but in truth, about 80 percent of dreams depict ordinary situations. We’re just more likely to remember and talk about the strange or dangerous ones. Information we do not understand can often rouse our curiosity, particularly in the presence of strong emotion. The emotional pull of dreams makes even the strangest incongruities seem meaningful and worthy of discussion and interpretation.

Extract C

One morning, when I was younger, I gave a detailed description of my previous night’s dream to my mother. When I finished, she said, “I’m going to tell you something. Don’t ever share your dreams with anyone. It’s boring to listen to other people’s dreams.” I was offended at first. But of course she was right; it’s almost always deadly to hear other people talk about their dreams. As a rule, dreams die in the glare of the waking world, their shimmering aura evaporating in the harsh air outside the psyche. And yet, paradoxically, it’s the emotional aura of dreams that makes them feel so urgently worth sharing in the first place.

I still share my dreams – just not verbally. Like so many other writers (and artists too) I employ dreams in my creative work. They’re an engine, a lending library. It’s a thrill to awake with a strange, arresting image in mind, or still grasping the thread of an allegorical dream story.

Extract D

For the first time in a long while, I had a dream which I feel like writing down. This was a dream where I was auditioning for an acting job, and the dream went lucid; I realized that what was going on was a dream. So, as I often do in these situations, I chilled out and tried not to actively do anything; I often like to just see what the dream reveals. A nondescript person came up to me and handed me a small white book with gold lettering. “Remember this book,” said the person, “because when you wake up you’re going to want to get a copy. Really remember it.” I thanked them and looked at the book in my hand. There was a title and author’s name written on it, but I couldn’t interpret the text. I’d look at it, trying to remember what it said, then I’d look away, and when I looked back it said something completely different and I was unable to remember what I’d just read.

There’s a great Batman episode all about this! Sometimes I can fully recall bits of dreamed text, but on waking after other dreams, it’s all gone.

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For questions 21 – 30, choose the option (A, B, C or D) which you think best answers the question.

Which extract..