Practice Essay Year 9 Selp

Student’s Name:_____________________________________________________________

Circle your teacher’s name:               Mrs Attard                   Mr Munro                   Mrs Xevgenis

WERRIBEE SECONDARY COLLEGE

SEMESTER 1, 2016

YEAR 9 EXAMINATION

SELP ENGLISH

Wednesday 8^th of June, 2016

1.15 pm – 3.00pm

Reading Time:                         10 minutes                                

Writing Time:                         85 minutes

Total Marks:                           40 marks

This Exam consists of 3 pages

INSTRUCTIONS TO STUDENTS:

l         Complete Section 1 and section 2

l         Plan your work carefully. Edit your work and use all the time available.     

l         Use a blue or a black pen, not a lead pencil.

l         Write on one side of the lined paper provided. Place these into the exam paper for collection.

l         You may use a dictionary, but not a thesaurus. You may not share your dictionary. No notes or text books are allowed.

SECTION ONE – TEXT RESPONSE                                                       50% of grade

Write an analytical essay of no less than 600 words in response to one of the questions.

SECTION TWO – LANGUAGE ANALYSIS                                            50% of grade  

Write a language analysis essay (which includes an introduction and two body paragraphs and a conclusion) in response to the source provided.      

                       

SECTION ONE – TEXT RESPONSE                                                       (20 MARKS)

Choose one of the topics below.

Write a carefully constructed essay of no less than 600 words in response to the chosen topic.

Remember to include specific examples from the film and quotations to support your ideas.

TOPICS

'Well I'm not going to stand around and let them do what they want, I say we fight'

What is the importance of conflict within Stuart Beattie's Tomorrow When the War Began?

OR

Growth and development are central to Stuart Beattie's Tomorrow When the War Began. Do you agree?

 or

SECTION TWO – LANGUAGE ANALYSIS                                                          (20 marks)

Write a language analysis essay (which includes an introduction, two body paragraphs and a conclusion) in response to the following source.

Background Information
Following the hunting of a famous lion ‘Cecil’ by an American dentist the issue of whether or not the hunting of animals should be allowed has been discussed. Those who promote the practice of hunting suggest that the practice is tied to tradition and honour, and provides a source of income to many in impoverished nations. Those against the hunting suggest that it is a barbaric practice that threatens our existence as a society and prevents sustainable sources of income from being maintained.

The hunter who killed Cecil the lion doesn’t deserve our empathy

Rose George                                                                                   www.theguardian.com     July 29, 2015

Trophy hunters like Walter J Palmer shouldn’t receive death threats – but there is no excuse for their argument that hunting serves conservation

We love a good fight, don’t we? Enter Walter J Palmer, a tanned dentist from Minnesota, with a bow and arrow. Along comes Cecil the lion, the alpha male of his pride, minding his own business being the best-known and most beloved lion in Zimbabwe if not in Africa, as well as the subject of an Oxford University study. Then Cecil is shot with a bow and arrow, taking 40 hours to die, all because Palmer thought killing a magnificent animal was sporty.

I read the story of Cecil’s killing and my education and intellect deserted me for a minute. I felt only disgust and rage, somewhat inarticulately. I feel no calmness about big-game hunters. I am not persuaded by their justifications, which can be easily punctured with buckshot. Trophy hunting contributes to conservation, they say: when the Dallas Safari Club auctioned the right to kill an endangered Namibian black rhino, it said the $350,000 winning bounty – they called it a “bid” – went towards conservation efforts in Namibia. There are only 5,000 black rhinos left.

The population of African lions has been reduced by 50% in the last three decades, says the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and there are now only 32,000. Elephants, leopards, polar bears and giraffes are all hunted for “sport” too. Shooting an endangered species and calling it sustainable is like waving a fan and thinking you’re helping to stop global warming.

In April, after Ricky Gervais tweeted a picture of the blonde, pretty Rebecca Francis lying next to a dead giraffe she had just shot, the internet went ape. Arguably, it went more ape than it would have if she hadn’t been female, and you can find plenty of earnest essays about how women have the right to be big-game hunters without getting an online hounding. I don’t care what gender she was. I care that afterwards, she declared that she had done a good thing. The giraffe was elderly, she wrote, and was going to die soon. By shooting him, she had honoured his life by making his body useful to locals: his tail could make jewellery and his bones could make “other things”. “I’m no game biologist,” she wrote, but “there is no question that hunters contribute the most to the welfare of wildlife.”

Follow this argument further and you reach the reasoning that poaching and trafficking do more harm than big-game hunting. True. Wildlife trafficking is worth $7-10bn, and is the fifth most profitable illegal market worldwide. Yet in many countries where poaching is rampant, policing is patchy and punishment often nothing more than a fine. Yes, poaching is more damaging than trophy hunting. Murder is worse than grievous bodily harm, technically, but I’m comfortable strongly objecting to both.

But violently objecting to hunters can be almost as bad as hunting. Most public displays of big-game hunting attract fury and sometimes death threats, as Palmer has been subjected to since his identity was revealed. The fact that African countries such as Namibia and Zimbabwe sell licences to shoot their own big game gets less attention.

Palmer is said to be “quite upset,” but only because he got the wrong lion. He blamed his guides for this, rather than his own bizarre and repellent desire to augment his own self-worth (somewhat damaged, now, by a campaign to shut down his dental practice) by killing another creature. Francis was compelled to release a statement saying that she “couldn’t understand how people who claim to be so loving and caring for animals can turn around and threaten to murder and rape my children.”

Let’s not turn Palmer and Francis into trophies too, repugnant though their actions are. I don’t want to understand them or empathise. I’d rather not attempt to comprehend the inexplicable act that is the murder of animals for fun. But trophy hunting is about something bigger than that: an assumption that all animals are at our service, and ignoring the fact that we are just clever animals too.

Here is a product of my superior animal brain: a plan. If you’re going to pay $50,000 towards conservation efforts by shooting a lion, then give the money and don’t shoot. Preserving life, by killing fewer animals – now that would be worth a trophy.