Exam practice

a. lurking b. obsessed c. window shopping d. stamp e. ridiculous f. outfit g. swerve h. munching i. leer j. stammer

The story opens with c, but e happened “a couple of days ago”: a flashback.

e, c, a, g, d, b, h, f
The father’s remark about her clothes (g) and her confession (d) came on the way, so after he set off with her (a). The car was parked there when they arrived (b), before the ten minutes of waiting (h), and he told Dhurva the next day (f).

Partly because she felt grown-up and found him overprotective and embarrassing. But mainly because she had a secret: her friend thought she was a boy, and with her father there, her lie would come out.

She calls him obsessed, says that nothing is going to happen to her, calls his plan ridiculous while stamping her feet, and says he is impossible. In her eyes he is an overprotective old man who sees danger everywhere.

As far as Anuja knew, her e-friend was a girl of 12, whom she had met online a few days earlier and liked very much. In fact she was a real girl, careful enough to come with her mother, who knew Anuja only as a boy of 13.

He proposed to drive her there and stay in the car. If he saw a girl of 12 waiting, he would go window shopping and let Anuja meet her alone; if there was no girl, they would wait ten minutes and then come back.

That Anuja had pretended to be a boy while chatting with the girl: the girl knew her as a boy.

Because no girl appeared at the meeting place. They waited ten minutes, as agreed, and then the father decided the friend must have been fake.

Because he knew the other side of the story, and its irony amused him: the father thought he was protecting his daughter from a dangerous stranger, while the girl’s mother had taken him for the dangerous stranger.

She saw him from her car with dark windows, across the road: a bald old man with a big belly, pacing and looking around. She took him for a lecherous old man who had been pretending online to be a boy of 13. They didn’t talk because she was afraid of him and drove away at once, while he never knew who was in the car.

Faking your identity destroys trust. The people you fool feel cheated when they find out, as Anuja’s friend would have, and you may lose real friends. It can also put you in danger: when one person lies, others may lie back, and meetings arranged with a false identity can go badly wrong. Using a fake identity to cheat people or take money is a crime.
Bullying online can hurt as much as bullying in person, or more, because it follows the victim home, at all hours, and hurtful posts spread fast and stay online. Victims may lose sleep, stop going to school, fall into depression and, in the worst cases, harm themselves. The bully can be suspended from school, lose friends, and be punished under the law: in Nepal, posting abusive or hateful material online is an offense, investigated by the Cyber Bureau of Nepal Police.

• a.a statement: fall at the end, my Facebook ↘friend.
• b.↘Why? falls (a wh-question); Is it because I’m 60 years ↗old? rises (a yes/no question).
• c.↘God! falls (an exclamation); the statement falls: this new infor↘mation.
• d.two questions offering choices: the first rises, 60 years ↗old?, the last falls, a big ↘belly?, to show the choices are finished.
• e.the tag falls, ↘doesn’t she?, when the speaker is sure and only wants agreement; it would rise, ↗doesn’t she?, if she were really asking.
• f.a yes/no question: rises, what she said about ↗you? (Said teasingly, as Dhurva says it, it may fall: he isn’t really asking.)
• g.a list of actions: rise on each until the last, which falls: got out of the ↗car, waited for the ↗girl and finally returned ↘home.
• h.a statement: fall, You are ob↘sessed, Dad.

• b.Anuja should have told her friend the truth about who she was from the start.
• c.She should have listened to her father’s warnings instead of calling him obsessed.
• d.She should have arranged to meet her friend in a busy public place, with both families knowing.
• e.The father should have talked to the other girl’s parents before the meeting.
• f.He shouldn’t have paced up and down near the meeting place; he should have waited in the car, as he had promised.
• g.He shouldn’t have decided so quickly that the friend was fake.

