Exam practice

He is standing in a town square covered in squashed oranges, dressed in a team’s checked costume, with both arms in the air. He is throwing oranges in the Battle of the Oranges, or cheering after a throw, while the crowd behind him watches.

My favorite festival is Tihar, the festival of lights. It lasts five days in Kartik. We honor crows, dogs and cows, light oil lamps for Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, and on the last day my sister puts a tika of seven colors on my forehead. I love it because the whole town glows at night and the family is together.

a – iii, b – v, c – vi, d – i, e – vii, f – ii, g – iv.
Mush and pulp are close: mush is any soft squashed mass, pulp the soft inside of a fruit. And strictly, a concussion is the injury; losing consciousness for a moment is one of its signs.

The red hat, the berretto frigio, symbolizes freedom. It is the symbol of the carnival itself: in Roman times such caps were worn by freed slaves, and in the Middle Ages by peasants rising against their feudal lords.

She is shocked and frightened: she sees red on her hand, thinks it is blood, and fears she needs stitches or has a concussion. Then she remembers blood oranges and feels relief, though she is still shivering from the shock.

The square is covered in a thick sludge, a mixture of orange pulp and horse manure, which smells sharp and sweet-and-sour.

When a cart comes, they charge at it and bombard it with oranges. When it moves on, they run after it for a while, hurling the last of their oranges, then rush back to the crates at the sides of the square to fill their bags and tops again.

Yes, she enjoys it very much. She waits for it all year and would be happy to have a black eye. She believes it is good for her psychological health: for three days she can let out all the frustration she has built up during the year, and afterwards she feels refreshed.

Because he believes that to really live the carnival you have to be in the middle of the battle, not watching safely from behind a net. For him, the thrill is worth the risk of a black eye.

La Tomatina, Spain. On the last Wednesday of August, about 20,000 people crowd into the streets of Buñol, a small town near Valencia, and throw ripe tomatoes at each other for one hour. Trucks bring in about 120 tons of tomatoes. It started in 1945, when a few young men began a food fight in the main square; the town tried to ban it, but it kept coming back. Afterwards fire hoses wash the streets, and the tomato acid leaves them very clean.
Closer to home: in Thimi, near Bhaktapur, the Sindoor Jatra on the Nepali New Year’s Day covers people and palanquins in orange-red vermilion powder, and in nearby Bode, the next day, a man has his tongue pierced with an iron spike and walks around the town with oil lamps on his shoulders.

• a.She asked him if he had ever seen Chandi Naach.
• b.She asked him if he could remember how he had enjoyed the festival in his youth.
• c.She asked him if there was any ritual to perform it.
• d.She asked him whether he invited a priest for the ritual.
• e.She asked him how he had danced.
• f.She asked him what activity he had appreciated.

In a, b, c and d (yes/no questions) if or whether is added; in e and f the question word stays. Did and do disappear, and the tense moves one step back.

• a.Agaman asked Timothy if he was working that night.
• b.A stranger wanted to know from me if that was the road to the station.
• c.My friend inquired of her whether she had done her homework.
• d.The tourist was asked if he had been to Paris. (she for a woman)
• e.Usha inquired of Anju how long she had been working in that company.
• f.My mother asked me what flavor ice cream I had had at the party.
• g.The teacher wanted to know if we had studied reported speech before. (Before stays: it is not tied to the day of speaking.)
• h.I asked him where he would stay that night.
• i.Sumangal asked his friend how many players had been shown a yellow card by the referee. (The question word is the subject here, so the order stays; only the tense moves back.)
• j.Sarita wanted to know from Sommaya what effect the medicine had had on the patient.

First change said or said to into asked. Then: a question word or if/whether; statement order; no do/did; tense one step back; change you, your, this, last night.

