Cambridge Assessment International Education

Cambridge International Advanced Subsidiary and Advanced Level

ENGLISH LANGUAGE 9093/12

Paper 1 Passages February/March 2019
2 hours 15 minutes
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Answer two questions: Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

You should spend about 15 minutes reading the passages and questions before you start writing your answers.
You are reminded of the need for good English and clear presentation in your answers.

The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question.

This document consists of 7 printed pages, 1 blank page and 1 Insert.

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Answer Question 1 and either Question 2 or Question 3.

1 The following text is an extract from a magazine article written by Kofi Annan, former Secretary-
General of the United Nations. In the article, Annan warns of the global consequences of
overpopulation on planet Earth.

(a) Comment on the language and style of the text. [15]

(b) After reading the text, you give a speech to your classmates to persuade them to tackle the
issue at a local level through individual and community action. Basing your writing closely on
the material of the original text, write a section of the speech. You should use between 120
and 150 of your own words. [10]

Red Alert

We are running out of space. Fly over Africa at night and you will see mile after mile
of fires burning red in the dark as scrub is removed to make way for human beings.
Satellite images of nocturnal Europe or America show vast areas lit up like an
enormous fairground. From Shanghai to Sydney, from Moscow to Mexico City, the 5
skylines of our major cities are no longer fixed and familiar. Where we cannot build
into the sky, we construct vast chequerboards of smogbound, low-rise dwellings
that stretch from one horizon to the other.

Our cities expand in every direction as we fight to house a population that is growing
at the rate of 200,000 each day. That adds up to a headcount the size of Germany 10
every year. To feed this growing number requires ever more land to farm: each year,
more than 150,000 square kilometres of natural forest are lost to agricultural or
urban development.

Forests cover a third of our planet’s surface. They produce life-giving oxygen and,
by absorbing carbon dioxide, also mitigate the otherwise catastrophic effects of 15
climate change. Not only do they provide a habitat for many of the world’s most
endangered animals, around 1.6 billion people rely on them for food, fresh water,
clothing, traditional medicine and shelter. Yet they are under threat from rampant
deforestation in its many forms: fires, clearing for agriculture, unsustainable logging,
ranching and development. 20

We speak reverentially of the savage beauty and teeming biodiversity of the world’s
great wildernesses, from the tropical rainforests of Amazonia and central Africa, to
our wetlands and deserts, and on to Patagonia and the frozen wastes of Antarctica.
We are increasingly aware of the threats to such spaces and have encouraged
sustainable conservation and ecotourism. But still the threats remain. 25

The greatest unexplored space on our planet lies beneath the oceans. Yet rising
CO2 levels in the atmosphere are causing acidification, which disrupts food chains
and marine habitats. Huge floating masses of plastic dumped in the oceans turn
into hazardous waste that endangers not only marine life but also, indirectly, human
populations – and the planet itself. Overfishing, illegal and damaging trawling 30
practices and past whaling have emptied the oceans before we have even properly
understood what riches they contain. And the great spaces of the oceans are the
lungs of the planet.

The very air we breathe is filling up with toxins. For years, gases have burned
through the ozone layer, exposing us to ultraviolet rays and affecting climate 35
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change. Airborne diseases – such as Zika, swine flu and bird flu – have multiplied
and threatened to become global pandemics.

Great clouds of smog hover above our cities and airborne diseases multiply.
Inhalation of toxic gases is said to reduce average lifespans by one to two years.
Various estimates suggest that air pollution accounts for between half and two- 40
thirds of all premature deaths in Asia, while anywhere between 10 and 20% of all
worldwide deaths are attributable to the same cause.

Typhoons, hurricanes and cyclones are harbingers of disaster, yet the winds are
also, for some, an important source of energy. The debate about the effectiveness
of wind farms rages on. Protesters claim they are ineffective and even dangerous 45
eyesores, while pro-campaigners trumpet the positive impact of these wind farms.

Space itself – famously the final frontier – has not been colonised but has, instead,
become a dumping ground to such an extent that scientists are now calling on nations
to reduce the quantity of orbital junk they produce or risk inhibiting future space
activity. And yet, as overpopulation and decreasing landmass become a conundrum 50
for future generations, will outer space provide an inhabitable environment?

