2.3 Practice Questions – Non-fiction Texts
Text A: Extract from the book ‘How to Watch a Game of Rugby’
After reading Text A below, answer the questions on the next page.
Extract from the book ‘How to Watch a Game of Rugby’
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“When I taught at St Patrick’s College, Silverstream, I was told that ‘a good rugby school is
a good school’. This assertion that there is a moral dimension to rugby is not as banal as it
seems. Rugby is a manly game. You play for your team. You take your knocks, give as hard
as you receive, but you do not do anything underhand. You don’t pass to someone in a
worse position than yourself. You take the tackle yourself, if necessary. You play the ball,
not the man.
The erratic bounce of the ball gives rugby an anarchical aspect. You never know precisely
what will happen next. The round ball in soccer, for instance, has an inevitability about the
way it rolls, thereby reducing the element of luck and unpredictability in the game. But no
rugby movement is exactly the same because of the contrariness of the ball, which scuttles
and wheels like a tiny terrier doing somersaults. This contrariness mirrors the contrariness
of life. Rugby teaches you to accept life’s bounce of the ball. The rugby watcher learns to
take the bad and the unfair with the good and the fair. Winning is important. But accepting
defeat graciously is also (or should be) the mark of a rugby supporter.
For some people, these values are as limited as the lines that mark out the rugby paddock.
But, simple though they are, I believe they have an integrity and honesty about them, and
that generations of rugby players and rugby watchers trying to live by these principles
have contributed to the generally decent nature of our society. As Denis Welch once
pointed out in an editorial in the ‘New Zealand Listener’: ‘Rugby remains one of the great
games, perhaps precisely because it totally involves the body, not just the feet, or a stick or
a racquet. Is there any sporting thrill in the world to equal that of a try? There are qualities
like unselfishness and unpretentiousness that distinguish it from flashier rivals…’
Playing and watching rugby was our religion. The grounds where we watched the tests
were our cathedrals. The paddocks where we watched our local teams play were our
chapels. The best players were our saints and the opposition thugs were our sinners.
Referees who gave penalties against our sides were devils. The cry of ‘Black! Black!
Black!’ emanating from the stands and terraces in great roars of sound was New Zealand’s
prayer.
From the thousands of accounts gleaned from memory, newspaper columns, books on
rugby and, more recently, television interviews, we know hundreds of personal stories.
They have been created for over 100 years now by generations of watchers of rugby, and are
the catechism of the rugby religion. For many generations, they have also defined what
being a New Zealander is. But no longer, perhaps. I have the feeling that the claim that
‘New Zealanders know everything about rugby’ cannot be sustained. Kids don’t have to
play rugby as they did when I was a youngster. Other sports and interests have grabbed the
attention of the younger generations.
I would argue that New Zealanders have lost something. A revival of the old-time religion
of watching rugby is needed.
Published by Mary Varnham Publishers, Wellington, 2004.
Text A: Extract from the book ‘How to Watch a Game of Rugby’
1. Analyse how the writer develops the ideas of ‘these principles’ (lines 17-18).
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2. Analyse how the writer develops and builds up to the ideas of the last sentence ‘A revival of the oldtime religion of watching rugby is needed’.
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Text B: ‘The wonderful bike’ (Abridged newspaper column)
After reading Text B, answer the questions on the next page.
The wonderful bike
Of all the endless multiplicity of things that I wouldn’t have invented, the thing that I most
wouldn’t have invented is the bicycle. But Mr Bike did. He took two wheels and sat people
astride them.
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What gave him that notion? How did it enter his sick little head that it would be possible
to balance the thing? Yet not only is it possible, it’s easy, so easy that it’s become a simile for
easiness. “It’s like riding a bike,” we say of anything so simple that once learned, it is never
forgotten.
Mr Bike discovered a latent human capacity for travelling by buttock. Because balancing a
bike is the business of making a series of minute buttock-shifts relative to the position of
the bike frame. And we do it with ease, without thought, as if there’s a separate mind down
there, a sort of pre-reptilian cortex in the body’s basement that lay dormant for centuries
until Mr Bike rolled up and nudged it awake with the words “your cyclist needs you”. None
of that would have occurred to me even under torture. But that it occurred to mad Mr Bike
was, and continues to be, the greatest of all boons to a thousand million children.
The bike is the first swig of freedom, for not only does your first bike snap the apron strings
and expand the as-yet uninvented atlas of your world, but it also snaps the rules of motion.
Who doesn’t recall free-wheeling down the steepest slope in the world-the one just around
the corner from your house, the one that you barely notice today in your purring Japanese
sedan, but that was the Everest of childhood, free-wheeling down at that speed so terrorinducingly great that you could glimpse, just ahead of you, round the bend, the tail feathers
of tomorrow? And all done sitting down. Who doesn’t remember that?
The bike is a wonder beyond words. It is silent, cheap, efficient, healthy, simple, mendable.
