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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS General Certificate of Education Advanced Subsidiary Level and Advanced Level

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8693/01
May/June 2008 2 hours

ENGLISH LANGUAGE Paper 1 Passages for Comment Additional Materials:
*6743318543*

Answer Booklet/Paper

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST If you have been given an Answer Booklet, follow the instructions on the front cover of the Booklet. Write your Centre number, candidate number and name on all the work you hand in. Write in dark blue or black pen. Do not use staples, paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid. Answer two questions. You are reminded of the need for good English and clear presentation in your answers. At the end of
His two friends had loyally agreed to suffer the boredom and indignity with him and all four of us made our way to the field where the Big Top had been put up. As we passed through the gate into the playing-field, the mingled scents of crushed grass and canvas gave an extra tingle of excitement. There was a pleasurable agony of waiting in the queue to get in before we finally entered the tent where the air was thick with the smell of sawdust and animals. My brother and his friends draped themselves languidly along the bench and discussed their foreign trip with an air of ostentatious indifference to the ring before them and the trapeze above. I sat alongside my brother with my jacket rolled up beside me so I’d have more room to see if someone big sat down in front of me. The show began when a tall, handsome Ringmaster with moustaches and whip and top hat announced the first act and the clowns came on. They fell over, they burst balloons, they poured buckets of water over themselves and each other; they threatened the audience, fell over, threw pies at each other and their trousers fell down. They were outrageous, hilarious, anarchic, entrancing. I loved them. I roared and I hooted and I guffawed and shrieked. My brother and his friends watched with a stony and cynical aloofness. Then the acrobats performed dizzy