Adapted from "Let the River Stand"
The new girl set herself apart by everything she did. It took only a couple of days for
the school to know her old man was silly as a chook. You only had to see the way he
drove her up to the school gates on the back of his clapped-out tractor, sitting there at
the wheel with a balaclava covering half of his face and his hands in matching brown
(5) mittens, although it couldn't have been cold because he wore shorts and cut-off
gumboots. And the girl stood up there behind him, one hand balancing herself on her
old man's shoulder. That first morning she stared directly back at them when the
playground stopped its milling and haring about and the kids raised their heads and
looked at her dumbly as cows disturbed at their grazing. You might expect at any
(10) moment they would break out and yell at her and give her the treatment. But they were
held back by what Bob later said you could only call her shining, her height and her
white dress and her hair lifting slightly with the slow movement of the tractor, and
more than these, the total sense of command he can find no word for. She stepped
down from the metal bar at the back of the tractor without saying a word to her old
(15) man. Nor did he speak to her, or so much as turn his head. He wheeled the tractor
back down the road he had come, to where the asphalt petered out into dust and grid
during the summer term and clogging mud in winter. The man's head, round and
squat in its knitted cover, jogged with the grunting movement of his machine. His
outline wavered in the oily fumes that rose behind him.
Questions:
1. identify two examples of simile from the passage (A)
2. Identify the group of four words in line 11 that tells you this passage is a remembered event (A)
3. In lines 2 and 9, the writer has begun the sentences with "you". Explain one reason why you think this has been done (A/M/E)
4. Identify three examples from the passage of how the girl's behaviour was different from that of the other children (A/M/E)
5. Explain what the phrases "silly as a chook" in line 2, "clapped-out tractor" in line 3, and "cut-off gumboots" in lines 5-6 tells us about the person telling the story (A/M/E)
ANSWERS
(NCEA Level 1 English revision guide. 2006 edition, Really Useful Resources, pg. 39)
the school to know her old man was silly as a chook. You only had to see the way he
drove her up to the school gates on the back of his clapped-out tractor, sitting there at
the wheel with a balaclava covering half of his face and his hands in matching brown
(5) mittens, although it couldn't have been cold because he wore shorts and cut-off
gumboots. And the girl stood up there behind him, one hand balancing herself on her
old man's shoulder. That first morning she stared directly back at them when the
playground stopped its milling and haring about and the kids raised their heads and
looked at her dumbly as cows disturbed at their grazing. You might expect at any
(10) moment they would break out and yell at her and give her the treatment. But they were
held back by what Bob later said you could only call her shining, her height and her
white dress and her hair lifting slightly with the slow movement of the tractor, and
more than these, the total sense of command he can find no word for. She stepped
down from the metal bar at the back of the tractor without saying a word to her old
(15) man. Nor did he speak to her, or so much as turn his head. He wheeled the tractor
back down the road he had come, to where the asphalt petered out into dust and grid
during the summer term and clogging mud in winter. The man's head, round and
squat in its knitted cover, jogged with the grunting movement of his machine. His
outline wavered in the oily fumes that rose behind him.
Questions:
1. identify two examples of simile from the passage (A)
2. Identify the group of four words in line 11 that tells you this passage is a remembered event (A)
3. In lines 2 and 9, the writer has begun the sentences with "you". Explain one reason why you think this has been done (A/M/E)
4. Identify three examples from the passage of how the girl's behaviour was different from that of the other children (A/M/E)
5. Explain what the phrases "silly as a chook" in line 2, "clapped-out tractor" in line 3, and "cut-off gumboots" in lines 5-6 tells us about the person telling the story (A/M/E)
ANSWERS
(NCEA Level 1 English revision guide. 2006 edition, Really Useful Resources, pg. 39)