• a.Kritika asked me why I had gone out the night before.
• b.Sunita asked Usha who that beautiful woman was. (Who that beautiful woman had been is also correct.)
• c.Gaurab asked Yang Dolma how her mother was.
• d.My friend wanted to know what I was going to do at the weekend.
• e.My teacher asked me where I would live after graduation.
• f.Anusha asked Melisha what she had been doing when she (Anusha) had seen her. (Usually just when she saw her: the past continuous moves back, and the second verb may stay.)
• g.I asked the pilgrim how the journey had been.
• h.Krishna asked me how often I went to the cinema.
• i.The principal asked me if I lived in Patan.
• j.Niraj asked Luniva if Phadindra had arrived on time.

In b, c and e, the speaker’s said was really a question, so it becomes asked; the name after the comma (Usha) tells you who was asked.

The task gives you your paragraphs: one for history, one for the people and activities, one for its importance, one for its drawbacks. Add an introduction (what, when, where) and a conclusion (your feelings and a hope).

Bisket Jatra: Bhaktapur Welcomes the New Year

Every spring, as the Nepali year ends, the old city of Bhaktapur fills with drums, cymbals and crowds. Bisket Jatra, or Biska Jatra, is the city’s greatest festival. It lasts nine days and eight nights, beginning a few days before the New Year on the first of Baisakh.

The festival is very old. People say it goes back to the Malla kings who once ruled the valley. A famous legend tells of a princess whose husbands died, one after another, on their wedding night, until a brave prince stayed awake and saw two serpents come out of her nostrils. He killed them, and the tall pole raised during the festival, with two long banners hanging from it, is said to remember the two serpents.

The whole city takes part. Hundreds of young men pull the huge three-roofed chariot of Bhairav through the streets around Taumadhi Square, together with the smaller chariot of the goddess Bhadrakali. The people of the upper part of the town pull one way and the people of the lower part the other, in a tug-of-war that decides where the chariot goes. On the last days of the year, a very tall wooden pole is raised at Yosinkhel and, on the last evening, pulled down; when it falls, the new year has begun. In nearby Thimi, the next day, people throw orange vermilion powder in the Sindoor Jatra.

Bisket Jatra is more than a show. It honors the city’s gods, marks the end of one year and the start of the next, and brings families, neighbors and the two halves of the town together. Relatives come home, and every house cooks a feast.

It also has its drawbacks. The crowds are so thick that people are sometimes badly hurt, even killed, under the chariot or in the pushing, and too much drinking causes quarrels between the two sides. Streets are left full of rubbish.

For me, Bisket Jatra is the time when Bhaktapur feels most alive. If people pull the chariot with care, drink less and keep the streets clean, this old festival can stay a joy for everyone for centuries to come.

a. intermittently b. commemorate c. typically d. crescent e. vibrant f. reveler (British reveller) g. exotic h. pervade i. flamboyant j. frantic

• a.Liberia (after church, a feast, then an evening of dancing and singing)
• b.Iran (Mehregan)
• c.Ghana (Homowo)
• d.South Korea (Chuseok)
• e.Brazil (revelers head to the beach)
• f.the USA (Macy’s parade and small-town parades)
• g.South Korea (the morning ceremony for the ancestors)

The family dinner, with roast turkey at its center: Americans eat more on Thanksgiving Day than on any other day of the year, about 45 million turkeys in all. Parades are a big part of it too.

They range from small-town parades with the local marching band to Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York, the world’s largest, with floats and huge balloons, usually of cartoon characters, Broadway shows and other topics of the day.

Chuseok is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month (the harvest full moon, in September or early October), to celebrate the autumn harvest and to honor the ancestors.

Former President Gaspar Dutra of Brazil visited the United States, was fascinated by Thanksgiving, and established it in Brazil in 1949.

It was started in the 19th century by freed American slaves who settled in Liberia. They started it to give thanks for their freedom, celebrating the good things in life while remembering their troubled past.

Crop Over was originally a celebration of the sugar cane harvest, when Barbados was one of the world’s largest producers of sugar.

Homowo, meaning “to hoot at hunger”, celebrates the end of a long famine the people suffered long ago. They celebrate it with a feast and a night of drumming and dancing in defiance of hunger.

