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Bondo District Mock-English Paper 2 Question Paper
Bondo District Mock-English Paper 2
Course:Secondary Level
Institution: Mock question papers
Exam Year:2006
101/2
(Comprehension, Literary Appreciation and Grammar)
Paper 2
JULY/AUG. 2006
Question 1
Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow.
In light of the just concluded recruitment of military officers in Kenya in which the percentage of women recruits hopefully rose-it is necessary to ask ourselves: How does the issue of gender relate to this era of counter-terrorism?
Here we must address generations of highly masculine. Armies of men confronted each other on the battlefield. The macho factor was often at work as virility and valour were intertwined. In most societies throughout history the warriors were overwhelmingly men.
In the course of the 20th Century, three processes tended to increase the proportion of women in military matters. One was the change in the technology of war. Fighting came to involve more and more the pushing of buttons rather than the wielding of heavy weapons. Women as foot soldiers and infantry were still at a disadvantage . But technological sophistication made muscle power less and less relevant.
A second factor which came to increase the role of women in the military in the 20th century was the women’s liberation movement worldwide. Both government and the armed forces were under pressure for at least ‘token’ participation of women in military matters.
The third factor that increased the role of women was emergence of new form and armed struggle,especially in the developing countries. Guerrilla warfare, liberation wars and even the new strategies of suicide bombers have come to involve increasing participation by women in combat roles.
I am in favour of pursuing the ideal of androgynous armies in which there would be approximate parity between men and women in the armed forces. I support the ideal of such gender parity in the military because I believe if women were equals in decisions about war and peace, the world would have fewer wars. It is not sociologically an accident that women are underrepresented in hard-core prisons for crimes of violence everywhere in the world, as well as being underrepresented within the armed forces of almost all societies.
Women as a force for peace would only succeed if their participation in warfare went beyond obeying the orders of male generals and male field marshals. That is why the truly significant enlistment of women in the armed forces of the United States and Israel has not prevented those two countries from becoming the most internationally aggressive for the last 50 years. Since the 1950s, the US and Israel have engaged in more wars across national boundaries than any other state in the world. The American and Israeli armed forces have a higher proportion of women than most other armies in the world. Yet, the US and Israel have military violated the territorial sovereignty of other countries more
often than have any other countries, with the possible exception of apartheid South African in the1970s and 1980s.
The conclusion to be drawn is that it is not enough to have numerically more women in the armed forces, if women are to be a force for peace. Women must go beyond saluting male generals. There is need to be greater parity in command, greater sharing of military authority.
In November 2002 in my home town of Mombasa by suicide bombers. The bombers were definitely
men. On the same day in Mombasa, an attempt was made to shoot down an Israeli tourist plane.
This one failed. Again the presumption was that the shooters from the ground were me, but this presumption was based on probability rather than certainty. There may be more and more women sacrificing themselves in Third world Liberation movements these days, but the chain of command is still heavily masculine.
A surface to air miscible seems to have been used in an attempt to blow up the Israeli plane over Mombasa. The global media presented this as a wholly new threat to civilian aviation.
In fact this attempt to shoot down a civilian plane was not even new in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa
had a 1978 precedent at the level of National terrorism. North Africa was accused of a similar 1988 destruction of a civilian airline at the level of international terrorism.
The sub-Saharan precedent was the shooting down of civilian government airliner by Zimbabwe
liberation forces in 1978, in which about 50 people died. Among those who survived on the ground, Joshua Nkomo’s forces killed several of them. Newsweek carried a photography of Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe raising their glasses. The caption of the photograph was “we shot it down”. It was not clear whether the photograph was not an old one dug up by Newsweek and taken long before the shooting down of the plane.
But there is no doubt that Joshua Nkomo “credit” for shooting down the plane, and he caused an uproar when he chuckled over the incident in a BBC interviewer. This was all part of anti-colonial terrorism at the national level of the politics of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe women participated in the liberation struggle, but had little role in decisions of such magnitude less clear-cut was whether Libya was really responsible for the bombing of the Pan – American flight 103 over Lockerbie,
Scotland, in 1988.
The fact that one Libyan (male) has been convicted by a Scottish court has still left many doubts about the nature of the evidence. But if Libya was indeed responsible for the bomb which destroyed Pan-
American flight 103, it was North African participation in terrorism at the international level. While Libyan women have served in the security forces, they have not shared ultimate military authority. If women are potentially a force for peace, no long-term strategy of either counter-terrorism or countermilitarism will succeed without paying greater attention to the sexual sociology of war. In the final analysis, a war on terrorism must include a campaign for the empowerment of women.
The human race has made a start, but there is still a long way to go before Afro gender is reconciled to Afro-equity.
By Prof. Ali Mazrui An extract from:
Sunday Standard of February, 19, 2006
QUESTIONS:
1. What has made the number of women in the military to increase in the recent past. 3mks*BND*
(ii) What advantage does the author see in including almost an equal number of women to
men in the armed forces? 2mks*BND*
(iii) Why do we have the United States and Israel participate in many wars despite their
enlistment of many women in their forces? 2mks*BND*
(iv) In November 2002 in my hometown of Mombasa, an Israeli hotel, the paradise, was bombed by
suicide bombers. (Identify the parenthesis in the above sentence). 1mk*BND*
(v) Newsweek carried a photograph of Joshua Nkonao and Robert Mugabe raising their glasses.
