COMPREHENSION

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions orally:

DEADLY DENTURES

It's the height of the summer season. You are splashing about in the waves, without a care in the world. You dive under a breaker, and suddenly you see it. A monster shark, 20 ... no, 30 metres long! It approaches you with gaping jaws, revealing razor-sharp teeth the length of your hand. Aaarghhh!

The bad news is that this massive shark isn't a product of the human imagination, it's real. The good news is that it lived long long ago - even before Tyrannosaurus rex stamped across the land. So the only place you might encounter even a model of it is in a museum.

Fossils of enormous shark teeth, some of them exceeding 15 cm in length, have been dredged up from ocean floors. Some experts believe the owners may have been between 15m to 20m long; others put them at an awesome 30m.

Either way this ancient giant makes the infamous great white shark that prowls our modern oceans seem like child's play. The great white is a diminutive descendent of this prehistoric monster.

Teeth are the hallmark of sharks - as victims of shark bites demonstrate very clearly. In most sharks the mouth is on the underside of the head, although in a few species it is at the front. The powerful jaws, which are made of cartilage, are lined with several rows of teeth - in one species as many as 14.

However, only the front row is used at any one time to snatch a mouthful of flesh. The rows behind it are replacement teeth. Every week or so a new set of teeth moves forward to replace the front ones as they wear off or are lost by accident.

Shark teeth come in a variety of shapes, depending on the kind of food eaten. Most sharks, especially large hunters such as great white and tiger sharks, have roughly triangular teeth with pointed tips. In many, the teeth have serrated edges. They are used to cut through the skin, flesh and bones of victims and rip off large chunks of food. The tiger shark can even bite through turtle shells and crocodile skins.

Some sharks, on the other hand, have flat, molar like teeth used to crush and grind the hard shells of molluscs and crustaceans.

A few species such as whale and basking sharks are harmless plankton-eaters, which feed by straining food off the water through gill clefts. Their minute teeth, set in several rows, are used as a rough sort of file.

As though the teeth in their jaws are not enough, a shark’s skin is studded with thousands of sharp tiny teeth called "denticles".

Brush a shark's skin from head to tail, and it feels smooth. Brush it the other way, and it feels like sandpaper. Dried shark's skin, called shagreen, was once sold as sandpaper for polishing wooden furniture.

The bad reputation sharks have, though, is largely undeserved. For one thing, most are harmless to people. For another, attacks on humans by large predatory sharks are comparatively rare - many more people die from drowning every year than from shark wounds.

Furthermore, many of the attacks that do occur are thought to be the result of sharks mistaking people for their usual prey or because the sharks are feeling threatened.

YOU magazine: 23 February 1995

Read the passage "Deadly dentures" and answer the questions that follow:

(1)

(1)

(2)

(1)

(3)

(1)

(2)

(1)

(2)

(2)

(1)

(2)

Vocabulary: What do the following words mean?

(5)

Total: [25]

SPELLING AND VOCABULARY

Let's make a spelling and vocabulary chart of words that appear in the passage.

Write down any words that you would find difficult to spell, and also words that you don't know the meaning of.

Write down all the new spelling words that your teacher gives you on this chart as well.

Remember!

ADJECTIVES

Look at these examples:

(Adjectives usually come before a noun; but they can be separated from their noun and come afterwards).

The little fur seal lies in the net, a round ball with two big eyes full of fear. The hunters scared away his mother so that they could catch him and her frantic cries can still be heard in the distance.

This is a seal hunt. These hunters won’t simply club the pups to death: this snowy, watery landscape won’t run red with blood as it has in the past. These hunters will “kidnap” the young animals before killing them. They are caught by their hind legs and bundled into netting sacks that will cause the minimum of damage to their prized coats. They are put into big crates and taken by helicopter to ships at the edge of the ice-bound sea, and then carried to their destiny at fur farms further south. There the traders wait until they have lost all the fine white fur of their infancy – and then kill them by injection before removing the pelts.

Adapted from: YOU, 28 June 1990

Write down the meaning of the words in bold. Use the dictionary to help you.

WRITTEN WORD

These strange and enchanting creatures live in the ocean. Write a paragraph in which you describe how you would feel if you were swimming and you came face to face with any one of them. Try to use as many adjectives as possible.

1.

(a) in a museum

(b) more than 15cm long

(c) This extinct monster shark was far more fearsome than the terrible great white shark we know.

(d) On the underside of the head.

(e) The jaws are very strong. They are made of cartilage and have several rows of teeth – even up to 14 rows in one species.

(f) They replace the teeth that wear off or are lost.

(g) To cut and rip through skin, flesh and bones of the shark’s prey.

(h) denticles

(i) Dried shark’s skin, used as sandpaper.

(j) Sandpaper for polishing wooden furniture.

(k) False

(l) They mistake people for their real prey. They feel threatened.

(m) (i) wide open

(ii) dragged up

(iii) small

(iv) characteristic feature / trademark

(v) huge

(vi) notorious

3. (c)

The littlefur seal lies in the net, a round ball with twobig eyes

full of fear. The hunters scared away his mother so that they could catch him and herfrantic cries can still be heard in the distance.

This is a sealhunt. These hunters won’t simply club the pups to death: thissnowy, watery landscape won’t run red with blood as it has in the past. These hunters will “kidnap” the young animals before killing them. They are caught by theirhind legs and bundled into netting sacks which will cause the minimum of damage to their prized coats. They are put into big crates and taken by helicopter to ships at the edge of the ice-bound sea, and then carried to their destiny at fur farms further south. There the traders wait until they have lost all the finewhite fur of their infancy and then kill them by injecting before removing the pelts.