In our community, the first grain of every harvest goes to the gods before anyone eats it. When the new rice is ready, Kirat and many other families hold nwagi, offering the first new rice to the gods and the ancestors, then eating it together. The Kirat people celebrate Udhauli after the harvest in Mangsir, and Ubhauli in Baisakh at sowing time, with Chandi Naach. On Asar 15, the day of planting rice, families eat beaten rice and curd in the fields and sing as they plant. And at Maghe Sankranti, families share sweet potatoes, yams, ghee and chaku, the foods of the season. In every case, we give thanks first, then share.

Speaker 1: a. True (a co-worker moved everything on everyone’s desk). b. False (it was “a total waste of time”).

Speaker 2: a. True (around the children’s playground in the park). b. False (the club went to the park and had a picnic).

Speaker 3: a. False (she always enjoyed it, “at least I think she did”). b. True.

Speaker 4: a. False (it was a family dinner, not a party with friends). b. True.

Speaker 5: a. False (she says those parties are the worst). b. True (the people next door partied until 5 in the morning).

Each fact in the report answers one question. Turn it back: put the helping verb or question word first, add do/does/did where needed, and the present tense for facts that are always true.

1. What is Ihi?
2. Why is it done?
3. Why was it started? (or: How did it start?)
4. At what age is it performed? (or: How old are the girls who take part?)
5. Why is it known as Bel Bibaha?
6. Why was this particular fruit chosen?
7. How long does the ritual go on?
8. Are there any foods or drinks that the participants cannot eat?

The report gives two of them in reported form: “I asked him why it was done” → Why is it done?, and he explained “why this particular fruit was chosen” → Why was this particular fruit chosen?

Turn each clue into a full sentence in the past or future. Put the most important facts (what, who, when) in the first paragraph, and who announced it near the start.

Vitamin A Capsules Given to Young Children Across the Country
Kathmandu, October 20
Health assistants gave vitamin A capsules to children aged six months to five years in every district of the country on October 19 and 20, according to the Department of Health Services.
Children between one and five years old were also given deworming tablets during the same campaign. The department had announced the program a week earlier and asked parents to bring their children to the nearest health post or distribution center.
Vitamin A protects children’s eyesight and helps them fight diseases such as measles and diarrhea, while deworming tablets clear the worms that steal nutrients from a growing child’s food.
The national vitamin A program has been running since 2050 BS, and deworming tablets have been given since 2056 BS. Health officials say the twice-yearly campaigns have played a big part in saving the lives of young children in Nepal.
Parents whose children missed the capsules have been asked to contact their local health post.

• a.The visitor asked Massi where he kept the oranges.
• b.Rina asked her teacher if/whether Chuseok was a holiday in Korea. (is may stay, as a fact still true)
• c.Bina asked me if I had watched the chariot festival the day before.
• d.The reporter asked the police how many people had come to the jatra.
• e.The teacher asked us if we could name three harvest festivals.
• f.My grandmother asked who had brought the sel roti.

a. where b. were pulling c. had d. why e. if she could f. what time the pole would fall
(f: “What time will the pole fall?” → would fall, in statement order.)

a. False (it is in Kathmandu) b. True c. True (eight days) d. False (on the first day) e. True

Students Plant 300 Saplings Along the River
Panauti, Saturday
Students of the Eco Club of Shree Janapriya Secondary School planted 300 saplings along the bank of the Punyamati River on Saturday, joined by their teachers and the ward chairperson.
The young trees, mostly native species such as chilaune, utis and katus, were planted over three kilometers of the bank, where floods washed away the soil last monsoon.
“Trees hold the soil with their roots and keep our river clean,” said the club’s president, a Grade 10 student. The ward chairperson praised the students and promised to put up a fence to keep goats away.
The club says its members will water and care for the saplings for the next two years, until they are strong enough to grow on their own.

Introduction (which festival, when, how long); history or legend; what people do; why it matters to you and to the community; any drawbacks; conclusion. Use the present simple for what happens every year.