• a.You should have kept your money in a zipped pocket, not in your back pocket.
• b.You should have practiced writing every day, and you shouldn’t have left your revision to the last night.
• c.You should have written the homework in your diary.
• d.You shouldn’t have used the same password for everything, and you should have turned on two-step verification.
• e.You shouldn’t have wandered off alone. You should have stayed with the group.
• f.You shouldn’t have stayed up so late watching videos.
• g.You should have chosen a password you could remember, a long phrase of words, and kept it in a password manager.

• a.advice (a recommendation of the right thing to do)
• b.compulsion (the traffic rules are a law that everyone has to obey)
• c.moral obligation (being fair is a duty of conscience)

• a.ought to (a moral duty; should or must also fit)
• b.should (advice)
• c.should (advice; must if you mean it is urgent and necessary)
• d.should (a recommendation)
• e.mustn’t (a strong don’t: ought not to also fits, as a duty)
• f.should (advice)
• g.should (advice)
• h.shouldn’t (advice; mustn’t is stronger)
• i.ought to (a moral duty; should also fits)
• j.ought to (it is the right thing to do; should also fits)

In most of these more than one modal is grammatical; the choice shows how strong you mean it to be.

Thank her, congratulate the couple, say clearly that you can’t come and apologize, give the reason briefly, and end warmly with good wishes and a plan to meet.

To: sambridhi@example.com

Subject: Re: Invitation to the wedding of our brother

Dear Sambridhi,

Thank you so much for your kind invitation to Naman dai’s wedding reception on 21 March. My parents and I were delighted to hear the news. Please pass on our warmest congratulations to him and his bride.

I am very sorry, but we won’t be able to come. My grandfather is unwell, and the whole family has to go to our village in Gorkha that week to look after him and settle some urgent family matters. We were really looking forward to seeing you all in Dumre, so we are disappointed to miss it.

I hope the party goes wonderfully and that the newly married couple have a long and happy life together. Please send me lots of photos! I would love to visit you and meet the bride as soon as we are back.

With best wishes,
Niti

a – v, b – viii, c – vii, d – i, e – ii, f – ix, g – iv, h – x, i – vi, j – iii
Sensitive has several meanings. Column ii’s (quick to notice small changes: a sensitive scale) is the one offered here; in the article itself, sensitive information means private information that could do harm if stolen.

a – B, b – G, c – F, d – C, e – E, f – D, g – H, h – A
Paragraphs B and G are both about personal information. B is about keeping it safe from theft (shielding your PIN, skimmers, chip cards, secure sites); G is about keeping it private, not sharing it (account details, friend requests, posts).

We lock the doors of our homes, use a bike lock to stop our bikes being stolen, and keep valuable possessions in a safe.

Never share them with anyone, store them securely (in an encrypted file or a password manager) instead of writing them down, and switch off auto-login and “Remember my password”.

1. Shield the PIN pad with your hand when you type your PIN.
2. Use a chip card rather than a magnetic strip card (and watch out for card skimmers). Also: never enter card details on a website that isn’t secure.

By turning on two-factor authentication, which asks for a second proof, such as a code sent to our phone, so the password alone isn’t enough.

Because online, anyone can pretend to be anyone: an adult can pose as a teenager, as the father in “Parents” feared. A stranger may want to trick us, steal our information or harm us. People we know in person are who they say they are, and we can trust what we share with them.

Use strong, different passwords, turn on two-factor authentication, lock and update all our devices, avoid unsecured public Wi-Fi, share as little personal information as possible, and back up important data regularly.

Last year my cousin’s Facebook account was taken over after she typed her password into a page that looked like Facebook’s, but wasn’t: she had clicked a link in a message saying she had won a phone. The hacker sent messages to all her friends asking them to lend money. She reset her password from her email, turned on two-factor authentication and warned her friends. Now she checks the address of every login page, and I do too.

a. ✗ b. ✓ c. ✗ d. ✓ e. ✓ f. ✗ g. ✓ h. ✗ i. ✓
c is a trap: the talk says to keep your email password secret, not to make it strong. In h, the talk is about not clicking links or pop-ups in a cyber café, not about what you post.

