Directions:
You will be taking the Grade 6 English Language Arts/Literacy Post-test.
You will be asked to read a passage. Read the passage and all the questions carefully. Some questions will ask you to choose one correct answer, while others will ask you to choose more than one correct answer. You may look back at the passage when needed.
To answer a question, click on the circle or circles of the correct answer.
Read the passage “The Life of a Ship from the Launch to the Wreck”. Then answer the questions .
The Life of a Ship from the Launch to the Wreck
by R.M. Ballantyne
Song of the Sailor Boy
I Oh! I love the great blue ocean,
I love the whistling breeze,
When the gallant ship sweeps lightly
Across the surging seas.
I watched my first ship building;
I saw her timbers rise,
Until her masts were towering
Up in the bright blue skies.
II
I heard the cheers ascending,
I saw her kiss the foam,
When first her hull went plunging
Into her ocean home.
Her flags were gaily streaming,
And her sails were full and round,
When the shout from shore came ringing,
“Hurrah! for the Outward-bound!”
III
But, alas! ere (1) long a tempest
Came down with awful roar
And dashed our ship in pieces
Upon a foreign shore.
But He who holds the waters
In His almighty hand,
Brought all the sailors safely
Back to their native land.
1 Davy was a fisher boy; and Davy was a very active little boy; and Davy wanted to go to sea. His father was a fisherman, his grandfather had been a fisherman, and his great-grandfather had been a fisherman: so we need not wonder much that little Davy took to the salt water like a fish. When he was very little he used to wade in it, and catch crabs in it, and gather shells on the shore, or build castles on the sands. Sometimes, too, he fell into the water neck and heels, and ran home to his mother, who used to whip him and set him to dry before the fire; but, as he grew older, he went with his father in the boat to fish, and from that time forward he began to wish to go to sea in one of the large ships that were constantly sailing away from the harbour near his father’s cottage.
2 One day Davy sat on a rock beside the sea, leaning on his father’s boat hook, and gazing with longing eyes out upon the clear calm ocean, on which several ships and boats were floating idly, for there was not a breath of wind to fill their sails.
3 “Oh, how I wish my father would let me go to sea!” said Davy, with a deep sigh. “I wonder if I shall ever sail away beyond that line yonder, far, far away, where the sky seems to sink into the sea!” The line that he spoke of was the horizon.
from The Life of a Ship from the Launch to the Wreck by R.M. Ballantyne—Public Domain
(1) ere—Before