Week 28 · English Practice Paper

Reading Passage

This extract is written from the point of view of Fen, an old sheepdog, who is travelling in the back of a pickup truck with a farmer's granddaughter, Nessa, and her grandfather.

Fen

Fen felt the truck slow before Nessa did, as she felt everything first. Through the pads of her paws, along her spine, in the sensitive whiskers at her muzzle. By the change in the engine's hum, she knew the road beneath them had turned from tarmac to gravel. She lifted her head from Nessa's lap and sniffed at the cold air leaking in through the gap in the window, which told her they were somewhere close to the old market square. The usual smells of diesel and hedgerow were there, but beneath them, faint and sharp, something new: a clean, stinging scent Fen had never smelled before, though it made the fur along her back prickle like static, all the same.

The girl's silence surprised Fen. On every other journey like this, Nessa had chattered the whole way, or hummed some tune she'd picked up at school. Nessa pulled Fen closer now and gripped the old dog's collar more tightly than usual. Fen nudged her muzzle into the girl's palm, the way she always did when Nessa needed comforting, and usually this made the girl laugh and scratch behind her ears. Today, Nessa only pressed her face into Fen's fur and said nothing.

It was then that Fen realised her girl was crying. She twisted round to look properly, to be sure. Yes — crying, though without a sound, which was something Fen had never known Nessa to do before. The girl hadn't cried properly for a long time, not since she was small, but Fen remembered it well: always before, she had cried loudly, as though the whole farmyard ought to know about it.

Fen licked at the girl's face and then only grew more confused. There was no smell of blood anywhere on her. She wriggled free of the girl's arms to check her over properly, worried she might have missed some injury, though her nose was never wrong about such things. No blood; not even the deep, hidden ache of a bruise, which Fen had learned to smell once, long ago, after a bad fall from the hayloft.

The truck pulled off the gravel and onto smooth ground, and the crate of sheep-feed beside them shifted. By its scent, Fen knew it held the girl's coat and her school things, thrown in loose at the last minute. She pawed at the buckle, hoping to nose the coat open far enough to find something of Nessa's that might comfort her — a jumper, a glove, anything that smelled properly of home. But just then the truck slowed again, this time to little more than a crawl. Nessa went very still, her hands tightening in Fen's fur.

Fen's ears lifted, and the loose skin along her back began to twitch. The sharp, stinging smell she had caught earlier was stronger now, closer, and it caught unpleasantly at the back of her throat. Sometimes at home a similar smell rose from the bottle the vet used to clean small cuts, and Fen always felt calmer once it had faded. She whined once, low in her chest, and pressed herself flat against the seat.

Instead of climbing out, Nessa pulled Fen down onto her lap and spoke to her grandfather in a small, pleading voice. Fen had learned the meaning of a good many human words by now, and she heard him say one of them clearly: "No." Often that word was followed by her own name, or the girl's. This time it was only "no," said over and over, to her grandfather, and getting no smaller each time she said it.

The truck rolled finally to a stop outside a low white building, and Fen caught, at last, the true source of the sharp smell — carried out through a propped-open door each time somebody went in or out. The old man reached back over the seat, said something to his granddaughter in a voice gentler than his usual gruff one, and lifted Fen carefully into his arms. Nessa did not try to stop him, so Fen did not try to stop him either, though by now every hair on her body stood on end. She hung quite still in his grip, watching her girl's face, and followed him without a struggle towards the door.

Option 1: Continue writing the story from the grandfather's point of view.

• Show an understanding of what the grandfather is likely to be feeling, and how he might express himself.
• Show an understanding of what might reasonably happen next.
• You may use this opening if you wish: "I lifted Fen down from the truck, feeling her heart hammering against my arm. I hadn't wanted to bring Nessa today, but she had refused to be left behind, and now..." (please continue)

Option 2: Write a story which is told from an animal's point of view. It can be about a pet or a wild animal.

• Show an understanding of how the animal might experience the world through its senses.