Passage A
1. In China, 7000 captive bears in bear-bile farms supply the voracious Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) market. Bear bile has been used in TCM for thousands of years, but intensive bear farming only began in the 1980s when the supply of wild bears was depleted.
From Passage A:
From paragraph 1:
1. Write down the word from the paragraph which suggests that the bears are held against their will on bear-bile farms. [1 mark]
Extracted bear bile through the catheter
the catheter through the bear's skin and flesh
Animals Asia Moon Bear Rescue Centre in China - Another caged bear rescued.
2. Usually bile is extracted from the bears’ gall bladders twice daily through a catheter, a surgically implanted tube. The process, called “milking”, is clearly painful for the bears, which are often seen moaning and chewing their paws during the process.
3. Sometimes the farmers just push a hollow steel stick through a bear’s abdomen and the bile runs into a basin under the cage. Surgery to insert the tube or stick is seldom performed by veterinarians (very few bear farms employ them). Roughly half of the bears die from infections or other complications.
From paragraph 3:
2. “Sometimes the farmers just push a hollow steel stick through a bear’s abdomen” (line 7). What does the word “just” suggest about the farmers’ attitude towards the bears? [1 mark]
4. The catheter was later banned. In recent years, the government has been promoting the so-called humane “free dripping” method, where a permanent hole carved into the bear’s abdomen and gall bladder. The damage caused by bile leaking back into the abdomen, together with infection from the permanently open hold is worse than the older style methods and causes high mortality on the farms. As the body’s natural instinct is to repair itself, farmers find it difficult keeping the hole in the abdomen open. This has led to the illegal use of the catheter.
From paragraph 4:
3. In your own words, why is a catheter still used to extract bile even though it is banned? [2 marks]
5. On most bear bile farms, the bears are housed in cages so small that these 110 to 260-pound animals can barely sit up or turn around. The bars pressing against their bodies leave scars, some as long as four feet. Some bears have head wounds from banging them against the bars. Many of the bears have broken and worn teeth from biting the bars.
From paragraph 5:
4. What are the bears trying to communicate when they band their heads against the bars of their cage and bite the bars? [1 mark]
6. Captive-bred cubs are taken from their mothers at three months as captive mothers often eat their young, a behaviour attributed to the stress of captivity. This seldom occurs in the wild as cubs typically stay with their mother for up to eighteen months. Milking of the gall bladder begins at three years. Some bears arriving at the Animals Asia Moon Bear Rescue Centre have been caged for twenty years or more, still producing bile at the time of their surrender. Once they stop producing bile, bears are either allowed to die from starvation or illness, or they are killed so that their paws and gall bladders can be sold.
7. Bear bile is touted to cure numerous human maladies, from cardiac illness to impotence to sore eyes. Available in various forms: pills and powders, ointments, lozenges, wines and shampoos, they can fetch several thousand US dollars. Some TCM practitioners, however, prefer cheaper and more readily available herbal and synthetic alternatives to bear bile.
8. Despite international laws protecting bears, the illegal trade in bear bile and gall bladder thrives. Smugglers have been caught with whole gall bladders dipped in chocolate or packed in coffee to obscure the smell. The differing international legal statuses for bear parts in trade, combined with the impossibility of distinguishing between species parts, also complicate national or international bear-protection law enforcement.
9. In July 2000, the Chinese government signed an agreement to deliver 500 bears to the Animals Asia Foundation, which provided them with veterinary care, rehabilitation, and sanctuary. Some criticize the agreement with Animals Asia as nothing more than a public relations manoeuvre, intended to mitigate the fact that the Chinese government is clearly committed to bear-bile farming. These critics argue that it is, in fact, pushing to legitimize the industry. They claim that the farms from which the bears would be taken are merely the worst of the hundreds operating in the country and the bears being surrendered to Animals Asia are old bears which are no longer profitable.
From paragraph 9
6(a) Explain the italicized word in the phrase “a public relations manoeuvre” (lines 40 – 41). [1 mark]
6(b) Why do critics feel that the Chinese government is insincere in its attempts to work with the Animals Asia Foundation? [2 marks]
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PASSAGE B
1. Sharks have an image problem. The serial-killer stare, the obscene grimace of warped teeth, the bloody feeding frenzies – it is no wonder they have been difficult to love as long as we have known them. And writers have not always helped their cause.
