Eduqas – English Language – Dinosaurs – Component 1
20th Century Literature Reading and Creative Prose Writing
1 hour 45 minutes
SECTION A: 40 marks
Read carefully the passage, then answer all the questions below.
0 1 Read paragraphs 1 and 2.
List five things you learn about the explorers’ approach to the rookery in these lines. [5]
0 2 Read paragraph 3.
What impressions does the writer create of the rookery in these lines? [5]
You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.
0 3 Read paragraph 4.
What impressions does the writer create of the Pterosaurs in these lines? How does the writer create these impressions? [10]
You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.
0 4 Read paragraphs 5 and 6.
How does the writer present the explorers’ experience in these lines? [10]
You must refer to the language and structure used in the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.
0 5 To answer this question, read paragraph 7 and consider the whole passage.
The teacher describes the rookery as “both fascinating and horrifying.”
To what extent do you agree with this view of the rookery? [10]
You should write about:
- your thoughts and feelings about how the rookery is presented in lines 30–31 and in the passage as a whole
- how the writer has created these thoughts and feelings.
You must refer to the text to support your answer.
SECTION B: 40 marks
In this section you will be assessed for the quality of your creative prose writing skills.
24 marks are awarded for communication and organisation; 16 marks are awarded for vocabulary, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation.
You should aim to write about 450–600 words.
Choose one of the following titles for your writing: [40]
Either,
1 1 a) Write a story which begins:
The ground trembled beneath us…
Or,
1 1 b) The Lost Fossil.
Or,
1 1 c) Write about a time when you, or someone you know, encountered something unexpected.
Or,
1 1 d) Against the Roar.
RESOURCE MATERIAL FOR USE WITH SECTION A
In this edited extract is from the novel The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, a group of explorers stumble upon a pterosaur rookery on a remote plateau.
A belt of brushwood led up to a tangle of rocks—the whole plateau was strewn with boulders. We were walking slowly towards these rocks, among bushes which reached over our waists, when we became aware of a strange low gabbling and whistling sound, which filled the air with a constant clamor and appeared to come from some spot immediately before us. Lord John held up his hand as a signal for us to stop, and he made his way swiftly, stooping and running, to the line of rocks.
We saw him peep over them and give a gesture of amazement. Then he stood staring as if forgetting us, so utterly entranced was he by what he saw. Finally he waved us to come on, holding up his hand as a signal for caution. His whole bearing made me feel that something wonderful but dangerous lay before us.
Creeping to his side, we looked over the rocks. The place into which we gazed was a pit, and may, in the early days, have been one of the smaller volcanic blow-holes of the plateau. It was bowl-shaped and at the bottom, some hundreds of yards from where we lay, were pools of green-scummed, stagnant water, fringed with bullrushes. It was a weird place in itself, but its occupants made it seem like a scene from the Seven Circles of Dante. The place was a rookery of pterodactyls.
There were hundreds of them congregated within view. All the bottom area round the water-edge was alive with their young ones, and with hideous mothers brooding upon their leathery, yellowish eggs. From this crawling flapping mass of obscene reptilian life came the shocking clamor which filled the air and the mephitic, horrible, musty odor which turned us sick.
But above, perched each upon its own stone, tall, gray, and withered, more like dead and dried specimens than actual living creatures, sat the horrible males, absolutely motionless save for the rolling of their red eyes or an occasional snap of their rat-trap beaks as a dragon-fly went past them. Their huge, membranous wings were closed by folding their fore-arms, so that they sat like gigantic old women, wrapped in hideous web-colored shawls, and with their ferocious heads protruding above them.
Large and small, not less than a thousand of these filthy creatures lay in the hollow before us.
Our professors would gladly have stayed there all day, so entranced were they by this opportunity of studying the life of a prehistoric age.
Source: https://www.telelib.com/authors/D/DoyleArthurConan/prose/lostworld/lostworld010.htm