It’s transport for saints. But the clouds of glory, as Wordsworth was fond of pointing out,
tend to burn off in the fierce sun of adulthood. We graduate to the car, which is silent,
cheap, efficient, healthy, simple, mendable and transport for saints with an enormous “not”
in front of all of them.
And yet those good, wise adults who stick with the bike all wear a badge of crankiness. The
green-voting wearer of cable-knit sweaters. The self-flagellating German couple pedalling
across the Mackenzie in a nor-wester, their faces writhing like sacks of snakes. The
muttering wino pushing his bike through the city centre, the handlebars hung with plastic
bags full of plastic bags. And the racing cyclists with their bums encased in a lycra that is
nuder than nudity. All seem to have a touch of the asylum.
And yet, as I have said, the bike is in every way a good thing, one of the greatest inventions
that I didn’t invent. If we all reverted to the bike the world would be better in a hundred
ways-less pollution, less obesity, less noise, less death, less frustration, and a whole lot more
room on the road for me and my car, which I also would never have invented.
Text B: ‘The wonderful bike’ (Abridged newspaper column)
1. Analyse how the writer uses language techniques to relate his ideas to the reader.
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2. Analyse how the writer use humour in paragraphs to communicate his ideas.
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2.3 Practice Questions – Prose Texts
After reading Text C below, answer the questions on the next page.
Text C: ‘The Wait’
Silence. Dead silence. Hear the clock ticking. Click clock click clock. So monotonous, so dull, so
heavy. Two strangers sit across the waiting room. Routine visit. An old married couple. Monthly
medicine, weekly injection? None of my business. Probably..
What’s the time? Tick tock tick tock. Hurry up! Need to get out of here, need to get out of here.
Sick to the stomach, saliva creeps into my mouth. Must be nervous-or is there another reason?
No, no, no, no, no. The old couple’s eyes are creepy. I bet they’re wondering why I’m here. Well,
it’s none of their damn business, and they can keep their wrinkly eyes off me.
Damn it! The suspense in here is incredible. Need to go, neeeeed to go.
All around the walls are covered with posters. Cancer, unwanted pregnancy, STD’s, meningitis. I
hate to be reminded of such gross things. Yuck! How depressing. This place sucks with its plain
bogey walls covered with its hideous morbid posters.
This place is damn silent. The only sound is the tick tock of the ugly clock, the tap tap of a
keyboard, and cars speeding past. Oh, to be able to speed away in one of them! A Ferrari or a pink
Cadillac would be good to take me far, far away from my mess of a life, to a beautiful castle with a
handsome prince and my very own gorgeous garden.
But that is just a fairy tale. Life never happens that way. The sound of the old man clearing his
throat brings me back to this dense place. The tension in here is insane.
A lady pushes a pram past me. Salty tears come to my eyes but, luckily, don’t manage to escape.
Fear and panic replace the unformed tears. Faster and faster my heart beats, like when hearing
“on your marks, get set…” right before a race at primary school. Now it’s beating so fast, I can’t
keep up with it. Focus, need to focus. Dad calls from the sidelines, “You’ll be fine, sweetie.” I need
him here to say that again but that could never happen. He can never know about my visit. Not
ever! A voice disrupts the thoughts, “Mr and Mrs Foster? The doctor is here to se you.” Thump
thump. Thump thump. That was my heart. The old couple get up and go into the lethal room.
Funny how closed doors can hold the story of a life. My head is spinning-the green walls keep
going around and around. Brown chairs, creepy posters popping out, huge pram, drugged lady,
green walls, brown chairs. Over and over again. Then I hear a voice.
“Kirsten Reeves?” I look up.
“She’s ready to see you now.”
Okay, okay deep breaths. I will be all right. I can do this. After all, I did win all my races
didn’t I?
Only just.
Ruby Little, Year 13, Hagley Community College, Christchurch.
Text C: ‘The Wait’
1. Analyse how tension is built up by the writer.
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2. Analyse how the writer helps the reader understand the girl’s thoughts and emotions.
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After reading Text D below, answer the questions on the next page.
Text D: ‘Imagine a small town’ (extract from New Zealand novel)
Imagine a small town
Along its edges, chaos.
To the east, clinking shelves of shingle and a tearing sea, surging in from South America across
thousands of gull-studded, white-capped heaving miles.
To the south, the worn hump of a volcano crewcut with pines dark and silent, but dimpled still on
the crest where melted rock and fire have spilled to the sea to hiss and set as solid bubbles, black
threaded with red.
To the west, a border of hilly terraces built up from layer upon layer of shells which rose once,
dripping from the sea and could as easily shudder like the fish it is in legend and dive.
To the north flat paddocks pockmarked with stone, and the river which made them shifting
restlessly from channel to channel in its broad braided bed.
Nothing is sure.