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2 The following extract is from food writer Sophie Egan’s book, Devoured. In the extract, Egan
explores the connection between the working and eating habits of the ‘millennial’ generation –
people reaching adulthood in the early twenty-first century.

(a) Comment on the language and style of the passage. [15]

(b) After reading the extract, you decide that Josh and his fellow ‘millennials’ need to make some
changes regarding what, where and how they eat. You explain your views on the subject in
your personal blog. Basing your writing on the material of the original passage, and using
between 120 and 150 of your own words, write a section of text for your blog. [10]

The Millennial Food Psyche

Wednesday, 7:00 A.M.

An alarm clock blares, and a guy we’ll call Josh bolts out of bed. The noise is
definitely alarming because he has the alarm set to the one that sounds like bad
things are happening on a submarine. Ambling into the kitchen, Josh finds his neatly 5
lined rows of coffee pods and goes for the southern pecan flavour. Autumn has just
begun, and at that particular moment, he’s in the mood for something comforting.

Josh is a thirty-one-year-old hardware operations quality engineer at Google. At six

feet tall with pale, freckled skin, brown hair, and blue eyes, he’s got somewhere
between a cross-country runner’s build and a ‘dad-bod’1 – the latter thanks to a 10
slight paunch that’s developed since taking the Google position three years earlier
(surely a small price to pay for finally having landed his dream job at the best
company to work for in the country).

7:08 A.M.

Josh opens his laptop and plunges deep into the Internet. With seven different 15
windows open, his screen flashes with a whirl of activity. The number of e-mails
waiting for him this morning is massive. It’s not so much that the deluge has already
begun, but that it never really ends. Every minute he sleeps, the more behind he
gets at work. So now he takes a sip of coffee and starts firing e-mails back.

Josh is a member of the millennial generation. A graduate of the University of 20

Michigan, he’s among the 61 percent of his cohort with a college degree, 15 percent
higher than his parents’. He’s among the 62 percent who prefer to live in mixed-
use urban areas, according to a successful consumer insights firm. Work, nightlife,
shopping – all at their doorsteps. Also like other millennials, he was raised on cereal,
computers, and a congratulations every time he put his socks on straight. 25

Josh scrolls through his Facebook feed and sees that his friend from a summer
internship in Austin a few years back is on a two-week liquid diet. She has posted
a photo of herself sipping a kale smoothie at Starbucks. Josh also sees that his
sister in Portland made homemade pizza last night with gluten-free dough, topped
with poached eggs from the chickens in her backyard. And Josh’s former college 30
roommate has posted from a CrossFit2 box in New York, bragging about his WOD,
which means ‘workout of the day’. He’s eating a strawberry coconut breakfast bar
he got from the gym.

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7:55 A.M.

Josh has an 8:30 A.M. meeting, so he grabs a roasted jalapeño almond protein bar 35
because it is non-genetically modified and gluten-free and has 10 grams of protein.
He takes the keys with his other hand and heads out the door.

While driving to work – which he does because he can leave when he wants,
and listen to his favourite NFL podcast as loudly as he wants, because it takes
five minutes longer by bus, and, well, because every minute counts these days – 40
he remembers he’s out of toilet paper and plain, non-fat Greek yogurt. When he
doesn’t have an early meeting, he eats Greek yogurt at home before work because
one time at the airport he read in Men’s Fitness that Greek yogurt is one of those
foods that ‘Fill You Up While You Trim Down.’

Given his hectic schedule that day, he doesn’t know when he’ll have time to get 45
groceries. So, at a stoplight, he takes out his phone (even though he promised his
sister he’d stop doing that), opens his Instacart app, and quickly places an order.
Before checkout, the page reminds him about grocery items he has purchased in
the past, so he throws in some sour cream and onion ‘Popchips’, which he eats a
few times a week because the label says ‘all the flavour, half the fat.’ Their absence 50
of evil means it’s totally fine to eat the whole bag after dinner.

1dad-bod : a slang term in popular culture for a male physique that is not slim or
toned
2CrossFit : an exclusive fitness programme in a private gym

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3 The following extract is taken from a biography of Pete Maravich, a famous basketball player.
In the extract, the writer describes Maravich taking part in a friendly game eight years after his
retirement from professional basketball.