From paragraph 1:
7.Give two examples of sharks having “an image problem” (line 1). [2 marks]
8. What do you think the statement “And writers have not always helped their cause”(line 3) mean? [1 mark]
2. At Tiger Beach in the Bahamas, a dozen of tiger sharks circle, not vulture-like, but more like a mobile above a child’s bed. After the great white, this species is allegedly the world’s most dangerous shark. It eats everything – other sharks, license plates, tyres. The big female that breaks formation and heads my way passes so closely I can see the pores that pepper her snout and enable her to sense the electro-magnetic energy of living flesh. As she slides by, huge and silent, I run a hand over her side. Her movements stay steady and calm as she rejoins the circling sharks. For a fish with a vicious reputation, this one makes a disarming first impression.
From paragraph 2:
9. Explain fully why the tiger sharks are described as circling “not vulture-like, but more like a mobile above a child’s bed” (line 4-5).
3. Bimini, a tiny secluded lagoon in the strand of Bahamian islands, is a natural shark nursery with windowpane waters. Samuel “Doc” Gruber, a biologist, who runs a shark research station nearby laments that it is difficult to win public support and dollars for shark research and conservation. Gruber’s lab on South Bimini is clearly a duct-tape-and-string operation. Torn fishnets festoon the yard. The lab’s donated truck, when it runs, fills quickly with noxious exhaust ( a passenger needing air has to ride holding the door ajar). Volunteers who do most of the grunt work share a double-wide mobile home painted in loud colours and the food is off-brand. The mostly twenty-somethings look sleep-deprived and hungry, but they still eagerly line up to do hands-on research in a place where sharks still thrive.
From paragraph 3:
10(a) Why are the waters of Bimini in the Bahamian islands described as “windowpane waters” (line 13)? [1 mark]
10(b) In your own words, give two reasons to explain why the conservationists run on a “duct-tape-and-string operation” (line 15)? [2 marks]
4. The “shark geeks” spend long nights working by moon and flashlight in open stretches of Bimini’s North Sound, wading along a lattice of nets, carefully untangling captured lemon sharks and rushing them to a pen to be studied and later released. Nearly every pup that moves through the sound is caught this way. Each is weighed, measured, tagged, and its dorsal fin snipped for DNA studies to help the researchers build a lemon shark family tree.
5. Gruber has been studying Bimini’s lemon sharks for some 25 years, amassing a detailed database that is the largest for any shark population anywhere on Earth. Along with numerous other studies, Gruber’s findings on how sharks affect their environment and what they need from it confirm the life-giving nature of the mangroves. This is why the biologist is fighting mad about a contentious and outsized resort elbowing its way onto tiny North Bimini Island. Condos, a marina and a casino are already under way, and plans call for a waterside golf course. Local Bahamians are worried about their shrinking access to fishing grounds as the seafloor is dredged, but Gruber has his own concern. “The mangroves will all be wiped out if the developers have their own way,” he says.
6. The shark’s ecological value is seen in how they weed out the sick and weak fish, leaving the fittest to breed. As top predators, they also keep other carnivores in check, preventing them from depleting the algae-eating fish that keep coral reefs healthy.
7. It is a great and sad irony that over much of the world, sharks are prized foremost for their nearly tasteless cartilage ribbons of their fins which are the costly key ingredient in shark-fin soup. As many as 73 million sharks die annually. The trade is illegal and cruelly wasteful – finners often slice off the fins and throw the sharks back to starve, drown, or be eaten alive – but continues to grow.
From paragraph 7:
11. Explain the “irony” (line 38) that the writer is referring to. [2 marks]
From Passage A and Passage B:
12. For each of the following words, give one word or phrase (of NOT MORE THAN SEVEN WORDS) which has the same meaning as the word has in the passage.
FROM PASSAGE A:
1. voracious (line 1)
2. touted (line 29)
FROM PASSAGE B:
3. frenzies (line 2)
4. disarming (line 10)
5. festoon (line 16)
From Passage B:
13. Using your own words as far as possible, summarise the work done on sharks at Gruber's research centre and how man's selfish actions can destroy sharks and their environment.
USE THE MATERIAL IN PASSAGE B FROM PARAGRAPHS 3 - 7.
Your summary, which must be in continuous writing (NOT NOTE FORM), must not be longer than 150 words (not counting the words given to help you begin).
Begin your summary as follows: Gruber and his team of volunteers at his research centre...
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