The town pretends of course, settled rump-down on the coastal plain with its back to the sea, which
creeps up yearly a nibble here, a bite there, until a whole football field has gone at the boys’ high
school and the cliff walkway crumbles and the sea demands propitiation, truckloads of rubble and
concrete blocks. And the town inches away in neat rectangular steps up the flanks of the volcano
which the council named after an early mayor, a lardy mutton-chop of a man, hoping to tame it as
Greeks thought they’d fool the Furies by calling them the Kindly Ones: inches away across shingle
bar and flax swamp to the shell terraces and over, where order frays at last into unpaved roads,
creeks flowing like black oil beneath willows tangled in convolvulus, and old villa houses, gaptoothed, teetering on saggy piles, with an infestation of hens in the yard and a yellow toothed dog
chained to a water tank.
At the centre, things seem under control. The post office is a white wedding cake, scalloped and
frilled, and across the road are the banks putting on a responsible Greek front (though ramshackle
corrugated iron behind). At each end of the main street, the town mourns its glorious dead with a
grieving soldier in puttees to the north and a defiant lion to the south, and in between, a cohort of
memorial elms was drawn up respectfully until 1952 when it was discovered that down in the dark
the trees had broken ranks and were rootling around under the road tearing crevices in the tarmac
and the council was forced to be stern: tore out the lot and replaced them with plots of more
compliant African marigolds. There are shops and petrol stations and churches and flowering
cherries for beautification and a little harbour with a tea kiosk in the lee of the volcano. It’s as sweet
as a nut, as neat as a pie, as a pin.
Imagine it.
Source: The Skinny Louie Book, (Penguin), by Fiona Farrell, Winner of New Zealand Prime Minister’s
Award for Fiction, 2007.
Text D: ‘Imagine a small town’ (extract from New Zealand novel)
1. Analyse how the writer develops the ideas raised in the sentence ‘Along its edges, chaos’ (paragraph 2).
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2. Analyse different ways the writer shows us that ‘The town pretends, of course’ (line 14).
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2.3 Practice Questions – Poetry
Text E: ‘Hydroslide’
After reading Text E below, answer the questions on the next page.
The shadows of little dark bodies
are flying downwards, looping and tumbling
like spinning X-rays of the water chute’s
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long yellow arm. Two calm girls, you walk
straight up to it, climb in to the cavernous
maw* ready, eager to be devoured then spat out
by that angular, helter-skelter,
hit-and-miss streaking cascade. Tell me,
once in, are you at all the movers,
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being moved, in that thrusting propulsion?
Is it all one, the power and the loss of it?
Do you ride to your glory by throwing
yourselves away? Intricate splayed-out
little fliers, I watch you emerge, stroll out
from your fearful insect ecstasy, casually
peel off a new ticket; so you’re condemned
and incited, so you take off over and over
on your high, mad flight from the world.
By Lauris Edmond
[*maw - stomach]
From Scenes from a Small City, Daphne Brasell Associates Publishers, Wellington, 1994)
Text E: ‘Hydroslide’
1. Analyse the idea(s) behind the three questions in the poem. ‘Tell me… yourselves away?’ (lines 8-13).
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2. Analyse how the poet uses poetic techniques in the poem to develop and support the ‘insect’ image
(line 15).
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Text F: ‘Our Trip to Takaka’
After reading Text F below, answer the questions on the next page.
‘Our Trip to Takaka’
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Well, we went to Takaka
for the weekend
and there was this spring.
Yes.
This spring.
And we could see under the
water with this mirror thing.
And there was this eel.
Yes.
This eel, swimming from right
to left like a reel of silk ribbon,
like a pennant waving.
You know: a pennant,
with teeth and an eye like a
silver stud among all this
pondweed. And there were
all these bubbles. Each one
was like a little world
rising in its sleek skin.
And then we went to see
the goldfields.
Yes.
Goldfields.
And there were these caves
in scrubland. They’d stripped
the hills till the ground ran red.
And we went into one of the
caves and there was this young
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man sleeping on fern fronds,
meditating to make the world
well. He had his dog with him.
Yes.
His dog.
That’s how we knew he was there.
The cave was deep, like an ear.
Or a belly button. It was deep and
damp, and we heard the dog bark
down in the dark and a young man
saying, “Be quiet!”
The clay in the cave stuck
to our hands like dry blood.
We gave the young man a
bread roll.
Yes.
A bread roll.
With cheese and egg. And we
said, Well, good luck with the
meditating and everything.
He said, yeah, well, he was
going to give it his best shot.
Then we drove home.
Yes.
Home.
That was our trip to Takaka.
by Fiona Farrell
Fiona Farrell, ‘Trout’. [www.trout.auckland.ac.nz], 2003
Text F: ‘Our Trip to Takaka’
1. Analyse how language features are used to establish the mood of the poem.
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2. Analyse how language features have been used to suggest that it is a young person is telling the story.
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