Cambridge Assessment International Education

TERM 1 EXAMINATION
[2023-24]

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NAME

CANDIDATE
E-MAIL

SCORE / GRADE

NAME OF EXAMINER SIGN

Cambridge Lower Secondary STAGE- 8

ENGLISH (0861)
PAPER 1 – NON-FICTION 1 Hour
10 Minutes
No additional material needed

INSTRUCTIONS
• Answer all questions.
• Write your answer to each question in the space provided. Nothing written in the
gutter space will be evaluated.
• You should pay attention to punctuation, spelling and handwriting.

INFORMATION
• The total mark for this paper is 50.
• The number of marks for each question or part question is shown in brackets [ ].
Suggestions for how long to spend on each section are given in the booklet.
 SESSION 1: READING
(Spend 30 minutes on this session)

Text A

How eavesdropping on elephants is keeping them safe

A low rumble of reverberates from a rainforest cleaning. Occasionally, piercing roars and
haunting wails emanate from among the trees. These are the calls of forest elephants
that inhabit this tropical landscape. Hidden by the dense vegetation, they are smaller
and more enigmatic cousins of savannah elephants. They are more commonly heard
than seen, but their diminishing populations are endangered by high levels of poaching.
Now, the calls these elusive elephants use to communicate with each other through the
thick forests could provide researchers with new tools they need to protect the animals.

“Our goal is to better understand and protect forest elephants, a keystone species
roaming the second largest tropical rainforest on earth.”, says Peter Wrege, a biologist
who is a part of a team attempting to decipher the elephants’ calls. “We are using
technology to improve their chance of survival and, in doing so, to conserve the
biodiversity of their forests’. The aim: to find the location of the elephants – and the
poachers who seeks to kill them – so the animals can be kept safe.

Wrege and his colleagues have collected 900 000 hours of recordings from central
African forests, which include thousands of hours of elephant vocalisations. They have
found, for example, that low frequency rumbles keep groups in contact with each other,
while long, overlapping rumbles serve as greetings.

But the researchers are off to a strong start. Their largest current project includes a grid
of 50 sensors monitoring 1243 sq km of forest, recording the equivalent of two million
songs and calls from the forests every 3-4 months. With the help of a form of Artificial
Intelligence known as deep learning, analysing this huge volume of recordings, and
picking out the 15 000 or so elephant calls, can be done in about 22 days. Wrege and
his colleagues are also now testing prototypes for real-time detection.

“AI just makes us so much more efficient in all of these things”, says Lucas Joppa, a
chief environmental officer. “No human would be able to sit there and listen to two
million songs in a language they don’t understand.”
Text B

How does an elephant’s trunk work?

The elephant’s trunk must be one of the most amazing things in the entire animal
kingdom. Created from a fusion of the animal’s top lip and its nose, the elephant’s trunk
is a multifunctional tool integral to these distinguished mammals’ survival, and it is used
in almost every aspect of their lives.

Incredible engineering
The trunk is composed of 140 kg of flesh, fat, nerves, connective tissue, and over
40,000 muscles grouped around the nasal passages. These taper down to two fingers
in the case of African elephants and one finger for Asian elephants.

What does the elephant use its trunk for?

In human terms, the elephant’s trunk is mostly like the tongue. Just like the human
tongue, the elephant is able to taste air thanks to millions of receptor cells in their upper
nasal cavity. They can smell just as well as any hunting dog and are able to detect water
from 19 km away.

Once found, the elephant can draw up to 8 litres of water in into their nasal passages at
a time. This is then sprayed into the mouth. Water and mud is sprayed over the
elephant’s body to cool it down on a hot day and discourage external parasites such as
ticks.
If a river crossing is in order, the trunk comes to the rescue once again. Held high above
the surface of water, the trunk is used like a snorkel so the elephant can breathe even
when its entire body is submerged.

Finger food
Food time is a breeze when you have two highly tactile fingers to pick leaves from the
highest branches, snap off twigs or pull up grass, and self-defence is no problem either
with a long muscular club at your disposal. An elephant’s trunk can lift hundreds of
kilograms with ease.
Read Text A , and then answer questions 1-5.

Q1. Look at the first paragraph.

a) The writer uses powerful imagery to describe the sounds made by elephants.
Give one example.

………………………………………………………………………………………… [1]

b) Give one word that tells the reader that forest elephants are mysterious and
difficult to understand.

………………………………………………………………………………………… [1]

c) Give one word that tells the reader that forest elephants are hard to track.

………………………………………………………………………………………….. [1]

d) Look at the last part of the first paragraph.

Identify a complex sentence.

………………………………………………………………………………………… [1]

Q2. Look at the second paragraph.

a) “Our goal is to better understand and protect forest elephants, a keystone
species roaming the second largest tropical rainforest on earth”, says Peter…
Identify the form of narration and change it.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………….. [2]

b) Pick out a punctuation mark used in lines 13-15..

………………………………………………………………………………………… [1]

Q3. Look at the third paragraph.

a) The word ‘while’ is an example of?

………………………………………………………………………………………….. [1]
 b) Identify a verb in this paragraph and change it to future continuous tense.

………………………………………………………………………………………… [1]

c) State whether the following phrase is True or False.

But the researchers are off to a strong start.

………………………………………………………………………………………….. [1]

d) Give one phrase that tells the reader that it is not yet certain that the new
research methods will be successful.

………………………………………………………………………………………….. [1]

Q4. Look at the fifth and sixth paragraphs. Explain how the writer used the word songs
in different ways.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………….. [2]

Read Text B, and then answer questions 6-10.

Q5. Look at the first paragraph. Explain the difference in structure in first and second
paragraphs.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………….. [2]

Q6. What is food time a breeze an example of? Tick one option.
a) Hyperbole
b) Oxymoron
c) Idiom
d) Personification [1]
Q7. Why does the writer use the word fingers to describe part of the elephant’s trunk?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………….. [1]

Q8. Text B is less formal than Text A.

How does the writer achieve this effect? Give one way.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………….. [2]

Q9. How does an elephant use its trunk? Make notes in the table below. [3]

How does an elephant use its trunk…….. Notes

When drinking?
……………………………………………………

……………………………………………………

……………………………………………………

……………………………………………………

When eating?
…………………………………………………….

…………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………..

……………………………………………………...

When looking after itself

……………………………………………………...

……………………………………………………...

……………………………………………………...
 At other times?
……………………………………………………...

……………………………………………………...

……………………………………………………...

……………………………………………………...

Q10. Summarise how an elephant uses its trunk. Use up to 50 words.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………………………………………….. [3]
 SESSION B: WRITING
(Spend 30 minutes on this session)

Q11. Our hands are one of a human’s most remarkable features.

Give a write up about the significance of human hands as a part of a ‘Guidebook
for Visitors to Planet Earth’.

You can include

 How humans use their hands in their everyday lives
 Some special ways that humans use their hands
 How humans take care of their hands.

Space for your plan:

Give your write up in the next page. [25]

EXAMINATION OVER