• a.many things, even make friends
• b.a firewall and antivirus
• c.log out or shut down
• d.they may contain viruses
• e.the supervisor

One day a pop-up appeared saying that my phone had a virus and that I should download an app at once to clean it. It even made a warning sound. I didn’t tap it: I closed the browser and asked my brother, who said that such pop-ups are tricks to make people install harmful apps. Since then, I install apps only from the official app store.

a. a b. an c. a d. an e. an f. a g. a h. an
d: the h of hour is silent. f: ewe begins with the sound /j/ (you). g: one begins with the sound /w/ (wun).

a. the (the window we can both see) b. the (a particular book, “I gave you”) c. the (the floor of the room) d. the (a musical instrument) e. a, the (first mention; then the living room of that house) f. The (there is only one president of Nepal at a time) g. a (European begins with the sound /j/) h. the (a superlative) i. a (describing what kind of man he is)

a. the (she went to the building, not as a student) b. ✗ (get home) c. The (a plural name) d. ✗ (a single mountain) e. The (a river) f. ✗ (a street) g. The (names of theaters, cinemas, hotels and museums usually take the: the Aarohan Theatre, the National Museum) h. ✗ (a meal) i. the (the blind, blind people as a group) j. ✗ (a game)

Give the article a headline and a byline, and one paragraph to each guideline. Use examples a reader in Nepal will recognize.

Online life needs locks too
By a staff reporter

Kathmandu. Thirty years ago, very few people in Nepal had heard of the internet. Today it reaches villages where there is no road, through the phone in almost every pocket. It has changed the way we learn, work, shop and keep in touch.

We now pay electricity bills, book bus tickets and transfer money with an app. Students attend online classes and look up answers in seconds, farmers check prices before they sell, and families talk face to face, on video, with relatives working in the Gulf.

But criminals have moved online as well. Fake messages promise prizes and ask for a one-time code; hackers break into social media accounts and ask the owner’s friends for money; bullies post cruel comments and private photos. Many victims never report it, out of shame or because they don’t know where to go.

That is why our personal data needs protection. Every account should have a long, different password and two-step login. Phones should be locked and updated, and nobody should click links in unexpected messages or share an OTP. Before we post anything, we should ask who else might see it.

The internet is one of the most useful tools ever made, and it isn’t going away. Like a house, it needs locks. Learning a few simple habits, and reporting cybercrime to the Cyber Bureau of Nepal Police, will keep us one step ahead of the criminals.

• a.In Butwal (in Grade 10).
• b.Rs. 5,000, sent urgently to a phone number, kept secret.
• c.The message was in English, but his friend always wrote in Nepali.
• d.It had been hacked.
• e.She changed her password, turned on two-step login (and warned everyone on her friend list).

a. a b. ✗ (a place name) c. The d. an e. a f. the g. the h. an i. ✗ j. ✗

a. mustn’t b. should c. must d. ought to (or should) e. should have

• a.Rita should have locked her phone.
• b.Hari shouldn’t have clicked the prize link.
• c.They should have checked the website’s address before paying.
• d.I shouldn’t have told a stranger my school’s name.

A friendly email: greeting, sympathy, three or four pieces of advice with should or you’d better, each with a reason, and a warm close.

Subject: Keeping your accounts safe

Greeting: Dear Bikash dai,

Paragraph 1: sorry to hear about the hacking; glad you got the account back.

Paragraph 2: advice: you should use a long password of three or four random words, a different one for every account; you should turn on two-step login, so a stolen password isn’t enough; you shouldn’t click links in messages about prizes or problems with your account; you must never share an OTP.

Paragraph 3: keep your phone updated and locked; check the address before you log in anywhere.

Close: hope it helps; see you at Tihar. With love, (your name)