(a) Comment on the language and style of the passage. [15]

(b) After the game at the Parker Gymnasium, Pete Maravich decides to record his thoughts and
feelings in a diary. Basing your writing closely on the material of the original extract, and using
between 120 and 150 of your own words, write his first diary entry. [10]

They cannot see him, this slouched, ashen-faced man in their midst. To their
oblivious eyes, he remains what he had been, unblemished by the years, much as
he appeared on his first bubblegum card: a Beatles-esque halo of hair, the fresh-
faced, sad-eyed wizard, cradling a grainy leather orb.

One of the regulars, a certified public accountant, had retrieved this very artefact 5
the night before. He found it in a shoebox, tucked away with an old train set and a
wooden fort in a crawlspace in his parents’ basement. He brought it to the gym this
morning to have it signed, or perhaps, in some way, sanctified. The 1970 rookie
card of Pete Maravich, to whom the Atlanta Hawks had just awarded the richest
contract in professional sport, notes the outstanding facts: that Maravich had been 10
coached by his father, under whose tutelage he became ‘the most prolific scorer in
the history of college basketball.’

Other salient statistics are provided in the small print: an average of 44.2 points a
game, a total of 3667 (this when nobody had scored 3000). The records will never
be broken. Still, they are woefully inadequate in measuring the contours of the 15
Maravich myth.

Even the accountant, for whom arithmetic is a vocation, understands the limitation
in mere numbers. There is no integer denoting magic or memory. ‘He was important
to us,’ the accountant would say.

Maravich wasn’t an archetype; he was several: child prodigy, prodigal son, result 20
of his father’s proverbial deal with the devil. He was a creature of contradictions,
ever alone: the white hope of a black sport, a virtuoso stuck in an ensemble, an
exuberant showman who couldn’t look you in the eye, the athlete who lived like a
rock star, a reckless genius saved by God.

Still, it’s his caricature that evokes unqualified affection in men of a certain age. Pistol 25
Pete, they called him. The Pistol is another relic of the seventies, not unlike Bruce
Lee flicks: the skinny kid who mesmerized the basketball world with Globetrotter
moves, floppy socks, and great hair.

Pistol Pete was, in fact, his father’s vision, built to the old man’s exacting
specifications. Peter’s father, Press Maravich, was a Serb. Ideas and language 30
occurred to him in the mother tongue, and so one imagines him speaking to Pistol
(yes, that’s what he called him, too) as a father addressing his son in an old Serbian
song: Listen to me, eyes of mine, guard that which is thine ...

* * *
The game in progress is a dance in deference to this patrimony. The Pistol is an
inheritance, not just for the Maraviches, but for all the American sons who play 35
this American game. The squeak of sneakers against the floor produces an oddly
chirping melody. Then there’s another rhythm, the respiration of men well past their
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prime, an assortment of mainly white guys: the accountant, insurance salesmen,

financial planners, even a preacher or two. ‘Just a bunch of duffers,’ recalls one.
‘Fat old men,’ smirks another. 40

But they play as if Pistol Pete, or what’s left of him, could summon the boys they
once were. They acknowledge him with a superfluous flourish, lingering teenage
vanity – an extra behind-the-back pass or an unnecessary between-the-legs dribble.
The preacher, a gentle-voiced man of great renown in evangelical circles, reveals a
feverishly competitive nature. After hitting a shot, he is heard to bellow, ‘You get that 45
on camera?’

The Parker Gymnasium at Pasadena’s First Church of the Nazarene could pass for
a good high school gym – a clean, cavernous space with arching wooden rafters
and large windows. At dawn, fully energized halogen lamps give off a glow to the
outside world, a beacon to spirits searching for a game. As a boy, Maravich would 50
have considered this a kind of heaven. Now, it’s a way station of sorts.

Pete begins wearily. He hasn’t played in a long time and moves at one-quarter
speed, if that. He does not jump; he shuffles. The ball seems like a shotput in his
hands, his second attempt at the basket barely touching the front of the rim.

But gradually, as the pace of his breath melds with the others’ and he starts to 55
sweat, Pete Maravich recovers something in himself. ‘The glimpse of greatness was
in his ballhandling,’ recalls the accountant. ‘Every once in a while the hands would
flicker. There would just be some kind of dribble or something. You could see a little
of it in his hands, the greatness. Just the quickness of the beat.’

There was genius in that odd beat, the unexpected cadence, a measure of music. 60
The Pistol’s talent, now as then, was musical.

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