1mk*BND*
(Change the above statement to an interrogative sentence)
(vi) In not more than three sentences paraphrase the author’s argument on the role of women in the
armed forces. 3mks*BND*
(vii) Give the meaning of the following words as used in the passage. 5mks*BND*
(a) Macho
(b) Sophistication
(c) Guerilla
(d) Liberation
(e) Empowerment
(viii) Why isn’t the attempt to shoot down a civilian plane considered new in Africa? 2mks*BND*
Q. 2 MERCHANT OF VENICE
By William Shakespeare
……… To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will feel my revenge. He hath
disgraced me and hindered me. Half a million, laughed at the losses, mocked at my grains,
scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies and what’s
his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions,
senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and
summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like
you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?
Revenge! If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance by Christian example? Why,
revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the
instruction.
(i) State what happens immediately before and after the extract. 4mks*BND*
(ii) Who speaks in the above extract and who is he addressing? 3mks*BND*
(iii) What is the speaker in the above extract addressing? 2mks*BND*
(iv) What is the meaning of the following statement as used in the extract, ….”To bait fish withal”
1mk*BND*
(v) With appropriate illustrations, describe the character of the speaker as portrayed elsewhere in the
play. 4mks*BND*
(vi) Make notes on the speaker’s complaints against his presumed. 5mks*BND*
(vii) In about 80 words summarise the reasons why the speaker feels they should not be given such a
treatment described in the extract.
Q 3. Read the poem and answer the questions which follow.
THE MARKET WOMAN
The market woman
Strong sun
and the market woman in the shade
of the mulemba
- Orange, my lady
a nice little orange!
Light plays in the town
its burning game
of brightness and shade
and life plays
in worried hearts
its game of blind-man’s buff.
The market woman
who sells fruit
sells herself.
- My Lady
orange, nice little orange!
Buy sweets oranges
buy from me too the bitterness
of this torture
of life without life
buy from me the childhood of the spirit
this rosebud
that did not open
start still impelled to a beginning.
Orange, my lady!
I exhausted the smiles
with which I cried
I no longer cry.
And there goes my hopes
as did the blood of my children
mingled with the dust of roads
buried on plantations
and my sweat
soaked in the cotton threads.
As effort was offered to
the security of machines
the beauty of tarmac roads
of tall buildings
comfort or ricy gentlemen
happiness dispersed in towns
and I
became a part
of the very problems of existence.
There go the oranges
as I offered myself to alcohol
to anaesthetize myself
and stupefied myself to live.
I gave all.
Even my pain
and the poetry of my naked breasts
I gave to the poets.
Now I myself am selling me
Buy oranges!
my lady!
Take me to the markets of life
My price is only one: - Blood.
Perhaps selling myself
I posses my self
- Buy oranges!
From Scared Hope by Agostino Neto,
Tanzania Publishing House, 1974, 12 - 14
QUESTIONS
(a) Identify the three voices in this poem. 3mks*BND*
(b) What is the Poet’s attitude to the market woman? 2mks*BND*
(c) What is the theme of the poem? 3mks*BND*
d) Describe the feeling of the market woman. 3mks*BND*
e) Identify the lines spoken by the persona in his role as an observer. 3mks*BND*
f) Explain the meaning of the following lines. 6mks*BND*
(i) I exhausted the similes
With which I cried
I no longer cry
(ii) Even my pain
and the poetry of my naked breasts
I gave to the poets
……………………………………………………………………………………………
My price is only one: - Blood
Q. 4 GRAMMAR
A. Rewrite the following sentences according to the instructions given. 3mks*BND*
(i) He was the wisest man present.
(Rewrite using wiser)
(ii) Fry the pieces of chicken on all sides. Use a thick frying pan. (Combine beginning
with a participle)
(iii) The young man was very hungry. He swallowed the food without chewing it.
(Begin: So …..)
B. Punctuate the following sentences correctly. 3mks*BND*
(i) The fisherman a very hardworking man made a large profit from the sales.
(ii) You will come to see us won’t you.
(iii) The results therefore depend on the care you take while carrying out the experiment.
C) Fill in the blank spaces with the correct preposition. 3mks*BND*
(i) The hall was packed ……………………….. capacity
(ii) Otieno isn’t a verse …………………………. making money.
(iii) You can’t make an omellete …………………….. breaking eggs.
D) Write two sentences to convey two different meanings of each. 3mks*BND*
(i) Bank
(ii) Book
(iii) Rebel
E. Use the correct form of the word in bracket to complete the sentences below.3mks*BND*
(i) With the …………………………(except) of Ely all the pupils were present.
(ii) She was full of ……………………………. (indignant) at the cruel threats of the gang
of ………………………….. (prison)
(iii) His (obey) ……………………………. earned him severe punishment from his boss.
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